Stefania Tchornenko—Emil-Karl-Théodore Anger

The relationship between Stefania Tchornenko and Emil-Karl-Théodore Anger begins in the aftermath of a fire and ends, as the doctor lies dying, with his attempt to undo the harm of his own rescue. He takes a Ruthenian neighbor’s daughter into his home after her family’s house burns, but later admits that pity, despair, and an inability to face his own faith shaped the decision. His care gives Stefania shelter and a place in the household; his failure to understand the dependency that grows there leaves both her and Adèle exposed to consequences he can only foresee when it is almost too late.

Rescue and household

The doctor describes taking Stefania in as an impulsive act after the neighbors’ dwelling burned without a trace. The family were poor Ruthenians who had helped Thérèse in the house, and Stefania was a small girl left without that home. In retrospect, he refuses to present the rescue as uncomplicated benevolence: he confesses to the pastor that self-pity, distress, despair, and a prohibition against admitting his own faith were also at work. The admission complicates the origin of the bond. Stefania’s new place in the Anger household is both practical refuge and an answer to needs the doctor himself had not acknowledged.

The doctor later says Stefania became part of his house. Yet he had also become absorbed in his medical practice and, by his own account, neglected both girls. Instead of actively guiding Stefania and Adèle, he left one at the mercy of the other. He understands this as a failure of responsibility rather than as a neutral arrangement: the girls were very different in origins and prospects, and their contrasting positions did not protect either of them from the intimacy that formed in the space he left unattended.

The doctor’s recognition of harm

In his letter to the pastor, the doctor admits that their conversations about Stefania had repeatedly turned into arguments. He resisted the pastor’s criticism because accepting it would have meant admitting he had erred and had wanted to think better of himself than he was. He finally concedes that the pastor was right: his decision and subsequent neglect harmed both Adèle, his daughter and chief concern, and Stefania, whom he calls an unwitting poor girl. In the doctor’s judgment, Stefania learned to see only what suited her, a habit he links to the conditions in which he had left her.

He describes the two girls as pliable and gentle, too naïve, and as having put down roots in soft, fertile soil until their trunks became entwined. The image does not make their bond merely affectionate: it gives shape to the doctor’s fear that closeness has developed without the care or boundaries that might have let either girl grow independently. His metaphor is also an accusation against himself. He had left them together while he immersed himself in work, then watched their lives become joined in a way he could neither manage nor reverse.

A late attempt at separation

As his chest illness nears its end, the doctor fears the consequences of what he calls a culpable weakness disguised as altruism. He has little time left and sees no way to repair the damage already done. Stefania keeps watch beside his deathbed, but he interprets her presence not as freely chosen mercy but as the result of having been taught no other way. That judgment exposes the cost of the household role he helped create: care is real, but it has been formed under conditions of dependence and service.

The doctor nevertheless tries to change Stefania’s future. He accepts the pastor’s offer to take her in, recommending her as hardworking, capable, tireless, exceptionally skilled at cooking and organizing a household. His recommendation recognizes concrete abilities, but it also describes her through the domestic labor that has defined her usefulness in the Anger home. He hopes the pastor will help her find support within herself, suggesting that departure is not simply a change of address but an attempt to give her a basis for life beyond her attachment to Adèle.

Final charge and significance

The doctor’s last instruction makes the separation explicit. Speaking with difficulty, he tells Stefania that she and Adèle are like two trees whose trunks have grown together, asks her to think of Adèle and of her own life, and says she must leave Adèle. The command turns his earlier metaphor into a practical demand: a bond he once allowed to grow unchecked must now be broken, even though he knows the change will be hard for Stefania.

The relationship is therefore shaped by a tension between shelter and injury. The doctor’s intervention gives a child displaced by fire a home, but his later confession shows that good intentions did not amount to sustained protection. He acknowledges neglect, recognizes the entwining dependency between the girls, and arranges a possible new household only as death approaches. His final appeal asks Stefania to imagine a life of her own, while the circumstances of his deathbed vigil reveal how deeply she has been trained to remain in service. The bond ends not in a resolution he can witness, but in an urgent attempt to name the harm and redirect the future before his authority disappears.