Adèle Anger’s Infertility

Adèle Anger’s infertility is a medically confirmed condition that alters the meaning of her marriage to Petro and exposes the tangled loyalties of Stefania Tchornenko, who serves and loves Adèle while privately hoping that Petro might leave her. The condition does not end the marriage: Petro remains, and Stefania watches Adèle’s grief and the couple’s changed intimacy with a mixture of tenderness, relief, revulsion, and sorrow.

Medical Confirmation and Family History

Doctor Anger explains Adèle’s infertility through the family’s history. He says that Thérèse had become pregnant by a pure miracle, an outcome he himself could not explain because there had been no apparent chance of it. Adèle’s case, he suggests, would likewise require a miracle—but specialists have effectively ruled one out.

The diagnosis is not presented as a vague suspicion. Doctors Vodnetsky and Richter, specialists in women’s illnesses, confirm that Adèle cannot have a child through chemical and microscopic examinations described as among the most advanced methods available. Their professional authority is reinforced by their studies in Krakow, Berlin, and Vienna. For Stefania, this medical finding establishes a hard limit around the possibility of motherhood, even as Doctor Anger’s account of Thérèse leaves a narrow, almost extinguished space for miraculous exception.

Stefania’s Secret Hope and Care

Stefania admits to nurturing a “treacherous little parasite” in her thoughts: she hopes that, once Petro learns of Adèle’s infertility, his desire will fade and he will withdraw, restoring some of Stefania’s own place in Adèle’s life. The hope is not framed as a judgment that Adèle deserves abandonment. Stefania believes Petro would have the right to leave because Adèle cannot become the mother of his children or fulfill that promise, and she thinks no one would condemn him for doing so. Her own response to Petro is tenderness; she considers him worthy of Adèle and insists that he has done them no harm.

At the same time, Stefania’s service to Adèle becomes intensely practical. She holds her hand, changes a pillowcase wet with tears, and makes cold cucumber-juice compresses to reduce the swelling in her face. Despite Adèle’s protests and revulsion, Stefania presses fresh meat juice into her care routine, mixing it with an egg yolk and a spoonful of boiling water. She also bakes pigeons bought from Pinkas Ritter at the town market, following the belief that cooked pigeon helps anemia, and prepares Maria-Theresienbouillon for Adèle’s attacks of weakness. This repeated care gives Stefania’s attachment a bodily, domestic form: her secret wish to regain closeness coexists with devoted attention to Adèle’s suffering.

Marriage and the Refusal to Leave

Petro does not abandon Adèle after learning that she cannot have children. He remains as firmly beside her as before, and Stefania notes that his attitude toward his wife has not changed. The change is instead in Adèle: her gaze now seems to Stefania to carry the fidelity of a dog, a sight that makes her feel sick and sad.

At dinner, Adèle places her palm on Petro’s large, rough hand as if they now share something real and have become truly close. Stefania reads their childlessness not simply as an absence, but as a new form of union. Rather than giving life to a third person, the couple seem to believe that they have become one single being. The infertility that Stefania had imagined might loosen their marriage instead marks, in her account, a deepening of their mutual bond.

Meaning and Consequences

For Stefania, serving Adèle brings not joy but a quiet acceptance: Adèle cannot have a child, and the fact feels unjust. Stefania imagines Adèle’s delicate hands caressing little heads and her gentle voice singing lullabies, locating the loss in the tender acts of motherhood that seem suited to her. Her compassion is sharpened by the gap between that imagined future and the medical certainty she has been told to accept.

Stefania also distinguishes Adèle’s loss from her own wishes. She says she never wants a child, because she already has someone to care for, and describes her love as indivisible and incapable of extending to anyone else. In this way, Adèle’s infertility brings several different meanings into contact: a diagnosed bodily limit, an unfulfilled marital promise, Petro’s decision to stay, and Stefania’s fear of losing her place. The decisive consequence is not separation but a reconfigured closeness—Petro and Adèle appear more united, while Stefania continues to serve Adèle with fidelity and an attachment she cannot comfortably name.