Emil-Karl-Théodore Anger

Emil-Karl-Théodore Anger is a physician whose late recognition of his failures culminates in a letter to his pastor and a final appeal to Stefania Tchornenko. He sees that his medical work left Stefania and his daughter Adèle Anger to shape one another without guidance; by the time he tries to change their circumstances, he believes the damage is already done and he has little time left.

Identity and Circumstances

Emil is addressed in the narrative as Doctor Anger. His letter reveals both the intimacy of his friendship with the pastor and the gravity of his physical decline: he describes a chest ailment as reaching its end and says that only a short time remains. The letter is not a detached account of household affairs. It is an attempt to acknowledge responsibility while he is dying, when the possibility of setting things right has narrowed to a last decision.

He thanks the pastor for caring about his fate and Adèle’s, and recalls their repeated conversations about God. The warmth he associates with those discussions stands beside his uncertainty and distress; his thoughts about faith are not resolved into a confident declaration. The letter instead presents a man trying to speak honestly to a trusted friend at the limit of his life.

Recognition of Harm

Emil admits that the pastor had been right in their arguments about Stefania, who came into his household and became part of it. He had resisted acknowledging his mistake because he feared admitting fault and wanted to believe himself better than he was. His confession names the consequences plainly: he harmed Adèle, whom he calls the object of his greatest concern, and also harmed Stefania, whom he describes as having learned to see only what suited her.

The source of that harm, in his account, was not a single deliberate act but prolonged neglect. Immersed in his medical practice, he abandoned one girl to the other’s influence. Their different origins, destinies, and places in the household did not prevent them from taking root together. Emil’s image of their trunks becoming entangled makes the bond at once intimate and constricting: their closeness has grown in the fertile space his absence left, but it has not given either of them an independent support.

The Attempt to Intervene

Although Emil fears the consequences of what he calls a culpable weakness disguised as altruism, he decides to try to alter the situation. He accepts the pastor’s offer to take Stefania into his home, expressing gratitude he says cannot be conveyed in words. His recommendation is practical as well as personal: Stefania is hardworking, capable, tireless, skilled in cooking, and adept at organizing a household. He specifically suggests Viennese roast beef with onions and potatoes or baked poliadvitsa, details that make visible the domestic competence on which her place in the family has depended.

Emil also hopes that life with the pastor will help Stefania’s “distorted trunk” find support in itself. The metaphor shifts the entangled-tree image toward a possible, though uncertain, separation: he does not imagine that removing her from the household will undo the past, but hopes she may acquire a steadier basis for living. Adèle, meanwhile, is engaged to a Ruthenian whom Emil considers remarkably aristocratic, and he says this leaves him reassured about her. His proposed change is therefore unequal in its immediate form: Stefania must be moved, while Adèle’s future appears settled by her engagement.

Final Appeal and Significance

Emil plans to tell Stefania of his decision soon, asking the pastor to expect her visit. The letter establishes the intended transfer, but the later bedside scene gives his intervention its painful urgency. With a weakened throat and a difficult rasp, he insists that Stefania hear him: she and Adèle are like two trees with intertwined trunks, and Stefania must leave Adèle and think of her own life. The command turns the image from retrospective diagnosis into a direct appeal, spoken when Emil is close to death.

His final words do not erase the contradiction at the center of his conduct. He has long left Stefania with no other model than service, and even while he praises her indispensable labor, he imagines a future in which she must learn to stand apart. His recognition is real, but late: he accepts responsibility, secures the pastor’s offer, and gives Stefania an explicit instruction, while acknowledging that the harm cannot be repaired in the time left to him. The letter and bedside appeal thus make his last effort both an act of care and a measure of how long care was withheld.