Josef—Ivanka

Josef—Ivanka is a marriage formed under the pressure of Ivanka’s recurrent convulsions and her father’s fear of them. The union is presented as an effort to quiet what he imagined was a demon, rather than as a straightforward romantic choice; later, Ivanka appears as a devoted and vulnerable wife, while a sudden emergency at Adèle’s celebration makes her life itself the immediate stake.

Marriage and the Fear of Illness

Ivanka explains that her father was frightened by her convulsions. When she twisted in a fit, her mother stayed beside her and held her head to keep her tongue from slipping into her throat. Her father, by contrast, turned pale and left the house. His absence did not mean indifference: he spent the night reading the psalter over Ivanka, convinced that someone had entered her. His care was therefore entwined with terror and a religious interpretation of illness.

That fear determined his decision to marry her to Josef. Ivanka says her father hoped the marriage would calm the demon he believed responsible for her condition. The episode gives the union a double character: marriage provides a socially recognizable arrangement for Ivanka’s future, but it is also made to bear an impossible therapeutic expectation. Nothing in her account establishes that marriage cured the convulsions; instead, she remembers the fear and the hope that prompted the match.

Ivanka’s Account of Married Life

In describing the arrangement, Ivanka also recalls her father’s judgment of Josef. Though Josef was very young and would not grow a beard to appear more respectable, her father trusted him and expected no unpleasant surprises from their union. Ivanka says Josef accepted the wedding gifts, including Hutsul furniture, tiles, and dishes, and that the couple lived in a settled, ordinary manner. These practical details give the marriage a domestic texture distinct from the dramatic hopes attached to its origin.

The calm she describes is not the same as fulfillment. Ivanka tells Stefania that she had imagined leaving her mountain village for the city would bring a full life, only to find life there dull. Her disappointment makes the marriage part of a larger unmet expectation: a change of place and a respectable household have not delivered the vitality she hoped for. The evidence does not depict Josef as the cause of that disappointment, but it does show that ordinary married stability has not quieted Ivanka’s longing for a fuller existence.

Devotion and Vulnerability

At a gathering, Josef watches Adèle and Petro dance with a faint smile. Ivanka, meanwhile, wipes away a tear of emotion and rests her neatly combed head on her husband’s shoulder. The small gesture presents their marriage as physically close and publicly composed. It also places Ivanka’s tenderness beside Josef’s watchful presence, without explaining the precise source of her emotion or turning the moment into proof that their relationship is uncomplicated.

Stefania’s later interpretation casts that apparent calm in a darker light. She thinks of Josef as having a young, devoted, gentle, sick wife who constantly needs help, and imagines Ivanka as an unwitting victim of betrayal. This is Stefania’s anguished understanding, not a neutral account of everything Josef has done. Its force lies in the contrast it draws between Ivanka’s dependence and tenderness and the possibility that her trust is being violated; Stefania’s thoughts also reveal how fiercely she judges the alleged betrayal through the moral demands of marriage and faith.

Crisis at Adèle’s Celebration

The marriage’s stakes become immediate when a voice asks whether Ivanka is dead. Adèle answers that Ivanka is alive, thanks God, and says she knew what to do because she is a doctor’s daughter. The exchange confirms that Ivanka has suffered a grave enough crisis to make those around her fear for her life, while Adèle’s response establishes that she intervened successfully. It does not identify the cause of the emergency or describe a particular medical procedure, so the scene leaves those details unstated.

The relief is followed by fury. Adèle strikes Stefania and accuses her of lying about Ivanka’s death to ruin the celebration, then connects the outburst to Stefania’s lasting anger over an old joke: when Josef had courted Adèle, Adèle had told Stefania that he was in love with her. The episode thus brings the marriage into the open through a collision of present danger and remembered jealousy. Ivanka survives, but the scene exposes how her vulnerability, Josef’s past courtship of Adèle, and Stefania’s resentment remain entangled in the household’s relationships.