Stefania’s Encounter with Velvele at the Fish Market

Stefania’s encounter with Velvele at the fish market turns an ordinary purchase into a crisis of bodily disorientation and shame. Surrounded by floodwater and struggling fish, she is overwhelmed by Velvele’s gaze, loses command of simple actions, and ends up sprawled in the mud; his calm assistance only sharpens her sense of humiliation. The scene makes the market’s disorder more than a setting: its water, living fish, and unstable footing help expose how abruptly Stefania’s sense of herself as a normal, capable woman can collapse.

Setting and First Encounter

The market is diminished by the flood. Mountain paths are impassable, keeping the Hutsuls from coming down, while the women who have reached the bazaar tend their baskets amid the cries of disputes and the policeman’s whistle. Against this disrupted scene, Stefania reaches the zinc tubs of fresh fish, where a stout Jewish vendor knits a sock, apparently unaware that her black wig has slipped down the back of her neck. The fish themselves are in restless motion: eels twist, pike turn in the water, and tench and carp open their mouths spasmodically.

Stefania asks the vendor the price of the tench, but the appearance of Velvele, summoned from behind a pile of sacks, changes the encounter. He is presented as the vendor’s likely son, younger than Stefania but composed and serious. His attention has an immediate, disproportionate effect on her. She grows cold; her heart pounds with anxiety, and her hands become damp and begin to tremble. His eyes seem to carry something humiliating and wounding, even as his full red lips open in a benevolent smile. Stefania cannot make herself turn away or leave.

The Purchase and Its Reversal

The vendor’s rough voice reaches Stefania as if from a distance, asking whether she really wants tench or is looking for something else. She makes an effort to look back at the woman and then at the fish, but describes herself as resembling them: frightened, stunned, and short of breath. The comparison links her bodily paralysis to the fish’s exposed, struggling life in the tubs, while showing how little control she has recovered through conscious effort.

Velvele crouches beside a basin, swiftly catches a tench, and holds it up for her. The fish twists with remarkable force in an effort to escape, but his grip remains firm; Stefania feels that same iron-like hold upon herself, and another wave of paralysis overtakes her. He asks calmly whether he should kill the fish. Frightened, Stefania asks him to repeat the question, then says no. He selects four attractive tench, ties them in a canvas bag, and puts it into the basket on her bicycle. Only after the vendor asks whether Stefania is no longer going to ask the price does she manage to do so. Velvele answers politely: two crowns and forty kreuzer per kilo, for about two kilos.

Fall, Assistance, and Humiliation

Even the transaction’s simplest steps become difficult. Stefania cannot remember where she put her purse and struggles to count out the money. She thanks Velvele at least five times, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes, and heads toward the market exit as if stumbling like a specter. There she catches herself on a barrel, falls onto her bicycle with a clatter, and lands face-first in a puddle. Somehow the tench have worked their way out of the bag; they jerk and splash in the mud.

Velvele comes to help her up, props the bicycle against a wall, and calmly puts the tench back in the sack. He tells her gently that it would have been better for her if he had killed them. The practical kindness does not undo the exposure of her helplessness. Instead, his composed response contrasts with the public, messy spectacle of her fall and the fish’s escape, leaving Stefania to confront how thoroughly she has lost her ordinary poise.

Aftermath and Significance

Stefania says she does not know where she finds the strength to hold back tears. The humiliation burns in her throat, yet she cannot identify what has overcome her: she calls it a spell, black magic, or a stupid trick that can turn a normal woman into an idiotic doll in no time. This language registers the distance between the intensity of her physical response and her ability to explain it. She does not offer a settled account of Velvele’s power; the scene stays with her bewilderment at having been changed so completely by his look and presence.

The encounter continues after the market. Stefania is later seated in the salon above a bucket containing the tench; water is leaking through the ceiling again, and it is raining. She cries, but her bitterness does not lessen. The fish have passed from lively creatures in the market tubs, to struggling bodies in Velvele’s grasp, to escapees in the mud, and finally to the bucket beside her. This chain of material incidents gives the scene its unsettled force: the purchase is completed, but the emotional disturbance is not. Stefania’s attempt to carry the fish home ends not in mastery of the transaction but in a lingering sense of shame and inexplicable enchantment.