New York City serves as both a refuge and the setting for Irena’s first encounters with the Architect. After studying fine arts in Budapest, she leaves for the city when war breaks out. When asked whether she misses her former home, she explains that she is from the Carpathian Mountains, not a city; New York is therefore the place where her displacement and new life meet.

A Refuge and a Place to Draw

Irena returns to draw outdoors on sunny afternoons, and her work connects her to the city’s artistic life. The Architect first hopes to meet her again after their conversation, then continues to think about her when she does not appear at the zoo. Their connection begins not through a planned introduction but through the routines of drawing and looking for one another in New York.

The Zoo and the Art Gallery

The Architect’s studio is described as almost directly across from the zoo in Central Park. One afternoon, as daylight fades, he leaves his drafting tools and goes there hoping to find Irena, but she is absent. Later, walking along a fashionable avenue, he notices an art-gallery window displaying works devoted to panthers. Inside, he finds Irena being congratulated by others: the city’s zoo and gallery frame two different stages of his search for her.

Narrative Significance

The city links Irena’s refugee past to the relationship taking shape around her art. It also supplies the story’s concrete route from the Architect’s studio to the zoo and, later, to the gallery, where Irena appears as an artist in her own right. New York is thus more than her destination after leaving Budapest: it is the setting in which the Architect’s curiosity becomes a pursuit and her work brings them together again.