Pedro Ivanovich

Pedro Ivanovich, called the Wax Man and the Statue of Himself, is defined in the novel by a striking bodily stillness: he remains in whatever position other people place him and is said to be unable to change it. His few appearances make that condition both a visible feature of life in the ward and a measure of how readily other residents treat his body as something to move, test, or control.

Identity and Introduction

Alice Gould first encounters Pedro during a meal in the part of the hospital associated with its most deteriorated residents. The meal is a potato stew with a few pieces of fish, heavily colored by saffron, followed by apples. While the other diner finishes eating, a nurse struggles to raise Pedro by the armpits. She removes the chair and leaves him standing, arms held apart and shoulders hunched, in the posture in which she has placed him.

The scene gives his nickname a literal explanation. The staff call him the Wax Man because he keeps the positions imposed on him and never changes them; the explanation extends even to an emergency, when he is said to remain fixed even if there were a fire. The name is not a diagnosis, and the available account does not supply one. It describes an observable condition through an image that is at once memorable and unsettling: a person left standing as though the act of supporting him were still under way.

Stillness and the Ward

Pedro’s immobility becomes especially visible because it is described through ordinary acts of care. A nurse lifts him, removes the chair, and leaves him upright; the account says that two attendants will soon come to undress him and put him to bed. The practical sequence makes clear that his dependence is not limited to one posture at a meal. Other people must arrange his position and carry out basic care, while he is unable to complete the movement for himself.

The narration also gives his condition a severe, almost absolute formulation: he cannot change the posture in which he is left. Yet a later moment describes a giant beginning to agitate. This brief indication sits uneasily beside the earlier insistence on total stillness. It establishes a moment of movement, but does not explain its cause or extent; it should not be taken as evidence that Pedro has recovered the ability to move at will. The contrast instead leaves his physical state less simple than the nickname suggests.

Encounters and Treatment by Others

On a later occasion, Alice sees a resident known for mocking others approach a large, motionless man in the middle of a room and provoke him. Pedro neither moves nor defends himself. Alice recognizes him as the man she saw at supper the previous night, and the narration supplies the second name, the Statue of Himself. A nearby man tells her not to judge him too harshly for having been severe with the mocker and says that she may slap the offender if he repeats the behavior. Pedro’s stillness thus appears in a scene where another person’s response to cruelty, rather than Pedro’s own reaction, takes the foreground.

Another encounter gives this passivity a more troubling human context. The Duchess of Pitiminí calls Pedro by name, hurries over to him, and brings him before her by pulling at his hands. She says that she cut out his tongue when he was young because of something he had said to her. Her statement is presented as her own account; the passage does not independently confirm it or explain what Pedro said. Even so, the scene places a history of alleged bodily violence beside his present dependence, and shows another resident exercising physical control over him without any response from him being recorded.

Narrative Significance

Pedro is not given an extended biography, an account of his inner life, or a stated explanation for his condition. The narrative instead builds his presence from posture, care, names, and other people’s actions. That limited presentation makes the difference between his person and the roles imposed on him especially noticeable: the staff’s nickname turns a condition into an identity, while the titles and gestures of fellow residents make his body part of their own encounters.

His stillness also sharpens the novel’s attention to care and coercion within the institution. Lifting, positioning, undressing, and handling him may be necessary because he cannot change position unaided; the same physical vulnerability also leaves him exposed when another resident pulls him by the hands or when someone uses his inability to defend himself as the setting for an act of provocation. The text does not resolve that tension by offering Pedro’s perspective. Instead, his brief appearances make the reader confront how much of his life, as presented, is mediated through what others do to him and what they call him.