Aniela

Aniela is the narrator’s caregiver and a steady presence through the family’s early moves and changing fortunes. First introduced as the nursemaid who looked after him in Moscow, she later follows him and his mother to Vilna, where her care at home contrasts with his mother’s exhausting efforts to keep the household afloat.

Identity and Background

Aniela looks after the narrator in Moscow, where the family shares a flat with several other actors’ families. She remains part of his life after the move west: by the time the family is stranded in Vilna, she has followed them from Moscow a year earlier. The account establishes her through this continuity of practical care rather than through a separate history of her own.

Care and Work in Vilna

During a bitter winter in Vilna, Aniela stays at home with the narrator while his mother goes from house to house trying to sell hats. The family has already lost its remaining jewels, the hats sell poorly, and the landlord threatens to put them out if the rent is not paid. Despite the strain, the rent is somehow met and the stove remains lit; bread, butter, eggs, and tea are provided for the child. Aniela’s presence belongs to this precarious domestic routine, while the narrator’s account leaves the means by which the family manages each immediate need unexplained.

Later, as the family’s prosperity increases, Aniela is promoted to personal assistant and receives what the narrator calls a handsome salary. Her position has changed from the nursemaid who accompanies the family to a better-paid household role, although the account gives no inventory of her new duties. It does show that she remains closely attached to the narrator and attentive to who has access to him.

Conflict and Loyalty

Aniela detests the narrator’s French governess, whom she accuses of keeping him away from her, and does what she can to make life difficult for the governess. The tension reveals a conflict over the child’s attention and companionship, though the narrator does not describe how the governess or his mother responds to Aniela’s hostility.

Aniela’s bluntness is also evident when a miniature bicycle arrives as an unexplained present. She tells the narrator that it has come from far away, then argues with his mother over whether he should keep it. The narrator overhears her say that the man who sent it has taken too long to remember their existence; his mother, by contrast, replies timidly that the gesture is kind. The identity of the sender is not stated in this exchange. Aniela’s words make the gift a sign not only of generosity but also of a long absence, while the child himself is chiefly anxious that the bicycle not be taken away.

Narrative Role

Aniela appears in brief but revealing domestic scenes: as the caregiver who bridges the family’s move from Moscow to Vilna, as a worker within the household’s struggle to survive, and as a forceful advocate for her own closeness to the narrator. The bicycle episode gives her a particular function in the family story: she voices a grievance that the child does not yet grasp, setting her practical concern for him against his mother’s more forgiving response to the distant sender. Beyond these scenes, the account does not specify Aniela’s later life or fate.