Handsome Laba—Labina

Handsome Laba and Labina’s relationship is shaped by a striking reversal: Labina chooses a poor farmhand despite other prospects, waits for him when the village has given him up for lost, and then finds that his return brings wealth and distance rather than a shared life. Their marriage connects private attachment to the village’s inequalities, while the unexplained loss of Laba and his possessions leaves the relationship unresolved.

Identity and Origins

Labina recalls her husband on rainy afternoons, when she grows melancholic and speaks of him as someone who is no longer alive. Her memories reach back to a time when she was considered beautiful and the richest peasants sought to marry her. Instead, against reasoned advice, she fell in love with and married Laba, the village’s poorest farmhand, also known as Handsome Laba. The contrast between the suitors’ wealth and her choice establishes the marriage as a bond not formed through economic advantage.

Laba’s poverty governed his standing even within the marriage’s early history. The rich peasants hired him for farm work, and their knowledge that their wives and daughters desired him became a source of humiliation. They also harassed Labina, taking advantage of the fact that her penniless husband depended on them and could only watch without being able to intervene. Their treatment makes the couple’s vulnerability social as well as economic: the household’s dependence leaves both spouses exposed to the people who control Laba’s work.

Waiting and Return

After Laba was gone for a year, the villagers forgot him. Labina alone continued to believe he was alive and would come back. His return therefore answers a period of isolation for her, but it arrives in a form that immediately marks a change in his circumstances. A cart drawn by a large horse comes out of the forest carrying a large chest beneath a cloth; Laba walks beside it dressed in a fine leather jacket, fine trousers, and tall polished boots. The former farmhand appears prosperous, although the source of that prosperity remains unknown.

Labina is waiting at the doorway. Laba kisses her, unloads the chest, and enters the hut, while neighbors gather outside to admire the horse and cart. The scene briefly brings husband and wife back together, but attention also gathers around the visible signs of Laba’s new status. His return does not explain where he has been or how he obtained his goods. The chest, cart, and clothes announce a changed life without disclosing its history.

Unequal Lives After His Return

Once back, Laba no longer works in the fields and refuses even to help Labina in the house. He spends his days bathing in the lake and hangs his colorful clothes on a tree near the shore. Women gather nearby to watch him; rumors say that some were allowed a degree of physical familiarity with him and were prepared to risk serious consequences. The account distinguishes the women’s attention from confirmed knowledge of what happened: what circulated in the village was partly report and rumor.

Their daily lives increasingly diverge. In the evenings, horses come to take Laba to receptions, sometimes dozens of miles away. Labina remains at home, responsible for the farm, the horse, and her husband’s possessions, while also bearing the exhaustion and humiliation described in the account. The contrast is not simply between a poor past and a comfortable present. Laba’s apparent leisure and social movement depend on a household in which Labina continues the work, and the narrative sets his preserved youthfulness against her rapid aging. His return restores his presence but does not restore a reciprocal partnership.

The Attic and the Unexplained Loss

Laba’s treasures are kept apart from the ordinary household. The attic is described as his exclusive realm, secured by a large padlock; he carries its key on his breast alongside a medallion of the Holy Virgin. This arrangement makes the collection both part of the couple’s home and a space controlled by Laba alone. Labina tends the farm and the horse, but the treasures remain bound to his private domain, and she never learns how he acquired them.

One autumn day Labina comes back from the fields expecting to find Laba in the attic. Instead, the house is completely still: there is no smoke from the chimney and no sound of him singing as he changes clothes. The narrative does not explain what happened during his absence or provide a confirmed account of his fate. It emphasizes the silence where his familiar presence had been, then records that his possessions were stolen and that neither the thief nor the objects were ever found. The loss is known; its circumstances are not.

Suspicion and Narrative Significance

The village supplies competing explanations for the theft. Some people suspect a cuckolded husband or fiancé; others blame a jealous woman. Many suspect Labina herself. When she hears the accusation, she reacts with intense anger, confronts the accusers, and has to be separated from them by onlookers. She later returns home, drinks until she is overcome, and holds the young narrator close while weeping. These actions show the accusation’s immediate consequences without establishing whether she had any part in the theft.

The relationship is therefore presented through a tension between what the village sees and what it cannot know. Neighbors witness Laba’s return, his conspicuous possessions, his departures for receptions, and the later disappearance of the goods; they cannot account for his earlier absence, the source of his wealth, or the theft. Labina’s memories and reactions make the marriage emotionally legible, but they do not resolve its mysteries. Her enduring belief in Laba’s return contrasts with the village’s readiness to forget him, while the household that follows his return leaves her carrying its labor and its suspicion. The account preserves attachment, unequal burdens, and uncertainty together rather than offering a settled explanation of the couple’s end.