Antek and Jagna’s nocturnal encounter in the fields

Antek and Jagna’s nocturnal encounter in the fields marks the point at which their secret affair becomes physically consummated. It begins not with a planned departure but with a quiet opportunity at a gathering: when word comes that Boryna has returned from the courts and is drinking in the inn, Jagna collects her things and slips away without even calling Józka. Antek follows her stealthily, catches her at the hallway threshold, takes her hand, and leads her through another door into the farmyard. From there they pass through the orchard and behind the barn, leaving the gathering before the others realize they are gone.

Departure from the gathering

The scene is set in the winter volume, and the departure unfolds against the ordinary sociability of the evening. A pipe tune and a hymn have drawn the company into quiet participation; conversation follows, and the young people joke together. Tereska keeps the gathering lively by posing riddles. This communal noise provides cover: as she calls out to the lads, Jagna and Antek can leave without attracting attention. The sequence makes concealment an action in itself. Jagna moves first, quietly and without summoning Józka; Antek then intercepts her and redirects her out through a different door, away from the gathering’s usual exit.

Their route carries them from the farmyard into the orchard, under drooping branches, and behind the barn. The lovers run into the snow and the dark fields, leaving the village’s human sounds behind. The movement is furtive, but the narration gives it the momentum of flight: they hurry like startled deer, then disappear into a darkness so complete that the village and its clamor seem to vanish. The contrast between the busy gathering and the emptied landscape turns their private meeting into an escape from the social world that surrounds and constrains them.

Mutual desire and the winter darkness

Away from the village, the pair cling to one another and move deeper into the fields. Their silence is punctuated by pauses to catch their breath, glances, kisses, and sudden bursts of speech. When Antek asks whether she is frightened, Jagna insists that she would follow him to the end of the world. His next question tests whether she had been waiting for him; she explains that she had thought she would see him at Kłąb’s and leave with him, though she had meant to hurry home until Antek caught her. Asked whether she did not want what was happening, she answers that she had often thought of letting it happen. Her words establish that this is not simply his pursuit or a chance she passively endures: she acknowledges a desire that has recurred over time, even as the encounter carries them beyond what either had said aloud.

The landscape surrounding them is dark, clouded, and difficult to read. There are no stars or moon; the low sky and drifting darkness make the fields feel vast and uncertain. The night’s unsettling murmurs and fleeting shapes are described as if the world were full of obscure presences, but the lovers remain absorbed in each other. The narration shifts between the weather outside and the storm gathering between them. Their feelings pass through bodies before they can be articulated: glances, shudders, breath, kisses, and tight embraces crowd out coherent speech. The physical intensity is presented as reciprocal, overwhelming, and at moments painful, until they clutch each other and fall, barely conscious.

From passion to dreamlike oblivion

The encounter is rendered at greater length as a loss of ordinary perception. Fields pass into more fields, and the lovers seem to move beyond familiar distances until even the memory of the world falls away. The narration surrounds their passion with images of visions, enchantment, fear, wonder, and prayer. These are not presented as a separate supernatural event; rather, the language makes their experience feel dreamlike, as if desire had temporarily displaced the everyday world. They appear to cross fabulous landscapes and pass through scenes of marvel, then return to awareness unsure whether what they have experienced belongs to waking life or to a dream.

The narrative then places their joining within a recurring image of spring’s hidden life. Vital forces beneath the earth awaken, reach toward one another, and meet before bringing new life into view. The comparison enlarges this winter meeting beyond a private episode: after days of yearning and torment, Antek and Jagna press together with the force of storm-uprooted pines thrown into a desperate embrace. The language joins erotic fulfilment to natural generation, while also retaining danger in the image of trees struggling until they fall. The night shelters them and allows events to run their course; nearby partridges call in the darkness, and cockerels crow from the village, signs that the world beyond their isolation continues around them.

Return and aftermath

The lovers do not remain wholly outside the village. They eventually find themselves on a path running behind the barns, now on Boryna’s side. Antek calls Jagna’s name as though surprised to find her beside him; she answers that she is there, but her tone is tearful and subdued. The transition back toward a recognizable route does not restore the ease of the gathering. Instead, Jagna begins to cry, unable to give a definite explanation for the sudden tears.

Antek is alarmed and sits with her on projecting stones at the foot of a barn. He draws her close, and she clings to his chest like a child. He tries to wipe her tears with his hand and then his sleeve, but they continue to fall. When he asks whether she is frightened, Jagna denies that fear is the explanation. She describes something quiet growing inside her, alongside a sensation like death at her side and an impulse to be carried upward, away into the world with the clouds. The scene leaves that sensation unexplained: it records her divided response after their encounter without identifying it as a particular omen or consequence.

The episode’s decisive change is therefore both intimate and exposed to risk. Antek and Jagna have moved from secret meetings and unspoken longing to a mutual physical union, and Jagna has confirmed that her desire preceded this night. Yet their escape is temporary: they return to a path behind the barns on the side of Boryna’s household, and the surrounding village remains close. The contrast between the boundless darkness in which they imagine themselves alone and the familiar farm buildings they encounter afterward gives the meeting its double character—as an ecstatic departure from ordinary life and an encounter still enclosed by the world they have tried to leave behind.