Boryna expels Antek’s family from the homestead

Maciej Boryna expels Antek Boryna and his family from the homestead in a quiet but decisive break: after a night spent wandering in anger, Boryna gives his son until midday to leave, and the family departs without a physical struggle but under the gaze of Lipce. The eviction turns their conflict over the household into a change of place and livelihood, ending with Antek’s loaded cart on the road and the farmstead left behind.

From unresolved anger to an order

The expulsion follows a night in which Boryna cannot settle himself. He passes the light in Jagna’s window without going in, wanders around the pond, and goes as far as the inn, where he sends for Piotr, the Voyt, and drinks until almost midnight. None of this calms him; his anger and hatred only intensify. The narration says that he makes a resolution, but does not disclose its details before the next morning’s action. The delay gives the order its force: the decision has been made in private, then delivered as a demand that Antek leave.

Early the next day, Boryna finds Antek still in bed, his face wrapped in a bloody cloth. Antek raises himself slightly. Boryna demands that he leave the house at once, insisting that no trace of him remain. He invokes the law and tells Antek to make his complaint and claim if that is what he wants; he also points to Antek’s sowing and the coming summer harvest. The reference to the crop places the quarrel within the practical calendar of farm life, even as Boryna uses it to assert that Antek’s work in the household does not secure him a place there. He repeats the deadline from the hallway: Antek must be gone by midday.

Antek does not answer. He gets up and dresses slowly, then remains silent as the demand is repeated. His lack of reply does not halt the eviction, and the scene does not present a negotiated settlement: Boryna orders Józia to have Kuba harness the mare to the cart and take the family wherever they choose. The father controls the timing and initiates the move; the destination is left to those he is forcing out.

The household is dismantled

Boryna turns to the farm’s morning chores himself. Kuba is genuinely ill, though Boryna does not believe him and treats his groans as laziness. The old man does not notice the signs of Kuba’s suffering because he is occupied with making sure Antek’s family leave. The contrast is starkly contained in the scene: the work of the household continues, but attention is fixed on the departing family rather than on an ailing worker.

Antek, Hanka Borynowa, and the children pack without a quarrel or open opposition. Hanka is nearly faint with misery; Antek revives her with water and urges her to hurry so they can get out of his father’s sight. He borrows a horse from Kłąb rather than use Boryna’s, then carries their belongings to Hanka’s father, at the far end of Lipce beyond the inn. The borrowed horse makes the separation tangible: Antek will not rely on his father’s animal even to complete the move that Boryna has ordered.

The family’s departure includes more than packed possessions. Hanka follows the cart with the younger child at her breast, driving a cow, a gaggle of geese, and two skinny pigs ahead of her. The elder boy clings to her woollen skirt and cries. Antek has reinforced the heavily laden cart, crosses himself, and walks beside it with a white face, fixed, burning eyes, and chattering teeth. He does not look back at the cottage or speak. These details register the cost of leaving through the bodies and goods in motion: children, animals, and household things are carried away together, while the family’s former home falls behind them.

Mediation fails in public

A few farmers come from the village, led by Roch, hoping to make peace between father and son. Neither Boryna nor Antek will listen. Boryna says Antek can find out how freedom and earning his own bread taste; his words cast expulsion as a test of independence, while the departure itself shows that freedom begins under severe material pressure. The family must relocate to Hanka’s father’s home with the goods and animals it can take.

Antek gives no ground to the neighbours’ persuasion. He shakes his fist, curses, and threatens so fiercely that Roch turns away and retreats to the women gathered in the yard and on the porch. Their presence changes the scale of the event. The eviction is not concealed within a private room: villagers arrive to intervene, and women gather to help Hanka, but also to complain, gossip, and speak at length. The household crisis becomes a public spectacle even as practical assistance is offered.

The departure proceeds like a procession. Hanka laments as she trails the cart, and people come out of their houses and accompany the family along the road. At the farmstead, Józia serves dinner to Boryna and Roch, her face swollen from crying; those remaining eat in gloomy silence. There is no reconciliation in this division of the scene. The family leaves amid grief and public attention, while the meal at home continues under the weight of what has just happened.

The empty room and the broken bond

The dog Łapa gives the departure a final domestic echo. It barks on the porch, runs after the cart, returns, and howls. Witek calls, but Łapa will not listen. The dog searches the garden and yard, enters Antek’s room, circles there, and rushes through the hallway, whining and rubbing against Józia before racing after Antek again. Its confused movement follows the route of the loss: from the road to the emptied room and back toward the departing family. The scene ends not with a spoken judgment on the eviction but with this restless pursuit.

Boryna’s order therefore succeeds in removing Antek’s household from the farmstead, but it does not resolve the conflict that produced it. Antek leaves without answering his father, and the neighbours’ effort to restore peace fails before the move is complete. The loaded cart, the grieving children, Hanka’s animals, the silent dinner, and Łapa’s return to Antek’s room make the consequences visible in ordinary household details. The expulsion is at once an assertion of Boryna’s authority over the home and the beginning of Antek’s family living elsewhere, separated from the farm they had occupied.