Jagna and Antek resume their secret meetings

Jagna and Antek’s secret meetings resume under the same roof that Boryna is trying to hold together through watchfulness and control. Their rendezvous at the hayrick depend on help from Witek and Jagustynka, but the arrangement is more than a practical evasion: it grows out of an atmosphere of suspicion, resentment, and retaliatory feeling. Jagustynka’s role as go-between also connects the lovers’ private arrangement to the conflict between Antek and Boryna.

A household that cannot mend

The renewed meetings take place in a cottage whose apparent peace has not repaired its deeper divisions. The narrative compares the household to a broken pot, patched but still leaking through cracks no one can locate. In that uneasy setting, Boryna watches Jagna closely despite his efforts to let mistrust go. Jagna, for her part, has not forgotten his temper or harsh words; she remains angry and hungry for revenge. Their outward coexistence therefore conceals a continuing struggle over who may act freely and who gets to watch.

The narration makes the connection between surveillance and desire explicit: Boryna’s failure to trust Jagna intensifies her hatred of him and strengthens her longing for Antek. The affair thus resumes not in a neutral space but within a cycle of control and reaction. Boryna’s vigilance does not end the meetings. It helps make secrecy more necessary, while Jagna’s resentment gives the clandestine relationship a sharper edge.

Arranging the rendezvous

Jagna arranges for the pair to meet every few days at the hayrick. This regular interval shows that the meetings are not a single impulsive encounter; they have become a continuing pattern requiring coordination. Witek assists them, having lost sympathy for Boryna over the stork and become attached to Jagna. The practical benefits reinforce his loyalty: Jagna gives him better suppers and more gravy, and Antek often gives him a few groszy.

The arrangement makes the lovers’ secrecy dependent on people inside the household. Witek’s help is sustained by his changed allegiance and by the food and money he receives, rather than by any stated account of his beliefs about the affair. The hayrick is the meeting place, but the pathway to it runs through this network of assistance, creating opportunities for the lovers while also leaving their privacy vulnerable to those who know how they move.

Jagustynka as go-between

Jagustynka is the most important intermediary. She ingratiates herself with Jagna and wins Antek’s trust, making it difficult for the lovers to see one another without her help. She guards them from Boryna and from unexpected interruptions, serving as their go-between as well as their protector. Her assistance, however, is not presented as affectionate or disinterested. The narrator emphasizes that she resents the whole world: she begrudges the rich their possessions, despises the poor, and carries her own grievances into her dealings with everyone around her.

In winter, when there is little work to occupy her, Jagustynka goes from cottage to cottage with her distaff, listening in, provoking one group against another, and mocking people across the village. The villagers are reluctant to shut their doors against her, both because they fear her tongue and because she is said to have the evil eye. That reputation gives her a peculiar freedom to circulate and gather news. She visits Antek’s cottage too, but most often meets him as he returns from work, when she can pass along news of Jagna. The same mobility that lets her shield the lovers also makes her an agent of rumor and division.

News carried between rivals

About a fortnight after the priest’s visit to Boryna’s home, Jagustynka catches Antek by the pond and tells him that Boryna has taken a stand against him before the priest. She reports Boryna’s allegation that Antek is inciting people against the manor and should be handed over to the gendarmes, among other accusations. Jagustynka does not merely help arrange secret meetings; she also carries information about the household’s confrontation into Antek’s hands.

Antek answers passionately that Boryna should try, threatening to set his roof ablaze so that nothing would remain by the time the authorities reached him. Jagustynka then flies off with this news to Boryna. He thinks over what he has heard and quietly calls Antek a ruffian. The sequence turns private mediation into a channel for provocation: Jagustynka brings a threat from one man to the other, and Boryna’s brief response confirms that the message has reached him without resolving the conflict.

Secrecy and its consequences

The resumed affair is sustained by a fragile alliance, not by reconciliation. Jagna and Antek meet regularly, but their secrecy depends on Witek’s changed loyalties and Jagustynka’s calculated interventions. At the same time, Jagustynka’s circulation between their meeting place, Antek, and Boryna ensures that concealment and exposure remain entangled. She helps the lovers avoid surprise, yet her pleasure in setting people against one another makes her protection inseparable from the wider household hostility.

The episode therefore presents the hayrick meetings as part of a larger contest over trust, information, and control. Boryna’s watchfulness and Jagna’s resentment deepen the conditions in which the affair continues; Antek’s threat and Jagustynka’s report carry that tension beyond the couple. The rendezvous remain hidden, but the anger surrounding them is already moving openly from one person to the next.