Kuba’s fatal leg wound

Kuba’s fatal leg wound is the consequence of an injury he hides until it has become desperate. Shot by a woodsman while poaching a hare, he fears that disclosure will bring court proceedings, the gendarmes, and the loss of the gun. His refusal of hospital care turns a gunshot wound into an ordeal of delayed treatment, self-amputation, and death. The sequence makes the wound both a physical crisis and the point where fear, secrecy, and the limits of help close around him.

The concealed injury

Kuba’s leg is already badly damaged when Ambrozy sees it: the calf is swollen, festering, and pitted with pellets. Kuba admits that he had gone after a hare and was returning across the fields when the woodsman shot him. He had kept the injury secret because he feared being taken to court for poaching and having the gun confiscated. His account also shows how long he has tried to manage the wound alone: he had hoped it would heal by itself, although the pain has become severe.

The disclosure does not make Kuba feel safe. Ambrozy questions why he did not call for help earlier, but the delay has already made the injury urgent. His fear of legal consequences is joined by a direct fear of the hospital: he believes he may be cut up there and insists that Ambrozy should remove whatever is necessary instead. Ambrozy says only a doctor can perform the operation and proposes going to the Voyt for a cart to take Kuba to town. Kuba firmly refuses. Help is available in principle, but he will not accept the form it takes.

Ambrozy’s treatment and Kuba’s refusal

Before that proposed journey, Ambrozy tries to treat the wound himself. He rolls up his sleeves, takes a sharp penknife, and begins extracting pellets and squeezing pus from the injured leg. The procedure brings Kuba to a scream; Ambrozy stuffs a sheepskin into his mouth, and Kuba faints. Ambrozy cleans the leg, applies ointment, wraps it in clean rags, and revives him. The attempt provides immediate care but cannot undo the danger created by the wound’s deterioration and the delay.

Ambrozy’s advice to go to hospital meets the same refusal. Kuba would rather remain where he is, even if he dies, than go there. He tells Ambrozy to cut off the leg himself and offers to pay, but Ambrozy will not do it. The exchange leaves the difference between them plain: Ambrozy recognizes the need for medical treatment, while Kuba’s distrust makes him choose a dangerous alternative. His decision is not presented as a successful act of self-reliance; the earlier wound, the failed home treatment, and his refusal of a doctor have narrowed his choices to a last, desperate attempt.

The self-amputation and its discovery

Kuba’s condition is discovered when Łapa, the dog, leaps at a man arriving in the yard, whines, tugs at his capote, and runs ahead to the stall entrance. The man follows and finds Kuba slumped across the threshold, his head inside the stall. At first he thinks Kuba may have fainted after coming out for air. The lantern reveals the truth: Kuba is white, covered in blood, and bleeding heavily from his leg. The dog’s persistent behavior has led someone to him, but not in time to prevent the injury from becoming catastrophic.

The evidence of what Kuba has done is stark and specific. His leg has been hacked off at the knee and is barely attached by skin. Blood stains the threshold, while the bloodied axe and the grindstone usually kept by the stable eaves lie near the doorway. Ambrozy concludes that Kuba amputated the leg himself because he was afraid of the hospital. The axe, the displaced grindstone, and the blood make the act legible without turning it into a triumph: Kuba is barely breathing, has lost a great deal of blood, and can scarcely respond.

Death and significance

When Kuba briefly opens his eyes, he is lucid, but the recovery does not last. Ambrozy predicts that he will die by morning, his blood nearly drained. Roch proposes fetching the priest while Kuba is conscious, but the priest is away at Wola, at the manor. The sequence therefore records the practical limits of those around him: they can find him, try to rouse him, and seek spiritual attendance, but they cannot reverse the blood loss or secure the medical care he refused.

Kuba dies at the holy feet of the Lord. That religiously inflected ending places his death within the book’s language of faith, while the preceding details remain stubbornly bodily: pellets beneath the skin, pus, a penknife, an axe, blood on a threshold, and a leg cut off at the knee. The wound’s fatal course is shaped not by a single moment alone but by the progression from concealment to untreated infection, from fear of the hospital to self-amputation, and from discovery to death. Its tragedy lies in that narrowing sequence: the help Kuba needs is recognized, yet his fear keeps him from accepting it until the cost is irreversible.