Wola

Wola appears in the story not as a fully mapped setting but as a place woven into the everyday circuits of neighboring rural life. People travel from it, seek workers there, and identify visitors by their connection to it; the settlement is also associated with a squire, contested family land, and a road leading toward the manor. These brief references give Wola a practical narrative presence: it is close enough to Lipce to shape its labor needs and social news, yet distinct enough to be named as the origin of people arriving from beyond the village.

A neighboring settlement in the rural circuit

The text establishes Wola through movement and reference rather than through a sustained description of its streets or landscape. A road leading toward Wola is part of the local network: after vespers, the priest sets off along it toward a ball at the manor. The route links village religious time and social obligations to travel beyond the immediate community, while the priest’s departure occurs as evening falls and people begin to return from town with news.

Wola also enters the village’s seasonal economy. During Easter, a speaker reports having gone there to recruit laborers for tillage, offering three zlotys and food. No one is available immediately because the workers are putting their own fields first; they promise to come in a week or two. The episode makes the agricultural calendar tangible. In the rush of spring work, the need for hired hands does not erase the claims of a worker’s own holding, and even a stated wage with meals cannot command labor at once.

Kinship, land, and the squire

A separate reference places a family dispute in Wola: relatives are dividing a farm and quarrelling over the parcels. The speaker says a promise was made to adjudicate so that no poor person would be treated unfairly. That obligation is given as the reason for going to Wola rather than attending a meeting in Lipce. The absence matters politically: those left behind understand that apparent agreement with their plans does not amount to sincere support. Wola’s family land dispute therefore intersects with a wider local conflict over collective action and the manor.

Wola is also the seat of a squire whose family connection becomes important when Jacek visits Lipce. On being recognized, Jacek is asked whether he is the squire’s brother at Wola. He confirms his identity as Jacek from Wola and explains that he has been searching for Kuba for years, only learning of him after his death. People had heard that the squire’s brother had returned from distant lands and was looking through the villages for a man named Kuba, though they did not know which Kuba he sought. Wola thus anchors a story of return and belated discovery: Jacek’s standing is legible through his relation to the squire, but his journey is driven by a personal search that ends too late.

Visitors, news, and reciprocal ties

Jacek’s visit also shows how Wola is carried into Lipce through hospitality and personal recognition. Before departing, he asks his hostess to tell her husband that Jacek from Wola has been there, thanks her, and says he may look in again. When she offers payment for his visit, he refuses it and leaves promptly as night approaches. The exchange presents the connection between settlements as more than formal status or business: a visitor is named, welcomed, and expected to pass through again, while the attempt to pay for hospitality is gently rebuffed.

Wola is likewise named among the places from which carts arrive at Lipce. Their appearance is part of a wider arrival from neighboring communities, with Wola identified alongside Rzepki and Dębica. The text does not give each group a separate role in that scene, but the roll call makes the movement visible: Lipce is not sealed off from its neighbors, and Wola belongs to the surrounding network of places whose people can gather there.

Wola and the movement of people

The settlement’s links extend into the expectation of return. A letter read to Tereska announces that her husband intends to come home for the harvest, accompanied by Kuba, identified as being from Wola, and Grzela Boryna. The promised journey binds Wola to the seasonal rhythm of reunion and work: the return is timed for harvest, and the letter’s warm concern for home stands in painful contrast to what Tereska knows has happened in the meantime.

Across these references, Wola is defined by relationships and routes rather than by a single central episode. It is where kin contest a farm, where labor is sought but cannot immediately be spared, where a squire’s brother has his home, and from where visitors and returning workers travel toward Lipce. The place’s significance lies in this recurring circulation. Wola helps show how village life is organized across neighboring settlements, with land disputes, labor shortages, family ties, and news crossing the same roads.