Antek Boryna–Jagusia

Antek Boryna and Jagusia’s renewed relationship is a collision between remembered passion and the injuries it left behind. When they meet again, their former intimacy returns with physical force, but so do the circumstances that have separated them: Jagusia has been driven from the household by Antek’s wife, Hanka Borynowa, and feels exposed to the village’s ridicule. Their encounter briefly revives their old bond, then turns on Jagusia’s resistance to being treated as Antek’s possession. His proposal that they escape together cannot undo the harm she attributes to him, and she leaves without agreeing to a future with him.

An Uneasy Reunion

The renewed contact begins by chance near the river. While Antek is talking with someone about fields he has his eye on, he catches sight of a face among the alders that looks like Jagusia. His attention keeps straying toward the thickets. Eventually he uses the heat as an excuse to go down to the water, then hurries along the bank as soon as the trees conceal him. Jagusia is there, heading toward the cabbages with a hoe. The river is only a few paces wide at that point, but too deep for Antek to cross; their first approach is therefore marked by proximity without access.

Antek calls to her and asks why she has been hiding. Jagusia explains that Hanka drove her out of the house and that she is staying with her mother. Her wary response makes clear that this is not a simple reunion between former lovers: she is living with the consequences of their relationship and does not want to be seen meeting him. Antek begs her to come to the graveyard that evening, saying he has something to tell her. Jagusia objects that people might see them, and says she has already had enough of that scrutiny. His repeated pleading eventually softens her resistance, though she remains cautious about what he wants.

Old Injuries and Competing Blame

At their later meeting, the past becomes an argument before it becomes an embrace. Antek tells Jagusia that he waited for her every day, clinging to the grating and searching for her. His claim of constancy meets a wound she has carried from his earlier conduct: she recalls that he cursed her at the hayrick, had previously treated her angrily, and did not look at her or speak to her when he was taken away. She remembers that he found words for everyone else, even the dog, but none for her. His assertion that he was consumed by grief does not erase the abandonment she felt.

Jagusia blames Antek for the public humiliation and private upheaval that followed their affair. She says that his actions helped make her the village’s laughingstock and that she became so absorbed in him that the rest of the world disappeared from view. She asks why he drew her into the relationship only to leave her stranded afterward. Antek answers with anger rather than reassurance. He reminds her of the Voyt and others, and accuses her of having been with anyone who wanted her. Their exchange exposes a sharp asymmetry: Jagusia describes being caught up in the attachment and then left to bear its social costs, while Antek responds by turning her hurt into an accusation about her conduct.

Intimacy and the Question of Possession

When Jagusia breaks down beside the barn, Antek first comforts her. He sits her beside him on a beam, holds her to his heart, strokes her hair, and wipes her tear-stained face. The tenderness recalls their old closeness and eases her crying; she leans against him and trusts him with her sorrow. But his consolation changes into physical pressure. Inflamed by the closeness, he kisses her more fiercely and grips her more forcefully. The narration says she does not at first understand where the encounter is leading; when she realizes that she is in his power, she struggles and begs him to stop.

The scene reaches a disturbing contradiction between remembered desire and present consent. The narration describes their reunion as a return to the passion they had known before, and Jagusia briefly yields to that remembered intimacy. Yet afterward she says he forced her like a ruffian. When Antek asks whether she is his, she pushes him away and insists that she belongs neither to him nor to anyone else. Her words reject the possessive logic with which he tries to turn their past into a claim on her. The relationship’s renewed physical closeness does not restore trust: it makes Jagusia’s demand for independence more explicit.

Flight Refused, Attachment Unresolved

After the encounter, Antek asks Jagusia to go away with him into the world, even as far as America, and imagines that they could remain together. He clings to the idea with feverish agitation and speaks at length about his plans and hopes. Jagusia responds with irony, questioning the assumption that the affair has left her irrational enough to believe him. She refuses to run away, asks what she would gain by leaving, and says she is not badly off alone. Wrapping her apron around herself, she looks about carefully and says she must go. Her concern that Hanka is already waiting at home, airing the quilt and sighing, brings the proposed escape back against the ordinary household life Antek has not left behind.

Antek returns to the cottage ashamed and distressed by what has happened. His bedding is outside in the orchard, in a cart-basket, because the heat and flies make sleeping indoors impossible. Awake beneath the distant stars, he turns over his feelings for Jagusia and admits to himself that he can live neither with her nor without her. A child cries inside the cottage, and Hanka murmurs; the sound recalls his obligations as a father and farmer. He resolves that the relationship must end because it is shameful, sinful, and exposed to village judgment, even as regret immediately unsettles that resolution.

The episode leaves the attachment active but without a shared future. Antek’s longing survives Jagusia’s refusal, and his private decision to end the affair is shadowed by the regret he cannot master. Jagusia, meanwhile, has not accepted his proposal or his claim of ownership; she leaves the meeting on her own terms. Their old intimacy has returned, but the return reveals its damage as plainly as its force.