Antek and Jagna’s final rendezvous

Antek Boryna and Jagna Borynowa’s final rendezvous brings their renewed intimacy to a crisis: after they come together, Antek asks her to leave with him, but Jagna refuses and goes home alone. The encounter offers no escape or promise of a shared future. Instead, its closing movement is one of separation, followed by Antek’s private recognition that desire has entangled him in a relationship he believes must end.

Waiting by the barn

The meeting takes shape beside the Parish Priest of Lipce’s farmyard, where Antek has been watching and waiting for Jagna. The priest moves back and forth praying while keeping an eye on his horses, which are eating fresh clover. He does not know that Antek is observing him or waiting anxiously for Jagna. Antek spends several prayers watching before he decides to approach the priest and speak about his troubles.

The interruption is practical as well as personal. The priest says he would help if he could and offers to say a Mass for Antek’s intention on the Feast of the Transfiguration. He also asks Antek to help drive the horses into the stable because it is late. Antek is so caught up in these troubles that he remembers Jagna only as he is leaving the farmyard, then hurries to find her. She has been crouching by the barn, waiting in the dew; when he arrives, she tells him that she has waited a long time.

Reunion and intimacy

Antek makes to embrace Jagna, but she pushes him away. As they sit together on the baulk, he draws her close, strokes her hair, wipes her tears, and kisses her face. The narration first presents the contact as consolation: Jagna clings to him and rests her head against his breast as if she were seeking shelter for her sorrows. That tenderness shifts into physical urgency. Antek kisses her more fiercely and holds her more tightly; she struggles and begs him to stop, while he presses on. The scene records both her resistance and her eventual surrender, rendering their reunion as an intimacy charged with unequal force as well as remembered desire.

The encounter is framed by the quiet of the night rather than by any public rite or communal celebration. Earlier village ceremonies make farewells collective and visible: at a wedding, Jagna kneels with Boryna, asks forgiveness, and is embraced by the women as she takes leave. Here, by contrast, her meeting with Antek unfolds privately beside a barn. The contrast sharpens the difference between a separation recognized by the community and a bond pursued outside its public order.

The proposal and refusal

After the encounter, Jagna insists that she belongs neither to Antek nor to anyone else. Antek asks whether she would go away with him, even to America. Her answer is an unequivocal refusal: she says she has no reason to run away and is not badly off alone. She wraps her apron around herself, looks about carefully, and says she must go because it is late.

Her decision turns the meeting away from the escape Antek imagines. He argues that no one is watching out for her at home, but Jagna points out that Hanka is already airing the quilt and sighing for him. The detail brings his household into the scene without removing him from it: the life he shares with Hanka and his children remains close at hand, even while he has been seeking Jagna. Jagna leaves by taking a shortcut through the fields. When she curses him and disappears by the orchards, Antek does not follow or call after her; he watches her go and rubs his eyes as if waking from sleep.

Aftermath and significance

Alone afterward, Antek cannot sleep. A child cries in the cottage, and Hanka murmurs; the sounds of his household interrupt his thoughts of Jagna. He tries to review those thoughts soberly and concludes that the affair is shameful and sinful, that he is a father and a farmer, and that it must end. His resolve is accompanied by regret rather than relief. The rendezvous thus ends not with a reconciliation or departure together, but with Jagna’s refusal and Antek’s unresolved struggle to break from the desire he has just acted upon.

The scene also makes the limits of Antek’s proposed solution plain. He offers distance—leaving for America—but Jagna does not accept that his passion gives him a claim on her future. Her departure is her own decision, while his final resolve is inward and uncertain. The meeting’s lasting consequence is not a new life for the pair, but the exposure of their incompatible wishes: Antek seeks to turn renewed intimacy into escape, and Jagna chooses to leave him behind.