Antek drives off the gendarmes trying to arrest him

Antek Boryna drives off two gendarmes who try to seize him after a tense public confrontation in Lipce. The encounter shifts the immediate balance of power: the officers approach under color of official authority, but Antek’s readiness to fight makes them withdraw. Their retreat is tactical rather than final, leaving the threat of renewed pursuit unresolved.

Setting and political context

The encounter follows a gathering in which resistance to authority had already taken a collective form. In an earlier dispute over the manor’s felling of the village forest, elders went to fetch Boryna because farmers expected him to lead; when he called the villagers to defend what they regarded as theirs, the crowd dispersed to prepare and then set out together. The episode establishes a recurring tension between communal claims and the manor’s power, but the later clash with the gendarmes is not a coordinated village action: Antek faces the officers alone.

In the immediate lead-up to the confrontation, a crowd had closed around gendarmes in the village and then parted to let them pass. Its members surged after them toward the prefect, cursing and shaking their fists; a voice among them protested that people and animals alike had their own tongues, yet peasants were ordered to speak another’s. The public anger gives Antek’s encounter its charged setting, while also sharpening the contrast between a crowd’s brief show of unity and one man’s direct resistance.

The approach and the challenge

Looking back toward the crowd, Antek considers turning around. He notices, however, that two gendarmes are following him. Instead of simply continuing on, he breaks off a substantial branch and leans against a cottage wall to trim it to fit his hand, keeping the approaching officers in view. This deliberate preparation changes the encounter before either gendarme lays hands on him: Antek is no longer merely being followed but is visibly readying himself to resist.

When the men draw near, Antek addresses them derisively and asks whether the sergeant is spying. Their talk briefly takes the form of casual complaint. The older gendarme lights a cigarette and grumbles about having no peace from work; Antek answers that the officers’ work amounts to setting dogs barking around the village and extracting the peasants’ last zloty. His accusation makes explicit the hostility underlying the exchange. The gendarme swears, grows livid, and reaches for his broadsword.

The attempted seizure and retreat

The officers wait until they reach the last cottage before the sergeant suddenly lunges and calls to his companion to get Antek. The attempt fails almost at once. Before they can seize him, Antek throws them off, leaps beside the cottage, and faces them with the branch raised. His threat is blunt: he says that even four men would not take him and warns that he will break their teeth if they come closer. He also insists that he has done nothing wrong, while making clear that he is prepared to kill if they force the confrontation.

The gendarmes stop short. The narration emphasizes the material imbalance that has momentarily reversed: Antek is huge and enraged, and the stick is humming in his fists. The sergeant, recognizing that this is no trivial encounter, changes his manner. He laughs as though the attack had been a joke and turns back. After withdrawing a dozen paces, however, he shakes his fist and promises that he and Antek will meet again. The forced retreat therefore does not amount to reconciliation or release from official pressure; the parting threat keeps the conflict open.

Aftermath and significance

Antek answers the threat with a curse. Once the gendarmes have disappeared from view, he mutters that the sergeant had been frightened and had pretended the attack was a joke. He interprets the clash as a consequence of his own defiance and believes that the officer disliked hearing the truth. This is Antek’s reading of the encounter, not a neutral account of the gendarme’s motives; the scene has shown both the officer’s attempt to seize him and his retreat when faced with resistance.

The immediate result is a reprieve, not a settled victory. Antek reaches the manor orchard, some distance beyond the village, and sits in the shade to rest, shaken and sweating. The pause registers the bodily cost of the confrontation after his aggressive stance: he has driven the gendarmes away, but the exertion and fear have not vanished with them. The episode turns public resentment into personal danger, showing how easily an argument over power and official conduct can become physical, and how Antek’s forceful refusal to submit can secure space in the moment without removing the threat of another encounter.