Antek throws Mateusz into the river

Antek throws Mateusz into the river in a sudden assault at the Lipce village mill, after overhearing him mock Antek’s alleged pursuit of Jagna and claim that she had complained about him. The attack turns a dispute over reputation into a public display of physical power: Mateusz is carried through a mill door and hurled into the river, while Antek’s warning afterward leaves the villagers awed and silent. Its consequences reach beyond the fight, as Antek returns to work the next morning on terms he has demanded from the miller.

Background and provocation

Antek is waiting at the mill for Franek and has stretched out on sacks to sleep from exhaustion. After about an hour, he gets up to look for Franek and shake off his drowsiness. His route out passes the miller’s room; with his hand on the latch, he stops when he hears Mateusz speaking inside. The moment places Antek at the threshold as an unwilling listener before it makes him an assailant.

Mateusz first tells the company a story about an old man tending to a woman: he boils the milk, brings tea to her quilt, minds the cows and does chores with Jagustynka, and has even bought her a chamber pot so she will not catch cold going behind the barn. The account draws loud laughter. Antek retreats to the sacks, staring at the light from the open doorway, but then returns quietly to listen. The mill’s ceaseless clatter and the men’s laughter surround his pause; the narrative shows him unable to remain away from the conversation, without explaining his reaction as a settled decision.

The subject shifts to Jagna. Mateusz says that she explained away the circumstances of a pregnancy by claiming she had been hurrying over a fence, and that Dominikowa had confirmed such accidents happened to girls. The men laugh again. Mateusz then turns to Antek directly, disputing the village talk that he and Jagna had been lovers. He claims he knows better because he heard Antek whining at Jagna’s storeroom door until she drove him away with a broom. When challenged about whether he witnessed this, Mateusz claims he had been in her storeroom more than once and that she had complained about Antek to him. These are Mateusz’s assertions in a mocking exchange; the scene establishes what Antek hears and why he reacts, not an independent confirmation of Mateusz’s account.

The assault at the mill

Antek steps across the threshold and calls Mateusz a liar. Mateusz springs at him, but Antek seizes him by the collar and chokes him until he loses his breath and voice. With his other arm around Mateusz’s middle, Antek tears him from the spot, kicks open the door, and carries him behind the mill. There, beside the river enclosure, he hurls him with enough force to smash four fence pickets. Mateusz falls heavily into water that is described as fast and deep.

The suddenness and physical handling distinguish the attack from an ordinary bout of wrestling. Antek does not merely strike Mateusz in the room: he carries him out and throws him through the barrier into the river. The broken pickets register the force of the act, while the river makes its immediate danger unmistakable. The escalation also changes the scene’s public stakes. What begins as mocking talk within the miller’s room becomes an assault witnessed by people who rush to rescue the victim.

Injury, warning, and public reaction

The people at the mill pull Mateusz from the water quickly, but he is unconscious, and they can barely revive him. The miller rushes in; someone fetches Ambrozy, and villagers carry Mateusz to the miller’s house because he keeps fainting and vomiting blood. His condition appears so grave that they send for The Parish Priest, fearing Mateusz will not survive the night. The account notes that his ribs are cracked against the pickets, though the immediate fear is that he may die.

Antek, by contrast, sits by the fire warming his hands and chatting with Franek, who has arrived. Once the rescuers and other onlookers drift back and the commotion subsides somewhat, Antek speaks loudly enough for everyone to hear: “Anyone else who attacks or offends me will get the same or worse!” The words turn the assault into an explicit warning. He does not apologize or explain himself in the aftermath presented here; instead, he makes the threat part of the scene’s public meaning.

No one answers. The villagers regard Antek with deep awe and even respect, astonished that he lifted Mateusz as easily as a sheaf of hay and carried him away. Their response distinguishes the injury from the humiliation. A fight in which one man wrestled another down, beat him, or even killed him would have seemed commonplace to them; being picked up and thrown into the water is what they believe Mateusz will find unbearable. Their whispered judgment that such a thing has never been seen before makes Antek’s act a spectacle of strength—and of lasting shame for the man he overpowered.

Work and immediate aftermath

As the scene closes, Mateusz spits with hatred that Antek will no longer boast of having been in Jagna’s storeroom. Back at home, Antek says nothing, although Hanka is still awake and spinning. The next morning he does not go to work, convinced that the miller will dismiss him. The anticipated consequence does not occur: the miller comes to fetch him, saying that his business with Mateusz is his own affair and that the mill cannot stand idle while Mateusz recovers.

The miller offers Antek four zlotys and dinner to direct the work. Antek refuses those terms and demands the same pay Mateusz received, saying he will run the mill just as well. The miller gets angry and haggles, but finally agrees and takes him straight back to work. The sequence leaves the assault’s practical aftermath sharply unsettled: Mateusz is seriously incapacitated, while Antek returns to his job with authority over the work and the wage he requested. Hanka, meanwhile, understands none of what has happened because she knows nothing of the fight.