Antek’s beating of Mateusz

Antek Boryna’s beating of Mateusz grew out of Mateusz’s talk about Jagna and the jealousy behind it. The violence left Mateusz badly hurt, but their later conversation turned the quarrel into an uneasy movement toward accord: Mateusz acknowledged that he had provoked Antek and retracted what he had said, while Antek explained why he had lost control.

Provocation and the beating

In a later conversation, Antek asked whether Mateusz had spoken falsely about Jagna. Mateusz admitted that he had been “sounding off out o’ spite,” then denied the claim he had made. The admission gives the beating a particular cause: Antek had understood Mateusz’s words as an attack on Jagna, and Mateusz confesses that spite, not truth, lay behind them. Antek, for his part, says Mateusz had kept needling him and then spoke nastily; provoked, he no longer cared what he was doing.

The injury and the move toward accord

When Antek Boryna visits Mateusz the Young Villager, Mateusz is still unable to move without a stick. Antek approaches with suspicion, but Mateusz takes his arm and makes him sit on the bench rather than allowing the encounter to become another fight. The injured man names the beating’s public consequences: he was so badly hurt that people called for the priest. He also acknowledges the force of it, recalling that Antek tossed him like a sheaf and saying that the blows drew blood and broke ribs. The injury makes the violence more than a passing quarrel, even as Mateusz’s manner turns the meeting away from retaliation.

Mateusz is the one who offers reconciliation first. He invites Antek to drink and treats his strength with a mixture of admiration and challenge, comparing him with Wawrzek of Wola, whom Antek had also beaten. Antek explains that Mateusz’s persistent needling and nasty speech provoked him until he stopped caring what he was doing. Mateusz accepts that explanation in part, insisting that he is speaking freely rather than out of fear, and sets aside his anger despite his continuing pain. Their successive drinks make the shift visible: they sit side by side as friends, to the astonishment of those in the inn.

The accord does not erase the jealousy that helped fuel the conflict. Speaking quietly in Antek’s ear after the drinking and laughter, Mateusz admits that he had wanted Jagna, but that she rejected him and preferred Antek. He says that jealousy gnawed at him, and he cannot understand why Jagna chose the older man, Boryna, instead. His confidence that Jagna loved Antek makes the rivalry’s emotional stakes explicit: Mateusz’s hostility had grown from desire and resentment, while Antek’s violence had answered what he took as an insult to Jagna. Reconciliation restores their friendship for the moment, but it rests on an exposed rivalry rather than on its disappearance.

The confrontation’s personal stakes

Before the later attempt at reconciliation, Jagna asked Antek whether he had beaten Mateusz because of her. Antek confirmed that Mateusz had lied about her and said he had silenced him for it, adding that he would do the same to anyone who spoke that way. The exchange makes the beating an act of defense as Antek understood it, but his threat also shows how readily jealousy and loyalty become violence. Their conversation is interrupted when someone runs across the yard toward the byre; Antek barely has time to hide between the mangers before Józia Borynianka’s errand brings her inside.

The bodily cost of rejection

Mateusz’s account of his thwarted pursuit gives the rivalry a physical trace: he says Jagna clawed his face as if it had been dragged through briars. The injury sits beside his bewilderment that she chose Boryna, the older man, and makes clear that his resentment was bound not only to Antek’s strength but to a rejection he could neither command nor understand. The confession does not settle that hurt; it exposes what had been driving it.