Autumn rains and flooding in Lipce

Autumn rains and flooding in Lipce make weather more than a seasonal backdrop: persistent rain swells the pond, floods roads and meadows, and threatens to interrupt the work on which village households depend. The worsening conditions slow movement just as people are trying to bring in cabbages, binding the landscape’s changing water levels to the practical pressures of harvest and daily life.

The Rain Settles In

After the fair, the rain does not arrive as a single dramatic storm but settles into a prolonged, engulfing condition. Woods and villages appear only as pale outlines through a grey veil; icy showers repeatedly batter the earth, and water courses along the ditches. The roads become muddy and nearly deserted, while dark clouds suppress the light. The narrative makes the weather feel pervasive: it reaches from fields and forest into the village’s cottages, byres, orchards, and cemetery, and the surrounding landscape seems to share in the longing for sunlight.

In Lipce, the rain’s effects are visible in the ordinary surfaces and sounds of the village. Black thatch and soaked stone walls emerge through the mist, smoke drifts above the chimneys, and the occasional threshing sound comes from a barn. Most people, however, are occupied in the cabbage fields. The roads are empty except for a figure briefly glimpsed in the mist or a cart carrying cabbages from the peat bogs, with geese following for fallen leaves. This subdued movement does not mean the village has stopped working; rather, work is taking place under difficult conditions and is increasingly constrained by the weather.

Rising Water and the Cabbage Harvest

The pond grows until it presses against its banks and spills onto the lower stretch of road along Boryna’s side, reaching fences and splashing against cottage walls. The rising water is a local, physical change with immediate consequences: roads that connect fields and homes become harder to cross, and the pond’s overflow makes the surrounding village vulnerable to further flooding.

Meanwhile, cabbage cutting and gathering continue on a large scale. Cabbages fill threshing floors, hallways, and rooms, in some places reaching the eaves; large barrels stand outside the cottages to soak in the rain. The harvest is both a sign of intense household labor and a bulky crop that must be gathered and stored before the roads become impassable. The villagers hurry because the rain has scarcely let up and the muddy tracks are turning into quagmires.

The next day brings no reprieve. Rain continues through the morning and becomes a downpour around noon. Some villagers still need to collect leaf litter in the forest or haul home firewood; many have not finished cutting their cabbages. Overnight, the pond rises so high that the sluices must be opened to release water into the river. The river then overflows into the meadows, leaving cabbage plots visible as dark islands along the ridges amid the spread of grey water. The landscape is no longer merely wet: fields and transport routes have been altered by the water, and unfinished work is stranded by the conditions.

Work, Waiting, and Household Pressures

At Dominikowa’s home, the family is also cutting cabbages, but some remain in the field and cannot yet be fetched. Jagna has been out of sorts since morning. She moves from one corner to another, looks out at dahlias flattened by the rain, and waits impatiently for dusk so she can go to Boryna’s for cabbage trimming. Her restlessness and headache make the day feel even more oppressive; she spreads toasted oats moistened with vinegar on her head, yet cannot settle to work, and tasks slip from her hands as she watches the pond.

This domestic scene gives the flooding a human scale without turning it into a separate catastrophe. The same rising water that blocks access to cabbages also stretches the day and frustrates Jagna’s plans. Beyond her household, the pressure is collective: people are trying to finish fieldwork while roads and water levels make movement uncertain. Rain therefore acts through accumulated delays and competing obligations, not only through a spectacular moment of destruction.

Weather Across the Seasonal Cycle

The autumn flood belongs to a wider pattern in which weather repeatedly alters the conditions of life in Lipce. Soon after St Barbara’s Day, winds strip away snow and expose frozen ground, before threatening clouds gather and severe winter weather approaches. In mid-March, rain and thawing ice accompany news that the squire is felling the peasants’ forest; villagers initially doubt the report, in part because the season and rising sap seem an unlikely time for such work. By late May, the weather has swung toward oppressive heat: streams dry, vegetables wilt, and potatoes suffer, even as the winter crops remain comparatively strong.

Later, after Boryna’s death, fine warm rain falls across fields and orchards, giving parched crops, leaves, streams, and earth water again. This return of rain contrasts with the autumn deluge: water can obstruct harvest and movement when it comes in excess, yet its absence can threaten crops and livelihood. Across these shifts, the novel presents weather as an active material condition of village life, setting the pace and limits of labor while repeatedly reshaping the landscape on which Lipce depends.