Bylica

Bylica, Hanka’s elderly father, is shown at the edge of economic security and family life: physically weakened, dependent on his daughter’s household, yet still capable of small acts of care, calculation, and resolve. His story moves between work he can scarcely finish, moments when others mistake him for confused, and choices that insist on his independence. After disaster leaves a cottage in ruins, he refuses Hanka’s offer of shelter elsewhere. Later, when she finds him among the beggars at an indulgence gathering, he again resists being brought home, even as he gives her a zloty for her child. His frailty does not erase his will; it makes the question of who may decide where he belongs all the more pressing.

Identity and Family

Bylica is Hanka’s father and the grandfather of her children. He appears within a family network in which care is practical and often strained: Hanka feeds him, checks on him, and tries to bring him into her home, while he remains concerned for her children and for other members of the family. His affection is expressed less through declarations than through the small provisions he hopes to make. When he thinks about the two zlotys associated with the skewbald’s tether, he imagines buying Pietruś a mouth organ at the next indulgence fair, finding something for the younger child as well, and bringing snuff home for himself. He also remembers Weronka’s children, whom he regards as unruly and spoiled but still includes in his thoughts.

The wishes are modest, but they reveal how Bylica measures a little money: not simply as relief for himself, but as a chance to give something to the children and to preserve an ordinary pleasure of his own. His hand is numb from gripping the halter after the skewbald pulled hard, and he has spent time praising the animal to its buyers. He hopes that this connection might count in his favor when the tether money is distributed. Yet his slow work and uncertain claim to the money expose how little control he has over the household’s resources.

Work, Poverty, and Everyday Care

Hanka sends Bylica to mulch the potatoes and heap snow over the pit because frost threatens. He does not refuse the task, but his strength is limited: although the snow is piled high, he works so slowly that after about an hour scarcely a layer covers the straw. Hanka rebukes him for doing no more than a child, and he answers that he is hurrying but has to catch his breath. The exchange shows both the household’s need for labor and the mismatch between that need and his aging body. His delay is not presented as simple indolence: he is weak, winded, and preoccupied with the two zlotys on the table.

Elsewhere, his contribution is measured in small acts of care. While Hanka’s children sit by the fire, Bylica whittles them a windmill and amuses them. After a storm destroys Weronka’s cottage, he moves among the rubble gathering hens, putting hay before a cow tethered to a cherry tree, and crouching by the wall to whistle to the dog. The scene’s disorder makes his routine gestures especially revealing: even when the family’s home has been reduced to broken rafters and scattered belongings, he attends to animals and keeps company with the dog. His care is concrete, improvised, and inseparable from the precarious conditions around him.

The Ruined Home and Bylica’s Resolve

The destruction of the cottage leaves Weronka grieving beside her children and asking where they will sleep. Hanka tries to comfort her and later offers to take Bylica with her, explaining that Weronka has no room. Bylica refuses. He will stay where he was born, he says in effect, and where he expects to die. His answer makes the ruined threshold more than a temporary shelter: it is the place that anchors his sense of belonging. Hanka’s offer is compassionate, but accepting it would mean leaving the place he regards as his own.

His insistence does not prevent others from doubting his grasp on events. At another point, Hanka and those around her think his mind is wandering when he says that Pan Jacek the violinist has been living with him since the previous day. Bylica maintains that he is in his right mind. He explains that Pan Jacek came at Easter, offered to live there as a hired hand, and promised to pay. Bylica initially suspected that the gentleman was making fun of a peasant, but he answered that he needed money and had rooms to spare. Pan Jacek gave him a packet of money, looked over the cottage, and imagined that it could be repaired gradually into a proper manor. Bylica’s account gives the proposed arrangement an unexpected practicality: a man in need of a grosz offers lodging to a guest willing to pay, and the ruined dwelling becomes a possible shared project. Others react with surprise because Pan Jacek is the squire’s brother, but Bylica presents the matter as a bargain he has considered and accepted.

The episode complicates the impression of helplessness created by his stammering and by other people’s belief that he has lost his wits. He may be physically frail, but he can still explain his decision, distinguish mockery from an offer, and imagine a way to make use of what remains. The damaged house is not only evidence of poverty; in Bylica’s telling, it is also a place with rooms, a possible source of income, and a future that could be repaired slowly.

Begging, Dignity, and Independence

Bylica’s poverty eventually brings him into the rows of beggars at an indulgence gathering. Hanka, searching for Józka near the graveyard, unexpectedly sees her father sitting among them with his hands stretched out to passers-by. The sight wounds her with shame, and she tells him to come home at once. Bylica refuses. He has already made up his mind not to burden her when good people can help, and he says he will go out into the world, visit holy places, learn new things, and perhaps return with money. He gives Hanka a zloty and asks her to buy something fine for Pietruś.

The gesture reverses the expected direction of care. Hanka tries to reclaim her father and remove him from public view; Bylica instead insists that his choice to seek alms and travel is his own, and he gives what little he has to her child. His resolve is not free of hardship: begging is a visible sign of need, and Hanka experiences it as a family humiliation. But the scene also shows him resisting the idea that dependence on his daughter is the only available form of life. His proposal to go among holy places joins material need to a desire for experience beyond the village, while the zloty makes clear that he remains attached to his family even as he seeks distance from its care.

Across these episodes, Bylica’s independence is limited but persistent. His weakened body slows him; poverty makes him speculate over small sums; disaster leaves him amid rubble; and Hanka’s concern sometimes becomes an effort to decide for him. Yet he continues to choose where he will stay, whom he will receive, and when he will leave. His life is shaped by dependence, but not exhausted by it: the old man who can barely cover a straw pile still imagines gifts for children, attends to animals in a ruined yard, negotiates a place for Pan Jacek the violinist, and turns a begged-for zloty into a gift for Pietruś.