Haystack

The Haystack is more than a feature of the farm landscape: it becomes a possible hiding place around which Jagna’s secret desire for Antek gathers. Its hollow suggests a sheltered meeting, but the evidence shows invitation and expectation rather than a rendezvous. As Jagna searches for Antek and struggles against the urge to leave the house, the haystack gives her longing a specific destination—and makes her hesitation visible in the landscape.

A Farm Object Made into a Hideout

The haystack stands a short distance from the house, beyond the track and set within a field. Sparrows shelter in a large opening in the hay. That opening is not deliberately prepared for the lovers: a farmhand, ignoring Boryna’s orders to climb up and toss the hay down, has been removing it in small clumps until he has made a hollow large enough for two people. A practical failure of farm work thus produces a space that can be imagined as private. The haystack’s significance rests on this ordinary, accidental change to its form.

The hollow is close enough to the house and orchard to be reached, yet far enough beyond the track to suggest concealment. That position shapes Jagna’s anticipation. The invitation she hears from Antek directs her beyond the rick, and later, alone with her thoughts, she repeats the call to go behind the haystack. The place is therefore established not through a meeting shown on the page, but through the lovers’ proposed use of it and Jagna’s repeated attention to it.

Antek’s Invitation and Jagna’s Longing

At church, Antek whispers that he will wait for Jagna every evening and urges her to come beyond the rick so that he can speak with her. His closeness and the force of his appeal overwhelm her: she nearly faints, cannot answer, and begins to rise as though she might leave at once. The first carol interrupts that impulse. Its thunderous singing brings her back to the people around her and prevents the invitation from immediately becoming action.

The haystack remains present in Jagna’s thoughts after the church scene. She watches the snowy fields and dark woods from the porch and orchard, imagining Antek’s arrival and dwelling on the fact that he has taken her part when she felt insulted. The hollow in the hay gives this yearning a concrete focus: she knows where he has asked her to go, and imagines the possibility of finding him there. At vespers she goes to church in the vague hope of meeting him, but finds no sign of him. Hanka passes Jagna without returning her greeting or reaching for the holy water, a cold encounter that contrasts with Jagna’s warm expectation of Antek’s support.

Waiting, Surveillance, and the Unmade Meeting

That evening Jagna’s desire to go to the haystack competes with her fear that the household will notice and her awareness that the meeting would be sinful. She imagines Antek waiting, watching, or searching around the cottage, and considers going out only long enough to tell him she will not come. The thought itself carries her toward the door; then she stops. Jagustynka watches her movements, while Nastka and the old man also seem to be observing her. Their presence makes the household feel like a barrier between Jagna and the secluded place she has been imagining.

When Łapa begins barking, Jagna leaps up in alarm, apparently thinking Antek may have arrived. Later, after asking whether he went home, she rushes onto the porch and looks across the orchard and fences, even checking behind the haystack. No one is there. Her disappointment quickly turns outward: she shouts at Józka to hurry and water the cows, then quarrels with her when the girl answers back. The haystack has drawn Jagna’s attention away from household work, but it cannot deliver the meeting she hopes for. Her search ends not in contact with Antek but in an empty hiding place and a domestic argument.

Narrative Significance

The Haystack links physical labor, secrecy, and desire without becoming a mere romantic backdrop. Its hollow exists because a farmhand has failed to follow Boryna’s instructions; that unintended space then acquires a purpose imagined by Jagna and Antek. The contrast is sharp: the hay is a resource to be handled under the authority of the household, but its opening offers the possibility of escape from that household’s watchfulness.

The repeated movement toward the haystack also gives Jagna’s inner conflict a visible geography. She hears Antek’s request, looks toward the place, imagines going, restrains herself, and later checks whether he is there. Yet the evidence does not show the promised meeting taking place in this sequence. The haystack consequently holds both attraction and refusal: it is a shelter made available by chance, and a destination that Jagna approaches in thought and search without reaching Antek.