The return of the imprisoned men is staged as a passage from anxious rumor to public, ritualized reunion, and then to the intimate recovery of home. Lipce greets the returning villagers with prayers and embraces at the Boryna cross, but the celebration exposes its limit for Hanka Borynowa: Antek Boryna remains in jail. The event restores many families to one another without restoring every household, making communal joy and private abandonment part of the same homecoming.

News Spreads Through Lipce

The news arrives before dawn, abruptly and without a clear account of how or when the men will come. A commune messenger has hurried to the Voyt’s house with a letter; Kłębowa hears of it while taking her geese to the pond, then passes the report to her neighbors. The Balcerek women shout it onward to nearby cottages. In less than the time it takes to say a Hail Mary, the whole village is awake and the cottages are alive with the news. The chain of transmission is distinctly communal: a letter begins the movement, but women carrying out ordinary morning tasks give the message its speed and reach.

The uncertainty matters. At first, nobody can confirm the report or say when the men will appear, yet the shout that they are coming travels ahead of any proof. A May dawn rises through fine drizzle over blossoming orchards as the announcement rings from cottage to cottage. The weather does not halt the village’s excitement; the rain and darkness instead frame the moment when expectation becomes shared knowledge. The return begins, in Lipce, as a collective act of hearing and repeating.

An old beggar later explains that a Jew had secretly told him the men were on their way from jail. He had planned to hurry to Lipce the next morning with the news, but finds that the village has already learned it. When he asks who is walking beside him, the women call out their names: Marysia Balcerkówna, Nastka from the Gołąbs, the Voyt’s Ulisia, Kasia Kłębowa, and Hanusia Sikorzanka. His teasing remark that they seem eager to see the lads only sharpens the scene’s central anticipation: the women have come out for their own people, not for a stranger who has arrived with news too late.

The Reunion at the Boryna Cross

As the procession approaches the cross marking the edge of Lipce land and the manor woods, someone spots men coming out of the wood. The returning villagers are already waiting beneath the large birches, their heads bared as the procession draws near. The women recognize husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. The men’s faces are thinner and gaunter, but their smiles make the first sight of them a moment of recognition and relief. The cross is both a boundary marker and the place where the separated group is received back into the community.

Names and family calls break out across the crowd: the Płoszkas, the Sikoras, Mateusz, Kłąb, Gulbas, old Grzela, and Filip are hailed among the men. The people surge toward them, but The Parish Priest of Lipce quiets the crowd and leads a prayer at the cross. He reads slowly, looking from face to face; everyone kneels in a half-circle, and their grateful prayer is accompanied by tears. After he sprinkles the bowed heads with water, he greets the men warmly. They crowd around him, kiss his hands, clasp his legs, and receive his embraces, kisses, questions, and kind words. His welcome joins religious blessing to bodily recognition: the men are not merely reported safe but personally received by a priest who looks at and addresses them.

Only after the prayer and blessing does the gathering break into unrestrained greeting. Laughter, kissing, weeping, children’s calls, and overlapping conversation fill the space. Women draw their own men aside, while husbands sway amid the press of children and relatives. The greetings last for two prayers; the priest eventually signals that the procession must continue. The return is thus neither an instantaneous reunion nor a private household scene. It unfolds in stages, with a public pause at the cross before the families move onward together.

A Homecoming Marked by Absence

The procession continues along the forest road, past fields and orchards. The men look toward the green pastures, blossoming trees, winter wheat, and strips of land they have been away from. Some cross themselves or remove their caps. Their attention to the fields makes homecoming more than a reunion with relatives: it is also a return to the land and farm life that have been part of their separation. The path past the forest and fields carries the men from the boundary cross toward the village and their holdings.

For Hanka Borynowa, however, the procession’s abundance intensifies a personal lack. She already knows that Antek will not be among the returning men, yet seeing the others come back makes her tremble with hope before the absence becomes impossible to ignore. She walks among women and children gathered around their own men and feels that she alone has nobody to speak to. Even the return of people she associates with the village’s troubles—among them Kozioł, Grzela, the Voyt’s brother, and Mateusz—cannot soften the fact that Antek is still in custody. She fears she may never see him again.

Hanka does not openly ask about Antek. She keeps her head high, sings when the others sing, and answers the priest’s prayers, while trying to restrain the tears that escape despite her effort. Her outward participation contrasts with the shared elation around her: she continues in the procession but experiences it as a lonely passage. The event therefore does not erase the consequences of imprisonment. It makes the difference between the men who have returned and the one who has not visible within the very crowd that celebrates reunion.

Return to Threshold, Table, and Farm

At dusk the people separate into groups and make their way back to Lipce. The village soon fills with noise as the men reach their thresholds. Some make the sign of the cross; more than one falls before the holy pictures at home, crying with happiness. The homecoming shifts from the public road into the household, where greetings begin again and women and children surround the returned men with embraces and questions.

The women seat the men before their bowls and press food on them, urging them to eat. The narrative marks a reversal: the long months of separation and the memory of injustices are set aside in the immediate relief of seeing one another safe. Once the men have eaten their fill, they go out to inspect their farms. Though darkness has fallen, they walk through yards and orchards, touching livestock and blossom-laden branches. These gestures extend the reunion beyond people to the familiar possessions and living things of home. The men have come back to their households and to the holdings they recognize as their own; Lipce’s jubilation is grounded in both forms of return, while Hanka’s unanswered longing for Antek remains the scene’s unresolved counterpoint.