Pan Jacek’s return to Lipce culminates in a belated reunion: after searching for Kuba for years, he finds him only in the village graveyard. Witek’s news turns the visitor’s long search into an encounter with a named grave, and his kneeling there makes private grief visible within the community’s landscape of remembrance.

The Search Ends in Lipce

The encounter unfolds at Jagna’s home as a blizzard eases and evening chores resume. The visitor, an old man bent and weathered, has a bullet mark in his cheek and a long scar above one eye; he keeps relighting his pipe. His identity is not initially self-evident to the household. When he asks whether a man named Jakub Socha served with them, Witek recognizes that he means Kuba, who had died in the autumn.

The answer exposes the painful mismatch between the two men’s timelines. Pan Jacek explains that the priest had already told him of Kuba’s death: he had spent years searching among the villages, only to find Kuba after he was gone. Witek, moved by the discovery that this stranger had been looking for his companion, asks whether Pan Jacek is the brother of the squire at Wola. Pan Jacek confirms the connection, while Witek explains how village talk had preceded him: people knew that the squire’s brother had returned from distant lands and was looking for a Kuba, though they did not know which one.

The exchange clarifies both the relationship and the limits of what the village knew. Pan Jacek had served with Kuba, but the information reaching Lipce had not been enough to connect the searching visitor to the man remembered there as Kuba Socha. He had learned only that day that Kuba had served with him and had died. The recognition arrives through Witek’s knowledge of the dead villager, not through a formal announcement or a reunion between the two former companions.

Witek Leads Him to the Grave

Witek offers to show Pan Jacek where Kuba is buried before night falls. He knows the grave’s location and its identifying marks: Ambrozy put up a cross, and Rocho wrote a small board so that Witek could find it even under snowdrifts. The grave’s legibility therefore depends on the work of several villagers. One raised the cross, another supplied the written marker, and Witek carries their knowledge to the visitor.

At the cemetery, Witek runs ahead through the deepening dark, frightened by the changing graveyard but intent on finding the right place. He locates the cross near the fence, alongside the tombstones of those who fell in the war, and traces its large white letters with his finger as he spells out Kuba’s name, Jakub Socha. Pan Jacek gives him a couple of zlotys and tells him to hurry home. Witek runs off, turning back once to whistle for Łapa; only after reaching the church does he stop to look at the coins in his fist.

The boy is astonished by what he has seen: the squire’s brother kneeling at Kuba’s grave. That gesture is the scene’s quiet culmination. Pan Jacek has crossed the distance between a long search and its answer, but the answer is a grave rather than the living companion he hoped to find. Witek, meanwhile, returns to the village with a small payment and the knowledge that Kuba’s life mattered to someone from beyond Lipce.

Companionship, Memory, and the Marked Grave

Pan Jacek’s questions show that he wants more than confirmation of the death. He asks whether Kuba suffered for long, and Witek tells him everything he knows. As Witek speaks, Pan Jacek interrupts with questions and visible emotion, spreading his hands and exclaiming; the boy does not understand why the account affects him so strongly. Witek is frightened by the growing darkness and the graveyard’s shifting shapes, and presses on toward the cross. Their different responses meet at the graveside: one brings memories of shared service, while the other supplies the local story and the way to the grave.

The scene also acquires depth from the earlier All Souls’ observance. At that time, Witek had pointed out graves of people killed in the forest, including his own kin and mother. Kuba, kneeling nearby, remembered his mother Magdalena and his father Pieter, called Socha, and spoke of serving the manor, joining his master on journeys, and carrying a wounded young squire. He also recalled returning to find the manor burned and his mother and others beaten to death. That earlier speech places Kuba’s life within a history of service, violence, family loss, and displacement; Pan Jacek’s arrival now reveals that the past he recounted included a companion who had continued to remember and seek him.

The graveyard’s markers distinguish this encounter from the earlier image of sunken, unmarked graves. Kuba’s cross and written board allow Witek to locate and name him, even through snow. The name spoken and traced at the grave connects personal remembrance with the village’s material acts of commemoration. The scene does not restore the lost companionship, but it brings its existence into view: Pan Jacek’s long search, Witek’s account, and the villagers’ work on the grave converge around the name Jakub Socha.