Kuba and Witek

Kuba and Witek are bound by an intimacy made visible in small acts of attention: sitting together among forgotten graves, answering a sick man’s call for water, and finding help when a desperate act leaves him near death. Their companionship brings two forms of loneliness into contact. Witek’s orphanhood surfaces in grief he cannot contain, while Kuba carries memories of a family and household destroyed by violence. As Kuba’s fatal injury advances, Witek becomes his immediate caregiver and witness.

A bond formed beside the forgotten dead

At the church, Witek is overwhelmed by the prayers for the dead. He hears families naming fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and the public ritual sharpens his sense that he alone has no parents to remember. He is pushed aside and weeps in a corner. When Kuba finds him, Witek is still caught in grief; Kuba’s simple question about whether he has sorted the prayers meets the boy in the midst of that distress. Their connection begins not with an explanation but with Kuba noticing that Witek has disappeared into sorrow and going to find him.

Later, the two go with the others into the old cemetery. When darkness falls, Kuba makes his way deeper among the sunken graves, where generations lie without anyone to pray for them or tend a lamp. He has saved pieces of bread and kneels to scatter them over the graves, addressing the dead as Christian souls and inviting them to eat. Witek stays beside him and asks whether the dead will take the food. The question registers both his alarm and his willingness to take part in Kuba’s act of remembrance. Kuba’s care for the forgotten is not abstract: he gives what he has saved, and Witek accompanies him into the dark place where that care is enacted.

Memory shared in the cemetery

At another cluster of graves, Kuba quietly recognizes the place where his mother lies. He recalls that she was called Magdalena and that his father had owned land before working as a coachman at the manor. After his father died, Kuba’s uncles took the land, and Kuba was left to tend the master’s pigs. He later served with horses and hunted; the young squire gave him a shotgun, while Kuba’s mother kept the old lady company at the manor.

Kuba’s recollection turns from childhood and service to wartime loss. He remembers carrying his wounded master after the young squire had been hit, then setting out with letters despite his own injured leg. Returning exhausted, he found the manor buildings burned and his mother, the old master, the old mistress, and a maid dead in the garden. The memory comes back with such force that Kuba stops trying to wipe away his tears and can only grieve. Witek is beside him as he speaks, though the boy eventually falls asleep, exhausted from crying earlier. The scene does not make Witek an equal participant in Kuba’s history: Kuba murmurs largely to himself. But Witek’s presence gives the account a listener, and the two share the cemetery as a place where losses that might otherwise remain solitary are given words, food, and company.

Care during Kuba’s illness

The bond becomes practical when Kuba is feverish in the stable. He calls for water, but Witek is asleep and does not hear him. Łapa recognizes Kuba’s voice, barks, and tugs at Witek’s capote until the boy wakes. Though drowsy and disgruntled, Witek brings a full bucket and sets it close enough for Kuba to drink. The scene makes their dependence concrete: Kuba’s need is urgent, Witek is tired, and the dog has to rouse him, but Witek responds once he understands what is happening.

As Kuba’s leg pains worsen before dawn, he cries out that he is dying and asks Witek to fetch Ambrozy or Jagustynka. Witek wakes and runs out, still sleepy. The episode anticipates the more severe emergency to come: Kuba’s illness is no longer a private discomfort that can be eased with water, and Witek is again the person within reach when he calls for help.

The amputation and Witek’s response

After Kuba amputates his badly wounded leg himself, Łapa again leads Witek to him. Kuba is hanging over the stable threshold, barely breathing and covered in blood. Witek’s account to Roch and Ambrozy gives the crisis its sequence: the dog had barked and tugged at his capote; it then ran to the stall entrance and whined; Witek found Kuba there, carried him to the pallet, and lit the lantern. By the time help arrives, Kuba’s leg has been hacked off at the knee and is barely attached by the skin. The bloodied axe and the grindstone knocked beside the doorway show the means of the desperate act without softening its cost.

Kuba is briefly calm and even takes quiet pride in having sharpened the axe and arranged his leg on the threshold, while Roch prays beside him. Witek remains part of the care around him: Roch tells the boy to stay still and promises that Kuba will receive something soon, asking him to tell Józia. The scene closes not with recovery but with the recognition that Kuba is unlikely to live until morning. Witek’s actions cannot reverse that outcome; they do ensure that Kuba is found, carried from the threshold, and surrounded by people who respond to his suffering.

The relationship’s narrative significance

Kuba and Witek’s companionship is defined by asymmetry but not by a single direction of care. Witek is the orphaned boy who breaks down among the community’s prayers for ancestors; Kuba, who has himself lost his parents and home, makes room for him beside the graves. Later, when Kuba’s body fails, Witek answers the calls he can hear and helps bring others to the bedside. The cemetery scenes join their histories of loss, while the stable scenes translate companionship into water, a lantern, a pallet, and urgent appeals for help. Their bond offers no rescue from bereavement or death. Its significance lies instead in the attention the two give one another when abandonment and suffering threaten to leave either of them alone.