Maciej Boryna’s unconscious, near-death state

Maciej Boryna’s unconscious, near-death state suspends him between life and death, gradually transferring the work of protecting his household to Hanka. For days he lies motionless and unrecognizing, while those around him wait for change; a brief return to speech allows him to reveal where he hid money and to urge Hanka to defend Antek, but he soon falls back into the same unresponsive condition.

A slow passage toward death

Boryna’s decline is presented not as one decisive collapse but as a drawn-out approach to death. He lies staring straight ahead, and even when he calls Jagna and takes her hands, he does not recognize her: his gaze remains fixed on something beyond the people at his bedside. Hanka can only guess that the sound of her voice makes his lips move and his eyes dart, as if he is trying to say something. The distinction between a bodily response and a conscious exchange remains painfully uncertain.

The condition persists without visible change, wearing down those who watch him. The narration likens his slow approach to death to wheat ripening in the sun while awaiting the sickle, and elsewhere compares him to a tree struck by lightning, still full of green branches yet already prey to death. These images hold life and extinction together: Boryna’s body has not simply ceased to live, but neither can he return to the active, capable farmer he was. He is described as being wholly at God’s mercy, with his fate beyond the control of himself or his family.

A brief return to speech

The long stillness is interrupted when Boryna sits on the edge of the bed and looks around the room. Hanka rushes to prop him up so that he will not fall. His eyes pass over her and settle on the door, where Antek’s Brother-in-law has just entered; then Boryna calls Hanka by name, loudly and clearly enough to make her freeze. The moment appears to open a way back to ordinary awareness, but the scene does not establish that his full recognition has returned.

After Antek’s Brother-in-law leaves, Boryna asks Hanka to sit beside him. Speaking clearly but pausing to rest after each word, he tells her that cash is hidden in the grain in the storeroom and warns her to hide it so that it will not be taken from her. He then turns from safeguarding money to safeguarding Antek: Hanka is to defend him, selling half the farm if necessary rather than giving up. The instruction makes the brief awakening consequential. Even from a bed he cannot leave, Boryna tries to direct the household’s resources toward his son’s defense.

He cannot finish. He turns blue and falls back, his eyes fading and misting over; although he mutters more and seems to try to rise, he does not recover. Antek’s Brother-in-law and Magda hurry in and give him water, but Boryna lies motionless again, his eyes open and far removed from what is happening around him. The return to speech has revealed a secret and a final practical charge, not a lasting recovery.

Care at the bedside

Hanka’s role is shaped by the repeated labor of watching and tending. She prays while keeping an eye on the children and checking on Boryna, whose unchanging condition occupies the household’s attention. Later, when neither Jagna nor the blacksmith’s wife has thought of him, Hanka washes him with warm water, combs his tangled hair, and changes his shirt and bedding. He submits without moving, staring straight ahead as before. Care here does not restore him; it maintains his bodily dignity while the people around him confront their inability to bring him back.

The care continues amid the village’s religious observances. On the holiday, the women return from church with candles, and Hanka lights the wood with one of them. She first drinks blessed water, passes it to the others, then sprinkles the livestock and orchard trees with it in the hope of guarding against sore throats, ensuring fruitfulness, and helping the cows calve. In the same sequence, she tends Boryna. The household’s acts of devotion and practical care proceed alongside his helplessness, but the blessing does not alter his condition.

The Parish Priest comes at dusk, prays over the holy gifts, looks at Boryna’s livid, bearded face, and asks whether anything has changed. Hanka answers that the wound is almost healed, but Boryna is no better. The distinction is stark: the visible injury can mend while the larger crisis remains. His bodily stillness, rather than the wound alone, defines the continuing emergency.

Significance of the suspended state

Boryna’s condition changes the balance of action in the household. During his prolonged incapacity, others must watch, care for him, and confront the demands that he can no longer manage himself. His brief instruction to Hanka makes that shift explicit: he entrusts her with hidden cash and insists that Antek be defended, even at the cost of selling part of the farm. The near-death state thus carries both material and familial consequences, without turning the awakening into a final settlement.

The narrative’s repeated return to Boryna’s fixed gaze and motionless body makes waiting itself part of the ordeal. His brief, clear voice interrupts that waiting, but only long enough to give Hanka a duty before silence resumes. He remains neither wholly present to his family nor finally gone from them: the household is left in the uncertainty of a man who has not died, cannot live as before, and is at the mercy of an outcome no one there can command.