Mateusz—Jagna Borynowa

The relationship between Mateusz the Young Villager and Jagna Borynowa is disclosed in a small, asymmetrical gesture: after the others depart, Mateusz is the last to leave, lingering by Jagusia’s side of the house and looking back greedily. The scene does not give Jagna Borynowa a reply or show Mateusz acting to protect her; instead, it makes his desire legible through the delay and the hungry comparison to a cat driven from milk. That restraint matters: the relation is conveyed as an impulse observed from outside, not as a mutual declaration.

A Desire Shown in a Parting Gesture

The moment follows a brief exchange about the meadow, where the grass is judged almost dry enough to scythe. The group soon disperses, but Mateusz takes his time lighting a cigarette beside Jagusia’s house. His lingering separates him from the others, who are moving on to the day’s work, and his backward look fixes the scene’s attention on Jagna Borynowa. The narrator’s comparison makes the look openly possessive in its appetite, while stopping short of establishing what she feels or how she interprets it.

The distinction between attention and action is central to what this episode can establish. Mateusz does not approach Jagna Borynowa in a recorded conversation, make her an offer, or intervene on her behalf. His conduct is a brief display of longing, visible to the reader through where he pauses and where he looks. The scene therefore supports an account of attraction, but not a fuller claim about reciprocity, commitment, or protection.

The Mowing as Social Setting

The encounter belongs to the morning when haymaking begins. From the houses, workers come out for the mowing; Józka of the Boryna Household leads them toward the meadows, measures her father’s land, marks its boundary with a stick, and runs home. The mowers remove their outer garments, roll their trousers to the knee, set their scythes into the ground, and smooth the blades with whetstones. Mateusz takes the first stroke after the group crosses itself: he tightens his belt, bends his broad shoulders, spits on his palms, and swings the scythe into the grass. The others follow in a slanting line, keeping enough distance not to strike one another.

This shared labor provides a contrast to Mateusz’s earlier pause. In the meadow, he is at the head of a coordinated line, working with the same steady strokes as the others; at Jagusia’s house, he delays, looks back, and is marked out by private appetite. The narration shifts from the single, conspicuous gesture to the collective rhythm of work: blades flash, grass falls wet with dew, and the mowers advance span by span. Their exertion gives the scene a public, practical order against which his personal fixation briefly stands apart.

Drought, Want, and Distraction

The work begins amid a continuing drought. The villagers hope for rain by the feast of Saint John and even make Mass offerings for that purpose, but the dry spell persists. Some cooking pots go empty, and disputes multiply: the forest lawsuit and the Village Head of Lipce’s affairs remain subjects of talk, alongside tensions involving Dominikowa and her son, the Germans, and smaller neighborly quarrels. The older villagers remember no time when so many disputes seemed to fill village life.

Mowing briefly interrupts that cycle of complaint. The poorest go looking for work at the manors, while farmers take up their scythes and shut their ears to news. Yet even the labor does not remove the wider pressures. People continue to watch the German settlers at Podlesie, and the report that the settlers have sued The Squire over money and Lipce over assault draws hearty laughter. That report is discussed at the noonday meal, where the laborers sit beneath alders beside the river. Hanka the Farmstead Keeper and Jagustynka bring food for them, while Nastka brings Mateusz a drink. These practical exchanges locate his day within the same network of labor and provision as the other villagers, even as his lingering glance marks a private attachment.

What the Scene Establishes

The relation is therefore framed by a contrast between visible desire and unspoken response. Mateusz’s backward look is vivid enough to suggest that Jagna Borynowa holds his attention, but the episode supplies no corresponding gesture from her and no later consequence for the pair. It also places that desire beside a working community whose immediate concerns are land, weather, food, and the disputes that threaten to eclipse the harvest. The passage’s significance lies in this scale: one man’s appetite appears for a moment within the broad, repetitive labor of the village, clearly seen but not developed into a conversation or resolution.