Szymek—Nastusia Gołębianka

The relationship between Szymek and Nastusia Gołębianka is shown at the threshold of marriage, not as a settled union: Szymek asks Dominikowa for money to arrange the banns, while his mother ridicules the match and withholds her support. A later reminder that Nastusia is waiting places the intended marriage beside Szymek’s refusal to leave his inherited land. Their connection is therefore shaped by both a practical betrothal and the pressures that prevent it from proceeding smoothly.

The betrothal takes shape

After breakfast, Szymek sits at the window with a cigarette and eventually asks Dominikowa for money. He says the priest has instructed him to come before Vespers for the prayers associated with the banns. When Dominikowa asks whom he intends to marry, Szymek names Nastusia Gołębianka directly. The exchange makes his intention explicit: this is not simply a private attachment but a proposal moving toward public and religious recognition.

Szymek also asks for five roubles, explaining that there is a betrothal to arrange. The sum gives the courtship an immediate material dimension. His request is for money needed to carry the match forward through its customary steps; the relationship is embedded in household resources and formal preparations, rather than represented only through declarations of feeling.

A public step, met with mockery

The preparations have already moved beyond Szymek’s own request. He says that Kłąb and Płoszka have gone to carry the vodka, and confirms that Nastusia accepted him. The detail that other villagers have taken part makes the betrothal socially visible: the match is being communicated through intermediaries and a customary gesture, even as Szymek seeks the money to continue its formal progress.

Dominikowa responds not with assistance but with derision. She asks whether the vodka has already been sent around, then mocks Nastusia’s acceptance with a proverb about a blind chicken landing on grain and calls her a slut. The exchange sharply contrasts the couple’s apparent progress with the contempt it encounters at home. Szymek frowns, but waits to see what else his mother will say; the scene records his displeasure without depicting him ending the argument or abandoning the match.

Family resistance and the cost of proceeding

Dominikowa’s scorn matters because Szymek has come to her for the money required to advance the banns. Her response therefore combines personal disparagement with a practical obstacle: she mocks the intended bride at the moment he seeks help with the preparations. The evidence does not establish what happens to the money or whether she ultimately gives it, so her resistance is clear while its precise material outcome remains unresolved.

The scene also places Szymek’s intention inside a family household rather than outside it. Jędrek adds wood to the fire while Szymek waits for his mother’s response, and blows on it despite the crackling flames, apparently from fear. His presence registers the strain of the confrontation within the home, though the passage does not identify him as intervening in the match. Szymek’s request, Dominikowa’s ridicule, and the uneasy silence around them make marriage a matter on which family authority can bear directly upon a couple’s plans.

Nastusia’s waiting and Szymek’s land

Later, when Szymek refuses to join people going to the Germans, he insists that the land is his because it came from his father and says he will not move from the spot. Someone then reminds him that Nastusia is waiting and that he was supposed to have taken the money for the banns. The reference links the earlier preparations to a continuing expectation: the match has not disappeared from the story, and Szymek is still expected to act on it.

Yet the reminder does not make him leave. He repeats that he is going nowhere and returns to the claim that the land is his by inheritance. The episode places two commitments alongside one another—the anticipated marriage and his determination to remain on his father’s land—without resolving their tension. It does not say that he rejects Nastusia; rather, it shows that, in this moment, he answers the pressure to move by asserting his rootedness.

Significance and limits of the relationship

The relationship is defined most firmly by its practical signs: Szymek names Nastusia, asks for five roubles, invokes the banns and the priest’s prayers, and reports that the betrothal vodka has been taken. The later reminder that she is waiting confirms that these preparations carry forward as an expectation. In contrast, the evidence offers little direct access to Nastusia’s perspective beyond Szymek’s report that she accepted and the later statement that she is waiting.

That asymmetry keeps the relationship’s depiction focused on Szymek’s plans and the obstacles around them. Dominikowa’s ridicule threatens the domestic support he seeks, while his insistence on remaining with his inherited land competes with the expected next step in marriage. The available scenes establish an intended union under pressure, not its eventual outcome: they do not confirm that the banns are completed or that Szymek and Nastusia marry.