The sawmill

The sawmill is a working landscape of frozen timber, rushing water, and relentless machinery, but it is also where Antek finds paid work and where his conflict with Mateusz the Young Villager turns physically dangerous. Its open, river-hung structure makes labor visible and communal: workers move among the logs while villagers gather in the mill rooms, and a dispute carried into that shared space ends with Mateusz thrown into the river.

Work and authority

Late one morning, The Miller hires Antek and leaves him in the yard among heaps of logs. He places Mateusz the Young Villager in charge while he is away, making the younger man the immediate authority over Antek’s work. The arrangement establishes a hierarchy on the job that Antek must accept even though he resents Mateusz’s position and pay.

The frozen wood gives the work its immediate difficulty. Antek has brought a hatchet, but Mateusz explains that it will scarcely bite into timber brittle with cold. He lends Antek an axe and tells him to sharpen it flat, then pairs him with Bartek to work on an oak log before the wood at the saw comes through. The exchange makes the sawmill’s process tangible: timber must be prepared by hand and kept moving to meet the machinery’s pace.

Once work begins, the cold drives the men through their tasks. The mill clatters continuously; beneath its wheels, water, partly covered in ice, surges toward the sawmill. The saws rasp without stopping, scattering yellow sawdust as Mateusz prepares logs, adjusts the water flow, opens sluices, clamps wood to sawhorses, and measures and directs the work. He moves between the mill and forecourt, urging workers on while also laboring himself. Antek recognizes his competence, but the acknowledgment remains edged with animosity; Bartek, in turn, remarks that Mateusz is well paid.

The mill’s structure and rhythms

The working deck stands high over the river on four stout pillars. The water strikes them hard enough to make the reed roof tremble, while the sawmill has no side walls and lets daylight pass straight through. This exposed construction places the labor almost over the current: the timber, the workers, and the machinery occupy a platform suspended above powerful water. The river is not just scenery beside the workplace; it is part of the mill’s working environment and later the setting for its crisis.

The sawmill remains active beyond the hours of cutting. Near Yuletide, people waiting for grain to be ground occupy the porch, while others sit in The Miller’s room. Mateusz holds the company’s attention with a curious story, and laughter rises in the room. The mill therefore brings together separate kinds of work and village life: grain customers wait nearby, sawmill labor continues, and conversation fills the intervals. Its noisy, busy interior becomes a public setting in which private resentments can surface.

Antek and Mateusz’s confrontation

Antek comes to the mill looking for Franek, waits on sacks, and eventually heads out to find him. Passing The Miller’s room, he stops at the door when he hears Mateusz speaking. After listening, Antek bursts in and challenges Mateusz’s claim about having been in Jagna’s storeroom. Mateusz springs toward him, but Antek seizes him by the collar and throat, then lifts him and carries him behind the mill.

At the river fence, Antek hurls Mateusz into the fast, deep water with enough force to break four pickets. People rush to pull Mateusz out; he is unconscious, repeatedly faints, and vomits blood. The Miller calls for help, and the villagers carry the badly injured man to his house. The sawmill’s riverfront setting thus becomes part of the violence: the same water that powers the work threatens Mateusz’s life, while the broken fence records the force of Antek’s attack.

Antek, by contrast, returns to his place by the fire and warms his hands. When the disturbance quiets, he warns the gathered people that anyone else who attacks or offends him will face the same or worse. The contrast between Mateusz’s grave condition and Antek’s composed posture makes the assault’s consequences stark, while his warning turns a personal grievance into a threat addressed to the whole room.

Work resumes

Antek expects to be dismissed and does not go to work the next morning. Instead, The Miller comes to him after breakfast: Mateusz cannot yet run the mill, and the machinery cannot be left idle. The Miller offers Antek responsibility for directing the work, together with four zlotys and dinner. Antek refuses those terms and demands the same pay as Mateusz, saying he can run the work just as well. The Miller bargains, then agrees and takes him back.

The sawmill’s machinery therefore keeps the story moving even after violence disrupts its chain of command. The need to keep production going gives Antek leverage: his place in the workplace changes from new hire under Mateusz’s direction to the person asked to direct the work himself. Yet the return does not resolve the hostility that brought him there. The sawmill remains at once a source of wages, a site of status and rivalry, and a shared public space where work continues in the wake of personal conflict.