Push Not the River

by James Conroyd Martin

  It was as they rolled the body back that the pillows were dislodged and something else, something foreign and heavy, fell from the bed to the floor with a metallic clatter.

  Anna could only stare at what she saw there on her side of the bed.

  “What was that?” Zofia came around to Anna’s side before her cousin could reply.

  They both stared blankly at the pistol that lay there.

  “I guess it shouldn’t surprise us,” Anna said. “She wasn’t about to yield peacefully to the Russians.”

  “Even in death,” Zofia laughed, “Mother is full of surprises. Pick it up, Anna, and put it in your skirts. We may need it in the carriage.”

  “But I—”

  “Just do it, damn it!”

  Anna obeyed.

  The two cousins then lifted the body from the bed. Zofia led the way, out into the hall and down the stairs. Working together, they quickly made their descent to the first floor, then to the cellar, where they laid down their burden.

  “You go on up and change as I told you. Hurry, now.”

  “What are you going to do?” Anna asked.

  “I’m going to cover her in another blanket or two and drench the body in water. If the house does burn, she will be spared for burial.”

  “I want to say a prayer.”

  “Antigone to the last!” Zofia scoffed. “There’s no time for that now. Go and change quickly. When I’m finished here, I’ll see to the carriage. Go!”

  Anna climbed the steep stairs that led to the kitchen. She quickly ran through the swinging door and into the hallway. She was on the stairway and nearly to the second floor when she heard the front door open.

  Some instinct stopped her at once, her heart catching in fear. She turned around to see the door swinging wide and the boots and trousers of a soldier in the door frame. The trousers were those of one who wore a red uniform, a Russian uniform.

  Anna felt a great panic rise within her. Zofia had been right. Time was short and theirs had run out. Anna took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and started to descend the stairs. She fought for calm. She had faced looters before. She had faced the King’s Guard. She had faced the king himself. She and her cousin would somehow brave this out.

  With each of her descending steps, more of the Russian came into view: his sash, his saber, the gold buttons and embellishments on the coat. It was an officer’s coat, Anna realized. Was this a bit of hope? Perhaps an officer would treat two noblewomen with respect. Then she remembered General Suvorov’s reputation and hope vanished.

  As she came to the landing midway down the stairs, the officer came into full view. He had taken two steps into the vestibule and seemed to be waiting for her to descend. He was dark-haired and wore no hat. Beneath a heavy moustache, he was smiling strangely. The eyes were reddish-brown.

  “Hello, Anna,” he said.

  Anna could feel the blood draining from her face. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her surroundings began to lift and swirl around her. She found herself reaching out to the railing to keep from falling. Was this happening? Everything whipped around her as in a whirlpool. Was this possible?

  He seemed to wait silently, complacently, while she tried to think. The motion within her head slowed. Her focus cleared. He was still smiling.

  Her voice sounded small as she dared to speak, as frail as her aunt’s had been. “Walter?”

  “In the flesh, cousin.”

  “Dear God,” Anna breathed.

  Walter laughed. “Is that all you can say?”

  Anna could not speak.

  “Thought me dead, did you? Left me for dead, I should say. You thought your making a conquest of Lieutenant Boraviecki would solve your problems. It didn’t quite work out that way.”

  “Szymon?”

  “Dead. Not without managing to get a shot into me, I grant you. But before he could get off a second shot, I ran him through to the heart.”

  Anna winced. A man had died to keep her from Walter’s control. But she could not think of that now. “What do you want?”

  “Ah, straight to the point, cousin! I like that. I came to see that you are not left to die in a burning building, as I had been left.”

  “You don’t think I wish to go with you?”

  “You have no choice. Only I can save you now from the slaughter coming this way. Only I—as a Russian officer.”

  “As a Polish traitor!”

  Walter’s face darkened. “I’m a realist, Anna. Poland is no match for Russia.”

  “And you’ve helped see to that!”

  Walter shrugged. He took a step forward. “Aren’t you going to welcome me with at least a cousin’s innocent kiss?”

  Anna’s heart tightened and she drew back and up a step. The scene at the pond flashed like a knife through Anna’s mind. Her right hand moved to her skirts, where the pistol was hidden. She had fired her father’s pistol once. Her father was teaching her how to aim, but her mother put an end to her lessons once she found out. Anna feared she would not even recall how to hold it. And, no matter what Walter had done, she knew she could not bring herself to shoot him.

  “Don’t worry, Anna,” Walter was saying contemptuously. “I haven’t come for you.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’ve come for my son.”

  Anna could not move, could not think. What did he know? “Your son is dead. There is no child here.”

  “I will look for myself. And if he is not here, you will tell me where he is.”

  As Walter moved forward, Zofia stepped out of the shadows of the reception room and came to within a few paces of her brother. Anna suspected she had been listening to the exchange.

  “You have no business here, Walter. Anna has told you: her child is dead. Go to the cemetery if you wish to see him, but leave us alone. We will manage our own escape.”

  “Ah, Zofia. I have every confidence you will. But I know different about my son. I was just about to tell our cousin here that I ran into our farm manager, Walek, two months ago. He pretended otherwise, but I knew he was one of those foolish legions of peasants who carried scythes into war. He assured me that the child had swallowed no emerald stickpin, that there was no sad funeral, and that my son still lives! I was grateful enough to him that I didn’t turn him in to be executed.”

  “What of it?” Zofia cried. “You have no claim on the child.”

  “I’m his father! And if he is not here, one of you will tell me where he is.” His gaze moved up to Anna. “Anna?”

  “He does live,” Anna said. “Since I came back to Warsaw, I have not tried to hide the child. But I have not named you as the father. As far as anyone knows, he is Antoni’s child. It’s his name he bears. So you see, Walter, you have no claim, as Zofia says.”

  “Ah, as Zofia says,” Walter spat. “The clever Zofia. What a lucky brother I am to have such a clever sister, one who has done me out of my inheritance. You should be proud of her, too, Anna. Coming up with that scheme about the stickpin. Worked like a charm, didn’t it? Oh, my sister’s full of schemes. Strange, isn’t it, how our father fell into the swamp at such an opportune time for her? She was at least saved from a marriage to Grawlinski. And I can think of another scheme that makes you terribly beholden to her.”

  “Walter,” Zofia interrupted, “I want you to leave this house.”

  “Not without my son, and not without telling our sweet cousin here how she came to be a widow.”

  “What are you talking about?” Anna asked.

  “He’s talking gibberish, Anna, and I’m going to put him out.”

  Zofia moved toward her brother.

  Anna could not imagine what Zofia had a mind to do, for she surely could not overpower him.

  Zofia pushed Walter back toward the door. But this was no helpless servant, easily frightened and bullied. This was a soldier who had seen war. With one arm, Walter threw her to the floor. “You cunning bitch!”

  Anna stood helpless on the stairs.

/>   Zofia lifted her head from the floor and threw back her dark hair, which had come undone. “You are an orphan my parents plucked from the gutter only to get grief in the bargain!”

  “Your parents’ grief came from within their own bloodlines. Who was it who held me back from trying to pull your father out of the quagmire? Who?”

  Zofia, flushed with anger, pulled herself to her feet now and began to rush toward her brother.

  Anna watched in horror as Walter drew his saber and fixed his eye on Zofia. In that split-second, Anna saw the intent in those brutish eyes that had haunted her dreams, the reddish eyes of a devil. He meant to run her through just as he had done Szymon Boraviecki.

  No other thought entered Anna’s head until the pistol had been drawn and fired.

  Walter stumbled backwards, grasping his reddening chest and staring up at Anna, dumbfounded. His eyes closed then, and he fell like a stone to the marble vestibule floor.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Zofia cried, looking from Walter to Anna and back again. “You killed him. Anna, you killed him.”

  “I thought he meant to kill you.” Anna dropped the pistol and took hold of the railing for support. “I was certain—”

  “Oh, he did. You can be sure he did.” Zofia ran to the front window in the reception room. “I just pray he had no other soldiers with him,” she called.

  Anna started down the stairs, moving closer and closer to the man she killed.

  “We’re lucky, I think he was alone,” Zofia said, coming back into the vestibule. “There, there, Anna.” She gave her cousin a hug. “Don’t look so glum. You saved my life!”

  “What did Walter mean, Zofia, when he said you helped make me a widow?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “You do, I can see it.” Anna held her cousin at arms’ length. “Walter was the one that day, the sniper who killed Antoni. Wasn’t he? And he could only have known about the duel between Antoni and Jan through you. You engineered my husband’s death! Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?”

  Zofia pulled free. “I did it for you, darling. I took responsibility for matching you up with Antoni. I didn’t know just how despicable he was.”

  “So you used Walter’s . . . attraction for me to free me of a hellish marriage?”

  “Yes, exactly. You should be thanking me.”

  “For doing murder? And in the bargain, didn’t you wish to keep Jan from harm, too?”

  Zofia shrugged. “It’s the old adage about two birds and one stone. You know that one, Anna. But Walter didn’t keep the bargain entirely; he allowed Antoni to have his shot. Jan was lucky your husband had such a poor aim.”

  “Zofia,” Anna said, her gaze catching and holding her cousin’s, “for whom did you wish to keep Jan from harm? For me, or for you?”

  Zofia smiled. “For the one clever enough to win him.”

  In her second floor room, Anna quickly changed into a simple brown dress, wearing no underskirts as Zofia had recommended. She resecured the combs in her hair which held it atop her head.

  She didn’t need to question Zofia about Uncle Leo’s death. Walter had said enough for Anna to fill in the details. Zofia and Walter had found their father that day he had gone to determine whether it was Jan who had attacked Anna. They had found him in the swamp struggling for his life, and Zofia, who was about to be forced into a marriage she didn’t want, had held back her brother, who had his own grudge against his father. They had watched their father die a hideous death. To think they might have rescued him . . . Anna thought she would be ill.

  She suddenly became aware of a great cacophony of noise from outside and sprang into movement. There was no time to think about Uncle Leo. And let Zofia wait, Anna thought, impulsively running up to the attic room to look out the window. As soon as she pushed open the door, memories of her son overtook her. “Let Jan Michał be safe,” she prayed aloud. “Let him be safe.”

  Anna was not prepared for what she saw from the window.

  Praga was in chaos, its streets filling with peasants, as well as with nobles, many of whom were carrying some treasured furnishing or item of value. Some of the wealthy seemed to be trying to bribe others to help them with their heavily-laden carriages, but most of those in flight took no time to listen. They were too concerned with escaping the terrible onslaught.

  The streets within Anna’s view bulged with people rushing—at least to the extent the crowding allowed—toward the Bridge Vistula that would take them across to the capital. Anna thought it a network of human ants scrambling from some predator to the safety of their community anthill and underground chambers. She could not guess whether the city afforded any real protection from the Russians or not, but she knew that she and Zofia would have to join that crush of people. And they must do so soon.

  Praga was afire now. Anna could see two separate columns of black smoke moving with the wind toward the riverfront. As yet, no Russians were in view.

  “Anna!” Zofia screamed from downstairs. “What’s keeping you?”

  “Coming!” Anna flew down the stairs to the second level and ran back to her room to collect her own treasures. She placed the wooden box that contained the crystal dove into a hatbox, adding to it the emerald stickpin, and the alexandrite ring—all wrapped in velvet. Lastly, she placed in the box her diary, the record of her years since her parents’ deaths.

  “Anna!”

  Downstairs, Anna found that Zofia had bargained with a hulk of a man to drive the carriage. He grumbled his greeting and offered no assistance. Anna saw that he had only one good eye.

  Anna and Zofia climbed into the open carriage and the driver goaded the two nervous horses into the street that would take them down to the bridge. The street was thickening by the moment with persons on foot and an occasional wagon or carriage. Pungent smoke and ash filled the air now, and the booming explosions of artillery were closer, much closer.

  “Damn Russian scum!” the driver bellowed.

  Anna realized what that simple exclamation meant: Praga had fallen. Death might be imminent. Everyone around them knew that Suvorov was merciless. Anna’s left hand clung to the side of the carriage to hold her in her seat. To her right, Zofia knelt on her cushion so as to survey the scene from a higher angle. “Sweet Jesus,” she would mutter occasionally, her head turning and eyes darting.

  Anna thought of Walter. She and Zofia had dragged him to the cellar and placed him next to his mother. How ironic it was that he had not been told that his mother had died less than an hour before his arrival, and now he lay next to her in death.

  The Gronski townhome was on the riverfront and not so very far from the bridge, but all of Praga had turned out, it seemed, so that traffic moved at an exceedingly slow rate.

  Suddenly there came frenzied, fearful cries from the west moving down toward the river, like waves. “The Russians!” the people screamed in terror. “The Russians!”

  And then they were upon the crowd. Anna and Zofia saw them at a distance first, few in number. Anna watched numbly as the swords, sabers, and cutlasses were lifted, catching the dull sunlight before coming down to be reddened with the blood of innocent Polish citizens.

  The cool November day had turned hot with the glowing orange wall of fire that moved, like the Russians, in the direction of the Vistula.

  The carriage came nearer the bridge now, where several roads converged at its access. Traffic came to a near standstill as all the arteries filled with screaming, crying people. The masses seemed to Anna as the numberless blades of grass on a thick lawn.

  “Press on, you idiot!” Zofia shouted at the driver. “These people are like rats running to a mill! Give the whip to the horses, do you hear?”

  Although their own lives were in danger, a few peasants in the street turned to watch Zofia rant and rage at the driver.

  The carriage picked up speed.

  The press of the crowd increased and the carriage rolled over a growing number of unfortunates who had fallen in the street.
Anna held her hands to her ears in an attempt to shut out the shrieks of the dying and the gut-wrenching screams of those who clawed their way, panic-stricken, toward the bridge. She could not block out the sounds, however, nor could she close her eyes to the blood upon their carriage wheels. It was more than she could bear.

  “Slow down!” Anna screamed, trying to rise from her seat. “Zofia, make him slow!”

  “Quiet, you fool!” Zofia cried, pulling her back into her seat. “Do you want to die?”

  “No, but I don’t want to kill, either.”

  Zofia fixed her gaze on Anna. “Too late for that, cousin!”

  They were but a short distance from the approach to the bridge and in a still tighter crush when several desperate men and women attempted to board the carriage.

  “Get out, you filthy swine!” Zofia shouted. The brutish driver cursed the interlopers, too, lashing them with his whip. They fell back into the surging crowd with bleeding faces and torn eyes.

  At last, the carriage reached the approach. Here, where each street was depositing its human cargo, traffic all but stopped. “What now, Countess?” the driver asked. “There are too many to drive over and it looks like the bridge supports have been torched.”

  It was true. Anna could see flames licking at the underside of the bridge.

  At that moment the mounted Russians seemed to multiply, descending on the heaving, hysterical crowd, slaying everyone about them. The soldiers descended like red locusts, their gold glinting in the sun’s glow, mindlessly destroying everything as they moved. Those who couldn’t get out of their path were cut down unmercifully. Anna saw a woman rush forth, her baby clutched to her breast. A Russian bore down on her with his curved cutlass, and in an instant she was decapitated, the baby lost to sight.

  Anna prayed as she never prayed before. She was convinced now that her own death was imminent. She prayed most for her son and for Jan Stelnicki, hoping that somehow they would survive.

  Anna turned her eyes to the left then and found herself staring into the grinning face of a Russian. She caught sight of him just as his massive arm was reaching down into the carriage to lift her out. She struggled to fight him off, calling to Zofia. The more she yelled and pummelled him, the more he laughed.