Push Not the River

by James Conroyd Martin

  Distracted, Countess Gronska pressed Anna’s hands so tightly as to cause pain. “Anna Maria Berezowska,” she whispered gravely, “the Lord Antoni Grawlinski has asked for your hand in marriage.” The countess continued to speak, but Anna’s mind was erased of all thought and understanding.

  Slowly this one incredible reality—that Lord Grawlinski wished to marry her, not Zofia—began to dawn on her. What a fool I have been, she thought. What a silly fool not to have seen behind Zofia’s distance and Lord Antoni’s attention! Yet, some part of her had seen, had known. But it was a thought she had not allowed to take root.

  “The Grawlinski family,” her aunt was saying, “is not related in any way to the Gronski or Berezowski Houses, yet its history is a fine one, nonetheless.” With a restrained voice, she related at length details as to the suitability of the young Grawlinski.

  When the litany was finished, Anna smiled weakly. “I have no wish to marry, Aunt Stella.”

  “But, Anna Maria, here is the very thing that may turn your life onto the proper path. You should marry—and you should marry soon! The . . . accident . . . at the pond might have prevented any favorable match. And there is still the possibility that . . . ” She broke off the sentence, clearly embarrassed.

  Leaving unsaid the possibility that Anna might have a child made it seem all the more ominous and terrible. And possible. Anna trembled at the thought.

  “My dear niece, it may be a blessing in disguise that Zofia’s engagement did not materialize and that young Antoni has taken a fancy to you.”

  “Why has he taken a fancy to me, Aunt Stella?”

  “Why, he’s found you beautiful and charming—utterly charming, he said.”

  “And he knows?”

  Countess Gronska averted her eyes. “Yes, dear, he knows. And it doesn’t matter to him.” The huge brown eyes came back to Anna. “Doesn’t that say something about his character?”

  “His character will be considerably enhanced by my father’s . . . by my fortune.”

  “Oh, Anna, how can you say that? He’s a fine young man, and handsome, too. There are many girls who would consider themselves lucky to have him.”

  “Then let one of them have him! The man has bought a cage for Zofia and since she eludes him, he seeks another, tamer, bird.”

  “My dearest Anna, it hurts me deeply to say this, but can you afford to be so selective . . . after . . .”

  “I know,” Anna said, so that her aunt would not give voice to the thought.

  The countess turned in her chair to stare blankly out the window into the dark sky.

  Long, vacant moments passed.

  Finally, the countess sighed heavily, saying, “I’m so alone now. My Leo! Why, people said we were as devoted as a pair of storks. He would not be dead were it not for his recklessness. He was always taking on too much without thinking. Once he dashed into the forest after some wild boar and didn’t return for two days. Oh, if only this time he had just gone directly to the starosta. What a foolish, bull-headed man!”

  Anna watched her aunt’s back shaking now as she sobbed silently.

  “And I am left with two children, Anna, neither of whom has the vaguest sense of responsibility. Zofia refuses a fine marriage which we’ve planned for so long, and Walter serves only himself and that wretched Catherine. Leo pleaded with him to stay and help with our estate and yours. He flatly refused. I wonder that I’ll ever see him again. I’ve been a failure in raising my children; they’ve thrust aside the old values.”

  Pitifully, she wiped at her eyes. “We have no man to manage for us, Anna. Three women alone in this changing, hostile world. It is unheard of! What is to become of us? What is there left for me to do but to ask you, my child, to consent to the marriage? For the sake of all of us.”

  Anna knew that her aunt’s face and gaze had turned once again toward her, but she had closed her own eyes.

  “Anna?”

  Anna could not bring herself to answer. She became aware of a pattering at the window: it was raining again.

  The countess sat quietly, her lips whispering in prayer or absent thought.

  After a time, she rose, brushed her wet cheek against Anna’s, and wordlessly left.

  It was no surprise that her cousin did not look in to say goodnight. Anna lay staring vacantly at the window darkened by the night. Where in all of this was the hand of Zofia?

  12

  BY THE TIME JAN STELNICKI had arrived at the family city residence in Kraków, his father had already died of a progressive cancer.

  “He tried hard to hold on,” Uncle Teodor told him. “He was determined to see you.”

  Jan was crushed. He had ridden the whole distance without sleep. He had known his father was ill, but never supposed it to be so serious.

  “Did he say anything?” Jan asked.

  “Only that you continue to fight on for him,” Aunt Kasia said.

  “The Patriotic Party?”

  “Yes,” Uncle Teodor said. “It was like his religion.”

  “It was his religion,” Jan said.

  The wake and burial of Piotr Stelnicki was concluded in the customary four days, but the legalities and mundane tasks associated with closing the city household took more than three weeks.

  Jan had thought he was reasonably well-informed politically, but in the days following his arrival in Kraków he absorbed volumes first-hand about Poland’s internal and external struggles. And he learned from the very men who were shaping his country’s future.

  Through the innumerable visits with those who called to express condolences, he gained a knowledge that added substance and dimension to the cause that had possessed his father: a new and reformed Poland. He met Stanisław Staszic, a priest-turned-politician who, in his Warning to Poland, pleaded for an individual-based Commonwealth in order for the nation to survive.

  He met Hugo Kołłataj, who had so influenced the four-year Great Sejm—of which Jan’s father had been a part—with his vision of reform guaranteeing rights to all citizens.

  Attending the funeral also were Ignacy Potocki and Stanisław Małachowski who, along with Kolłłataj, had drawn up the Third of May Constitution.

  King Stanisław Augustus himself sent a personal emissary bearing written condolences and words of the highest praise for Jan’s father.

  Jan was most impressed, however, by an old school fellow of his father’s. He and his father had attended the new College of Chivalry, a state school for the training of military and administrative cadres. Tadeusz Kościuszko, now 45, had already made a name for himself by serving with George Washington and by fortifying West Point in the American drive for independence. He was back in Poland now, no less concerned about and energized by the Polish struggle for reform and independence from its longtime predators.

  “I tried to enlist your father in the American pursuit,” Kościuszko told young Jan, “but he would not leave his family. A fine man, Piotr was a patriot and a damn good friend. Truth is, he probably did as much here—for Poland—as he could have done there. Things will get bad here, my son, mark my words. The cause lost a good man. You should be proud.”

  Jan was buoyed by the outpouring of respect and sentiment for his father from the most prestigious and powerful men in the nation. He came to realize he had only partly understood his father, and at the funeral he unashamedly shed tears of both loss and regret.

  Jan came to feel a deeper sense of the involvement of his father and, more notably, as the days of mourning wore on, a deeper sense of the importance of the cause.

  The Third of May Constitution, the first of its kind in Europe, must be retained at all costs, he realized. It was a document dedicated to the rights of the peasantry and szlachta alike. The changes it effected were profound. The Sejm was to be the chief legislative and executive power, and only a strict majority was needed. The liberum veto—a longtime legal tool by which a single Sejm member could say “I oppose” and thus block any vote—was abolished. The Sejm, along wit
h the King and his Royal Council, would effectively rule Poland. Everywhere Jan heard the slogan “The King with the People, the People with the King.” He found himself saying it, too.

  Jan learned also of the growing opposition to the Constitution on the part of some of the nobility who wished to give up nothing to commoners and who were outraged at relinquishing their “golden freedom,” the liberum veto. He prayed that, once enlightened, they would join the cause of democracy.

  It was his aunt who inquired about his marriage plans. “You are twenty-five and so handsome,” she pressed. “It is time.”

  Jan laughed. “Meaning that I’m at my zenith and starting to roll downhill toward antiquity?”

  Aunt Kasia blushed. “No, I only wondered if you needed some help in meeting marriageable young ladies.”

  “Still and ever the matchmaker, Aunt Kasia? You’ll not be able to enlist me. You’ll be pleased to know that I have found my future wife.”

  His aunt blinked back her surprise. “Has she agreed?”

  “Well, not yet. . . . But she will.”

  “Who can deny a Stelnicki, is that it? Where is she?” Aunt Kasia’s round face shone like the sun. “Who is she?”

  “In Halicz. Her name is Anna Maria.”

  “What a lovely name . . . and so very Catholic.”

  “Yes, Aunt, she is Catholic.”

  Aunt Kasia smiled devilishly. “Well, I declare, it will be nice to have your side of the family back in the fold.”

  Jan smiled. “You are assuming I shall convert?”

  “Oh my, yes! If she is a Catholic worth her salt, you will.”

  Jan changed the subject then. He didn’t tell his aunt about Anna’s very sad and tragic past at Sochaczew. He didn’t tell her that he had hoped that his marriage to Anna would provide a new life for her. The heat that pulsed in his cheeks reflected a terrible guilt. Jan had suffered deep pangs of regret for that day at the pond. He had been too quick to act on his emotions. Always had been, he knew. He would have to change that in himself. He had been too impatient with Anna. It was an irony: It was Anna’s innocence that attracted him and it was her innocence that tried his patience. And it was Zofia’s interference and lies that had—for the time being—come between them. But how could he have expected Anna to learn the truth about Zofia’s character in so short a time when it had taken him quite a bit longer?

  How could he have left her? She was as beautiful and fragile as a bird. He would have gone back to the pond that day had not the messenger been waiting at the house to tell him that his father was dying.

  He hoped he had explained himself well enough in the letter. He was certain that she understood, that she would forgive. Within days now, there would be plenty of time to make it up to her in person.

  Jan would make Anna his wife. How he longed for her! He had loved her from the first.

  Part Two

  Put in a good word for a bad girl;

  for a good girl

  you may say what you like.

  —POLISH PROVERB

  13

  ONE WEEK TO THE DAY after her conversation with Aunt Stella, Anna was married by a local priest of the parish to Lord Antoni Grawlinski. It was a Sunday, as tradition prescribed.

  Lord Antoni was elegantly handsome in his full dress attire. He stood stiffly, as if at attention, his right hand held to his purple sash of Turkish design.

  Anna managed to stand during the ceremony in the reception room, holding to the back of a winged chair for support. She wore a pale silken robe and a simple cap. As custom dictated, her hair was unplaited and worn long and loose for the occasion, symbolizing her transition from girl to woman. But because of the nature of the attack at the pond, no joyous ceremony had been made of the unplaiting the night before. In a myriad of other ways, too, the events leading up to the marriage and the ceremony itself were significantly abridged.

  There was to be a wedding bread, at least. Aunt Stella herself had taken charge of the baking of the kolacz, seeing to it that only the best wheat flour was used and that the dough was carefully prepared, for if the top of the braided wedding bread cracked, the marriage would not be a good one.

  Anna’s white-knuckled hands gripped the chair more and more tightly as the ceremony wore on, the priest’s voice droning interminably. Her own wedding was becoming a torture, not the splendid celebration of her girlhood fantasies.

  Anna looked past the priest to Baron Grawlinski who stood near the window, a little apart from the women. Her father-in-law was very old, indeed. The only way Anna could detect that he was still alive was to catch sight of his laces beneath his loose-skinned neck as they stirred slightly under his breath. The baroness, a large and unattractive woman, stood stolidly, her hooded eyes set approvingly on her son.

  Zofia, radiant in a rose gown, played at sniffling a little, but it was only Aunt Stella who cried.

  Anna was beyond tears. She could not remember a specific point in those days after the proposal when she came to a conscious decision that she would accept. She had been beaten down, by her aunt, by Zofia, by herself. And disillusionment had set in when no word was forthcoming from Jan. Why? Had his attraction cooled? Was he the chameleon Zofia painted him to be? Was it something about herself that suddenly made him lose interest? Or had his interest been merely what Zofia called a dalliance? She regretted her extreme reaction to Zofia’s accusation at the pond—turning on Jan as if in her confusion she trusted Zofia’s word before his. But she felt certain that his anger, however justified, would have eased in time. If he cared for her.

  What if he had heard about the attack? Would that have kept him away? She knew many men wanted only virgin brides. Or had the accusations against him on the part of the Gronski family held him at bay? Anna herself was convinced that he was not the guilty one. Yet, why had he disappeared?

  As the ceremony drew to a merciful close, she tried to search within herself for some sense of assurance—or at least resignation—that fate now propelled them in different directions, that it was simply out of her hands.

  Only the night before, Anna had peered out her window, vacantly watching the rain fill the driveway, walkways, and gullies below. Her father had once told her about the great reverence the Chinese held for water. It was a peaceful and humble entity, water, willing to seek the lowest level, willing to make way for the rock in its path. Always patient. Always surviving.

  Anna looked to her husband, and she could not help brooding over her decision. She had for the moment become as meek and fluid as water. What would become of this marriage? She had followed neither her intuition nor her heart.

  Outside the rain pattered on relentlessly. When the priest pronounced them married, Anna looked up at Lord Antoni and smiled. The Countess Gronska had told her: “No man, my dear, wants a reluctant bride.”

  Later, when Anna received her piece of the kolacz, she lifted the little decorative branch—symbol of fertility—only to see that, underneath it, the bread had cracked in the cooking.

  Two days later, Anna was busy preparing for the journey to Warsaw, where she and Antoni would winter with the countess and Zofia. She was carefully wrapping a blanket around the box that held the crystal dove. Impulsively, she unwrapped the box, opened it, and withdrew the bird. She moved a step or two to the window where the sunshine could pierce it with its warm life.

  Once, the bird had seemed to be a happy omen of her future and that Warsaw shopkeeper of so many years before, a prophet from a Greek drama. He had told her the bird would carry her anywhere, that it would lead her to her dreams. She would hold it up to the light—as she did now—and imagine Iris, goddess of the rainbow, carrying her forward, ever forward, into the future.

  There seemed no hint of Iris in the cold crystal now, no heat in the October sun. The bird was more a relic of the past. It had belonged to a child who had chosen an unlikely gift and who was singular in her passion to have and keep it. What has become of that child, Anna brooded, that passion?


  A commotion from below took her attention from the dove. Parting the lace curtains and looking down, she wondered if she could trust her eyes: Jan Stelnicki was just dismounting his horse.

  She saw him as her memory had etched him, charismatic even in his movements. And beautiful. No man should be so beautiful, she had thought on that first day.

  Anna was already at the stairhead when the knocker sounded, but she stopped suddenly. Zofia had been quick to see his approach, too, and she swept to the front of the house in a blur of movement, throwing open the huge oak door.

  Anna could see only her cousin’s back, but she could make out Jan’s face and its serious expression. She hurried down the stairs to the midway landing so that she might hear what was said.

  “Good morning, Zofia,” Jan was saying, “I wish to offer my condolences. I’ve been to Kraków and only on my return yesterday did I hear of your father’s death.”

  “You are not welcome here, Jan Stelnicki.”

  “Ah, straight to the point, as always, Zofia. Well, I’ve not come to speak to you, although allow me to congratulate you on your marriage.”

  “Oh,” Zofia exulted, “your servants have gotten the news all wrong. It was not I who married Lord Grawlinski.”

  Zofia paused for effect.

  Anna could see a quizzical look flash across Jan’s face and with it a sharp pain pierced Anna’s heart.

  “It is,” Zofia continued, “Anna who has earned your congratulations!”

  Silence.

  In the short time she had known him, Anna had never seen Jan at a loss for words, but he was stammering now, groping for some reply, his face screwed into a map of disbelief.

  Anna held to the banister. She thought she would faint.

  Zofia continued in her solicitous manner. “You wish my cousin well, of course. I shall relay your message. Now you are to leave this house.” The curt voice was rising in volume. “And don’t ever attempt to see Anna again!” Zofia slammed shut the heavy door.