Push Not the River

by James Conroyd Martin

  It came to her then with the clarity of a sunrise: Antoni has hired these Russians to kill me!

  On her own power, Anna turned Babette, lifting her torso and head upright. She gasped when she saw the face. Babette’s still eyes stared out of their deep, dark sockets. Her gaping mouth, ringed by purple lips, was a tiny black pit. Babette would never regain her warmth.

  Anna pulled Louis to her now and held him as if in a vice. It would do no good: he was dying, too. There was no reserve in his manner as he clung to her, his wide, blue eyes staring into hers. The boy knew.

  The carriage started to pitch and shake violently. Anna could hear the frightened coach horses rising up in fright.

  They had to get out. If the carriage did not tip over, the fire or smoke would kill them. The opportunity to extinguish the fire had come and gone: it was spreading rapidly. Escape was the only way to safety.

  Anna left Louis to try the door away from the fighting men—if, indeed, anyone outside was left alive. They were both coughing now. She could feel the heat of the floor against the soles of her boots.

  Anna threw her weight against the door. On the third try, it gave way, and as it opened out, she had to catch herself from falling into a roadside ditch. She saw that a rear wheel was already on the incline so that the carriage was perched precariously, ready to tumble from the road.

  The carriage lurched suddenly, throwing Anna onto the seat. The incoming air seemed to fuel the fire, and flames began to feed hungrily in the smoke-filled compartment.

  Louis had stopped coughing.

  “Louis! Louis!”

  Anna found the boy’s wrist and felt for a pulse.

  There was none.

  There was no time to cry now for the children or even to think. Anna moved to the door and climbed as far down on the coach as she could manage, then let go, dropping like a wingless bird into the cold and wet—but snow-cushioned—ditch.

  32

  COUNTESS STELLA GRONSKA FELT as if she had been drawn through the eye of a needle into some dark place, but somehow had come to escape. She was feeling much more like the woman she had been in the days before her husband’s death.

  Oh, she was aware that Zofia and Anna thought her eccentric and peculiar. It was strange, but some part of her, too, was cognizant of the cloud that had attached itself to her. Sometimes she felt as if she were a prisoner in her own body watching herself do and say the most outlandish things. She talked to herself, knitted shapeless garments, tore them apart and started again. She snapped at the servants with little provocation.

  Still, her ordeal had led to a kind of self-discovery. She had been born and raised to be a noblewoman. This, in effect, meant being a nobleman’s wife. Her relationship to her father was the same as her mother’s to her husband: both listened to and obeyed their mates without question, often with little or no investigation into the reasoning of a decision or opinion. She had not learned to truly think.

  Stella had been taught always to rely on a man. The transition from relying on her father to relying on her new husband in an arranged marriage had been carefully prepared for and seamlessly executed. It was not, she had been instructed, for her to question her place in the family, or for that matter, in the world.

  She had been lucky. Leo had been a good mate. He had never mistreated her, and they had come to love one another. There were sometimes heavy drinking incidents and occasional violence against their adopted son Walter, but she had learned how to exert a quiet influence on her husband that helped to neutralize such behavior.

  Stella had not been prepared for life without a man. She had not been prepared for the sudden violence of his death, the decisions regarding Anna, or the behavior of her two children. The sum of these things accounted for her downward spiral—but what precipitated her return? She thought it was, in part, her concern for Anna. She regretted now letting her go to Russia, to Antoni Grawlinski, who—she had come to realize—was a poor facsimile of a husband. The Minka episode was proof enough of that. What danger had she sent her niece into this time? The recurring thought that Anna Maria was indeed in danger raised goose flesh on her arms.

  Stella also gave credit for her recovery to prayer. Through these past months she had not abandoned her faith. Prayer had allowed her to endure and survive. It was a Pole’s best friend.

  She sat now in her sewing room, absorbed in a special issue of The Monitor. It was good news. In only two days the word had come back from sejmiks across the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania: The Third of May Constitution was to stand! The vote, though still not officially tallied, was overwhelmingly in favor of democratic reform.

  As she read now, the countess hummed to the music and joyful noise she heard coming from the streets of Praga and Warsaw. It was a happy day. Poland was the first country in Europe to adopt such a progressive document. Despite the ruffled feathers of some of the magnates, the Constitution was vindicated. She felt very proud.

  Her pride had to do with herself, too. Before Leo’s death, she had accepted his political views without question. In these past weeks, however, she had become politically inquisitive and aware. Hours once devoted to knitting useless garments were now spent reading about Kościuszko and his cause. She came to see how wrong it was to keep whole classes of people from attaining a decent quality of life. All men should be able to live to their full potential, as Thomas Paine suggested in his Rights of Man. This simple philosophy she discovered and embraced. She was thinking for herself, and a new, quiet dignity settled over her.

  In celebration, some men were setting off pistols across the Vistula, jarring the countess into a more fearful train of thought. She remembered the Partition of 1772. She had been thirty-nine. Even then Poland’s long push toward democracy had begun. King Stanisław, a young man, supported it then, as now. Unfortunately, this current quest was coming at the very time Poland’s three neighbors were putting together the most powerful autocracies Europe had witnessed in a millennium. The Hapsburgs in Austria, the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, and the Romanovs in Russia were creating their empires at the expense of common citizens and the peasants. Ninety-five per-cent of Russians, it was said, lived their lives as serfs in abject misery. In the city there was a saying that defined the contrast between Poland and Russia: In Russia as one must; in Poland as one will.

  The countess remembered how, with that partition, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—afraid that Poland’s more humane and democratic nature would encourage the hunger for reform in their own peoples—conspired to divide up portions of Poland among themselves. Polish lands and people were traded off like livestock and were not returned.

  By God, she thought, the Constitution is to stand! Only now, after the countess’ personal rediscovery, could she fully understand this vote, its importance, its history, its potential.

  But the countess could see its danger, too. If anything, those three countries were stronger than ever these twenty years later. Were they going to stand by and allow the rose of democracy to flower in their midst? They would see only thorns.

  She shivered, as if overcome by a chill. She knew they would not stand idly by. They would act.

  How might Poland respond to their aggression?

  True to its peaceful nature, the Commonwealth had no standing army. The treasury paid for some 18,000 troops, a small enough force. But rumor had it that a corrupt military and political system inflated that number for personal profit and that the true number probably did not exceed 11,000.

  The countess worried as the happy explosions continued. What could 11,000 troops do to allay the advance of three powerful autocracies?

  She prayed that she would never bear witness to the sounds of enemy gunfire in Warsaw.

  33

  ANNA LAY STUNNED FOR WHAT must have been several minutes.

  The snow stung her hands and face, slowly awakening her to her surroundings. She had fallen into a deep, natural ditch at the side of the road. She looked up. Above her, against the darkening
sky, the carriage was dangerously perched at the road’s edge. Its underside was ablaze, and the frenzied horses stamped and whinnied in their panic. The immediate danger of the teetering vehicle brought Anna to her senses.

  She crawled along the ditch, burrowing into the high drift of snow. She moved slowly, fighting for every bit of ground.

  The blizzard was increasing in strength. Sleet, driven by a fierce wind, lashed at her face and gloveless hands.

  She was not twenty paces away from the carriage when she heard the crash. She looked back to see that the horses had been cut loose. At least one of the men must still be alive!

  The carriage lay in the ditch upside down, flames leaping up now, like the scarlet petals of a poppy around its pistil. Anna stared blindly at the sight. Her first thought was to return to the children. But Louis and Babette were dead. There was nothing she could do for them. May God take their innocent souls!

  Her hands moved instinctively to her belly. She had to protect her own child at all costs. Anna looked about. Here, she might be easily sighted. She needed a safer shelter.

  Over the sounds of the wailing wind, she could hear nothing. Of the two Russians and three Poles, who survived? Praying she would not be seen, she crawled up the slope opposite the road, where spruce trees would provide a shield.

  Once hidden, Anna knelt and hunched over, burying her head and hands in her cloak, as a turtle might retract into its shell. She lost track of the minutes.

  She dared then to peek out between branches. It was fully dark except for the area lighted by the fire—which had already weakened. She watched for a very long time. She saw no human movement, no horses. Through the white blur of snow, she could make out the dark forms of the bodies on the ground. Anyone who survived, it seemed, had fled.

  Slowly, Anna eased herself down into the ditch again and pulled herself up onto the other side. Cautiously, she stood and went to check the bodies. There were four, as well as that of a horse.

  Anna’s mind took her to that day her murdered father had been brought home. Why must things such as this happen? she wondered, shivering in the cold. She pulled the wool cloak around her, one hand holding the collar to her mouth as protection against the cold, the other grasping her belly.

  The carriage was still throwing off enough light to identify the men. Anna went from one to the next. They were all bloodied, all wearing grim expressions—as if the world into which they just ventured was an unwelcoming one. The first was a Pole, then a Russian, then another Pole. The last one lay face down near the dead horse.

  Anna thought. Although there might have been more, she had seen three Poles through the narrow opening in the carriage window. Was this the third Pole? Or was it the other Russian? Anna drew in a deep breath. She bent now and pulled at the bloodied overcoat. With a great effort, she was able to turn over the body.

  Anna screamed. The man’s face had been shot away by a pistol at close range. His lower jaw was missing.

  Still, she knew from his clothing that this was not the other Russian. The other Russian had escaped. Her heart stopped. Where is he now?

  She looked about the ever-darkening scene. Might he come back? Was he out there even now, watching her? He had been paid to kill her. Would he come back to complete his mission?

  No, she decided. He undoubtedly thought she had died in the carriage, if not by poison, then by fire. Perhaps, too, he had taken all of the surviving horses: that would be a pretty bonus for him.

  Thinking was about to drive her mad. The cold night wind tore into her as if her cloak were a gown of gossamer. She was exhausted. Pulling at the dead horse’s wool blanket, Anna opened it and draped it off the animal’s back so that it formed a crude shelter. After pulling the gloves from one of the dead Poles, she bent down and crawled into the little tunnel the horse and blanket formed. Shivering with an intense inner chill, she sidled up to the still-warm carcass. She lay there shaking, thinking only of her child and praising Lutisha for having had the foresight to gird her stomach with the warm goatskin. If only it would prove sufficient to save her baby.

  In time, she felt herself being drawn toward a cold, blue blankness—as if she were a tiny skiff caught up in the powerful current of the River Lethe.

  When Anna awoke, the horse had stiffened into an ice sculpture, its warmth gone. She pulled herself from her shelter. To lie there was to yield to death.

  The night was fully dark. She cursed herself for her stupidity. Hadn’t she realized that the horse would not warm her for long? Instead of sleeping, she should have kept alive the fire that had burned the carriage. She looked to the ditch. The fire seemed to have gone out long ago.

  She was hungry, too. She had not remembered the crucifix, nor had she thought to save the basket of food from the coach. Aunt Stella’s advice had gone unheeded.

  She guessed that an hour or two had passed. The blizzard had moved on, leaving the white landscape eerily serene. Nothing stirred. Anna began to pace back and forth to keep her circulation going. How was she to survive this? Where was she? How far from any human settlement? Would daylight give her some direction? Would she live to see the dawn? Tiring quickly, she paused and listened to the frigid stillness.

  She was about to start moving again when she heard something. It was indiscernible, but she had heard something. Her numbed feet carried her back to the ditch. Her eyes moved over the charred carriage.

  She heard the noise again. It was the crackle of a tiny fire, she realized, for a small flame exploded now, as if feasting on some part of the carriage that had not yet been burned.

  Hope dared to tempt an almost hopeless Anna. She hurried down into the ditch. Before she could build on that tiny flame, she knew what she had to do. The body was host to the immortal soul, and even in its lifeless state, deserved a respectful burial. Of course, she could not bury the children herself, but—God-willing—someone would see that they be laid to their final rest in Christian fashion.

  Anna reached into the over-turned carriage, and—with great difficulty—pulled from it the remains of little Babette, dragging her some distance further down the length of the ditch.

  She returned for Louis. The boy’s body was hideously burned; eyeless sockets stared out of a featureless face. Anna pulled his body some thirty paces, to where his sister lay.

  She turned now and fell to her knees. A spasm of retching overcame her. What little she had eaten earlier spilled out into the snow.

  Why did two innocents have to die? Life had scarcely begun for them. She could not help but think that they were dead because she had been targeted by her husband.

  Knowing that the cold could kill with no further help from Antoni, Anna focused her mind on one thing: survival. She rushed back to the carriage, praying that the flame had not gone out. She found it quickly and nursed it with bits of wood and other flammables that had escaped the fire. It responded with a modest vigor, sending up a little stream of smoke. She scrambled about in the deep snow, searching for branches and twigs. It was not long before the fire was radiating real heat.

  Doffing what stays remained in her hair, she let her long brown tresses swing before the warmth of the fire. It mattered little if it were singed, as long as it became dry again. She was cold and wet through and through, but those modest flames kept her alive that February morning.

  Hours passed. The black night turned to blue. Daylight would not be long in coming.

  Anna kept moving to keep warm and to keep the fire from going out. Each search for firewood took her further along the ditch or deeper into the spruce forest. Each step tired her more than the last. Like the fire, she was weakening. Through it all, congestion began to develop in her lungs and head.

  As day dawned in the east—a cold red, it seemed—Anna could see that this road indeed had been taking them in a southwesterly direction. The rising sun seemed to intensify the whiteness that lay all about her. The spruces were at her back and before her was nothing but a wide expanse of flat, wild fields laden
with white. Further south, miles away, stood a forest of strong birches—like tall, thin, snow-spattered soldiers.

  Anna began to tremble with a chill that came from within. How far am I from a settlement? she asked herself, trying to hold down a new panic. How far from another living soul?

  Was it best to stay and hope someone happened upon her, or should she follow the road? There was nothing the way they had come, she thought; they had covered too much distance since the last inn. Or had it only seemed so? Should she move ahead? That thought gave her pause because she knew she did not wish to find herself in Opole and at the mercy of Antoni.

  As Anna prayed to make the right decision, she experienced the same sensation she had had at the pond: her spirit seemed to disengage itself from her body. She floated upward, upward until she felt as though she were high above, looking down at the trees, the snow—and herself. She was but one of a few dark specks in an enormous bowl of the whitest yogurt.

  With this experience came feelings of insignificance and helplessness. A sense of profound despair enveloped her. Whole minutes seemed to lapse while she watched herself moving about aimlessly on the blanched landscape below.

  Suddenly, spirit and body became one again when she heard a noise! She listened to the deathly calm. It had sounded like a dog’s bark.

  There! It came again, and yet again. The distant sounds of dogs barking came from the birch forest, so far to the south. It was the sound of hunting dogs, tamed hunting dogs. Men must be near!

  As if to assure her, a hunting cry sounded on the light morning wind. They would be peasants, she thought, praying that they were God-fearing.

  She waited. No one came into sight. Though she sorely wanted to call out or scream, her upbringing as a noblewoman precluded such behavior.