Push Not the River

by James Conroyd Martin

  “Yes, milady,” he politely whispered.

  Anna could sense the impatience of the captain, but she persisted. “Tell me, then, why it is you beg?”

  The boy looked up in fear at the captain.

  “You may tell me,” Anna said, “I’m sure he will not understand much of your Polish.”

  The boy took heart. “Since they have come, no one may go to work in the fields. My father is unable to feed us.”

  “Come, Countess,” the Russian pressed. “Ignore these street wretches. They’re but homeless bastards.” He looked down at them with a reddening face. “Away with you!” he shouted. “Be gone!”

  The eyes of the seven or eight little ones became enlarged with fear of the foreign soldier. They knew his meaning, if not his Russian words. But their hunger and their hope kept them stoically huddled together.

  “Captain,” Anna said, drawing his eyes to her, “your illustrious empress may deny us our homeland and the parents of the wretches, as you say, their livelihood—but will she also deny them the miserable crust of bread for which they have been reduced to begging? Is Catherine a woman without a heart?”

  The man bristled at Anna’s audacity, his face becoming pinched and more purple than red, but he was unwilling to create a scene.

  Anna gave her remaining provisions of food to the small, outstretched hands. “Wait, now,” she said to those she had missed. “Don’t go yet.”

  Anna hurried to the wagon, well aware that she was delaying the entire procession. “Marta! Give me anything you and Marcelina have not eaten. Hurry!”

  The loyal and wide-eyed servant was quick to obey.

  As Anna took their leftover portions and walked back to the children, she could sense the eyes of hundreds—of mounted soldiers, of coachmen, of Polish gentry and nobles, of the physician—all upon her. She held her back straight, her head erect, embarrassed but determined to stand up to the Russians in this one small matter.

  The little ones cried with delight when she handed them the partial loaves of bread, sausage, and apple cake. Several of the collecting throng of bystanders called out, “God bless you, milady! God bless you!”

  Anna turned to the Russian. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Captain. I’d like to go home now.”

  The street was dark and silent when the wagon pulled to a halt in front of the four-storied Gronski townhome. After the women were helped down, Anna dismissed the two-man Russian escort.

  She turned to look across the River Vistula, toward Warsaw. It seemed that Fate, like the tide, always returned her to the capital. Zygmunt’s column still rose high in the castle’s outer courtyard, and the Royal Castle sat on the tall embankment of the Vistula as it had for centuries, the king no doubt moving through its cavernous rooms, but now it was a foreign power that ruled the city streets. Her eyes moved then to the bridge, where she could see the horses and vehicles of the Russian-led procession as it continued on toward the great walls of the capital.

  Anna heard the door of the townhome open now and turned to see a large and familiar figure emerge, her head bent humbly but joyously downward and her ruffled white cap fairly glowing in the dark like some alien moon.

  “Lutisha!” Anna called.

  The bulky servant swooped down the steps and in moments was imposing a great bear hug upon Anna, then upon her daughter and granddaughter. “Thank God. Thank God,” she kept repeating.

  A flood of feelings stirred, eddied, and rose within Anna. If she could not call the Gronski home her own, it was at the very least a place of protection where she was welcome and certainly a happy alternative to what might have been her fate in St. Petersburg. Within this home, she thought, are people whom I love and who love me. Her heart quickened now at the realization that she was about to see one of the two people who meant life itself to her. “My child?” she managed, choking on emotion. “Jan Michał?”

  “Oh, he’s fine, Countess Anna!” Lutisha assured. “A beautiful child and as quick as can be,” she added, her large hands swiping at the tears which wet her face.

  Anna smiled, keeping her own tears at bay. He will have to be quick, she thought, to survive in times such as these.

  As Anna lifted the folds of her tattered and burned black dress to ascend the few steps, she looked up to see Zofia standing in the light of the doorway, like the scarlet vision of a saint. Of the reddest velvet, her gown was trimmed with hundreds of hanging and undulating silver beads that caught the moonlight as she quickly descended the stairs toward Anna. Red velvet ribbon was laced through the high piling of her white powdered wig. Her lips and cheeks were heavily rouged and her eyes shone like polished ebony.

  “Anna!” Zofia cried. “Oh, darling Anna!” She seemed genuinely glad to see her cousin, her outstretched arms flying about her like the wings of a falcon.

  Despite everything, how could Anna not warm to that welcome? However, her return of her highly perfumed cousin’s tight caress was more restrained, more guarded. “I’m so happy to be back, Zofia.”

  “It’s wonderful to have you here and out of harm’s way,” Zofia said. “You aren’t to leave again, do you understand? This is your home!”

  Home. For the moment Anna forgot the circumstances of her departure when Zofia had declared that she had affixed the Gronski and Grawlinski names to the Confederacy of Targowica—and when Zofia had implied that she loved Jan Stelnicki, warning Anna to forget him. Anna put these things from her mind now, warming to her cousin’s affectionate words and expression and the love and security which they promised after so many bleak months of isolation. Knowing, too, that her cousin had kept Jan Michał from Walter, she acquiesced, welcoming the hot, happy tears that collected in her eyes.

  Zofia’s mouth moved to Anna’s ear, though, and her voice was immediately transformed. “The Russians are here,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “We welcome them with celebration, or we die. Make no mistake about it, Ania!”

  Even while her cousin spoke, Anna’s eyes moved up to the doorway where, in the flickering yellow light spilling out from the house onto the portico, there stood a tall figure in the red uniform of a Russian soldier. Anna could discern, too, the noises of partying within the house. Her exquisite delight at being back in Praga vanished. Her heart dropped with the weight of a stone, for she became overwhelmed with the certainty that this doorstep offered only some new despair.

  Zofia stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, her face stern as a midwife’s, her dark eyes wordlessly begging her to submit to the circumstances in which she found herself. Then, as her gaze turned toward the house and she began to guide Anna to the steps, Zofia underwent still another metamorphosis.

  Her intent face was effortlessly changed into one that radiated a luminous—and false-faced—gaiety. She bubbled over in exclamations of delight as she guided Anna up the stairs and past the soldier who eyed them coolly, into the house, and to the main staircase. “It’s so unfortunate that you must rest, cousin, and cannot meet my friends tonight,” she said loudly and with all the aplomb of a seasoned actress. “However, I shall see you early in the day tomorrow. Sleep well, darling.” She kissed Anna on both cheeks.

  And then she was gone—like the shapeshifter she was.

  Anna started up the staircase. She could hear Lutisha behind her and turned, whispering, “Where is my son?”

  “He sleeps in the attic room, Madame, so that he is removed from the noises of . . . from below.”

  “In the attic?”

  “Yes, Katarzyna sleeps there also so that someone is near should he become frightened.”

  At the landing of the second level, where Anna had her rooms, Lutisha turned to her, barring the way to the third level and attic. “The boy is in fine health,” she assured Anna, “but we should let him sleep while the frolicking below is not yet too loud.”

  Anna’s first reaction was to overrule the servant, but her own maternal instinct made her concur, reluctantly. Besides, her nerves were shattered, and every mu
scle and bone in her body attested to the long journey and the ordeal before that. It would be heaven to yield to the temptation of her soft, feathered bed. She doubted that even the sounds of the lost souls in Tartarus could bother her this night.

  “Countess Anna?”

  “Yes, Lutisha?”

  “How is old Stanisław? Has he stayed at Hawthorn House?”

  Anna turned around. Before she could rest, she had to console Lutisha on the death of Marta’s father-in-law. She imagined that downstairs Marta was telling Katarzyna and Tomasz about the murder of their grandfather.

  It was already a bright and warm mid-morning when Anna awoke to whispers in the room. She sat up abruptly and looked to the open door, pulling her hair back from her eyes.

  There, just inside the doorway, stood Aunt Stella and Lutisha, both displaying subtle smiles. Anna’s eyes moved downward, and when they stopped, she let out a little gasp.

  Standing there, too, his tiny arms stretched upward for the steadying grips of the countess and Lutisha, was Jan Michał. Anna thought him a vision in his red short pants held by suspenders. His half-sleeved shirt and little shoes were white, spotlessly so. Blond curls fell around his round face with its perfect features and velvet red cheeks.

  “Come along, my little man,” Aunt Stella said as they guided him closer to Anna.

  Delighted at the attention, he laughed, emitting a stream of high-pitched gurgles.

  Anna stared in disbelief. Of course, she expected him to have grown, but to see the tiny babe she had slipped into her aunt’s embroidery satchel so many months before—to see him taking his small steps, his expressive mouth turned up in laughter—filled her with amazement. In the interim of their separation, Jan Michał had been transformed from a red-faced infant, indistinguishable from a thousand others, into a toddling human being with his own unique and vibrant personality.

  And what did it matter that those warmly flashing eyes were the brown of Walter’s? She thought back to that defining moment in the Gronski kitchen when little Tomasz noticed that the infant’s blue eyes were giving way to brown. She had been horrified to think that her son was Walter’s legacy.

  But Walter was gone, no more a threat to either mother or child. And if Anna had Jan Michał as a result of Walter, so be it. He was a child to be thankful for.

  Removing herself from the bed, Anna slipped to the floor and knelt, stretching out her arms, beckoning her son. “Come here,” she whispered. “Come to your mother, Jan Michał.”

  The countess and the servant relinquished their holds, so that the child stood alone. Anna’s words had prompted him to focus solely on her for the first time. His little steps stopped and his forehead wrinkled in sudden surprise, then panic. He turned to stare up with enormous eyes at Lutisha and reached out to her, desperately clinging to her skirts.

  He had not been two months old at the time of his separation from Anna, and he seemed to hold no memory of her at all.

  “Come, Jan Michał,” she pleaded softly, her heart tearing, “come to me.”

  He whimpered now, a tiny fist thrust partially into his mouth and tears forming in the wide eyes that were fastened on Anna with uncertainty.

  Fighting back her own tears and the searing disappointment which cut through her, Anna continued to speak to him in soft, soothing tones. She moved toward him on her knees by almost imperceptible degrees.

  In time, the fear and shyness began to dissipate, and slowly, slowly, the corners of his mouth turned upward again until he was coaxed by Anna’s cooing sounds and silly faces into laughing, lightly at first, then very merrily. Did he remember her?

  “Come, Jan Michał,” Anna persisted, moving still closer, her arms outstretched. “Walk to Mother.”

  Doubt clouded his face once again, but he vacillated only briefly. Breaking into a smile and warbling some mirthful exclamation, he toddled the three or four steps into Anna’s arms.

  She held her son to her, lightly, as if he were a baby bird she might crush.

  “I’m holding my son at last,” she murmured, looking up at her aunt and Lutisha. “You two shall be my witnesses. I ask you both to hear my vow never again to be separated from my son.”

  Aunt Stella and Lutisha gave in to their tears.

  Anna breathed deeply. She did not want to cry in front of the child. He would not understand tears of joy.

  After a few minutes, she realized that she had yet to properly greet her aunt. Lifting herself from the floor, she kissed the countess, who was wiping her eyes.

  “Welcome home, Ania!” Countess Gronska exclaimed.

  It was only later, when Anna went to see the countess in her anteroom where she sat sewing, that Anna more fully assessed her. Countess Gronska was like some delicate old Dresden figurine, her health almost visibly failing. She was ill, seriously so.

  Paradoxically, however, with failing health came a healing of the countess’ attitude, which had brightened considerably. Her mind seemed lucid. Any trace of peculiarity had vanished.

  And the black that the countess had worn since the death of her husband was gone. Now Anna found herself staring at the lovely dark green dress her aunt wore so elegantly. She had given up her mourning. Young widows were allowed a year and a day to grieve, but sometimes, older women who had lost lifetime mates were expected to wear the black for the rest of their lives.

  “Come in. Come in, child!” the countess was saying. “Why do you hesitate so?”

  “Your dress, Aunt Stella—it is so beautiful!”

  “Too beautiful for an old widow?”

  “No, no. I was just . . . surprised.”

  “I’ve realized some things, Anna Maria.” The countess set aside her embroidery. “I’ve realized how dear life is. And how fragile. I still have some life and some fight left in me. Oh, I was so focused on the death of my Leo that I could not remember the wonderful days and years of our marriage. I remembered only the day of his death, obsessing about one day of loss when there had been so many full, happy days. I was doing both him and myself an injustice. On the day I realized this, I put away the black dress. In fact, I had it burned.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Oh, no! Oh, Aunt Stella, you’ve come back to life.”

  The countess smiled. “I think perhaps it was little Jan Michał who did it. I realized after we came back to Praga without you that this little life was for a time my responsibility. I had to live, if only for him.”

  “I thank you for that, Aunt Stella.”

  “And there is Poland, too, my other distraction.”

  “Are things as bad as they seem? What with Russians in Warsaw, Russians in this house?”

  “No, Anna, Poland has not fallen. Not yet! Our resistance is still to be fully tested.”

  “Then you still maintain hope?”

  “As long as Kościuszko lives and breathes, there is hope.”

  “And he does live?”

  “By God, Anna, he is Poland’s living symbol of liberty. He spent some months in self-exile in Paris, but even now he is bringing together a force of nobles and gentry and peasants, biding his time. One day he will show Catherine that Poland is not the easy prey she thinks.”

  Is Jan with him? Anna wondered. He had most certainly taken part in the early actions against the Russians. Had he survived? Had anyone heard from him? Anna would not allow herself to think the worst.

  “Aunt Stella, I came to speak to you about Walter.”

  The woman pitched in her chair, and the focus of her dark eyes clouded.

  “You know,” Anna said softly, “that Walter is the father of Jan Michał.”

  “Oh, I know,” she replied, her voice a monotone. Her eyes cleared again and fastened on Anna. “I know. May God forgive him. He told me so last summer at the Stelnicki home, spitting out the details without a shred of shame.”

  “And you bravely managed to steal Jan Michał away from his influence. For that, Aunt Stella, I will be eternally gr
ateful.”

  “Oh, believe me, dearest, I fought for you to leave with us, too, but he turned a deaf ear on me. What can bring a man to such maddened behavior? And what he did to you . . .” The countess’ voice trembled with emotion. “Oh, Anna, what this past year has been like for you, I cannot imagine.”

  “It was not so terrible,” Anna lied. “Anyway, it’s past now and I’m home.”

  “Anna, you know that Walter was an adopted child?”

  “Yes, Zofia told me.”

  “Oh. Don’t think that I put down his failings to that, though. Look at Zofia. She’s of my blood, but you’d never know it.”

  Adopted or not, Anna thought, how was the countess to take the news of her only son’s death? Clearing her throat, Anna tried to dispel the sick apprehension within her. “Aunt . . .” she started.

  The countess gave Anna her full attention.

  Anna’s mind had traveled back, however, to that moment in the burning Stelnicki home when she had left Walter with only a sword to protect himself from Lieutenant Boraviecki, who held him covered with a pistol at close range. Out in the field, she had heard the shot, seen the building being consumed by fire.

  “What is it, Anna?” the countess was saying. “You’ve lost all your color.”

  Anna was brought forward to the present. “Aunt Stella,” she said, her hand reaching out to one that was frail and blue-veined, “Walter is dead.”

  The realization moved like an eclipse across the woman’s face. She sat motionless many moments, her body still as a corpse, the knuckles of her other hand whitened by the tightness of her grip on the arm of the chair. Then her head fell forward onto her chest.

  “Aunt Stella!” Anna pressed. Had her aunt suffered a heart attack? Anna would never forgive herself for bringing it on.

  But the woman’s hand remained warm, and when the countess lifted her head, there were tears glistening in her eyes, though none had spilled. She tilted her head toward Anna. “I have no desire to know the details, Anna. Not now.” She exhaled deeply, a long audible sigh, and when she spoke next, it was with a bitter resignation. “Oh, he came to the house once while he was in Warsaw doing the Empress-whore’s dirty work. He had turned against his family, against his motherland. What was there to do but to follow Leo’s example and disown him? And let me tell you, Anna, that to do so hurt no less because he was adopted. Well, he can bring no further shame down upon this house or his good father’s name . . . not any longer.”