Matthew Salesses - The Hundred-Year Flood

He rescued a few floating books and piled them on the bed, water seeping into the mattress. She smelled the sewage without knowing yet what it was. Her leg beat like a second heart. She imagined them in a country that meant nothing to them — Australia, Papua New Guinea — the paintings and pity and need for secrets fading away. He would write books, and she would learn piano, and eventually they would raise a baby, a red-cheeked, black-eyed surprise. The baby would crawl, stumble to her feet, run around speaking Australian English.

Or at least they would adopt a cat, or a dog — not to wish for too much — take it for walks and let it free in their yard. They would give it a Czech name, and never need to say anything else about their old countries.

At least they would get out of this flood.

One of his books fell open in the water, and she saw, in a margin, her name. She’d violated her rule to not pretend, and she wondered if this meant only pretense was left.

By the time she recognized the long low notes accompanying Tee’s dance as the shouts of rescue workers, she was confused again. She dreaded the water — either outside or inside. She wanted to wait for unmistakable danger before she risked swimming. Half-tipsy, half-hungover, she balanced on the mattress and looked out the window. City employees canoed through Karlín. She smelled the water, saw the trash and flotsam in the current, and suddenly, she was sure they must stay.

Tee had noticed the canoes, too. “Who is it?” he asked. “The police?”

“No,” she said.

“Rescuers.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Can we?” He ran out of the bedroom as if he’d been waiting for them, and came back with a couple of plastic bags and stuffed some clothes and books and their cell phones into them.

Her face grew hot and then cold, and a minute passed in which she could have changed his mind but she didn’t know what to do.

“Let’s go?” he said.

He waited, and finally, she said, “Let us go.”

He tossed her one of his hoodies, and she pulled it on over her head. His musty scent in the fabric. “We’ll have to jump out the window,” he said. She knew Prague’s past of defenestration, but perhaps he did not.

He wiped his legs with old clothing and got onto the bed. His skin smelled like the dirty river. He pointed out the window. “Five of them.”

She didn’t know why she felt wrong about leaving. Had she taken on his beliefs in the end, his earlier us-in-here, them-out-there mentality? “They could be anybody.” He shook his head.

When she reached for his fly, he said, “You’ve kept those boots on since you got here,” and, for a liberating instant, she thought that he knew. Yes, she could say, what about her bleeding wound? Then he went on: “I guess I understand holding on to one last piece of your past.”

“One last piece of my past?” Maybe it was easiest for him to think she wasn’t in danger, simply unable to give up her husband completely.

He called out the window, and the rescuers paddled and shouted back.

“What if you were right and the water never gets to the top of the bed?”

“You don’t want me to say sorry,” he said, “but this is my fault. And now I can get us out.” She let go of him. She hated that he was so eager to save her.

He held up the window, waving at the approaching rescuers. “Can you get some more plastic bags?” she asked. He said there wasn’t anything of hers in the flat. She sighed and repeated her request.

When he went to the kitchen, she formed her plan. She would tie bags around her legs so the water wouldn’t get in. Then they would swim out to the canoes and leave Prague, visit her mother after all, row out through the rivers into the rest of Europe.

He climbed back onto the bed, wiping himself off with the sheets this time. He never expected to use them again. He smelled even more like the flood. She took the bags from him. The rescue workers shouted warnings. They called, “Titanic. Titanic.” They had seen that Tee was a foreigner. A hum rose in Tee’s throat and she tied the bags over her boots — both calves, to keep up the illusion. He shot her a questioning glance, but she said, “I know what I am doing,” which, unbelievably, kept him quiet. She felt again that he must know. Wind blew in, crinkling the bags. Outside, she thought she saw a yellow bird flap out over the water.

“Ready?” he said. She nodded. He glanced again at what she’d done, frowning, but then he kissed his palm and pressed it to the ceiling. “Good-bye, apartment.” He stepped onto the window ledge, his right foot turned sideways. He shoved his plastic bags down the front of his jeans and held out his hand for her.

A desperate longing stopped her breath, as if he’d jumped already, leaving her behind.

“Please,” he said.

She took his hand and stepped beside him. She should have run away with him as soon as she could. Maybe every act of faith, as they got older, was meant to make up for an earlier lack of faith. In one movement she made herself small enough to fit through the window and she dropped into the water less than a meter below.

She heard him plop into the river beside her. “Stay there,” he said, but she stroked out as fast as she could. She felt the water seep in — inevitably — through the tied-up neck of the bag, and she swallowed the river with a pained gasp. The alcohol in her blood did nothing to dull the burning and pulsing inside her boot. She felt tired, unable to keep churning her limbs. Then, at last, he was there. His arm wrapped beneath her breasts, and he pulled her toward the canoe. A rescue worker helped her in.

“Are you okay?” the man asked in Czech.

“Afraid of water,” Tee said, gesturing. He bent over the side, fishing out coasters that floated, trapped, between the canoe and the neighboring building.

This, Katka thought, was how she would leave Karlín: in a lie. She hardly recognized where she was. The river had washed in a brown tide, and the area would never completely recover. The buildings would be abandoned, torn down and rebuilt if they didn’t collapse, and the residents, at least many of them, would take the insurance money and move.

Tee was still in the river beside the canoe. She reached between them. In his hoodie, she felt like a second Tee. She was one of her kind, the most American she would ever be, the last American left in this hundred-year flood. She was an identity rising to the surface, as she’d seen him on New Year’s. The canoe rocked lightly as he climbed in beside her, and the water dripped off his nose. She managed a smile, and then a grope of fear reminded her that water was unsafe, and she passed out.

Two other canoes pulled even on either side. The rescue workers gestured for Tee to switch vessels. Katka shut her eyes. Tee shook his head. “ Ne. I’m staying with her.”

The men waved insistently. Tee picked a coaster out of the water — somehow, the objects he’d thrown into the streets days earlier had bobbed up in the flood like echoes.

One of rescue workers said, “You must go other canoe. Many things in Vltava. Hardly go around them.”

“Please,” Tee said. “I am with this woman.”

Their canoeist, a young Czech with a hooked nose, said, “No go, no go.”

“Too much dangerous,” the other man said. He reached between the canoes and took Tee’s arm, at first gently.

Tee called Katka’s name. She didn’t stir. He had the brief fear that the strain or emotion had made her pass out, but as the yank on his arm unbalanced him, he was forced to shift into the second canoe to keep from falling into the water.

“Will she be okay?” he asked his new canoeist.