Matthew Salesses - The Hundred-Year Flood

“What is on her foots?”

“She really loves those boots,” Tee said. “Do you think she is okay?”

“Why not she is okay?” the canoeist asked, paddling them through filthy water.

Tee soon saw why he had been asked to move. When a tree tipped over into the water, the canoes barely swerved around it. The extra weight would have made turning more difficult. A group of workers anchored the trunks underwater as they struggled like ships trying to reach the sea. Tee asked his canoeist where they were going.

“Wait,” the man said. A wash of clothes caught on the bow. One of the other men picked off the clothes with his paddle.

“We need to go to a hotel.”

“We go near Náměstí Republiky,” the man said. “We will put you on ground.”

Tee looked for Katka: she lay in the same pose.

Farther down the river, half of a roof bobbed up. The red-brown shingles had blended in with the brown water, and now were only a couple of yards away. He scooped the river out with his hands, to help them turn.

“Do not,” the canoeist said, spraying Tee’s back as he passed the paddle expertly from one side to the other.

Tee continued scooping. The shingles could be scales on the rising back of a sea monster. The outer two canoes split off in slow arcs, and Tee splashed at the water. He pictured the roof flipping over the canoe and sliding over his head like an underwater coffin. Something slapped his back. The paddle.

“Not helping.” The man pointed with the paddle and waited for Tee to stop. Tee sat on his hands. He wanted badly to be with Katka. Her head still lay against the lip of the other canoe. Her canoeist didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t waking.

The roof carried toward them, individual shingles swirling beside it. All Tee could do was wait. Either the canoe would make it past, or he and Katka would be separated.

The roof seemed to speed up, until it was feet away. They would have to jump out, or they would get hit and fill up slowly. Tee had Katka’s cell in a plastic bag down his jeans. She would wake somewhere else and he wouldn’t know how to find her. The paddle seemed to bite into the water, bite into the water, and then finally the shingles scraped along the side of the canoe, as they made it past.

Tee checked over the side for a puncture. When he turned and gave a thumbs-up, the canoeist rolled his eyes.

A glint of blue from the other vessel. Katka blinked awake.

They paddled down into the edges of the Jewish Quarter, where the man said the damage was not as bad. In Karlín the sewage systems had caused the current, and the smell, but in other areas buildings hadn’t collapsed, the flood wasn’t so high or so strong. As they turned in the direction of the Powder Gate, a small black shape darted past. Almost like a seal.

The three other canoes turned off after it, and the men shouted.

“Seal,” Tee’s canoeist said.

The seal swam around outstretched hands and circled one of the canoes, playing. “How did it get here?” Tee asked, though it must have escaped the zoo.

“They need catching it or could die,” the canoeist said. “Three others gone, too.”

Four seals somewhere in Prague, or swimming to other cities and countries, miles from the ocean they were seeking. Tee wondered about the rooster that used to wake him.

“They killed elephant earlier,” the canoeist said. “So not—” He closed his fingers around his throat.

The seal slipped beneath the bow. “But elephants can swim,” Tee said. His mother had taught him this.

“That elephant not.”

His mother had taught him about animals, like dolphins, whose breaths were not automatic, who had to choose to breathe.

In the distance, another building buckled into the flood, and Tee half-expected an elephant or some other beast to wade toward them. He had the feeling that the building had been theirs, the one they’d left, and they’d barely lived. He pictured his father’s wall-drawings, the faint trace of pencil, despite their erasure.

When the two canoes slid up onto the cobblestone of an inclined street in the Jewish Quarter, Katka’s face was drained of color. Tee stepped into the water and helped her out of her canoe. She leaned her long body on him as if she’d broken a leg.

“Find a hospital,” she said.

The canoeists called good-bye and pushed off. Tee ignored them. “What’s wrong? We got out.” As if maybe she hadn’t realized.

“Please.” She pressed against him. He felt her forehead — she was burning hot. She couldn’t walk. The plastic bags, still tied around her legs, sloshed with sludge water. How much did he understand then?

He pulled from his jeans the two plastic bags with his clothing and three books and their cell phones, and slung them over his shoulder. He called a taxi service, but the woman who answered said that the streets were closed. She struggled to make herself clear.

“All right,” he said. “I got it. How far do we have to go?”

“Yes,” she said. “Close.”

He didn’t know if she meant close by or closed. She hung up. Later he would be surprised she was still working. It reminded him of the rooster in winter.

He helped Katka down Truhlářská toward the Powder Gate and Náměstí Republiky, dread accumulating in him with each step, like stones in the pockets of a diver. Only a few other people were out. A woman in tiny jeans said something in Czech and Katka replied, wincing. Then a man appeared and pulled the woman away. “Help us,” Tee pleaded. But it was each couple for itself.

As they moved, Katka seemed to improve. She limped beside him, not needing his arm for a short period, then needing it again. They closed in on the square. They managed a couple of hundred feet.

“What happened?” he asked whenever she leaned harder.

Finally she said, “It was Pavel.”

“How? What did he do to you? Your leg? You’ve been hurt for how long?”

She looped his arm around her waist. “There is a hospital here if it is not closed.”

He eased her along the wet cobblestone and tried not to ask questions she clearly did not want to answer. “A little farther,” he said. “Did he hurt you to stop you from leaving him?”

The black top of the Powder Gate seemed to tongue the dark clouds. Katka laid her head on his shoulder. He walked as flatly as he could. As they drew nearer, the dome of the art nouveau Municipal House, then the mural under the dome, then the ornamented facade blocked their view of the Powder Gate. Katka grew heavier on his arm. Finally she groaned and teetered into him, and he caught her. Her eyes had shut. She’d passed out again. He would have to carry her.

He’d kept her inside as the water rose. He’d waited until buildings fell. He was why she was in Karlín in the first place.

Overhead a helicopter flew by, and he feared his thoughts.

He looked for the hospital, but couldn’t find it. He sat Katka down and lightly tapped her cheeks. She didn’t stir. Where was he supposed to go? He felt his container fill, with the flood, or with tears, or with the rain they’d thought could hide them. He wished to go back to New Year’s, empty properly this time. He shook her, and she nearly slipped into the street.

“Tell me where the hospital is!”

He lifted her, lengthwise, across his arms. He couldn’t carry her for long. His plastic bags shifted and he readjusted them.

Seven streets fed into Náměstí Republiky. One led to the hospital. He hurried down the first. She was so tall; he should exercise more. People stared, and he said, “Hospital. Hospital.” He knew the word in Czech but couldn’t remember it. It stayed just out of reach.

One person quickened her step. Another flipped open his cell phone. The police, Tee thought, that man is calling the police. What did Katka and he look like, in their wet clothes with the plastic bags on Katka’s feet and hanging on his arms? He should have removed her bags, at least.