Princess of Passyunk

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  But he couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could she, and she tried again, to speak, to scold. All that came out was: “Ga-ha-ha-ha-ny!”

  So he laughed back: “La-ha-ha-na!”

  “Ganny?”

  He jerked his head around so violently, he nearly slipped from the step on which he sat. The front door had opened and his mother stood in it, silhouetted against the light from the living room.

  A second later, she opened the screen door, and stepped out onto the top step. “Ganny, who were you talking to?”

  Ganny swung back to the place where Lana had sat. Empty now. He looked up and down the street, wondering why he bothered. He wouldn’t see her.

  He picked up the plate of cookies and stood. “Uh...nobody, Mama.”

  “Nobody? I heard laughing.”

  “I just thought of something funny, is all.”

  His mother tilted her head in an echo of Baba Irina and narrowed her eyes. “Ganady Puzdrovsky, what sort of nonsense are you telling me? I heard laughing. I heard a girl laughing. I think I know your laughter from a girl’s, don’t I? Who was she?”

  He gripped the plate of cookies as if they were a life raft and he a drowning man. “You heard her?” he said, hiccupping so hard he squeaked.

  “So now you think I’m deaf?”

  “No, Mama. I just...it...she...”

  She crossed her arms.

  “It was Svetlana,” he said. “She was just here, but she had to go.”

  “This is the girl your grandmother has spoken of, yes?”

  “I...I guess. Yeah.”

  “And that you have not spoken of.”

  Ganady felt heat rising up the back of his neck to suffuse his cheeks. He stammered out syllables that were not even approximately words, and his mother reached out and brushed his cheek with one hand.

  “This is the way of boys, yes? It would please me if you will not come home all beat up like Nikolai.”

  “Yes, Mama. I mean—no, Mama.”

  “I think it is good for children to have some secrets.” She smiled, straightened his shirt collar, then went back into the house.

  Ganady stood, clutching the plate of cookies, aware of one thing only: that he was not dreaming. His mother had heard Svetlana’s laughter.

  oOo

  Ganny puzzled over this new wrinkle in his already peculiar existence. He was still puzzling over it when he went to school Monday morning. It made him inattentive in class and distracted in the hallways between, for he found himself looking for Svetlana everywhere, as if she might suddenly appear sitting at the desk next to him in class, or giggling with a group of other girls by the lockers.

  He was still puzzling about it, when he went to his next ghost baseball game on Wednesday night with Mr. Ouspensky. He’d hoped Lana would come too, and he could ask her directly what it meant that she had appeared outside a dream, but she wasn’t there, and he realized that he had only ever seen her on Sabbath days—Jewish or Christian—which certainly blurred the boundary between magic and miracle, if indeed there was one.

  He asked Mr. O the question: “What does it mean that she came outside my dream?”

  The old man shrugged and said, “Perhaps it means she becomes more real to you. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Was it? Ganady certainly couldn’t say. He could only meditate on the situation as he washed windows on Saturday morning. Upon his return from synagogue, Mr. Joe tried only once or twice to entice him into conversation. Then he gave up and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Ganady came to himself abruptly when he was suddenly overcome with a strange prickling sensation between his shoulder blades. He was on his knees, wiping down the gleaming meat cases, his back to the door. He turned to find Boris Bzikov standing in the open doorway watching him.

  “H—hello,” Ganady said hesitantly. He was suddenly sweating, hot and cold at once. He thought his cheeks must be as red as filet mignon.

  Boris merely nodded, lifting his chin then dropping it. His eyes never left Ganady’s face. He spoke: “You are the one who brings Mr. Joe word of Svetlana?”

  He could have said, No. Who’s Svetlana? But he didn’t. He said, “I guess that’s me.”

  “How is it you know of her?”

  “I...see her sometimes.”

  Boris took a step into the shop, looming above Ganady, who still knelt upon the floor. “Where? Where do you see her?”

  It was not lost on Ganady that the other young man’s hands were knotted into fists the size of ham hocks. He scrambled to his feet and was pleased to note that while Boris was a good deal brawnier than he, he was not taller.

  “I’ve seen her at church and at the ballpark. And at Izzy’s deli.” Suddenly, Ganady Puzdrovsky wanted to impress this fellow with exactly how well he knew Svetlana Gusalev. “We go there for ice cream sometimes after games. Sometimes we just go walking together. And sometimes she comes to my house.”

  Boris’s expression grew darker with every word that staggered from Ganny’s lips. “To your house!” he cried. “Why should she come to your house?”

  Ganny shrugged as if the whole thing were of no concern whatever. “She likes to hear me play clarinet. And she likes my mother’s pierniki.”

  “How can this be?” Boris demanded. “How can she do these things with you when she has not spoken to her father or to me for a year or more?”

  “I guess you’d have to ask her,” Ganady said, trying to be nonchalant.

  “I cannot ask her. How can I ask her when I don’t know where she has gone? How can I speak to her if she will not hear me?”

  The older boy took another step, which brought him nose to sweaty nose with Ganady. “You must speak to her for me. You must tell her that she must do her duty to her father—to her family. If she doesn’t do this, there will be no empire.”

  Ganady could only stare at Boris blankly, feeling as if he had just stepped into the biggest boobeh myseh in the history of the world.

  “I don’t understand. What empire?”

  Boris leaned forward, glancing pointedly toward the back of the store. “The empire of sandwiches. An empire built of bagels and sausages.”

  In a wild effort to stop the laughter that wanted to bubble up out of his throat, Ganady uttered a mangled hiccup.

  Boris must have taken this peculiar sound as an expression of dismay or perhaps sympathy, for his mouth tugged down at its wide corners and his blue eyes assumed a look that was at once woeful and terrifying. He nodded and lowered his voice even further.

  “This is what Mr. Joe wants. He tells me every day that this is what he has worked his life for. And she—that accursed girl—she is throwing it away for him. I ask you, how can a daughter do such a thing to her own father?”

  Ganady had no idea. He also had no idea what Boris was talking about unless... “So, Svetlana doesn’t want to inherit the—the empire—is that what you mean?”

  “That is it. In a peanut shell. You see her, yes?”

  Ganny nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Then you must tell her that Boris wishes above all things that she do her duty to her father, the Sausage King, and come home to her inheritance.”

  Ganady solemnly agreed to do this, though he did not agree that he would make the pronouncement with any sort of solemnity. And when he saw Svetlana next, his sense of the absurd had not diminished one bit.

  It was the following evening and he had been sent by his Da to help Father Zembruski replace all the used-up candles with fresh ones in time for late mass.

  Father Z had bustled off to the sacristy for a moment, leaving Ganny alone at the altar with the candles, which he was dutifully arranging when he heard a soft sound behind him and felt a frisson of delightful anticipation run up and down his spine.

  He turned to find Lana standing below the altar in the central aisle of the sanctuary, her radiant hair blazing in the light of the braziers.

  “You weren’t in your room.”

  “I ha
d to help out...” He waved a votive at the altar. “You look really nice.”

  She did, too. She was wearing a green blouse with little pearl beads upon the collar and a wide skirt of darker green wool. There was a soft yellow scarf tied about her neck and her head was completely uncovered.

  “You look like spring,” he told her.

  She smiled. “You’re back in school this week.”

  “Yeah. This is my last year. I get to graduate early.”

  “That’s because you’re so smart.”

  He shrugged, pleased that she thought so.

  “And how are Mr. Joe’s windows?” She didn’t call him “Father,” just Mr. Joe, or even “the Butcher.”

  Ganady realized with a start that they must be very much alike, these two—proud, stubborn—in a word, Polish.

  “They’re cleaner than they’ve ever been. I think I may have a promotion. He’s been talking about having me come in after school and play clarinet for his customers.”

  Lana laughed and clapped her hands. “I would love to see that! Many of his customers are olreitnik—you know.” She rubbed her fingers together. “They’d give you tips and you could make a lot of money.”

  “Would you like me to do that—make a lot of money?”

  She blushed, coy, and looked aside at the brazier nearest the altar. “I don’t care how much money you have, Ganny. Those things don’t matter to me.”

  “Is that why you don’t want to inherit the empire?” he asked, grinning.

  “What?”

  He made big eyes. “The Empire of Bagels and Sausages. Don’t you want to be the—the Sausage Princess?”

  “Who have you been talking to? Papa doesn’t say such things.”

  “No. It was the Bagel Prince. He asked me about you—what we do together, how I came to know you, that sort of thing. Then he called you ‘that accursed girl’ and started going on about you ‘doing your duty to your father’ and empires built of bagels and sausages and—”

  Ganady’s laughter died in his throat for of all the varied expressions he had seen on Svetlana’s beautiful face, he had never seen this one. It was very like his grandmother’s Baba Yaga look, and it terrified him more than a hundred Borises. He swallowed, finding his throat suddenly parched.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said about you being accursed. I’m sure it was just a figure of speech.”

  “Oh, Ganny,” she said. “What have you done?” And she turned and ran from the sanctuary, cutting through the rows of pews and exiting by a small side door at the far side of the nave.

  He started after her, candles still clutched in his hands, but Father Zembruski emerged from the sacristy and asked, “Ganady? Who was that you were speaking to? Was that your sister Marija? Do you need to go home?”

  “It was Lana, Father. And if I could go...”

  The priest absolved him with a smile and a gesture and Ganady pelted after Svetlana. But of course, when he reached the street, she was nowhere in sight.

  He called to her all the way home. He went up to his room and prayed, then talked to her, then played her favorite songs on his clarinet. She was gone. And The Cockroach was gone as well. It was neither in his glove, nor on the ball, nor hiding behind the Virgin as it sometimes did.

  All week Ganny had not one dream, not one glance, not one sign of Svetlana. And when the Sabbath rolled around again, and she still did not appear, he knew with all the passion of his seventeen-year-old heart that in parroting back to her the things Boris had said, he’d hurt her feelings very badly. And now she was gone.

  She had asked him—had begged him—not to talk to her father. She had begged him to stay away from Boris, but he hadn’t listened. He had wanted only to hear more about her—to assure himself over and over that somewhere in this city or in this world, there was a real girl named Svetlana Gusalev who was neither ghost nor angel nor insect.

  Fifteen: A Gift, a Girl and a Ghost

  Barely two months before Ganady’s high-school graduation, he climbed to Mr. Ouspensky’s rooftop sanctuary and found the old man lying unconscious across the home plate of their ritual diamond, his face turned toward Connie Mack Stadium.

  Mr. O had no phone, so Ganady had to pound on a neighbor’s door to summon help. The neighbor called the hospital; Ganady called his grandmother; his grandmother called Izzy.

  Sometime later, he found himself standing in the middle of a hospital waiting room while his Baba fussed at the doctors and Izzy sat mumbling prayers as if he were practicing the kaddish. After a while, a doctor came to them and said that Mr. Ouspensky had had a heart attack.

  None of them got to see Mr. O that night, but three mornings after—a Sunday—Baba Irina came to the door of Ganady’s room and announced, “I’m going to see Ouspensky. You want to come with?”

  “Sure, Baba,” Ganny said, set aside his clarinet, and rose from his bed. His eyes fell upon the dresser, where the Eddie Waitkus baseball sat atop his mitt. The Cockroach was nowhere to be seen.

  The good-luck ball. Mr. O could certainly use some luck, Ganny thought, and with Svetlana gone it no longer meant to him what it once had. He grabbed it and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket.

  Later, standing in Mr. Ouspensky’s hospital room, he watched Baba fuss with the old man’s blankets and pillows and thought how small and fragile he looked. His hand went to his pocket to caress the ball, to turn it over and over, whispering his baseball prayers and wondering why it seemed so difficult suddenly to find something to say to the man he’d spent so many Saturday afternoons with.

  He looked up to realize Mr. Ouspensky was watching him.

  “So, Ganny, they say they gotta keep me here two weeks. Two whole weeks! We’ll miss next Saturday’s game. Last time the Giants will be in town this year.”

  Ganny flushed. That game had been played the day before. Mr. O was mixed up in time, which Ganny supposed was only natural.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry about it, Mr. O. We’ll go first Saturday after you get out of here.”

  “Won’t be the Giants, though,” said Stanislaus Ouspensky wistfully. “You go this Saturday. Maybe you can catch me a pop foul.”

  Ganny’s hand tightened on the Waitkus ball. He took a deep breath and pulled it out of his pocket. “I already did, Mr. O.”

  The old man took the ball and turned it in his hands. “What’s this? Why, this is your miracle ball, Ganny. You shouldn’t give this to me.”

  “Yeah, I should. Now it’s your miracle ball.” Because a miracle is what you need.

  Mr. Ouspensky’s eyes misted and he held the ball over his damaged heart. “Thank you, Ganady Puzdrovsky. You’re a good boy.”

  Later, as they stood awaiting a bus to take them home to the zibete, Baba Irina slipped her arm through his.

  “That was a fine thing you did for Ouspensky, Ganady.”

  He shrugged. “It was nothing.”

  “It was something,” she argued, shaking his arm. “He’s wrong, though. You’re not a good boy.”

  Ganady groaned inwardly, wondering what he’d done now.

  “You’re a good man. A mensch.”

  He flushed with embarrassment and pride. “Oh, Baba,” he muttered.

  “But explain to me how it is that such a mensch spends most of his evenings playing clarinet for his grandmother, and most every Saturday with a meshuggeh old man?”

  “Mr. O isn’t meshuggeh. He’s just imaginative.”

  “Don’t be a shlub. Why aren’t you out with your friends?”

  “My friends all have other things to do.”

  “Your friends all have girls,” Baba corrected. “Why don’t you have a girl, Ganny? I’d like to see you married before I die.”

  “Baba!”

  “What happened to that Svetlana you told me about? Where did she go, eh?”

  “I don’t know. She just...stopped coming around.”

  “That’s it? She stopped coming around. Just like that—you did nothing to cause
this?”

  “Well, I...that is, we... Something I did made her mad. I guess I sort of bragged to a friend of hers that I knew her so well and then he said some things about her that weren’t very nice, and I repeated them to her and...and I don’t really understand why she’s mad at me. I mean, Boris is the one who called her ‘that accursed girl.’ I just told her he’d said it.”

  “And why did you say this to her?”

  He’d done much thinking about this very subject. “I think because I was afraid he was, you know, sweet on her and I wanted her not to be sweet on him.”

  Baba Irina’s eyes opened very wide. “Oh?”

  “I don’t think she was sweet on him. I thought she liked me. But she sure didn’t want me talking to this Boris. Or to her Da, either. But I did. I don’t think she minded me washing his windows, but she didn’t like to hear the messages they were always asking me to give her.”

  “What sort of messages?”

  “Something about coming home and doing her duty to her family. Her Da owns these butcher shops. He calls himself the Sausage King of Philly. I think he wants her to learn the business, you know? Follow in his footsteps and become like...a Sausage Princess or something. She doesn’t want to do that, I guess, and she got really upset with me when I tried to get her to go talk to her Da and this other guy.”

  “This other guy?”

  “Boris. Boris Bzikov. The—the Bagel Prince.” Ganny tried not to laugh or smirk or show mirth in any way. Truth to tell, he did not feel particularly mirthful, but the laughter still wanted to come.

  “Ah. And so you think this Boris Bzikov is an old beau.”

  He dropped his eyes to the sidewalk. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah. So, why aren’t you going to Svetlana and apologizing for this?”

  “I can’t find her. I don’t know where she lives...anymore. She sort of...moved.”

  “She moved out of your dreams? When did this happen?”

  “Months ago, Baba. Right after school started. She’s just not around any more.”

  “Ganady Puzdrovsky! Shame for you giving up so easily!”

  “Baba, she’s gone, okay? She’s really gone this time. And I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.”