Princess of Passyunk (36 page)

He stood. Just below him, near enough to almost touch, Eddie Waitkus fielded the ball and tossed it into the stands. Right at Ganny. He reached up and felt the ball settle into the pocket of his glove.

Around him, the crowd murmured.

“Wow,” said Mr. O. Which was exactly what Yevgeny had said when he had caught the ball in real life.

The murmuring grew, changed, sharpened. Some of the voices seemed familiar. Surely that was his Da he heard behind him. He turned to look over his shoulder, but the stadium lights went out and he found himself in total darkness.

He sat up in his bed, surprised to still be able to hear the murmuring. It was coming from downstairs, he realized, and was punctuated by what sounded like his Mama crying.

He rose, turned on his bedside lamp, and scrambled to find his jeans, which had fallen to the floor at the foot of his bed. He put them on and was pulling a shirt from his closet, when his bedroom door opened and Marija came into the room. There were tears in her eyes, but behind the tears her eyes were as fierce as Baba Irina's.

“You've got to get out of here, Ganny,” she said. “They've called the hospital on you.”

“What? I don't understand. Why would they do that? I'm not sick or anything.”

“It's the cockroaches. They know about the cockroaches and they think that means you're
meshuggeh
. Baba tried to tell them that you're okay, you just have a quest.”

“She told them that? That I have a quest?”

“Well, actually she told them you have an obsession and that you have to find Svetlana. But it doesn't matter what she told them; they just think she's getting old or that she's
meshuggeh
, too. They think it's silly that she should want to marry Mr. Ouspensky. At her age, Mama said—like she was too old to be in love.”

She seemed to remember her mission then, and reached out to tug at his arm. “But you have to go, Ganny. They've called the hospital to come get you. I don't know what will happen to you if they take you away from here. Maybe you'll never find Svetlana then.”

It did not occur to him to wonder, at that precise moment, that his little sister had mentioned his quest to find Svetlana twice in the same speech. His heart was too full of the chilling possibility that he would be kept from that quest. His mind was occupied with the thought of being locked away and never even knowing what had become of her.

He pulled on his shirt, socks, shoes and a jacket while Marija fretted in the doorway, whispering, “Hurry, Ganny!” at intervals.

He had almost dressed when he saw that the cockroaches had congregated on his dresser, clustered about the feet of the Virgin Mary. He had almost forgotten about them in his distress, and was stricken with sudden fear. What would become of them if he was not around to protect them?

Frantically, for Marija had begun to yip like Esther Isaacson's little terrier, Ganny dug in his closet for his old school book bag. If he could get the cockroaches into it somehow...

He found the bag and scrambled to the dresser, but the cockroaches, who seemed to sense there was something afoot, had begun to disperse. “No!” Ganny cried, but the insects ignored him. They disappeared like water down a drain.

“Oh, Ganny!” Marija's voice was shrill with panic. “Someone's coming up the stairs!”

Well, there was nothing for it but to go without them. And there was no way to go but out the window. So, with no cockroaches, with nothing but the clothes on his back, Ganady Puzdrovsky pulled up the window sash and slipped out onto the ledge. He found himself two floors above the sidewalk with the awning of the front stoop just below. He dropped to the awning, slid from there to the railing of the stoop and leapt to the sidewalk.

He was running before his feet hit the ground and headed for the end of the block. Even so, it was not a clean escape, for he heard a shout from above and behind him, and glanced back in time to see a head pull back into his bedroom window. He ran faster, paying little attention to where he was going, caring only that there was no one behind him.

When he stopped, he was in Passyunk Square, standing among the bare-limbed trees, staring up at the stars. They looked like tiny ice chips in the sky, remote and cold. They made Ganady realize how alone he was. For the first time in his life, he could not go home.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and found them empty. The Baseball was still sitting on his dresser.

Bereft, Ganady drifted across the intersection of Thirteenth and Reed and into the alley behind Gusalev & Son's butcher shop. Light shone from a second floor window, splashing the wall of the building opposite with a fuzzy rectangle of light. Inside the rectangle, a blurry shadow play was being staged, and voices tumbled from the window into the alley below. Ganny couldn't make out any words, but the heat of argument was clear enough in the emphatic gestures of the shadows and the blistering tones.

He stood and looked up at the window for a while, wondering if that was Mr. Joe up there and who he was arguing with. Well, he owned it was more a monologue than an argument. A man's voice was doing most of the blistering, while the second individual only offered an occasional bleat of protest.

Svetlana?

He vacillated at the door for some time—reaching for the latch, then pulling his hand away, then reaching again. What if it was Svetlana? What if it was not? He'd already made more than his share of stupid mistakes barging in where he shouldn't be.

He made up his mind to wait until the muted shouting had ceased and then to see if Mr. Joe would talk to him. He settled himself on the top step of the back stoop and pulled his jacket tight against the cold.

He was nearly dozing when the back door of the butcher shop flew open and someone far too big and burly to be Svetlana bulled out onto the stoop. Ganady had no time to react before he was bowled off the steps and down onto the cobbles of the alley. A large, lumpy object fell on top of him, making him give up all the air in his lungs with a loud, “Oof!”

There was much swearing in Polish, the weight lifted, and he found himself peering up into the moonlit face of Boris Bzikov.

Boris spluttered some more, then said, “
Kim pan jest
? Who are you?”

“I'm...I'm Ganady. Ganady Puzdrovsky. I came to see Mr. Joe.”

Boris leaned over and looked at him squint-eyed. “You! You're that boy! The one who the window broke! The one who—who!” He choked and stepped back, shaking his finger in Ganady's face. “You,
you
are the one responsible! You stole from me my Svetlana! You!” And he spun on his heel and disappeared down the alley toward Thirteenth Street.

Ganady levered himself up onto his elbows and stared after the other young man. Then he picked himself up and dusted himself off and looked back up at the window. The light had gone out.

Dismayed, Ganny trotted up the steps and tried the back door, but it was locked. He glanced over at the kitchen window, feeling an immediate stab of guilt. Mr. Joe had forgiven him for breaking into his shop once (twice if you counted the front window); he doubted he would forgive him yet again. He rattled the back door, then pounded on it, praying Mr. Joe was still inside and would hear him.

He had spent several minutes at this, losing hope and wondering if he should go around to the front of the building, when he heard Boris's voice again.

“There! There he is! He tries to break in!”

Ganady turned and saw below him in the alley a triumphant Boris standing side by side with a policeman, who looked not at all happy to be dragged into a malodorous alley in the middle of the night. The Bagel Prince was pointing at him with one beefy digit, his face so red it almost seemed to glow in the light of the moon.

“I was just knocking,” Ganny said. “Mr. Joe was upstairs a moment ago...”

The policeman sighed and beckoned Ganny to come down into the alley. What could he do but obey?

“You know Mr. Gusalev?” the officer asked.

“Sure. I know Mr. Joe. I...” Riding a roller coaster of sudden perversity, Ganny looked right at Boris and said, “I'm engaged to his daughter.”

In answer, Boris Bzikov roared and launched himself at his rival, toppling him from the steps for the second time that night.

When the shouting and pummeling was over, brought to a swift end by the policeman and a timely associate, Ganady found himself back in jail, in the very same cell he had inhabited not two weeks past. This time there were neither mice nor cockroaches but only Boris, who glared at him balefully from the cell next door.

This time Ganady had asked the police
not
to call his family, but the sergeant had recognized him the moment he set foot in the precinct house and well remembered the circumstances of his previous arrest. Ganady sat upon his narrow cot in hopeless misery, anticipating that when next his cell opened, white-coated orderlies from Saint Mary's would be there to take him away.

Knowing of no other meaningful expedient, Ganady began to pray. He started with Hail Marys, then moved to the Lord's Prayer, and then recited the Twenty-third Psalm. He was surprised to find he recalled some of the prayers he had heard in shul and mumbled those too—in less-than-perfect Hebrew. And when he had done that, he sang
Sheyn vi di Levune
.

He thought of Armin the Opshprekher and wondered what the old kabbalist would make of these desperate incantations. Feeling most profoundly the emptiness of his pocket, he sang
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
.

He was on the second chorus and Boris was beginning to growl at him when the door of his cell rattled. He glanced up, expecting the orderlies or at the very least, his Da. But it was Joseph Gusalev who stood there, looking as sad and rumpled as Ganny was certain he did himself.

Boris leapt up from his cot. “Papa Gusalev!” he called out. “Will you take me out of here?”

Mr. Joe glared at him. “Let your own Papa get you out, you
no-goodnik
. I'm here for Ganady.”

Ganady could hardly believe his ears. He rose slowly to his feet and shuffled toward the cell door as the long-suffering police sergeant swung it open.

“Ganady,” said Mr. Joe, “you gotta find her. You gotta find my Lana before she does something mule-headed.”

“Me? But...”

“It's the cu—” He broke off and glanced sideways at the sergeant. “It's like this, Ganny. Lana...Lana's herself again.”

“What?” said Ganady and the sergeant and Boris in perfect three-part harmony.

“I can take him?” the butcher asked the policeman, gesturing at Ganny.

“Well...”

“It was my alley you found him in. I tell you he wasn't breaking in. I...I was expecting him.” Mr. Joe took a deep breath. “He is to be my son-in-law.”

“Papa Gusalev!” wailed Boris, and Ganady's heart soared like a long fly ball.

The Sausage King fixed the Bagel Prince with his most thunderous scowl. “You, I was done with once tonight already, you pompous
shmegegi
.”

“He was fighting with this other boy...” said the sergeant.

“Fighting? Ganady Puzdrovsky?”

“Well...not so much. Mostly he was trying to keep from getting hit.”

Mr. Joe shrugged as if to say:
Well, there you have it
.

Ganny was released and Mr. Joe hurried him from the precinct house out into the moonlit street.

“What you said about Svetlana—” Ganady began, following him down the steps and into a puddle of lamplight.

“Is so.” Mr. Joe began walking up the street, hands jammed into the pockets of his coat. “Beyle came to me just now, all
baroygis
—madder than a wet hen. ‘Lana is Lana again,' she says. ‘I don't know how the
shlimazel
did it, but he broke my curse.' Then she says, ‘The good news is, your girl is just as mule-headed as ever. You'll never guess what she's gone and done.'“

He took a measure of steps in silence and Ganady's blood ran colder than the river that sliced Philly and Camden in two.

“What, Mr. Joe? What's Lana done?”

“She's gone to a—a
convent
.”

Of all the things Joseph Gusalev could have said, that was the least to be expected.

“But she's not even Catholic.”

“You're telling me? I'm telling you, this is killing her mother. It's bad enough she should
marry
a Catholic—no offense—but if Lana doesn't marry
somebody
, we get no grandchildren. Lana is it, Ganady. Our only child. And right now, I'd rather have her marry you than the Church.” His brows gathered in a perplexed knot. “How can she marry a whole church? I don't get that.”

Ganny shrugged. He had always been weak on theology, and his understanding of such fine detail was especially sketchy.

“A crazy, shiftless son-in-law is better than no son-in-law at all.”

“I'm not shiftless. I have work. I'm a musician.”

“What did I just say?” Mr. Joe stopped next to a gleaming sedan in two-tone cream and turquoise that was drawn up to the curb. “Well, at least there'll be grandchildren.”

“But you had her turned into a...you know...a cockroach. How were you going to have grandchildren from a cockroach?”

Mr. Joe's eyes misted over. “I only meant to put a scare into her. I didn't mean for it to go this far. I asked Beyle to cancel the curse if Svetlana would only come around to talk to me. But she said she couldn't. She said the curse was stronger than she thought. She said it had ‘legs.' What the hell does that mean: ‘It has legs?'“

Ganny opened his mouth to say he didn't know, but Mr. Joe continued on, not even stopping for breath.

“I was mad, I gotta tell you. ‘What have you done, you old
makhesheyfe
?' I say. And she looks me in the eye and gives me this brazen, ‘So I made a mistake! So what?' A
mistake
, she says! Revenge is more like. ‘Look here, you old witch,' I say, ‘who's going to inherit my shops if my only child is a Cockroach?' And you know what she says? She says, ‘How about me?' Like she's gonna
live
that long.”