Nadia tugged lightly at Yevgeny’s sleeve. “Come on, Eugene,” she said. “My house is right there.” She drew him gently away toward the golden castle. “Can I please call you ‘Gene?’ I am Nadia.”
“Uh. Oh, sure, Nadia. ‘Gene’ is fine.”
Gene is fine. Ganady Puzdrovsky mouthed the words incredulously. He tapped the bat against the sidewalk, glancing around for the ball. It was nowhere in sight.
He considered checking the first-floor flower box into which his friend had fallen, but the thought that The Broom might have really called the police dissuaded him.
He wandered back into Passyunk Square, bemused, feeling as if he had just stepped into Baba’s story. Except, of course, that Annie and Nadia were not real princesses, but only regular girls, and there were no bows and arrows and no King of the Sea to turn his daughter into a frog.
Standing in the Square, gazing from Thirteenth to Reed, Ganady was overcome with a strange wistfulness. His brother and his best friend had both seemingly stepped into an enchantment, while he lacked the means to join them.
He wavered toward returning to the old woman’s flower box, but then remembered what was snuggled at the bottom of his jacket pocket.
He dug The Baseball out and turned it in his hand. It was, perhaps, his imagination that the scuffed sphere grew warm in his palm or that the sky and trees and the fresh, spring grass glowed, but he knew the ball had its own peculiar magic. It must have, for it had found his glove among all the upraised and eager gloves at the Mack.
He did not stop to ask himself what he would do with a princess, were he to find one (or even a real girl). He knew only that the other two princes in this American fairytale had achieved their goal without even a magical ball to aid them. He held the Thompson-to-Waitkus miracle in his hand.
He did not stop to ponder or reason or calculate. He sucked up the sense of moment as if it were a chocolate malted elixir, then tossed the ball into the air. There it hung for a perfect, glowing, breathless instant before he swung the bat in a gleaming arc.
And missed.
Face flushed and tingling, Ganny glanced around to see if anyone had seen. The two old men were intent on their game, arguing a move, children played tag, birds flew, twittered and built nests; all were oblivious to his embarrassment.
Furtively, and without ceremony, he tossed the ball up a second time and hit it, then hurried after, lest there should be another window box waiting to receive it. It flew across the intersection of Thirteenth and Reed and ricocheted off the curving roof of a parked Buick.
Ganny heard the sudden music of shattering glass. He halted, teetering on the curb. The impulse to take flight warred with the urge to confess.
Flight almost won out, but then he remembered the Ball. He dropped the bat at the curb, pushed his glove around to the back of his waistband and trotted across the street, dodging a milk truck and a bicycle.
The broken window belonged to a butcher’s shop. It was a large window, made up of six panes. “Sausage King,” said a paper sign taped to one pane. And above it in gold leaf, “Gus___ and Sons” was artfully lettered across two panes. He suspected there was more to “Gus” than now met the eye, for there was a gaping hole in that pane right after the letter “s” at which two white-garbed folk within the shop now gestured with great gusto.
Ganady swallowed and cautiously—not to say surreptitiously—crossed the street and approached the front of the store. He crammed his hands into his pockets, felt the emptiness with a pang of loss, and scoured his mind for the right, the most apologetic words.
As he peeked in through the door, he saw one of the butchers throw the beloved ball out the back door of the shop into the alley beyond.
He almost gasped aloud. He no longer needed to confront the butcher to claim his ball, but...
Father Zembruski would say, his conscience supplied with annoying predictability, that you should confess your sin and make reparations. He sucked up his fear and squared his shoulders.
“I tell you,” said a man’s voice from within the shop, “if ever there was a sign from God we should replace that sign, here it is. I’m gonna call that glazier this minute.”
Ganady slunk away as far as the corner, then ran to find the entrance to the alley.
Behind the butcher shop was a jungle of trash and foul-smelling garbage, among which flies buzzed happily. Ganady did not see the ball. He sent a prayer heavenward that he would find it before he was overcome by the various aromas. He gave a glance to the back door of the shop. It was shut tight against the ferocious odor.
He stood, chewing his lip, trying to imagine the trajectory the ball would have taken from the butcher’s hand, how it might have bounced, how far it could have rolled.
His calculations led him to a spot where one of a trio of large garbage barrels had tilted and overflowed, loosing an avalanche of refuse onto the cobbles. He moved reluctantly toward it. Flies scattered like startled birds; Ganny batted them away, wrinkling his nose.
Bread crusts, fruit rinds, and things he did not recognize—nor wanted to—were mounded beneath the barrel, along with wadded and torn scraps of butcher paper.
He kicked the paper aside hopefully. No baseball. He tiptoed among the garbage, further disturbing the flies, eyeing the gaping mouth of the barrel as if something terrifying might lurk within.
Then, Ganady Puzdrovsky swallowed his misgivings, held his breath, stepped up to the barrel and peeked inside. He caught a glimpse of yellow eyes before something big and black exploded into his face with the shriek of a demon.
Ganny threw his hands up and yelped, ducking to one side as the outraged cat flew past his ear. When his heart had stopped pounding and the roaring had left his ears, and he was certain there was no reaction from the butcher shop, he straightened and shook himself all over.
Then, he nearly laughed aloud. If the ball was in that trash barrel, he had just come perilously close to being wed to an alley cat.
Back to that gaping, smelly maw he went, and peered down inside.
The Baseball sat upon a pillow of crumpled, greasy butcher paper in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. And atop The Baseball sat the largest, shiniest cockroach Ganady Puzdrovsky had ever seen.
He stared at it in stunned revulsion. It wriggled long antennae at him, but did not scurry away.
After a moment of consternation, he reached down to flick it aside. His hand froze in the act. His mind had also frozen, caught in the moment like a butterfly in amber. But the thaw brought a flood of thought and feeling that was nearly as paralyzing.
Eventually, Ganady unfroze his hand. He nudged the ball. The cockroach did not move.
He picked the ball up and shook it gently. The cockroach stayed put.
He glared at the cockroach. It merely waved its antennae at him again, perhaps in curiosity.
In the end, Ganady Puzdrovsky made a ponderous journey homeward, baseball cradled in his glove, the gleaming insect perched unmoving over Eddie Waitkus’s autograph.
No one saw him enter the house or, if they did, they saw nothing unusual in the reverence with which he carried The Baseball. Possibly, the cockroach was too small to be seen. Little did it matter.
He carried the ball upstairs and placed it carefully, gingerly, upon his dresser between the Virgin Mary and a box of marbles that had been Baba’s gift at Hanukkah. The Virgin did not blink or take exception to this juxtaposition.
The highboy dresser came up to Ganady’s chest. He slumped, resting his chin on its worn mahogany top, and watched the cockroach.
She—for it certainly must be a she—waved her antennae at him slowly, as if sizing him up. He thought of honor and duty and Old-World magic and felt as if he had walked into one of Baba’s stories.
oOo
After dinner, he found Baba on the stoop, for the evening was unseasonably balmy.
“Baba,” he said, “were you and Papa happy?”
“Such a question!”
“Well, were you
?”
“I haven’t already answered this?”
“Sort of. And sort of not.”
“Ah, well, the answer is that it was a good marriage and your grandfather was a good man.”
“But that’s not—” Ganny protested.
“That was how I felt at first. Just that. But, as the years passed and we grew together, I was very happy indeed, and so was he. Which is not to say that it didn’t take some patience...and faith. And perhaps some stubbornness.”
“What if you hadn’t married him?”
“What—you mean what if he hadn’t asked after me?”
“No. I mean what if you said you didn’t want to marry him?”
“Why should I have said such a thing? Never would I have said such a thing.”
Ganny believed her absolutely. “Just like Ivan wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to the Frog Princess, huh?”
Baba laughed. “Your grandfather was no frog, let me tell you! Every girl in Keterzyn batted lashes at him. But no, Ganny, Ivan wasn’t honoring the frog. He was honoring his father’s wishes.”
Something like relief flash-flooded through Ganady’s heart. He’d certainly made no covenant with Vitaly Puzdrovsky to marry a cockroach.
“Of course,” Baba continued, “once he found Princess Frog, his duty was to her.”
“Oh.”
She turned slightly toward him on the stoop, her stiffening neck moving with her shoulders. “Now, why all this worry about duty and marrying frogs, hm?”
Ganady blushed, something his Baba’s sharp eyes clearly saw, even by street lamp. They twinkled at him.
He told her a little about the boyish pact, then—the flight of the ball, Nick’s Italian princess, Yevgeny’s golden-haired, blue-sweatered Polish angel.
“And your girl, Ganny?”
He scratched his ear. “I didn’t find a girl.”
She patted his knee. “Well, there’s time. There is always time.”
He opened his mouth to tell of the great, glistening cockroach, but she sailed on.
“We both know Nick has chosen his princess, and as for Yevgeny, well, not to worry. He is still a boy; it’s unlikely he will marry anyone very soon. You will still be boys together for a while yet. And Ganady, his fate is his own. I’m sure he wouldn’t marry someone he didn’t want to. This is America, after all.”
Ganady peered at her face, but she had turned away to gaze toward the Atlantic as if she could see all the way back to Keterzyn.
Was she teasing him? Or chiding him? Was that wistfulness in her voice? Or was it amusement?
He tried to say: “You’re a tease, Baba,” but she rose, shaking out her skirts.
“To bed with us,” she said, and went inside.
In his room, Ganady went right to his dresser, telling himself the cockroach would surely be gone—this was America, after all. But she was there, silent and unmoving, unable to utter even the croak of Ivan’s frog.
Ganady washed his face and brushed his teeth. Still the cockroach had not moved. He went to bed, realizing only belatedly that Nick, who had left in a hurry right after dinner, had still not come home.
As a result, Ganady could not sleep. Through the darkness of his room, he could hear the house settling, mice in the wainscoting, pigeons in the eves above his bedroom window. Big-band music carried up the stairs from the parlor, occasionally punctuated by his parents’ muted voices and the rhythmic cadence of the clock in the front hall.
He also heard, or imagined he heard, the tiny, furtive noises of Princess Cockroach upon her cowhide throne.
He listened past all these sounds, both real and imaginary, for the squeak and clatter of the front door, willing Nikolai to come home with no broken bones or black eyes.
After what seemed like hours, measured by the ticking of the clock and the increasing volume of Da’s voice, Ganady began to suppose that a black eye was really not such a big deal, if only God would send Nick home.
He tried to imagine that his brother was just up the street, turning the corner from Wharton onto Seventh, walking homeward beneath the streetlamps and the moon. He willed it so hard that it suddenly seemed as if he was the one coming home in the moonlight.
He looked up. The ceiling of his room was gone, replaced with a star-speckled sky. His bed was mysteriously absent; he stood upright with solid asphalt beneath his feet, just up the street from his house. He looked down reluctantly, fearing he would be wearing his blue-and-white-striped pajamas, and was relieved to find that he was fully dressed in chinos and his good wool jacket.
He couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he began to walk home. He could already see the front stoop, and could also see that someone sat on the steps, waiting for him. He prayed it wasn’t Da.
As he drew near, he saw that it was a woman, lamplight gleaming on her white hair. Baba Irina. Ganady relaxed. He relaxed so much, he began to whistle one of Baba’s favorite klezmer tunes, Zum Gali Gali. He had learned it on the clarinet just to please her.
He whistled his way to the bottom of the steps, put his hand on the newel and stopped. The woman sitting on the stoop wasn’t his Baba. In fact, she wasn’t even a woman, strictly speaking. She was a girl about Ganny’s age, and her long hair, tied back in a ponytail, wasn’t white, but pale, red-gold. Titian, Mama would have called it. Yevgeny’s sister Zofia had hair of the same fine color.
The titian-haired girl sat primly on the third step from the top, her hands clasped around her knees. She wore a full, dark skirt—Ganady couldn’t tell the color—and a heavy sweater of deep, vivid green.
She looked up at him through eyes that were the color of twilight and smiled.
“You’re not Baba Irina,” he said, and meant: Who are you?
She laughed. It was the song of a clarinet. Her teeth were the color of starlight.
“No, I’m not,” she said.
“Are you lost?” he asked, and meant: Were you waiting for me?
“No. How could I be lost if I’m sitting on your front steps?”
“How do you know I live here?” meaning: How can someone so beautiful know where I live?
Her smile deepened. “I know something about you,” she said. “I know you have a grandmother named Irina, and a brother named Nikolai, and a magic Baseball with Eddie Waitkus’s autograph on it. And I know your name is Ganady, but your Baba calls you ‘Ganny.’” She paused, tilted her head to one side and added, “And I know you’re Catholic, but your Baba is Jewish.”
He marveled at this for some time. When he realized that he’d not said anything for several seconds and that she had been watching him not say anything for several seconds, he said,”You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” Which, of course, meant: I want to know everything about you.
“Svetlana,” she said.
He thought it the most perfect name he’d ever heard—the most perfect and most beautiful. It suited her.
“I’m Ganny,” he said, and meant: I love you.
She laughed again. “I know.”
She rose from the steps in a fluid ripple of motion, like a swan rising from the surface of a dark lake. “I think you’d better go in. It’s very late.”
Ganady stepped aside reluctantly, feeling her warmth as she passed by him to the sidewalk. Her wake smelled of rosemary and clove.
“Do you have to go?” he asked, and his heart added: Ever?
Her smile turned into a girlish grin. “Silly. I’ll be back.”
Before he could think of anything more to say, he heard the front door open and close.
“You! Boy! What do you mean—trying to sneak in at this hour? Do you know you’ve scared your poor Mama to death?”
Da’s voice broke over Ganady like an ocean wave, bringing him fully awake in bed, once again in his blue-and-white-striped pajamas.
Nick’s reply was drowned in Mama’s tearful exclamations and the discussion moved into the living room, reducing words to meaningless mumbles.
Ganady lay quivering b
eneath his covers, straining to hear. After several fruitless moments, he got up and slipped to the door of his room. It was slightly ajar and he dared to push it ever so softly further open. It creaked. He held his breath, but the voices downstairs didn’t pause.
Even from here, he could only make out the occasional word, such as when Da shouted: “Church!” as if “church” and “mouse” had suddenly become synonymous and he had seen one or the other scurrying across his carpet.
Ganny hovered, weighing the advisability of creeping out to the landing. He had started to slip around the doorjamb when he heard the bottom stair creak. He cannonballed back across the room and into bed—a blur of blue and white—and pulled the covers up to his chin.
A moment later the door opened fully to admit Nikolai. Ganady recognized his silhouette in the light from the hallway. When many shufflings and rustlings passed in silent darkness, Ganady could stand it no longer. He sat up and turned on his bedside lamp.
“Hey!” Nick’s voice was muffled by the pajama shirt he was pulling on over his head. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“Yeah, well, you’re supposed to be home by now.”
Nick pulled the shirt down into place. He was grinning. “I am home by now.”
Ganady thought his brother must have gone completely mad. “Where were you?”
The impossible grin deepened. “Church.”
Ganady could think of nothing to say for several minutes, during which Nikolai carefully piled his dirty clothes into their shared laundry basket, then went down the hall to wash up for bed.
When finally Nick reappeared, Ganady asked: “Why?”
Nick flopped onto his bed before answering. “Because nobody can bother us there. We can talk there.”
“You and Annie.”
“No, me and Sister Mary Francis. Jeez, of course, me and Annie. Her big brother caught a bad cold, so the family stayed home. Annie came to mass all by herself.”
“So, what’d you talk about?”
“Turn out the light.”
That was no answer. Ganady hesitated then did as his brother asked, but he persisted. “What do you talk about?”
Nick’s sigh filled the room to the rafters. “Oh, Ganny, you’re too young to understand.”
Princess of Passyunk Page 8
