Princess of Passyunk

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  “Mama doesn’t like us doing stuff like that on Sunday. It’s the Sabbath.”

  “Well, then? How are my windows to be clean and shiny for the new week?”

  “If you left me a bucket and sponge I could clean them on Saturday.”

  “Done,” said Mr. Gusalev, as if he had just negotiated a fat deal for tenderloin.

  Ganny nodded and hesitated and tried to make himself ask The Question, but could not. Well, he reasoned, he might have just arranged to have a year of Saturdays in which to get up his courage.

  oOo

  That night he dreamed of Svetlana. He dreamed they went to a baseball game, then to an ice-cream parlor—the one over on 12th. They sat by the window, sharing a sundae with strawberries and hot fudge, and somewhere toward the bottom of the dish, Lana stopped in mid-bite and said, “Why’d you bring me here?”

  He looked up at her, taking in the way the phantom sunlight reveled in her hair as if it wanted nothing more than to live there. The way her eyes, illumined by that same sunlight, were sea and sky at once. The way her skin seemed to glow as if it were the source of the light and not merely reflecting it.

  He absorbed all of this in one deep breath, committed it to his heart and said, “Huh?”

  She shrugged. “Why here? I know you’d rather go to Izzy’s. Why don’t we go to Izzy’s?”

  “I brought you here?” he repeated. “How’d I do that?”

  “I don’t know. You just did.”

  “Oh...well, Nadia didn’t like Izzy’s, so I thought—”

  “That was Nadia. Not me. I think I’d like Izzy’s.”

  “Okay. Maybe next time?”

  “Why not this time?”

  Ganady looked down at the empty sundae dish and the fudge-gooey spoon in his hand. “Well, we’ve already eaten the ice cream.”

  Svetlana threw back her head and laughed. “Are you full?”

  He pondered that for a moment. “No.”

  “You could eat ice cream all day long and not get full here. Or you could not eat the whole time and not be hungry.”

  “Where is here?” Ganady asked, and Svetlana said,”Izzy’s.”

  And indeed they were standing outside of Izzy’s deli. They went in. They sat at the counter. They ate more ice cream. Bittersweet chocolate, which Izzy’s had and the regular ice-cream shop did not.

  They did not speak of ghost baseball games or butcher shops or alienated fathers. They talked to Izzy about the old country and listened to klezmer music on the radio. They talked about the season the Phillies were having and about their chances for going to the World Series. And Ganady came close to mentioning his trip to a certain butcher shop in Passyunk Square, but did not.

  oOo

  It was odd, cleaning the windows in Joseph Gusalev’s shop Saturdays. The shop was closed and all the meats put away in the cold room. Mr. Gusalev and his sons apparently did not begin sausage preparation until very early on Monday morning. And on that morning, at approximately five AM, the first new sausages of the week would be made.

  But on Saturday late in the morning, Ganny would come to the shop and find a bucket of soapy water, a bucket of clear water and a sponge awaiting him on the sidewalk outside the shop. He would clean the outside of the big plate glass window and the glass in the front door. By this time, the Gusalevs would return from synagogue and Mr. Joe, or so he liked to be called, would let him into the shop and sit behind the counter on a tall stool and watch as he washed the insides of the windows and the glass cases, which had inexplicably been added to his contract.

  “I’m not called the Sausage King for nothing,” Mr. Joe told him the third Saturday of their arrangement.

  He was sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper, and had caught Ganady staring at a trophy that sat enshrined in the front window.

  “Best sausages in Philly—that’s what that trophy is for. The best. That’s why I own such a shop in such a location. And I’ll tell you something else, Ganady Puzdrovsky. I’m going to open another store one block north of Market. One block!”

  “You’re going to move your business?”

  “Not at all. I’m expanding again. In a few weeks, I’ll have another trophy to go with that one. What with advertising in the newspaper, in a few years, I’ll have an empire of butcher shops. This isn’t my only shop, you know. I have another one four blocks over. That’s the original. Not a prime location, though. And the flat upstairs—whew! What a dump that was. But now we can afford this one, and soon, I’ll begin looking for a real house.” He nodded, and his eyes seemed to be looking at something beyond the empty glass case they were focused on.

  “So, your sons run the other shops?” Ganady buffed a smudge on the window near the trophy.

  “My sons?” Mr. Joe blinked. “No. My wife runs the first shop, and she’ll go to run the new one when it opens and Mikhail will take over the first one.” He hesitated for a moment, then added: “I got no sons.”

  “But...but the sign...”

  “Oh, that. I bought the shop from a guy named Otto Gusthof. He had sons. I don’t have sons.”

  There was something so infinitely sad about the way he said it, that Ganny had to stop himself from imagining that the butcher had wiped a tear from his eye. He recognized this for what it was—the moment for his question.

  “Do you...do you have a daughter?”

  Mr. Joe’s eyes snapped to his face with such force that Ganady thought he should hear a click. “A daughter? Why do you ask?”

  Ganady had not considered having to answer that particular question. “I...well...”

  “What—you’d like to inherit my Sausage Empire?”

  “No I...I know a girl whose last name is Gusalev, that’s all.”

  Now he had the butcher’s complete attention. He felt it as a hot, prickling sensation upon his cheeks. Mr. Joe put his paper down on the glass top of the empty meat case and leaned forward on his stool.

  “What girl is this? What’s her given name?”

  Ganny swallowed. “Svetlana,” he said, and he heard Mr. Joe let out a long, low sigh.

  “Svetlana.”

  Ganny nodded. “Svetlana.”

  “How does she seem, this Svetlana? Is she well? Is she healthy?”

  “She’s...she seems okay. She’s kind of hard to get to know though. I don’t know where she lives or anything like that.”

  “You don’t know where she lives? Where’d you see her?”

  “In church.”

  Mr. Joe’s eyes bugged out. “In a church? What kind of church?”

  “Saint Stan’s—Stanislaus. Over on Wharton.”

  “A Catholic church? Chas v’cholileh! Well, at least it’s not Protestant.”

  “So, um...then your daughter isn’t—”

  “Daughter? I have no daughter. My daughter is dead.”

  Ganny’s heart turned to ice in his chest, but then the butcher muttered not quite beneath his breath: “The ungrateful wretch.”

  “But she’s not dead dead?”

  The butcher threw him a strange look. “What do you mean, dead dead? You’ve seen her—you just said so.”

  “Well, yeah, but only...” Only in my dreams?

  Ganny stopped himself from saying the words, picked up his bucket and sponge and rags and stood. “I’ve got to do the cases.”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Joe, but he continued to watch Ganny work, which made Ganny shiver and sweat in turns.

  Finally, he was finished and put away his tools and prepared to go. He was at the door when Mr. Joe asked him: “So, this Svetlana Gusalev you know—and I’m not saying she’s my girl, mind you—she seems...normal to you?”

  “Well, not exactly. She...she does things I don’t think other people can do. And she seems sad. She says she misses her Da something terrible.”

  Mr. Joe’s eyes watered a little, but his face seemed hard as a frozen side of beef. “Does she? Well, that’s as may be. But what things does she do that seem so strange to you?�
��

  “It’s kind of hard to say.”

  Gusalev shrugged. “What—hard to say? Just say. Tell me one thing she does that’s not exactly normal.”

  “She comes into my dreams.” There, he’d said it.

  The butcher shrugged again. “What’s not normal about that? My Rodenka—my Stella—came into my dreams when we were courting. The next time you see her, this Svetlana—and I’m not saying she’s my daughter, mind you—you tell her for me that a girl should do her duty to her family. It’s that simple. A girl should do her duty. You’ll tell her?”

  Ganady could only nod, staring through the perfectly clean glass of the butcher shop’s front door as it swung shut behind him. The muted, delicate tinkle of the little bell suspended above the lintel jarred him from his astonishment and he turned and ran home as fast as his feet would carry him.

  oOo

  Ganady did not dream of Svetlana that night. Not until the next sabes did he dream of her. They went to Passyunk Square and watched the old men play chess, and Ganny found it was all he could do not to look at the butcher shop that was on the corner even in his dreams. Svetlana, for her part, made no mention of it at all.

  They went to Izzy’s next. And Mr. O was there—or at least, Ganny thought, he had put Mr. O there. They talked of baseball heroes long gone and when the subject of Lefty O’Doul came up, they were suddenly at the ballpark with Mr. Ouspensky watching the Giants and Phillies play ghost baseball.

  As he did most nights after dreaming of Lana, Ganady went to his dresser and, by the light of the moon, he studied the Cockroach. This night, he did something that would have been unthinkable even weeks ago—he took the baseball along with the wooden stand he had made for it, and the creature that sat atop it, and moved it to his bedside table. He found that if he set the ball just so, he could see the cockroach in silhouette against the window shade, backlit by moon and streetlamp.

  What would Mr. Joe think, he wondered, if he asked him if his daughter was sometimes a cockroach?

  Fourteen: Bagel Boy and Cookie Girl

  “So, you are a businessman now, are you?” Baba Irina said, glancing at Ganady out of the corner of her eye.

  They made their way down Tenth toward Izzy’s for an after shul snack.

  “I wash windows, Baba.”

  “For two businesses. This is a beginning.”

  Ganady smiled. Only Baba Irina could see two window-washing jobs as the start of a career.

  At Izzy’s they sat at their window table and listened to the radio.

  “You do good work,” said Baba Irina, tapping the gleaming glass with a fingernail. “Doesn’t he do good work, Isaacson?”

  Isak Isaacson sat at the counter reading a paper. His wife Esther was not to be seen which, Ganny suspected, was fine with Baba Irina.

  Now Isak glanced up from the sports page and said, “Eh?”

  “Ganady washes the windows—good work, yes?”

  “If you say so.”

  “He could be washing your windows,” she said coyly.

  “Baba!” Ganny objected.

  Baba laughed at him and asked Izzy for two ice creams.

  The radio sputtered ads for Sears Roebuck and Coca-Cola, then began to ooze klezmer. Ganady knew the song and daydreamed the clarinet fingerings.

  “This is good,” said Mr. Isaacson, looking up from his paper. “Who is this?”

  “It’s the King,” said Ganady.

  “Elvis?” asked Isaacson.

  “Naftule Brandwein—the King of the Klezmer Clarinet,” said Baba, looking extremely pleased.

  “You like this, Ganny?” Isaacson seemed dumfounded.

  Ganny nodded. “Sure. He’s my favorite.”

  “What? Not Elvis Presley? A boy like you—I figured you’d listen to that rock and roll.”

  “I listen to lots of stuff,” said Ganny. “But I like klezmer. I play it a lot.” Ganady did not comment that he secretly daydreamed about playing on a reconstituted Jewish American Hour. He glanced at his grandmother’s face and found her smiling at him in that unsettling, omniscient way as if she had just read his heart.

  He bent to turning his hot fudge sundae in to a puddle of chocolate mud. At the counter, the men went back to their previous occupations.

  Mr. Ouspensky came in.

  “Stanislaus,” said Baba, nodding.

  “Irina,” said Mr. O, returning the nod and adding a smile.

  “Ouspensky!” crowed Isak Isaacson. “Seen any good baseball games lately?”

  The old man stopped in the doorway and blinked owlishly as if his eyes could not adjust to the dimness of the room. “Why yes! Just the other night. Phillies/Giants. It was a great game.”

  “The Phillies haven’t played the Giants since May,” said Isaacson.

  Mr. Ouspensky shrugged and shuffled to the counter to slide onto his regular stool. “Ganny was there. He’ll tell you. Wasn’t it a great game, Ganny?”

  He had been to a game with Mr. O the week before, but it had been the Dodgers they’d played...and beaten. That wasn’t the game Mr. O was talking about.

  “Uh...uh, yeah. Great game.”

  Isaacson leaned over the counter toward Izzy and said in a stage whisper: “The boy needs a girlfriend is what. He spends too much time watching ghost baseball with an old meshuggener.”

  “Ganny has a girlfriend,” Izzy defended him. “What’s your girlfriend’s name, Ganny? I forget.”

  “My girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, the golden-haired beauty—what’s her name—Nurya?”

  “You mean Nadia? She’s Yevgeny’s girl.”

  “No, I know Nadia, thank you very much. I mean your girlfriend—what’s her name—Lubliya? No, that’s not it.”

  “Lana,” said Mr. O, and all the blood drained from Ganny’s face. “Her name is Lana. It’s short for Svetlana.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. When do we get to meet her, this wonder girl?”

  “Meet her?”

  “What’s this, an echo?” asked Isak Isaacson. “Meet her—as in to make her acquaintance. You going to bring her in here someday, or we got to wait for the wedding?” He and Izzy laughed long and well at that, while Stanislaus Ouspensky watched with an air of exaggerated bemusement.

  Ganady could only ask: “How...how do you know about her?”

  Isaacon shrugged and Izzy said, “Old Ouspensky, here. After all, he’s met her—which we have not.”

  Ganady looked sideways at ‘old Ouspensky,’ who favored him with a slow, conspiratorial smile and winked.

  oOo

  In Ganady’s hands the clarinet sang the sad, ebullient, cascading notes of Yo Riboyn Olam—God, Master of This Universe. It was an amazing thing about klezmer, he thought, that it had the capacity to capture opposing emotions in a single song, in a single musical passage. Delight and despair, sorrow and celebration. It reminded him of Baba Irina, and it reminded him of Svetlana.

  Somewhere in the tumble of notes, he became aware of a presence in the room. It had gotten dark while he played—he wondered if he had missed dinner and his mother had come for him. But he only wondered that for a second. This was not his mother—he felt it before the bed rocked under a slight weight on its opposite side. He wished suddenly that he were Benny Goodman.

  Ganny let the song trail away, leaned back against the headboard, and laid the clarinet across his lap.

  “Don’t stop,” she said. “That was nice. It was more than nice. You’re very, very good.”

  He tilted his head in a silent denial and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Are you really here?”

  She laughed, and he wished he were Danny Kaye. “What does that mean? You’re talking to me, so aren’t I here?”

  “I mean...did my Ma see you come in?” What he meant was, Could she have seen you come in?

  “I don’t think so. I sort of...let myself in.”

  He wanted to ask how, but didn’t.

  They were silent together for a moment. Even that
felt good—to have someone to be silent with again. Silent, not because you had nothing to talk about, but because you felt no need to speak. He had had that with Nikolai once, and with Yevgeny. But Nikolai was now quintessentially Nick, and Yevgeny was becoming more and more Eugene. Ganady was still just Ganady.

  It was Svetlana who broke the companionable silence. “You have something you want to tell me.”

  “I do?”

  “Well, I think you don’t want to tell me so much as you feel like you should. I think you tried to tell me last sabes. When we went to Passyunk Square?”

  “Oh... You mean about the butcher shop?”

  “And about the butcher.”

  “Uh...well...I’ve been cleaning his windows is all. For the last month or so.”

  She nodded. “I wondered when you’d tell me.”

  “You knew?”

  She smiled and tilted her head from side to side.

  “How?”

  “Dos hartz hot mir gezogt,” she said. “My heart told me.”

  “I asked him about you. Did it tell you that too?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Why Ganny? Why did you have to ask him about me?”

  “I wanted to know that you weren’t—”

  “A ghost? That again?”

  “An angel, maybe.”

  “So are you sure?”

  “Well, I got a little ferklempt when your Da said he didn’t have a daughter...”

  She winced.

  “But then he asked how you were. Did you seem okay, healthy—that sort of thing. I...I think he misses you.”

  “So, how is he—Mr. Joe?”

  “He’s okay, I guess. He was a little upset about you being in a Catholic church. He said, ‘God forbid.’“

  Her jaw set, and in her sea-green eyes a squall brewed, and Ganady added quickly: “But he said at least it wasn’t a Protestant church.”

  Her mood turned with a swiftness that stole Ganny’s breath, and she laughed. Impulsively, he reached out and grasped her hand.

  “Maybe you should go see him. Maybe you should ask him to forgive you for whatever it was he thinks you did. Maybe you should—you know—patch things up. Maybe he’ll take you back.”

  She shook her head, solemn again. “It’s not that simple, Ganny. It isn’t just a matter of forgiveness for something I’ve done. It’s a matter of forgiveness for something I won’t do. Something I can’t do. Especially not now.”