Princess of Passyunk

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  The girl sitting in the chair next to his had hair the color of a wheat field at sunset. She had her back to him and was engaged in animated conversation with her fellow brides-to-be—Antonia to her right and Nadia kitty-corner across the table. She wore a long, satin dress with voluminous sleeves that fluttered gracefully as she moved her hands in conversation, and of a green so dark it was almost black.

  He returned to his chair like a man walking underwater, his eyes riveted on the girl in the seat next door. She was beautiful, radiant, with a laugh like music. She was not even remotely like either a cockroach or a ghost. She was as perfect as he had dreamed her. She was Svetlana.

  She caught sight of him as he settled into his chair, and smiled as if the sun had just that moment risen. She held out her perfect hands.

  He took them and gazed into her perfect eyes. They were green, just as in his dreams and visions. In fact, she was exactly as he had dreamed her, down to the last detail. Except that her hair fell in golden waves only to her shoulders.

  She smiled at him. “Did you think I wouldn’t come? Didn’t I promise I would come?”

  “I dreamed that,” he murmured. “Didn’t I?”

  She laughed, her mouth falling back into the repose of a lopsided grin.

  Vitaly Puzdrovsky rose at that moment and proposed a toast to the three brides: Antonia, Nadezhda, and Svetlana.

  Mouldar Toschev, in turn, toasted the three grooms. Nikolai toasted the family of his bride-to-be and Yevgeny toasted his.

  Vaguely, Ganady realized it was his turn, but his fingers were wrapped about the stem of his wine glass and would not lift it. Out of the corner of his right eye, he saw Nick lean in past Svetlana and raise his glass.

  “To Ganny’s mystery girl. I have to admit, brother, some of us thought you’d made her up and that we’d now be hearing excuses as to why she couldn’t come tonight. Welcome, Svetlana Gusalev.”

  Svetlana’s sweet laughter trilled over shouts of “L’Chaim!” and “Na sdrovya!” Ganady could only smile weakly, but he did get his goblet to rise from the tabletop. His brother had put voice to his exact plan—to make excuses. Because surely he had made her up. Hadn’t he?

  “But your family...” worried Rebecca.

  Svetlana tossed her golden head and shrugged her perfect shoulders and said, “My father and I had a bit of a falling-out...over the family business. I haven’t spoken to him for a very long time. That’s very important to my Papa—the business.” She looked sad, as if tears were close.

  Glancing about the table, Ganady realized she had won their sympathy with that and wondered at her words. They weren’t untrue...if his dreams could be trusted, if he had really seen her on moonlit Sabbaths, if Mama had really heard her voice and Stan Ouspensky seen her at a ghost baseball game. If, if, if...

  This was it, then: The Moment. The moment in which Ganady must finally (unless, of course, we was dreaming) come face-to-face with the reality of Svetlana in the waking world. He had gone back and forth, believing this, then believing that. She was real. She was a dream. She was a Cockroach by day and a girl by night. She inhabited his head. She inhabited his heart. She inhabited this Moment.

  He peeked at her now past a curl of obscuring and unruly hair. So which was it? he asked himself. Had the creation of his dreams stepped out into the real world his family inhabited? Were she—this perfect girl—and the ever-present Cockroach one and the same? Or was he dreaming?

  Or was he completely, unequivocally mad?

  She seemed to feel his eyes on her and turned to smile at him, her short cap of golden hair winging against her cheeks. It had been a yard long and bound into a braid the last time he’d seen her...dreamed her. No...no, it had been tucked up beneath a baseball cap.

  He swallowed. “You cut your hair.”

  She raised a hand to it. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh...no. It’s nice like this. Well, it was nice long, too, but...”

  “But so old-fashioned, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t mind old-fashioned,” Ganny said and found himself unable to pull his eyes away from her.

  “I can grow it again, if you like.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “Galobki, Ganny?”

  He looked up to find Yevgeny grinning at him as he pushed a platter of stuffed cabbages across the table.

  “A waste,” said Vitaly Puzdrovsky. “The boy is too enchanted to taste the ‘pigeons.’”

  “A pity,” added Baba Irina, “since his Svetlana makes such galobki as a czar should envy. You should get her recipe, Ravke.”

  “I should get your recipe,” agreed Rebecca eagerly.

  Having received from his wife’s own lips tacit permission to praise his daughter-in-law-to-be’s cooking skills, Vitaly Puzdrovsky passed the platter and launched into a litany on the subject of Svetlana Gusalev’s galobki and her babka as well. Not to mention that her weaving skills had led to the creation of the extraordinary piece of cloth beneath the centerpiece of this very table.

  Ganady’s cheeks burned with a strange mixture of embarrassment and pride. Passing the galobki, he caught the rueful glance that passed across the centerpiece between Annie and Nadia.

  “A treasure that is,” his Da was saying. “As fine a piece of weaving as I’ve ever seen.”

  And his mother asked, “Wherever did you find such thread?”

  Ganady dropped his eyes to the hand woven runner. It was, he thought, a work of art—the golden threads gleaming softly in the candlelight, contrasting the vivid colors woven at the edges. There was no doubt—it was an exact match for her hair.

  He looked up to catch her smiling at him. “It was just something I had on hand,” she said.

  Nadia leaned across the table, her face a peculiar blend of envy, hope, and wariness. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share the recipe for your galobki? Eugene would very much like that, I imagine.” Her eyes slid sideways to Yevgeny, who grinned.

  “I’d be happy to,” Svetlana assured her. “You know, there’s really no trick to it. It’s the cut of meat you start with and the spices in it. My father makes sausage, so I learned all about spicing meat from him. I’d be happy to share what I know.”

  Under her bright, gracious smile, Nadia melted. The paragon was not above herself, nor did she intend to hoard her favors. From the corner of his eye, Ganady saw his Baba Irina smile, while around the table the other grandmothers and mothers and daughters-in-law-to-be shared looks that said Svetlana Gusalev had just hit a triple.

  His plate full, Ganady Puzdrovsky allowed himself to relax—to enjoy the food, drink, and company. Svetlana was real and she was here. This was no dream. He could taste the spicy galobki, feel the cabbage virtually melt in his mouth.

  He was cutting into the roast capon and listening to the happy banter around him when he beheld his bride-to-be take a galobki from the platter and laughingly slip it up her voluminous sleeve. She made no attempt to conceal the act, so every eye at that end of the table was glued to her when she shook out her sleeve and released a quartet of beautiful white and gray speckled pigeons into the air.

  Ganny quickly revised his assessment of his state of consciousness. Now I will surely wake up, he thought. But he didn’t.

  Vitaly Puzdrovsky went from open-mouthed astonishment to laughter. “Bravo! Bravo! Ganady, what amazing talent has your Lana. How is this done?”

  Lana only smiled secretly.

  Ganady was impelled into the gap. “Svetlana is a circus performer—didn’t I tell you? She’s a—a magician—well, sure, you can see that, huh? That’s—that’s a—another reason why her parents are a little put out with her, see. And that’s why you haven’t met her before. She’s been...touring. With the circus,” he finished lamely.

  “Oh, how exciting!” cried Nadezhda, clapping her hands.

  “Could you teach us to do that?” asked Annie from her place next to Nikolai.

  Svetlana’s eyes sparkled in the candl
elight as she took a second galobki from the platter and slipped it into the opposite sleeve, saying as she did: “I don’t really know how I do it. I just put the ‘little pigeon’ up my sleeve and—” She flung her arms upward, scattering more live birds into the air. The assemblage applauded.

  Giggling like the schoolgirls they had lately been, Nadia and Annie each picked up a pair of galobki and stuffed them into their sleeves.

  Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Annie asked, “Do we count or say abracadabra or anything?”

  Svetlana cocked her pert golden head and shrugged. “If you like.”

  The two other girls exchanged looks across the table.

  “One,” said Annie.

  “Two,” said Nadia.

  “Three,” they said together. In perfect unison, they flung their arms up and out.

  Cabbage, rice, and meat sprayed everywhere.

  Belatedly, the guests ducked and closed their eyes, hoping to dodge the hail of food.

  When Ganady once again opened his eyes, they went reluctantly to his father’s face.

  Vitaly Puzdrovsky was as red as the cabbage on his plate, his eyes bugging out from his head as if he could not believe that his good Sabbath bow tie was now decorated with sauce and rice and ground meat. There was a truly horrible moment of silence, then Svetlana’s bubbly laughter cascaded down the table.

  Ganady held his breath, for Vitaly Puzdrovsky had begun to quiver, then to tremble, then to rattle like a boiling teakettle. Tears started from his eyes, and from between his compressed lips came a sound like the hiss of escaping steam.

  And then, he uttered a sound Ganady had never heard before—he giggled. There was no other word for it. He giggled. He chortled. He chuckled. And then suddenly, he was laughing uproariously, his eyes streaming.

  With the speed of waves chasing the wake of a harbor tug, the laughter circled the table, sweeping everyone away.

  In the midst of it all, Svetlana cried: “Oh, but Papa Puzdrovsky, your pretty bow tie is ruined!”

  And so saying, she reached out to the dessert tray with its mound of bow-shaped cruschiki, and lifted a fat, sugar-covered specimen from the top of the pile. She put this delicacy up her left sleeve then, with a grace that brought to mind enchanted swans or Sonja Henie, she shook out the sleeve and delivered into Vitaly Puzdrovsky’s hands a big, beautiful red satin bow tie.

  Smiling and wondering, Vitaly unclipped the soiled tie and replaced it with the new one.

  Meanwhile, Annie and Nadia, giggling, scrambled after the cruschiki. But where Svetlana had used one, the other girls each grabbed a handful of the delicate pastries, stuffing them into their sleeves. Then they shook them out again in a cloud of confectioner’s sugar and broken crumbs. The tablecloth and the guests looked as if they had been snowed upon.

  Svetlana laughed. Everyone else laughed with her. Even the two embarrassed would-be magicians.

  And Ganady, for his part, fell twice as much in love with the flesh-and-blood woman (if that she was) as he had with the dream. Three times. Four.

  As coffee, tea, and babka were passed around in what to Ganady was a happy, warm, scented blur, Svetlana excused herself to go up to the powder room on the second floor.

  Ganady thought nothing of it until his mother also went there and back, and still Svetlana was gone.

  “Where is Lana?” Rebecca asked her son.

  He could only say: “I was about to ask you. She wasn’t in the ladies’ room?”

  Rebecca seemed surprised. “I didn’t see her.”

  Ganady shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned. “Maybe she went to the kitchen...for something.”

  “For what would she go to the kitchen?”

  “To find...recipe cards?”

  Rebecca Puzdrovsky seemed to find that a reasonable idea and returned to her seat, but Ganady’s insides were in a sick knot. Had she come to him only to disappear again? If they were indeed married, would she disappear still—once or twice a week? Every day?

  He waited a moment more, then glanced about to make sure that everyone had returned to their celebrating. Everyone had, except for Baba Irina, who gave him a strange, veiled look and tilted her head toward the doors that opened into the service hallway and kitchen.

  He rose, patted his mouth with his napkin and excused himself from the table. He would go to the ladies’ room first, he reasoned, because that’s where she said she was going. That was his intention. But as he entered the hallway and found the kitchen doors facing him, curiosity overcame logic.

  He passed through the doors. The kitchen was empty. Still, he made a slow circuit of the central island, eyes flitting here and there, drawn to the floor.

  It was on the windowsill that he found it—the empty black-cherry husk of a huge cockroach. He stared at it for a long moment, terrified at first, then wondering.

  It was impossible, of course. Impossible that his beautiful Svetlana had... Had what? Slipped out of this carapace as a normal woman (a real woman?) might slip out of a coat?

  But if it were so—if—what might happen should the coat be destroyed? Might the wearer be forced to do without?

  The reasoning (if it could be called that) seemed sound from a dreamer’s point of view...or from the point of view of someone in one of Baba’s boobeh mysehs.

  And he was not yet convinced he didn’t dream.

  He picked up the carapace between thumb and forefinger and carried it to the great, gleaming stove. His hand shook and the heat of the oven, propped open to cool, all but melted his resolve. But at last he grasped a knob, and turned on one of the burners. Blue flame erupted from it, licking up through the cast iron cover.

  He flung the carapace into the flame. It vanished in a puff of smoke and flame with a tiny sound like a sigh.

  Behind him, the sigh was echoed and he knew his strange actions had been observed. He turned, readying some explanation that involved his Mama’s fear of insects, but it was Svetlana who stood in the doorway watching him with sad eyes.

  “What have you done?” she asked.

  “I...I...I meant,” he finally got out, “to free you. I thought if I burned it, you wouldn’t have any place to go back to and you’d have to stay...like this.”

  He’d already started the gesture toward her before he realized what it implied. What it meant he believed—and had believed for sometime, if he was honest. His face burned so hot, he thought he must be glowing red.

  “Oh, Ganny,” she said. “If it were that easy, don’t you think I would have destroyed it myself by now?”

  “I figured there must be some sort of rule about it. I thought maybe I had to do it.”

  She sighed again. “You’d already done it, Ganny. You’d already saved me. But now... Well, I’ve got to go back.”

  “But...how? Why? I mean, how did this happen?”

  What he was really asking was whether she was a cockroach turned woman, or a woman turned cockroach. Not that it mattered to him, because he would have loved her either way. He wasn’t certain, but he suspected there was a mitzvot for it.

  Svetlana’s mouth pulled up at one corner. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’d really like to know.”

  She shrugged and slipped up onto a kitchen stool, hooking her ankles around the legs. Her shoes slipped from her feet to clatter on the black and white tiles. They were pumps—or so Marija, who had just begun to care for such things, had informed him. They were the same color as her dress—darkest green—and had little satin bows on each toe.

  She tucked her dress around her knees. “It was my Da, the Sausage King of South Philly. Da, he’s a very shrewd businessman. A self-made businessman. He’s always had this dream of having a chain of shops here in Philly, over the river in Camden, maybe other places as well.”

  “A Sausage Empire,” said Ganny.

  She nodded. “He’d build it and pass it down to his sons. But he didn’t have sons, he had me—the Sausage Princess.”

  “And he wants you to r
un the stores, right?”

  She cupped her knees with her hands. “Ever since I was a little girl, he’s been trying to get me to take an interest in the family business. But, I gotta tell you, Ganny, my only interest in meat is cooking and eating it. But he kept at it anyway—buying new stores, looking for ways to expand the business. And, you know, I’d do it for him—run the stores—if it were that simple. But it’s not.”

  She took a deep breath then said, “Once upon a time, he was happy with the idea that his daughter would inherit the stores instead of a son, but that all changed when he met the Bagel King—Yuli Bzikov (a pompous shmegegi if ever I met one). And it hit him: what if, instead of just cutting meat up and sending it home in little white parcels, he sent it home inside bagels? Sausage bagels, galobki bagels, all different kinds of meat-stuffed bagels.

  “To Papa, it was a marriage made in heaven. They’d merge the two businesses, become legal partners. He’d get dough for his sausage-breads, Bzikov would get meat for his pierogies. And best of all, Bzikov had a twenty-year-old son named Boris. Pompous shmegegi junior.”

  Boris. Ganady’s hair stood on end. He did not at all like where this was going.

  “And Boris liked me. So Papa got it into his head that the Sausage and Bagel Empires should be joined by ties of matrimony. He had a big party to announce my betrothal to the Son of the Bagel King.”

  “The Pierogi Prince,” said Ganady, apropos of nothing.

  “Exactly. But I didn’t want to marry Boris Bzikov, even if he was a Prince. I was only fifteen—I didn’t want to marry anybody. So when Papa made this big announcement—which, by the way, was a surprise to the bride-to-be—I was so shocked I jumped up and said... Well, I said what I was thinking, which wasn’t very nice. And the Bzikovs were understandably offended, and Papa was outraged. He demanded I take it back.”

  “What you said?”

  “What I said—which I’m not going to tell you, by the way. But I didn’t. So first, Papa complains about how America is having a pernicious effect on the behavior of young women—”

  “He said ‘pernicious?’”

  “He tries to learn a new English word every week. ‘Pernicious’ was the word that week. Anyway, next he set a curse on me.”