Princess of Passyunk

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  oOo

  Dawn came, invading the narrow alley behind the butcher shop on Sigel Street, pouring over the kitchen windowsill and into the sink, then spilling out again to run across the floor, where it eddied just inside the door of the smoke room.

  If dawn had possessed the power of speech, it would have admitted that it had never beheld such a sight as met it that morning in the smoke room. In fact, it rarely got into the smoke room this early, for the door was usually shut tight.

  The inner door of the kitchen swung open, but the dawn neither flinched nor withdrew, staying on as if curiosity demanded it.

  “Ai! What’s this? What’s this?” A woman’s voice cut through the cold dregs of smoke that lay near the floor and huddled in the corners. “That idiot boy left the smoke room door open!” Her steps stirred the smoke and sent it scurrying.

  “Did you hear me, Joseph Gusalev? That dumkop Mikhail left the smoke room door o-Oh!” The sentence ended in a shriek that should have sent both the smoke and the dawn scuttling for cover.

  It seemed to have very little effect on either, and even less on the strange young man who sat in the far corner of the smoke room amid mounds of finely ground meat. Sausage casings hung from his jacket, clung to his hair, and lay limply across his lap. He blinked up at Stella Gusalev without even a hint of fear or contrition or intelligence.

  Only when her husband Joe joined her in the doorway to his smoke room, did the strange young man show any emotion.

  He laughed.

  oOo

  “I don’t smell alcohol on him,” said the police sergeant, sniffing suspiciously in Ganady’s general direction. “I smell sausages. He’s making me hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry, sausage smell or no,” his lieutenant replied, and nodded toward the cell block. “Lock him up.”

  Ganady was ushered into a small cell in the back of the precinct house at 100 South Broad Street. It was furnished with a blanket-covered cot, which filled Ganady’s sight to the exclusion of all else. He could almost feel the cozy warmth of the woolen blanket, and the thought of being horizontal almost made him weep. He faced the hungry sergeant, hoping the man would grant him leave to lie down.

  Instead he said, “Mr. Gusalev says your name is Ganady—is that right, son?” He seemed kindly enough, though he kept licking his lips and eyeing Ganady as if he hoped he might reach into his pocket and produce a kielbasa.

  “Yes, sir. Ganady Puzdrovsky.”

  “And you live around here, do you?”

  “Yes, sir. On the zibete—I mean, Seventh Street. Between Wilder and Dickinson.”

  “He seems polite enough,” the sergeant said to the lieutenant, who had followed them as far as the hallway outside the cell.

  “Hmp,” the lieutenant replied, and asked Ganady if he knew his address and phone number and if there was someone at home that might be responsible for him.

  He recited his particulars to the police, wondering why they should think he did not know them. He told them his parents and grandmother would be at home, though his Da might have already gone to work.

  The policemen left him, shaking their heads and murmuring between themselves.

  Ganady lowered himself to the cot, which squealed in response, its aging grid of metal straps sagging. In the silence that followed, he heard the dripping of water somewhere above, and what sounded like the whispering of mice in the walls. He smiled a little at that, for he recalled any number of fairytales his Baba had told him in which the hero lay languishing in prison only to find that he had allies among the small vermin that lived in the straw. Of course the jail cell had no straw, but Ganady enjoyed the thought that there were little hidden creatures whispering plots to help him. There was certainly little else to enjoy in the situation.

  He sighed, feeling the weariness he had tried to keep in his head spread languorously to all his limbs and members. “I don’t suppose you little guys could break me out, huh?” he asked any mice who might be listening.

  In his imagination, the whispering grew in volume, as the mice and rats consulted about his escape.

  Half-dozing, Ganny tried to sort through the things that had befallen him since he walked into The Tavern on Saturday night. His already peculiar life seemed to have taken a turn for the criminal. Had he really broken into a butcher shop—Joe Gusalev’s original butcher shop, as it happened—and cut open every sausage in the smoke room expecting that his beloved would pop out and fly into his arms? What had possessed him to do such a thing? And why had the Titan Street Crone sent him to do it?

  The whispering distracted him from his thoughts, and he sat up, glancing about the cell, almost expecting to see a delegation of mice advancing to welcome him. In the fairytales, they always wore little velvet weskits and sometimes shoes with tiny buckles. But there were no mice, not even naked, furry ones.

  Ganady heard the outer door open and close, and the sound of footsteps in the corridor. A moment later, the sergeant appeared at the door of his cell. Mr. Joe was with him.

  “Well, Mr. Puzdrovsky, Mr. Gusalev here would like to speak to you. Why, I’m not sure. Joe?”

  The sergeant stepped back and allowed Mr. Joe to come to the bars, from which he stared at Ganady as though he had no idea what to say to him.

  There was only one thing Ganady could say. “I’m sorry, Mr. Joe. I really am. I’d be happy to pay for the sausages.”

  “You bet you’ll pay for the sausages,” the butcher told him. “But what I really want is to know why. Why you gotta go and spoil all those beautiful sausages? I didn’t pay you enough to wash my windows? Okay, I admit, I took advantage of that whole broken window thing.”

  “Oh, no! It was because of the Crone on Titan Street. She said that’s where Svetlana was.”

  “In my butcher shop?”

  “In the sausages. She didn’t tell me it was your butcher shop. She just told me Lana was there...in a sausage casing.”

  Mr. Joe’s brows gathered above his nose like furry little thunder clouds. In the moment of speechlessness, the sergeant leaned toward the butcher and stage-whispered, “You gonna press charges against this kid, Joe? The poor boy is meshuggeh.”

  Mr. Joe turned his gaze to the sergeant, who reacted as if an invisible bolt of lightning had shot from beneath those thunderous brows and struck him where he stood.

  “I’d like a private word with Mr. Puzdrovsky, if you don’t mind.”

  “Now, I don’t know, Joe. He looks like he might be dangerous.” The sergeant was laughing openly now, a grin splitting his round face.

  Mr. Joe’s eyes widened and the sergeant held up his hands to fend off any further attacks by lightning. “All right. All right. I’ll leave you two alone. You call me if he gets violent, eh?”

  As soon as the sergeant was gone, Mr. Joe turned back to the cell. “This crone you say you talked to—was she in a butcher shop on Titan Street, by any chance?”

  “Uh...well, yeah. I only saw the kitchen. It was a lot like the kitchen in your place, but not as clean, or as nice. She was making sausage.”

  “Yeah? Chain-smoking crone? Hair net? Beady little eyes?”

  “That sounds like her.”

  Mr. Joe nodded. “Yeah, that’d be her.”

  “You know her?”

  “I should. That’s my sister-in-law, Beyle Tolstaya.”

  Ganady felt as if the vermin had scampered over his grave. “Beyle the Witch?”

  “Well, I try not to call her that. At least not in front of my Stella, but yeah, that’d be her.”

  “But isn’t she the one who-who turned Lana into a—a...”

  Mr. Joe’s eyebrows now stood almost straight up over his very round eyes. “Into a what?”

  “A...a...a runaway?”

  Mr. Joe’s expression didn’t change.

  “Why would she do that, Mr. Joe? The Bard said she was jealous.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, well. Her business is not so good, you see. And, em, well...my Stella tells me her sist
er wanted to be Mrs. Joe.” He flushed, his ears reddening. “Not that I’m saying that’s the way of things. God knows I didn’t do nothing to make her think she ought to be Mrs. Joe... Who’s the Bard?”

  Ganady barely heard the question. He rose and came up to the bars so that he could look into Joe Gusalev’s eyes. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Beyle?”

  “No, Svetlana. Do you know where Svetlana is?”

  “I was gonna ask you the same question, but I guess you don’t know either. I was hoping she’d smarten up and come home to marry Boris. But no such luck.” His gaze grew somewhat softer, pitying, Ganny thought. “You were looking for her, huh?”

  Ganny nodded, feeling as exhausted as he had every reason to be.

  “Sorry, kid.” Mr. Joe studied the toes of his shoes for a moment, then said, “Look, Ganady, if you pay for the damage to the sausages, I won’t press charges. Fair enough?”

  “Oh, more than fair, Mr. Joe. Thanks.”

  The butcher nodded and turned to go. He stopped just short of the outer door. “You wanted to marry my daughter, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re Catholic, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Joe sighed. A huge sigh that came up from the soul of his being. “I tell you what, Ganady Puzdrovsky, you find my girl, I’ll think about you marrying her. No promises, you understand. I mean, you’re Catholic, for godsake. But I’ll think on it.”

  Ganady was so stunned, he couldn’t answer, but he thought he might cry. Svetlana’s father might let them marry. Now, when it was surely too late. How had he any hope of finding his Lana now?

  The outer door closed on a silence so deep, Ganady’s ears rang with it. Even the imaginary mice had deserted him. He lay down again on the cot. Was he meshuggeh? It must certainly look that way. He was, at the very least, an idiot to have vandalized Mr. Joe’s shop on the say-so of the Titan Street Crone—who was not even a real crone, let alone Baba Yaga.

  What did he suppose, that the magic he had lost, the magic he realized he had begun to take for granted, had suddenly come back into his life? Why should it? So that he could squander it again?

  He returned to seek the dubious comfort of the narrow cot. Lying down, he rolled over, face to the wall, only to bruise his ribs on something hard and lumpish in his jacket pocket. He reached into the pocket, a breath short of cursing, and his fingers brushed the scuffed, beloved surface of The Baseball.

  It was real. Which meant the Singer had been real.

  This was a miracle. This was magic. His bruised ribs forgotten, Ganady wrapped his hand around The Baseball. He had never been so comforted by anything in his life.

  Twenty-Three: Baba Yaga and Cockroach Boy

  He awoke from a brief doze to semi-darkness. He was disoriented for a moment, remembering where he was only because of the strong smell of sausage spices that seemed to permeate everything. There must be a breeze wafting through the cell, he thought, for he could hear the sound of papers riffling in it.

  But no, what would papers be doing here? It was the whisper of dry, papery leaves. In his mind’s eye, they had blown through the window at the end of the hall opposite the door to the offices and collected under his cot where they now fluttered against the wall.

  Odd, he didn’t feel a breeze.

  He chuckled sleepily at himself. Dumkop, indeed. A breeze? In a jail cell? Perhaps it was the mice, coming to offer him their aid.

  He made himself sit up. He looked down at the worn concrete, blinking his eyes to clear them of sleep and dryness.

  There were no mice. There were cockroaches. A dozen of them. They had gathered on the floor in the middle of the room, facing him. They were not as big as the Princess Cockroach, but they were large, and when he sat up they all reared back on their hind legs and wiggled their antennae at him.

  “Uh...hello,” he said.

  They wiggled some more and one scuttled forward a few steps and paused again to regard him. It must have been the jacket that had drawn them, smelling as it did of a cockroach feast.

  “You’re welcome to any scraps you can find. Someone should get some joy from Mr. Joe’s wonderful sausages.” Ganady took off the jacket, taking care to remove the Baseball from the pocket, and laid it next to him upon the bed.

  As if they had understood his words, they advanced, climbing up the legs of the cot, marching across the blanket single file, and taking up residence on the jacket where they feasted and, Ganady supposed, made merry after the manner of cockroaches.

  He had watched them for a moment when the largest one detached itself from the group and scuttled purposefully toward him. It stopped atop a small hillock in the blanket that covered his cot and saluted him with two front legs and a prodigious set of antennae.

  Ganady held his breath. Absurdly expecting to receive some sort of communication, he reached down and held out his hand to the cockroach, which obligingly climbed aboard.

  “Gotteniu! Es iz tsu shpet!” the cockroach said in a voice that was teasingly familiar.

  Ganady gasped, suddenly completely awake. “Too late for what?” he begged. “What’s too late?”

  The lights went on suddenly, blinding him. He looked up, blinking, toward the door of the cell where his father and brother stood with the police sergeant, staring at him with identical stricken looks on their faces. The cockroaches, caught in the light, vanished beneath the jacket.

  The sergeant cleared his throat apologetically and opened the door. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know where those bugs came from. We keep a clean jail here.”

  Da fixed the poor man with a dark scowl and he stepped quickly aside.

  “Ganady?”

  “Yes, Da?”

  “Are you ready to go home?”

  Ganady stood. “Can I?”

  Da nodded. “Mr. Gusalev was kind enough not to press charges against you.”

  “I know. He just wanted to know why I did it. Well, and of course, that I should pay for the sausages.” Ganady smiled. “He said it was okay that I should marry Svetlana. If I can find her.”

  Ganny reached down and picked up his jacket, revealing the bevy of cockroaches clustered on the cot beneath it. He paused in perplexity, wondering what was required of him. He glanced up at his Da and Nikolai.

  “I think maybe I’m supposed to take them home. I think maybe they were sent to help me. Instead of mice. I thought it would be mice, but it’s cockroaches.”

  “Gotteniu,” mumbled Nick, and Ganady realized whose voice he had heard earlier and mistaken for a cockroach’s.

  And why not? It was not much more absurd to think a cockroach had spoken Yiddish than that Nick had.

  Da said sternly, “I think your mother and grandmother would not allow it. You should...you should leave them here.”

  As if they had understood, the cockroaches fled in every direction, like sequins shaken from a beaded gown. In a heartbeat there was not one to be seen.

  Ganady felt strangely bereft and wondered if he was supposed to have fought harder to take them home. They hadn’t really given him time, he argued. They had fled at the sound of Da’s voice...or perhaps at his words...or perhaps at the thought of having to face Mama and Baba Irina.

  Ganady acquiesced, shaking his jacket gently just to be sure it had no passengers, then shuffled toward the door of the cell. Da and Nikolai traded significant looks that made Ganady feel profoundly guilty. What a Sabbath it had been for them; first Marija’s shocking announcement at dinner, and now this.

  He opened his mouth to utter an apology.

  “Ah,” said Nick, “There...there’s one on your head.”

  Ganady’s heart turned a somersault then beat faster and lighter. A cockroach on his head? Such luck! He wanted to take it as an omen, but he wasn’t certain he trusted omens just now.

  He looked hopefully at his Da. “May I...may I take it home, please?”

  Again, Da and Nick exchanged their significant looks. T
hen Da cleared his throat. “Well...I suppose. If it’s just the one.”

  “Just the one,” Ganady promised, moving toward the door. “I’m going to take a bath when I get home. It’s no fun to go around smelling like a sausage. And I’m really hungry.” He stopped to look back at his Da and brother, who had not moved. “Something wrong?”

  Vitaly Puzdrovsky shrugged and glanced at his elder son. “What could be wrong? We’ll come home, you’ll take a nice, hot bath, you’ll get something to eat.”

  “Not sausage,” said Ganady.

  “No,” said Da. “Certainly not sausage.”

  oOo

  Ganady wasn’t quite sure what to do with it—the cockroach—but he cleared a spot on his dresser in case it wanted to be in close proximity to the Holy Virgin. It set itself up on his windowsill instead. He left it there and fell into bed where he slept, his hair still wet from the bath, his body drained of all energy.

  He dreamed of sausages. Actually, he dreamed of sausages and cockroaches, and of talking to Joe Gusalev through the iron bars of a jail cell. It was a very odd dream.

  But he dreamed. That in itself was significant.

  And at the end of the dream—or at least the end of that part of the dream—the cockroach said, “Es iz tsu shpet! It’s too late!” Just as (he thought) it had said in the jail cell.

  And then, with one of those segues that leave the dreamer breathless, he was saying it and he was not on a cot in a jail cell, but in a deck chair on Mr. Ouspensky’s rooftop, facing Connie Mack Stadium.

  Mr. O sat beside him, eating peanuts. He had put a whole peanut in his mouth and was sucking blissfully on the shell. Now he looked at Ganady in surprise. “What? What do you mean it’s too late? How can you say that, Ganny?”

  “I can say it because...because I’m afraid it’s true.”

  Mr. O handed him a peanut. He put it in his mouth and was surprised by the vivid tang of salt on his tongue.