Princess of Passyunk

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  “Well, I’ll admit there’s not much left in the way of time, but who cares? This is love, right?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ganny around his peanut. “Of course it’s love. But I’ve heard people say that sometimes love isn’t enough.”

  “Yeah, but not anybody who knew what they were talking about. You ever heard your Baba Irina say that love is not enough?”

  Ganady shook his head. He had never heard his Baba say that. He had heard her say that sometimes you started with liking and respect and that love would come along later. And he supposed if he were ever to marry he’d find out all about that because at this moment he couldn’t imagine loving anyone but Svetlana Gusalev.

  “Love is too enough,” said the old man. “If it’s really love. And this is really love, strange as that may seem to you.”

  Ganady cracked open the peanut shell with his teeth and used his tongue to pry out the peanuts. They tasted like the bottom of the ninth in a tie game with the bases loaded and no outs.

  “It doesn’t seem strange,” he said when he could talk again. “I know it should. But it doesn’t.”

  Mr. O beamed. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Ganny. It means a lot to me and your Baba. Because you know, it seems strange to other people—I’m not naming names, you understand. They think it’s...”

  “Meshuggeh,” said Ganady.

  “Exactly.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “What—for an old fool to be in love with—”

  “A Cockroach?”

  “What, cockroach? I was going to say ‘your grandmother.’ Who’s in love with a cockroach?”

  Ganady swallowed the peanuts, shells and all, and turned to look at Mr. O, as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re in love with my Baba?”

  “Well, yeah. You couldn’t tell?”

  “I could tell. I was just sort of...distracted because of—”

  “Svetlana.”

  Ganady nodded.

  “So, what’s ‘too late’ that’s got to do with cockroaches?”

  Ganady produced The Baseball from thin air—one can do these things in dreams—and held it up for Mr. O to see.

  The old man’s eyes went wide. “You found it! How’d that happen?”

  He explained about the nurse from Saint Mary’s hospital who had found The Baseball in the trash and brought it home to her niece. He described meeting the niece at The Tavern and going home with her only to have her return The Baseball to him. He told of following the ball, and of mistaking the ersatz crone for Baba Yaga.

  “But she wasn’t really Baba Yaga at all. She was the witch who turned Lana into a Cockroach and she used me to get petty revenge on Mr. Joe, the Sausage King. And now, here I am at a dead end. And I think it’s too late.”

  “Not too late,” protested Mr. O. “Not while you’ve got love in your heart and that Baseball in your pocket.” He turned his head and called back into the apartment. “Irina, come out and tell this boychik of yours what’s what.”

  And just like that, Ganady awoke.

  Gone was the rooftop and the stadium and the taste of peanuts. There was sunlight pouring through the window and the memory of sausage and smoke in his nose, and the sound of someone knocking at his bedroom door.

  He sat up, disoriented, and glanced over at the windowsill. The new cockroach saluted him, its carapace glistening in the sun.

  “Ganny?” It was his Baba, and this time he did not mistake the voice for a cockroach’s.

  “I’m awake.”

  She came in, all business, a steaming cup of something in her hands. She sat on the edge of his bed and he smelled hot chocolate. She held it out to him.

  “No, boychik, you’re not awake. But you will be. Drink.”

  His obedience was habitual.

  “So,” said Baba Irina. “You saw the in-laws?”

  He choked on the chocolate and glanced up at her, surprised to see a glint of humor in her eyes.

  “You mean the cockroaches?”

  “No, I mean the Gusalevs. Why would I mean cockroaches? Ganady Puzdrovsky, have you brought another cockroach into this house?”

  He snuck a look at the windowsill. The cockroach was gone.

  “Yes. I did. Not the one I wanted to.”

  She shook her head. “You’re such a...”

  “Putz?”

  She looked at him severely. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Ganady Puzdrovsky. I was going to say, ‘you’re such a romantic.’ Like your mother. Nothing between your ears but moonlight on waves. What made you think you would find your Svetlana inside a sausage?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Something you said...about a Bard and Baba Yaga. But I didn’t find Baba Yaga. I found Svetlana’s Aunt Beyle.”

  “Small world. What made you think Svetlana’s aunt was Baba Yaga?”

  “Well...the Baseball led me to her and...she looked like Baba Yaga.”

  Baba’s eyebrows rose. “Chicken legs?”

  That drew a smile from Ganny, which he supposed was her intent. “No. No chicken legs.”

  Baba Irina watched him drink his chocolate for a moment. Her close and silent regard made him uncomfortable.

  He said, “I know what I did was crazy, Baba. I just wanted a miracle so much—anything to lead me back to Svetlana—that I thought the Singer was a miracle. When she gave me back my Baseball, I was sure of it. When the ball led me to the old woman, I guess I figured that had to be a miracle, too. But none of it was a miracle, was it? Or even magic. It was just...a bunch of coincidences, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  He looked at her from beneath his lashes, trying to read her expression. “Mr. O said you’d tell me what’s what.”

  “Ouspensky told you that? And when did this happen?”

  He thought about fibbing, saying he had seen Mr. O here or there, when in truth he’d not seen him in the flesh for a month of Sundays. Instead, he looked her in the eye (a very difficult thing to do) and said, “Just now. In a dream. He told me it’s not too late for Svetlana and that you’d tell me what’s what. He said love is always enough if it’s really love. I guess his head is full of moonlight on waves too.”

  He expected his Baba to snort or harrumph or make some tart comment about the state of Mr. O’s head, but instead she smiled, her eyes going distant as he had seen his mother’s do from time to time when she looked at his Da, and said, “I suppose it is.”

  Then her gaze moved to his face and became purposeful and sharp. “You think all these things that have happened are coincidences? Do you want me to tell you that’s what they are?”

  “No.”

  “It’s certainly what your Mama and Da would like me to tell you. But I can’t tell you that, Ganny, because I don’t know. An old man falls in love with an old woman. Their friends and family shake their heads and say it’s meshugass. Ouspensky and I say it’s a miracle. So, who’s to say that your Baseball isn’t a miracle that can lead to more miracles?”

  “But it only led me to do something so stupid I ended up in jail.”

  “And what happened in jail? Nothing? I think something must have happened in jail.”

  “I can tell you what didn’t happen in jail,” said Ganny, half-smiling. “The mice didn’t come.”

  “The mice?”

  “The ones that always help the Prince out in the fairytale. They didn’t come.”

  Baba Irina took his empty mug and stood. “There are no mice in this fairytale,” she said, and moved to the door.

  “Da thinks I’m crazy, doesn’t he? For the sausages, for Svetlana, for all of it.”

  She paused in the doorway, her hand on the knob, and turned back to look at him. “I won’t lie to you, Ganady. He thinks you’re chasing a ghost, a daydream—a marzenie. He no longer believes there’s a Svetlana for you to find.”

  “But he met her! He has the—the tapestry she wove, he ate the galobki, and the babka. He saw doves fly from her sleeves, and bow ties and—”r />
  “He saw vodka flow like water that night, Ganady. That is what he believes—that his glass was never empty of vodka and his eyes were never empty of wild and unexpected things. He believes your Svetlana was one of those things.”

  “Do you?”

  “Do you believe Ouspensky watches ghost baseball games?”

  “Do you?” he repeated.

  She smiled at him in a way that for the briefest moment, he saw a young girl where the old woman had been. “That Lefty O’Doul is a fine-looking man,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

  When his grandmother had gone, Ganady rose and dressed and looked for his newest guest. The insect was not on the windowsill, so he checked his dresser. At first he didn’t see it, looking as he did in the places Princess Cockroach had liked to settle. Then he spied movement near The Baseball and rolled it aside to find the little cockroach waving up at him.

  He had to smile at his own thoughts; the cockroach wasn’t “little” at all. It was large enough to cause his Mama no end of tsuris, but smaller by far than his Cockroach and of a shade of reddish brown that made it look, in stillness, like a pecan with delicate antlers.

  “Hello, friend cockroach,” he addressed it, for in his Baba’s tales, this was the way the hero always greeted the creatures.

  It said nothing. It concerned Ganady that he had almost expected it to.

  “Can you take me to Svetlana?”

  There was no answer to this either, but the insect rose up and tapped at The Baseball with its frontmost legs as if it intended to climb the scuffed surface. It did not climb, however. It returned to face Ganny.

  Ganny brushed The Baseball with the tips of his fingers. It seemed most logical (using the logic of dreams and fairytales) to assume that The Baseball could lead him to Lana, but...

  “All I got the last time I followed this was a phony crone,” he told the cockroach.

  Now the creature did something most peculiar. It turned itself about one full revolution as if in great agitation or distress.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” A stunning idea suddenly presented itself. “Are you cursed, too? Like Svetlana?”

  The bug stopped dancing and tapped at The Baseball again.

  “Is it a curse?”

  “Ganady, who’s that you’re talking to?”

  The sound of his Mama’s voice startled Ganny so that he kvitched like a girl and jumped back from the dresser.

  “I...I was talking to God,” he said, and did not exactly fib, for he had been formulating in his heart a prayer that he would be able to understand what the cockroach wanted of him. “And to the Virgin,” he added, nodding toward the statuette.

  His mother’s expression, which had been guarded and tense, lightened a bit. “I have breakfast laid out for you. Some blintzes and a little babka from Sunday dinner. Come eat.”

  He smiled at her and nodded. Tears started to her eyes and she pressed her hands to her lips and came to him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Please be well, Ganny,” she said. “Please, God.” She made the sign of the cross and left him to dress.

  He felt immeasurably better after the blintzes and babka—as who would not? But as he was finishing his meal and thinking that he really ought to go up to clean and practice his clarinet, Nikolai came into the kitchen.

  “Aren’t you at work?” Ganady asked, realizing he sounded as if he didn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. “Is it Saturday again, and I’ve slept the whole week?”

  Nikolai took his words as sarcasm and snorted. “I’ve been at work all morning. Now I’m here. You’re to come back with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Da has decided you need to stay busy.”

  “I have work. I work Thursday through Sunday, that’s all. Mostly at night. I know Da thinks that’s strange, but—”

  “That’s not all Da thinks is strange, Ganady.” Nick was looking at him very steadily, his eyes bright and overly observant. “Do you know how it looked for you to do what you did in that butcher shop? What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking—”

  “I know what you were thinking. You were thinking to find the love of your life in a damned sausage. What’s with that?”

  “I thought I’d found—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You found Baba Yaga. Come on, Ganny. Where are you going to find Baba Yaga here?”

  “Probably right here in my own kitchen, that’s where. I think Baba Yaga is really—”

  “A figment of your imagination. That’s what. You hear me, Ganny? It was a—a—”

  “Figment,” repeated Ganny, liking the word and wondering where Nick had gotten it.

  “Yeah. Now are you coming with me or not?”

  “Not?”

  “A choice I didn’t give you. Da wants you.”

  “Then why’d you ask?” Ganny asked completely without rancor, and stood, tucking in his shirt. He took his jacket off its peg by the door and put it on against the cold.

  As he slipped out the door, he couldn’t help wondering about the new cockroach and what it was doing right about now. He wondered if it would still be on his dresser when he got home.

  Twenty-Four: Twelve Little Cockroaches

  At the machine shop, Ganady was put to work in the dusty, high-ceilinged stockroom, unloading screws, nails, and other little bits of metal into wedge-shaped wooden bins. He was almost immediately assailed by a childhood memory of pretending that the little chunks of steel were really treasure and that if he retrieved enough of them from beneath the bins or shoved within cracks in the oak flooring, he would one day be very wealthy indeed.

  The memory put a smile on his face, which little else did of late. He felt oddly warm and fuzzy—disconnected from what was happening around him. He might have slept much, but he was still exhausted, and his childhood continued to tug at him from all the dark little corners of this large room which he had once imagined the hall of a greedy troll king and in which he had played at being a treasure-hunting knight.

  Somewhere near closing time, he was jarred from his reverie by a startled exclamation at the end of the row of bins/booty caches from which he was preparing to fill a small but heavy cardboard box/treasure chest with washers/pirate doubloons. He glanced toward the end of the row and saw his brother jumping up and down as if someone had set his shoes on fire.

  Curious, Ganady wandered to his brother’s side, empty box forgotten in his hand. Nikolai had stopped dancing and was now poking between two of the bottommost bins with the toe of his boot.

  “What is it?” Ganny asked.

  “Some kind of big, nasty bug. You should have seen it—it was this long, I swear.” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger splayed to maximum width.

  Ganady felt a dagger of cold purpose stab at his heart. “You’re not going to kill it?”

  “If I can get it out of there, you bet. Why wouldn’t I kill it?”

  With Nikolai there were no mitzvot to invoke, and as far as Ganny knew there were no injunctions in the Catholic liturgy about killing big, nasty bugs on any day of the week. But now, Nick was reaching for the hooked metal cane with which one tilted the uppermost bins so as to reach the nuts and bolts within, and he surely intended to wreak violence upon whatever was hiding in that inverted wedge of darkness.

  Ganady dropped the empty washer box and intercepted the hook. “I’ll get it. You can go back to whatever you were doing.”

  Nick hesitated and Ganny added, “Unless you’d rather chase bugs around.”

  “What do you think?” Nick asked rhetorically, and swung away to return to the main shop, affording his younger brother a single backward glance.

  It was a hopeful glance, Ganny thought.

  As soon as Nick was out of sight, Ganady set aside the hook and got down on his hands and knees to peer between the two parts bins.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s safe for you to come out. Re
ally.”

  Still nothing happened and Ganady felt suddenly silly, crouching there on the floor of the stockroom talking to an unseen insect. He rocked back on his heels, picked up his box and started to rise.

  A nut-brown cockroach of a size much smaller than Nick had indicated sallied forth into the light. It was tentative at first, then it waxed bolder and came to stand right between Ganny’s feet.

  He blinked.

  The cockroach did not.

  He tilted his head.

  The cockroach waggled its antennae.

  “Well,” he said.

  The cockroach rose up on its rear legs in a way that was becoming eerily familiar.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  The cockroach said nothing.

  “Hey, Ganny, time to go home!” Nick’s voice preceded the sound of his footsteps as he returned to the stockroom.

  As his shadow fell across the doorsill, Ganady scooped up the cockroach and slipped it into the empty box.

  “Yeah. Great.” He flipped the lid of the box closed, tucking the edges under to seal it.

  Nick nodded toward a large crate by the door. “You can just toss that box back into the keeper and finish filling the order tomorrow. I don’t think we’re even starting that job until Thursday.”

  “Huh? Oh, no, I’m taking it home. It’s...just the right size for...something I need a box for.”

  Nick shrugged his indifference. “You take care of that bug?”

  “Sure did,” Ganny said. He tucked the box under his arm and used his elbow to turn off the stockroom light.

  oOo

  It seemed to him that the cockroaches knew each other. When they met atop his dresser, to which he had transferred the new insect, it was with much touching of antennae and tapping of tiny front feet. He was gratified to see them so happy (if indeed cockroaches knew happiness) and wondered if somehow the rescue of this unfortunate put him any closer to finding Svetlana.

  After dinner that evening he volunteered to help Mama and Baba clear, and when he and his grandmother were alone for a moment, he had intended to ask about what she and Mr. O meant to do, but what came out was, “What happened about Marija? After Sunday dinner, I mean. No one is talking about it.”

  Baba Irina did not look at him, but kept washing the serving dishes, her hands working beneath the warm, soapy water. “Marija is a child. Her parents’ child. She will do as her parents wish until she is an adult.”