Princess of Passyunk (19 page)

“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.”

“He said something about me telling you to come home and do your duty to your family. What did he mean by that?”

She hesitated to answer him, and in that moment of hesitation, God intervened in the form of Rebecca Puzdrovsky calling her son to the evening meal.

“Ganaaady! Diiiinner!”

He glanced at the door. “Do you want to meet my family?” He asked.

When she didn't answer, he glanced back to find her gone. The world tilted strangely and Ganny sat bolt upright, barely catching the clarinet before it slid from his lap.

“Did you hear me, Ganady? Dinner's ready!”

He gripped the woodwind's sleek, black barrel. “I need to put my clarinet away, Mama,” he called, and hurried to do just that.

oOo

Summer had somehow slipped away and a new school year crept ever closer, darkening the mellow afternoons. The thought of school made Saturdays and Sundays special again. Ganady found he savored even his window-washing duties, for it wasn't an unpleasant thing to have one's hands in cool soapy water on a warm day and Izzy would always reward him with an ice cream or a soda in addition to his payment of two dollars.

He was surprised when Joe Gusalev, whose windows he always did first, one Saturday gave him several pounds of fine chicken to take home to his Mama.

“You still see that Svetlana?” Joe asked him as he wrapped the chicken in brown butcher paper. He never called her ‘my daughter,' or ‘Lana,' but always and only ‘that Svetlana.'

“Yeah. Now and then.”

“Yeah?” Joe peered at him oddly from behind the meat counter. “How does she look?”

“She looks really nice. She's very pretty.”

“Nothing odd about her?”

Ganny stared at the package of meat now sitting atop the counter. “Uh...what do you mean—odd?”

Now Joe stared at the chicken too, so their eyes did not quite meet. “I don't know. Just...you know, the way she dresses or talks or the things she says.”

“She says...wise things. Sometimes she says funny things. She knows an awful lot about baseball. I suppose that's odd. For a girl, I mean.”

“Huh,” Joe said. “So what sort of things do you do? Together.”

Ganady lifted the package down from the counter and Joe's eyes skittered away to the front window where his name was spelled out backwards. The letters threw shadows on the black and green tile floor.

“We go to baseball games sometimes. She listens to me play the clarinet.”

“Clarinet, huh? You any good?”

Ganny shrugged. “I don't know. My mom and grandmother think so. Lana thinks so.”

“What kind of music you play?”

“Klezmer.”

“No kidding. I'd never have thought it of a kid your age. Thought klezmer was for old folks.”

Ganny shrugged again. “I better go,” he said. “I should get this chicken home before I go to Izzy's.”

He turned toward the door to find that another shadow lay across the floor, spanning the tiles between the door and the meat cases. It belonged to a tall, blond young man of perhaps nineteen or twenty who was built like a superhero with immensely wide shoulders and narrow hips. The youth had pale gray eyes that swept over Ganady and dismissed him before moving to Joe Gusalev.

“Hey, Mr. Joe,” he said in a voice that was low and thick with the Motherland.

“Hey, to you as well, Boris. How is your father?”

“He is well enough. How is Mrs. Gusalev?”

The butcher smiled. “She is well. And as always, a solace to me in my disappointment.”

Ganny glanced between the two, sensing some subtext, or at least a shared history. Boris's next words confirmed it.

“And your daughter?” he asked in the same heavy tone.

Gusalev gave Ganady a swift look before answering. “I'm told she's well.”

Boris seemed to perk up a bit at this news, or at least Ganny imagined that he did. His heart beat just a bit faster now. Here was another person who knew Svetlana Gusalev.

“I haven't seen her, myself, you understand,” added Joe Gusalev, giving Ganady another ‘look.' “She hasn't seen fit to speak to
me
.”

Blond Boris caught the glance the butcher passed to Ganny and turned the full attention of his pale eyes upon the younger boy.

On cue, Joe Gusalev said, “This is Ganady Puzdrovsky. He cleans my windows every Saturday, plays klezmer on his clarinet, and likes baseball. In fact, it was his baseball that broke our front window last spring—you remember? Ganady, this is Boris Bzikov. He's the son of an old friend. Maybe you've heard of him—Yuli Bzikov?”

Ganady's expression must have communicated a negative, for Joseph Gusalev looked bemused and said, “The Bagel King?”

“Oh,” said Ganady, sensing it was politic to be impressed. “Oh,
sure
.” And did that make this Boris Bzikov the Bagel Prince? The words almost made it to his lips, which shocked him. He fought down a desperate desire to laugh.

“I gotta go,” he said, waving the package. “Chicken.”

He all but ran from the store and did not stop running or laughing until he was almost to Ninth Street. At Ninth Street, he recalled the way Boris, Prince of Bagels, and Joseph King of Sausage had discussed Svetlana so blandly, as if it were something they did every week. ‘Hello, how's everything? And, oh yes, what about that no good daughter of yours?'

oOo

Ganady's mother took him to buy school clothes the week before school was to start—crisp, new black trousers, fresh white shirts, blue blazers. Ganady didn't understand why he couldn't wear to school the same chinos and jackets he wore after school and on weekends, but these were the rules he lived by.

He understood rules. Baba Irina had the
kashris
and the
mitzvot
, he had catechism and Lent and school uniforms.

On Saturday of that week, the last Saturday before the school year began, Ganny went to one of the last Phillies games of the season with Mr. Ouspensky. He hadn't seen Yevgeny for over a week—his best friend seemed intent on spending every last free moment with Nadia, even though they would share nearly half their classes in the coming year.

Ganny pondered this as he sat up in the stands next to Mr. O, ruminatively chewing a handful of peanuts. He wished Yevgeny were here. Then wished, even more strongly, that Svetlana were here.

He glanced over at his elderly companion. “Mr. O, when Izzy said that you said you'd met Svetlana, you meant I'd mentioned her to you, right? He just misunderstood.”

The old man gave him a sideways glance. “What, misunderstood? I said I'd met her. Beautiful girl! Wonderful girl! How should even an
altetshker
like me forget a girl like that?”

“Well, what did you mean—you met her?”

“Sheesh, Ganny. You don't remember? I thought us old folks were supposed to be forgetful. It was a night game. Giants and Phillies.”

“And Svetlana was there?”

Mr. O rolled his eyes. “Come now, Ganady—you remember: the game was tied in the ninth; Lefty O'Doul hit a homer and won it for the Phillies.”

Ganny nearly choked on his peanuts. “But that was a
dream
game!”

Mr. Ouspensky chuckled. “It
was
a great game, wasn't it?”