Princess of Passyunk (8 page)

They had, in fact, reached Passyunk Square when Ganady Puzdrovsky shoved his hands deep into his pockets and had a revelation, or at least an epiphany.

“Baseball,” he said.

The other two boys looked at each other, resembling a pair of startled carp. Yevgeny grinned.

Nick shaded his eyes and gazed west across the park toward the row houses and shops whose weathered brown faces blushed in the waning sun.

“So, if it happened in America, old King what's-his-name would have given his little princes bats and magic baseballs and sent them out to score princesses instead of home runs?”

Ganady liked the idea well enough. “Sure, why not?”

In the upstairs window above one of the shops, a curtain fluttered and Nick took his hand down from his eyes.

“Dumb,” he said, then: “It's late. We better scram.”

Scram they did, but at a leisurely pace that might have been mistaken for the same meandering that had brought them there.

Baseball / season had started, a sure harbinger of the coming summer. Sometimes Ganady's Da took the boys to Phillies games and, on occasion, Yevgeny's father came with. The two men would sit and talk business past each other while the game proceeded now lazily, now urgently, below. Sometimes the boys were on their own.

The Toschevs owned The Samoravam, a restaurant on Wharton Street that was doing “land-office business”—whatever that meant. On Friday nights, the place was especially packed, and every adult in the family—parents, grandparents and older siblings—were pressed into service.

Ganady wondered if perhaps they were unaware that Yevgeny disappeared every Friday night to go to shul. He wondered, too, if someday soon that might change.

Yevgeny thought not.

“They don't want me in the restaurant,” he said. “Dad wants I should go to college. The restaurant goes to Alik and Zofia.”

“Kind of like in the Prodigal Son, huh?” Ganady grinned. “You going to go out and see the world?”

Standing on the top step of section E in the Lower Deck of Connie Mack Stadium, Yevgeny looked down into his popcorn.

“I don't want to see the world. I want to work in the restaurant with Mom and Dad. But they want me to ‘make something of myself.' They want me to be a teacher. They've talked to Father Ivanov about what college I should go to and everything. You know what's really dumb? Alik doesn't want to be in the restaurant,
he
wants to be a teacher.”

“Why don't you tell your parents that?”

“I don't think they want to hear it.”

“Yeah, but shouldn't you and Alik tell them anyway? It's your life, right?”

Yevgeny shook his head. “You don't understand. It's what they
want
.”

This came to Ganady's mind again when, next sabes
,
Yevgeny was unable to attend synagogue. His aunt and uncle had come to visit and he must go to see a movie with his younger cousins.

“A movie?” Baba had repeated. “In
Americanish
? Then you must come and tell me all about it. But in Yiddish,” she'd added, eyes twinkling.

That evening Ganady had shared with Baba Yevgeny's secret sorrow.

Baba had listened and said, “Ah,” and nodded.

“I don't understand,” Ganady said. “Why don't they ask him and Alik what
they
want?”

“Because they expect them to understand that the family comes first. The eldest son, by tradition, takes the family business. And if Alik is to have the restaurant, Yevgeny would do very well to go to university.”

“But if Alik wants to be a teacher and Yevgeny wants to work in the restaurant, what does it matter? All the bases are still covered.”

Baba blinked at him. “What, bases?”

“I mean, they'd still have a son who's a teacher and a son in the business.”

“To the
oldest
son goes the business, Ganny. It's the same in your family. It's tradition. It's more than tradition, it's duty.”

“But what if Alik would make a better teacher and Yevgeny a better chef? What if—”

“Ganny, why does this trouble you so?”

Why, indeed? He pondered that. “I guess because I'd like Yevgeny to be happy.”

“Who says he won't be happy? You remember that prince, Ivan, with his frog?”

Ganny nodded slowly, uncertain where his grandmother was headed.

“Well, how happy do you think he was when he waded into that bog, em? Do you think he made a
brocheh
for his da's wisdom when he saw that frog with his arrow? And how did he end, I ask you?”

Ganady squinted up his eyes and tried not to look disbelieving. “Happily ever after?”

Baba shrugged. “How do I know from ever after? But in
this
life, he was happy.”

At this juncture, a shadow fell long upon the sidewalk, thrown from the street lamp toward Wharton. Ganny looked up expecting to see Yevgeny. Instead, he saw his brother, Nikolai. Hands in pockets, shuffling along, his head down. As he realized the shuffle was actually more of a limp, Ganady rose.

Baba, too, came to her feet with an alacrity that belied her age. “Nikki? What's wrong?”

Nikolai stopped just below the stoop, cramming his hands even further into his pockets. “Nothing,” he mumbled.

Baba smacked the flat of her hand on the railing. “Nikolai Feodor Puzdrovsky, don't give me ‘nothing.' Come here.”

He hesitated, but obeyed, coming into the light from the front windows.

Ganady felt his stomach clench. His brother's clothes were rumpled and dirty and a dark smear of blood swept from his upper lip to his chin.

Baba grasped Nikolai's face in one wiry hand, turning it this way and that. She let go of his chin to brush at the front of his shirt.

“Such a mess! Your poor Mama. Do you
know
how hard is dried blood to get out? Inside with you!”

He moved, then, up the steps and into the house while Ganady and Baba trailed, one in shocked silence, the other giving a running preview of what each parent would think, feel, say and do when they saw their eldest son.

Baba's prophecies were quickly proven, for Mama let out a
kvitch
of maternal distress and launched into immediate action. And while moist rags and ointments appeared out of nowhere, Da shouted and paced and demanded the full knowledge of what had happened and what
lump
had done it.

It was not, however, until Baba had brought tea (the universal curative) and Nick had changed clothes and remanded his ruined garments to a sink full of cold water and Da was merely pacing and Baba merely hovering and Ganny sitting on Da's footstool where he could see that Marija had padded out onto the upstairs landing to eavesdrop, that Nikolai related his tale of woe.

He had been minding his own business, getting a breath of fresh air on the rear stair of the Youth Center, when he had been thoroughly thumped by another youth.

“For no reason?” Da asked.

“He called me a
kike
,” said Nick, not looking at anyone. “I told him I was Catholic, but he said I was just a Jew boy in disguise.”

“
Oy
, such words,” murmured Baba.

“Why did this happen?” Da asked, and Mama said,”It's bigots, Vitaly. This surprises you?”

Now Nick looked at his toes, wriggling bright red in last year's Christmas socks.

“We are
Catholic
,” Da said. “Polish and Catholic. Why should this boy call you a...such a name?”

Baba, face closed, moved to go upstairs. Ganady made a gesture with his thumb and Marija disappeared from her perch on the second floor landing.

Nick wriggled his toes some more. “He called me a dumb Pollock, too.”

Da stopped pacing. “Go to bed, boys.”

They obeyed immediately, helping their grandmother to the landing where they kissed her goodnight. In their room, Nick flopped onto his bed to stare at the ceiling. Ganady got slowly into his pajamas, brushed his teeth, mumbled his prayers and sat down on the edge of his bed to watch his brother study the discolored plaster.

“Nick? Why'd that guy beat on you, really?”

When Ganady had decided Nick wouldn't answer, he said, “Because of Annie.”

“Huh?
Princess
Annie?”

“Yeah. Annie Guercino. We went out to talk—you know—just to talk. We were just sitting there on the steps when her brother and a bunch of his friends came out.” He hesitated a moment, then went on. “They were smoking.”

“Smoking
cigarettes
?”

Nick grimaced. “Yeah. And I think they had a flask of something.”

“You mean like
liquor
?”

Nick shrugged, making his bedstead creak. “Annie, she sees them first and jumps up and lays into her brother like you wouldn't believe.” He shook his head. “I don't know what she said to him, ‘cause she was talking Italian, but I could sure tell she was hot and I heard ‘Mama' and ‘Papa' a few times, so I think she was saying she was gonna tell on him. Anyway, he sees me there and that's when he starts in on her for going around with a Jew boy. Like his smoking and drinking is nothing compared to that.”

“Did he really call you that?”

“Yeah, and you know what? I don't think he really cares whether we're Jewish or Catholic. He just cares that we're
not
Italian.” He made a face at the ceiling. “I guess I'll have to change my name to Puzdrolli.”

Ganady considered his next question carefully before asking it. “Nick, why didn't you tell Mama and Da what it was really about?”

“I don't know. I guess I was afraid maybe they'd care that Annie wasn't Polish.”

“You think?”

“Hey, I don't know. I just figured why take a chance, you know?”

“So, what're you going to do?”

“I don't know, Ganny. I got to think of something, I guess.”

“You're gonna stay away from her, right?”

Nick levered himself up and onto his feet. “Go to sleep, kid.” He headed to the bathroom to wash up.

Kid
.

Ganady looked after him, bemused and uneasy. It was the first time Nick had ever called him that.

oOo

The Monday following the bloody nose, Nick failed to meet his brother and Yevgeny at their appointed after-school meeting place.

“He has a report due on Wednesday,” recalled Ganady. “Maybe he's gone to the library to get the books.”

They went up to the library. He wasn't there. He was not at the tables; he was not among the stacks. But as they were passing the little chapel annex next door to the library, they saw him. He was sitting in the pew nearest the altar, his auburn head tilted toward the raven one of the girl sitting close beside him.

Ganady and Yevgeny observed for only a moment, then moved on in silent accord. They were half a block toward home before Yevgeny said,”Was that Princess Annie, you think?”

“I guess so.”

“I thought you said her brother gave him a bloody nose and told him to stay away from her.”

“Yeah.”

“Geez, Ganny, why's he want to take up with her?”

“I guess he likes her.”

“Yeah, well, her brother sure doesn't like
him
.”

“I guess not.”

They fell silent again.

“Want to go to Izzy's?” asked Yevgeny at last.

“Nyeh.”

“Me neither.”

oOo

Each day thereafter it was the same. Nikolai spent each afternoon in the chapel. Nor was his new religiosity limited to this; he also attended Wednesday night mass at Saint Stan's.

Friday night, he came home with a black eye.

This time, Da demanded a name—a family.

“I don't know his name,” Nick lied and gave Ganady, sitting once again on Da's footstool, a warning glance from his good eye. He held the cold tea poultice more firmly to the other. “I'm not sure he even goes to Saint Casimir.”

“Then why does he hit you, this boy you don't know?” asked Da.

“I think he was little drunk.”

“Drunk? How is it that he's drunk at a Church dance?”

“He and a couple of his friends had a flask of something.”

“At these dances they allow liquor?” Mama gasped.

“They don't
allow
it,” said Nick. “But some of the kids sneak it.”

“Cigarettes, too,” Ganady blurted, and drew a scowl from Nick.

“Two weeks in a row, you come home bloodied. Next Friday, Nikolai Puzdrovsky, there will be no dance for you.”

Nick's eyes widened. “Da...!”

“Vitaly.” Mama laid a hand Da's arm. “This is fair?”

Da's look was dark and thunderous, but his voice, when he spoke to Mama, was gentle, as always. “You want he should come home like this every week? What might it be next time, Rebecca - another black eye? A broken nose? An arm?”

Mama looked from Da's cloudy face to Nick's doleful one and back again. In the end, she deferred to Da, having neither the will to support Nikolai nor the heart to deny him.

“But what'm I supposed to do on Friday nights?”

“You could go to library,” suggested Mama, “to study for school. More study wouldn't hurt.”

“School's over in a month.”

“You could come to shul with me and Baba,” offered Ganady, garnering another lopsided scowl.

With his mouth open to retort, Nick's expression melted from annoyance to epiphany. He raised his eyes to his parents. “I could go to mass.”

Mama and Da exchanged startled glances, then Da said,”You want to go to Friday mass, too? Already, you go on Wednesday and the Sabbath.”

“I'd like to go,” said Nikolai with pious resolve. “I think it would be
good
for me to go. Don't you think?”

It was a point no good Catholic parent could argue in good conscience. But Ganady distinctly heard his father say, as he and Nick went upstairs to bed, “My God, will the boy become a monk?”