Princess of Passyunk (11 page)

He scratched his ear. “I didn't find a girl.”

She patted his knee. “Well, there's time. There is
always
time.”

He opened his mouth to tell of the great, glistening cockroach, but she sailed on.

“We both know Nick has
chosen
his princess, and as for Yevgeny, well, not to worry. He is still a boy; it's unlikely he will marry anyone very soon. You will still be boys together for a while yet. And Ganady, his fate is his own. I'm sure he wouldn't marry someone he didn't want to. This is America, after all.”

Ganady peered at her face, but she had turned away to gaze toward the Atlantic as if she could see all the way back to Keterzyn.

Was she teasing him? Or chiding him? Was that wistfulness in her voice? Or was it amusement?

He tried to say: “You're a tease, Baba,” but she rose, shaking out her skirts.

“To bed with us,” she said, and went inside.

In his room, Ganady went right to his dresser, telling himself the cockroach would surely be gone—this was America, after all. But she was there, silent and unmoving, unable to utter even the croak of Ivan's frog.

Ganady washed his face and brushed his teeth. Still the cockroach had not moved. He went to bed, realizing only belatedly that Nick, who had left in a hurry right after dinner, had still not come home.

As a result, Ganady could not sleep. Through the darkness of his room, he could hear the house settling, mice in the wainscoting, pigeons in the eves above his bedroom window. Big-band music carried up the stairs from the parlor, occasionally punctuated by his parents' muted voices and the rhythmic cadence of the clock in the front hall.

He also heard, or imagined he heard, the tiny, furtive noises of Princess Cockroach upon her cowhide throne.

He listened past all these sounds, both real and imaginary, for the squeak and clatter of the front door, willing Nikolai to come home with no broken bones or black eyes.

After what seemed like hours, measured by the ticking of the clock and the increasing volume of Da's voice, Ganady began to suppose that a black eye was really not such a big deal, if only God would send Nick
home
.

He tried to imagine that his brother was just up the street, turning the corner from Wharton onto Seventh, walking homeward beneath the streetlamps and the moon. He willed it so hard that it suddenly seemed as if
he
was the one coming home in the moonlight.

He looked up. The ceiling of his room was gone, replaced with a star-speckled sky. His bed was mysteriously absent; he stood upright with solid asphalt beneath his feet, just up the street from his house. He looked down reluctantly, fearing he would be wearing his blue-and-white-striped pajamas, and was relieved to find that he was fully dressed in chinos and his good wool jacket.

He couldn't think of anything else to do, so he began to walk home. He could already see the front stoop, and could also see that someone sat on the steps, waiting for him. He prayed it wasn't Da.

As he drew near, he saw that it was a woman, lamplight gleaming on her white hair. Baba Irina. Ganady relaxed. He relaxed so much, he began to whistle one of Baba's favorite klezmer tunes,
Zum Gali Gali
. He had learned it on the clarinet just to please her.

He whistled his way to the bottom of the steps, put his hand on the newel and stopped. The woman sitting on the stoop wasn't his Baba. In fact, she wasn't even a woman, strictly speaking. She was a girl about Ganny's age, and her long hair, tied back in a ponytail, wasn't white, but pale, red-gold. Titian, Mama would have called it. Yevgeny's sister Zofia had hair of the same fine color.

The titian-haired girl sat primly on the third step from the top, her hands clasped around her knees. She wore a full, dark skirt—Ganady couldn't tell the color—and a heavy sweater of deep, vivid green.

She looked up at him through eyes that were the color of twilight and smiled.

“You're not Baba Irina,” he said, and meant:
Who are you
?

She laughed. It was the song of a clarinet. Her teeth were the color of starlight.

“No, I'm not,” she said.

“Are you lost?” he asked, and meant:
Were you waiting for me?

“No. How could I be lost if I'm sitting on your front steps?”

“How do you know I live here?” meaning:
How can someone so beautiful know where I live
?

Her smile deepened. “I know something about you,” she said. “I know you have a grandmother named Irina, and a brother named Nikolai, and a magic Baseball with Eddie Waitkus's autograph on it. And I know your name is Ganady, but your Baba calls you ‘Ganny.'” She paused, tilted her head to one side and added, “And I know you're Catholic, but your Baba is Jewish.”

He marveled at this for some time. When he realized that he'd not said anything for several seconds and that she had been
watching
him not say anything for several seconds, he said,”You know my name, but I don't know yours.” Which, of course, meant:
I want to know everything about you
.

“Svetlana,” she said.

He thought it the most perfect name he'd ever heard—the most perfect and most beautiful. It suited her.

“I'm Ganny,” he said, and meant:
I love you
.

She laughed again. “I know.”

She rose from the steps in a fluid ripple of motion, like a swan rising from the surface of a dark lake. “I think you'd better go in. It's very late.”

Ganady stepped aside reluctantly, feeling her warmth as she passed by him to the sidewalk. Her wake smelled of rosemary and clove.

“Do you have to go?” he asked, and his heart added:
Ever
?

Her smile turned into a girlish grin. “Silly. I'll be back.”

Before he could think of anything more to say, he heard the front door open and close.

“
You
! Boy! What do you mean—trying to sneak in at this hour? Do you know you've scared your poor Mama to death?”

Da's voice broke over Ganady like an ocean wave, bringing him fully awake in bed, once again in his blue-and-white-striped pajamas.

Nick's reply was drowned in Mama's tearful exclamations and the discussion moved into the living room, reducing words to meaningless mumbles.

Ganady lay quivering beneath his covers, straining to hear. After several fruitless moments, he got up and slipped to the door of his room. It was slightly ajar and he dared to push it ever so softly further open. It creaked. He held his breath, but the voices downstairs didn't pause.

Even from here, he could only make out the occasional word, such as when Da shouted: “Church!” as if “church” and “mouse” had suddenly become synonymous and he had seen one or the other scurrying across his carpet.

Ganny hovered, weighing the advisability of creeping out to the landing. He had started to slip around the doorjamb when he heard the bottom stair creak. He cannonballed back across the room and into bed—a blur of blue and white—and pulled the covers up to his chin.

A moment later the door opened fully to admit Nikolai. Ganady recognized his silhouette in the light from the hallway. When many shufflings and rustlings passed in silent darkness, Ganady could stand it no longer. He sat up and turned on his bedside lamp.

“Hey!” Nick's voice was muffled by the pajama shirt he was pulling on over his head. “You're supposed to be asleep.”

“Yeah, well, you're supposed to be home by now.”

Nick pulled the shirt down into place. He was grinning. “I
am
home by now.”

Ganady thought his brother must have gone completely mad. “Where
were
you?”

The impossible grin deepened. “Church.”

Ganady could think of nothing to say for several minutes, during which Nikolai carefully piled his dirty clothes into their shared laundry basket, then went down the hall to wash up for bed.

When finally Nick reappeared, Ganady asked: “
Why
?”

Nick flopped onto his bed before answering. “Because nobody can bother us there. We can talk there.”

“You and Annie.”

“No, me and Sister Mary Francis. Jeez, of course, me and Annie. Her big brother caught a bad cold, so the family stayed home. Annie came to mass all by herself.”

“So, what'd you talk about?”

“Turn out the light.”

That was no answer. Ganady hesitated then did as his brother asked, but he persisted. “What do you talk about?”

Nick's sigh filled the room to the rafters. “Oh, Ganny, you're too young to understand.”

Ganny blushed furiously in the darkness. “No I'm not.”

Nick just laughed, and Ganny thought how much it sounded like Da's laugh, suddenly.

“So...so what did you tell Da, to make him not yell so much?”

“Pretty much what I told you. I was at church with Annie and we talked for a long time. And I was late because I had to walk her home. And then her Mama invited me in for milk and cookies. Oh, and we talked to Father Z for a while, too.”

“You did? What about?”

“Go to sleep, Ganny.” Nick turned on one side, his back to his little brother.

Subject closed.

Ganady stared at his brother's lumpy shape for some time before rolling over to face the window, through which he could still see moonlight falling upon the sill.

“I'm
not
too young,” he mumbled to the moon. Then he closed his eyes and tried to call the Princess Svetlana to mind.

It was a funny thing about The Cockroach. She was always there when Ganady looked, and never there when anyone else did. At least, Nick hadn't said anything about a giant cockroach, and neither Mama nor Baba Irina had
kvitched
about a giant cockroach while cleaning his room, and Da didn't much come into the boys' room at all. So there she sat on The Baseball, next to the Virgin Mother for over a week, and waited for God knew what.

Ganady considered asking Mr. Ouspensky about it, he having more experience with magic than most people. At the very least, Ganady knew he wouldn't laugh. How could a man who watched ghost baseball games laugh at a boy who had followed a magic baseball to a Cockroach Princess and then dreamed of a girl so beautiful that she had to be a princess herself? At most he might observe that between Baba Irina's folktales and Nikolai's romantic notions, Ganady had princesses on the brain. He would be right.

“Oy!”

Ganady lifted his head from the funnies.

“Oy!” The cry was followed this time by a chain of Yiddish exclamations, some of which Ganny was certain he'd never heard before, all delivered in Baba's voice.

Curiosity propelled Ganny out of his chair and up the stairs. On the landing, curiosity was overcome by something much stronger: the flurry of Yiddish was coming from
his
room.

He reached the doorway and peered around the corner to see Baba Irina hovering before his dresser like a large bluebird in quest of a worm. Her hands fluttered around the ball, pecking at it, trying to pick it up without touching its gleaming, black passenger.

Ganady opened his mouth to say something, but Baba Irina was quick; before he'd even piped wind to his throat, she had snatched up the ball in one hand and flung open the window with the other.

He found his voice. “Baba!
No
!”

She turned, expression incredulous. “No—what? Do you
see
this? Do you
see
this?” She shook the ball in his direction, Cockroach uppermost. “This-this
creature
?”

The “creature” did not budge. Baba pushed the window sash further up.

Ganady's mind raced. “Baba, it's sabes!”

“What?”

“Well, what about the laws? The—the
mitzvot
!”

She took her hand from the window sash and rested it on her hip; it was a gesture his mother had inherited. “And what do you know about the
mitzvot
?”

Ganady came into the room, his eyes on the ball. “I know... um...you're not supposed to carry anything—especially not outside.”

It was usually amusing to see Baba's eyes smiling while her mouth was trying not to. Just now, Ganady felt he dared not take his eyes off The Baseball. The Cockroach waved its antennae at him.

“So well you know the
mitzvot
, do you?”

Ganady could honestly say he didn't think he knew the
mitzvot
at all, and was immensely surprised that anything resembling a
mitzvah
had come out of his mouth. He looked at her now and smiled. “Well, I remembered that one.”

She pursed her lips, her eyes going from the imperturbable insect to her grandson's face. “This is
that
ball, is it? I remember the day you brought it home. This is a very special baseball, em?”

Ganny felt an urge to tell her it was a Magic Baseball, but he did not.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you are right about the carrying laws, and perhaps you are wrong. I suppose I shall have to ask Rabbi Andrukh if throwing out a dirty old baseball is breaking a
mitzvah
. So next time, I'll know for certain. For now, perhaps I shall just get rid of this cockroach.”

She turned to the window again and Ganady, galvanized, shot forward and snatched the ball from her hand.

“It's okay, Baba. I really don't want you to break the sabes because of this.”

She cocked her head to give him a long bemused look. “You're a good boy, Ganny,” she said at last, and left him to deal with The Cockroach.

He was in a quandary: he really couldn't just put the ball and its peculiar occupant back on the dresser. Next time, Baba might not feel inclined to be so merciful. Or worse—it might be his mother who found The Cockroach. The Church had no
mitzvot
about carrying cockroaches on the Sabbath; he doubted it was even a venial sin. He couldn't put the thing in his dresser drawer. Who knew where the bug might end up: In a sock? In a shirt pocket? Right where Mama would put his freshly-washed underwear?