Princess of Passyunk (34 page)

“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—”

“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.

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. Really.”

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.