Princess Of Passyunk Part 18

"But...but the sign..."

"Oh, that. I bought the shop from a guy named Otto Gusthof. He had sons. I don't have sons."

There was something so infinitely sad about the way he said it, that Ganny had to stop himself from imagining that the butcher had wiped a tear from his eye. He recognized this for what it was-the moment for his question.

"Do you...do you have a daughter?"

Mr. Joe's eyes snapped to his face with such force that Ganady thought he should hear a click. "A daughter? Why do you ask?"

Ganady had not considered having to answer that particular question. "I...well..."

"What-you'd like to inherit my Sausage Empire?"

"No I...I know a girl whose last name is Gusalev, that's all."

Now he had the butcher's complete attention. He felt it as a hot, p.r.i.c.kling sensation upon his cheeks. Mr. Joe put his paper down on the gla.s.s top of the empty meat case and leaned forward on his stool.

"What girl is this? What's her given name?"

Ganny swallowed. "Svetlana," he said, and he heard Mr. Joe let out a long, low sigh.

"Svetlana."

Ganny nodded. "Svetlana."

"How does she seem, this Svetlana? Is she well? Is she healthy?"

"She's...she seems okay. She's kind of hard to get to know though. I don't know where she lives or anything like that."

"You don't know where she lives? Where'd you see her?"

"In church."

Mr. Joe's eyes bugged out. "In a church? What kind of church?"

"Saint Stan's-Stanislaus. Over on Wharton."

"A Catholic church? Chas v'cholileh! Well, at least it's not Protestant."

"So, um...then your daughter isn't-"

"Daughter? I have no daughter. My daughter is dead."

Ganny's heart turned to ice in his chest, but then the butcher muttered not quite beneath his breath: "The ungrateful wretch."

"But she's not dead dead?"

The butcher threw him a strange look. "What do you mean, dead dead? You've seen her-you just said so."

"Well, yeah, but only..." Only in my dreams?

Ganny stopped himself from saying the words, picked up his bucket and sponge and rags and stood. "I've got to do the cases."

"Sure," said Mr. Joe, but he continued to watch Ganny work, which made Ganny s.h.i.+ver and sweat in turns.

Finally, he was finished and put away his tools and prepared to go. He was at the door when Mr. Joe asked him: "So, this Svetlana Gusalev you know-and I'm not saying she's my girl, mind you-she seems...normal to you?"

"Well, not exactly. She...she does things I don't think other people can do. And she seems sad. She says she misses her Da something terrible."

Mr. Joe's eyes watered a little, but his face seemed hard as a frozen side of beef. "Does she? Well, that's as may be. But what things does she do that seem so strange to you?"

"It's kind of hard to say."

Gusalev shrugged. "What-hard to say? Just say. Tell me one thing she does that's not exactly normal."

"She comes into my dreams." There, he'd said it.

The butcher shrugged again. "What's not normal about that? My Rodenka-my Stella-came into my dreams when we were courting. The next time you see her, this Svetlana-and I'm not saying she's my daughter, mind you-you tell her for me that a girl should do her duty to her family. It's that simple. A girl should do her duty. You'll tell her?"

Ganady could only nod, staring through the perfectly clean gla.s.s of the butcher shop's front door as it swung shut behind him. The muted, delicate tinkle of the little bell suspended above the lintel jarred him from his astonishment and he turned and ran home as fast as his feet would carry him.

oOo Ganady did not dream of Svetlana that night. Not until the next sabes did he dream of her. They went to Pa.s.syunk Square and watched the old men play chess, and Ganny found it was all he could do not to look at the butcher shop that was on the corner even in his dreams. Svetlana, for her part, made no mention of it at all.

They went to Izzy's next. And Mr. O was there-or at least, Ganny thought, he had put Mr. O there. They talked of baseball heroes long gone and when the subject of Lefty O'Doul came up, they were suddenly at the ballpark with Mr. Ouspensky watching the Giants and Phillies play ghost baseball.

As he did most nights after dreaming of Lana, Ganady went to his dresser and, by the light of the moon, he studied the c.o.c.kroach. This night, he did something that would have been unthinkable even weeks ago-he took the baseball along with the wooden stand he had made for it, and the creature that sat atop it, and moved it to his bedside table. He found that if he set the ball just so, he could see the c.o.c.kroach in silhouette against the window shade, backlit by moon and streetlamp.

What would Mr. Joe think, he wondered, if he asked him if his daughter was sometimes a c.o.c.kroach?

Fourteen: Bagel Boy and Cookie Girl.

"So, you are a businessman now, are you?" Baba Irina said, glancing at Ganady out of the corner of her eye.

They made their way down Tenth toward Izzy's for an after shul snack.

"I wash windows, Baba."

"For two businesses. This is a beginning."

Ganady smiled. Only Baba Irina could see two window-was.h.i.+ng jobs as the start of a career.

At Izzy's they sat at their window table and listened to the radio.

"You do good work," said Baba Irina, tapping the gleaming gla.s.s with a fingernail. "Doesn't he do good work, Isaacson?"

Isak Isaacson sat at the counter reading a paper. His wife Esther was not to be seen which, Ganny suspected, was fine with Baba Irina.

Now Isak glanced up from the sports page and said, "Eh?"

"Ganady washes the windows-good work, yes?"

"If you say so."

"He could be was.h.i.+ng your windows," she said coyly.

"Baba!" Ganny objected.

Baba laughed at him and asked Izzy for two ice creams.

The radio sputtered ads for Sears Roebuck and Coca-Cola, then began to ooze klezmer. Ganady knew the song and daydreamed the clarinet fingerings.

"This is good," said Mr. Isaacson, looking up from his paper. "Who is this?"

"It's the King," said Ganady.

"Elvis?" asked Isaacson.

"Naftule Brandwein-the King of the Klezmer Clarinet," said Baba, looking extremely pleased.

"You like this, Ganny?" Isaacson seemed dumfounded.

Ganny nodded. "Sure. He's my favorite."

"What? Not Elvis Presley? A boy like you-I figured you'd listen to that rock and roll."

"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 reconst.i.tuted 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 bemus.e.m.e.nt.

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-G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sage. 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.