Princess of Passyunk Read online

  “You already knew that.”

  “And how,” said Nikolai.

  “Did Da yell?”

  “You hear yelling?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then I guess not.”

  “Mama didn’t cry?”

  “Mama wasn’t up still. Only Da.”

  “But he didn’t yell?”

  “No yelling.”

  “Nick? Ganny?” Their mother was at the bottom of the stairs. “Breakfast, you lazy boys!”

  Ganady hopped out of bed. “Better hurry,” he said. “Mama will want us to beat the rugs today before we go to the game.”

  Nick was silent. He hadn’t moved. “I don’t think I’m going to the game today.”

  “Not go to the game?” Ganny repeated through the fabric of a half-pulled-on tee shirt. “Why not? You sick?”

  Another, more disturbing thought occurred to him. He pulled the tee shirt full on and circled Nick’s bed to stand where he could see his brother’s dark thatch of hair poking out of the covers.

  “Are you in trouble with Mama and Da?”

  “No, but I think Steve Guercino is.” Nick shook off the covers and sat up, leaving his younger brother speechless.

  oOo

  “He looked like one of those monsters from the Saturday matinee last week.”

  “The zombies or the frogmen?” Yevgeny wanted to know.

  “The zombies.”

  It was the middle of the second inning. The two boys sat along the first base line, watching the Phillies trot onto the field.

  “He had a fat lip and two black eyes and his jaw was swollen so bad he had to eat oatmeal for breakfast. His hands were swollen, too,” he added as an afterthought.

  “You mean, he hit back?” asked Yevgeny incredulously.

  “Here we go, boys. Peanuts.”

  Mr. Ouspensky slid into his seat, red-and-white-striped bags of hot, roasted peanuts in his gnarled hands.

  “Who’s got a fat lip?” he asked Ganady, passing out the treats. “That big brother of yours?”

  The boys glanced at each other. The old man seemed to have exceptionally sharp ears.

  Mr. O leaned toward Ganny. “Girl trouble, eh?” He winked.

  “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

  “Eh. Not so much a guess. I talked to your grandmother. Or maybe I should say, she talked to me.”

  And the entire congregation of Megidey Tihilim, Ganny suspected. Given a few sabes, every member of every Jewish synagogue and glayzele tey society in the neighborhood would know that Nikolai Puzdrovsky had “girl trouble” as Mr. O had so eloquently put it.

  Ganady thought back to the morning; breakfast had turned into a family council. Puzdrovskys great and small had gathered around the dining room table with Nikolai holding the place of honor at one end, his little sister clutching one of his swollen hands. She had cried when she first saw him, and peered up into his damaged face, her chin a-quiver.

  Before them, the oatmeal had grown cold.

  “Perhaps,” said Da, “you should stay away from this girl after all. Perhaps these are not our kind of people.”

  Nick had not looked up from his untouched oatmeal. “Antonia is our kind of people. It’s just her brother. Well, and her Da isn’t sure about me either.”

  “There, you see?” asked Da. “A child learns from his parents how to hate or love. How can you keep company with a girl whose family is against you?”

  “Your Da is right, Nikolai,” said Baba Irina. “A man can’t abide in a land where he has no friends.”

  “I have a friend. Antonia. She’s the only friend I need. And besides, her mother likes me.”

  “But not her father,” Da reminded him.

  Nick had merely shrugged. “Not so much.”

  “They’re not our people,” Da said again, as if to convince himself.

  Mama sniffled.

  Nick looked up and met their eyes at last. “Don’t you see? That’s the whole problem. They don’t think I’m their people. But I’m her people. It’s just like with you and Da. You told me that, remember?”

  “Oh, Nikolai,” murmured Mama.

  “I love her,” Nick said. “I’m going to marry her.”

  “Oh, Nikolai,” repeated Mama, but there was something different in her voice this time. And in her eyes, Ganady was certain he saw the Sheyn vi di Levune look.

  Da had gotten up from the table and walked to gaze out the window into the garden.

  “We are Catholic; they are Catholic,” he’d said after a moment and Baba Irina had made a dainty snort. “We go to the same congregation. We sit in the same pews. We use the same confessionals. We say the same prayers. We hear the litany in the same priestly language. Do they imagine they are better because they do this on a different day?”

  Ganady had pondered that, for it seemed almost profound to him.

  Now, he said as much to Mr. Ouspensky.

  “Religion is like baseball,” the old man said, nodding thoughtfully. “Maybe they are one and the same.”

  “Huh?” Yevgeny grunted around a mouthful of peanuts.

  “Your families worship at Saint Stanislaus. Ganny’s Baba and I worship at Megidey Tihilim. And there’s the Lutheran church over on South 4th and Saint Michael’s Orthodox up north on the zibete. And everyone is there out of love. But everyone believes their love is true love; that their rabbis or priests are the best. Now, you and Yevgeny and I, we also worship here at the church of Saint Connie Mack. Don’t we think our priests are the best?”

  Ganady had never thought of baseball as religion or Connie Mack as a cathedral or the Phillies as priests, but the idea did not seem at all strange. In fact, it had a certain rightness.

  After a moment’s thought he said, “No. They aren’t the best, but they’re ours.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. O.

  oOo

  Ganady had an entire week to contemplate the similarity between baseball and religion. It was a week in which Nick kept a low profile; waiting for the swelling in his various body parts to subside.

  His father had asked him to consider staying a comfortable distance from Annie Guercino until perhaps her brother should leave home to take up his own life, but by Thursday night he had relented. A week of his eldest son moping about the house looking tragic was enough to make him reconsider.

  That, and a word or two from his beloved Ravke.

  “The boy is miserable,” she told her husband as they sat on their stoop in the moonlight of a perfect summer evening.

  She was unaware that her youngest son, sitting in his window casement with a stack of comic books, was hearing every word.

  “How would you have felt if one of our families had said we should ignore one another?” she continued.

  “Our families, except for your mother—God bless her—were back in Poland when we met. Those that still lived.”

  “Ah, but if they had been there! A Jew and a Catholic, Vitaly. They would have said the same thing as the Guercinos: that Vitaly, he’s not our people. That Ravke—she’s not a believer that our Vitaly should marry her.”

  “But...” said Vitaly.

  “You know I’m right.”

  “But...” said Vitaly.

  “Even though we were all Poles together, they’d have said it: not our kind. Not our faith.”

  “But, I’m not saying that,” said Vitaly.

  “Oh, so it doesn’t come from our mouths. But doesn’t it amount to the same thing if we ask our boy to heed it when it comes from the mouths of others?”

  Da was silent and Mama said in a soft voice that Ganny had to strain to hear: “Would you have stayed away, Vitaly? Would you have kept your distance from me if our families said so?”

  “Hm,” Da said, which was no answer at all.

  His answer—his real answer—came on Friday night at supper just as Baba Irina began the Ritual.

  “Who will go with me to shul this evening?” she asked.

  Before the Ritual could
continue, Da said, “Tonight we go to mass.”

  Baba looked for a moment as if the Day of Atonement had arrived unannounced. “You go to Sunday morning mass.”

  “This week we will go to Friday mass with Nikolai.”

  “Then who will go with me to temple?”

  The silence was sudden and awful. Accusing glances winged between the Puzdrovsky patriarch and his wife. The children averted their eyes.

  “Perhaps Ouspensky—” began Vitaly, and next to him Marija opened her mouth.

  “Can’t I go with her like always?” Ganady asked.

  “No. We must attend mass as a family.”

  “Then I’ll go with you tomorrow morning, Baba,” Ganady told his grandmother.

  The old woman’s lips compressed and she gave her son-in-law such a look as might wither a lesser man...or a wiser one.

  “Thank you, Ganny,” she said to her grandson. “Of course, we won’t know as many folks there and you will have to call Yevgeny and tell him not to come tonight.”

  “Yes, Baba,” he said, and her eyes thanked him.

  She returned to her meal with a huge sigh. Everyone else looked face down into their plates.

  “May I go?”

  All heads lifted as one and turned toward Marija who sat with her hands folded meekly in her lap, blinking at this sudden sharp regard.

  “Go?” asked Da.

  “To shul. Tomorrow. With Baba and Ganny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I must be in bed asleep when Ganny and Baba go to shul on Friday night. On Saturday, there’s no staying up late, so I could go.”

  It was a statement of fact—quiet and sure—and it did not answer Da’s real question.

  Ganny caught the sudden spark in his grandmother’s eyes, the slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  “Well,” said Vitaly.

  Marija turned to her natural ally. “Mama? Can’t I go?”

  “Well,” said Vitaly again. “It’s only that I’m afraid you might be confused.”

  “Confused?”

  “Well, the Jews revere Moses and—”

  “Catholics revere Moses,” observed Marija.

  “Well... But we don’t... They don’t... It’s not... That is to say...”

  The senior Puzdrovsky looked to his wife for guidance or support, but she would only shrug.

  He echoed the shrug. “I suppose, as long as you also go to mass.”

  Marija granted him a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Da!”

  She went immediately back to her meal before something else might be said about the matter.

  Ganady wondered if Marija would now be included in Armin the Opshprekher’s yearly prayers and spells.

  oOo

  From the sidewalk in front of Saint Stan’s it seemed to Ganady that the aging cathedral was a box of captive stars and suns. Light burst from every aperture, shooting into the night air and spilling out over sidewalk and street.

  The opening of the great doors was a revelation; stepping into the narthex in a flood of golden light, he thought that all masses should be held at night when the glow of candle and lamp transported it nearer to the Glory of God.

  Baba’s synagogue was as holy, if not nearly as grand, and both houses of worship had the same warm smell of beeswax, wood polish, and incense. Perhaps, Ganady thought as his family made its way to an empty pew, that was the very scent of holiness, and all such places had it.

  Being that they were newcomers to Friday night mass (except for Nick), much of the congregation turned to look at them. This was exactly what Vitaly Puzdrovsky had in mind, of course, for they were almost late in arriving and Deacon Markov made much of their coming.

  “Well, here are the Puzdrovskys! Two masses in one week! You set a fine example,” he added in a stage whisper.

  “Ah, well...” was all Da could say before the good deacon hurried away to his duties.

  As fate or the will of God would have it, the Guercinos occupied a pew across the central aisle and a row or two behind where the Puzdrovskys sat. So, they were able to see the cordial greetings accorded the Puzdrovskys by friends and neighbors.

  As they passed the Guercinos, Da nodded politely at their patriarch; the two mothers exchanged amiable nods; Antonia smiled shyly at Nikolai while beside her, her brother glared.

  After that, it was mass as usual. Ganady found it difficult to concentrate on the ritual. Overcome by light and warmth, he drifted in almost a dream state, intoning where it was called for, but never really feeling as if he were there.

  He wondered if that was the way one was supposed to feel in a house of God—slightly elevated, faraway, absorbing more sensation than sense. It was certainly how he felt at shul.

  Nikolai stole glances at his princess all during the service. By the time they reached the Sanctus the two were sharing long, meaningful looks. This was not lost on Stefano, who continued to glower at Nick like a dog separated from a cat by a windowpane.

  After Deacon Markov sang the dismissal, after the recitation of the Last Gospel, after the procession had returned to the sacristy, the pews emptied into the aisles and the congregants merged.

  Antonia Guercino managed to lag behind her family enough to afford Nick a shy nod and a murmured “Hello.” She turned her attention next to Rebecca Puzdrovsky, smiling sweetly and saying “Good evening, Mrs. Puzdrovsky.”

  “Such a good girl!” exclaimed Rebecca. “See how polite, Vitaly. Didn’t I tell you what a sweet, thoughtful girl she is. You know those wonderful little cookies with the almond paste we had at Tuesday dinner? She brought those.”

  “Delicious,” said Vitaly, on cue.

  “Mother taught me how to make them,” Antonia murmured.

  Rebecca turned the full effects of her charm on the Guercino Mama, who had turned back to overhear the conversation. “Such a recipe,” she said. “I’d love to have it. Do you think I might?”

  Mrs. Guercino—Francesca by name—smiled and nodded, casting her frowning husband a sideways glance.

  Before the commingled group of Guercinos and Puzdrovskys had migrated down the aisle to the narthex, the two women and their daughters were happily exchanging recipes while Vitaly and Sergio Guercino had introduced themselves and were talking sports. Nikolai hung on the edge of the group between Annie and her mother.

  Ganady watched wide-eyed. At this rate, they would be fast friends by the time they reached the sidewalk. He shot a look back over his shoulder.

  Stefano Guercino lagged behind them in the aisle, a look of stupefaction on his face.

  oOo

  Ganady decided he must have been much impressed with Saint Stanislaus at night, for he went back to it in his dreams. One moment he was settling into his pillow, and the next he was strolling up Fitzwater toward Saint Stan’s.

  At the bottom of the sanctuary steps he paused to make sure he wasn’t wearing his pajamas, and to wonder if in the realm of dreams the cathedral existed inside his head or if he existed here in front of the church as a phantom.

  He supposed he was to enter, so he climbed the steps to find that it was as warm and mellowly bright as it had been in reality. But now there were no worshippers, no choir, and no priests. The pews were empty; the only sound the whisper of a thousand tongues of flame.

  No, not quite empty, Ganady realized, for someone sat in the first row before the altar. It was a woman or girl, her hair covered with a black lace scarf.

  Antonia, he thought, and glanced about, expecting to see his big brother. Nick was nowhere in sight.

  Ganady made his way down the main aisle, wondering what he might have to say to his brother’s beloved. He hesitated at the end of the first row, not wanting to interrupt her prayers. She didn’t seem to have noticed him. Perhaps phantoms did not make noises other phantoms could hear. Or perhaps she was really here, saying prayers of thanksgiving for the miracle God, with a little help from Rebecca Puzdrovsky and Annie herself, had wrought this evening.

  Ganady
glanced up at the altar with its old-country crucifix, recalling with embarrassing clarity his comment about Jesus winking. Which did not stop him from wondering if He might have winked when Nikki came here with Antonia.

  “Hello, Ganny.”

  He turned to find Antonia watching him.

  Except that it wasn’t Antonia after all. It was the girl from another dream—Svetlana. The scarf was gone and her hair gleamed a pale, rose gold in the candlelight.

  He moved with dreamer’s grace and ease to slide into the pew beside her, marveling at how much the same she was: the twilight eyes, the pale hair, the delicate Slavic features. Everything about her was the same. That seemed remarkable to Ganady, who took for granted the changeability of dreamscapes.

  “I thought you were Antonia,” he told her. “We saw her tonight at mass, so I guess I thought...”

  “It made sense to dream about her.”

  “I guess.”

  “So how’s that going, do you think? Your brother and Antonia, I mean.”

  “Oh. Pretty good, I guess. I mean, the families have met.” He shrugged.

  “And the womenfolk talked recipes?”

  “Yeah. Antonia brought us these little cookies. Mama asked for the recipe.”

  Svetlana nodded. “That’s all right, then. Nikki should be happy.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “You know, I can bake cookies, too. And babka and cruschiki. But I’m best at meat dishes.”

  Ganny could only stare at her. “Why am I dreaming about you?”

  The question was directed at himself; he didn’t really expect an answer.

  She didn’t give one. “Do you mind? Dreaming about me, I mean.”

  “Well, no. Of course not. I like it.”

  “Good. I like being dreamed about.”

  A striking thought. He turned to look at her and noticed again the color of her hair in the candlelight. He noticed that it was long—cascading down her back to her waist. It almost reminded him of something...a tickle of the mind that did not quite generate a sneeze.

  “What does it feel like to be dreamed about?” he asked.

  She smiled. “How do you feel?”

  “Me? I feel...” He paused to consider this. “I feel warm. Safe.”

  “Happy?”

  “Happy.”