Princess Of Passyunk Part 5

Now Da laughed, while Mama trilled like a young girl.

"I'll put on the kettle. There are cookies," she said, and hurried up the stairs.

Da followed her, still smiling.

"That girl," said Baba. "Such a head for dreams. And you are just like her, Ganny."

Ganady sat up sharply. He didn't recall his grandmother ever having made that observation before.

"When I was a girl in Poland," Baba continued. "It was not like this. We did not go to dances and take moonlight strolls. Your grandfather and I met at shul. We went to the same Talmud Torah and smiled at each other in the halls and in the streets. When he offered for me, our families were pleased to allow us to marry."

Ganady wondered how pleased she had been. The question came from his lips before he realized he had asked it. "Did you want to marry Papa? Or was it just your family?"

"Such a question!" she said, then fell silent.

When Ganady thought she would not answer the question at all, she said, "Your grandfather was a very handsome young man and he was from a fine family-the son of a judge. He was also a good man, kind and happy. I liked him very well."

"But...what if you hadn't liked him?" asked Ganady, to whom the concept of arranged marriage was entirely alien.

Baba sat up a little straighter and tugged at her shawl. "There is such a thing as honor, Ganady. If Yisrul Kutshinski had been a bad man, my father would never have accepted his offer. But he was a good man, as I said, and his offer of marriage was made in good faith. And that is the spirit in which I accepted it."

She paused, and above them, a clarinet wailed.

Ganady wondered how he might change the subject.

Yevgeny, who had sat silently till now, was not to allow it. "Is that how everybody got engaged?"

"Not at all. Often the families would choose their children's mates and arrange the marriages. This is a very ancient custom, you know."

Ganady was confused. "But wasn't your marriage to Papa arranged?"

Baba seemed almost insulted at the notion. "Why should you say that? My family didn't choose Yisrul, Ganady. He chose me, and my family and I accepted the choice. Does this seem strange to you? Why? There are stranger ways to choose a mate." She smiled the smile that preceded a story.

Yevgeny, galvanized at the merest hint of a tale, asked, "Like what?"

Baba settled back against the stoop into her storytelling posture.

"Well, there was once a king of Poland, in the Golden Age of the Jagiellos, many, many centuries ago, who had three sons: three princes. My great-great-great-great-grandfather was archivist to this king-or so my mother told me-and so I suppose he must have written the story down. But I heard it from my mother, who heard it from her father."

She smiled, and her two boychiklech smiled with her and settled back into their accustomed listening positions.

"When the princes had become men, which happened much earlier in those days-about your age-their father the king gave them each a bow and one arrow and told them this: 'You must each shoot an arrow into the air, and follow it to find your bride, for where it falls, there she will be.' So, each prince took up his bow and fired his arrow. The first prince found his arrow in the garden belonging to a duke. And standing next to it was the duke's beautiful young daughter. The second prince found his arrow in the hands of the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The third prince, Ivan, followed his arrow into a swamp."

At this moment, Ganady's mother came out of the house with tea, milk, and a plate of pierniki, and the boys chafed to hear what sort of bride the third prince had found in a swamp. The sweets were served and Mama went upstairs again, but Baba didn't continue her story. Instead, she sipped her tea and watched moths fluttering about a nearby street lamp. Above their heads the music ended.

"Well?" said Yevgeny. "What did the prince find in the swamp?"

Baba picked up as if she had paused but a moment. "Why, a frog, of course. What other kind of bride might live in a swamp? But, she was no ordinary frog. She was a frog princess and daughter of the King of the Northern Sea. Of course, she was under a spell."

"Who was under a spell?" Nikolai popped into the pool of lamplight below the stoop, quite as if he'd been summoned.

Ganady sighed and Yevgeny said, "A princess."

"What princess?"

"The one Baba was just telling us about. The Polish princess who was turned into a frog."

Ganady could hear Nick's eyes rolling.

Baba cleared her throat noisily and took another sip of her tea. "Nikolai isn't interested in such things as princesses and enchantments."

"How did she get enchanted?" asked Nikolai, belying that.

"She was given mushrooms cursed by her father's opshprekher, or so my mother told me," said Baba, challenging Nick with her eyes.

Nick flopped onto the steps and dug an elbow into Ganady's ribs. "Wow, guess we'd better think twice before we eat mushrooms again."

It made Ganady hot when Nick taunted Baba. "Don't you have homework?" he asked.

"On a Friday night?"

"I want to hear about the princess," said Yevgeny.

"Okay," said Nick, picking at a thumbnail. "I'll tell you about a princess. I met one at the dance tonight. Princess Annie."

"What sort of name is that for a princess?" protested Yevgeny.

"Her name is Antonia. But everybody calls her Annie."

"Antonia's more princess-like," Yevgeny persisted.

"Okay, Princess Antonia, then. Who cares?"

"I should think she would care," said Baba Irina. "When I came here, they all wanted to call me 'Irene.' And poor Ravke, she worked in that purse factory for a while, you know, when we first got here. 'Rebecca' they called her and 'Becky.' I remember one day she came home in tears, crying because she was so embarra.s.sed. Her supervisor had scolded her in front of everyone for not answering when she was spoken to. 'Are you stupid?' he asked her. 'I call and call and you don't know your own name.' So she says, 'My name is Ravke Kutshinska.' And her supervisor says, 'What kind of name is that? Your papers say you are Rebecca. You must answer to Rebecca.'"

Ganady glanced from Yevgeny to Nikolai. Both of the other boys were directing their gazes and thoughts at a long, crooked fissure in the sidewalk just beyond the stoop.

Nikolai, he knew, would no longer be thinking of princesses, but of the time in first grade when he had tried to describe how their puppy had messed the floor. In his giggling haste, he had said, "The hint did du-du on the poodle," and the cla.s.s had gone into stunned silence that was followed immediately by raucous laughter.

Nick no longer spoke Yiddish except by accident.

Yevgeny said, "My teachers all call me Eugene. No matter how many times I remind them that my name is Yevgeny. Except for Father Kiselev. I like Father Kiselev," he added.

There was silence for a moment, in which the only sound was Baba sipping her tea.

Into that silence Mama opened the front door and called, "Boys, it's time to come in. Yevgeny, your Mama called."

Yevgeny scrambled to his feet. "G'night," he said. "Thanks for the milk and cookies, Mrs. Puzdrovsky."

Ganady helped with the tea things, then escorted Baba Irina upstairs. He could not decide whether he was glad or sorry to have a name that refused to be properly Anglicized.

Nick lagged behind, watching the near empty street. Perhaps, Ganny thought, he was thinking of Princess Annie.

Six: Three Princes.

"So what's with this princess Baba was telling you about the other night?" Nikolai wanted to know.

It was the first day of spring break and the boys were wandering the neighborhood. They were working their way toward Izzy's with change jingling in their pockets, and Ganady was pleased to have Nikolai with them again.

Nikolai was always busy after school, it seemed, for he had developed a sudden fascination with the library, often coming home with books on subjects in which Ganady had no idea he possessed any interest. When he was available for after-school activities, he seemed not to have the energy for them. Ganady and Yevgeny suspected Nick had begun to think of them as excess baggage. Younger excess baggage. In a word, "kids."

"It was just a story," said Ganady defensively.

"Yeah? So how did it go?"

"The princes were supposed to choose their brides," said Yevgeny, "so their father gave them magical bows and arrows and they shot the arrows into the air and when they got to where the arrows fell, they found their brides."

"How do you track an arrow?" asked Nick the Pragmatic. "n.o.body can track an arrow. And besides, they might've shot somebody."

Yevgeny shook his head, impatience standing out like the copious freckles that dotted his nose. "These were magic arrows. They do what they're told to do, find the princess, not shoot the princess."

Nick digested this in silence and Ganady said, "Why don't people do stuff like that anymore?"

"No arrows?" offered Nick.

"No imagination," said Yevgeny with a sideways glance at the older youth.

"I asked Father Zembruski," said Ganady, and the other two boys turned to look at him.

"About magic arrows?" Nick was incredulous.

"About why things don't work like they used to. Take G.o.d, for example. The Torah and the Gospels say He was around all the time back then-prophets and miracles and all. Now, nothing. No prophets, no apostles, no raising the dead, nothing."

"Bubkis," agreed Nick. "Why do you think that is?"

"I think it's because we're so wicked," said Yevgeny. "I think He's mad at us. In the Gospels, Christ says that G.o.d won't give the Israelites a sign because He gave them Moses and the prophets and they didn't listen. And then He sent Jesus and they didn't listen to Him. Worse than that, they killed Him. So maybe the same goes for us. G.o.d figures we'll never listen, so no signs and wonders."

"You think?"

"You see any apostles around here?"

"No, but there are still holy men," argued Ganady. "Look at Father Zembruski-he's holy, right? And Rabbi Andrukh-his parents were practically martyrs. They died at Dachau. If there was any magic left, they'd know about it. They've both seen miracles, but none of them here. Even Izzy's seen a miracle."

He didn't mention Mr. Ouspensky.

Nick laughed. "You're kidding."

"No. He called it the Miracle of the Mushrooms. It happened in Keterzyn, he said. There was this farm, and these n.a.z.i soldiers showed up at the door and demanded food and drink. They'd gotten separated from their troop and they were real hungry and kind of scared, and that made them mean."

"Gee," said Nick. "Mean n.a.z.is. Imagine that."

Ganady gave him a dark look and continued, "So, the farmer-Lubov, was his name-invites them in-"

"He has a choice?" asked Nikolai.

Another dark look went from Ganady to his brother. "Anyway, the farmer has a pretty daughter. And the n.a.z.is start making eyes at her the minute they see her. So, Lubov sends his daughter out to pick mushrooms for a stew. And just before she leaves, one of the soldiers finds their Torah. Well, they know what that means, so the farmer tells his daughter not to come back from her mushroom hunt. But the head soldier suspects something, so he sends a guy with her. So, what she does is, she picks poison mushrooms, figuring dead is better than death camp. And she and her mother make this stew and everyone eats. And when they wake up the next morning, the soldiers are all dead, but the Lubovs are spared."

Nick shook his head. "Wouldn't happen here. That's old-country stuff."

"But there's stuff here from the old country," argued Ganady. "Heck, there's stuff in the synagogue all the way from Israel. Really old stuff. And you know what Baba Irina says about Philly."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Oy, se flig zan vi Dzheruzalem!" he mimicked with such utter perfection that Ganady nearly choked on a combination of mirth and outrage. "But it's not Jerusalem and it's not anything like Jerusalem," Nick continued. "Or Keterzyn, either. I don't think Polish or Jewish magic works here. It's not compatible. America is a very practical sort of place."

"Why would G.o.d make some places to have magic and others not?" asked Yevgeny.

This required several blocks of silent pondering during which the boys reached Izzy's. Here, there were kosher sausages to be eaten. They settled in at the counter to chew contentedly and listen to the old men natter in Yiddish over the sports pages.

"So if there is any magic in America, what is it?" asked Ganady at length.

"What about the crucifix in Saint Stanislaus?" asked Yevgeny.

"It's from Krakow," said Nick.

"Besides," said Ganady, "Rabbi Andrukh says he doesn't think G.o.d does magic. He does miracles."

"What's the difference?" asked Yevgeny.

"The difference is, G.o.d doesn't do magic. Rabbi says we do it, somehow."

"Makes sense," said Nick between bites. "I mean how could the crucifix help you find a wife?"

Ganady shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe you take the girl up to the altar and if she's the right one, Jesus winks or something."

Yevgeny disapproved of this idea. "I don't think Jesus would wink."

It was late afternoon when the boys got up and wandered on, discussing the possibility that trolley cars or black cats or places that had Indian names like Pa.s.syunk or Manayunk might be capable of generating magic. This latter category seemed quite promising to Ganady for, after all, they were native places and must therefore possess some sort of native magic. The question, of course, was whether it would work for immigrants.

Nick was of the opinion that it had apparently not worked terribly well for the Indians, so there was no reason to believe it would work for anyone else.

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

"Baseball," he said.