Part 6 (1/2)
The other two boys looked at each other, resembling a pair of startled carp. Yevgeny grinned.
Nick shaded his eyes and gazed west across the park toward the row houses and shops whose weathered brown faces blushed in the waning sun.
”So, if it happened in America, old King what's-his-name would have given his little princes bats and magic baseb.a.l.l.s and sent them out to score princesses instead of home runs?”
Ganady liked the idea well enough. ”Sure, why not?”
In the upstairs window above one of the shops, a curtain fluttered and Nick took his hand down from his eyes.
”Dumb,” he said, then: ”It's late. We better scram.”
Scram they did, but at a leisurely pace that might have been mistaken for the same meandering that had brought them there.
Seven: Princess Annie.
Baseball / season had started, a sure harbinger of the coming summer. Sometimes Ganady's Da took the boys to Phillies games and, on occasion, Yevgeny's father came with. The two men would sit and talk business past each other while the game proceeded now lazily, now urgently, below. Sometimes the boys were on their own.
The Toschevs owned The Samoravam, a restaurant on Wharton Street that was doing ”land-office business”-whatever that meant. On Friday nights, the place was especially packed, and every adult in the family-parents, grandparents and older siblings-were pressed into service.
Ganady wondered if perhaps they were unaware that Yevgeny disappeared every Friday night to go to shul. He wondered, too, if someday soon that might change.
Yevgeny thought not.
”They don't want me in the restaurant,” he said. ”Dad wants I should go to college. The restaurant goes to Alik and Zofia.”
”Kind of like in the Prodigal Son, huh?” Ganady grinned. ”You going to go out and see the world?”
Standing on the top step of section E in the Lower Deck of Connie Mack Stadium, Yevgeny looked down into his popcorn.
”I don't want to see the world. I want to work in the restaurant with Mom and Dad. But they want me to 'make something of myself.' They want me to be a teacher. They've talked to Father Ivanov about what college I should go to and everything. You know what's really dumb? Alik doesn't want to be in the restaurant, he wants to be a teacher.”
”Why don't you tell your parents that?”
”I don't think they want to hear it.”
”Yeah, but shouldn't you and Alik tell them anyway? It's your life, right?”
Yevgeny shook his head. ”You don't understand. It's what they want.”
This came to Ganady's mind again when, next sabes, Yevgeny was unable to attend synagogue. His aunt and uncle had come to visit and he must go to see a movie with his younger cousins.
”A movie?” Baba had repeated. ”In Americanish? Then you must come and tell me all about it. But in Yiddish,” she'd added, eyes twinkling.
That evening Ganady had shared with Baba Yevgeny's secret sorrow.
Baba had listened and said, ”Ah,” and nodded.
”I don't understand,” Ganady said. ”Why don't they ask him and Alik what they want?”
”Because they expect them to understand that the family comes first. The eldest son, by tradition, takes the family business. And if Alik is to have the restaurant, Yevgeny would do very well to go to university.”
”But if Alik wants to be a teacher and Yevgeny wants to work in the restaurant, what does it matter? All the bases are still covered.”
Baba blinked at him. ”What, bases?”
”I mean, they'd still have a son who's a teacher and a son in the business.”
”To the oldest son goes the business, Ganny. It's the same in your family. It's tradition. It's more than tradition, it's duty.”
”But what if Alik would make a better teacher and Yevgeny a better chef? What if-”
”Ganny, why does this trouble you so?”
Why, indeed? He pondered that. ”I guess because I'd like Yevgeny to be happy.”
”Who says he won't be happy? You remember that prince, Ivan, with his frog?”
Ganny nodded slowly, uncertain where his grandmother was headed.
”Well, how happy do you think he was when he waded into that bog, em? Do you think he made a brocheh for his da's wisdom when he saw that frog with his arrow? And how did he end, I ask you?”
Ganady squinted up his eyes and tried not to look disbelieving. ”Happily ever after?”
Baba shrugged. ”How do I know from ever after? But in this life, he was happy.”
At this juncture, a shadow fell long upon the sidewalk, thrown from the street lamp toward Wharton. Ganny looked up expecting to see Yevgeny. Instead, he saw his brother, Nikolai. Hands in pockets, shuffling along, his head down. As he realized the shuffle was actually more of a limp, Ganady rose.
Baba, too, came to her feet with an alacrity that belied her age. ”Nikki? What's wrong?”
Nikolai stopped just below the stoop, cramming his hands even further into his pockets. ”Nothing,” he mumbled.
Baba smacked the flat of her hand on the railing. ”Nikolai Feodor Puzdrovsky, don't give me 'nothing.' Come here.”
He hesitated, but obeyed, coming into the light from the front windows.
Ganady felt his stomach clench. His brother's clothes were rumpled and dirty and a dark smear of blood swept from his upper lip to his chin.
Baba grasped Nikolai's face in one wiry hand, turning it this way and that. She let go of his chin to brush at the front of his s.h.i.+rt.
”Such a mess! Your poor Mama. Do you know how hard is dried blood to get out? Inside with you!”
He moved, then, up the steps and into the house while Ganady and Baba trailed, one in shocked silence, the other giving a running preview of what each parent would think, feel, say and do when they saw their eldest son.
Baba's prophecies were quickly proven, for Mama let out a kvitch of maternal distress and launched into immediate action. And while moist rags and ointments appeared out of nowhere, Da shouted and paced and demanded the full knowledge of what had happened and what lump had done it.
It was not, however, until Baba had brought tea (the universal curative) and Nick had changed clothes and remanded his ruined garments to a sink full of cold water and Da was merely pacing and Baba merely hovering and Ganny sitting on Da's footstool where he could see that Marija had padded out onto the upstairs landing to eavesdrop, that Nikolai related his tale of woe.