Part 16 (1/2)
”Do you think maybe the ghost baseball players were angelic hosts?” Ganady had asked.
Father Z was doubtful of this. Just as he was doubtful that G.o.d spoke through the mysterious Svetlana, who was not even Catholic. He took her, rather, for a symbol of the lure of disobedience.
Then it occurred to Ganady that since both of the speakers in his dream were Jewish, perhaps a Jewish interpreter would be of more help.
He tried his grandmother first.
”I dreamed about Mr. Ouspensky the other night,” he said, fingers aimlessly pattering at the keys of his clarinet.
Next to him on the stoop, Baba Irina hummed the tune he had lately been playing. ”Oh?” she said.
”He was trying to tell me about how life changes, I wasn't listening very well, so he...he turned into Svetlana.”
”Ah. And then did you listen?”
He grinned at her arch look. ”Yeah.”
”Well then, I suppose the dream must have met its purpose.”
”Do all dreams have a purpose?”
”Maybe. Maybe not. But I think that one must.”
”Father Zembruski says G.o.d speaks through dreams in a secret code, and that we have to decipher the code to understand the dream. Like Captain Midnight.”
”Ah. A secret code. And?”
”And he said I should pray to G.o.d to be able to break the code.”
”So, you didn't understand your dream? I thought you said Stanislaus spoke to you about change.”
”He did. They did. Him and Lana.”
”Lana?”
”She asked me to call her 'Lana' because her father called her that, and he's mad at her, so no one calls her that now.”
Baba Irina's eyebrows soared. ”So you did understand the dream then?”
”Sort of.” Ganny tongued his clarinet reed contemplatively. ”Like I said, Mr. O was talking to me about how life changes. Well, I thought he was talking about baseball, but Lana said he meant life-he was talking about Nikki and Yevgeny. He meant that things change-all the time-but no matter how much they change, it's still the same life. So things with Nikki and Yevgeny might change, but they're still there...and I'm still here. We're still in the same game, I guess.”
”Well!” said Baba Irina. ”And for this you needed a decoder? This is not clear enough?”
”But there's more to it than that, Baba. Why am I dreaming about Svetlana at all? She's Jewish-she says. And Father Z said I should be able to make her Catholic. But I couldn't. Why couldn't I make her Catholic? That's the part I don't understand. Is it maybe because she's one of those things that doesn't change-like baseball?”
”Why do you think she will not be Catholic?”
”She says it's because she's real.”
Baba Irina shrugged. ”So? If she's real, you can find her.”
Find her. It seemed so simple. Only where did he begin to look?
oOo He excused himself to go to bed early, which prompted his mother to lay her wrist against his forehead.
”I'm fine, Mama,” he told her. ”I just have a new comic book I want to read.”
”A new comic book? Oh, well, in that case, there is nothing at all wrong with you.” She shooed him on up the staircase with a waving of hands. ”Don't let me keep you.”
He wasn't sleepy. He was wide awake, and after lying in the dark for some time, waiting for the dream to overtake him, he finally pulled a comic book out of his bedside table and settled in to read for a bit.
It was a Superman comic, and the story-one of life and death, earth-shattering events-was hardly calculated to put a seventeen-year-old boy to sleep, but Ganady was distracted. After the fourth reading of the same six frames, he gave in with a sigh and started to close the magazine.
”Ganny!”
He stared down at the page. Svetlana gazed up at him, wearing the person of the hapless Lois Lane, presently in the clutches of a green-skinned mutant.
”Were you waiting for me?” she asked.
”Well...uh...yeah. I was. I wanted to ask you something.”
”Oh, okay.” She looked down at the mutant, frozen in the act of carrying her off, his yellow teeth bared in a garish pen-and-ink snarl.
”This is pretty uncomfortable. Can we go someplace else to talk?”
”Oh...oh, sure. Where would you-”
Ganady found himself standing at home plate in Connie Mack Stadium. He was in the left-hand batter's box; Svetlana faced him across the plate from the right-hand box. She was wearing a Phillies cap and held a ball loosely in one hand.
”-like to go,” Ganny finished lamely.
”This is fine. What did you want to ask me?”
”Your family name.”
”My family name?”
He shrugged, feeling suddenly ridiculous. ”I just wondered what it was.”
”Gusalev.”
This surprised Ganady. He'd half expected her to give a name he knew-the name of one of his cla.s.smates or a friend from shul or church. ”I don't know anybody named Gusalev.”
”You do now.”
Lana's crooked grin, he discovered, did mysterious things to his insides.
”No, I mean I've never heard the name before.”
”Da's people are from Warsaw. Yours are from Keterzyn.” She shrugged artlessly. ”It's not a common name, and until Da they didn't get out of town much.”