Princess of Passyunk Read Online Free Page A

freckles puckered indecisively. “Saint Peter said that God wasn’t partial. That anybody who feared Him and did what was right would be acceptable to Him.”
    Ganady vaguely remembered having heard this, so he nodded.
    â€œFather Zembruski,” said Yevgeny as if the name was shoved from his open lips, “said that doing what’s right means believing in Christ, not just doing what’s right.”
    Ganady nodded again, supposing that Father Z, who had studied these things, should know.
    â€œHas your mother really tried to explain to Baba about Jesus?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Ganady said. “Are you afraid Baba’s going to hell?”
    Yevgeny’s fair skin flushed and his delft eyes looked suddenly bright and watery. “She couldn’t. I mean, she fears God, right?”
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    â€œAnd that’s half of it.”
    Ganny nodded.
    â€œAnd if Father Zembruski is wrong and what Peter meant by doing right is just doing right, then that’s the other half.”
    Baba came out then, arresting any discussion of what it might mean to think that Father Z had been wrong about something.
    â€œAh, here are my good boychiklech ,” she said, and Yevgeny didn’t mention Jesus to her, as much as Ganady knew he wanted to.
    They walked to shul this evening. The weather was mild, the streets and sidewalks still glistening with spring rain. Ganady wondered if the ballgame would be rained out tomorrow. Da had said they might go.
    He thought of Mr. O. “Baba, how long have you known Mr. Ouspensky?”
    â€œWell, when we came to Megidey Tihilim for our first sabes here, there was Stanislaus Ouspensky. I’ve known him since that day.”
    â€œDo you think he’s a...a meshuggener ?”
    â€œGanady! What sort of thing is that to say?”
    â€œI didn’t say it. Nikolai did. He said Mr. Ouspensky likes to play jokes on dummies like me and Yevgeny and that’s why he says...” He broke off, unable to think of a way to explain Mr. O’s theories of time to his grandmother.
    â€œI know what he says,” Baba said, her mouth prim. “Perhaps that makes him a meshuggener. Certainly, it’s not my place to say.”
    â€œDoesn’t he have any family?” Ganady asked.
    â€œShouldn’t you ask him these things?”
    Ganady shrugged, looking around Baba Irina at Yevgeny, who peered back owlishly. “He just said he’d been here a long time. That he came here when he was almost a kid. But not quite.”
    â€œAnd he said he played baseball for some mill,” added Yevgeny.
    â€œHe came over as a young man, I think,” Baba told them. “Perhaps he left his family in Poland. Or perhaps there was no one to come with him. So, what do you boys think? Do you think he’s a meshuggener ?”
    Ganady thought about that for a moment. What was he supposed to think of someone who discussed time-eddies and windows with the same conversational tone as he discussed batting averages and ERAs?
    â€œNo,” he said at last. “I don’t.”
    From Baba’s opposite side, Yevgeny shook his head and said nothing.
    oOo
    Synagogue was, above all, a place where Ganady Puzdrovsky exercised his imagination. Unlike Yevgeny, whose eyes and ears never ceased external surveillance, Ganady withdrew into his own spiritual sanctuary.
    Inside Ganady Puzdrovsky’s head was a baseball diamond. It was 334 feet from home plate to left field, 468 feet to center, 331 feet to right, 86 feet to the backstop. It had no spite fence and was the scene of many more home-team triumphs than the park at 21 st and LeHigh.
    Ganady’s ballpark was always filled to its 35,000 capacity with fans wildly cheering or perched at seat’s edge in the hushed, tense, expectant silence that is only experienced by those who frequent ball games. While the cantor canted and Rabbi Andrukh prayed, play commenced, with