Page 100 of Pioneer Summer

Volodya recited the memorized words in a serious but rather indifferent voice. Yurka had already heard the monologue during rehearsal, so he didn’t listen to it now, instead helping the actors get ready for their first scene.

Volodya finished delivering his official welcome and handed the floor over to Polina, the play’s narrator. In a clear, expressive voice, she began reciting the poem that was ubiquitous at all Pioneer camps, Zheleznov’s “Pioneer Heroes,” about how the Soviet people fought valiantly and saved everyone from Fascism, but at great cost to themselves.

Mitya was working the curtain. He was standing at the ready, his gloved hands gripping the rope, and he was getting antsy. He whispered to Yurka, “Well? So you’re going to nod, right, when it’s time to open it?”

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Yurka wasn’t convinced Mitka could handle the curtain all by himself; he’d have to open and close the curtain at least thirty times, after all. Since it wasn’t practical to completely switch out the sets every time there was a scene change, they had divided the stage into two halves. The left half was for indoor scenes, while the right half was for scenes that were set outdoors. And because the script maintained a regular alternation between indoor and outdoor scenes, only the right half of the stage, the outdoor part, had to be covered by the curtain whenever there was an indoor scene, and vice versa.

Mitka was more serious than Yurka had ever seen him. “I can do it myself!” he insisted, sneaking a peek at Ulyana, who was warming up for her entrance. Yurka realized that the curtain had become a way for Mitka to prove his manhood; still, Yurka had his doubts.

“But, Mitya, it’s only easy to draw the curtain at first. You’re going to have to draw it a hundred times during the—”

“It’s fine!”

“Mitya, if we shit the bed here, even just one thing ...” Yurka expressed himself in exactly the words that were running through his brain. And why not? Volodya was elsewhere, and none of the senior campers were around, either, so nobody was there to tell him off for it.

But Mitka was stubborn and declared firmly, “Yura, I’ll do it myself!”

There was no time to argue. The moment of truth was upon them. Yurka was very worried, even though his entrance wasn’t for another whole act, because he was in charge today, and Volodya was counting on him, and Yurka had to show everyone what he could do. It felt like he’d put part of himself into the show, and he was invested in its success.

The Young Avengers had already taken their opening positions and were getting ready for curtain. Polina was starting the final stanza of “Pioneer Heroes,” which called on everyone to always remember and honor the young heroes who’d died for their country.

Yurka took a deep breath, trying to calm his agitation. He opened his eyes and nodded to Mitya. The rope creaked and, in perfect accordance with the plan, the curtain slid up, revealing the left side of the stage: the indoor side. The first scene was where Zina Portnova and her nine-year-old sister, Galya, arrived in the village in late June 1941 and found out the war had started. As the narrator, Polina announced that the village was quickly occupied and that Zina soon met Fruza Zenkova—played by Ulyana—and joined the ranks of the other brave young people of the Byelorussian SSR in the Young Avengers.

The left side of the stage was quite picturesque: the crew had fastened a big picture of the inside wall of a wooden hut to the backdrop, hung propaganda posters on the wall, and arranged suitcases and duffel bags on the floor. They had even brought over dishes and pots and pans. Masha, her hair pulled down over her face to hide the rash that covered her cheeks after she was toothpasted with Pomorin, started playing the Moonlight Sonata. The Young Avengers had gathered at a table with a map and were planning their sabotage. All the play’s main characters were in this scene, and they all had at least one line, meaning that if even one of them made a mistake, the entire scene would go off the rails. So far everything was going smoothly, but Yurka, who was scrupulously following the actors’ lines in the script, was prepared to prompt them.

“Zina,” said Ulyana as Zenkova, the secretary of the Avengers, turning to Portnova. “You’ve been working in the officers’ mess for a long time now. The time has come to give you a task!”

The leader held a little glass bottle of perfume out to Portnova. (They hadn’t been able to find anything else at camp.) “This is rat poison,” she explained. “You have to poison their food.”

“I will!” Portnova replied readily.

“And now we move on to the next issue. A secret cache of weapons has been found. Ilya, how many weapons do we have in total?”

As Ilya Yezavitov, Olezhka leaped to his feet. “I ... I ... ,” he stuttered.

Yurka whispered from backstage, “We have ...”

“We have,” said Olezhka, collecting himself, “five wifles, a Maxim machine gun and ammunition, and half a dozen ow so gwenades.”

The piano music faded, replaced by the sound of clacking train wheels. Pasha, playing Nikolay Alexeyev, a member of the underground who had a job at the railroad station, ran onstage and into the room. “Men, for several days now echelons loaded with haystacks have been moving through the station. It’s strange: no one uses steam trains to transport such flammable cargo. Itisstrange, right?” The Avengers nodded. “Well, I was checking the bridge today and I looked and saw that under those haystacks they’re hiding tanks ...”

Everything would’ve been fine, but there wasn’t a trace of alarm or surprise in Pasha’s voice. The actor was just getting through the words as quickly as he could. Yurka huffed angrily, but the Young Avengers notified the partisans of the tanks by radio and made arrangements to meet the next day to hand over the weapons they’d found. The curtain slid closed.

“Guys, why are you so sluggish? You’ve got to pull it together, we can’t let Volodya down!” hissed Yurka when the actors came backstage.

Ulyana actually flared up at him: “We’re already doing the best we can! But instead of gratitude, all we get is criticism! You know what, Yurka—”

“Ulya, no time to talk: Get to the outdoor half, on the double!”

The forest stage decorations were already in place: the crew had attached drawings of fir trees to the backdrop, along with the large outline of a train station complete with low outbuildings and the station bell. The members of the underground hurried over to their hiding place, a small hollow log, to hide the weapons, looking around apprehensively the whole time. But there was no log onstage! There should’ve been, according to their plan, but there wasn’t! Had Alyosha forgotten to set the prop?

Some helper Matveyev turned out to be! He begged and pleaded to join in, but what happens!Yurka thought angrily, waving his arms to indicate they should hide the weapons behind the piano. They understood and set the weapons there.

Meanwhile, on the indoor half of the stage, the part now covered by the curtain, chaos reigned. The kids were getting ready for the next scene, in which Zina poisoned the soldiers in the mess hall. They set out a table, covered it with a white tablecloth, and took down the posters. The scene in the forest only had three lines, so it went by like a flash. It was time for the next scene.

This was chubby little Sashka’s fateful hour: he’d been entrusted with playing the first German to die.

Mitka heaved on the rope and the curtain slid away, revealing an officer’s mess with German officers sitting at the table. Upstage, Zina surreptitiously poured poison into a pot of soup, then started ladling it into bowls. Masha played the dark, gloomy passage from the middle of the “Internationale.” The officers each had a spoonful of soup and then fell to the ground. Sasha, of course, overdid it, shouting and writhing so much that the audience tittered.

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