Page 101 of Pioneer Summer

Zina was seized immediately. She started shouting that she’d had nothing to do with it, that the soup was fine, and that she’d prove it. She ate a spoonful of the poisoned soup, and her legs buckled as she fell unconscious to the floor.

Villagers appeared onstage, picked Portnova up under her arms, and took her upstage to where a set piece resembling a porch had been set up. The villagers arranged Zina next to it. Her grandmother and sister appeared. Her grandmother started fussing over the still-insensible Zina, while little Galya clutched her tightly, started crying very believably, and said in a thin voice between sobs, “Zinochka, I’ll be left all alone without you! Leningrad is starving, and our mama and papa are there ...”

The action continued to play out on the porch while Sashka, having finished his dramatics, ran offstage.

“Sasha, I’m begging you, a little less emotion! At least don’t shout so much.”

It was as though Sashka, wiggling happily and red in the face, didn’t even hear him. But Ulyana peppered Sashka with questions: “So? How’s it going?How’s the audience?” Then she added smugly, “I was too preoccupied to see, you know, because I’m a lead.”

Yurka scoffed.

“Oh! Fine,” the chubby lad assured her happily. “Olga Leonidovna and Pal Palych look pleased, but Volodya looks strange, like he’s not paying attention even the littlest bit!”

“No way!” declared Ulyana.

She and Sashka tiptoed over to the curtain and peeked out from behind it at Volodya. Yurka remained where he was, making sure that the outdoor stage decorations were being set up for the next scene. There wasn’t much that could be messed up there: all they had to do was throw a pile of “coal” on the ground and attach a drawing of the pumping station to the backdrop. They didn’t even have to remove the previous scenery of the forest.

Ulyana came back offended and hissed angrily at Yurka, “Konev! Here you are, riding our backs with your ‘Don’t let Volodya down, don’t let Volodya down,’ but Volodya doesn’t even care! He couldn’t care less about this show!”

“That can’t be!” Yurka was actually perplexed. If anybody cared about this show, it was Volodya!

“It sure can!” scowled Ulyana.

The stage was set, so Yurka had a free moment to peek into the audience. It was true: Volodya wasn’t even looking at the stage. His face was tilted down, toward the notebook in his lap, and his brow was furrowed in concentration while his fingers drummed on the armrest. He was nervous. How Yurka wished he could sit beside him right now. But he had to show everyone—not just the administration and Volodya, but himself—that he could do it, that he could be counted on, that he could make his own decisions, that he could keep things running smoothly, both for himself and for the actors.

Yurka went backstage. Ulyana, fanning herself with the script, nodded toward the audience. “See? What did I tell you?”

Yurka said stubbornly, “Ulyana, it’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s that he’s nervous! If we botch this, we’re in for it. Volodya too! You know that already. So give it your all!”

Onstage, the narrator’s voice began: “It is now 1943, two years since the Fascist invasion and occupation of Zina’s village. Zina Portnova hasrecovered from eating the soup she herself poisoned and continues her work with the Young Avengers. In order to stop the Red Army’s counteroffensive, Hitler’s forces have started sending enormous numbers of troops and resources to this part of the front. Troop trains thunder along the Vitebsk-Polotsk line day and night. But their motion is being hindered: steam trains need water to make steam, and almost all the water-pumping stations along that railway line were destroyed, either by the Soviet Army or by partisans. Only one pumping station has remained intact, one that had gone unnoticed among the villages and fields near the little town of Obol until it was too late to put it out of commission.”

The right side of the stage was revealed, showing a pumping station with a German soldier standing next to it: Pcholkin, wearing a uniform jacket and holding a toy rifle at the ready.

A girl playing Nina Azolina approached him. She was a pretty girl, a Young Avenger who acted like she was serving the Germans faithfully. Pcholkin the German started yelling at her, but the deputy commandant who was courting her came running at the noise.

Vanka was playing the part of the deputy commandant, Müller. He ran up to the German guard and started shouting at him in German. His German wasn’t all that great, but he was doing the best he could. Yurka had written that line especially for him. “Entschuldige dich bei der Dame! Schnell!”

While he was turned away from Azolina, shouting at the guard, Azolina sneaked a bomb disguised as a lump of coal into the coal pile.

Polina resumed her narration: “Three days later the water station was leveled to the ground. It took two weeks to rebuild it, during which the Germans were kept from conveying eight hundred troop trains to the front. The Germans began to suspect it had been the local residents, not organized partisans, who blew up the station, so they increased the guard on strategic infrastructure and set more patrols on the streets.”

The next scene was Yurka’s favorite. It was impressive, but it required a lot of attention. The entire cast had put their heads together to come up with a way to depict it onstage. “If only we could do it as a movie, so everyone didn’t have to just imagine the fire and smoke ... ,” the kids had mused.

Yurka darted over to the lighting console and readied himself to give the signal for the sound effects at the right moment. He looked over at Matveyev,who was standing next to the stage decorations for the outdoor half, holding the ends of some strings.

Yurka tried not to dwell on the fact that this scene was the last one in the first act, which he was bringing to a close with his Lullaby. The main event of his whole day was going to happen in just a few minutes, but Yurka wasn’t mentally prepared for it.

On the left side of the stage the crew had put back the set for the Young Avengers headquarters: a typical village hut with a porch, and on the ground by the porch a small sandbox where Galya Portnova was playing.

“Galka, you remember, right?” asked Zina. “As soon as you see Fascists or police, you sing your favorite song, ‘In the Field a Young Birch Stood.’”

Galya nodded. Zina went into the hut. The meeting began. Olezhka as Ilya Yezavitov took the floor: “The Fascists are afraid of us, but that doesn’t mean we are out of danger!”

All of a sudden, Galya’s thin little voice pealed,

“In the field a young birch stood,

In the field, long-tressed, she stood ...”

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