Page 102 of Pioneer Summer

Upstage, three Germans walked across the stage and then exited behind the curtain. Ulya, as Fruza Zenkova, the chairman of the Young Avengers, ran over to the porch, verified the soldiers were gone, came back to the meeting, and began listing the facilities in Obol that had been seized by the Germans and had to be destroyed: the power station, warehouses, and town factories.

After the shouted line “All of them must be destroyed!” Yurka looked at Mitka, who, drenched in sweat, uncovered the outdoor half of the stage, revealing a village scene with huts and vegetable gardens, along with four large flats depicting an electrical power station, a flax mill, a brick factory, and a warehouse. A string was attached to the back of each flat, and Mitka held all four strings. Yurka rested his right hand on an AV console and got ready to give the signal to the person handling sound effects and Alyoshka.

Polina narrated: “On August third, the Young Avengers dealt their heaviest blow to the enemy: at eighteen hundred hours exactly, the power station was blown sky-high.” Yurka chopped his hand down, giving the signal, and then three things happened at once: there was the sound of an explosion,a red spotlight lit up the power station, and the flat with the power station painted on it fell down. Gasps came from the audience. Yurka perked up and lifted his hand, ready to give the next signal. The narrator announced, “This task was accomplished by Zina Luzgina.” Onstage, Katya, who was performing that role, stood up from the bench she’d been sitting on inside the hut.

“Fifteen minutes after the power station, the flax mill was destroyed, complete with the drying chambers, storage facilities, and machine room.” Yurka chopped his hand, giving the signal. There was the sound of an explosion as the second flat with the flax mill painted on it glowed red, then fell down. “This task was accomplished by Nikolay Alexeyev.” Pasha stood up from the bench.

“An hour later, the brick factory was blown to bits. This task was accomplished by Ilya Yezavitov.” Olezhka, his chin raised proudly, stood up. Once again Yurka gave the signal, and once again came the explosion, the red light, and the clatter of a flat falling to the ground. Then, suddenly, Olezha’s high but confident voice rang out over the audience: “For the Motherland!” Yurka turned to look. He couldn’t believe his ears: it really was Olezhka! At the beginning of the performance, he’d been nervous and kept messing up his lines, but then his delivery became more and more confident until now, when, for the first time Yurka could remember, Olezhka had pronounced a clear, ringingr.

Then the excited Petlitsyn sprang up from his chair. He was early. He was supposed to wait until after Polina’s narration: “Five minutes after the explosion of the brick factory, the peat processing plant blew up. This task was accomplished by Yevgeny Yezavitov.” Yurka gave the final signal, waited for the sound and light, and watched the fourth flat fall over, then rushed to the piano.

He cautiously peeked out from behind the curtain. Onstage, the Young Avengers who had caused the explosions were still standing in their places. The audience was still rustling and exclaiming in excitement. Volodya saw Yurka and smiled and nodded. Yurka’s chest swelled with pride. He ducked back behind the curtain, grinning: they’d really laid on the pathos and fervor! He hadn’t expected this much of a success himself! And here he was amid the thundering audience, and the lights, and the kids’ solemn faces, and over it all was Masha, proudly pounding out the “Internationale” on the piano.

“No one was caught that day,” continued the narrator. “On August nineteenth, 1943, a station warehouse was burned down, destroying twenty tons of linen that was ready to be shipped to Germany. The fire then spread to a manufacturing warehouse, destroying ten tons of grain allocated for Fascist troops! But this time, shortly before the fire, Ilya Yezavitov had been seen near the warehouse ...”

Olezhka walked all the way across the stage and exited behind the curtain. The remaining actors stood where they were.

“Ilya left in time and joined the partisans. The Germans noticed that Ilya went missing from the town of Obol right after the attacks. His escape was what ultimately convinced the Germans that there was an underground organization of local residents in Obol and that the acts of sabotage were performed by them, not by the partisans.”

“The authorities’ response to our infrastructure attack was too weak,” pronounced Zina Portnova loudly. “The Germans rounded up a few suspects but quickly released them. Too quickly. They’re up to something!” She got up and left, just like Olezhka.

The narrator intoned the last sentence of the first act: “Zina Portnova left and joined the Kliment Voroshilov partisan troop. On August twenty-sixth, 1943, the Gestapo arrested almost all the members of the underground resistance that were left in town, along with their families.”

“That’s it! It’s time!” Yurka started shaking. He was standing in the wings near the piano, all cleaned up, hair combed, in a perfectly tied neckerchief, white shirt, and gray trousers. Masha was just getting up from the piano and glared angrily at him. But he didn’t care. His heart was beating hard enough to break through his rib cage and his fingers had gone numb. He couldn’t straighten them. He knew that any second now Mitka would slowly and smoothly cover the left side of the stage with the curtain and uncover the right side of the stage, where the piano was.

Yurka looked out into the audience. There were so many people out there! How many times had he played the Lullaby in front of the cast without being afraid? But the cast was different: he wouldn’t quite call them family, but they were like the boys from his building back home—his people, familiar. It was also true that before Camp Barn Swallow Day he’d played out on the outdoor stage, where anybody walking by could’ve heard him, like PalPalych, and all the troop leaders, and even the Pioneers who were sneaking out during quiet hour. But that was just practice. Only a few individual people were listening, and they wouldn’t have cared if he’d made a mistake. But this was it, now: he had an audience!

The second it fully dawned on Yurka that he was about to play his song, his Lullaby, in front of everyone, his memory ricocheted back to a bad perm and enormous glasses, a table covered in exam papers, and a verdict: “Weak!” He was worthless. He couldn’t do it. And if he couldn’t do it back then, after he’d trained for several months, what would happen now?

The curtain slid up, the creaking rope indicating that it was time for Yurka’s performance.

If only I could rip out this stupid heart, maybe I could at least breathe, thought Yurka. He heaved a shuddering sigh and approached the piano. His cotton wool legs were capable of bending, even of straightening—but his fingers still weren’t.

It had felt so good, back then, on the outdoor stage! The cook had been banging the pots and pans while the phys ed instructors lolled around on a bench loudly doing a crossword puzzle. But the main thing was that Volodya had stood behind him and tried to keep him from playing by putting his hands over Yurka’s eyes. And Yurka hadn’t been afraid in the slightest ... But right now he was, even though it was all the same people here in the movie theater with him: the two phys ed instructors, and the cook, and even her pots and pans.

And Volodya was here, too.

Yurka stood stretching his fingers and trying to concentrate. He pretended that Volodya was standing behind him, tittering silently—but did Volodya even know how to titter, though?—and covering Yurka’s eyes with his warm hands, and that everything was going dark.

Yurka squinted his eyes shut, and everything really did go dark.

“Pull it together. You’re not at an exam. You’re onstage. Everything is fine. There’s no perm. There never was such a thing as that perm in your life! But there was such a thing as Volodya. And all this right here is for him.”

Inhale ...

Just watch me the whole time, like you promised, came the thought, full of entreaty. Yurka knew that this thought, sent out into nothingness, wouldstill find its target. His shaking stilled, and his numbed fingers came back to life and began to do as he bid them.

... exhale.

The moment he touched the keys, everything disappeared; the voices in the audience went quiet. It was as though he himself sank into darkness. All that remained was a single, solitary gaze. Yurka didn’t need to turn around to feel it. The music, too, remained.

Yurka played as though in a fog. The slow, lingering melody alternated with bolder echoes of the main theme, and it seemed like his heart was beating in sync with them. The music filled Yurka completely, penetrating the most guarded recesses of his soul and raking through it, pulling everything out of it in a melody that was sometimes frenzied, other times tender and calming: sadness, and longing, and fear ... and love. As Yurka let the music in, it passed through him, washing away his emotions. The sounds spoke for him, and he knew that the person these feelings were for would understand. The music was saying everything for Yurka: the love he felt, and the yearning he would suffer, and how fiercely he didn’t want to part, and how unbelievably happy he was to have met this person. The music promised that Yurka would wait for him without fail and would keep hoping even when there was no hope left.

Yurka lifted his hands from the keys. Only then did he realize he’d finished. A rising ovation thundered at him from the audience. Yurka couldn’t comprehend how much time had passed. He flinched, turned toward the audience, and immediately sank into Volodya’s eyes, which were sad and happy all at once.

The rope creaked and the curtain slid down, hiding Yurka from the audience. Polina came out onto the edge of the stage in front of the curtain and announced, “End of Act One. There will be a fifteen-minute intermission.”

Yurka’s heart was hammering so hard in his chest that he thought everyone around him must be able to hear it. Had he done it? Had he played well?

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