Page 123 of Pioneer Summer

In May they found out their departure date and other details. There was no time to waste. Despite Volodya’s request not to write, Yura sent him a brief note: “We’re leaving in July. First they’re sending us to a distribution center, then from there they’ll transfer us to our permanent place of residence. I don’t know the permanent address yet, but here’s a temporary one.”

May was coming to a close, but Yura still hadn’t heard from Volodya. His heart pounded like crazy every time he approached the mailbox: maybe there was a letter! He startled every time the doorbell rang: maybe it was a telegram! But he never got an answer.

Once June started, Yura had no choice but to borrow money from friends and go to Moscow himself.

He stepped off the train and plunged into the chaos of Moscow. He definitely did not like it. It was like a seething cauldron: too aggressive, too noisy, too dirty. Everything from the pavement to the sky was plastered in posters of Yeltsin, Zhirinovsky, and other candidates in the upcoming election for president of the RSFSR—the first such election ever. Half the city’s parks and squares were taken over by demonstrations and rallies, but even if you didn’t take those into account, Moscow was still too dirty and too loud. The city looked to Yurka like one big street market where people haggled over clothes when they weren’t haggling over rights and freedoms. Street vendors were everywhere: in the squares, in and around the metro stations, and even standing in rows along the sidewalks of busy streets, next to the panhandlers and lines of people. Throughout the city, high above the political posters, hung banners advertising the Russian production of David Henry Hwang’sM. Butterflyby the Soviet Ukrainian director Roman Viktyuk: the first show with homosexuality as a theme. And all this was engulfed by the endlessly scurrying populace.

Yurka had never been in the capital until this moment. He’d previously dreamed of visiting Lenin’s mausoleum as soon as he got there, but once he arrived he completely forgot about it and went straight to Volodya’s metro station.

He more or less figured out where he was on the map and was so concentrated on the purpose of his trip that he paid no attention to the beauty—or ugliness—of the metro. Or to what Volodya’s apartment building looked like: a yellow, four-story, Stalin-era building with stone balconies and picturesque ivy growing up the sides. Or to what Volodya’s courtyard looked like: shady and quiet, with a statue of Pioneer girls poring over their books. Or to the smell of Volodya’s building entrance. Yurka only came back to his senses and began to notice at least some of the things around him when he found himself at the door to Volodya’s apartment.

He rang the doorbell. Nobody opened the door. He pressed his ear to the door: silence.

Yurka settled in to wait. He remembered that Volodya’s mom didn’t work anymore, which meant she had probably stepped out for a little while and would soon return. It was getting on toward four o’clock and he was counting on the fact that in a couple more hours somebody would definitely be showing up. He tensed at every rustle, hoping it was one of the residents of the hallowed apartment coming up the stairs. But nobody ever came all the way up to the fourth and last floor; nobody went to Volodya’s door. One grumbling old granny did shuffle past Yurka and survey him suspiciously, but she ducked into the apartment next door without a word.

An hour later, the granny cracked her door open, without undoing the security chain, and yelled rudely at Yurka: “Who are you? What are you sitting here for?”

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said, and turned away. Then, thinking better of it, he jumped up: “I’m a friend of Volodya Davydov. He lives here. Do you happen to know if anybody’s coming home soon?”

“You go on home, then. They’re not coming back.”

“What do you mean?”

“The whole family left. Six months ago now,” replied the granny, continuing to drill a hole in Yurka with her gaze. “Just before New Year’s.”

Yura’s throat seized up. He croaked out: “But why?”

“How should I know? They didn’t tell me,” answered the granny sharply. But she made no move to close her door.

“Have the other neighbors said anything?” asked Yurka, trying to get the woman to at least share some rumors.I mean, she is a granny, thought Yura,and grannies are all equally nosy, no matter where you are in the USSR. This one’s probably no exception.He was right.

“People talk, but how much of it’s worth listening to?” said the old woman, frowning. A minute later, though, she broke her silence: “Lev Nikolayevich got mixed up with some bandits. He borrowed money from them and then couldn’t pay them back. He signed the apartment over to them and he and his family escaped.”

“Lev Nikolayevich?” This was Volodya’s father. “What about Volodya? Are you sure they weren’t after him?”

“I saw it myself. More than once. A car would stop at the entrance and Lev Nikolayevich would get in. Then he’d get back out. Then the bandits started coming right up to the apartment. They’d come banging on the door at all hours of the night. I’d call the police, but they’d be long gone by the time the police showed up.”

The first thing Yurka felt upon hearing this was relief: he had spent so long blaming himself for Volodya’s disappearance, afraid he’d outed their relationship to his parents and revealed that the treatment didn’t work. But now it turned out Yura had had nothing to do with it. The thing that was the real reason for Volodya’s disappearance—or rather full-on escape—was far worse: his family had been run out. And the granny’s story was entirely plausible, because in those days it was impossible for businessmen to get by without borrowing money, but the only people who had money were the bandits. So there were only two ways to keep afloat: either borrow from a bandit, or become one. The sudden upswing in Volodya’s family’s income was confirmation of that, he realized: it was impossible to just start out from zero with the kind of thing that’s as long-term as construction and make that kind of income after just one year.

“And what about Volodya?” Yura asked hoarsely. “Did he leave with his parents? Because he’s grown, he’s in college ...”

“You tell me. You’re the one who said you’re his friend.”

“We haven’t seen each other in a long time, I haven’t—”

“And there’s no telling what’s wrong with that Volodya, anyway,” the granny interrupted. “He was a good boy. He always said hello, helped me carry up the shopping. But then at the end he got all jittery. Always peering around wide-eyed. Stopped saying hello.”

Yurka feverishly cast about for his next move. How would he find Volodya now? “Where might they be? Do you know?”

The granny shrugged so hard that the security chain on her door clinked.

“What about relatives or friends?” said Yura, inspired. “His cousin! He had a cousin with the same exact name! Where do their relatives or friends live?”

“I believe they had someone in Tver,” replied the granny. “Now, you go on along. You can’t wait for them. They’re not coming back.”

Yura asked a couple more questions, but the granny had no answers. He asked about the institute—“He was a student. Did he really just quit?”—but on that note their conversation ended.

Yura flopped down on the top stair like a rag doll. He stretched and limbered his fingers, which had gone numb from the shock, and stared at the gray floor, trying to sort out the fragments of thought wheeling through his head:They escaped. Bandits. They’re hiding. If they’re hiding, then they’ve hidden well enough not to be found. Tver. Is Tver far? The institute. I have to go to his institute. I have to get ahold of myself. This is my only chance to find him. There’ll be no chance later.

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