Page 2 of Pioneer Summer

He recognized absolutely nothing in the area and had to depend completely on the map to know where he was. Twenty years ago this area along the road had been lined with dense, dark undergrowth interspersed with sunflower fields, but now the town was creeping this way, step by long, slow step. The woods were being cut down, the fields were being leveled, and several plots of land had been fenced off. In the loud construction sites behind the fences he glimpsed cranes, tractors, and backhoes. The horizon, which Yura remembered being clear and incredibly distant, now seemed dismal and cramped, and the entire landscape stretching along it bristled with upscale summer homes—dachas—and gated communities everywhere he looked.

After the sign for the village of Richne he turned, just like they’d said. The paved road ended as abruptly as though it’d broken off. The car jolted. The shovel in the trunk clanked loudly, like it was alive and reminding him of its presence.

He had absolutely no recollection of how to get to the camp. The last time Yura had seen Camp Barn Swallow was twenty years ago, and even then he’d never driven there himself; he’d always been bused in. It had been so much fun that first summer, riding in a column of identical, iconic LikinskyBus Plant buses, white with their red stripe and decked out with flags and traditional signs indicating there were children on board. It had been especially fun riding in the very first bus, right behind the official traffic police car, where he could see everything spread out before him, both road and sky ... and listening to the blaring siren, and singing children’s songs with everyone ... but then there were later years, looking out the window, bored, because he’d outgrown the silly songs ... Yura remembered his last camp session, when he just listened instead of singing: “We ride along with flags and songs, we sing and clap and stamp! This is how our fearless troop goes to Pioneer camp ...”

Now, twenty years later, all he heard was the jangling of the shovel bouncing around in the trunk. He cursed through gritted teeth at the ruts and potholes. Praying he wouldn’t get stuck somewhere, he peered up, not at blue sky but at gray storm clouds: “Just don’t drench me, now!”

His plan of action had been thoroughly weighed and considered. He’d left during the day, figuring he’d make it to the village while it was still light but would then wait until late at night to get into the camp itself and from there to his special spot. He’d thought everything through: it was September, so the last camp session of the season would be over and there wouldn’t be any kids there, and there would probably be just one watchman, whom Yura could easily sneak past—the woods at night were pitch-black. And even if he did get caught, he’d think of something. The watchman, who’d be an old man, might initially be scared of this random guy sneaking around in the bushes with a shovel over his shoulder, but he’d come around eventually, see that Yura was a normal guy, not some alcoholic or bum. Of course they’d come to an agreement.

The Pioneers ... the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization ... red neckerchiefs, calisthenics, assemblies, swimming, campfires ... how long ago that had all been. Everything must be completely different now: it was Ukraine, not the USSR ... a different country, different anthems, different slogans and songs ... The kids wouldn’t have the neckerchiefs and pins anymore, but kids are kids and camp is camp. And soon, very soon, Yura would be back there, and he would remember the most important time, the most important person, of his whole life. Maybe Yura would evenfind out what happened to him. Which meant that maybe Yura would even see him again, that person who had been his one true friend.

But when he pulled up to the familiar sign, it was hanging by a thread and so faded he could barely make out the letters. Yura saw what he’d dreaded most: there was almost nothing left of the chain-link fence that used to run the entire perimeter of the camp. Only the metal fence posts were still there. The handsome double-door gate was broken. One red and yellow door was somehow still hanging on its rusted, mangled hinges, but the other door was flat on the ground and had been that way, judging by the weeds surrounding it, for quite a few years. The guardhouse was now dilapidated; the original painted patterns of blue and green had come off long ago, the wooden walls had rotted in the rain, and the roof had fallen in.

Yura heaved a heavy sigh. So the devastation had reached all the way out here, too. Deep in his subconscious he’d suspected it, given what happened in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union; he lived in Germany, after all, not under a rock. He knew that factories had been shut down left and right. And, like all the Pioneer camps, this one had been affiliated with one of those same factories, the one where his mom had been an engineer. But Yura hadn’t wanted to think about the same sad fate befalling Camp Barn Swallow: it was the brightest spot of his whole childhood, a searing solar flare of memory. This was where he’d left more than half of himself behind ... but now Yura could feel that memory fading, as though it were the paint on the guardhouse, damp flakes of it sloughing off into the tall weeds.

The inspiration he’d felt during the drive drained away, leaving him sad and wistful, his mood matching the dreary weather and the fine drizzle misting down from the sky.

When he got back to his car, Yura changed into his boots, got the shovel from the trunk, and swung it onto his shoulder. He stepped over the rusty metal panels that had once been a gate and entered the camp: the Pioneer Hero Zina Portnova Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp.

His forward steps took him backward in time, moving in reverse to his half-forgotten past, to those happy days when he’d been in love. The big square concrete pavers were cracked and dark under his feet, while the trees,disturbed by rain, were rustling all around him, but dappled sunlight glimmered in his mind’s eye, flickering faster and faster down the old camp’s main avenue, pulling him into the last summer of his childhood.

He stopped at the intersection where the path to the mess hall went off to the left, the trail he remembered leading to the unfinished barracks—had they ever been finished?—went off to the right, and the once-broad Avenue of Pioneer Heroes led straight ahead to the main square in the center of camp. Most of the pavers were broken and huddled in random piles, but there was a tiny spot by the flower bed at the intersection that had remained intact.

“This is where it was! Yes, it was right here!” Yura smiled, remembering how late one night, when the whole camp was asleep, he’d sneaked out here with some chalk and drawn the most beautiful letter in the world:V.

Then the following morning, as they were going to breakfast, all the kids had tried to guess the shape drawn around the letterV.

Rylkin from Troop Two, the second-oldest troop at camp, had been sure he’d figured it out: “It’s an apple, guys!”

“But what type of apple starts withV?” asked his troopmate Vasya Petlitsyn.

It hadn’t occurred to a single one of them that the shape traced around the letterVwasn’t supposed to be an apple but a heart. The shape had gone wonky because, while Yurka was drawing it, he’d suddenly heard those cherished footsteps through the rest of the general nocturnal rustling, and he’d been so overcome with shyness that his hand started trembling. So that’s what he’d ended up with: an apple.

Yura nudged a broken hunk of paver with the toe of his boot and looked around. Time had spared neither avenue nor flower bed. Scattered over the ground were twisted, rusting lengths of metal—the remnants of the frame around the gate—as well as rotten boards and slivers of wood and broken bricks ... broken bricks! He picked up the pointiest piece and crouched down. In one sure movement he drew a big, beautifulVwith decorative flourishes. Then he enclosed it in a heart, one that was crooked and lopsided, again, but stillhis. Yurka’s. The cynical, grown-up Yura suppressed his skepticism and mentally nodded to his younger self: that which should be preserved in this place was now restored.

His memories drew him farther along the Avenue of Pioneer Heroes. In the distance he saw the three broad steps leading up to the camp’s main square. Along the way, moss-covered pedestals and statues stuck up randomly out of the undergrowth, just like headstones. It sure felt like he was wandering through a cemetery—an old, abandoned one. Once there had been seven statues of Pioneer Heroes here, glaring fiercely westward, and once Yura, like thousands of other Pioneers, had known not only their names but their accomplishments. He’d also done his best to be like those seven heroic children and follow their example. There was Lyonya Golikov, a sixteen-year-old Soviet Russian who had joined the partisans—the bands of organized, armed resistance fighters hiding in the countryside—and killed something like eighty German soldiers before they got him; there was Marat Kazey, a Soviet Belorussian spy and scout who, at fourteen years old, blew himself up with a hand grenade rather than be captured by the Germans; there was Soviet Ukrainian Valya Kotik, the youngest person to be made a Hero of the Soviet Union (albeit posthumously, like all the other Pioneer Heroes), who died just after his fourteenth birthday fighting the Germans in Volhynia in northwestern Ukraine; there was Tolya Shumov, a Soviet Russian who was seventeen when he fought alongside the partisans until he was captured, tortured, and killed; but the most heroic of them all was Zinaida Portnova from Leningrad, who was a member of a partisan band called the Young Avengers. At the age of seventeen, Portnova had spied, distributed leaflets, sabotaged factories, and poisoned a whole enemy garrison. The Germans eventually captured and interrogated her, but she got hold of her interrogator’s pistol and shot her way out, only to be recaptured, tortured, and executed ... But now, some twenty-odd years later, Yura found himself grasping for all of these details. He had forgotten everything he’d once known so well.

Yura walked farther along the crumbling avenue. The only traces of the clean, smooth path that used to be here were the gray remnants of asphalt among the thick weeds. Yura kept going, strolling past the crumbling pedestals and gazing with pity at the plaster arms, legs, and heads sticking up out of the undergrowth. As his gaze lingered on some dingy, lifeless torsos with metal armatures poking out of them, he caught sight of their worn plaques. There they were: Marat Kazey, Valya Kotik, Tolya Shumov ...

But there, right by the steps at the end of the avenue, the honor board had remained intact. Back then the honor board had been in a rectangular glassed-in frame, but the only glass left now was a few sharp shards poking out of the corners. Still, thanks to the frame’s shallow overhang, a few of the captions on the honor board were still fairly legible, and there were even three black-and-white photographs left.

“Session Three, August 1992: Achievements and Distinctions,” Yura read at the very top of the board. So that was the very last session. Had the camp really gone on for just six more years after the last time he’d attended?

As he walked up the three steps leading to the main square, Yura’s heart almost burst in a surge of sad longing. The awful thing wasn’t the old being replaced by the new; it was the old being forgotten and abandoned. But this was much worse, because the one who’d forgotten and abandoned everything had been him, even though he’d earnestly sworn back then to remember the child heroes, and his fellow Pioneers, and especially V. So why hadn’t he looked for this damned place before now? Why hadn’t he come back until now? To hell with Lenin’s maxims, the red banners, the oaths he’d been forced to take—to hell with all that! How had he allowed himself to break his word to V., his one true friend?

Yura tripped over a faded, broken-off section of a wooden sign readingOUR FUTURE IS BRIGHT AND SPLEND—.“It’s not all that bright, and it’s certainly not splendid,” he grumbled, stepping up the last step.

The main square, the most important place in the whole camp, was just as decrepit as everything else. It was littered with trash and fallen leaves. Clumps of weeds pushed through holes in the asphalt, seeking the wan sun. Smack in the middle, surrounded by broken concrete and rock, lay a beheaded statue: the monument to Zina Portnova, Pioneer Hero of the Soviet Union, after whom the camp had been named. Yura recognized Zina and swore through gritted teeth. Even though the girl was just plaster, he still felt sorry for her. She’d accomplished genuine feats, after all, so what did people have to go and do that for? He wanted to try and stand her back up, but couldn’t, due to the rusty metal struts sticking out where her legs had been broken off at the shins. Instead, he leaned the statue’s torso against its pedestal, set the head next to it, and turned around to consider the one thingon the whole square that had remained intact: the bare flagpole, stretching proudly to the sky, same as it had twenty years ago.

Yura had first gone to Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp when he was eleven. He’d been so delighted by the camp that his parents started signing him up every year. Yura had adored the place when he was little, but every year, when he came back for another camp session, he got less joy from it. Nothing changed here. From year to year it was the exact same well-worn paths, the exact same troop leaders with the exact same tasks, the exact same Pioneers following the exact same daily schedule. The same old stuff. The clubs: model airplanes, sewing, art, sports, and computer science. The river where the water never went below twenty-two degrees Celsius. The camp cook, Svetlana Viktorovna, and her Friday lunch of buckwheat soup. Even the smash hits on the dance floor were repeats, the same songs year in and year out. And his last camp session had also begun same as usual: with an assembly.

The children began gathering into their assigned troop locations on the main square. Dust motes danced in sunlight and there was exultation in the air. The Pioneers stood in their places, happy from new meetings with old friends. The troop leaders issued orders to their charges and surveyed the square sternly, just the barest hint of glee in their eyes. The camp director was swaggering and preening: that spring they’d managed to remodel four whole cabins and had even almost finished building a big new barracks. And only Yurka was the odd one out, again; the only one who didn’t feel like joining in the fun and games; the only one who was sick to death of camp by now. It was all almost offensive to him, somehow. And there wasn’t anything to take his mind off it.

No, wait—there was something, after all. A new troop leader was standing over to the right of the flagpole, in the middle of Troop Five. He wore navy blue shorts, a white shirt, a red neckerchief, a red flight cap, and glasses. A college student, maybe even a first-year; certainly the youngest and tensest of all the troop leaders. The breeze smoothed the unruly locks escaping from his scarlet cap; freshly scratched mosquito bites glowed red on his pale legs; his focused gaze moved along the backs of children’s heads ashe counted them off, his lips moving reflexively: “... eleven ... twelve ... thir ... thirteen.” He must’ve been the one named Volodya, Yurka reasoned; he had heard something to that effect back by the bus.

The bugle sounded, hands flew up in the Pioneer salute, and the camp administration took the stage. The air reverberated with words of welcome and shook with the same thunderous, passionate speeches about Pioneers, patriotism, and Communist ideals that had been repeated a thousand times. Yurka knew them so well he could’ve recited them verbatim. He tried to keep himself from scowling, but couldn’t. He didn’t believe the educational specialist’s smile, or her burning eyes, or her fiery speeches. Yurka could tell there wasn’t anything real in them, or even in Olga Leonidovna herself; otherwise why repeat the same thing over and over? Sincerity would have been able to find new words. It felt like everyone in the whole country was living by inertia, reciting slogans and swearing oaths out of old habit without really feeling it. That’s certainly what Olga Leonidovna was doing; officially, her job at the camp was to ensure that camp was educational, so that all campers learned how to be good Soviet citizens, but he knew she just liked ruining people’s fun. All this passion felt like it was just for show. He felt like he, Yurka, was real, but everyone else was a robot. Especially that Volodya.

Because come on, could somebody like that, somebody who looked like a film still, really be a living, breathing person? So perfectly perfect, such a model member of the Komsomol—the Communist Youth League ... like he had been cultivated in a greenhouse under a bell jar! He could have stepped out of a Communist Party poster: tall, trim, self-possessed, dimples in his cheeks, skin glowing in the sun ... “The only little hitch here’s the hair color,” Yurka scoffed spitefully. “He’s not blond.” Even so, his hair was perfect, not a strand out of place. The same couldn’t be said for tousle-headed Yurka. “There’s a robot for you,” Yura rationalized, abashedly smoothing down his own mop of hair. “Normal people’s hair gets messed up in the wind, but get a load of this guy: his hair just gets better.”

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