Page 29 of Pioneer Summer

“I don’t know. As it is, I only understand every other word Olezhka says, but right then he was crying, too, so I didn’t get much of what he said. But, Volod, I thought about it and it’s true: he pronounces all those words withr’s really badly, like ‘partisans,’ and ‘struggle,’ and so forth ...”

“It’s true,” Volodya repeated glumly. “It’s not the lead, of course, but it’s got a lot of lines ... He asked to do it, though! And I thought it’d give him more confidence in himself, not less. We have to figure something out, butwithout taking the part away from him, because then he’d be crushed; he really is trying so hard ... Got any ideas?”

“I do, and that’s what I was going to say! Let’s take the script now, before he’s memorized his lines, and rewrite them so there are as few words withras possible!”

“He doesn’t have that many lines, but it’s complex, and there’s a lot riding on it; it’s an important role,” Volodya said. “We don’t have time for a thoughtful revision, but we’d still have to get it done as fast as we can! Think about it: How many hours will we need? Six or eight, I’d guess, but where will we find them? We can’t work during rehearsal, and we definitely can’t work while I’m busy with Troop Five ... There’s always quiet hour ...”

“Yeah, right. Even if they give us the okay on rewriting it, letting me out of quiet hour’s another thing entirely,” said Yurka bitterly.

“They gave you to me not as an actor, but as a helper. And right now I really need your help. They can’t make you do it during the competitions, or during civic duty work, or during the dances. And they can’t make you do the rewriting during rehearsal either because I need you then, to help me.”

Yurka felt a brief burst of excitement. Not only would he no longer have to sit around bored to death for two hours—now he and Volodya would have those two hours all to themselves! But his joy quickly faded as soon as he remembered Olga Leonidovna’s stern voice and her constant “Children always have to be kept busy and troop leaders always have to know where their children are.” His troop leader was Ira. Not Volodya. Yurka grew dejected. Let Konev the knucklehead out of quiet hour? Yeah, right! It would never happen. Why was Volodya even teasing him with the possibility?

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Yurka said.

“I’ll ask the head troop leader, and I’ll also ask Lena to support it. She works with me, after all, she sees everything I do.” Volodya had noticed the change in Yurka’s mood, of course, and clapped Yurka on the shoulder. “Never hurts to try. Let’s see how good a diplomat I am.”

So he did. And the next day, as they were walking to the playground after the beginning of quiet hour, Volodya, who usually spoke quietly while they were still by the Troop Five cabin, almost yelled as he told Yurka about it: “Can you believe it, Yur? It took Olga Leonidovna a little while to agree, butit was basically clear she didn’t really have anything against it—when she’s against something, she lets you know, she comes down on you like a bolt from the blue—but this time she asked what the head troop leader thought, and then as a formality she asked the rest. They all were okay with it, and why not? Makes no difference to them, right, since I’m the one who has to do the rewriting. But then Irina butts in and starts insisting that it’s just the opposite, it’ll actually help Olezhka to have to perform the unchanged script in public because it’ll make him work harder with the speech therapist! I just about fell off my chair—that’s crazy talk, but it’s crazy talk that’ll hurt Olezhka. I don’t even think she really thinks it will help him. She’s just trying to put a spoke in my wheel!”

Volodya still hadn’t been able to make up with her after the scene in the theater. He’d tried to apologize several times, but Ira would end the conversation without letting him finish. Volodya was upset and admitted to Yurka more than once that he was very worried about the continued rift. But this time, at least, despite what Irina said, Olga Leonidovna ended up being more sensitive to Olezha’s problem and granted Volodya permission.

“Really? I’m officially allowed to skip quiet hour?” Yurka couldn’t believe it.

As usual, they were at the playground, on the merry-go-round. Yurka was so happy, he kicked off and set the merry-go-round spinning. Until that moment the fluffy white dandelion heads would only occasionally send their downy seeds up past the boys’ knees and into their noses. Now, disturbed by the wind, the white fluff flew up into the air in a swirling cloud.

As though on command, both boys simultaneously dug their feet into the ground to stop their spinning. Yurka got a fuzzy dandelion seed in his throat. He started coughing and his eyes started watering. Blinded, he blinked stupidly until he could look around, and when he did, he was struck by the beauty of the place. It was as though he were seeing it for the first time. Fluffy little dandelion seeds were still swirling around and floating slowly to rest in the grass. The small white seeds floating through the air were an echo of larger white things floating through the sky: every day, white planes from a nearby airfield flew past Camp Barn Swallow and paratroopers jumped out of them, opening their white parachutes and drifting down to the ground, practicing their landings. It looked unbelievably gorgeous. How had Yurka not noticed that before?

Once he took a good look, he realized that everything was gorgeous here. And Volodya was really gorgeous. Especially today, right now, after he’d delivered his good news, when he was happy, disheveled and red-cheeked, and bursting into such infectious laughter that Yurka started laughing, too. He’d never seen Volodya so happy. Yurka himself had probably never been so viscerally happy. And from that moment on, they would spend every free minute rewriting the script together.

But it turned out that something always got in the way. They lost almost a whole day because of the girl from Volodya’s troop who wanted to go back to her parents so badly. She went into such hysterics that it took both her troop leaders, the educational specialist Olga Leonidovna, and the nurse to calm her down. By that evening Volodya was so exhausted that Yurka let him go to sleep instead of staying up to work.

The second day they lost was parents’ day. It added insult to injury that the day was chaotic and went by too fast. Yurka had actually been looking forward to it just as much as the rest of the kids. But it felt like his mom had just had a chance to hug him when the troop concert began. They’d just had a nice stroll around the camp when it was time for lunch. They’d just finished a game of rucheyok—babbling brook—when it was time to eat again. His mom had just gotten a Chinese jump rope contest going—women against girls—when it was time to say goodbye already.

Yurka felt like he’d barely had time to exchange a few words with his mom. The only thing he managed to even talk about was the theater. He wanted to tell her about Volodya, about how fantastic he was and how they’d become such good friends that now he couldn’t imagine spending a day without him. His mom would probably be glad to hear it: her son had finally come to his senses and was socializing with a real Komsomol member, not with some kind of riffraff! But once Yurka opened his mouth, he felt abashed, unsure how best to convey his feelings or how to even describe them.

Before she got on the bus to leave, Yurka’s mom gave him a kiss and asked carefully, “Have you made friends with any of the girls yet? You didn’t introduce me to anyone ...”

“There’s Ksyusha. I’m going to ask her to dance,” Yurka replied, awkwardly sticking a finger out toward the girl. He suddenly felt very uncomfortable. His mom had never talked to him about girls before.

Yurka wasn’t the only one who was completely exhausted by the end of parents’ day. He didn’t go to sleep, of course, but he had neither the desire nor the energy to work on the script. So he and Volodya just sat on the merry-go-round and chatted about this and that.

In the time that Yurka and Volodya spent together, they became true friends. Usually, though, they didn’t sit around talking but got their notebooks and papers out right away, spread them out on their laps, and bent over them to brainstorm. Or try to.

“Okay. ‘Struggle.’ ‘Struggle ...’” Volodya chewed on his pencil thoughtfully. He pronounced the sounds slowly, seeming to linger over ther. “‘Strrrruggle’ ...”

“Battle. Fight.” Yurka offered a couple of synonyms and suppressed a monstrous yawn.

They’d been at work for ages. The sun was burning hot. Volodya was sitting on the merry-go-round in the shade of a nearby bird cherry tree, not letting the sun hit so much as the tip of his nose. His handsome nose. Which Yurka kept noticing. Yurka himself hadn’t taken off his favorite imported red cap all day. His forehead was sweaty and the buckle of the cap was painfully tight on the back of his head, but he bore the discomfort stoically, rather than run the risk of getting sunstroke even in the shade.

Their work was going well, despite the heat. They’d done more in this quiet hour than they’d done in the previous two combined. But there was still a long way to go. Yurka was tired. He’d been sitting virtually motionless for half an hour and his neck and arms were stiff. He wasn’t complaining, though. This was way more important than scary stories. He rolled his neck, stood up from the merry-go-round, and walked around it, stretching out his stiff back.

“Yeah, ‘fight’ is good,” mumbled Volodya, without looking up from his notebook. “‘Their fight against the German invaders’ ...”

“‘Thefight ... um ... the fight for victory over their attackers’? Hmm ... sounds kind of dumb ...”

“And all those words haver’s,” Volodya pointed out.

Then it dawned on Yurka: “Enemies!” he said, stopping and jabbing his finger up into the air.

---