Page 45 of Pioneer Summer

He got back to the movie theater a whole hour after rehearsal started. The actors were performing admirably, and Volodya was completely immersed in the proceedings, so Yurka, bored, wandered around the theater.

The piano was silent for once. Apparently, Volodya had asked Masha for a little time off from her playing, for she now sat scowling in the audience not far from the stage.

Yurka shot a glance at the piano every so often, wishing he’d never brought up that story. Now he was fighting the urge to walk over to it, open the cover, and touch the keys, even just for a second. He didn’t want to actually make sounds, he just wanted to feel the cool lacquered wood under his fingertips. While everyone else was busy with their rehearsal in the left half of the stage, Yurka worked up his nerve and approached the piano in the right half. He opened the cover. A gleam of light danced along the keys. Yurka panicked and sprang away.

He bit his lip, eyeing the piano with a hunted look as he unconsciously warmed up his fingers. Out of nowhere a voice thundered at him in his head. Not his own voice. Someone else’s. The judge’s voice. She’d been a fat old lady with a bad perm. Yurka was surprised he even remembered it. He tried to think about something else, to just ignore the voice, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to hear it, but he listened all the same, and it brought him pain:Do it, Konev. Reach out and touch the piano. It’s right there. Play whatever you want, play as much as you want; it won’t change anything. You’re still worthless, an utter mediocrity, and you have no future in music. Playing will just rub salt in your wounds.The voice was hers, but the words weren’t. They were Yurka’s to himself.

“Well hello, schizophrenia ... great ... ,” he muttered to himself sardonically, and headed backstage. He wandered aimlessly around the movie theater, bored, until rehearsal was over. He yearned to get into the projection room, but it was locked, as usual. He found just one somewhat interesting place in the whole giant building: a backstage supply closet. He went in and found a box with filmstrips and a projector and showed his discovery to Volodya after rehearsal.

Regardless of the anguish Yurka’s frightening discovery had caused, regardless of the bad mood that had tormented him the entire next day, Yurka naturally went to Volodya and his boys after junior lights-out. The whole of Troop Five unanimously chose filmstrips instead of scary stories. The boys voted forThe Adventures of Cipollino, while the girls insisted onSleeping Beauty. After fifteen minutes of heated debate, the young cavaliers agreed to defer to the ladies.

Afterward, as soon as the children had gotten into bed and pretended to be asleep, Yurka and Volodya went out to “their” spot. Yurka was gloomier than ever. He had neither the energy nor the inclination to even talk about anything, much less rewrite the play. Volodya tried again to find out what was really going on, but Yurka was determined not to talk and kept as quiet as a partisan. After a few fruitless attempts, Volodya tried to cheer him up, moaning out the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s balletSleeping Beauty—as off-key as he could—and rocking the merry-go-round back and forth in time to the music. At first, Yurka maintained his silence. Then he grumbled, “Too slow. And now you need to hold it: ‘mm-mm.’ But then you need to go slower ...” Eventually he relented and taught Volodya to moo the waltz correctly.

When Yurka went to bed, he dreamed of ballerinas all that night. And for the first time in half a year, he heard music playing in his head. He hadn’t had such hard days and sweet dreams in a very long time.

CHAPTER NINE

LIKE TCHAIKOVSKY

Earlier, Yurka had felt pleasantly drawn to Volodya, looking forward to how they’d have fun talking and doing interesting things, but the next morning, after his “Great Discovery,” the pull Yurka felt toward Volodya was agonizing.

This condition was utterly new and baffling. Yurka figured that the best and safest thing for him to do would be not to see or spend time with Volodya at all. If he’d been able to, that’s what he would’ve done; he might’ve even picked a fight with Volodya on purpose. But just at the thought that he wouldn’t hear Volodya’s pleasant voice and he wouldn’t see that special, soft, tender smile—the one Volodya smiled only for him—Yurka’s heart seized up in agony. It was as though somebody had opened his rib cage and implanted a magnet that pulled him so strongly and painfully to Volodya that it felt as if it were about to break through his ribs and tear through his muscles. At least, that’s what Yurka felt like that entire morning; he barely managed to make it to quiet hour.

Once quiet hour started, he and Volodya went on dry land to find the willow. After walking the entire bank by himself yesterday, finding the path was easy as pie. Walking along it to get to the willow, though, was much harder. The path looped and split and came together again between the trees of the thickly wooded bank, but not a single path led directly to the willow, so they had to break a new path right through the woods, getting caught in the tall weeds, pushing through thick bushes, and picking their way over tree roots sticking out of the ground. And while Yurka, who knew the area, felt as at home there as a fish in water, he had to keep a watchful eye on Volodya. Once, Volodya tripped on some unsteady sandy ground and almost fell off the cliff into the river, and another time he was making his way through a stand of rushes, didn’t notice a boggy patch, and nearly got stuck in it.

But no matter how hard it was to get there, it was worth it. In full daylight the willow looked like a living tent, and they very much wanted to get into its shade, away from the awful midday heat. The leafy branches undulated all the way down to the ground, and the trunk of the tree was hidden behind the thick green foliage.

The boys spread the pliant, feathery branches apart with both hands and ducked into the space behind them. They found themselves in a miniature glade, covered with soft grass and delicate fallen leaves as though with a carpet. This carpet was soft and springy and begged for them to lie down and sink into it.

“It’s light here, too!” Volodya exclaimed. His voice sounded muffled, absorbed by the green “walls” surrounding them. “I thought the sun wouldn’t make it through such thick foliage, but look at those sunbeams there.” And sure enough, a handful of sunbeams were slanting onto the grass, seeming preternaturally bright because there were so few of them.

Volodya had brought his radio with him. He turned it on and spent a long time looking for a station. When he found it, the music that came pouring out of the speaker, hissing and cutting in and out, was classical. Vivaldi.

“Let’s find another station,” suggested Yurka. “Something more fun. And something with better sound; on this one we can’t hear anything because of the static.”

“No, we’re going to listen to classical,” insisted Volodya.

“Ah, the hell with that! Try to find Radio Youth instead. That’s a good station, it plays your Time Machine sometimes.” Volodya shook his head. “Do you really not want to? But you love Time Machine!”

“And you love classical music. Who’s your favorite composer?”

“If it’s Russian composers, then Tchaikovsky,” Yurka began, then interrupted himself. “What difference does it make? What are you doing this for?”

“And why Tchaikovsky, exactly?” asked Volodya brightly, ignoring Yurka’s question.

Yurka realized that Volodya hadn’t brought the radio along just because. He was trying to get something out of Yurka. But what? Yurka didn’t understand. So he got angry.

“Volodya, what is this?!” He frowned and reached for the radio. “Give me the radio.”

“I’m not giving it to you!” Volodya hid it behind his back.

“Are you making fun of me? Is that it?” exploded Yurka, sure that Volodya had turned on classical music deliberately. But what for? To torture him?

“Yur, listen, haven’t you ever thought that you could try applying to the conservatory anyway? Sure, it’d be later than the others, but what does that matter?”

“No! I told you already, they won’t take me. I’m worthless! I’m not going to even try. So turn it off, now! Why are you taunting me like this?!”

“I’m not taunting you. All I’m doing is looking for a main theme for our show.” Volodya looked at Yurka with a disarmingly honest expression.

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