Page 54 of Pioneer Summer

“It was always there. You just didn’t bother to read the script all the way to the end.” And Volodya was right about that. Yurka, focused as he was on Olezhka’s lines, had completely forgotten about all the other parts. “The Gestapo officer Krause. It’s a supporting role, but an important one. You don’t have a lot of lines, but tomorrow you need to have them memorized so well you can rattle them off in your sleep. Do you think you can do it?” he said, echoing the exact words he’d said to Masha. Yurka squirmed.

He didn’t want to. It didn’t feel good to play a German, even one that ended up getting killed off later. Deep down, it felt to Yurka a little bit like a betrayal, even though he knew that was a big exaggeration. His grandmother had lost her husband to the Nazis; his mom, her father. Yurka himself had never seen his grandfather, not even a picture of him. But if he were going to refuse to play this part, he’d have to explain why. It was all his friends and family could talk about whenever they saw each other, every time they got together on holidays, to the extent that, in spite of everything, Yurka started to be ashamed of it. Yurka didn’t want to have to talk about what he dismissively called his “dreary” family history, especially not in front of Masha.

He thought it was too banal, too Jewish, too similar to the stories of a thousand other families who’d lived in Germany, or in other occupied countries, during that time. His grandmother had told the story of how she lost her husband, and how she looked for him afterward, to everyone she met, as well as to Yurka himself. Yurka knew the tale by heart: how hard his grandfather had worked to get his pregnant grandmother out of Germany and into the USSR as the Holocaust escalated, trying and failing several times before he succeeded just before it would have become impossible. How his grandfather had intended to follow her but vanished, and how she had waited for him, and how she had searched for him later, obsessively, with the help of those of her relatives in Europe who had miraculously survived, and how she had traced him all the way to Dachau, and how, against all common sense, she had believed until the day she died that Yurka’s grandfather might have escaped from the concentration camp ...

His grandmother had died, so this story had stopped being told, but evidently it was now Yurka’s turn to tell it. He was capable of sharing something like this with Volodya, but with Masha? No. Not for anything, not ever.

“Fine,” Yurka mumbled listlessly, reaching out to take the piece of paper on which Volodya had copied out Yurka’s lines by hand. In a monotone, Yurka read, “‘My brave Fräulein, I am aware that your parents remain in Leningrad. And I am also aware that your beloved city has fallen. A new flag flies above it. But I assure you that all you have to do is agree to a small compromise and share a few bits of information with Hitler’s army command, and—”

“No, not now,” Volodya interrupted him. “Memorize it first. We’ll rehearse it later. Right now we’d just bother you, though, so you can ... you’re free to go.”

“Come again?” Yurka’s mouth fell open. He was flabbergasted. “What are you doing, kicking me out?”

“No, no!” Volodya hastened to explain. “I’m just giving you your day off. You’ve earned it. You can learn your lines, or you can just relax—you’ve worked a lot already. But, anyway, just do what you want.”

Yurka stayed, of course. All his previous enthusiasm had evaporated. His mood hadn’t just fallen a little, it had collapsed in a heap. Even whenOlezhka showed up and Volodya presented him ceremoniously with his new lines, and Olezhka thanked them both and began practicing them, it didn’t make Yurka feel the least bit better.

Once the entire cast had arrived, the kids started running through individual scenes from the show. Volodya capably instructed the young performers while Polina and Ksyusha, eyes alight, whispered about something, but the crestfallen Yurka sat in his usual spot in the front row, fighting the urge to put his fingers in his ears: Masha was plinking the piano keys as she worked on the music, and Yurka couldn’t listen to someone else performing his competition piece.

He had played the Lullaby so many times in his life that he felt like he hadn’t just performed it, he’d composed it. He had spent so many hours hearing it in his head, he had spent so many hours sitting at the piano, memorizing it, experimenting with it, looking for the ideal sound and trying to figure out how Tchaikovsky himself had imagined the piece. Yura had spent so much energy on the Lullaby that it felt like it belonged to him. But now somebody else was playing it!

Masha. She was trying to run through it in her head, trying to get to know it, trying to adjust her heartbeat to fit its tempo and rhythm and make it the music of her soul. But the worst of it was that she was only playing the Lullaby to please Volodya. To make him like her. And it was working! Every so often he’d step away from rehearsal and go over to Masha and nod in satisfaction as he murmured something. It looked to Yurka like he was praising her.

Apparently, Yurka was the only person who knew Masha wasn’t playing it right; that she was playing badly, playing it totally wrong! He knew he could play it way better and that Volodya would like it way more. But making himself even walk up to the keyboard was worse than death.

Masha just kept on playing and playing. She’d finish and then begin all over again, then finish again and begin again. Finally, Yurka couldn’t take it anymore.

He leaped up onto the stage and was barely able to restrain himself from slamming the cover down on Masha’s fingers and flattening them. “Stop it!” he shouted. “That’s enough, I’m telling you!”

Masha snatched her hands back from the keyboard and stared at Yurka, frightened. A tense silence hung in the air. Everyone who was there froze in the middle of whatever they were doing: Olezhka, looking through the tube of his rolled-up script as if it were a spyglass; Volodya, caught in midair as he was sitting down in his seat in the audience; Polina and Ksyusha, covering their open mouths with their palms. They all turned their heads and were now watching Yurka closely. But he didn’t care. He had lost control of himself.

“Masha, that’s nauseating!” he exclaimed. “You’re playing the Lullaby like it’s some kind of polka! Where’s your accompaniment racing off to? Why is it drowning out the main motif? And why so loud so soon? Right here,” he said, stabbing his finger into the sheet music, “it has to be more tender. And why aren’t you stepping on the pedal? Can you not feel the music at all? Do you not understand in the slightest how this piece has to sound?!” He caught his breath. Then he went on, more quietly but far more angrily, grinding the words through gritted teeth: “Masha, you’re utterly worthless!”

For a couple of seconds, Masha was still as a statue, processing what she’d heard. Then her lips began trembling. Yurka saw that she was trying to say “Look who’s talking,” but she was gasping so hard for air that she couldn’t speak. Then she burst into quiet tears.

“Bawl all you want! It won’t change anything!” announced Yurka. Immediately he felt someone grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him away.

“We’re going to step out now,” Volodya hissed in his ear, pulling him off the stage and toward the exit.

They went all the way to the far side of the outdoor stage, where nobody who was inside the movie theater could hear them through the open windows.

“Yura, what was that?!” Volodya exploded. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

But Yurka scowled and wouldn’t talk.

“For crying out loud, Yura ... Don’t you think you went a little too far?” asked Volodya, a little calmer now. He leaned back against the wall with a sigh and closed his eyes wearily. But Yurka felt so hollowed-out inside that he didn’t even have the strength to raise his voice.

“Quit lecturing me,” he groaned. “Is that why you asked me to leave? Because you knew I’d shout at her?”

“Yes,” Volodya replied simply.

“Am I really that predictable?” This idea made Yurka even more dejected: Was he really so simple that even reactions as deeply personal as these could be seen coming a mile away?

“No,” said Volodya without pause. “It’s just that I care about what you say.”

Yurka, surprised, lifted his head to look at Volodya, but he must’ve anticipated this reaction, too, because he wasn’t looking back. An awkward silence dragged on.

Yurka didn’t know what to say, or whether he needed to say anything at all. He did know one thing: he didn’t want Volodya to leave yet.

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