Page 62 of Pioneer Summer

Yes, Yurka was aware his behavior was extremely odd. Rationally, he was aware of it. And Volodya’s relationship with Masha shouldn’t have provoked such a hurricane of emotion in him. But it did. His heart was spasming and breaking all at once. His chest felt both tight and hot. His cheeks burned, but chills raised goose bumps on his skin. His fingers trembled.

Volodya was calm. He stood with his arms crossed on his chest. Yurka approached him and, without breaking eye contact, said: “I want to be the only person in your life!”

“You are. You’re my only friend,” Volodya said softly, even affectionately. “Yura, if you like Masha, just tell me. I’ll back off.”

“‘Just tell me’?! Maybeyou’rethe one who’d better tellme!”

“What is it I’m supposed to be telling you?”

“The truth. About her. Because it’s her, isn’t it! Why didn’t you admit it was her from the start?! Why are you hiding it? And what are you even hiding, anyway? That you can barely wait a year for her? Just wait, and you’ll get everything you want! But I won’t ever get anything!”

“A year? I don’t understand.” Volodya really did look baffled now. He even let his hands fall to his sides. “But hold on ... wait ...” He thought furiously for a second, then clapped his hand to his forehead. “No, I was right a minute ago! That’s why you’re so strange, that’s why you’re avoiding me and picking on Masha: you like her, but she likes me!” Volodya burst out laughing.

As Yurka watched this travesty of his own making unfold, he instantly became furious. Suddenly everything around him was too intense, as though all his senses had sharpened at once. The hum of the power shed sounded deafening; the smell of the lilac felt cloying; even the dim light of the moon and stars was blinding him. In that light, Volodya’s face became paler and his gray-green eyes shone like emeralds. And maybe Yurka only imagined this, but along with the fake happiness there was something else in them, too. As though Volodya understood more than he should; as though he knew what was happening to Yurka even better than Yurka himself did. But Volodya was lying and putting on this clown show anyway.

“Your ‘girl from my building’ is Masha? Yur, I’m more than happy to ... to ... I won’t get in your way! Be bold, and you’ll get everything you want!”

“What are you even saying?!”

Yurka no longer knew what he was saying or doing. Time slowed down for the second time that evening. The humming in his ears was joined by the thundering of his heart. Yurka filled his lungs with air and tried to shout over the din: “It’s not Masha who I won’t have! It’s you!” Then he turned away.

“Wait! What?!” Volodya grabbed Yurka by the arm and turned him around. He furrowed his brows, gazing directly into Yurka’s eyes. “What did you say? Say it again!”

“How am I supposed to explain this to you?” croaked Yurka hoarsely. He took hold of Volodya’s shoulders, pulled him close, and paused for a heartbeat, then pressed his lips to Volodya’s.

Volodya gave a muffled gasp and his eyes widened in surprise. But Yurka simply lost all sense of self, all sense of self-awareness. All that existed was the way Volodya smelled ... like apples ... and also, just a little bit, the warmth of Volodya’s skin.

This lasted a couple of seconds, and then Yurka felt one more thing: Volodya’s hands on his shoulders. But before he could be glad, Volodya gently but insistently pushed him away.

Volodya, flustered, stared for a few more seconds at Yurka’s burning face. Then, keeping his hands in place so he held Yurka at arm’s length, Volodya said sternly, “You quit that.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THERE WILL BE MUSIC HERE

Yura used the uniform jacket to sweep the shards of glass off the windowsill, then he climbed out of the troop leaders’ room. The dandelion field looked very sad indeed, so he left it behind without regret and went to where the athletic fields and tennis courts used to be. They’d looked so huge when he was young, but now they were pitiful little patches overgrown with weeds.

Everything looks bigger and more meaningful when you’re a kid, he thought as he walked a circle around the courts. He sighed and shook his head, which was stubbornly beset with the thought of how inexorably time passes, how pitiless it is to everything, like a plague that kills everything it touches.

Wary of tripping on the chunks of asphalt hiding in the wet grass, Yura was looking down at his feet, so he spotted the torn, rusted chain-link fence lying flat as though it had grown into the ground. At one time that fence had enclosed the court, and at one time Volodya had clung to it desperately, apologizing for the thing with the magazines and telling him about MGIMO.

I wonder if he ever graduated?

His gaze landed on a dark mass in some tall weeds by the side of the mess hall. Yura approached it. Long, thin rectangles lay scattered among chunks of broken brick and clumps of fallen leaves. The black ones were smaller, the white ones bigger. Piano keys. The entire instrument was here, smashed in, the panels ripped off and the lid broken. The piece of wood that had once been the front panel still bore the gold letters reading “Elegy.” The hammers were scattered around and broken wires jutted from the piano’s innards.

It was almost physically painful for Yura to see that the instrument he’d played when he was young was now in such a state.How did it get here? The movie theater’s not nearby ...It must have been some village guys from Horetivka, when Horetivka still existed.

The Elegy ... he remembered that make of piano. It had been one of the most popular uprights in the entire USSR. All day cares, schools, and other institutions tended to have that exact model. The Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp had been no exception. The very same kind, in brown, had been in the movie theater and had been used at all the rehearsals. It was the one Masha had played.

Yura reached down and touched the scattered keys. He remembered them not the way they were now, but clean and shiny. New. If they had the capacity of memory, they wouldn’t have remembered his hands, either. Back then his hands had been different. Young. Yura was spellbound by the melancholy picture of his aging hands on the timeworn keys. How alike they were.

Scenes from his memory, flat and indistinct, flickered in his mind’s eye. It was as though time had turned and raced backward, and the keys turned white right before his eyes, and now his fingers on them were young and inexperienced.

The scene came to life and became crystal clear, just as though it were real, with details, full of sounds and smells ... the movie theater, at night, in the summer of 1986, and him, a teenager, in the movie theater, in summer.

“Yur, wake up! Come on, Konev, get up already! If even one person’s late to morning calisthenics, that’s it: no best troop title for us.”

Morning calisthenics. Breakfast. Assembly. Civic duty work. Drama club. Volodya would be everywhere. There was no place to hide from him. Yurka had told him everything, and Volodya knew his hiding spots. Volodya would find him and ask,Why did you do that?

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