Page 65 of Pioneer Summer

His next thought was alarming: nobody would be expecting Yurka at home. But he’d show up there. He’d just say it:I ran away from camp. Let me in.His mom would shriek and maybe even start crying, while his dad would start playing on Yurka’s conscience: he’d go all quiet and just look at his son with an expression of complete disappointment. That look was worse than everything else.

For a second Yurka thought about running not home but to his grandma’s, the one on his dad’s side. She loved Yurka no matter how he behaved, and she wouldn’t even say a word about it; quite the opposite, she’d secretly be happy and wouldn’t betray him to anyone. The idea was very appealing,but Yurka shook himself:Hide behind Grandma’s back? Be a coward? That’s just what I need! As though just the shame of it weren’t enough. My parents will go crazy when they hear their only and dearly beloved child has vanished. How will Mom take it? And what about Dad? He’ll stay mute the rest of his life!

Yurka dragged himself slowly along. A kilometer away from camp the forest was completely wild. In some places he had to fight through bushes or climb over fallen trunks. The path turned out to be a hard one. One time Yurka even fell into some wet, crumbly earth and got stuck, as though the camp didn’t want to let him go and was insisting he come back. But what Yurka wanted to do was cry. Like a pitiful baby. Because no matter how he distracted himself by planning his escape, no matter how he suppressed his hurt, his sad longing, his painful thoughts about Volodya, they kept bubbling up. Volodya had spoken in that nervous voice, and when he’d crouched down in front of Yurka, he’d looked at Yurka that way, the same way his dad did: a look of disappointment and sadness. “No. Don’t think about that. Better to think about escape. Better to think about crime and about punishment.”

What would Yurka’s parents do to him for this? Well, whatcouldthey do? Lock him up at home? Hardly: Yurka was too old for punishments like that. Take away his pocket money? That would hurt, but it wasn’t fatal; usually Yurka didn’t even have enough small change in his pocket to jingle. So he was used to that. Maybe they’d send him to work at his grandmother’s day care? Actually, that version sounded likeliest; his mother had already warned him he’d spend all summer working at the day care if he fought with anyone at camp again. Yurka had acted as though the threat cowed him, but the truth was that didn’t scare him a bit. He had his little friends at the day care, like Fedka Kochkin and “Celluloid” Kolka. Just like last year, the three of them would wander around the village at night, keeping watch and catching hooligans and hedgehogs. And there was a neighbor boy, too: Vova, who was Volodya’s age and just as judgmental ... Volodya! Reminders of him were everywhere. Why was everyone named Vladimir? Well, what do you expect when the leader of the world proletariat’s named Vladimir; of course half the country will be named after him. All those Vovas, Vovochkas, Vovchiks ... Volodyas ... Volodenkas ...

Just then Yurka tripped over a scraggly stump and just about fell flat on his face. He had to admit he’d miss Volodya terribly. He’d regret destroying everything they’d had. He’d never see Volodya again. Never. Period. And Yurka wouldn’t even have a photo to remember him by, since troop pictures weren’t printed until right before the end of the session.

He glimpsed the highway between two tree trunks. A couple of hundred meters farther out was the bus stop. It was gray as concrete and massive, monolithic, as though it’d been chiseled out of stone; it was also very pretty, with the pointed edge of its sky-blue roof sticking up and out like a wing, although he couldn’t tell whether it was the wing of a plane or a barn swallow. And right up under the peak of the roof, in fat metal letters with occasional spots of rust, were the wordsPIONEER CAMP.

Crossing the highway was easy. So was memorizing the bus schedule. There was only one bus that came all the way out here: the 410. Yurka was amazed. This was the first time in his life he’d seen a three-digit bus number. The first bus left the depot a little after six in the morning and got to this stop at seven ten. Yurka memorized that and nodded. He peered at the schedule one last time for good measure. It was very old, and in the part where the bus number was written, there was a wide crack, so maybe it wasn’t 410 after all. But that didn’t matter. The main thing was that the end station was in the city.

Now that he’d collected the information he needed to plan his escape, he looked around and surprised himself by calming down. There was such a pervasive sense of peace here. The deserted highway, the forest whispering all around, and the cool inside the old bus stop composed an idyllic scene, completed by the clear blue sky in which the airy white domes of a dozen parachutes floated weightlessly down to the ground like white dandelion seeds. Yurka smiled. How nice it felt out here, away from his troubles. He sat down on the bus stop bench in the shade and one last time repeated to himself what he’d decided on and confirmed. His plan was this: break the fence around the unfinished barracks at night and make a hole he could get through, like last year. Then get his stuff together and escape early in the morning while everyone was still asleep. Get to the bus stop and sit there waiting for the bus. Then home. Get the tongue-lashing from his mom andawait the divine retribution from his dad. And then would come the sad longing for Volodya, strong enough to make Yurka howl, sob into his pillow, and writhe and moan until he turned himself inside out. Why, oh, why had he gone and done that?!

Yurka buried his face in his hands. Why??! And how was he supposed to stand being all alone now with this confusing, bittersweet feeling? Guilty and alone, being eaten alive by his conscience?

When the thirst that had been torturing him for at least an hour finally became intolerable, Yurka stood up, spit a thick wad of saliva, and turned back toward camp. As he trudged through the woods, a new set of doubts tore at him: Was he really capable of this? Of not seeing Volodya? Of burning all his bridges without leaving even the slightest chance for reconciliation, of going away without saying goodbye? Without asking for forgiveness? But then, how could he forgive Volodya for pushing him away? He kept remembering Volodya’s reaction, there in the lilacs behind the power shed, the scene looping on repeat: Volodya telling him to quit it.

Yurka kept trudging along. It seemed like he’d never make it. In general, the way back from somewhere was usually faster than the way there, but not for Yurka. Not today. For him it was the opposite.

Burning rays of bright June sun pierced through the thick foliage of the dense wild woods and prickled his skin awfully. And everything inside Yurka complained and screeched, too. He felt like a dusty abandoned piano that nobody had played in a long time, that people used as a place to put random stuff. The taut wires inside had gone slack, and water had gotten on some of them and they’d gotten rusty, and a pedal was broken and hanging loose, unconnected ... And then he’d open the lid, which would also creak and be hard to move, and he’d lightly rest his fingers on the keys, yellow with age ... but instead of tender, touching sounds, he’d elicit a horrible din, because the piano had been out of tune for ages, after all, and the hammers were bent ... You play a B but get a little B-flat in there, you play the C above middle C but it doesn’t even make a sound ...

His friendship with Volodya seemed to be saturated with music. Music was always playing: the Pioneer anthem when he saw Volodya on the square, Pachelbel’s Canon on the radio during their first meeting in the theater,Masha playing the piano during rehearsal ... They heard the music from the dance floor during their nighttime sessions on the merry-go-round ... the music coming from the radio while they were under the willow ... His feelings for Volodya were always resonating with music, because wherever Volodya was, there was always music.

Yurka pulled the creaky gate shut behind him, ignored the duty guards’ questions, and wandered off in no particular direction. Children were running around. On their faces, there wasn’t even a trace of the alarm they’d felt earlier during the episode with Pcholkin. Just like there wasn’t even a trace left of his and Volodya’s friendship. So he’d figured out his escape plan, but other things were making themselves known now, too: uncertainty, exhaustion, and hunger. He had missed snack running around the woods. There was a long way to go until dinner, and there was no sense going to the mess hall, since they wouldn’t even give him a crust of bread. No surprise there: Zinaida Vasilyevna never let him have anything extra during her shift. He could go to the tennis courts, but he had neither energy to play himself nor interest in watching others play. He could go to some other club, but there’d be nothing for him to do there. He could go to the river, but he’d see Volodya. No. Seeing him now would be the worst thing possible.

But Yurka wanted to see him this very minute.

“I have no idea what’s going on!” Yurka whispered while his feet headed to the theater of their own accord.

On the main square, girls were playing Chinese jump rope while the boys were making matchstick guns out of stolen clothespins. Yurka wandered around so lost in thought that he didn’t notice anything around him, though he did tuck his arm behind his back instinctively whenever a small, noisy person ran by him too close and too fast. Yurka thought of the movie theater. There definitely wouldn’t be anyone there yet, and the piano was there, and all of a sudden Yurka wanted badly to sit down at it, open the cover, put his hands on the keyboard, and, without daring to breathe, run his fingers across them weightlessly, just to feel them. Maybe he could even play something. But what? What would he like to hear right now? Immersed in his ponderings about music, Yurka realized that only at his beloved instrument could he figure himself out—only there, and nowhere else. And nothing else besidesmusic was capable of calming him down. Only music could get through to him, settle into his very soul, put it in order, and extract from its deepest depths an understanding of what was happening to him. Only it could reason with his feelings, let him make peace with himself, explain everything.

But to force himself to touch the piano, Yurka had to conquer a fear that had seemed unconquerable. Although what was that sharp, prickly fear compared to this, the leaden, aching dread Yurka had been feeling all night last night and all day today? What’s more, he’d been afraid for so long. Like skin that gradually coarsens and loses sensitivity, Yurka’s heart had grown coarse; his emotions had grown numb. He’d stopped caring. Did that mean he’d finally be able to play now?

Inside the movie theater, it was cool and dark. The navy blue curtains were drawn, so all the theater’s interior spaces were lit only by the sparse sunbeams coming in around the edges of the thick cloth. It was like the theater was sleeping in peace and quiet. But it wasn’t empty. Olezhka was walking back and forth across the stage, whispering to himself, his nose buried in a thick stack of papers.

“Aren’t you all at the river?” asked Yurka, a little overly loud because he was so surprised.

Olezhka winced and came to a halt. “Oh! Yuwka! We’we done, we’we back alweady.”

“I see. But what about—Where’s Volodya?” Yurka grew alarmed: What if he was here somewhere?

“He’s busy. Petka Pcholkin committed sabotage. He made a cawbide wocket to send Sashka to the moon, because ouw Sashka’s the one who wants to wowk at the Baikonuw Cosmodwome. But Petka’s wocket didn’t wowk. The space capsule blew up.”

“Cawbide?” repeated Yurka, not understanding. But then he worked it out. “Oh, carbide!” he said, then thought it through aloud: “The same stuff I used to use for my cherry bombs. So that’s what Pcholkin was looking for in that construction debris! That’s why he was digging around in the rocks. And the girls’ hair spray didn’t just vanish for no reason! ‘There was just a little bit left at the bottom.’ Yes, that’s it—just a little left, and so the rocket exploded faster than he thought. You have to make your rockets out ofemptyspray cans.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! It made this huuuuge explosion! The giwls hid in the bushes, and the boys hid in the bushes, and then they busted Sashka’s nose, and it was pouwing blood evewywhewe, thewe was blood all ovew the main squawe. Lena was squealing like cwazy. Boy, was it scawy! So Volodya mawched him off to the diwectow. They’ve been in thewe evew since. But why didn’t you come to swim?”

“I was just ... doing something.”

“Will you come tomowwow?” Olezhka asked hopefully. “And why’d you come now? Awe you doing something now too?”

“I ... I want to play the piano. But don’t tell anybody, okay? I don’t play very well and I’m embarrassed. That’s why I was able to do it now, when nobody’s around.”

“Oh, okay, I get it. Well, go ahead and play. I’m going. I also have to ... do something.” Olezhka grinned and skipped away so swiftly that Yurka didn’t have a chance to shout goodbye after him.

And so here he was, all alone, except for the upright piano. There was one just like it in Yurka’s room at home, with one difference: his piano had a layer of dust and was covered with clothes, toys, and books piled so high the lid wasn’t visible. But this piano was clean, and gleaming, and beautiful.

---