Page 66 of Pioneer Summer

Yurka was at the piano before he could think about it. He reached out and turned on the lamp. As soon as he saw the keys, illuminated by the warm yellow light, panic seized him again.

“This fear is nothing compared to the horror you went through yesterday. And this feeling of your own worthlessness is nothing compared to the humiliation of Volodya pushing you away,” he encouraged himself. It was a strange sort of encouragement, but it worked. He moved closer to the piano.

He sat down, lifted his hand, and placed it carefully on the keyboard. Anticipation of a low, deep C shot from his fingers to his chest like an electrical shock. It might seem such a little thing, calling forth just a single solitary sound, but what an effort it took to make himself do it. His heart fluttered with joy: he could do it! The C burst forth, pealing through the theater.

Yurka was transported by joy and delight. His fingers, stiff from lack of conditioning, didn’t strike the keys; rather, they immersed themselves in the keyboard, pressing out other notes as he tried to remember something simple and play it.

“How did that go again?” he mumbled to himself. “F-sharp, A-sharp ... F or A? Not A. F. F, F-sharp. Or was it G? How does it go?!”

Yurka tried to remember the melody he’d composed himself. At the time it had seemed so simple; he’d played it with his eyes closed, delighting his parents and especially his grandma on his mom’s side, the one who’d dreamed her grandson would become a pianist. After a year without music, Yurka had forgotten the melody so thoroughly that now he could only remember it with great effort. And the other problem was that his fingers were stiff.

Yurka started stretching them and trying to recall the melody visually. “F-sharp and A-sharp two above middle C, then up another octave to F natural and F-sharp ... F natural, back down to A-sharp, F-sharp, A-sharp ... Yes! That’s it! I remember!”

At that moment, all his miseries faded into the background; at that moment, all his problems became insignificant. He had remembered! He was playing! He was finally playing; he was bending the keyboard to his will; he was eliciting beautiful sounds; he felt like he could do anything! He knew there were no heights he couldn’t attain! His rapture carried him out of this world into another one, comfortable, warm, and sonorous. It was as though Yurka had been launched into outer space and was floating there, enchanted by the yellow and white sparkling of stars. Except that in his outer space the stars were sounds.

The door to the movie theater creaked softly, but Yurka didn’t turn around. “F-sharp, A-sharp, F, F-sharp. F, A-sharp, F-sharp, A-sharp ... ,” he whispered, playing the same phrase over and over, shifting his hand up and down the keys, remembering the forgotten motions.

Suddenly he heard furious footsteps. “Not a junior camper,” concluded Yurka. “A heavy tread.” But he was playing the piano and, turning back to the piece, he forgot about them immediately. Completely immersed in his music, he was no longer paying attention to anything else: he didn’t look around; he didn’t listen to anything but the music.

The footsteps froze abruptly. Then individual steps, drowned out by the piano notes, quietly approached him one by one. The sneakers of the uninvited guest squeaked a little on the lacquered parquet floor; hands pulled out a hanky to clean a pair of glasses; the hanky rustled—but none of this mattered to Yurka.

F-sharp, A-sharp, up to F, F-sharp, F, back down to A-sharp, F-sharp, A-sharp ...

“Never do that again,” Volodya requested, his voice trembling.

Yurka froze: Was he imagining it? No. So the footsteps had, in fact, been Volodya’s. Yurka turned around. Volodya, breathing hard, was standing in a circle of light next to the stage. As he stared at the ground, he slowly drew in a deep breath. The moment he put his glasses back on, he became completely calm, as though by magic.

There he is. He came, said Yurka’s internal voice.He came himself. He came to me. Again. But what for?

“What exactly shouldn’t I do?” asked Yurka gingerly.

“Don’t disappear. You were gone for five hours!”

“Okay” was all Yurka could mumble in response as he watched Volodya sit down cautiously beside him on the piano bench.

“I thought I’d kill you once I found you,” snorted Volodya ruefully. “And I was looking for you. At first just me, then I sent out kids to help find you. If it hadn’t been for Olezhka, I wouldn’t have known what happened to you until this evening. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

Yurka found his voice. “It’s good you’re trying to act like nothing happened. I want to act that way, too, but it’s not working.” His hands started trembling. Again a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions burst into his head. And again Yurka placed his fingers on the keys and started walking himself through the second part of the melody. That was the only way he could retain his self-control. “F, F-flat. Dammit, no, that’s not it. F, F-sharp. Or flat? Dammit!”

Volodya ignored his outburst, continuing: “I’m not trying to act like nothing happened. Just the opposite ... So basically, this is why I’m here—besides finding out whether you’re okay, of course ...” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I had a lot of time to think about what happened. I tried all night to decide what to do. All night—but it was no good: I kept going off in the wrong direction! Because it never even occurred to me that you might have been serious. I mean, it occurred to me, of course, but I drove the thought out of my mind. It was too fantastical. And then it turns out that it was just the opposite, it was real. And I panicked. I didn’t say what I should’ve said. Or what I actually wanted to say. But while I was looking for you those fivehours”—he emphasized those last words—“I thought through it all again. But this time I got it right. So ... well, I came here. To tell you what I decided.”

“F, F-sharp ...” Stop. “What difference does it make? We’re not friends anymore, after all.”

“Of course we’re not. What kind of friends can we be after that?”

They remained silent. Volodya sat with his hands clutched together in his lap and looked at Yurka’s reflection in the piano’s lacquered front panel. Yurka was watching Volodya out of the corner of his eye himself. He didn’t want to watch Volodya, but he did. He didn’t want to sit so close to Volodya on the small bench, but he did.

“F-sharp, A-sharp, up to F, F-sharp ... F, down to A-sharp, F-sharp ... ,” Yurka said hesitantly.

“Yura, aren’t you even a little bit afraid?”

“What am I supposed to be afraid of?”

“Of what you did!”

Of course he was afraid. And he was also confused. And very hurt. But how much more frightening and painful it was to realize he had lost Volodya because of what he’d done. He’d just ruined everything, in one fell swoop.

“You’re acting like such a child,” sighed Volodya, not waiting for Yurka’s response. “But I’m actually a bit jealous of you.”

---