Page 73 of Pioneer Summer

Volodya scoffed. “But how do you know if they’re scum or not? Because you have an uncle who lives there? So what?Nowthey’re okay, but back then the whole country had become murderers!”

“Not all of them!” exclaimed Yurka.

“Well,obviouslynot all of them! But, Yura—” Volodya paused. He exhaled in frustration. “Look, you have to have better judgment! I know you want to think and speak your mind freely, and you can, but just not here! You have to adjust your behavior to fit the situation, and if you can’t, then you need to learn to lie! Nobody should eventhinkthe things you’re saying aloud!”

“Seems like I’ve heard this somewhere before,” growled Yurka through gritted teeth. “But I’m talking about something else, Volodya. Our honored Communist Leonidovna is only demanding our patriotism so she can check a box. Our quasi-Komsomol girls here are nodding their heads, but then they go cry their eyes out when you’re mad at them. Just look around: nobody gives a crap about the heroes! These girls are only here because of you!”

“And you have some other reason?” Volodya’s eyes flashed. He turned around to leave.

Yurka was also here because of Volodya, actually. But Volodya ... Volodya was doing the show not to check a box, not to attract somebody’s attention: he legitimately wanted to showcase the Pioneer Heroes’ feat for people, to let people know about it. He was the only one who was genuine about any of it, and he probably felt very lonely.

“Yes! I do care!” In any case, Yurka decided to correct his mistakes later; right now all he wanted was for Volodya not to have the last word.

Time stretched out longer and longer, as though it weren’t half an hour but half a day. The clock’s second hand seemed to be making fun of Yurka, crawling slowly and stumbling at every tick, so much that it felt like there should have already been five more each time the hand finally moved.

Finally Volodya clapped loudly, stood up, and said, “That’s it for today, folks.” Yurka noted that the time was only eight fifty by the clock, even though finishing early was completely out of character for the artistic director, especially now, when every minute counted. “Go take a break. Polya, Ulya, and Ksyusha, your task is to rehearse the Avengers’ dialogue a few more times, just among yourselves. Especially you, Ulya. Have the girls help you. You’re still overacting a bit. And you, Sashka, are a dead Fascist, so remember that and stop snoring when you’re lying onstage! Dead! Not asleep! Got it?”

Everyone he addressed nodded.

“You’re dismissed.”

The little kids scattered. The girls, whispering to each other, also proceeded languorously to the exit. The last person to leave the stage was Ksyusha. Yurka happened to be at the other end of the auditorium at that moment and saw her walk up to Volodya, but he didn’t hear what she asked him. Volodya shook his head no.

After Ksyusha left, Yurka demanded, with a twinge of jealousy in his voice, “What did she want?”

“She was asking me to come to the dance.”

“And?”

“No go.” Volodya shrugged nonchalantly. “We still have a bunch of work to do here. Speaking of which, come on, I wanted to talk to you about the set.”

He got onto the stage and called Yurka to follow him. Yurka’s brows shot up—What, he seriously wants to talk about the set now?!—but he trudged along anyway.

“Look,” said Volodya, gesturing toward the back left corner of the stage. “This is where we’ll arrange the HQ set: desk, chairs, the propaganda posters up there—a base, basically. And over here”—Volodya walked over to the right side of the stage—“we won’t open the whole curtain, and this will be where we do the outdoor scenes. We’ll have the hollow log here, their hiding place. We still need to think of a way to hide the rifles so they’re not visible from the audience, though: our log isn’t actually hollow like theirs was, ours is a regular one.”

Yurka was only listening with half an ear. Normally he would’ve wanted to get into the details, but he couldn’t get himself to focus on anything but the fact that he and Volodya were finally all by themselves in the empty movie theater.

“Well, but maybe we could actually put the log right up next to the curtain and then stick the rifles under the curtain ...” Volodya ducked behind the curtain and gave the heavy fabric a sharp tug. A cloud of dust enveloped him. “Ugh! Crap, now we’ll have to beat the curtain, too ...”

Yurka couldn’t stand it anymore. He strode quickly up to Volodya and shoved him so that Volodya fell back against the wall, pinning the curtainto the wall behind him. Yurka grabbed the edges of the curtain and wrapped the dusty fabric around them both, hiding them from the empty auditorium.

“What are you doing?” asked Volodya, somewhere between indignant and surprised.

“I’m picking up where we left off.”

Volodya shook his head: “Not here I won’t. What if somebody comes ...”

“But nobody can see us!”

“Yes ... that’s right ... ,” whispered Volodya, and put his hands on Yurka’s shoulders.

Yurka screwed his eyes shut and lunged for Volodya’s lips. Their lips touched and Yurka just stood there like that, holding his breath and keeping his eyes shut tight, afraid the same thing would happen now as at the power shed and Volodya would push him away. But Volodya didn’t push him away. Volodya’s hands tightened on Yurka’s shoulders and he pulled Yurka in. That innocent touching of lips to lips called forth such a storm of feeling in Yurka that he felt as if both a tender, romantic Viennese waltz and the nimble, surging “Ride of the Valkyries” had started playing at the same time inside him. It caught him in a whirl and tossed him up into the very sky, almost like what the music had done to him a couple of hours ago. But until now, he’d been clueless about the fact that playing music was hardly the only thing that could make him soar. And that heaven started not way up in the sky but somewhere about a hundred and seventy centimeters from the ground, at the level of Volodya’s lips. And also that, from now on, everything would be different, everything inside him would change—and everything outside him, too: the nights would now be bright, the winters warm.

Suddenly Volodya tensed, his back going tight as a bowstring as he turned his face away, although he pressed Yurka even closer, clutching him almost painfully tight. Yurka had no time to react before he went deaf: Volodya sneezed so loudly that Yurka’s ears rang. Then he sneezed again. And again. As they fought their way out of the dusty curtain, they were both laughing, Yurka with his head thrown back, but Volodya bent double, from sneezing, or guffawing, or both.

They both continued giggling stupidly as they made their way back to the Troop Five cabin. And Yurka also got the hiccups.

That night the little boys didn’t run riot. They didn’t even ask for a scary story. Volodya had probably worked them too hard. This was the first time Yurka wasn’t glad they fell asleep so quickly, because it meant Yurka had to leave.

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