Page 79 of Pioneer Summer

“Should I sing you a lullaby?” laughed Yurka.

“Yes. But it’d be better if you played it. At the play. I really want to see the most extraordinary Yurka, the very best Yurka in the whole world, sitting at the piano, and I want to hear the Lullaby. You love it so much, and I ... I want to watch you so much. I want to admire you. Play it—for me.”

Yurka would sooner have gnawed the willow down with his teeth than refuse Volodya now. After hearing that, he felt like the best person on the whole planet. How could he not feel that way? How could he not become the very best Yurka of all? So he did.

“I’ll play it. For you.”

He returned to camp after quiet hour, drew a piano keyboard on a long piece of paper, and started training his visual memory. He also got some blank sheet music, copied the Lullaby onto it from the library copy, and kept it in his pocket so he always had it and could go over it anytime he had a free moment.

But that night he didn’t have a chance to practice, because Olga Leonidovna drowned him in errands. Once he finished one, she piled on even more, as though she were mocking him. Evidently she had decided that Konev the knucklehead was the cause of Volodya’s failure to have the show ready on time, so the dried-up old fish was going to work him as hard as she could in punishment.

Volodya, for his part, was completely drowning in troop leader business. Troop Five was now preparing a sketch for the camp’s special show, and Yurka had neither the time nor the opportunity to help him or even see him. From sheer longing, they managed to steal ten minutes to be together in the evening. Yurka was tempted by the idea of them getting together late at night, but knowing that Volodya hadn’t slept in two days, he didn’t even think of suggesting it. Yurka knew that he needed the rest, because the things he hadn’t paid adequate attention to earlier were obvious now: the dark circles under Volodya’s eyes, Volodya’s generally pale and subdued air. No matter how much Yurka wanted to spend every minute with Volodya, he didn’t have the right to demand that Volodya not sleep at all.

The next day, Camp Barn Swallow Day, Yurka knew it would be hard to find even half an hour before the celebration when he and Volodya couldbe alone. But it turned out far worse: they couldn’t manage even a single minute. Starting first thing in the morning, Yurka was tasked with a gazillion chores, like digging to the center of the earth, completing five Five-Year Plans in three years, building a couple of Baikal–Amur railroads, and moving the piano. The piano was the one that made him most indignant: it would fall out of tune!

“Faster, higher, stronger!” came the phys ed instructor Semyon’s voice from the athletic fields. He must’ve been shouting himself blue in the face if they could hear him all the way out on the main square.

For the first time in his life, Yurka was missing morning calisthenics. With Olga Leonidovna’s approval, though: he was headed to the stage to decorate it for the talent show. He listened to the phys ed instructor as he walked, expecting the trees to splinter from the impact of that thunderous voice, and thought about how he, Yurka, was already faster, higher, and stronger than he ever had been, but he was even more than that: he was just plain miraculous. There was no other way to explain it; how else could such fairy-tale wonders be happening to him, Konev the knucklehead? Volodya, that very same Komsomol Goody Two-shoes—handsome, smart Volodya—had kissed him and held his hand and told him, “You’re so handsome when you play.” “If I had my way,” Volodya had told him last night, “I’d never let you go.”

Moving the piano turned out not to be that hard: Yurka had both the jug-eared Alyosha and the facilities manager, San Sanych, to help him, and the piano had wheels, and both the movie theater and the stage had ramps. But he still felt sorry for the instrument. The whole time they were moving it, Yurka muttered futilely to himself: “They couldn’t be happy with just a tape recorder, oh no. What if it rains?” Once they’d gotten the piano in place, they tested the sound, and he cursed. Sure enough, it was out of tune now, and the B didn’t even make a sound.

“So who’s going to tune it?”

“There’s more handymen around here than you can shake a stick at, Yurok. We’ll find somebody.” The facilities manager marched off to the administration building.

“Don’t you know how?” asked Alyosha naively.

“No. I did try once; I hated it when it didn’t sound quite right, but I didn’t have the patience to wait for a tuner, so I fiddled around with it myself. Thena wire snapped and I just about bit the dust,” Yurka recalled, not without some pride. “See that scar on my chin?”

“Isn’t that something! You sure are brave, Yurka. You know what? People said all kinds of things about you, but I didn’t believe them. I told them Konev’s a good guy. And that’s right! You are!”

“Oh? And what kinds of things did they say?”

“Oh, different things: some people said you’re a knucklehead, others said the opposite, that you’re aiming for assistant troop leader. Don’t pay any attention. Let ’em say what they want.”

“Who says that?” asked Yurka, thinking of Ksyusha.

“Well ... just don’t tell anybody I told you, okay?”

“I’ll keep quiet as a partisan. They’ll never drag it out of me.”

“Masha Sidorova complained to Olga Leonidovna about you, saying you’re keeping the artistic director from doing his job, but there you are tuning the pia—”

“Masha?!” shrieked Yurka, furious. Then he added, more quietly, “Just you wait, Masha ... I’ll get you for this!”

“Hey, but keep it a secret! You promised!”

“I’ll keep it a secret, Alyosh. It’ll be secret.”

It was time for breakfast. The first thing Yurka did was run and look for Masha so he could grill her about why she was tattling on him. But she was nowhere to be found. There were only two Pukes at breakfast; Ksyusha was missing. Yurka went over to them and asked, “Do you know where Masha is?”

Ulyana smiled flirtatiously. “Why do you want to know?”

“I just wanted to inform her that she’s no longer participating in the show. I’ll be doing the accompaniment!”

“Uh-oh ... ,” said Ulya slowly. “Go look in the club building. She and Ksyusha are making the wall newspaper for the celebration.”

Yurka was suddenly hit by an idea, one he liked so much that he decided not to go looking for Masha at all. He knew the news about her being kicked out of the play would travel through the grapevine quickly and that Sidorova would come find him herself.

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