Page 84 of Pioneer Summer

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I SWEAR: NEVER AGAIN”

Time had run out. The cast—Volodya especially—was scared out of their wits once they realized that the premiere of their show was the day after tomorrow.

Yurka skipped morning calisthenics to rush to the theater and immerse himself in practicing the Lullaby. He stayed there all day, so Volodya’s nerves didn’t affect him much. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of the drama club, who had a pretty rough time of it. Volodya was incensed at the loss of the entire previous day due to the Camp Barn Swallow Day festivities, so starting first thing in the morning, he spent the whole day pulling actors in threes, twos, and even one at a time out of their activities and civic duty work to run tirelessly through their individual scenes.

Two clubs were mobilized to help with the show, the sewing club and the art club. But while the tailors, armed with Ksyusha’s sketches, were working as hard as they could, the artists were just goofing off. At least, according to Volodya. They weren’t able to make as many set decorations as the show required, so Volodya took a few of the sketches from them and set to work painting decorations himself with the help of actors and volunteers like Alyosha.

As for Yurka, while he was worried, he was completely calm when it came to the show. If they kept working at this rate, he was sure they’d be ready in time. That wasn’t what was tormenting him. The problem was that time was running out not only for the actors, but for him and Volodya.

Volodya understood this, too, and took action. He managed to find moments even in that chock-full schedule to run over to visit Yurka in the movie theater, pecking him on the cheek and tousling his hair.

Yurka was sad nevertheless. His sadness made the Lullaby sound magnificent, but even that wasn’t enough to reverse his mood. The only thing that made him really happy was that the time they spent alone together was exclusively theirs. And even though the moments they did steal and the tender,lightning-quick glances they did share all filled his soul with joy, Yurka waited in agony for the hundred and twenty minutes of quiet hour. They’d finally be able to really be together! They’d be alone. They could forget about the rehearsals, and the set decorations, and all the rest of it. They would live as fully as they could, breathe as deeply as they could, so they’d remember each other, so they’d remember this summer, the most magical time of both their lives.

“We can’t seem to make it out to that bas-relief from your scary story,” said Volodya when quiet hour rolled around, jingling the keys from the boathouse in his pocket. “What do you think: Should we try again? Last time we were on a boat we didn’t even try to get out there.”

Yurka was about to argue that the day had gotten overcast and it looked like it was going to rain buckets, but he changed his mind. Was getting all wet really that big a problem?

They went down the path to the dock, got into a boat, and started out in the same direction as before. This time Yurka set Volodya to the oars: his turn to row against the current. Volodya didn’t complain, but halfway there Yurka could tell he got tired and switched with him. It was a lot farther to row to the bas-relief than to the lily pond.

Yurka called the place with the bas-relief the “ruins.” It was an uneven patch of ground overgrown with weeds and surrounded by sparse pines. It was unclear whether it was a church or a manor house that used to be here, but either way, the remains of walls and the little hillocks of the foundation testified that something had definitely been there. All it took was a close look to see the shapes sticking up out of the tall weeds.

But their path took them farther, to a little space bordered by spreading vines forming a lush living fence, sprinkled with little white flowers like the sky with stars. A regular old moss-covered wall peered out from behind the vines. Yurka walked up to it, looked at the confused Volodya, pulled the vines aside, and grinned: “This wall here is our bas-relief.”

“It’s very old, I’ll give you that, but it’s obviously not a ... Wait a minute!”

Volodya squinted. He exclaimed softly when he made out the barely visible figure that stood out from the rest of the wall, but he didn’t have a chance to utter a word before Yurka got on his knees and started tearing away the vines and moss.

“Careful! Those vines are clematis. It’s poisonous!”

“How do you know all that? Are you a botanist or something?”

“No, it’s just that my grandma was really good at growing flowers,” said Volodya, shrugging. He extracted the notebook he always carried with him from his shorts pocket and tore out a couple of sheets. Equipped with the paper as makeshift gloves, the boys started clearing the bas-relief of the vines and moss. Soon a woman’s profile emerged from the living velvet, followed by a neck and chest, and then the silhouette of the baby the woman was holding close.

“She’s posed like the Virgin Mary,” said Volodya, amazed. “That’s interesting ... but this is a secular woman. Is she the lady of the estate?”

“She’s my ghostly countess. See these buds?” Yurka pointed at the little pointy-leafed, star-like flowers. “When I found it, the clematis was still blooming, and right here”—Yurka pointed at the woman’s collarbone—“there was a big white flower, like a brooch. That’s how I came up with the idea for the scary story. I’ve never heard of there actually being an estate here, though.”

“Is it maybe a gravestone?”

“Doesn’t look like it. But who knows ...”

The bas-relief and the living fence surrounding it were beautiful in a mysterious, Gothic way, but apart from looking at it there was nothing else to do here. By Yurka’s calculations, they still had quite a bit of time left.

“So tell me something: How long until we have to be back in camp?” he said deviously. He had a way better idea.

“An hour and change ... almost an hour and a half,” Volodya estimated.

“Great!” Yurka said excitedly. “I know this one place ...”

“How do you know all this? All these places!”

“Well, I am a deadbeat and a good-for-nothing,” said Yurka, smirking. “I’m always wandering around where I shouldn’t and poking my nose where I shouldn’t, and that’s how I find all kinds of cool stuff.”

“Whatever you say.” Volodya smiled. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“We don’t have to go far to get to the path, but then it’s a long way up, waaaay up there.” Yurka pointed at the cone-shaped wooded hill looming to the east.

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