Page 14

Yurka surprised himself by finishing the edits to Olezhka’s lines so quickly that he not only managed to make it to rehearsal, he arrived a few minutes early. Just knowing the script was now finished made him happy. He ran into the movie theater.

It was almost empty inside. There were only two people in the whole place, Masha and Volodya, because the rest of the cast was still spread all over camp with their shovels, brooms, and dustrags, doing their civic duty work. Waving the pages of the script over his head, Yurka ran up to the stage. Since he was concentrating on making sure he didn’t trip and send all 175 centimeters of him plummeting to the ground, he didn’t immediately realize that something in the movie theater had changed.

But then he stopped short, took a good look at the stage, and recoiled, stung by an unfamiliar sensation. Masha was onstage playing the piano while Volodya bent over her, listening. It was as though Yurka were waking up from a deep sleep. He listened for a moment, then all but dropped the script: Masha wasn’t playing the Moonlight Sonata. She was playing another melody, one that was far more beautiful, a melody Yurka loved very much but hated even more. The unfamiliar feeling grew even more painful as he recognized Tchaikovsky’s Lullaby through Masha’s labored, stiff rendering. The very song he and Volodya had discussed. The song Yurka had failed his exam with.

Masha was playing it wrong. Masha was playing hideously, as though she wasn’t even looking at the sheet music: first she’d go too fast in places where she should slow down; then she’d play too slow, and sometimes she’d just plain hit the wrong notes. The sounds went back and forth from blending in harmony to convulsing in cacophony. Yurka’s head started pounding immediately from the caterwauling. But Volodya seemed to like it. He stood relaxed, elbows propped on the top of the piano, nodding in time with the music. Masha was very pleased with herself, occasionally tearing her eyes away from the keyboard to look at Volodya with lovelorn eyes and smile.

“Not bad, but you do need a little more practice,” said the artistic director gently when she finished. “We don’t have much time left. Do you think you can do it?”

Masha nodded. “I’ll start practicing right now, while you’re all busy rehearsing. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” replied Volodya.

“Ah-hem!” coughed Yurka as loudly as possible, to signal that he was present.

Volodya stood up straight as soon as he saw Yurka. “Oh, hello! Is the script ready? Did you bring it?”

“Yes,” replied Yurka coolly.

“Excellent. Oh, and I found a part for you.”

“Where’d you come up with it?”

“It was always there. You just didn’t bother to read the script all the way to the end.” And Volodya was right about that. Yurka, focused as he was on Olezhka’s lines, had completely forgotten about all the other parts. “The Gestapo officer Krause. It’s a supporting role, but an important one. You don’t have a lot of lines, but tomorrow you need to have them memorized so well you can rattle them off in your sleep. Do you think you can do it?” he said, echoing the exact words he’d said to Masha. Yurka squirmed.

He didn’t want to. It didn’t feel good to play a German, even one that ended up getting killed off later. Deep down, it felt to Yurka a little bit like a betrayal, even though he knew that was a big exaggeration. His grandmother had lost her husband to the Nazis; his mom, her father. Yurka himself had never seen his grandfather, not even a picture of him. But if he were going to refuse to play this part, he’d have to explain why. It was all his friends and family could talk about whenever they saw each other, every time they got together on holidays, to the extent that, in spite of everything, Yurka started to be ashamed of it. Yurka didn’t want to have to talk about what he dismissively called his “dreary” family history, especially not in front of Masha.

He thought it was too banal, too Jewish, too similar to the stories of a thousand other families who’d lived in Germany, or in other occupied countries, during that time. His grandmother had told the story of how she lost her husband, and how she looked for him afterward, to everyone she met, as well as to Yurka himself. Yurka knew the tale by heart: how hard his grandfather had worked to get his pregnant grandmother out of Germany and into the USSR as the Holocaust escalated, trying and failing several times before he succeeded just before it would have become impossible. How his grandfather had intended to follow her but vanished, and how she had waited for him, and how she had searched for him later, obsessively, with the help of those of her relatives in Europe who had miraculously survived, and how she had traced him all the way to Dachau, and how, against all common sense, she had believed until the day she died that Yurka’s grandfather might have escaped from the concentration camp ...

His grandmother had died, so this story had stopped being told, but evidently it was now Yurka’s turn to tell it. He was capable of sharing something like this with Volodya, but with Masha? No. Not for anything, not ever.

“Fine,” Yurka mumbled listlessly, reaching out to take the piece of paper on which Volodya had copied out Yurka’s lines by hand. In a monotone, Yurka read, “‘My brave Fr?ulein, I am aware that your parents remain in Leningrad. And I am also aware that your beloved city has fallen. A new flag flies above it. But I assure you that all you have to do is agree to a small compromise and share a few bits of information with Hitler’s army command, and—”

“No, not now,” Volodya interrupted him. “Memorize it first. We’ll rehearse it later. Right now we’d just bother you, though, so you can ... you’re free to go.”

“Come again?” Yurka’s mouth fell open. He was flabbergasted. “What are you doing, kicking me out?”

“No, no!” Volodya hastened to explain. “I’m just giving you your day off. You’ve earned it. You can learn your lines, or you can just relax—you’ve worked a lot already. But, anyway, just do what you want.”

Yurka stayed, of course. All his previous enthusiasm had evaporated. His mood hadn’t just fallen a little, it had collapsed in a heap. Even when Olezhka showed up and Volodya presented him ceremoniously with his new lines, and Olezhka thanked them both and began practicing them, it didn’t make Yurka feel the least bit better.

Once the entire cast had arrived, the kids started running through individual scenes from the show. Volodya capably instructed the young performers while Polina and Ksyusha, eyes alight, whispered about something, but the crestfallen Yurka sat in his usual spot in the front row, fighting the urge to put his fingers in his ears: Masha was plinking the piano keys as she worked on the music, and Yurka couldn’t listen to someone else performing his competition piece.

He had played the Lullaby so many times in his life that he felt like he hadn’t just performed it, he’d composed it. He had spent so many hours hearing it in his head, he had spent so many hours sitting at the piano, memorizing it, experimenting with it, looking for the ideal sound and trying to figure out how Tchaikovsky himself had imagined the piece. Yura had spent so much energy on the Lullaby that it felt like it belonged to him. But now somebody else was playing it!

Masha. She was trying to run through it in her head, trying to get to know it, trying to adjust her heartbeat to fit its tempo and rhythm and make it the music of her soul. But the worst of it was that she was only playing the Lullaby to please Volodya. To make him like her. And it was working! Every so often he’d step away from rehearsal and go over to Masha and nod in satisfaction as he murmured something. It looked to Yurka like he was praising her.

Apparently, Yurka was the only person who knew Masha wasn’t playing it right; that she was playing badly, playing it totally wrong! He knew he could play it way better and that Volodya would like it way more. But making himself even walk up to the keyboard was worse than death.

Masha just kept on playing and playing. She’d finish and then begin all over again, then finish again and begin again. Finally, Yurka couldn’t take it anymore.

He leaped up onto the stage and was barely able to restrain himself from slamming the cover down on Masha’s fingers and flattening them. “Stop it!” he shouted. “That’s enough, I’m telling you!”

Masha snatched her hands back from the keyboard and stared at Yurka, frightened. A tense silence hung in the air. Everyone who was there froze in the middle of whatever they were doing: Olezhka, looking through the tube of his rolled-up script as if it were a spyglass; Volodya, caught in midair as he was sitting down in his seat in the audience; Polina and Ksyusha, covering their open mouths with their palms. They all turned their heads and were now watching Yurka closely. But he didn’t care. He had lost control of himself.

“Masha, that’s nauseating!” he exclaimed. “You’re playing the Lullaby like it’s some kind of polka! Where’s your accompaniment racing off to? Why is it drowning out the main motif? And why so loud so soon? Right here,” he said, stabbing his finger into the sheet music, “it has to be more tender. And why aren’t you stepping on the pedal? Can you not feel the music at all? Do you not understand in the slightest how this piece has to sound?!” He caught his breath. Then he went on, more quietly but far more angrily, grinding the words through gritted teeth: “Masha, you’re utterly worthless!”

For a couple of seconds, Masha was still as a statue, processing what she’d heard. Then her lips began trembling. Yurka saw that she was trying to say “Look who’s talking,” but she was gasping so hard for air that she couldn’t speak. Then she burst into quiet tears.

“Bawl all you want! It won’t change anything!” announced Yurka. Immediately he felt someone grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him away.

“We’re going to step out now,” Volodya hissed in his ear, pulling him off the stage and toward the exit.

They went all the way to the far side of the outdoor stage, where nobody who was inside the movie theater could hear them through the open windows.

“Yura, what was that?!” Volodya exploded. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

But Yurka scowled and wouldn’t talk.

“For crying out loud, Yura ... Don’t you think you went a little too far?” asked Volodya, a little calmer now. He leaned back against the wall with a sigh and closed his eyes wearily. But Yurka felt so hollowed-out inside that he didn’t even have the strength to raise his voice.

“Quit lecturing me,” he groaned. “Is that why you asked me to leave? Because you knew I’d shout at her?”

“Yes,” Volodya replied simply.

“Am I really that predictable?” This idea made Yurka even more dejected: Was he really so simple that even reactions as deeply personal as these could be seen coming a mile away?

“No,” said Volodya without pause. “It’s just that I care about what you say.”

Yurka, surprised, lifted his head to look at Volodya, but he must’ve anticipated this reaction, too, because he wasn’t looking back. An awkward silence dragged on.

Yurka didn’t know what to say, or whether he needed to say anything at all. He did know one thing: he didn’t want Volodya to leave yet.

“Do you at least see that you did something cruel?” Volodya finally deigned to look at Yurka directly—right in the eyes—and more sternly than ever before.

“Cruel?” Yurka scoffed. “Masha’s the one who’s being cruel. She doesn’t have a clue about what she’s playing, Volod! This is classical music, it’s difficult, it’s impossible to understand in ten minutes! You can’t just pick up the music, look at it, and play. You have to feel it. You have to immerse yourself in the music, put yourself into it, let it flow through you. My ears bleed listening to Masha’s tedious struggling! Tchaikovsky would roll over in his grave if he heard that!”

Volodya listened to him, alternately raising and then lowering his brows.

“Do you understand?” Yurka had wound down and was now completely played out. “You don’t understand anything. You have to live and breathe music, the way I did, to understand ...”

“I understand the gist,” Volodya said. “Maybe not as well as you, but still ... You’re going through a hard time, but that doesn’t change the fact that you treated Masha badly. Look, Yur—I’m the only one who really knows about your musical past. And Masha had nothing to do with all this. When the parts were being distributed, she was designated to play the piano, so what am I supposed to do now—” he broke off. “I’m not going to kick her out of the show!”

“I’m not asking you to! But don’t let her play the Lullaby, it’s impossible to listen to that!”

“How about you don’t tell me don’t ? And if it’s so hard for you to listen to her, play it yourself! You know the piece, you know how to play it better—”

“No!” Yurka cut him off sharply. “Don’t even think about it.’

“But why?”

“Because I said so! I can’t, and that’s that!”

“So what do you suggest? You don’t like how Masha plays, but you don’t want to play yourself—”

“I’m fine with Masha playing, just not that!”

“But it fits the show perfectly! And Masha fits. But you—”

“I can’t stand to listen to the Lullaby being played like that!” Yurka burst out, interrupting Volodya. “Don’t you understand? That’s my piece, the one I flunked out of music school with!”

Volodya’s face changed. “Oh, so that’s it,” he said. “Yurka, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I don’t know! It’s embarrassing, okay? And now here’s Masha, playing it every which way, and I—”

“And you still have to say you’re sorry,” Volodya said. “You need to ask her to forgive you.”

“Yeah, right! I’m not asking anybody for anything! Ever!”

Volodya rolled his eyes. Then he shook his head and smiled in that patronizing way he sometimes did. “So you are a child after all.”

“You’re the child! I’m not afraid of apologizing. It’s just Masha; she—she drives me crazy!”

Volodya scoffed and gave a shrug. “Girls are always driving you crazy, everywhere you look.”

“That’s not true!” shouted Yurka, although he was horrified to realize Volodya was right. To cover it up, he admitted, “I liked one girl. Anya. She was here last year but didn’t come this year.”

“Oh ... so that’s it.” Volodya’s smile went from condescending to artificial. “What about this session? Nobody at all?”

“Well ... I don’t think so.” Yurka paused; then, succumbing to a sudden reckless impulse instead of rational thought, he all but gave himself away: “I mean ... there is somebody ... but for hi—for her I don’t exist.”

He’d just cut off his oxygen with his own words. His head started spinning, and he felt sick to his stomach, and a clammy fear constricted his throat. A thought pounded in his head: Now! Tell him now. You won’t get another chance like this! But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stared directly at Volodya, face-to-face, without a word.

The remnants of Volodya’s smile fell away. He was looking Yurka right in the eyes, just as directly, but where Yurka’s gaze was soft and questioning, Volodya’s was demanding.

“Who is it?” he asked seriously.

“A girl from my apartment building back home,” Yurka said. Even as he did, though, he wondered, what if he took the risk and told him? What would happen then? It wouldn’t hurt anybody. And after all, whatever Yurka’s older comrade said in reply might be useful for Yurka in the future. Because, to tell the truth, Yurka didn’t have any close friends, just “guys from my building,” and all they were good for was a few laughs, nothing personal or honest. This might be his only chance to tell anyone about this.

“You just like her? Or ... or is it more than that?” Volodya’s voice had turned cold and hoarse; his voice was so foreign, so rude in tone, that Yurka didn’t even recognize it.

That tone didn’t fit. It didn’t fit either Volodya’s face or the situation. Although the situation seemed unreal to Yurka, too: a Pioneer camp, Pioneers, summer, the heat ... but inside he was cold. It was like Yurka wasn’t here but in some gloomy November, looking at himself and Volodya from the outside. It was like he was watching two movies at the same time, the sound from one and the picture from the other.

“It’s more than that,” Yurka sighed. He turned away, unable to bear Volodya’s bleak gaze.

“Ah. That’s good,” replied Volodya.

“That’s good?!” Yurka was astonished. “Nothing good about it! I think I ... I’m in love, probably ... I don’t know. I’m not sure. It’s just that nothing like this has ever happened to me before. And there’s nothing good about it! It’s hard for me, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“But what makes you say you don’t exist for her? Have you told her?” Volodya shuffled his sneaker back and forth along the pavement, examining the bushes, so he saw neither Yurka’s face nor Yurka’s pose.

“No. It’s useless,” whispered Yurka sadly. “She’s not ... uh, she, uh, moves in different circles. She’s never liked people like me, and she never will. She just doesn’t even notice me like that. She looks at me but doesn’t see me. For her, it’s like I don’t even exist in that way. But there’s nothing to actually blame her for here. Or me either, probably. That’s just the way things are.”

“Neither of you are to blame, for anything. But you know, for some reason I don’t believe she just doesn’t notice someone who’s such a troublemaker.” Volodya’s tone had changed, gotten warmer.

That warmth, and his words, and the knowledge that Volodya genuinely wanted to support him, all lent Yurka courage. So Yurka dared to ask the crucial question: “What if you were in my position? What would you do? Would you say anything, being a thousand percent certain there’s no chance of it being mutual?”

“But what would you lose if you said something?”

“Everything.”

“Come on, don’t be so dramatic about it.”

“I’m not being dramatic. That’s how it is. If she finds out, her attitude toward me will change and nothing will be like it was before. And that means I’ll lose what I have now. And what we have now is the best we’re ever going to get.”

“Is it really that hopeless?”

“Absolutely.” Yurka nodded and repeated, “So? What would you do?” Volodya sighed and cracked his knuckles. Yurka looked up and saw Volodya adjust his glasses. But not by the arms, like always; he did it the way he did when he was agitated about something, awkwardly shoving the bridge of the glasses up his nose with one finger.

Volodya, sensing he was being looked at, turned away from Yurka and said harshly, without thinking: “If I’m in love with someone, then I have an interest in making sure that person is happy.” Volodya emphasized the last word. “And I have a greater interest in that person’s happiness than anyone else does, even the person themself. And so I will only do what’s good for the person. And if that requires me to stay away from the person, then I’ll stay away. In fact, if it’d be better for that person to be with somebody else, then I’ll not only step aside, I’ll push the person to be with that somebody else.”

“But how are you yourself supposed to go on, then?”

“You just keep going the way you’ve been going.” Volodya shrugged.

“Doing everything for the sake of another person? Sacrificing yourself? That’s crazy talk ... ,” scoffed Yurka. Evidently Volodya was too grown-up after all, and Yurka was still just a child, because he didn’t understand Volodya. Not in the least. Or did he not want to understand? Or was he afraid of sharing the same fate?

Volodya replied harshly: “What makes you think ‘sacrificing’ is the right word? A sacrifice is voluntary. You don’t have to make it. But this is entirely different: you don’t have a choice. And there’s no other way out of it, either. Think about it, Yura: if you have everything you want, and you’re completely happy, but she’s unhappy, how will you feel? Nothing else will matter if you find out the person you love is suffering!” Volodya’s words were forceful, stony, each one louder than the last. “Yur, listen: if you find yourself worrying about what you’ll get when you do something for the person you love, then you’re an egotist. And if that’s the case, then I’ve got good news for you: it’s not love. Because there’s no egotism in love.”

Yura was listening closely but couldn’t find anything to say in reply. One thing was clear, though: if Yurka had Volodya’s brains, he’d have already understood by now that what he was feeling wasn’t some kind of “love.” What he was feeling was childish nonsense. It was so logical, so simple, so self-evident!

A wave of relief washed over Yurka. His feelings for Volodya would pass. And that meant everything was fine. And everything was definitely temporary. And he’d definitely make peace with himself again, if he could just be patient.

But that would be later. Right now, though, Yurka had to find something to say to Volodya, if for no other reason than to keep their conversation from ending on such an unpleasant note.

Barely able to restrain a smile, Yurka murmured the first thing that came into his head, regretting it the minute he said it: “You talk as though you—as though you know what unrequited love is. You didn’t just come up with that out of thin air, though, right? You’ve gone through something like that yourself?”

“I have,” Volodya answered, not looking at Yurka. After a short pause he crossed his arms and croaked angrily, “And I still am.”

An avalanche of ambiguous feelings plowed into Yurka. He was overjoyed that Volodya had trusted him, overjoyed that he’d uncovered a new side of Volodya that was hidden from other people. But at the same time he burned with raging jealousy that he wasn’t the girl Volodya was talking about.

Yurka wilted. “Why aren’t you with her?” he mumbled lamely.

“Because it’s best that way.”

“But where did you get the idea that the girl you love will be better off with someone else than with you?”

“I didn’t ‘get the idea.’ I know.”

“But won’t she be better off with someone who’s willing to do anything for her? Someone who loves her so much?”

“With another person like that, yes. But not with me.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m no saint, Yura! Don’t try to get me to prove anything to you. You can’t make me.”

“Fine. Have it your way.” Yurka floundered, then remembered and woodenly repeated Volodya’s question: “Who is she?”

“I’m not telling. It’s too personal,” Volodya shot back.

“Don’t trust me? And you call yourself a friend ...”

“Think what you want. I’m not telling.”

“At least tell me her name, because we’ll have to refer to her somehow when we talk about her ag—”

“We won’t be talking about this again.”

Yurka wanted to be offended by this, but didn’t have the heart. He, of all people, knew exactly what it was to be afraid to reveal even a name. But on the other hand, Volodya’s response, “I’m not telling,” was worded in such a way that Yurka couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because Volodya could’ve fobbed him off with something vague, like Yurka did: “a girl from my building.” Or “a classmate.” Or he could’ve just said any random name. But no! What he’d said was “I’m not telling,” as though any information, even a name or brief description, could point to a specific person. So why the secrecy? Was she famous or something? Or ... maybe Yurka knew her? Maybe she was someone at camp?

Volodya interrupted Yurka’s musings. “Enough about me. What about you? You don’t want to even look at anybody else? There are lots of pretty girls around.”