Page 17

Just then Yurka tripped over a scraggly stump and just about fell flat on his face. He had to admit he’d miss Volodya terribly. He’d regret destroying everything they’d had. He’d never see Volodya again. Never. Period. And Yurka wouldn’t even have a photo to remember him by, since troop pictures weren’t printed until right before the end of the session.

He glimpsed the highway between two tree trunks. A couple of hundred meters farther out was the bus stop. It was gray as concrete and massive, monolithic, as though it’d been chiseled out of stone; it was also very pretty, with the pointed edge of its sky-blue roof sticking up and out like a wing, although he couldn’t tell whether it was the wing of a plane or a barn swallow. And right up under the peak of the roof, in fat metal letters with occasional spots of rust, were the words PIONEER CAMP .

Crossing the highway was easy. So was memorizing the bus schedule. There was only one bus that came all the way out here: the 410. Yurka was amazed. This was the first time in his life he’d seen a three-digit bus number. The first bus left the depot a little after six in the morning and got to this stop at seven ten. Yurka memorized that and nodded. He peered at the schedule one last time for good measure. It was very old, and in the part where the bus number was written, there was a wide crack, so maybe it wasn’t 410 after all. But that didn’t matter. The main thing was that the end station was in the city.

Now that he’d collected the information he needed to plan his escape, he looked around and surprised himself by calming down. There was such a pervasive sense of peace here. The deserted highway, the forest whispering all around, and the cool inside the old bus stop composed an idyllic scene, completed by the clear blue sky in which the airy white domes of a dozen parachutes floated weightlessly down to the ground like white dandelion seeds. Yurka smiled. How nice it felt out here, away from his troubles. He sat down on the bus stop bench in the shade and one last time repeated to himself what he’d decided on and confirmed. His plan was this: break the fence around the unfinished barracks at night and make a hole he could get through, like last year. Then get his stuff together and escape early in the morning while everyone was still asleep. Get to the bus stop and sit there waiting for the bus. Then home. Get the tongue-lashing from his mom and await the divine retribution from his dad. And then would come the sad longing for Volodya, strong enough to make Yurka howl, sob into his pillow, and writhe and moan until he turned himself inside out. Why, oh, why had he gone and done that?!

Yurka buried his face in his hands. Why??! And how was he supposed to stand being all alone now with this confusing, bittersweet feeling? Guilty and alone, being eaten alive by his conscience?

When the thirst that had been torturing him for at least an hour finally became intolerable, Yurka stood up, spit a thick wad of saliva, and turned back toward camp. As he trudged through the woods, a new set of doubts tore at him: Was he really capable of this? Of not seeing Volodya? Of burning all his bridges without leaving even the slightest chance for reconciliation, of going away without saying goodbye? Without asking for forgiveness? But then, how could he forgive Volodya for pushing him away? He kept remembering Volodya’s reaction, there in the lilacs behind the power shed, the scene looping on repeat: Volodya telling him to quit it.

Yurka kept trudging along. It seemed like he’d never make it. In general, the way back from somewhere was usually faster than the way there, but not for Yurka. Not today. For him it was the opposite.

Burning rays of bright June sun pierced through the thick foliage of the dense wild woods and prickled his skin awfully. And everything inside Yurka complained and screeched, too. He felt like a dusty abandoned piano that nobody had played in a long time, that people used as a place to put random stuff. The taut wires inside had gone slack, and water had gotten on some of them and they’d gotten rusty, and a pedal was broken and hanging loose, unconnected ... And then he’d open the lid, which would also creak and be hard to move, and he’d lightly rest his fingers on the keys, yellow with age ... but instead of tender, touching sounds, he’d elicit a horrible din, because the piano had been out of tune for ages, after all, and the hammers were bent ... You play a B but get a little B-flat in there, you play the C above middle C but it doesn’t even make a sound ...

His friendship with Volodya seemed to be saturated with music. Music was always playing: the Pioneer anthem when he saw Volodya on the square, Pachelbel’s Canon on the radio during their first meeting in the theater, Masha playing the piano during rehearsal ... They heard the music from the dance floor during their nighttime sessions on the merry-go-round ... the music coming from the radio while they were under the willow ... His feelings for Volodya were always resonating with music, because wherever Volodya was, there was always music.

Yurka pulled the creaky gate shut behind him, ignored the duty guards’ questions, and wandered off in no particular direction. Children were running around. On their faces, there wasn’t even a trace of the alarm they’d felt earlier during the episode with Pcholkin. Just like there wasn’t even a trace left of his and Volodya’s friendship. So he’d figured out his escape plan, but other things were making themselves known now, too: uncertainty, exhaustion, and hunger. He had missed snack running around the woods. There was a long way to go until dinner, and there was no sense going to the mess hall, since they wouldn’t even give him a crust of bread. No surprise there: Zinaida Vasilyevna never let him have anything extra during her shift. He could go to the tennis courts, but he had neither energy to play himself nor interest in watching others play. He could go to some other club, but there’d be nothing for him to do there. He could go to the river, but he’d see Volodya. No. Seeing him now would be the worst thing possible.

But Yurka wanted to see him this very minute.

“I have no idea what’s going on!” Yurka whispered while his feet headed to the theater of their own accord.

On the main square, girls were playing Chinese jump rope while the boys were making matchstick guns out of stolen clothespins. Yurka wandered around so lost in thought that he didn’t notice anything around him, though he did tuck his arm behind his back instinctively whenever a small, noisy person ran by him too close and too fast. Yurka thought of the movie theater. There definitely wouldn’t be anyone there yet, and the piano was there, and all of a sudden Yurka wanted badly to sit down at it, open the cover, put his hands on the keyboard, and, without daring to breathe, run his fingers across them weightlessly, just to feel them. Maybe he could even play something. But what? What would he like to hear right now? Immersed in his ponderings about music, Yurka realized that only at his beloved instrument could he figure himself out—only there, and nowhere else. And nothing else besides music was capable of calming him down. Only music could get through to him, settle into his very soul, put it in order, and extract from its deepest depths an understanding of what was happening to him. Only it could reason with his feelings, let him make peace with himself, explain everything.

But to force himself to touch the piano, Yurka had to conquer a fear that had seemed unconquerable. Although what was that sharp, prickly fear compared to this, the leaden, aching dread Yurka had been feeling all night last night and all day today? What’s more, he’d been afraid for so long. Like skin that gradually coarsens and loses sensitivity, Yurka’s heart had grown coarse; his emotions had grown numb. He’d stopped caring. Did that mean he’d finally be able to play now?

Inside the movie theater, it was cool and dark. The navy blue curtains were drawn, so all the theater’s interior spaces were lit only by the sparse sunbeams coming in around the edges of the thick cloth. It was like the theater was sleeping in peace and quiet. But it wasn’t empty. Olezhka was walking back and forth across the stage, whispering to himself, his nose buried in a thick stack of papers.

“Aren’t you all at the river?” asked Yurka, a little overly loud because he was so surprised.

Olezhka winced and came to a halt. “Oh! Yuwka! We’we done, we’we back alweady.”

“I see. But what about—Where’s Volodya?” Yurka grew alarmed: What if he was here somewhere?

“He’s busy. Petka Pcholkin committed sabotage. He made a cawbide wocket to send Sashka to the moon, because ouw Sashka’s the one who wants to wowk at the Baikonuw Cosmodwome. But Petka’s wocket didn’t wowk. The space capsule blew up.”

“Cawbide?” repeated Yurka, not understanding. But then he worked it out. “Oh, carbide!” he said, then thought it through aloud: “The same stuff I used to use for my cherry bombs. So that’s what Pcholkin was looking for in that construction debris! That’s why he was digging around in the rocks. And the girls’ hair spray didn’t just vanish for no reason! ‘There was just a little bit left at the bottom.’ Yes, that’s it—just a little left, and so the rocket exploded faster than he thought. You have to make your rockets out of empty spray cans.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! It made this huuuuge explosion! The giwls hid in the bushes, and the boys hid in the bushes, and then they busted Sashka’s nose, and it was pouwing blood evewywhewe, thewe was blood all ovew the main squawe. Lena was squealing like cwazy. Boy, was it scawy! So Volodya mawched him off to the diwectow. They’ve been in thewe evew since. But why didn’t you come to swim?”

“I was just ... doing something.”

“Will you come tomowwow?” Olezhka asked hopefully. “And why’d you come now? Awe you doing something now too?”

“I ... I want to play the piano. But don’t tell anybody, okay? I don’t play very well and I’m embarrassed. That’s why I was able to do it now, when nobody’s around.”

“Oh, okay, I get it. Well, go ahead and play. I’m going. I also have to ... do something.” Olezhka grinned and skipped away so swiftly that Yurka didn’t have a chance to shout goodbye after him.

And so here he was, all alone, except for the upright piano. There was one just like it in Yurka’s room at home, with one difference: his piano had a layer of dust and was covered with clothes, toys, and books piled so high the lid wasn’t visible. But this piano was clean, and gleaming, and beautiful.

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 five hours”—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.”

Yurka remained silent.

“Your recklessness really does make me jealous. You break the rules so easily; you shrug and act without giving a thought to the consequences ... I’d like to do that too. Even just once, just one time, do not what I should do but what I want to do. If only you know how sick I am of constantly thinking about the correctness of everything I do! Sometimes I get so fixated on monitoring myself—on tracking what I do, and say, and how I behave—that it crosses over into paranoia and panic attacks. At times like that I’m physically incapable of calmly evaluating what’s going on, you understand? And what you did felt like a total catastrophe. But ... but maybe it’s not all so bad? Maybe I’m exaggerating?”

Yurka didn’t understand what Volodya was getting at. He was afraid to interrupt Volodya’s monologue because all he was capable of now, really, was just getting it all out, just saying what he felt without thinking about it beforehand, and he didn’t want to make both himself and Volodya uncomfortable, to take a thing that was already ruined and smash it to pieces. So he remained silent. All the more so since, for a long time now, he’d had a thick lump in his throat that kept him not just from talking but from even breathing.

But Volodya stared expectantly at their reflection in the lacquered panel. His gaze wandered tentatively around Yurka’s face, pausing to focus on Yurka’s eyes, as though he were searching them for an answer. Then he abruptly cleared his throat again and said: “Listen, Yur, I was thinking about something, and I want to know what you think of it. There is such a thing as very close friends, who ... I mean very close friends. Special friends. For example, in school, or at my institute, I saw guys walking arm in arm or even just sitting with their arms around each other.”

“Okay. And?” Yurka finally swallowed the lump in his throat. “Okay, so they walk around that way. Let them. That’s what people who are close do. They can do stuff like that. But we can’t.”

“What do you think ... Do they kiss?”

“Are you making fun of me or something? How would I know? I’ve never had ‘special’ friends!”

“What about me?” Volodya said, sounding a little pathetic.

“Go find Masha. I’m sure she’s fed up waiting for you.”

“Come on, Yur. Quit it. Masha’s just here on vacation, she’s just like everybody else.”

“‘She’s just like everybody else ... ,’” parroted Yurka mockingly. At the mention of her name, he started banging on the keys so the notes would be louder, so he wouldn’t hear his internal voice, the monologues that would reawaken his jealousy.

Yurka wasn’t aware of the fact that he was playing ever more confidently, that he was now playing from memory, without looking.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of Volodya’s reflection. Volodya was pale and still, stealing shy glances at Yurka and biting his lip. Then he said, “I don’t want to think that what happened was bad. But no matter how hard I try not to, I do. Maybe I’m just getting panicky and paranoid again and I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’m really scared. Yura, tell me: What do you think?”

“About what, exactly?”

Volodya scooted even closer. Yurka played even louder.

“Did you do that because ...” Volodya hesitated, wiping the sweat off his brow with his palm. “Would you ... be that? I mean ... do you want to be not a regular friend to me but a special friend?”

Yurka banged the keys as hard as he could. “F-sharp, A-sharp, up to F, F-sharp, F, down to A-sharp, F-sharp, A-sharp! F, G-sharp, up to F, G-sharp, F, down to G-sharp, F, G-sharp!”

“That’s enough! I can’t shout over this!”

“F-F-F-F ...” All of Yurka’s insides were trembling.

Volodya grabbed his hand and pressed it down on the piano keys. Everything stopped: the music, and his breathing, and his heart. Yurka turned toward Volodya. Volodya’s face was a couple of centimeters away. He could feel Volodya’s breath on his cheeks again. Volodya was so close to him that he stopped thinking at all. A shiver ran down his spine. Volodya’s cold fingers trembled as they pressed Yurka’s hand, and his eyes glittered feverishly behind the lenses of his glasses.

Volodya swallowed slowly and with difficulty, then whispered: “Maybe there’s really nothing wrong with kissing a ... a special friend?”

And then it finally hit Yurka: this was what Volodya had been trying to tell him for the past ten minutes. It didn’t just hit him; it crashed down on him like a ton of bricks. But on his heart, not his head; his heart took the blow, and Yurka actually reeled from it.

“Volodya ... what is this?” Yurka asked, the stupidest question in the world, but purely to make sure he hadn’t misheard. “What are you saying? Who are you trying to fool? Me, or yourself?”

“Nobody.”

“But I mean ... are you sure this isn’t ... you’re not deceiving yourself?”

Volodya shook his head and licked his dry lips. “No. Are you?”

Yurka, eyes bulging, was in turmoil, barely breathing. He blinked. He squeezed Volodya’s fingers. Heart beating, fit to burst, Yurka croaked, “No.”

Yurka couldn’t believe what was happening. Volodya of his own accord bent his head down and moved closer. His pupils were huge as he gazed urgently at Yurka, holding Yurka’s hand. Volodya was holding Yurka’s hand! Not like always, but tenderly, reverentially, his fingers stroking Yurka’s. Volodya’s lips were close, and he smelled nice.

But what was he, Yurka, supposed to do now? Purse his lips? He hadn’t even thought about this back by the power shed. But that had been yesterday. That had happened a very, very long time ago, and to someone else. And right now the main thing for Yurka was to neither suffocate from joy nor go deaf from the hammering of his heart. He closed his eyes and turned toward Volodya. He felt Volodya’s breath—not on his cheek now ... lower ...

And then the porch of the movie theater creaked.

“The tram flies by, its brakes a-squeal, its headlight shines across the mud! The tram ran over an Octoberist and left him in a pool of blood!” recited Sashka outside the door.

Yurka jerked away, clumsily, his face scraping against Volodya’s glasses, and leaped to his feet. Volodya’s shaking hands flew up reflexively, then fell back down with a clang onto the piano keyboard. A blyannggggg thundered out, spreading cacophony—aural and otherwise—through the entire theater.

“Eww! That’s such a gwoss poem!” Olezhka scolded Sashka.

The door opened, revealing all the little kids from the drama club. The senior campers weren’t there yet. Yurka was heaving for breath as though he’d just run a race. Volodya was sitting at the piano, blinking, his gaze roving uncomprehendingly between the keyboard and the incoming children.

“You’re so early today ... Your shift of civic duty work hasn’t ended yet ... ,” he mumbled hoarsely.

Mentally, Yurka shouted, Thank goodness the porch creaks! but didn’t risk saying anything out loud.