Page 18

During rehearsal, Volodya tried to act as though nothing hugely momentous had almost just happened between them a couple of minutes ago. Yurka, though, sought out every opportunity to be near Volodya, even for just a second, and spent the whole rehearsal on pins and needles. He paced nervously between the rows of seats because he was simply unable to sit still in one place. Every so often he looked over at Volodya and caught Volodya looking at him. The always stern artistic director had lost his edge and was looking a little distracted.

The rehearsal was in full swing when the porch steps creaked and two more people came into the theater. Olezhka was the first to notice them: he’d been gazing dramatically into the distance as he recited a bombastic monologue, but he broke off in the middle of a word.

“Ahem,” Pal Palych greeted them.

“Good afternoon, Pavel Pavlovich,” replied the children, without stopping what they were doing.

Olga Leonidovna followed the director into the auditorium, jotting something down in her notebook and whispering soundlessly to herself as she walked: “Fix steps.” Only then did she greet everyone out loud: “Good afternoon, children!”

Everyone greeted her in unison, too. The educational specialist made a beeline for Volodya, and Yurka joined them immediately.

“I just came over to check in and see how things are going for you out here. Camp Barn Swallow Day is the day after tomorrow, so the show has to be completely ready.”

Volodya grew pensive. “I’m not sure it will be, actually,” he replied apologetically. “We’re doing our best, but there’s a lot to get through and not much time. And the set, too ...”

“Ahem!” said Pal Palych indignantly.

“Volodya!” said Olga Leonidovna, interrupting Pal Palych. “I am not asking you if it will be ready. I am telling you it will be ready. But all right, show me what you’ve got. We’ll see.”

They began their run-through. Olga Leonidovna observed the actors with a cold, calculating gaze, writing things down in her notebook without a word and occasionally rolling her eyes. Yurka, following her reactions, realized to his chagrin that they were in a pretty bad position. He had been at all their rehearsals and was keeping track of how the show was progressing. It seemed like the younger kids had already learned their lines, and Masha was playing slowly but with confidence—although she didn’t touch the Lullaby—and the Pukes were working hard on their end, too, but everything was just still too rough around the edges. There were a few scenes they’d only run through a couple of times at most. But the set! Sure, there wasn’t supposed to be a big, complicated set for the show, but some of the stage decorations had to be built and painted from scratch, and they hadn’t even gotten past sketching them yet.

So Olga Leonidovna and Pal Palych weren’t happy. Of course. Yurka had known both of them for six sessions now and, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember them ever being happy with anything. But the worst thing was that Olga Leonidovna wasn’t happy with their Zina Portnova.

“Nastyona. You do know the story of your character, right?”

“Ahem ... what kind of question is that, Olga Leonidovna?” interjected the director. “There’s no way she doesn’t know it.” Every camper knew every Pioneer Hero’s story by heart.

“Of course I do,” confirmed Nastya. “My classroom’s even named after her.”

“Then you should remember that up until the war, Zina was an ordinary little Soviet girl. But you’re playing her as though she were some knight of ancient Rus, even though she was a real person and some of her relatives are still alive today. Zina wasn’t born a hero, she became one, and your task is to show that becoming, not immediately announce, ‘I’m a hero, and that’s that—I don’t cry and I’m not afraid.’”

“Olga Leonidovna, should we take another look at the script?” interjected Volodya, seeing that poor Nastya was already trembling. “You point out the lines you don’t like and Konev and I will rewrite them.”

“The script is fine. It’s Nastya’s acting that’s the problem.”

Nastya went pale and her eyes brimmed with tears. Olga Leonidovna noticed and changed her fury to benevolence.

“Nastyona, don’t worry, everything will be fine. All you have to do is imagine yourself in those circumstances. Like this: you’re Zina, you’re a tad bit older than you are now, you’re fifteen. You’re kind, and upbeat, you’re a good student, but like all children the thing you like most is playing and having fun. You and your girlfriends think up interesting things to do together: you write up a wall newspaper, or you organize a dance group—because you dance beautifully, you know—or you do a puppet show for the little kids ...”

At this point Yurka heartily clapped the woebegone Nastya on the shoulder, man-to-man style—she almost fell down—and proclaimed, “That’s how Nastya really is.”

Nastya gave a big fake smile. Olga Leonidovna didn’t budge, going on as though she hadn’t heard or seen anything: “You live in Leningrad and your friends are there, and your family, and your school, but you and your little sister, Galya, have gone to your grandmother’s little village near the town of Obol, in the Byelorussian SSR, to spend the summer at Grandma’s.”

“And that’s when the war started!” interjected Sashka, who was covered with Band-Aids like a telephone pole covered with flyers and ads. He jumped up onstage and started running around, gesticulating wildly. “Attack! Pow! Pew-pew-pew, rat-a-tat-a-tat!”

The educational specialist put her hands on her hips. “You think this is funny, Shamov?”

“N-no ...” Eyes bulging, Sashka shrank back a step.

“Joking about the great suffering of not only the Soviet people, but the whole world—!”

“Sasha had no intention of joking!” Volodya interceded. “Olga Leonidovna, in peacetime it all seems so distant, it seems like all this has nothing to do with us. But that’s how it should be ...”

Then the camp director chimed in. “Ahem ... but people didn’t know there’d be a war back then, either. And they wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told them the war would begin tomorrow. Children were on vacation, in villages or ... ahem ... in Pioneer camps, like we are now.”

“That’s right!” agreed Olga Leonidovna. “And actually the first strategic facility the Fascist air force destroyed wasn’t a train station or a factory but a Pioneer camp!”

Yurka could no longer stand idly by and listen to the kids, who were working hard, being lectured in this way. He liked absolutely none of this: the conversation was idiotic, it was insulting to the kids, and it was boring.

“So what did they bomb the camp for?” he interjected, shooting a challenging look at Olga Leonidovna. “It’s just a waste of ammunition, after all. They should’ve hit airports, transportation centers ...”

“The camp was in the little town of Palanga, right on the border between the Lithuanian SSR on one side and Nazi-occupied Poland on the other. The Fascists attacked in the very early hours of June 22, 1941. They shelled the camp directly, capturing it all on film. Read Mykolas Sluckis if you’re interested, Konev; he wrote about it. But we’ve gotten off-subject. Where were we ... ? Zina and her sister are spending their summer with their grandma in a little village near Obol. The war begins. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden. Their village, in the northern part of the Byelorussian SSR, is immediately occupied by German soldiers. And so she—that is, you, Nastya, just the same way you are now, good and kind—you start seeing nothing but blood and death all around you. A year later you join the ranks of the Young Avengers, a troop of local children. You learn to shoot, to throw grenades ...”

Dried-up old fish , Yurka thought furiously to himself as the educational specialist’s flood of words finally abated. She shook her head solemnly, then insisted that Yurka read his lines.

After she listened to him, she declared: “No, Konev. You’re also doing it wrong.”

“Really ... ?” Yurka said slowly, dripping with sarcasm. Fortunately for him, Olga Leonidovna didn’t catch his tone.

“Yes. Your character’s coming off as too human. But he’s a monster, not a person! All the Germans were monsters!”

“Really ... ?” Yurka said slowly, again, but this time he was genuinely surprised by her vehemence. Still, he recovered quickly and fell into line: “Okay, what should I do, then?”

“Well, I don’t know, make some kind of monstrous face.”

“Like this?” Yurka beamed a wide, self-satisfied smile.

The cast snickered. The educational specialist blinked stupidly, then burst out laughing herself. “Don’t be ridiculous, not that.”

But she didn’t smile again. She listened to everyone else stony-faced, with pursed lips. Then, frowning so hard you could’ve used her forehead for a washboard, she pronounced her verdict: “No. This is completely unsuitable for the Pioneer Hero Zina Portnova Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp. This is absolutely unfit for offering to the public and disgraces our name. Volodya, I expected much more from you!”

“Ahem ... yes ... ,” agreed the camp director.

At first Volodya just blinked, flustered. Then he ground his teeth so hard that the tendons stood out in his cheeks. Her words clearly cut him deeply. They couldn’t have done otherwise: Volodya was devoted heart and soul to preserving his reputation, and now there’d be a black mark on it. A small one, but still. This one wasn’t directly from Pal Palych, and there wasn’t any cussing involved, but it was in front of everyone. Again.

“But, Olga Leonidovna, the script is genuinely very difficult, and the topic is serious,” he said, trying to justify himself.

“I know, Volodya! But I was counting on you and thought you could handle it!”

“I can handle it! We can all handle it! But we need more actors! We’re just not getting enough boys, even after I asked them to come join us—this is what I’ve been telling you, yesterday and the day before ...”

The educational specialist pondered for a moment, then nodded. “Then we’re postponing the premiere! We’ll do the show the very last day, before the final campfire.”

“But that’ll mess up our original plan: we wanted to do it on Camp Barn Swallow Day, so we specifically picked an old script, and chose music for it ...” Volodya shot Yurka such a guilty, pleading look that Yurka felt he’d been splashed with boiling water.

“Either the last day or not at all,” proclaimed Leonidovna.

“All right,” said Volodya, surrendering. There was nothing he could do, anyway. “But what about the boys? Help us bring in some more actors, Olga Leonidovna. Everyone in the whole drama club has already gone out and tried to all but drag people in, but they’re still not coming. All we need them for is the crowd scenes, they don’t have to say a single word.”

“I’ll help,” the dried-up old fish said, nodding and jotting something in her notebook. “But in that case it has to be even better than I expected.” She nodded again and jotted something else in her notebook. She gave a couple more instructions, glanced at her watch, and left.

There was almost an hour of rehearsal remaining, but the actors, all riled up from the harsh critique, had no idea where to start or what to do. The cast wandered aimlessly around the movie theater until Volodya’s thunderous roar “Over here, everyone!” drew all the boys and girls to one place.

Yurka thought the artistic director was going to start sending them all over the stage in a frenzy, making them push themselves to the limit, but all he did was say, “All right, guys, did you hear that? Olga Leonidovna is absolutely not happy with what we’ve done. But fortunately for us, she’s allowing us to postpone the premiere to the last day of camp.”

A murmur ran through the gathered cast. The kids had been hoping to perform on Camp Barn Swallow Day, the special celebration held each session to honor their beloved camp. A few of them even had their parents coming. As he surveyed the downcast faces and listened to the pitiful sniffling, Yurka felt very bad for the actors. Volodya was also hurting, to judge by his guilty face and downcast eyes. An awkward silence lingered.

“It’s my fault,” squeaked Olezhka. “It’s because I can’t say my aw ’s wight ...”

“It’s all our faults!” Yurka interrupted. “But nothing bad actually happened. It’s fine, guys, let them postpone the show.”

Volodya chimed in. “Let’s think positive. We just got a little more time, plus we’re getting actors for the crowd scenes. But the main thing is that we’ve been given a big honor: performing for the official closing of session!” He smiled. Olezhka sniffed again, but his face brightened. “They’re paying attention to us now! That means they’ll help us and the show will turn out way better than it is now. Guys, I’m expecting you to do your absolute best!”

To get the kids a little more excited, Yurka also added in a scary voice, “And if you don’t do your best, and we’re a flop, then every night for the rest of your lives you’ll be visited by the vengeful spirit of an artistic director who killed himself, and the spirit will haunt you, and keep you from sleeping ...”

“What is this crap?” said Polya indignantly.

“What kind of spiwit is it, Yuwka?” said Olezhka, perking up. “Tell us!”

Yurka paused to think. “Okay, I will. But not tonight. And not even tomorrow. I’ll tell you if for the next three days you work hard at rehearsal and then do a great job in performance! Deal?”

“Deal!” chorused the kids, while the Pukes scoffed and rolled their eyes simultaneously.

Yurka caught Volodya’s eye: he nodded to Yurka and soundlessly whispered, “Thanks.” And that’s when the jitters hit Yurka for real. He kept looking at the wall clock, but its minute hand was apparently taunting him, going so slow that Yurka sometimes thought it was just standing still. How he longed for rehearsal to be over! For everyone to leave the movie theater, so he could ... Yurka didn’t know what, exactly. But he felt a sharp need to be alone with Volodya.

The step by the entryway creaked yet again, and once more a strained silence descended over the theater. Yurka turned to look at who’d come in. The person standing on the threshold was Ira.

She threw up both hands apologetically. “Keep going, I don’t want to distract you. I’m just looking for ...” Then her voice turned harsh all of a sudden, and unconcealed anger rang out in it: “Konev! Get over here! Come on!”

Yurka instinctively ducked his head into his shoulders. He knew a tone like that did not bode well. While he was slowly trudging up the center aisle toward the main exit, he racked his brain, trying to remember where he’d managed to botch it. And it turned out there were a lot of places: he’d skipped out from mess duty, he’d run away from camp, he’d wandered around nobody knew where for five whole hours, if not more ... And it was unlikely his disappearance had gone unnoticed, of course. In comparison to everything that had happened since he got back to camp, Yurka’s flight now seemed insignificant, unimportant, not the kind of thing worth worrying about. But he was apparently the only one who thought that. And now he was going to get it, and how.

But to his great surprise, Ira Petrovna looked more worried than angry, and she just asked in irritation, “How can you disappear for so long, Yur? We were worried!”

“What was there to worry about?”

“You just went and abandoned your mess duty and disappeared! How long were you gone? Why didn’t you tell anyone beforehand? How can you just run off like that? Did you even think about anybody else? Volodya was beside himself when he came to me and said you’d vanished!”

Yurka swallowed nervously. He hadn’t actually thought about what would happen here at camp while he was wandering around in the forest, looking for the bus stop and figuring himself out. Nor had he thought about how Volodya would feel ... because once Yurka had come back, Volodya hadn’t yelled at him, instead blindsiding him with completely different words and actions ...

Ira went on: “You only think about yourself, but other people suffer because of you! I’ve never seen Volodya like that! He was running around looking everywhere, you know! He crawled all over the unfinished barracks, and even went out onto the river! The duty phys ed guys told him over and over they hadn’t seen you, but he combed the whole beach anyway, and even took a boat and went out somewhere! He’s always so calm, you know, so levelheaded, but it was like someone else had taken over his body—and it was all your fault, Konev! Yura?! Hey, Yura! Are you even listening to me?!”

Yurka was listening. Ira was asking him a lot of questions, but he wasn’t coming up with answers quick enough, and he doubted he even needed to answer them at all. But now, just thinking about what Ira Petrovna was telling him, thinking about how Volodya had felt when he found out Yurka wasn’t in camp, Yurka felt the hair on the back of his neck start to rise. Suddenly it hit him: Volodya had looked for him! He’d gone down to the river. Had he tried to go to the willow? Had he taken the boat to get to it? And another thing: Volodya hadn’t gone immediately to tell the educational specialist. Neither had Ira! But that kind of negligent attitude toward the job, and the loss of a Pioneer—that would mean getting fired on the spot, if not being hauled into court.

What had Yurka almost done?

“Why didn’t you report it to Olga Leonidovna?” he asked, head bowed guiltily.

“If you’d been missing any longer, we would have! I was on the verge of going to the office, but you can thank Olezhik for telling us right away that you were here in the movie theater. And Volodya had asked me not to tell anybody yet. It would’ve meant a reprimand for us, but you would’ve been kicked out of camp. And then also”—she hesitated for a few seconds—“you kept my secret ...”

Yurka nodded and said softly, “I’m sorry, Ir ...”

“What good is your ‘sorry’ to me, Yur? You can see yourself that I’m not even angry. I just really want you to understand the full gravity of your actions. Yura, you’re already grown, but you’re acting like such a child. Grow up already!”

Yurka winced. Acting like a child—the same thing Volodya had said to him an hour ago, word for word!

“Take responsibility for your actions! Remember they can have consequences for people other than yourself!”

“I will, Ir. I’ll do my best,” Yurka said hurriedly, so that Ira would let him go and stop lecturing him.

She reached over, squeezed his shoulder, and said, more affectionately now, “I get it, it’s been hard for you after what happened ...”

Yurka’s guts turned to ice. What was she talking about?

“It’s all very unpleasant and hurtful, but, Yura, it’s not Volodya’s fault either. There’s nothing else he can do ...”

“Wh-what?” fumbled Yurka.

“I know everything. He told me. I get it.”

He told her? Was that even possible? Would Volodya really go and reveal something like that to Irina? Yurka felt frantic.

“Is this ... What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice trembling.

“About Masha, of course. About how Volodya assigned her your competition piece. I know how much music means to you, I remember how much you suffered for it. But, Yura, that’s no excuse for doing something so stupid! And it gives you no right to drag other people into your own personal problems!”

Yurka let out a breath. Ira thought Yurka was acting out because of Masha and the music. She didn’t know the real reason!

“I’m sorry, Ir. Really, I’m sorry.” Now he was being sincere, and way more direct. “I really wasn’t thinking of the consequences. I ... I’m an idiot!”

She took her hand off his shoulder.

“You’re no idiot, Yur. Not at all. You just need to grow up a little.”

Yurka nodded again, not knowing what to say to that. Sometimes he didn’t understand Ira. She supported him so often, and protected him, and was affectionate with him, even though his behavior was sometimes pretty darn awful.

He made up his mind to ask her something he’d long been wondering. “Ir ...”

She’d already turned away to leave but looked back at him over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“Why is your relationship with Zhenya a secret? What’s the big deal?” Ira forced a smile. “Do you really not know? I thought the whole camp was talking about it.”

“No. I don’t listen to gossip.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you. You’ll find out anyway. Zhenya’s married. I mean, he’s going to get a divorce, but it takes time ... Don’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t want rumors to spread. It’s fine if people know that about him, but if people start talking about me, saying I’m wrecking someone’s family ... It’s just something that happens in life, but it could end up making me look pretty bad. We’re in a Pioneer camp, with kids, where we’re all promoting family-oriented values, but what kind of example am I setting?”

Yurka was stunned by Ira’s candid admission but decided to mull this information over sometime later.

Ira sighed and concluded, “Okay, get back to rehearsal now. The call to dinner will be sounding soon. Promise me you’ll shape up.”

“I will.”

As she walked away, she added, “And apologize to Volodya.”

Yurka returned to the movie theater determined to talk to Volodya immediately and to apologize first thing. But when he saw how the artistic director was darting around the stage, shaking the script at people, when he heard Volodya’s voice trembling with tension and exhaustion, Yurka realized that this was not the time. He remembered what Ira had just told him a few minutes ago and decided to act like a grown-up.

The sound of the bugle calling them to dinner caught the whole drama club by surprise. Volodya and the actors scattered to find their troops and get in line for the mess hall, but not before agreeing that everyone whose acting had displeased Olga Leonidovna would come back to the theater after dinner to rehearse some more.

As they were leaving the theater, Yurka poked Volodya in the ribs and smiled, letting him know he was there and interested in talking. Volodya also smiled, but it was forced and awkward.

That smile completely took the wind out of Yurka’s sails. Volodya had almost kissed him! Why did he seem so awkward toward him now? Maybe he didn’t want to after all? Maybe he’d just done it out of pity? But do people really kiss people out of pity? Well— almost kiss them? He had to mull all this over, digest it, wrap his mind around it ...

On his way to the mess hall, Yurka realized he had absolutely no appetite, even though he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. That fake smile was making everything even more muddled. There were so many questions buzzing around in Yurka’s head, so many thoughts, suspicions, and doubts, that he felt completely exhausted. And the last thing he wanted now was to be stuck in a mess hall in the middle of a raucous crowd of people and see Volodya nearby—again—but not be able to work up the courage to go talk to him, and just be left asking himself even more questions.

Yurka grabbed a quick bite and then returned to the empty movie theater. At first he was going to sit down at the piano once more and try playing something, but then he saw a notebook on a seat in the front row of the audience. He immediately recognized the bent cover with writing all over it: Volodya’s notebook. Had he forgotten it as he was rushing out to dinner?

Yurka picked up the notebook and started leafing through it. He saw a bunch of notes penciled in the margins. They were mostly technical: “Ulya overacting,” “stage decor: forest,” “costume for grandma?” and so forth. It was interesting for Yurka to look through these notes, even though he already knew most of them, since Volodya went through them with everyone at rehearsal. He read the script almost all the way to the end and got to the scene with the German. Above it he saw a note of just one word: “Yurochka.” His heart skipped a beat and he couldn’t breathe for a second. Volodya had written his name here when he decided to give him the role, but how he’d written it! Could it actually be that Volodya privately thought of him that affectionately? Yurochka ... He never called Yurka that out loud!

While the rest of the camp was finishing dinner, Yurka studied his lines. There weren’t many, but they were hard. The evil Gestapo officer Krause was a negative character, but that was hard to reconcile with the tender penciled note above his lines.

Still, Yurka was determined to surprise Volodya, so he settled in to rehearse. He paced around the stage, reading his lines to the empty auditorium and imagining that he was sitting at a table, interrogating Zina, sitting across from him ... Yurka thought he wasn’t doing half bad. But then that step creaked and the actors came piling back in.

It wasn’t a small group: joining Yurka were all three Pukes, Nastya, and Sashka. Olezhka also joined the outsiders, even though everyone had been happy with his acting. Masha had also really wanted to come, but Ira Petrovna had dragged her back to the cabin to rehearse the accompaniment for the Troop One dance number for the concert celebrating Camp Barn Swallow Day. Masha resisted but had to go. Yurka was glad he’d spend the evening without her dismal piano plunking.

Yurka, the Pukes, and Volodya all sat in the back row of the audience while the little kids warmed up for the scene with the Fascists. The Pukes weren’t saying anything, but their presence was bothering Yurka anyway. With them around, he had to act like nothing special had happened or was happening, although inside him the sirens had been blaring and the steam trains had been shrieking for an hour already, everything smoking and shaking: “Grab Volodya and get out of here!”