Page 26

The morning of the show, the morning of the last day of Session Two of the Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp of the summer of 1986, emerged overcast and gloomy. By the time breakfast started, the sky was completely dark; a north wind had chased in a mass of heavy gray rain clouds, which hung directly over the camp, so fat they looked fit to burst. The only question was when they’d let loose. But Yurka—like Volodya, and like the entire cast—had no time to think about extraneous matters. Work was going full steam ahead; they had no time left for anything, not even sadness. Although Yurka was occasionally visited by sad thoughts, of course. How could he not be, after that nighttime conversation, after everything that had been said?

Yurka finished painting the stage decorations, set them up in their places, touched base with the actors, double-checked the cues for the sound effects, told Alyosha Matveyev what he needed to do during the show, and carried chairs from the mess hall to the theater because there weren’t enough seats in the audience for everyone. In between all those tasks he also managed to run through his lines, rehearse the scene with Krause a couple of times, and practice the Lullaby, which it seemed he could again play even with his eyes shut.

On top of everything else, Olga Leonidovna also showed up to rehearsal first thing in the morning. She spent a long time walking around the movie theater with Volodya, discussing something with him. The conversation made Volodya completely despondent; he told Yurka that the educational specialist had demanded that he sit in the audience with her and the camp director. She had said that the show was the Pioneers’ own work and she needed to see what they were capable of when the troop leaders weren’t helping. “Will you sub in as director for me today?” Volodya asked.

Yurka agreed. He wasn’t upset by the responsibility that had fallen to him. He knew the script backward and forward, and he already had a ton of responsibilities anyway: running the lights, prompting the kids if they forgot their lines, making sure the curtain was open and closed at the right times, and so forth. Overseeing the entire show didn’t really add much extra work. Plus it had already become a habit for Yurka to keep himself busy to avoid his own sad, longing thoughts. Right now he was avoiding them with all his might, but despite his best efforts, fragments of his conversation with Volodya kept coming back to Yurka periodically, first throwing him into a fever, then giving him chills.

One part came back to him most of all: “I’ve thought a lot about us, and about myself. And of course about what I’m going to do about my abnormality.” Yurka’s heart went painfully tight. At that moment he was moving the stage decorations for the first scene out from backstage and issuing instructions to Alyoshka and Mikha, who were helping him. He stopped and looked over at the stage, where Volodya was explaining something to Vanka, who was playing one of the Germans.

Why do you treat yourself like this? Yurka asked Volodya silently. In what way are you “abnormal”? Have you even seen yourself? How can you think that? He shook his head dejectedly.

Yurka and Mitka were checking that the curtain opened and shut smoothly. Volodya’s voice sounded in Yurka’s thoughts: “I spent a lot of time on this and found out a little about how it’s treated.” A shiver ran down Yurka’s spine. He stood still, then took a deep whiff of the dusty air, recalling how he and Volodya had kissed for the first time, wrapped up in that very curtain. Yurka started shaking as soon as he imagined the doctors eradicating those memories from Volodya’s head, those feelings from Volodya’s heart.

“You’re not the first person for whom I’ve had ... this.” What was he like? That first one, the other Volodya Davydov? Of course Yurka couldn’t help wondering about him. Was that Volodya as good as his Volodya? He must have been, because Volodya couldn’t fall in love with a bad person, right? Yurka felt ambivalent about this other Volodya. If he, Yurka, had been Volodya’s first love, then maybe Volodya wouldn’t have considered himself such a monster, wouldn’t have taken all of this so hard ...

After breakfast he went to the mess hall to get the chairs for the theater. He heard the clattering and clanging of dishes in the kitchen, and with them Volodya’s words: “I don’t want to do anything that’ll harm you! And I won’t! Yurka, it’s harmful! It is!” And then remembered Volodya’s hands over the vat of boiling water and understood, in a burst of realization like an electric shock. At the time, Yurka couldn’t figure out why Volodya was doing that, but now it all made sense: it was punishment! Volodya deliberately caused himself pain in order to punish himself! But why? What an idiot that boy was! Did he really need to punish himself for these feelings, these good, exalted feelings?

Was that why Volodya had been so stern about forbidding Yurka to touch him? He kept telling Yurka to move his hand away; he didn’t want to kiss Yurka for real ... But what would’ve happened if Yurka hadn’t moved his hand, if he had kissed Volodya for real, despite Volodya’s resistance? Because Yurka wanted so badly to experience that kind of thing with Volodya ... He didn’t see anything shameful about it, it was simply an expression of his love, but Volodya obviously regarded it as something that would ruin both of them. Or—how had he put it? That he was afraid of defiling Yurka? But that just made no sense, and it also made Yurka a little mad: How come Volodya got to decide everything without even asking him? Why was he so intent on being the only guilty one?

Nice try, but no , thought Yurka, grinding his jaw. I can make decisions myself. I can tell the difference between good and bad. And no matter what Volodya says, these feelings are the best thing that’s happened to me my whole life. They can’t ruin anyone or anything!

But he didn’t end up finding a time to get Volodya alone to talk. That whole morning all they could do was exchange sad or knowing glances or murmur work-related phrases as they prepared for the show. It wasn’t until right before the show, when the audience was already starting to take their seats, that Volodya finally came to Yurka, who was in the supply closet with the rest of the cast, getting into his outfit for the performance.

Yurka was having a sense of déjà vu as he stood in front of the mirror, trying, with shaking hands—he was already in the throes of stage fright—to tie his neckerchief. Then Volodya approached, put his hand on his shoulder, turned him around, and started tying the red knot at Yurka’s neck. It was all exactly the same way it had been before Summer Lightning, except that now they were in a tiny room that was crowded with people. Yurka looked around in fear, searching for Masha, but didn’t see her. And what was wrong with this, anyway—with Volodya helping him tie his neckerchief?

“Yur,” said Volodya quietly. “I’m really looking forward to your Lullaby.” Even more quietly, he added, “It’s the only thing I’m looking forward to ...”

Yurka took a long, searching look into Volodya’s sad eyes. “I’ll be playing it just for you. Promise you’ll watch me the entire time.”

Volodya nodded. “Of course.” He smoothed the ends of Yurka’s neckerchief and turned around to the rest of the boys in the supply closet: “Does everyone remember I won’t be here backstage with you? Listen to Yura, he’s in charge!”

The boys nodded and Volodya left. Olezhka ran over to Yurka and gazed, entranced, at his neckerchief. He had evidently understood Volodya’s order literally, since he paused and waited expectantly. Finally he asked, in a whisper, “Yuwa, is it twue that the Pioneews won’t take someone like me, who can’t say theiw r ’s?”

“What? That’s stupid! Who’s telling you that?” Yurka couldn’t restrain himself.

“Oh, you know ... I heawd it fwom lots of people.”

“Of course the Pioneers will take you! Grandpa Lenin himself said his r ’s different, and he wasn’t just a Pioneer, he was the leader of the world proletariat! So it’ll all work out for you, too, Olezhka! Don’t you listen to anybody, you’ll—”

“So I don’t have to listen to you ?” Olezhka narrowed his eyes shrewdly, grinning.

Yurka hadn’t even finished rolling his eyes before Olezhka darted away.

By one o’clock the audience was filled to bursting. There weren’t enough seats for everyone even with the extra chairs from the mess hall, so some people had to sit in the aisle. The house lights went down and the auditorium went silent. Then Volodya came out onstage in front of the closed curtain. The honor of saying some introductory words fell, as was proper, to the artistic director. And, as was also proper, he began, “Esteemed audience members, we offer for your consideration a show marking the anniversary of our beloved Pioneer Hero Zina Portnova Barn Swallow Pioneer Camp ...”

Volodya recited the memorized words in a serious but rather indifferent voice. Yurka had already heard the monologue during rehearsal, so he didn’t listen to it now, instead helping the actors get ready for their first scene.

Volodya finished delivering his official welcome and handed the floor over to Polina, the play’s narrator. In a clear, expressive voice, she began reciting the poem that was ubiquitous at all Pioneer camps, Zheleznov’s “Pioneer Heroes,” about how the Soviet people fought valiantly and saved everyone from Fascism, but at great cost to themselves.

Mitya was working the curtain. He was standing at the ready, his gloved hands gripping the rope, and he was getting antsy. He whispered to Yurka, “Well? So you’re going to nod, right, when it’s time to open it?”

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Yurka wasn’t convinced Mitka could handle the curtain all by himself; he’d have to open and close the curtain at least thirty times, after all. Since it wasn’t practical to completely switch out the sets every time there was a scene change, they had divided the stage into two halves. The left half was for indoor scenes, while the right half was for scenes that were set outdoors. And because the script maintained a regular alternation between indoor and outdoor scenes, only the right half of the stage, the outdoor part, had to be covered by the curtain whenever there was an indoor scene, and vice versa.

Mitka was more serious than Yurka had ever seen him. “I can do it myself!” he insisted, sneaking a peek at Ulyana, who was warming up for her entrance. Yurka realized that the curtain had become a way for Mitka to prove his manhood; still, Yurka had his doubts.

“But, Mitya, it’s only easy to draw the curtain at first. You’re going to have to draw it a hundred times during the—”

“It’s fine!”

“Mitya, if we shit the bed here, even just one thing ...” Yurka expressed himself in exactly the words that were running through his brain. And why not? Volodya was elsewhere, and none of the senior campers were around, either, so nobody was there to tell him off for it.

But Mitka was stubborn and declared firmly, “Yura, I’ll do it myself!”

There was no time to argue. The moment of truth was upon them. Yurka was very worried, even though his entrance wasn’t for another whole act, because he was in charge today, and Volodya was counting on him, and Yurka had to show everyone what he could do. It felt like he’d put part of himself into the show, and he was invested in its success.

The Young Avengers had already taken their opening positions and were getting ready for curtain. Polina was starting the final stanza of “Pioneer Heroes,” which called on everyone to always remember and honor the young heroes who’d died for their country.

Yurka took a deep breath, trying to calm his agitation. He opened his eyes and nodded to Mitya. The rope creaked and, in perfect accordance with the plan, the curtain slid up, revealing the left side of the stage: the indoor side. The first scene was where Zina Portnova and her nine-year-old sister, Galya, arrived in the village in late June 1941 and found out the war had started. As the narrator, Polina announced that the village was quickly occupied and that Zina soon met Fruza Zenkova—played by Ulyana—and joined the ranks of the other brave young people of the Byelorussian SSR in the Young Avengers.

The left side of the stage was quite picturesque: the crew had fastened a big picture of the inside wall of a wooden hut to the backdrop, hung propaganda posters on the wall, and arranged suitcases and duffel bags on the floor. They had even brought over dishes and pots and pans. Masha, her hair pulled down over her face to hide the rash that covered her cheeks after she was toothpasted with Pomorin, started playing the Moonlight Sonata. The Young Avengers had gathered at a table with a map and were planning their sabotage. All the play’s main characters were in this scene, and they all had at least one line, meaning that if even one of them made a mistake, the entire scene would go off the rails. So far everything was going smoothly, but Yurka, who was scrupulously following the actors’ lines in the script, was prepared to prompt them.

“Zina,” said Ulyana as Zenkova, the secretary of the Avengers, turning to Portnova. “You’ve been working in the officers’ mess for a long time now. The time has come to give you a task!”

The leader held a little glass bottle of perfume out to Portnova. (They hadn’t been able to find anything else at camp.) “This is rat poison,” she explained. “You have to poison their food.”

“I will!” Portnova replied readily.

“And now we move on to the next issue. A secret cache of weapons has been found. Ilya, how many weapons do we have in total?”

As Ilya Yezavitov, Olezhka leaped to his feet. “I ... I ... ,” he stuttered.

Yurka whispered from backstage, “We have ...”

“We have,” said Olezhka, collecting himself, “five wifles, a Maxim machine gun and ammunition, and half a dozen ow so gwenades.”

The piano music faded, replaced by the sound of clacking train wheels. Pasha, playing Nikolay Alexeyev, a member of the underground who had a job at the railroad station, ran onstage and into the room. “Men, for several days now echelons loaded with haystacks have been moving through the station. It’s strange: no one uses steam trains to transport such flammable cargo. It is strange, right?” The Avengers nodded. “Well, I was checking the bridge today and I looked and saw that under those haystacks they’re hiding tanks ...”

Everything would’ve been fine, but there wasn’t a trace of alarm or surprise in Pasha’s voice. The actor was just getting through the words as quickly as he could. Yurka huffed angrily, but the Young Avengers notified the partisans of the tanks by radio and made arrangements to meet the next day to hand over the weapons they’d found. The curtain slid closed.

“Guys, why are you so sluggish? You’ve got to pull it together, we can’t let Volodya down!” hissed Yurka when the actors came backstage.

Ulyana actually flared up at him: “We’re already doing the best we can! But instead of gratitude, all we get is criticism! You know what, Yurka—”

“Ulya, no time to talk: Get to the outdoor half, on the double!”

The forest stage decorations were already in place: the crew had attached drawings of fir trees to the backdrop, along with the large outline of a train station complete with low outbuildings and the station bell. The members of the underground hurried over to their hiding place, a small hollow log, to hide the weapons, looking around apprehensively the whole time. But there was no log onstage! There should’ve been, according to their plan, but there wasn’t! Had Alyosha forgotten to set the prop?

Some helper Matveyev turned out to be! He begged and pleaded to join in, but what happens! Yurka thought angrily, waving his arms to indicate they should hide the weapons behind the piano. They understood and set the weapons there.

Meanwhile, on the indoor half of the stage, the part now covered by the curtain, chaos reigned. The kids were getting ready for the next scene, in which Zina poisoned the soldiers in the mess hall. They set out a table, covered it with a white tablecloth, and took down the posters. The scene in the forest only had three lines, so it went by like a flash. It was time for the next scene.

This was chubby little Sashka’s fateful hour: he’d been entrusted with playing the first German to die.

Mitka heaved on the rope and the curtain slid away, revealing an officer’s mess with German officers sitting at the table. Upstage, Zina surreptitiously poured poison into a pot of soup, then started ladling it into bowls. Masha played the dark, gloomy passage from the middle of the “Internationale.” The officers each had a spoonful of soup and then fell to the ground. Sasha, of course, overdid it, shouting and writhing so much that the audience tittered.

Zina was seized immediately. She started shouting that she’d had nothing to do with it, that the soup was fine, and that she’d prove it. She ate a spoonful of the poisoned soup, and her legs buckled as she fell unconscious to the floor.

Villagers appeared onstage, picked Portnova up under her arms, and took her upstage to where a set piece resembling a porch had been set up. The villagers arranged Zina next to it. Her grandmother and sister appeared. Her grandmother started fussing over the still-insensible Zina, while little Galya clutched her tightly, started crying very believably, and said in a thin voice between sobs, “Zinochka, I’ll be left all alone without you! Leningrad is starving, and our mama and papa are there ...”

The action continued to play out on the porch while Sashka, having finished his dramatics, ran offstage.

“Sasha, I’m begging you, a little less emotion! At least don’t shout so much.”

It was as though Sashka, wiggling happily and red in the face, didn’t even hear him. But Ulyana peppered Sashka with questions: “So? How’s it going? How’s the audience?” Then she added smugly, “I was too preoccupied to see, you know, because I’m a lead.”

Yurka scoffed.

“Oh! Fine,” the chubby lad assured her happily. “Olga Leonidovna and Pal Palych look pleased, but Volodya looks strange, like he’s not paying attention even the littlest bit!”

“No way!” declared Ulyana.

She and Sashka tiptoed over to the curtain and peeked out from behind it at Volodya. Yurka remained where he was, making sure that the outdoor stage decorations were being set up for the next scene. There wasn’t much that could be messed up there: all they had to do was throw a pile of “coal” on the ground and attach a drawing of the pumping station to the backdrop. They didn’t even have to remove the previous scenery of the forest.

Ulyana came back offended and hissed angrily at Yurka, “Konev! Here you are, riding our backs with your ‘Don’t let Volodya down, don’t let Volodya down,’ but Volodya doesn’t even care! He couldn’t care less about this show!”

“That can’t be!” Yurka was actually perplexed. If anybody cared about this show, it was Volodya!

“It sure can!” scowled Ulyana.

The stage was set, so Yurka had a free moment to peek into the audience. It was true: Volodya wasn’t even looking at the stage. His face was tilted down, toward the notebook in his lap, and his brow was furrowed in concentration while his fingers drummed on the armrest. He was nervous. How Yurka wished he could sit beside him right now. But he had to show everyone—not just the administration and Volodya, but himself—that he could do it, that he could be counted on, that he could make his own decisions, that he could keep things running smoothly, both for himself and for the actors.

Yurka went backstage. Ulyana, fanning herself with the script, nodded toward the audience. “See? What did I tell you?”

Yurka said stubbornly, “Ulyana, it’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s that he’s nervous! If we botch this, we’re in for it. Volodya too! You know that already. So give it your all!”

Onstage, the narrator’s voice began: “It is now 1943, two years since the Fascist invasion and occupation of Zina’s village. Zina Portnova has recovered from eating the soup she herself poisoned and continues her work with the Young Avengers. In order to stop the Red Army’s counteroffensive, Hitler’s forces have started sending enormous numbers of troops and resources to this part of the front. Troop trains thunder along the Vitebsk-Polotsk line day and night. But their motion is being hindered: steam trains need water to make steam, and almost all the water-pumping stations along that railway line were destroyed, either by the Soviet Army or by partisans. Only one pumping station has remained intact, one that had gone unnoticed among the villages and fields near the little town of Obol until it was too late to put it out of commission.”

The right side of the stage was revealed, showing a pumping station with a German soldier standing next to it: Pcholkin, wearing a uniform jacket and holding a toy rifle at the ready.

A girl playing Nina Azolina approached him. She was a pretty girl, a Young Avenger who acted like she was serving the Germans faithfully. Pcholkin the German started yelling at her, but the deputy commandant who was courting her came running at the noise.

Vanka was playing the part of the deputy commandant, Müller. He ran up to the German guard and started shouting at him in German. His German wasn’t all that great, but he was doing the best he could. Yurka had written that line especially for him. “Entschuldige dich bei der Dame! Schnell!”

While he was turned away from Azolina, shouting at the guard, Azolina sneaked a bomb disguised as a lump of coal into the coal pile.

Polina resumed her narration: “Three days later the water station was leveled to the ground. It took two weeks to rebuild it, during which the Germans were kept from conveying eight hundred troop trains to the front. The Germans began to suspect it had been the local residents, not organized partisans, who blew up the station, so they increased the guard on strategic infrastructure and set more patrols on the streets.”

The next scene was Yurka’s favorite. It was impressive, but it required a lot of attention. The entire cast had put their heads together to come up with a way to depict it onstage. “If only we could do it as a movie, so everyone didn’t have to just imagine the fire and smoke ... ,” the kids had mused.

Yurka darted over to the lighting console and readied himself to give the signal for the sound effects at the right moment. He looked over at Matveyev, who was standing next to the stage decorations for the outdoor half, holding the ends of some strings.

Yurka tried not to dwell on the fact that this scene was the last one in the first act, which he was bringing to a close with his Lullaby. The main event of his whole day was going to happen in just a few minutes, but Yurka wasn’t mentally prepared for it.

On the left side of the stage the crew had put back the set for the Young Avengers headquarters: a typical village hut with a porch, and on the ground by the porch a small sandbox where Galya Portnova was playing.

“Galka, you remember, right?” asked Zina. “As soon as you see Fascists or police, you sing your favorite song, ‘In the Field a Young Birch Stood.’”

Galya nodded. Zina went into the hut. The meeting began. Olezhka as Ilya Yezavitov took the floor: “The Fascists are afraid of us, but that doesn’t mean we are out of danger!”

All of a sudden, Galya’s thin little voice pealed,

“In the field a young birch stood,

In the field, long-tressed, she stood ...”

Upstage, three Germans walked across the stage and then exited behind the curtain. Ulya, as Fruza Zenkova, the chairman of the Young Avengers, ran over to the porch, verified the soldiers were gone, came back to the meeting, and began listing the facilities in Obol that had been seized by the Germans and had to be destroyed: the power station, warehouses, and town factories.

After the shouted line “All of them must be destroyed!” Yurka looked at Mitka, who, drenched in sweat, uncovered the outdoor half of the stage, revealing a village scene with huts and vegetable gardens, along with four large flats depicting an electrical power station, a flax mill, a brick factory, and a warehouse. A string was attached to the back of each flat, and Mitka held all four strings. Yurka rested his right hand on an AV console and got ready to give the signal to the person handling sound effects and Alyoshka.