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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE LAST NIGHT

Volodya stood stunned, unmoving and unblinking, staring at the path the girls had just taken.

“Hey! Everything okay?” Yurka walked over to him and snapped his fingers in front of Volodya’s eyes. It took a couple of tries, since his palms were still sweaty from fear.

He knew he couldn’t allow Volodya to retreat into himself right now, as that would be the death blow to their final evening together.

“I don’t know ... ,” said Volodya, as though he were coming out of a trance. “I’m going to have nightmares now about Masha’s outburst, but ... I can’t believe we got out of that.”

“And the main thing is that we did get out of it! Or ... do you think maybe we didn’t? Do you think she’ll tell Leonidovna?”

“Who, Irina? No,” he replied with certainty. “Otherwise she would’ve dragged us off with her. Or did you mean Masha?” Volodya added warily. “Do you think Masha will tell her?”

“Nah, she’ll be too scared. It’s fine telling Ira about something like that, but telling Leonidovna and the director’s way scarier.”

“It is scarier, but that doesn’t mean she won’t do it!” insisted Volodya. “If she tells anyone, it’ll be them. They’re older, they’re more experienced, they know this kind of thing does exist. Not like Irina.”

“Okay, so fine. Let’s say she does tell them. What then? In that case, I’m the victim here, and they’ll ask me whether that’s really what happened. And I’ll say Masha’s lying! And you will, too, and Ira—I mean, everybody will say Masha’s lying! We know Polya and Ksyusha won’t be able to keep quiet, they’re definitely going to blab. So the way it’ll end up is that there’ll be nothing to charge us with because there are no victims.”

“That’s true, too. There’s no crime here.”

“Okay then, so are we going to the willow?”

Volodya nodded, turned off his flashlight, and went off the path directly into the woods. “To make sure nobody else can tag along,” he explained. “Even though that’s unlikely now ...”

After a couple of minutes, when they were going around the steep riverbank, he paused and set the alarm on his watch. “Did you leave anything at the bonfire?” he asked.

“Why, are we not going back there?”

“Well, we sensed it’s our time to leave, remember?” Volodya smiled and started walking again.

Yurka managed to collect his thoughts somewhat as he trundled obediently along behind Volodya. He felt guilty, because he was the one who’d gotten them in trouble, after all: he hadn’t gotten permission from Irina, nor had he kept track of Masha ...

“That Masha’s a real pest,” he said. “She was the one who sent Ira after us. It couldn’t have been anyone else. And then the Pukes went gallivanting along behind her. I thought she was busy playing babbling brook and didn’t see me leave.”

“No need to justify yourself, Yur. We’ve already seen how good a spy Masha can be. By the way, I was amazed that you stood up for her. That was a good thing you did.”

Yurka winced. “I don’t even know what came over me. It was like I suddenly felt sorry for her. What do you think: Will Ira go tattling on Masha to Leonidovna? I mean, accusing a Komsomol member of something like that is no joke ...”

Volodya scoffed. “I wouldn’t bet on it. Just imagine the mess Irina will have to deal with if she does. And also, she’s just a troop leader: she doesn’t have any kind of pedagogical role like a teacher or anything. And on top of that, today’s the last day: tomorrow Irina won’t have any kind of official position with regard to Masha anymore. And Leonidovna doesn’t need this kind of bureaucratic hassle, either.” Volodya snorted. “She had more than enough of you last year. So why do you ask?”

“Well ... What Polya said was actually true ... ,” Yurka mumbled lamely. “People would condemn Masha ...”

“Are you worried about her?” Judging by the tone, Volodya was even more surprised.

“Well ... ,” he said slowly. “I mean ... even if she is evil on two legs ...”

“Come on, Yur. She’s just a girl in love. Her love isn’t evil in and of itself.”

Yurka groaned wearily. “Look who’s talking about evil, Volodya! That love is precisely the kind that is evil. It’s ours that isn’t. Masha blackmailed you, after all! She tried to force us apart, and now here she is pulling this nasty, vile maneuver on us.”

“No, Yura,” insisted Volodya stubbornly. “She just doesn’t know how she should love. She’s in despair. She should be pitied, treated with—”

“I’m in despair, too! And I don’t know how I should love, either!” exclaimed Yurka. “But somehow I’m not the one sneaking around spying on you! I’m not trying to do these nasty, awful things!”

“That’s because your love is reciprocated. Why don’t you tell me who was still throwing apples at me not all that long ago, huh, Yur?”

Yurka tried to think of something to say in reply but didn’t come up with anything before they reached the shallows.

They had to take their trousers off to cross the river. During the day, Yurka had been wandering around here in shorts, so he’d just pulled them up, but now the prospect of sitting half the night in jeans that were wet all the way past the knees didn’t seem very appealing. The water in the river wasn’t that cold, but his legs were covered in goose bumps the moment he came out on the other side of the river. Volodya dove quickly into his tracksuit bottoms, but Yurka had to struggle a bit with his jeans. He was rewarded with several mosquito bites as a result. He cringed as he put on his shoes: his wet feet squelched disgustingly in his sneakers.

As they walked along the far riverbank toward the willow, Yurka asked, “What did you say to Ira that made her let us stay out all the way until one a.m.?”

“I reminded her that I covered for her and Zhenya when she asked.”

“Oh, so you do know ... ,” said Yurka, surprised.

Volodya sent him a sideways glance. “Zhenya and I shared a room. How could I not know?”

“So what do you think about it?”

“About what?”

“About the fact that Zhenya’s married but he’s seeing Ira.”

Volodya shrugged. “He loves her. I don’t know if anybody else sees it, but it’s completely obvious to me. Yesterday they had yet another fight and I was stuck in the middle as their go-between. Irina would come and complain to me and ask if she was doing the right thing.”

“Oho! So you’ve turned into a couples counselor now?” laughed Yurka.

“About right.” Volodya shrugged dismissively. “Almost a full-blown matchmaker. But I didn’t want to; Zhenya made me.”

“So? What did you tell her?”

“I ... I told her to think about her own life and not look around to see what everyone else thought. The people around you will always judge you, always say something, but maybe it’s worth just not caring what other people say, at least sometimes. Because if she’s happy with him, then let her be with him.”

Yurka stopped short. “Did you actually tell her something like that?”

Volodya also stopped and turned to him with a smile. “Yes.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“Yes.”

Something started simmering inside Yurka, something between anger and hurt. The memory of their conversation in the unfinished barracks was still too fresh. “So that’s what you think ... Huh ... ,” he said slowly. Then he added angrily, “But at the same time you’re convinced you’re some kind of monster and can’t allow yourself to be happy, right?”

“That’s totally different, Yur—”

“That’s exactly the same thing!” shouted Yurka. “You were saying you’re afraid to cause me harm, and that’s the exact same way Ira’s afraid of harming Zhenya. You look around at everybody else, just like she does, and you think you’re bad just because the people around you do! But you won’t listen to me when I try to convince you otherwise! Why not?!”

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand everything! Stop treating me like a child! You’re only two years older than me! Look how I’ve changed. That’s you. You changed me. Just three weeks ago I was afraid to even get close to a piano, even though everyone tried to talk me into it: my mother, my father, my relatives ... They even tried to force me to play! But you were the only way I could get over my fear. But now you can’t get over your fear, even though I’m asking you to! I’m asking you to do it for me! So don’t go saying I don’t understand it. I understand perfectly why you’re so afraid. I’m afraid, too! But I can overcome that fear—” He broke off and breathed out a ragged breath, as though all his fury had suddenly evaporated. Then, quietly now, with lowered eyes, he added, “Because I fell in love.”

Volodya froze and looked at him in astonishment. Then Yurka felt uncomfortable with what he’d said and how he’d said it: it was like he’d dumped everything on Volodya, and so harshly, too ... He knew this was not the time to talk about everything in a big heart-to-heart, but on the other hand, when would it be?

And now it was apparently Volodya’s turn to be lost for words. He just grabbed Yurka’s hand and pulled him forward, to where they could see the slope down toward the water and the lush foliage of the willow.

Once they were inside the tent of the willow’s branches, Volodya pulled the blanket out of the backpack and tossed it on the ground. Then he got out the time capsule, his notebook, and a pencil. He said, “All right. We need to write something to ourselves when we’re ten years older.”

Yurka sat down on the blanket. Volodya joined him and pulled off his damp sneakers. Yurka did the same. Then he took the pencil and notebook and wrote on the last page, “No matter what dont loose each other.”

“Look at these mistakes, Yur!” grumbled Volodya. “‘Lose’ has one o , not two, and you need an apostrophe in ‘don’t.’” Yurka looked at him reproachfully. Volodya added guiltily, “But that makes no difference right now! No, don’t correct it; it’s actually better this way. You can see it was written by the young hooligan Konev.” Yurka could hear his smile in his voice. “Then you’ll remember him ten years from now ... And now it’s my turn. Here, shine the light over here.”

With one hand Volodya took the notebook and held it as he bent low over it. With his other hand he wrote in neat, compact handwriting, “No matter what, don’t lose yourself ...” Then his hand started shaking. Yurka, forgetting he might blind Volodya, shone the flashlight on Volodya’s face. He jerked away from the beam of light but not before Yurka saw that Volodya’s eyes were wet.

“Volod, don’t cry, or else I’ll start up too ...”

Without waiting for him to finish, Volodya seized Yurka’s shoulders and drew Yurka in, holding him tight. Volodya buried his face in Yurka’s neck and mumbled something unintelligible.

Yurka choked at the pain that had flared up again. Maintaining his self-control with some difficulty, he put his arms around Volodya. The only word he could understand of Volodya’s feverish whispering at his neck was a quiet “Yurochka ...”

If this had lasted even a minute longer, Yurka would’ve lost it, too. The helplessness and grief were making him want to either cry or scream. But Volodya quickly got hold of himself and said, “You’re right. This isn’t doing us any good right now. It’ll wait, it’ll all wait till later.”

He picked up the notebook again and kept writing. Yurka sniffed as he held the flashlight on the notebook so Volodya could see. “Stay just the way we were in ’86. Volodya will graduate from his institute with honors and take a trip to America. Yura will go to conservatory and become a pianist.”

“Done,” said Volodya. Then he asked, “What else should we put in the time capsule?”

Yurka extracted a damp sheet of paper from his jeans pocket: the music he’d copied out for himself so he could practice. “Here’s the Lullaby. It’s the most precious thing I had during this session.” He put the music into the time capsule.

Volodya rolled his notebook into a tube and put it in. The notebook had the corrected script with all the notes, with his own personal thoughts jotted down over the course of the session as well as his wishes for their future selves.

“And one more thing,” said Yurka, digging in his pocket. “Here. I think this should go in, too.” He produced a white lily, now crumpled and missing a few petals—the lily Volodya had given him. Volodya nodded and placed the flower carefully at the very top of the time capsule, sitting on the notebook.

“Is that everything?” Volodya asked quietly.

Yurka thought for a moment: Was that really everything? Or was there something else that should be left here for safekeeping? Yurka shook his head. “No. There’s one more thing.”

Yurka clutched the Pioneer neckerchief knotted around his neck and tugged at it fitfully, trying to untie it. But his hands were shaking, and instead of loosening the knot, he made it even tighter.

Volodya reached over silently to help him. Yurka said gloomily, “How ironic. When I was accepted into the Pioneers, a Komsomol member tied my tie on. And now a Komsomol member is taking it off.”

A cool breeze touched Yurka’s bare neck, making him shiver. Volodya misread the reason for Yurka’s reaction: “Are you sure you want to put it in the time capsule?”

“Yes.”

“But your neckerchief only costs fifty-five kopeks, you know. We agreed to only put our most precious things into the time capsule,” said Volodya sarcastically.

“That was what it used to cost. Not anymore.”

Volodya smiled and said, repeating Yurka’s own words, “Get a load of that! So how much does your Pioneer neckerchief cost now?”

“It’s priceless.” Yurka saw Volodya’s smirk and clarified, “No, not because of the story of duty it tells; because it’s a piece of my childhood.”

“Will you help me?” asked Volodya. He took Yurka’s hand and put it on his own neckerchief, which was ironed, and crisp, and neat, and warm from his body heat. After both their neckerchiefs had been taken off, Volodya took them and knotted the ends together. Yurka remained silent. He studied the strong, tight knot and guessed that Volodya had imbued some kind of secret meaning all his own into it, but figured it was unnecessary to ask about it.

Volodya sighed, put the neckerchiefs into the time capsule, put the lid on, and said, “It looks like you really have grown up, Yura.”

The rain-dampened earth yielded easily, and even with their child-size shovel they were able to dig their hole quickly. They put the time capsule in. Yurka watched the clods of earth slowly covering up the tin’s little rectangular lid. Too late, he remembered that his neckerchief was where the Pukes had written their addresses. Mikha and Vanka, too. But this thought flitted out of his head as quickly as it had entered it. Right now that was completely unimportant. Volodya was way more important. Yurka watched him take his penknife and cut something into the bark of the willow tree right over the place the time capsule was buried. Yurka trained his flashlight on the tree, moving the circle of light around on the trunk, revealing a small, uneven set of Cyrillic initials inside it: Yu + V .

Seeing those letters was painful, because in just a few hours this spot, on this tree trunk, underneath this tent of willow branches, would be the only place where he and Volodya would remain together. In real life they would be headed off their separate ways, to their separate cities, which were almost a thousand kilometers away from each other.

Yurka stopped caring then about what Volodya thought of himself or what Volodya was afraid of. It became imperative for Yurka to hold Volodya close. So he did. He pulled Volodya tightly to him, with no intention of letting go, even if Volodya tried to get away. But Volodya didn’t push him away. On the contrary, it was as though he had just been waiting for this moment. He eagerly hugged Yurka back, pressing close and breathing shakily. “Yur ... I’m going to miss you so much ...”

Yurka wanted to ask him to be quiet so as not to hear such painfully sad words. And besides, why couldn’t they stay here forever, under their willow? Why couldn’t he hold on to Volodya forever, breathing in Volodya’s own dear, familiar scent, so they would never, ever part?

Volodya clutched Yurka so tightly, he rumpled Yurka’s T-shirt. He stroked his warm hands along Yurka’s back and breathed on his neck, making Yurka cringe from the ticklish sensation. Then Volodya abruptly leaned in and kissed the hollow under Yurka’s earlobe. Yurka shuddered, then recoiled. He remembered how Volodya had insisted he didn’t want all this touching, all this tenderness, and now here he was doing it himself ...

He removed Volodya’s hands and sat down on the blanket, wrapping his arms around his knees and then resting his chin on them.

“Yur, what’s wrong?” Volodya sat down next to him. “What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Yurka shook his head. “It’s just ... you and I have so little time left, but I don’t know what I’m allowed to do. Because you forbid me from doing anything.”

Volodya moved very close, put his arm around Yurka’s shoulders, and drew him in. “What do you want to do?” he whispered.

Yurka turned his head and rubbed noses with Volodya. “To kiss you. Is that allowed?”

“That’s allowed.”

Volodya closed the distance between them himself, pressing a warm, tender kiss to Yurka’s lips. Yurka squeezed his eyes shut, found Volodya’s hand, interwove his fingers with Volodya’s, and held on tight. He felt as though the moment he let go of Volodya’s hand, the moment he let that kiss end, then everything would end: his feelings would fizzle out, his heart would turn to stone, the air would turn to jelly, and the whole world would stop dead.

But the kiss did not end. Volodya’s lips parted and the kiss became wet and soft. Yurka opened his mouth, too, and sighed. He felt like smiling. It was so sweet that all those irrelevant mournful thoughts vanished immediately. The murmur of the water in the river, the rustling of the wind in the leaves, even the loud beating of his own heart—all of it went quiet; all of it ceased to exist. The only thing left was that dizzyingly real kiss and the distinct desire ringing in his head like an invocation: Let this kiss never end .

Yurka didn’t know how he ended up lying on his side on the blanket. He only knew the kiss had ended because a cold chill had just touched his wet lips. He opened his eyes. Volodya was lying next to him, one arm around him, looking at him: his cheeks, his lips, his eyes. Yurka thought for a moment that maybe he had fallen asleep for some amount of time, but no—only a couple of minutes had passed. He’d just lost track of everything. It had been so good, though. He wanted more.

Volodya turned to lie on his back and looked up at the sky through the willow leaves. Yurka studied the way the weak light outlined Volodya’s profile in a silvery silhouette. Then he moved closer. Volodya didn’t move; he just sighed heavily. Yurka moved even closer, and still closer, until his whole body was pressed up against Volodya’s. He almost asked permission to put his arms around him but then cursed at himself: To hell with all that! As soon as tomorrow came, he’d regret he hadn’t taken Volodya in his arms, but by then it would be too late. To hell with awkwardness and shame!

Yurka laid his head on Volodya’s shoulder and put his hand on his chest. He opened and closed his fingers hesitantly, stroking him. Volodya shuddered.

“Yur ... you’re too close.”

“Too close to what?”

“To me.” He put his hand over Yurka’s as though he were going to move it away but reconsidered and held it instead. “I really like it when you do that ... We had almost a whole month, but we didn’t do hardly anything ... We didn’t even lie down together like this ...”

“Well, you wouldn’t have let us. But we still have today left.”

Volodya turned his head slightly and buried his nose in Yurka’s hair. He inhaled Yurka’s scent. He let Yurka’s hand go and lightly stroked his neck, then his ear. Yurka gasped with pleasure. Volodya chuckled, then whispered, “You want so badly to be touched ... It’s like you’re electrically charged: the sparks fly even if I barely touch you.” He sighed. “Same thing for me, though,” he admitted.

Yurka wanted to touch Volodya, too. And although he knew Volodya would immediately resist him, he resolutely lifted the edge of Volodya’s shirt anyway, to touch Volodya’s stomach with trembling fingers. Volodya flinched, biting his lip. “Don’t, Yur,” he protested half-heartedly, but he didn’t move Yurka’s hand away.

Yurka was quaking on the inside as he cautiously stroked Volodya’s smooth, warm skin with just the very tips of his fingers. “It’s like you’re afraid of me,” Yurka said.

Volodya shook his head. “I’m afraid of myself. You were wrong when you said I can’t overcome my fear and change. The hard part, actually, is holding myself back from doing the things that ... the things I’ll regret later.”

“And what makes you so sure you’re going to regret them?”

“Because they’ll cause you harm.”

“Here we go again! Harping on that again, huh?” Yurka sat up and glared down at Volodya resentfully. “We have one hour left to be together, but you’re still thinking about whether you might hurt me. But I’m already hurting! Any more of this and I’ll lose it; I’ll lose everything: you, myself ...” He paused and took a breath. “At least here, at least this one day, be the way you want to be, Volodya. For me. I want to remember you at your best, as special, as my first. And I want to be that for you!”

Volodya stared at Yurka, flabbergasted. He propped himself up on his elbows, then sat up, too. “Yur ... ,” he said, then his voice caught and he spent a moment clearing his throat. “I’m such a degenerate. I keep thinking about just the wrong thing—”

“No, it’s the right thing, dammit! That’s the right thing!” insisted Yurka, cutting him off. “Volodya, I’ve left too much behind, here at camp—”

“I understand—”

“—but I want to leave it all behind!”

Volodya stared at the ground and was silent for a minute. Then he fixed Yurka with a penetrating gaze: “But this’ll be forever, Yur. You’ll never be able to forget it. Or undo it.”

“Why would I want to undo it? Or forget it? What is there to be afraid of? Nobody’s going to know about it, after all. You and I are the only ones who’ll know what we did—and that we did it for real. So that even twenty years later we can be positive all this was real.”

“Yet another shared secret?”

“Not another one. The only one. The biggest and most important one.”

Volodya remained silent for another minute, searching Yurka’s face and eyes carefully as though trying to find doubt in them. But Yurka returned his gaze, stubborn and resolute.

“Are you absolutely sure, Yura? I ... It’s ... Listen. At any moment you can tell me to stop, and I will.”

“Okay.”

“No, not ‘Okay’: You promise me that if you start having any doubts at all, even for a second, you’ll tell me.”

“I promise.”

“Close your eyes.”

Yurka closed them obediently. He caught his breath, anticipating Volodya’s touch, but on the contrary, Volodya drew back. Yurka could hear Volodya fussing with the backpack. Yurka froze, barely breathing, afraid to weaken the resolve it had been so hard for Volodya to build. Volodya drew near again, squeezed his arm gently, and then tenderly kissed Yurka’s neck, his lips just barely touching the skin. It tickled again.

“Will it hurt?” Yurka blurted out of nowhere.

Volodya chuckled. “We won’t do anything that could hurt for you. I told you, I won’t ever demean you—for anything.”

“Demean me?!” said Yurka angrily. “How can you say something like that! I love you and I’m ready for anything! I’ll—I’ll kiss the hell out of you, from head to toe!”

Volodya burst out laughing.

“No?” Yurka was flustered. He knew he’d sounded na?ve, but he hadn’t been sure what else to say. And he was in no hurry to open his eyes, so he was just guessing at Volodya’s reactions. “Then I’ll do something else instead. I’ll do anything, anything at all, I just ... I just don’t know what ... Will you tell me?”

“Oh, my dear Yurochka.” Yurka heard the smile in Volodya’s voice. Volodya stroked Yurka’s cheek and kissed his nose. “For now, just sit down. And help me a little.”

Volodya dug around in the backpack again. When he was finished, he turned back to Yurka and whispered, “Can I kiss you again?”

“Volod, you don’t need to ask permission.”

“Right ...”

He pressed his lips to Yurka’s. This time the kiss wasn’t as long and tender as it had been a few minutes ago; now it was quick and insistent.

Volodya was very close to Yurka, but he wasn’t pushing Yurka away. On the contrary, he pressed close. Yurka embraced him awkwardly, somehow rucking up Volodya’s shirt in the process. But he didn’t tug it back down, instead running his hand boldly along Volodya’s back near his shoulder blades. Volodya was hot. Yurka buried his nose in the little hollow at the base of Volodya’s neck between his collarbones and inhaled, drinking in the beloved scent. He gathered his courage and kissed a bare patch of skin there, making Volodya shiver and take a ragged breath as he raked his fingers through Yurka’s hair.

“Volod, wait.” Yurka opened his eyes and looked up at Volodya. He reached up and, without asking, took off Volodya’s glasses and put them on the ground next to the blanket. Volodya squinted comically. “It’s like you’re helpless to defend yourself without them,” said Yurka.

“Not ‘without them.’ Against you.” Volodya kissed him and turned off the flashlight.

And a few minutes later Yurka had forgotten who he was and where they were. He couldn’t understand what he was feeling. It was both pleasant and strange at the same time; it was absolutely unfamiliar, not remotely like anything else. He did remember he could say stop, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t want to stop. And he didn’t have the strength to speak anyway.

Yurka soared and plunged. With Volodya, it was easy to rise up to such heights that there was no oxygen, leaving him dizzy. And it was equally easy to hurtle down with Volodya onto burning sand, or dive into boiling water and drown in it. Yurka felt a compression, a smothering, as though he were about to explode into smithereens. His heart was pounding in his temples so loudly that he could hear nothing else. But Yurka wanted to hear Volodya, to find out whether he was just as breathless, whether this was all just as strange to him. Was it as sweet-smothering-hot all at once for him, too, or was it different? And what was he, Yurka, allowed to do? What should he do? He wanted to move, but he was afraid of ruining everything, of doing something wrong. He gathered up his courage and held Volodya, pressing in as tightly as he could. Then he lost himself completely in sensation; he forgot how to breathe; he went deaf from the hammering of his heart.

And then, just as the sensations were becoming almost unbearable, there was a release.

When he came back to himself, Yurka held Volodya close and pressed his forehead into his shoulder, listening to Volodya’s heavy, raspy breathing. Volodya had relaxed, too. When he seemed about to draw back, Yurka held him even tighter, saying, “Don’t leave. Let’s sit here a little longer, okay?”

Volodya obeyed. He pressed his body, still burning hot, into Yurka’s and gave Yurka a kiss right on the earlobe. It tickled again, but it was pleasant.

They sat like that for a little while, silent and completely still, until they began to freeze. Volodya moved away and turned around. Even though it was dark and he couldn’t really see anything, Yurka started feeling awkward. His cheeks burned. He was probably beet red all over.

“Everything okay?” asked Yurka in a shaky voice.

“Just got a little stain over here.” Volodya yanked at his shirt as he turned back to Yurka.

The pale rays of the moon pierced through the willow’s narrow herringbone leaves to fall on Volodya’s face. He was unusually darling, so tender and abashed, as he rubbed his shirt and smiled, his cheeks flushed.

“If only we could do that our whole lives, huh?” Volodya asked quietly.

Yurka nodded. “You said something about next time. When will that be?”

“When we meet. I’ll come see you, or you’ll come see me. For a long time. For a whole summer.”

Yurka’s heart leaped and filled with hope: Volodya had said that so firmly, without a hint of doubt.

“Yes! It’ll be so great,” said Yurka excitedly. “I’ll play the piano to wake you up, and you’ll always be losing your glasses ...”

“But I wear them all the time and haven’t lost them in ages now.” Volodya looked around, squinting. His gaze landed on his glasses, lying on the grass, and he reached over and got them and put them on. “Almost squashed them,” he noted with relief.

“Well, and I haven’t played in ages before this summer,” Yurka reminded him.

“But you will, right?” asked Volodya, and held him close, more tenderly than he ever had before. He had his arm around Yurka’s shoulder and kept stroking and squeezing it.

“Ha! If I do, you won’t last three days, much less a whole summer! You have no idea what torture it is to live in the same apartment as a musician. It’s constant, continual music! And this isn’t pretty little compositions; this is sounding things out, and hitting wrong notes, and sometimes playing the same part or even the same note over and over. And all this is loud, so you can hear it in the whole apartment. No, you have no idea what hell it’ll be!”

Volodya couldn’t stop smiling. All of a sudden he took his glasses off again. He put them on Yurka’s lap, then buried his face in Yurka’s hair and whispered in his ear, “Oh no, it seems I’ve lost my glasses. You have no idea what hell it is to live with someone who’s always losing his glasses!”

It got hot again from Volodya’s breath.

“I’ll find them for you.”

“And I will love your music.”

“And I will love you ...”

The alarm on Volodya’s watch went off, tearing them away from their beautiful fantasy where they lived under the same roof, where every morning they woke up together, where they ate breakfast together, where they talked and watched TV and went out together. Where they were always together.

“What time is it?”

“We still have a little time,” said Volodya, resetting his alarm.

And indeed, they had just a little time left. They sat side by side in utter silence, completely still, simply enjoying their last moments together. No matter how much Yurka wanted “a little time” to last longer, it ticked away all too fast.

The watch alarm beeped loudly, a shock to their ears. And not only to their ears: to their hearts as well. Yurka knew that Volodya also felt it; otherwise he wouldn’t have had tears in his voice as he said, “Well. We came here to say goodbye.”

And he wouldn’t have stood up, and he wouldn’t have reached a hand down to Yurka.

Yurka didn’t want to take it, but he did. Volodya pulled him to his feet.

They stood facing each other, barefoot on the cold grass. Yurka was motionless, even limp, as though bereft of will, emotion, and thought. The river roared in their ears. With one hand, Volodya stroked his cheek; with the other, he squeezed Yurka’s fingers tight.

I wish I could see his eyes in this dark , Yurka thought. As though hearing his wish, the moon came out from behind a cloud. But it didn’t get any brighter. The glow of the thin crescent just highlighted the outline of that beloved face. Yurka tensed: he had to memorize everything, all the images, sounds, and smells, know them better than he knew his own name. They would be more important to him than his own name.

He folded Volodya in an embrace, pressed tightly against him, glued himself to him, grew into him. Volodya embraced him back.

“Goodbye, Yurochka ... until we meet again ... ,” he whispered, his lips warm.

The hours after that were meaningless and went by in a blur.

Yurka didn’t know or notice how much time passed, where he was, what he did. He had no awareness of what was happening around him. His thoughts had remained completely behind, there under the willow, there in that memorable last night, holding Volodya close, feeling his warmth, breathing him in.

But his last memory from that summer was nevertheless not the sound of Volodya’s voice, not the words of farewell, not the rustling of willow leaves. Rather, it was the picture he saw out the window of the bus: a wave of Volodya’s hand, and out past that the sun, and the summer, and the camp, and the fluttering red flags.