Page 35

Story: Pioneer Summer

The Cyrillic initials Yu + V carved into the trunk had turned dark and rough and were stretched out like an old scar.

Tentatively, tenderly, Yura ran his fingers over it.

Then he grabbed the shovel.

The damp earth yielded to it easily.

In just a couple of minutes he heard the shovel clank against the metal lid of the time capsule.

He heaved a sigh of relief: it was here! He pulled it out and opened it, his hands dirty from the digging and the rust from the battered old tin.

He shook its contents out onto the grass.

First the faded neckerchiefs emerged.

Then came the dried-up, crumbling remnants of the lily, along with a Komsomol pin and a pair of broken glasses.

But they hadn’t put either the pin or glasses in the time capsule back then ...

Yura clutched the glasses, remembering how right here, right under this same tree, he’d once taken them off of Volodya’s face, as carefully as if they were a priceless artifact.

Mentally, he reviewed his list: it hadn’t had glasses, but it had had the notebook.

Where was it? But Volodya’s notebook, with the scary stories, and the script, and “Yurochka,” and the wishes for their future selves, was not in the time capsule.

What did come falling out of the capsule next—and this was something Yura never expected—was a neat little bundle of letters tied up with string.

He picked it up with shaking hands and untied the string.

His throat went dry, his blood pounded in his ears, and a whole swarm of questions started buzzing in his head: What were these letters doing here? Where did they come from? Volodya must have put them here, of course—who else? But that meant he’d come and opened the time capsule! That meant he’d been here!

But when?! The answers were waiting.

The topmost letter, in a standard Soviet-era letter envelope, was addressed to Yura’s old address in Kharkiv, with Volodya’s old Moscow apartment as the return address.

But it had no stamps or postmarks on it.

This was a letter Volodya had written but not sent; the contents allowed Yura to guess when.

I didn’t offend you in my last telegram, did I? You always told me that if I pushed you away again, you’d disappear for good.

Did I really push you away? Because you disappeared.

And if that’s what happened, then good for you.

You finally learned to keep your word.

But it was all for your own good! My father got into some serious trouble.

He got involved with the wrong people.

A bunch of criminals.

Not willingly, of course.

They came to him demanding money in exchange for protection.

But my old man’s a Soviet-style, principled guy, and he told them to take a hike.

They’re the opposite, though, completely unprincipled, so they “gave him a taste” and set fire to one of our properties.

Then they threatened to hurt our family.

Yura, when I wrote you those words, and then sent that telegram, I was trying to keep you safe! Our mailbox isn’t inside our apartment, you know! They could’ve found your letter, gotten you mixed up in everything, too—and you’re what’s most important to me.

I was scared for myself and for my mother and father, of course.

But I was also scared for you.

It still scares me to think of what they’d have done to you if they’d found out who you are to me.

And if they’d started threatening to hurt you ...

What would I have done?

I know now that it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle for them; Kharkiv had its own criminal groups, obviously, so ours wouldn’t have bothered encroaching on foreign territory.

But that’s now ...

back then it was different ...

and I wasn’t the only one who was afraid of my own shadow.

The whole family was terrified of even leaving the apartment.

Well, whatever happens, I suppose it’s all for the best.

It wasn’t what I wanted.

I miss you terribly and I don’t want to lose you.

But it’ll be better this way.

I want you to get your own life in order, I want you not to let me distract you, not to think about me.

I want you to find a girl.

Because what do you need me for? All you get from me is pain.

I hold you back.

I get you off track and distract you, when you should be living your own life.

Don’t think badly of me.

And forgive me for everything I’ve done.

I’ve never forgotten you, even for a minute, but you’ll be better off without me.

As Yura’s eyes ran along the lines, every word pulled him deeper and deeper into the past.

He remembered what he’d been like back then, and what Volodya had been like.

Now, in this changed new world, all that seemed forgotten, completely unreal, but back then ...

how important it had been!

Volodya had never sent this letter.

Now Yura understood why: Volodya had been afraid for him.

Volodya had been protecting him and didn’t want to get him in trouble.

And because of Volodya’s fear, Yurka had spent ages trying to guess what he’d done wrong and why Volodya had cut him off so abruptly ...

but the reason turned out to be absurdly simple: Volodya wanted to keep him safe.

Volodya was afraid somebody might hurt Yura, so he thought he would keep Yura safe by abandoning him.

The following three letters had stamps and postmarks.

They had been addressed to Yurka’s Kharkiv apartment, but the return address showed letters and numbers instead of a street: MU-1543.

Military Unit 1543.

So Volodya had done his obligatory two years of army service.

The first of the three letters was dated the beginning of August 1991.

I can just imagine your face when with no warning you get a letter from the army.

But why not? I’ll have to do my army service sooner or later, so why not now? I can’t say I like it here; I do regret that I had to go unenroll from my institute just one semester before I graduated.

Don’t worry, though: I’ll enroll again once I’m out.

The thing I regret more than that is how it had to end between us.

It had to, Yura! It wasn’t what I wanted!

I know you’re angry at me.

But I also know you’re reading this anyway.

Don’t be angry.

When I get back to civilian life I’ll explain everything, you’ll see.

I’m sad here.

Write me at least a couple of lines.

But ...

you have to write very carefully.

You understand.

Write soon.

I’m waiting.

But the response Volodya was waiting for would never come.

Yura sighed.

He’d never gotten these letters because by then he’d already moved to Germany.

How awful Volodya must’ve felt, not to get any response to his letter.

But there were two more letters sent from the military unit.

Yura opened them one by one.

At the end of August 1991, Volodya wrote:

I don’t know why you aren’t answering me.

I hope it’s just that you didn’t get my first letter.

Maybe there’s a problem with the mail?

It’s hard for me here, far from my family and friends ...

and without hearing from you.

It’s especially difficult because of my problem.

My surroundings are ...

having an effect.

You’re probably asking yourself how I’m dealing with those fears of mine here.

That problem of mine hasn’t gone anywhere, of course.

Nothing helped.

I wrote you about that, you should remember.

After the thing happened, the thing I can’t tell you about in a letter, the thing that made us have to leave Moscow, my father suggested that for my own safety I should do my army service.

He added that in the army they’d make a man out of me for sure.

You’re the only one who knows I’d had a “relapse.” I didn’t tell my parents.

That’s why my father wasn’t worried about me, and I convinced myself I wasn’t worried, either.

Now I remember the last three years and shake my head at how naive I was, thinking that I could get rid of my problem so easily.

But now that I’m here, in the military unit, there’s no chance of me overcoming it.

Although, on the other hand, the army does temper you.

There’s nowhere to hide from my fears here, I’ve got to learn to live with them.

Write me soon, I really want to hear from you.

Yura knew Volodya was talking in a coded way about his “disease” and that it was very difficult for him to be in the army, surrounded by men.

He also knew that it was hard for him to understand just how difficult it was.

In the former Soviet republics everything was much worse as far as attitudes about LGBT people; it had been then, and it still was now.

He knew that people’s opinions were changing only slowly and with great difficulty, not like in the West.

But trying to cure homosexuality as though it was a mental disorder—that was inhuman.

The doctors could’ve caused Volodya irreparable harm! And then the army ...

it had to have been no joke for Volodya, fighting his monsters—thinking that he himself was a monster!—to spend two years surrounded by men.

Now Yura was consumed with regret that he never got those letters.

He wished so badly he could’ve gone back and supported Volodya, told him that there were lots of men like him, told him that where Yura lived, they were accepted by society.

The last letter from the military unit was dated March 1992.

It was very short:

“Still no answer.

Did you move? Or is it that you hate me? How are you? What’s going on with you? Have you met a girl? Maybe you’re already married? I really hope so.

I hope you’ve found yourself and your happiness.

It’s hard for me to believe a whole year’s almost gone by.

I have leave in April and I’ll come see you, Yura! I’ll come see you right away!”

That last line made Yura narrow his eyes thoughtfully, calculating the dates: that was when Volodya had come out to look for him but hadn’t found him.

The rest of the letters were in regular white envelopes without stamps or addresses.

The only notes on them were dates written in pencil.

Yura opened the oldest of them, dated May 1993:

“Last year I went to Kharkiv.

I didn’t find you.

I went to the address that you always wrote me from, but there were new people living there, in your apartment.

They told me you’d moved to Germany a long time ago.

“You did the right thing, Yura.

What you did was right.

If you didn’t take the letters, it’s because you don’t need them.

If you didn’t leave me an address, it’s because you don’t need me.

It’s probably for the best ...

It wouldn’t have worked out for us anyway ...”

Yura was so frustrated, he hit the air with his fist, almost tearing the letter: I left my address! I wrote them, I asked them to give him the address, I asked them to pass on the letters.

Why did I ever rely on other people!

He shouldn’t have.

He should have written his old neighbors himself, a letter every month; even if nobody was living in his old apartment, he should’ve piled on the letters anyway.

But he hadn’t.

“I screwed everything up!” he moaned out loud.

He didn’t want to keep reading, but he couldn’t stop now: “But what I keep wondering is this: Why did you go looking for me that time, then? Why did you go to Tver? And how did you even find my cousin’s address?”

Yura had been about to quit reading this letter and move on to the next one, but then he thought: Cousin?! So that Vova really had been Volodya’s cousin!

Yura turned his face away.

But the letter drew his gaze back, like a magnet.

Volodya’s handwriting, the even lines, the compact letters—it was a vivid reminder of what they’d had ...

and of what they might have had.

Yurka, I was in despair when I found out that the connection between us had been good and truly lost.

I’m bouncing from one extreme to the other: I know it’ll be better this way, but I can’t make myself accept it.

I’m still in despair now, which is why I’m writing this letter, even though I know there’s nowhere for me to send it.

Writing letters to nowhere ...

it’s a way of dealing with stress.

I read about it in psychology books back when I was still at the institute, but the first time I tried it was in the army.

The idea is that you write down your thoughts and worries and then you destroy them.

That’s how you get some of the weight off your chest.

It really helped me in the army.

I was assigned to headquarters, so every so often I was able to find time and space to write.

By the way, my unit was basically fine.

The guys I served with were good, I made friends with a lot of them.

I heard stories, you know, about the kind of awful things that can happen during army service, but I didn’t get that—I didn’t even get hazed.

I had a different problem ...

you know what I mean.

So I poured out my emotions into letters.

Letters I didn’t send.

I wrote to you in them, even though the guidelines of the exercise say you should write to yourself.

If you only knew how many confessions I made, how many loving words I said there! And then I burned them all, because I couldn’t risk anybody finding out about something like that.

But now I’m home, and there’s no need to burn everything ...

I’m feeling really bad right now.

But I’m very glad for you.

I hope things are better for you there.

I hope everything is better ...

the people, and your life ...

My two years of service went by, and I came back home, but it feels like I came back into a completely different world.

The world really has changed.

The country has changed.

My father started another business.

He says I have to help him, but I just can’t seem to get back to normal after the service.

That’s pretty common, though, Vovka was telling me that after his two years it took him six months to recover.

Oh, by the way: Vovka!

When he told me some guy had come to his apartment asking about a troop leader from Camp Barn Swallow, and he didn’t even let the guy into the entryway, I tore into him and we had a huge fight.

I know, I should’ve warned him you might show up, but honestly, it never even occurred to me you might go see him! I get where Vovka was coming from: he knew about my father’s problems, he knew we’d left because we were hiding from some criminals, so he didn’t tell you anything ...

But I still can’t get over the idea that there was hope we wouldn’t lose each other, and we did anyway!

The times I’m living in now aren’t good either, Yur.

Something bad started happening in Tver and they’re pressuring my father again.

My parents want to move again.

To Belgorod now; they say it’ll be quieter in the outskirts, near the Ukrainian border.

But the border’s where all the contraband is, so there’s no way it’ll be quieter for us, and I can’t see how they don’t understand.

My dad won’t budge; he refuses point-blank to be partners with a bunch of bandits.

Come on—does he think there’s none of them in Belgorod and that they won’t pressure him there, too?

I had a big fight with my dad about all of this.

I’ve been telling him that we have to get not only out of town but out of Russia.

It’s not that you can’t run an honest business here: it’s that with my father’s principles—which I actually do share, by the way—you can’t run a business at all.

I can’t get through to him that you just have to take those expenses into account in advance, just make them a line item in the budget.

But he will do whatever he wants.

I, at least, can do something useful while he’s beating his head against the same old wall.

I’m still planning on leaving for the States someday, but there’s no way I can do that right now.

I’ve got to finish my degree, to start with; I’ll reenroll in the Institute and finish up by correspondence course, and then we’ll see.

I remember what you thought of my efforts to become a Communist, get into the Party, and earn a good reputation.

I remember it and smile: you were so right when you said none of it mattered.

Because that’s right, now it’s all meaningless.

Well, I should finish up this letter to nowhere, my hand is starting to hurt ...

Yura looked back over the letter hungrily.

“If you only knew how many confessions I made, how many loving words I said there! And then I burned them all,” he reread aloud.

“If you only knew!”

So many years had gone by, but now it was like he was being sent back to that time.

While Volodya had been pouring out his feelings onto sheets of paper he then burned, Yura had been waiting for news from his old friend from his building back home.

But then he had indeed begun to forget Volodya as he got into a relationship with Jonas.

He felt guilty for letting everything fall through his fingers and for not keeping his love alive longer, and it tormented him as he opened the next letter.

Volodya had written it almost a year later, in April 1994.

I haven’t written one of these letters in a long time.

I don’t think I especially need to; I just felt like it.

I’ve recovered from my army service and I’m finishing my degree.

I’ll get my diploma this June.

I’m helping my father with the business, so I’ve had to postpone my plans for moving to the U.S.

Maybe the place I end up going won’t even be America.

Or will I even go anywhere at all? Right now I definitely don’t have time for that.

I have things to do.

I’m helping my father.

He finally learned to listen to me.

We buy up land and old uninhabited buildings, mostly in rural areas or on the outskirts.

I found a legal loophole that allows us to resell it at two or three times the price.

Another letter was dated February 1995.

Yura was flabbergasted as he read the first few lines:

Get this: I moved to Kharkiv! How ironic! Even though I was the one who dreamed of hightailing it out of the country, you’re the one who actually did.

But now I live in your city! My father got Ukrainian citizenship and officially registered the company here.

We ended up choosing Kharkiv, but not because of my sentimentality—it’s just that Belgorod is on the border of Kharkiv Oblast, and by the time we were going to move, we’d bought several plots of land in Kharkiv Oblast, and we already had a small client base established here.

I’m getting Ukrainian citizenship too.

There’s no such thing as honest business here, either, of course, but I think my old man’s finally admitted it’s time to send his principles packing.

It’s so strange to walk the same streets that you once walked! It’s almost as strange as writing you these letters knowing you’ll never read them.

I really like your city, Yura.

It resembles Moscow in some ways, but there aren’t as many people.

It’s quieter and calmer.

I go on walks whenever I get the chance and try to guess whether you also took walks in the same places.

I looked for the Kharkiv conservatory for two months before I found it.

How was I supposed to know that, even though you called your alma mater “the conservatory,” it’s actually called the Kotlyarevsky Institute of the Arts? As I was walking past one of the buildings, I heard someone playing the piano.

It was such a nice feeling, as though you were the one playing, although I also knew there was no way it could be you.

It’s sad.

It’s like I got a little closer to you while remaining as incredibly far away as before.

Know what? I met a girl.

Her name is Sveta.

She’s really nice.

And she’s just like her name—“light.” She really is a bright light in my life! She was the leader of a city tour I went on, and she showed us how the main Lenin statue in the city, there on Freedom Square, is pointing toward the public toilets.

I don’t know why that struck me as so funny, but I laughed about it for a long time.

And I remembered how you used to talk to the bust of Vladimir Ilych back in our theater.

I like Sveta.

She’s very positive and cheerful.

I’m not getting my hopes up, because I know all I’m feeling for her is friendly affection, but being with her is pleasant.

Maybe I could fall in love with her?

Yura smiled, remembering the statue of Lenin and the city where he was born and raised.

Was Volodya really living in Kharkiv now? After all this time, he couldn’t think of anything more ironic.

And Volodya—how old had he been in ’95? Twenty-seven? And he still thought he could become normal! Nobody had ever told him that he was normal his whole life, actually, because what would be abnormal for him would be if he did just the opposite and fell in love with a girl ...

Maybe Volodya’s comment that he wanted to fall in love with Sveta was a joke, but Yura sensed the hope in his words.

And he felt something else, too, buried way down deep in his heart: jealousy.

It wasn’t very strong—he barely felt it—but he smiled as he realized how silly it was to feel that now.

He kept reading.

The next envelope had April 1996 written on it.

Yura, I screwed everything up! I betrayed her so badly! She’s suffering; she calls sometimes, and I do what I can to calm her down.

I wish I had someone to calm me down.

I’m such an idiot! Ever since 1990, if not earlier, it’s been all but proclaimed from the rooftops that people like me are ...

well, not normal, of course, but at least not the kind of monsters I used to think they were.

No, I still don’t accept all of them—I hate the ones like Boris Moiseyev who do drag—but I wish I had tried harder to be accepting.

Instead, I had to go and ruin my own life and then go and ruin Sveta’s.

I feel bad for her.

She’s so fun, so lively and funny ...

She’s like you.

She’s bright, just like her name.

And I caused her pain.

I loved her.

Or rather, I thought I did.

I tried so hard to believe I could fall in love with her—I wanted it so badly—that I convinced both her and myself.

We started dating a month after we met, you know.

It’s my fault.

I was confused about myself.

I couldn’t tell the difference between liking her as a person and liking her sexually.

We talked so much, went on so many walks.

This is probably going to sound stupid, but she was lavishing me with light and warmth.

I couldn’t resist! I started hoping my disease was curable again, seeing Sveta as my chance to change.

We moved in together.

Two months ago her period was late.

She told me about it immediately.

I felt like I’d been punched in the face.

Like an honest man, I said that if she was pregnant, I’d marry her.

No question.

We told our parents and went to the clinic for a pregnancy test.

It’s a good clinic, private, you pay through the nose.

Sveta and I are sitting there in the hallway and I’m looking around at the pictures of babies and pregnant women.

And Sveta’s just glowing! She’s smiling, flipping through a magazine, and then she holds it up for me to see: a picture of a young family.

A happy mama holding a cute little baby and the father behind them, his arms wrapped around them both.

Sveta’s all “Look, what a cute little guy!” and what do I look at? The husband! And I go, “Yeah, he’s cute.” And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: What am I saying?! What am I doing here?! How did I ever manage to get myself into something like this?! What dream am I dreaming here?! What do I think is going to happen?! Am I blind?! Then they call Sveta’s name, and she goes into the office, and I run to the bathroom.

I thought: Okay, I’ll turn on the hot water just to bring myself back to my senses; this will pass ...

it used to help me before, after all ...

but no! It didn’t help! It just made it worse.

What the hell kind of father would I be? I’m unbalanced, I’ve got some kind of suicidal tendencies! I hide in the bathroom and burn my hands at the least little thing! What kind of husband would that make me?

For a few days, while we were waiting for the results, I was a bundle of nerves.

I felt like I was in some kind of hell.

Not even the army was that bad.

I had to force myself to do it with Sveta in the first place, you know.

I already had to spend half an hour just working myself up to it.

Sveta was a big fan of the long prelude, of course, but the prelude wasn’t for her.

And I realized, if everything was so bad already, then how much worse would it get? There were only two options: either I’d cheat on her, or I’d die by my own hand.

And then we got the test results: false alarm.

I was so happy, I didn’t sleep that night! But Sveta thought the opposite, she thought I couldn’t sleep because I was so upset.

My parents told us to get married anyway.

They loved Sveta, obviously.

Doubtless because she’d apparently cured their fag of a son.

Sveta’s parents agreed with them.

They said, “We give you our blessing.

And kids will come with time.” But the minute I came back to my senses I told her I wanted to break up.

Poor thing, to this day she thinks it’s because of that non-pregnancy.

She cries all the time and calls me late at night.

I don’t get to sleep until two in the morning because I’m staying up on the phone with her.

I feel bad for her.

I never did tell her the truth, and I never will.

I’m never going to tell anyone.

But I don’t know how to deal with it.

I know now that it’s incurable.

I look at other people like me and I don’t feel any hatred toward them, or at least I don’t think so. But other people being this way are one thing; it’s different when it’s yourself. I can’t forgive myself for being this way.

I feel as though I’m living someone else’s life.

But what’s my life supposed to be like? I have no idea.

And I can’t bring myself to find out.

It scares me.

Yura squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them wide as he blew out a huge sigh.

His head was buzzing from the emotion saturating those lines and from the sheer volume of information.

How much life Volodya had poured into his writing, how much despair and hope.

And the whole time Volodya had been writing that—the whole time Volodya had been about to get married, and then calling it off, and fighting himself, and failing to accept himself—that whole time, Yura hadn’t given a single thought to his Volodya.

Yura had been completely immersed in his relationship with Jonas.

He felt terrible.

He should’ve tried to find Volodya earlier! Yura had promised, after all! He had promised they wouldn’t lose each other ...

But he had remembered his promise too late.

There were only two envelopes left in the bundle.

One of them had the exact date for once: June 30, 1996.

Yurka’s hands trembled when he saw the day of their intended meeting at Camp Barn Swallow.

That had been ten years to the day after they saw each other the last time.