Pioneer Summer

Chapter Two A Straight-Up Clown Show

CHAPTER TWO A STRAIGHT-UP CLOWN SHOW

The intermittent sprinkles of rain had turned into a steady shower, and the wind had picked up, blowing the choking smell of burnt diesel over from the construction site. The odor felt so out of place here that he had to get away from it, so Yura hurried over to the movie theater. He wouldn’t have been able to stay away from it anyway, even if he hadn’t been caught in the noxious wind and cold rain, since the theater was the place that brimmed most with memories of that summer.

The tall wooden building stood just next door to the outdoor stage. It was surprisingly well-preserved, except for the gaping black holes and protruding shards of glass where the large windows had been.

The steps leading up to the entrance creaked exactly as they had two decades ago, the evening they’d first met. Deep down, Yura was even glad to hear the creaking: How often do you get the chance to hear the pure, undistorted sounds of your childhood? If only he could hear the piano, too, Tchaikovsky’s deep, tender Lullaby, the leitmotif of that summer. This building was forever associated with music for Yura.

The outside of the movie theater was well-preserved; the inside, not so much. Thick, moth-eaten curtains fluttered at the windows. The door, insulated with felt padding, had at some point been broken down, and through the empty doorframe a strip of daylight pierced the large dim room. The light spread across the backs of the green seats that still stood in even rows. It fell on the bare wall, throwing the texture of the peeling paint into relief. It illuminated the dirty parquet floor. Yura’s gaze slipped along the band of light and landed on some parquet tiles that had been pulled out of the floor. Some of the light-brown wooden rectangles lay in jumbled piles, but others were placed next to each other, for all the world like broken-off piano keys. Like the keys of the piano that had been here, inside this very theater.

The stage. A birch sapling had forced its way up through the foundation over on the left, exactly where Volodya had been sitting on that fateful evening. It had broken through the rotten parquet floor and was reaching for the light, stretching toward the hole in the ceiling through which pale rays slanted into the large, dark room. The young tree’s unusually lush foliage only emphasized the surrounding emptiness, the absence of the piano that had once stood there.

Yura picked his way along the piano-key parquet tiles toward the birch. The moment he touched its slightly dusty leaves, he knew he didn’t want to leave. Not for anything. He wanted to stay here until it got dark, and look at the birch, and wait until the heavy curtain parted and the actors came out onto the stage. He leaned his shovel against the wall and sat in one of the decrepit seats. It creaked. Yura smiled, remembering the way the floor had squealed piteously underfoot during their first rehearsal, when Yurka had hesitated behind the felt-padded door that now lay flat on the porch. He’d been furious at Ira Petrovna then—so furious!

“No way, Ira! Aw, come on, Petrovna! What do I need your dumb theater for?!” Yurka had just gotten back from visiting the nurse and was in the worst mood ever. No surprise, given how many people had seen him not only get chewed out but made to look like a total idiot, too. That Olga Leonidovna could just go to hell and take her moralizing with her! All day Yurka was outraged and insulted and tried to think of a way to get out of attending rehearsal. But he couldn’t. So he had to clamp down on his cantankerousness, knowing that if he didn’t go to the theater that evening, he’d be betraying Ira Petrovna, who had put her head on the line for him.

But he was still furious—even planning on slamming the door to show everyone what he thought about this amateur hour nonsense. When he opened it, though, just as that top step had emitted its tiny creak—just as he was poised and ready for action—he froze in the doorway.

Volodya was the only one in the whole theater. He was sitting way over to the left, reading something in a notebook and munching on a pear. A radio next to him was trying to play Pachelbel’s Canon, constantly hissing and sputtering from interference. The static kept drowning out the sound of the piano, and Volodya finally laid his notebook on his lap and, without taking his eyes off it, reached over and fiddled with the radio antenna.

Yurka was transfixed. This Volodya was artless, even touching. Hunched over in concentration, without a trace of bravado, the troop leader was sitting on the edge of the stage, swinging one foot back and forth. He bit into the pear with a crunch, chewed thoughtfully, then choked and coughed, giving his head a shake; evidently he’d read something he didn’t like. His glasses slid down to the tip of his nose.

No wonder they slide down, on a nose as straight as that , Yura thought. He would’ve stood there longer, watching and admiring Volodya, wishing he had one like that, too—not a nose, obviously. A pear. Because Yurka really, really liked pears. But without meaning to, he cleared his throat. Volodya looked up, put down the notebook, and reflexively moved his pointer finger to his face, but then caught himself and, with a somewhat condescending expression, instead lightly took hold of the arms of his glasses with both hands and repositioned them.

“Hi. Back from snack already?”

Yura nodded. “Where are they handing out pears? There aren’t any in the mess hall.”

“Someone gave it to me.”

“Who?” asked Yura automatically. Maybe it was someone he knew, and then he could get one, too, or trade for it.

“Masha Sidorova. She’s our pianist, she’ll be here soon. Want to share?” Volodya proffered the unbitten side of the pear, but Yurka shook his head. “No? Have it your way.”

Yurka climbed up onto the stage and crossed his arms matter-of-factly. “So. What am I going to be doing here?” he inquired.

“Cutting to the chase, eh? Good attitude. I like it. And it’s a good question ... What are you going to be doing here?” Volodya rose to his feet and gazed thoughtfully at the clean white ceiling. “I’m looking at the script and thinking what part to give you.”

“Maybe a tree? Or a wolf? Every kid’s show has either a wolf or a tree.”

“A tree?” Volodya scoffed. “We’ll have a hiding place in a log, but that’s a prop, not a part.”

“Well, just—think about it. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s play a log really well, like a professional. Want to see?”

Without waiting for a reply, Yurka lay flat on the floor and stretched his arms along his sides.

“What do you think?” he asked, sitting up and looking up at Volodya.

“Not funny,” Volodya shot back bluntly. “Let me fill you in on something. This isn’t a lighthearted comedy, it’s a drama. A tragedy, even. The camp has a big anniversary this year: thirty years since the day it was founded. Olga Leonidovna was talking about it at assembly.”

“Yeah, I know she was,” Yurka said.

“All right, then. You already know, of course, that this camp was named after Zina Portnova, Pioneer Hero of the Soviet Union and one of the bravest Young Avengers. But the fact that the first big event held here was a show about Portnova’s life—that’s probably news to you. Well, that show is what we’re performing for Camp Barn Swallow Day. So no logs for you this time, Yura.”

Volodya spoke animatedly, with the air of someone intent on doing something special and meaningful.

“Bleah!” Yurka grimaced. “Boring.”

Volodya frowned at first, but then took a good, long look at Yurka and finally replied: “I think not. Boring is just what it won’t be—not for you, anyway. Since there’s no role for you, you’ll help me with the actors. Why not? The only other grown-up here, apart from me, is—”

Yurka rolled his eyes and scoffed in exasperation. “Yeah, some grown-up!” he broke in. “How old are you, even? Seventeen, if that! You’re in your first year of college; you’re just a year older than me.”

Volodya cleared his throat and repositioned his glasses, then said quietly: “I’m basically nineteen. Almost. My birthday’s in November.” Then he collected himself and added sternly: “And if I were you, Konev, I wouldn’t forget myself when I was talking with a troop leader!”

He looked more disappointed than formidable, and Yurka found himself embarrassed. Volodya really was a troop leader, after all, just like Ira Petrovna. Chastened, Yurka admitted, “Okay, I overdid it ... But who else in drama club is a grown-up, apart from you?”

“Masha,” replied Volodya. Yurka felt that Volodya had been more offended than he let on, but Volodya continued as though nothing had happened. “She’s from Troop One, same as you. The rest are all little boys. With girls, see, you don’t have to take care of them—they’re obedient by nature—but boys ... boys are completely wild. With boys, it’s not just watching them like a hawk, you also need authority.”

“Pfff ... let Masha babysit them, then. What am I, their mommy?”

“That’s what I’m saying, is that Masha can’t. These boys don’t need just anybody, they need somebody with authority. I don’t have the time to—”

“And what makes you think I’ll do it?”

Volodya sighed heavily. “You’ll do it because you don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really. If I were in your shoes, I’d be working on my self-discipline, or else ...”

“Or else what?”

“Or else you’ll get yourself kicked out of camp if you cause trouble again!” Volodya raised his voice, a note of anger sounding in it. “I’m serious. Do you have any idea how much trouble Irina got in today because of those lights? Oh, and on that note, Olga Leonidovna asked me to remind you that that was your final warning.”

Yurka had nothing to say in reply. He jumped to his feet and started walking in little circles. Then he stopped, lost in thought. Was camp boring? Yeah, of course. But did he want to leave? Not really, no. To tell the truth, Yurka couldn’t figure out what he wanted, but to be kicked out in disgrace ... Well, he didn’t care that much, even if it was in disgrace, but what about Ira Petrovna? What if she got a reprimand in her personal file and a terrible character reference? What a great guy he was: not only had he hidden behind his troop leader’s skirts, he’d also let her down. No, this was definitely not what he’d had in mind.

“So you vouched for me and now you’re blackmailing me?” he huffed, though it wasn’t clear who he was angry at, Ira and Volodya or himself.

“Nobody’s blackmailing you, much less trying to get you kicked out. Just be on your best behavior, do what your troop leaders say, and be helpful.”

“Do what they say?” spat Yurka.

He’d been backed into a corner. It felt like everyone had banded together against him and now they were looking for an opportunity to rub it in, finding ways to harass him, suffocate him ... He’d just arrived and they were already attacking him, accusing him, yelling at him, lecturing him. It wasn’t fair!

It was like Yura turned into a wild beast, with no awareness of what he was saying. He needed to unleash his suppressed rage, to smash and crush everything in his path.

“But who are you, anyway, that I should do what you say? Ha! I’ll show you! You want a performance? Fine! I’ll give you a performance—one you won’t forget!”

“Aaaaand here come the threats,” chuckled Volodya, as though Yurka’s tirade hadn’t moved him in the slightest. “Go ahead, give your performance. You’ll get kicked out, and that’ll be the last we hear of you. Just know who’ll get the blame for it. You. Not me. Like you don’t already know the way you stick in the administration’s craw.”

“But I didn’t do anything bad!” Yurka shot back. Then he sighed, dejected. “It just ... it all just happened, the plates, and the lights ... I didn’t mean to! And I didn’t mean for Ira to get involved, either ...”

“It’s obvious you didn’t mean to,” said Volodya, so sincerely that Yurka gaped in astonishment.

“Come again?”

“I believe you,” Volodya said. “Other people would, too, if Yura Konev didn’t have such a bad reputation. Ever since you almost got thrown out after your fight last year, we’ve been getting a ton of inspections, one after the other. You give Leonidovna the least opportunity and she’ll throw you out. So here’s the thing, Yura ... be a man. Irina vouched for you, and now I’m answering for you, too. Don’t let us down.”

There was an upright piano on the right side of the stage. In center stage stood a bust of Lenin on a pedestal. Yura was so frustrated he felt like hurling the leader of the proletariat to the floor and shattering the sculpture into a million pieces, but he tried to calm down and steady his breathing. He walked up to the bust, propped his elbows on the pedestal, and rested his forehead on Ilych’s cold balding pate. With his forehead still pressed to the statue, he swiveled his head to look sadly at Volodya.

“Since you’re being so honest and all, tell me this: Are you not giving me a part so that nobody’ll see my ugly mug and I won’t embarrass the camp?”

“What kind of nonsense is that? There’s no part for you because I haven’t thought of one yet. Our boy actors are all little. You’d look like a giant in the land of the Lilliputians out there with them, but there aren’t any giants in the script.” He smiled. “Look, is there something else you can do? Can you sing? Dance? Play an instrument?”

Yurka glanced at the piano, an Elegy, a typical Soviet upright model. His chest constricted painfully. He scowled and fixed his gaze on the floor.

“I can’t do anything and I don’t want to do anything,” he lied, knowing full well that right now he wasn’t lying to Volodya as much as to himself.

“I see. In that case we’ll go back to where we started: you’ll be my helper, and at the same time you’ll work on your own discipline and restore your reputation.”

Their conversation ground to a halt. The silence grew. With his left eye Yurka focused on Vladimir Ilych’s nose. Then he blew a speck of dust off it. Then Volodya, the other Vladimir in the room—the one who was the leader of Troop Five, not of the world proletariat—buried himself in his notebook again.

Meanwhile, the snack break Yurka had left early was ending and the actors started trickling into the movie theater. The first one to arrive was Masha Sidorova. Smiling at Volodya and ignoring Yurka, her hips swung breezily in her circle skirt as she walked over to the piano and sat down. Yurka looked hard at her: in the intervening year she’d changed completely. She’d gotten taller and thinner. Her hair now hung down to her waist, and she’d learned to flirt, just like a grown woman. Now she was sitting all proud and pretty, her back straight and her legs long and tan.

“Ludwig van Beethoven,” she announced quietly. “Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27.” She flipped her hair back and touched her fingers to the keys.

Yurka winced. The Moonlight Sonata! Couldn’t she have thought of something a little more original? The sonata was already painfully familiar. Everybody and their dog could play it. But Yurka was a tiny bit jealous, despite his grumbling, because it was Volodya, not him, who Masha sought with her timid yet tender gaze, and it was for Volodya, not for him, that she played.

When Masha finished the sonata, she immediately began a new piece, clearly trying to keep Volodya standing right there next to her a little longer, gazing approvingly at her, smiling at her ... But Mashka’s efforts were all for naught, because a swarm of young actors burst into the theater, slamming the door the way good-for-nothing Yurka had wanted to earlier. The group seized both Volodya’s attention and Volodya himself: he was trapped inside a circle of yelling children, each of whom simply had to tell the artistic director something of the utmost importance.

Volodya tried to calm their agitation, but a moment later he was the one who was agitated: the trinity had come to the theater! No fathers, sons, or holy ghosts here, of course—although, speaking of things celestial, it did smell to high heaven from their perfume. It was Polina, Ulyana, and Ksyusha. Yurka privately called them the Pukes, after the first letters of their names. These three girls were the living embodiment of the three “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys but in reverse: “See everything, hear everything, and blab everything.” Even now they eagerly surveyed the theater as they fluttered grandly up to the stage. All dressed up, even overdressed, and each with the exact same lipstick and the exact same smell: the Polish perfume By? Mo?e, “Perhaps.” Yurka knew the scent well, since half the country used it.

At first he thought Volodya had made up the “I’m the only grown-up in drama club” stuff, but as soon as Yurka looked over at the nervously sweating artistic director, he realized that Volodya himself was surprised at the club’s newfound popularity. And Polina was making matters worse, grabbing Volodya’s elbow and enthusing: “Volodya, let’s put on a modern play! There’s this one really interesting play about love, and actually I could even play the role of—”

“Girls! You do know that clubs have already been assigned?!” interrupted Masha, pale with rage. Apparently she’d realized it was the club leader, not the club, that had gotten so popular. “Go away. You’re too late.”

“N-no, it’s okay,” Volodya said, disconcerted, his cheeks burning. Small wonder: so many beautiful girls around, and all of them gazing at him ... Yurka would be disconcerted too! “There were a lot of girls in the Young Avengers, not just Zina Portnova. We’ll find parts for you. We need someone to play Fruza Zenkova, for example ...”

“So that’s how it is! You’ll find parts for them, but I have to babysit?!” Yurka raged.

His protest went unheeded. The shouting of the older teens joined the chorus of shrieking children. A straight-up clown show ensued.

“So can I be the costumer?” shrilled Ksyusha. “I’ll make such pretty dresses!”

“What kind of pretty dresses are there during a war?” asked Yurka indignantly.

“The show’s about war?” Ksyusha whined in disappointment. “Awww ...”

“Ha!” barked Yurka. “Obviously it’s about war—it’s about Portnova! Hmph ... signs up to do the show without even knowing what it’s about ... Volodya! Why am I the one who has to babysit?!”

“Vovchik, come on, let’s do something modern!” Polina wasn’t giving up. “Let’s do Athena and Venture !”

Yurka snorted. The spectacular, wildly popular Soviet Russian rock opera was a little bit out of their league.

“But who was just saying that doing a show was boring, Pol?! Who was that, hm?!” Masha, disheveled from rage, yanked down the hem of her cotton dress. “And what are you laughing at, Ulya? Like you weren’t egging her on!”

“What do you care! Afraid we’re going to steal him?” jeered Ulyana. “Volodya! Volodya! Volodya! Look at me! Is it my turn? Can I say something? Volodya!” The little kids were jumping up and down and grabbing the artistic director’s arm.

“We should have the metro in the show! I’ve been on the Moscow metro. It’s so beautiful,” bragged Sasha, a chubby boy little from Volodya’s troop.

“Now just hold on a minute. One at a time, children ... ,” the troop leader said, trying to calm them, but the room kept escalating.

“I stood on the very edge of the platform and the trains went by all shoom! fshoom! fshoom! Right on the very edge, like this ... and shoom!” said the pudgy show-off, spinning around to demonstrate speed.

“Sasha, get back from the edge of the stage! You’ll fall!”

“Shoom! Fshoom!”

“You miserable frump!”

“Can I say something?”

“That’s not fair!”

“I’ll do the costumes!”

“Good god, that’s enough!” Volodya’s roar reverberated through the theater, drowning out the hubbub.

It got quiet. So quiet Yura could hear the dust motes floating to the floor, and his heart beating (ba-bump), and Masha’s furious breathing. Everyone froze ... except the chubby show-off, who was spinning in circles on the very edge of the stage ... It was tall, at least a meter off the ground ...

... ba-bump ... ba-bump ... ba—

—and suddenly the boy’s ankle twisted, he awkwardly threw his arms wide, and he fell, slowly and heavily, off the stage. Yurka’s heart skipped a beat, Masha squeezed her eyes shut in horror, and Volodya’s glasses flashed—

—bump!

“Aaagh! My foot!!”

“Sasha!”

It hurt just to look at the show-off, but it hurt even more to look at Volodya and see how he ran in circles around the injured boy, how his hands shook, how he started cursing himself: “But this is something I could’ve stopped ... I could’ve stopped this ...” Even though Yurka was mad at Volodya, he still found himself the first one rushing forward to help.

“Let me through! My father’s a doctor!” Yurka yelled, quoting a line from a popular foreign film as he elbowed through the crowd of gaping actors that had immediately collected around Sasha and knelt beside the chubby little tyke. In a way, Yurka wasn’t kidding: his father had showed him a thousand times how to examine a patient. So now he examined the scraped ankle and skinned knee, then concluded with an air of expertise that the patient needed to be taken to the first aid station, and quickly, adding authoritatively that a stretcher wouldn’t be necessary.

Volodya grasped Sasha under the armpits and tried to heave him to his feet, but the victim burst into tears, categorically refusing to stand on his uninjured leg.

“Yur, help me. Get on his left. I can’t ... phew ... I can’t do it myself ...” panted Volodya. It was bad enough that the squirming, sobbing Sashka weighed as much as Volodya himself, but his panicked flailing was making things worse.

“Mommy! Mooommmyyyy!” Sasha groaned.

“Okay, take his arm: one, two, three, up!” said Yurka brusquely, doggedly acting like nothing hurt and he hadn’t gotten all banged up earlier that day falling out of the apple tree. Although even just bending over hurt.

“Masha, you’re in charge,” said Volodya.

Masha glared triumphantly at her rivals.

“Can I be the costumer?” the pesky Ksyusha butted in.

“All right, fine!” replied Volodya irritably. He took a moment; then, calmer, he instructed: “Read the play out loud until I get back, and—good god, Sasha! I know it hurts, but quit yelling your head off!”

Their journey to the first aid station was long and slow, accompanied the whole way by the victim’s wails. But anybody with eyes could tell Sasha was screeching not from pain but from fear, and also to be the center of attention. Yurka was silent, focused on his own tailbone, while Volodya urged Sasha on: “Come on, Sanya, you can do it, hang on, just a little more ...”

The nurse came out when she heard the wailing and immediately set to fussing and clucking like a mother hen over the pitiful creature. She rudely shoved Yurka aside and shot a stern, even threatening look at the troop leader. Yurka shrugged and didn’t bother going into the first aid station. What if Larisa Sergeyevna inquired whether the ointment she gave him earlier had helped? Then Volodya would find out about Yurka’s injury. Not a major concern, but still annoying. At any rate, Yurka decided to wait for Volodya, who had followed the nurse and her patient inside. Yurka wanted to find out whether he’d correctly diagnosed the patient as suffering from boneheadedness and a few bruises, not strains and sprains.

A comfy little bench nestled under an overgrown wild rose in full bloom by the porch. Yurka lay down on the bench, gazed up at the sky, and took in a lungful of fresh, flower-scented air, appreciating how stuffy it had been in the movie theater and how good he felt now.

Volodya came out after ten minutes or so. He pushed Yurka’s feet away and plopped down on the bench in exhaustion. He heaved a heavy sigh.

“How is the victim? Will he live?” Yurka asked lazily, still luxuriating in the air: it was so good, so pure and cool, you could all but drink it.

“Ah, it’s just a scratched knee and a couple of bruises, nothing serious. So what’d he scream bloody murder like that for?”

“What for?” Yurka repeated, raising his head off the bench but holding off from sitting up all the way. “You had auditions today, right? Well, now he stands out from the rest. Clearly he wanted to demonstrate all his many talents at once. You should make a note of it. There’s gotta be a way to use a voice like that!”

Volodya smiled. On his tired face, the smile looked so genuine that Yurka was taken aback: Had he really been the cause of it? That felt good; he was glad. But Volodya’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“I’m so sick of all this!” Volodya said, rubbing his temples.

“What are you sick of? Being in charge?” Yurka stretched, then put his hands behind his head and looked up at the sky. The blue was so bright he had to squint.

“It’s only the first day of the session and I’m already sick of it! Running around taking care of the small fry, justifying every little thing I do to the senior staff, and then they chew me out for every little thing anyway. And then they saddled me with this club ... and now, to top it all off, a kid’s been injured ...”

“So why are you doing it? Didn’t you know it’d be hard?”

“I knew it’d be hard; I just didn’t know it’d be this hard. When I was at Pioneer camp, it looked easy: just taking care of little kids. Nothing to it! And I thought it’d be useful, too: you get paid for it, and you get to relax out in nature, and it’s great for your character reference, which is really handy for the Komsomol or maybe even for the Party, if you’re lucky. But the reality of it is completely different.” Volodya shifted down the bench toward Yurka and bent closer to him. “They foisted off the youngest troop on me, telling me it’s easier to work with the little ones. But it’s just the opposite. I count them three times an hour because they keep running off with other troop leaders and they don’t do anything I say. What am I supposed to do, scream at them for real?”

“Why not? Even the educational specialist does! Hmph ... call that ‘educating’ ... she can just go and ...” Yurka pouted.

“She shouldn’t have done that, of course,” Volodya said. “She taught us not to raise our voice at a child, but that if we do have to bawl someone out, then to focus on the action, not the child. And, most importantly, not to do it in front of other people.”

“She said that?” Yurka gave a derisive snort. “No kidding.”

“Yes, she did. But that was before we got a surprise inspection yesterday, before you all got here, that uncovered a lot of violations. Now she’s stressed. We get inspections every session now. And guess whose fault that is?”

“Oh, come on! Like that’s all because of me!” Yurka didn’t believe it, but it did ruin his good mood.

“Who had the bright idea of getting into a fistfight at Pioneer camp? You should be grateful the police weren’t called in.” Volodya’s eyes flashed dangerously, but his attempt at teaching Yurka some sense ended when he glanced over at the little green hut of the first aid station. The troop leader suddenly wilted, turning from a model educator into a regular guy. He sighed. Clearly, even just being reminded of the injured Sashka sucked him right back into a whirlpool of misgivings. When Volodya spoke again, his voice was hoarse and lifeless: “I have to take Troop Five to the river tomorrow. Not by myself, of course; Lena, the other troop leader, is coming, and she’s more experienced. And the athletic director’s coming, too; he’ll also help me keep an eye on the kids. And we’ve already roped off a shallow zone for them. Everything by the book. But I’m still absolutely terrified. And Lena’s also terrified. She told me a troop leader she knows was prosecuted last year when one of her girls drowned in the river ... in the middle of the day, in front of all the troop leaders ... We didn’t make it to the river today. By the time we got everybody out here and got all set up, it was already lunchtime. But tomorrow there’s no way out, we have to take them to the beach. If I had my way, we wouldn’t even let them get near the water!”

Yurka shifted uncomfortably. Camp Barn Swallow had actually had its share of accidents, too; he’d heard things.

“Well ... don’t let it get you down,” he said. Volodya had now become even more dejected, so Yurka decided to cheer him up. “It’s just the beginning of the session; there’s still a lot of time left. You’ll find your rhythm, you’ll get used to it. I mean, look at Ira Petrovna—this isn’t her first time being a troop leader, so there’s got to be something good about all this, right?”

“The only good thing I see so far is the pay and the good character reference, to get into the Party later ...”

“Why are you so fixated on the Party?!” Yurka burst out. “This is the second time you’ve brought it up!”

It irritated him when people tried to just live by inertia, going wherever they were led, uninterested in stepping off the beaten path sometimes to do something differently from how they’d been taught.

Volodya just shrugged. “Of course I’m fixated on it! Yura, you know full well that without a Party membership you can’t get a good job—I mean a really good job—and that you can’t travel anywhere, either. Sure, it’s not an ideal political system—in some ways it’s outdated, in other ways it’s over the top—but it works, after all ...”

“What do you mean?” Yurka’s eyebrow shot up in surprise. He’d never expected to hear something like this from Volodya, a prime example of somebody who, to all appearances, was a zealous follower of that “working” system’s orders.

“What I said. Just keep it between us, okay? It’s not as bad now as it was back in Stalin’s day, but I could still get in deep trouble.”

“Of course!” Yura even sat up, then grimaced when his tailbone twinged.

“In this country everybody lives the same way they did fifty years ago: the Pioneers, the Komsomol, the Party ... I’m sure it’s frustrating for any progressive person here. And I’m not blind, either ... but there’s no other way ...”

“I don’t agree!” Yurka actually squared his shoulders as he turned to look Volodya right in the eyes. “There’s always a way.”

Volodya smiled. The smile was a bit smug and patronizing, but even so, it managed to make Yurka happy again.

“You usually don’t agree with anything anyway, Konev. But that’s no way to live, either. Of course there’s a way. You do what you’re supposed to: you join the Komsomol and then the Party, no matter how useless you think it is. But digging your heels in, trying to destroy the indestructible ... that’s what’s useless.”

Yurka, who did tend to argue with everyone and disagree with everything, was suddenly at a loss for words. He had no desire to acknowledge Volodya was right; still, deep down, he abruptly admitted there was a grain of truth to Volodya’s words. Especially the part about it being useless for Yurka to resist.

More than that, though, he felt his attitude toward Volodya also change at that same moment. Suddenly the troop leader stopped seeming like a robot and turned into a normal person, one with his own worries and problems, things he didn’t always know how to cope with. Yurka liked it that they both had the same thoughts about certain things.

“Want me to help you?” he said, feeling a sudden urge to try and support Volodya.

“Come again?”

“I mean, like, helping with the little guys. So it wouldn’t just be this drama club here but your troop, too. Tomorrow, for instance: When you take them to the river, want me to come—” Yurka broke off, surprised at his own fervor. “Well, I just ... since you’re so worried about them ... ,” he added, trailing off awkwardly.

Volodya was also surprised—and delighted: “Really? That would be awesome!” But then he clasped his hands together. “How’d this end up being all about me and my problems, huh? That’s no good. Tell me something about you.”

Yurka was prevented from talking about himself by a piercing blast from a speaker mounted on a post. It wasn’t the trumpets of Jericho, it was the camp bugle calling everyone in for dinner. And the ground shook, but it wasn’t the insurmountable walls tumbling down; it was the thundering of Pioneer feet. Troop leaders shouted like generals to their armies: “Pair up! Column formation! Forward, march!” The camp burst into lively activity.

As soon as he heard the loudspeaker start crackling, Yurka’s conversation partner raced back to the movie theater to collect the rest of the drama club and lead them to the mess hall, while Yurka himself, groaning and sighing, stood up and walked into the first aid station to have Larisa Sergeyevna rub on some more ointment. For better or worse, he was going to have to make an appearance in his swim trunks tomorrow, even though he was embarrassed to show off his bruised backside to everyone.

Yurka knew that Troop One was also going swimming tomorrow, but for some reason, when he was thinking about his backside, he wasn’t worried about his own troop but about Troop Five. Or, rather, about the Troop Five leader.