Page 97 of Pioneer Summer
“But what if they are? Because I see the kind of person you are, I know you. This is me talking here! I can be messed up, I can be crazy, but you can’t! You’re the best thing there is. You’re smart, you’re upstanding. I ... Let everything be my fault, okay? I’m the one who’s ruined, I’m as bad as anything—not you! I’m used to everything being my fault! It won’t hurt me to be guilty of one more thing; it’s just a drop in the bucket.”
“You’re spouting nonsense.”
Yurka didn’t bother answering. Nonsense? As long as it made Volodya feel even a tiny bit better, Yurka was willing to both spout nonsense and take responsibility for everything. He was willing to lie and hide. But did Volodya really not need all this? Did he really want to get rid of what Yurka was trying so wholeheartedly to give him? No. That was nonsense!
It was painful to look at Volodya, to see him so despondent now that he’d basically resigned himself to the inevitable. It was terrifying to think about what he wanted to do to himself. And Yurka felt so bad for him. Far worse than he ever felt for himself.
Yurka sat down next to Volodya. He put his arms around Volodya and rested his head on his shoulder.
“What if I say I love you, too?”
Volodya didn’t respond; he didn’t even move. After a pause, he said coldly: “It’d be better if you didn’t say that.”
“I just did.”
“It’d be better if you forgot.”
It was as though Yurka had been stabbed through the heart. No matter how scared Volodya was, no matter how much he was suffering, did he really not understand that hearing those words was simply painful?
“Listen to what I just confessed to you! Doesn’t it make you even a little happy?” demanded Yurka. Volodya didn’t say anything, but he did smile. Yurka noticed that and continued hotly: “Then I’m going to say something else, too. I also have doubts about a lot of things—there’s also a lot I don’t understand—but one thing I know for sure: you shouldn’t destroy what you’ve built. If everything ends now, if we just quit on each other, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“No. You’ll be grateful to me. You’re stubborn now, but later you’ll learn. You’ll realize I was right. Because I’m not just saying this. I know more than you about these things.”
“You know more than me? Tell me, then! Tell me already: What is this great thing that you know but I don’t! You’re always lecturing me, but you can’t tell me like it is, Konev’s still too stupid! Wait until you get smarter, Konev, then you’ll understand!”
“That’s not true. I just don’t want to scare you, or ... or disappoint you.”
“Then admit it! What happened to you?”
Volodya sighed in resignation and started talking. “You’re not the first person for whom I’ve had ... this.”
He looked closely at Yurka to see his reaction, but Yurka just nodded and said, “Go on. It can’t get any worse.”
“Well, we’ll see about that ... The first one was my cousin. He came to stay with us while he was getting enrolled in university. We hadn’t seen each other for many years. I’d even managed to forget what he looked like, but then here I see him again. He’d grown up, become ... he’d gotten ...I don’t know how to describe it. He’d become remarkable. He’s older than me; I had always been drawn to him and wanted to be like him. And then I saw him and was just transfixed. Everything that had anything to do with him seemed good and important to me. I lost my head whenever he was near. And all of a sudden, I felt ... it. And not for just anyone, but for my own cousin!” He turned toward the window, pressed his temple against the wall, and said in despair, “Just think, Yur, think how disgusting I am! Think what this filth inside me is capable of making me do. He was my cousin! My own blood, my family, my father’s brother’s son. We even have the same name: his first name’s also Vladimir and his last name’s also Davydov; just our patronymics are different ...”
“Did you tell him?” Yurka asked dully.
“No, of course not.” Now Volodya was speaking softly. “I never told anyone about my cousin, and I probably won’t ever tell anyone else, not even my parents. Especially not them. I have never felt as much horror as I felt then, and I probably never will. Because to be any more scared than that would be more than I could take: I’d die of heart failure. It got so bad that when I woke up in the morning, I’d look in the mirror and genuinely not know how I hadn’t gone gray yet. I’m not joking and I’m not exaggerating, Yur. I got scared of myself, I got scared of other boys: What if they awakened this filth inside me? And then I started to be scared of absolutely everyone. I haven’t always been as closed-of as I am now, you know. And I don’t hate people. I avoid them because I’m afraid: What if they see it inside me?”
Yurka didn’t know what to say, or whether he needed to say anything at all. He pulled Volodya away from the wall and hugged him hard. He rubbed his shoulder for a while, then went still. Bursts of rain kept spitting doggedly into the fogged-up window. It was now late at night, and it just kept raining and raining. Volodya’s breathing gradually went from panicked gasps to slow, even breaths. He began calming down and maybe even dozed of a little; Yurka didn’t check, since he was afraid of disturbing Volodya. Yurka was sleepy himself, and as he relaxed, his left hand accidentally fell down onto Volodya’s belly.
“Yura, are you testing me? I already asked you to move your hand. I forbid you to touch me there.”
Yurka flinched in surprise, then got mad: What did he mean, he forbade him?! Scowling, he retorted, “And I forbid you to put your hands in boiling water!”
“Oh, would you just stop,” said Volodya, giving up without a fight.
“The bonfire’s tomorrow,” said Yurka, petting Volodya’s belly through his shirt. “Do you even understand that? Tomorrow is the last time we’ll see each other! Maybe even the last time in our whole lives!”
Volodya shot a surly glance at Yurka’s hand, then looked pointedly at Yurka. Yurka understood his complaint.
“Fine, have it your way! I’ll move my hand! But you know what? I’m going to be leaving so much behind at Camp Barn Swallow that it can’t be counted. I’ll be leaving half of myself here! And when I get back home, the thing I’m going to regret more than anything else is that I moved my hand. And don’t tell me that it’s for my own good, that it’s for the best, and that I’ll be grateful nothing happened, and thatyou’llbe grateful nothing happened. You don’t even believe that yourself!”
“Of course I don’t believe that!” Volodya exploded.
It turned out he hadn’t calmed down at all; he was just pretending, and really he had gotten worked up about something again. Now he poured everything out on Yurka’s head in a rush:
“You’re talking about this ‘tomorrow,’ but look at the time: it’s already Friday. The bonfire’s today. Today is the end. As soon as we separate, I’m going to lose my mind from missing you ...” He heaved a shuddering sigh. “Yura, please, understand me! I’m so lost, I’m so tired of going back and forth! As soon as I make up my mind to do it, to go get treatment, I swing over to the opposite extreme: more than anything in the world I want to keep what we have now! And then I think about you and I get afraid again, because I don’t want the same thing to happen to you—”
