L. Kosmodemyanskaya

The Story of Zoya and Shura


Campfires in the Night

Zoya and Shura spent most of their summer holidays in a Young Pioneer camp. From there they would write me rapturous letters about how they went gathering berries in the woods, how they bathed in the deep swift river, how they were learning to shoot.

Shura, I remember, even sent me one of his targets. "See how I've learnt to shoot," he wrote proudly. 'It does not matter that not all the bullets have hit the bull's-eye. The main thing is that the grouping is good."

And in every letter they begged, "Mama, come and see how we live."

Once I went to see them on a Sunday morning and came back by the last train—the children would not let me go. They took me over the camp, showing me their domain: beds of cucumbers and tomatoes, flower beds, a giant's stride, a volleyball court. Shura was greatly attracted by the big white tent where the older boys lived; the younger ones slept in the house, and this grieved him immensely.

"He has no pride at all!" Zoya told me with strong disapproval. "He is always following Vitya Orlov about."

Vitya Orlov turned out to be the chairman of the Young Pioneer unit's council. He was a strapping energetic boy whom Shura almost worshipped. Vitya was the camp's best basketball player, best marksman, an excellent swimmer, and had numerous other accomplishments to his credit.

Vitya was followed about by no less than twenty small boys. And Vitya always found some important assignment for each of them. "Go to the monitor and tell him he can blow the bugle for dinner," he would say. Or: "Now then, sweep the paths. Look what a mess they've made!" Or:

"Water the flower beds. The third team's been stingy with the water. Look how the flowers are wilting in the heat." And the lucky lad would dash off to carry out his instructions.

Shura very much wanted to be with me. It was a long time since we had seen each other, for parents were only allowed to come visiting once a month. But at the same time he did not want to lose Vitya out of sight. He was obviously one of Vitya's most trusted aides.

"You ought to see Vitya shoot!" Shura would say about his hero. "He never misses the bull's-eye. The bullets hit so close they make one hole! It was he who taught me to shoot. And how he can swim! You should see him: breast stroke, and crawl, and overarm and any way you like!"

The children led me down to the river, and I was glad to see that they had both learnt to swim well. Shura showed off in front of me as much as he could; he lay on the water for a long time without moving, then swam along using only one arm, then swam along holding "a grenade." For a ten-year-old it really was not bad.

After that there were races, and Zoya won the one- hundred-metre sprint. She ran easily and swiftly, and somehow very cheerfully, as if they were not real races, with a strict judge and anxious friends, but just a game.

Shura's greatest moment of triumph came when darkness fell

"Shura Kosmodemyansky!" Vitya Orlov's voice rang out. "Time to light the campfire!"

Before I had time to look round, Shura, who had just been sitting beside me, vanished into thin air.

In spite of his being one of the camp's youngest, Shura was the camp fireman. Long ago, in Aspen Woods, his father had taught him how to light a campfire, and he had mastered this art to perfection. He would find the very driest twigs and place them so cleverly that they at once caught fire and burned brightly and merrily. But the small bonfire which Shura sometimes built near our house bore no comparison with the one which was to blaze up now on the big camp square!

Shura gave himself up entirely to his work. He forgot about my arrival and about everything else on earth. He dragged up branches and stacked them, preparing a store of kindling to be ready at hand. And when it was quite dark, and the children were sitting all round, at a sign from Vitya Shura struck a match. At once the dry twigs blazed up, fiery snakes raced swifter than the eye could see through the black, brittle brushwood, and suddenly, hurling back the darkness which embraced us, a sheet of blinding flame leapt skywards.

I should have gone long ago, there were hardly any parents left in the camp. But Zoya held tightly onto my hand, repeating, "Please, stay a little longer! It's wonderful with a campfire! You'll see for yourself. It's not far to the station, and the road is easy. The whole lot of us will come to see you off. Grisha is sure to let us."

And so I stayed. I sat together with the children at the campfire, looking now at the fire, now at the happy young laces reflecting the pink glow of the laughing, skipping flames.

"Well, what shall we talk about today?" said the Young Pioneer leader, whom all the children called simply Grisha.

And I realized that here they did not prepare a special program for the campfire. They just talked heart to heart of the things that interested them most, because there is no better time for talk of this kind than this quiet hour when behind you, listening attentively, hangs the transparent blue of a warm summer night, and you cannot take your eyes off the fire, and you watch how the embers fill with molten gold and then grow dull under the ashes, and how the countless sparks keep on flying up and vanishing.

"I was thinking," Grisha suggested in his quiet frank manner, "that we might ask Nadya's lather to tell us today…"

I did not hear what the story was to be about. Grisha's last words were drowned in a chorus of voices. "Yes! Yes! Do tell us! Please, please!" came from all sides. It was clear that the children knew and loved the storyteller.

"He's Nadya Vasilyeva's father," Zoya explained to me all in one breath. "He's wonderful, Mama! He fought in Chapayev's division. And he heard Lenin speak."

"I've told you so much already, you're probably f up with me," I heard a kindly, low-pitched voice. "No, no! Tell us some more!"

Nadya's father moved closer to the fire, and I could make out his round shaven head, wide sunburnt face and broad hands, probably very strong and kind, and on his tunic the Order of the Red Banner, faded with age. His reddish clipped moustache failed to hide his good-humoured grin, and his eyes looked out from under his thick bleached eyebrows keenly and cheerfully.

Nadya's father had been one of the first Komsomol members. He had heard Lenin's speech at the Third Komsomol Congress, and when he began to tell us about the great event it grew so quiet all around that you could hear the slightest rustle and the crackle of every twig in the fire.

It was not a lecture that Vladimir Ilyich read us. He just talked to us like a friend. He made us think about things that had never entered our heads before. I re member very clearly how he asked: 'What is most important now?' We all thought he would say: Fight! Smash the enemy! After all, it was 1920! We were all either in great- coats or pea jackets with rifles in our hands. Some of us had just come from battle, others would be in it tomorrow. And suddenly he says: 'Study! The most important thing is to study!'

Nadya's father spoke with tenderness and surprise, as if reliving again that far-off moment. He told us how grown-up people, twenty years old, sat down at school desks and took up the ABC, to carry out Lenin's order. He told us what a simple and modest man our Ilyich was, how friendly and warmly he talked to the delegates of the congress, how he could answer the most puzzling questions in plain clear words, show a man what was most sacred, inflame him and fill him with strength for the most difficult tasks, open his eyes to what was most beautiful—to the future of mankind, for the sake of which one had to fight and study.

"Vladimir Ilyich said that the generation which was then fifteen years old would live to become members of the communist society and would build that society themselves…And it is important that each one of you, children should do your bit always, every day—no matter how small and simple as long as it forms part of the great common cause…"

As I looked at my children I thought: How would their lives have turned out before, in those hard dark times when I myself grew up? How difficult it would all have been, how difficult it would have been for me to bring them up. But now it is not only I, their mother, who) educates them: the school educates them, and the Pioneer unit, and everything they see and hear all round. And who knows what flame will blaze up in the future from the sparks of this campfire, what feelings, what desires have been sown today in the hearts of the children by this man who had known Chapayev and had heard Lenin.

Unhurriedly, he told us about the things he remembered from the distant and glorious past, and then suddenly said, "And now let's have a song!" The children stirred, still under the magic spell of the stories they had heard, then began to suggest one after the other:

"The Song of Youth!"

"Chapayev's favourite!"

And so into the darkness flowed the thoughtful melody of a song sung everywhere in those days:

And roars the storm, and beats the rain,
And lightning flashes in the gloom,
And peals of thunder sound again…

And then they sang a song of the early Pioneer years:

Burn campfires through the azure night!
We're Pioneers, children of workers.
Near is the era of wonderful years,
And the call of the Pioneers is "Always be ready!"

Other songs followed. Zoya pressed close against my shoulder, and would sometimes glance up at me with the air of a conspirator, "You aren't sorry you stayed, are you? See how wonderful it is!"

Not long before it was time for the children to form up for evening roll call, Zoya tugged at Shura's arm, "Time's up! Come on…

Some other boys and girls sitting not far away whispered among themselves, and one by one they quietly began to leave the fire. I also wanted to get up but Zoya whispered, "No, no, you sit here. That's just our team. You'll see what will happen."

A little later all the children marched off for roll call. I walked behind them, and suddenly I heard, "Good sports! What a beauty! Who made it?"

In the middle of the camp square, at the loot of the flagpole gleamed a big five-pointed star. I did not realize at once how it had been done, but then I heard, "They've made it out of glowworms. Do you see—the sparks are green!"

The team leaders gave in their reports. Then they let down the flag, and the bugle rang out long calls of "Sleep, sleep, to your tents!"

Zoya and Shura came up to me, their faces shining.

"That was our team which thought of the star. Lovely, wasn't it? But you know, Mummy, Grisha says we are not to see you off. Nadya's father is going on the train too, you won't be afraid with him."

I said good-bye to them, and Nadya's father and I walked to the station. The lights of the station were visible from the camp itself, the road really was straight and short, and of course I was not in the least afraid.

"They're lovable folk!" said my companion. "I like talking to them, they are fine listeners…

The engine whistle called out to us in the distance, and we quickened our pace.

The flame of the campfire brightened the whole winter for the children. Again and again they would recall the camp, the talks round the fire, the star made of glow- worms.

These memories flared up in their composition books. You can think well by a campfire," wrote Zoya in 1935 in a composition called "How I spent the summer." "By a campfire it is good to listen to stories and then sing songs. Alter the campfire you realize all the more how fine it is to live in camp, and you want to be even better friends with your comrades."


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