On the Swings Between the Hills

1. A Summer That Begins at the End

The narrator of the novel is Misha Mirov, a boy who is about to turn thirteen. When the story opens, he is lying in hospital after a serious road accident. His leg is badly injured, his movements are restricted, and a cumbersome arrangement of weights hangs over his bed. Instead of a carefree summer, a mountain holiday, and the freedom he had been expecting, Misha faces weeks of enforced stillness. He decides to turn his confinement into a project: to write down the events of the summer and what they have taught him about people and himself.

What follows is far more than a straightforward account of an accident. From the beginning, Misha argues with his imagined readers, challenges adults, mocks his own failings, protests against restrictions, and then unexpectedly begins to reflect on subjects of real gravity. He warns that adults may not like what he has to say. He resents their assumption that they alone can decide what children should know, read, discuss, or feel. Yet beneath his bravado lies a boy who relies much more heavily on his family's love than he is willing to admit, and who longs to be trusted rather than merely supervised.

The book unfolds as a recollection of the weeks that led to the hospital bed. Misha's central conflict is established before the external drama fully emerges: he insists on being treated as an independent human being while still learning the difference between independence and stubbornness, justice and revenge, love and jealousy, truth and convenient self-justification. Over the course of one eventful summer, these beliefs will be tested not by words but by choices.

2. The Mirov Household: Freedom and Family Rules

Before the accident, Misha is surrounded by a lively, closely knit family: his parents, his grandmother and grandfather, and his older sister Lilya. Their home is full of debate, teasing, unsolicited advice, and affectionate interference. His father can listen as well as joke with him; his mother worries about his safety and expects discipline; his grandmother's devoted care often drives him to distraction; and his grandfather is never short of proverbs or arguments about how life used to be and how it is now. Beneath the noise is an unshakable sense of belonging.

Misha is quick to spot adult inconsistencies. The family tells him to exercise, take care of his health, and never lie, while the grown-ups smoke, quarrel, and sometimes ignore the very principles they preach. He dissects their reasoning with savage youthful wit and is convinced that he knows how things ought to work. Yet the family scenes also reveal his tenderness: he appreciates his mother's affection, is proud of his father, is capable of gratitude, and loves his grandfather even when the old man's lectures make him furious.

Books are part of the household's everyday life. For Misha, reading is not a respectable decoration or a school obligation; it is a means of arguing with the world. He reads voraciously, discovers demanding authors almost by accident, and searches their words for answers to questions he cannot yet express. Later, in the hospital, that habit will become a means of understanding what his own life is worth. The conflict between the freedom he demands and the love he already possesses is one of the novel's essential currents.

3. A Tragedy Beside the Road

The story's principal outward conflict begins with pets being killed on the road near the family's country home. Cars rush past the houses at dangerous speeds, leaving the owners of cats and dogs helpless. Misha witnesses the pain of people who have lost beloved animals, including a girl named Lyuba. For perhaps the first time, he sees an injustice not simply as something to complain about but as something he must try to put right.

His friend Yurka joins him in an ambitious plan: they will persuade the traffic police to install a warning sign. The boys wait for officers and eventually decide to visit the authorities themselves. Their journey is crowded with the comic incidents and revealing encounters that characterize the novel: a failed attempt at hitchhiking, a conversation with a truck driver named Samvel, and Misha's continually shifting judgments about who is kind and who is indifferent. Still, the underlying purpose is serious. He wants drivers to recognize that living creatures exist beyond the roadside.

The boys get nowhere with the officials. The recognized road signs do not answer their purpose: the rules allow a warning involving a large farm animal, but seem to have no place for the cats and dogs whose deaths have upset them. Misha is angry at this bureaucratic blindness. If adults and institutions are unwilling to help, he concludes, perhaps children must find a way to do something themselves.

4. The Sign That Does Not Exist in the Rulebook

Misha and Yurka make their own triangular warning sign. Yurka takes charge of the drawing. When Misha finally sees the result, he finds not an imitation of an official sign but a cheerful cat and dog painted inside the triangle. At first he is furious. How can anyone be expected to take such an amateur invention seriously? He scolds his friend and demands that the image be changed.

After cooling down, however, Misha realizes he has treated Yurka unfairly. Why should their sign depict a cow when it is cats and dogs they want to protect? In fact, Yurka's design expresses their idea more honestly than an official-looking imitation could. Misha means to apologize, but Yurka suddenly comes down with a bad case of tonsillitis and cannot return to help install the sign. The finished triangle remains in a shed. What looks like a small delay in a childish scheme becomes a crucial postponement in the structure of the novel.

Misha hates leaving things unfinished, although he is often distracted by new ideas, irritated by setbacks, and reluctant to admit that he is wrong. The quarrel with Yurka exposes an uncomfortable truth: demanding fairness from adults is easier than being fair to a friend. Meanwhile, the hand-painted sign waits for the moment when it can finally be put up beside the road. When that moment comes, it will change far more than the flow of traffic.

5. A Journey to See a Sick Friend

Concerned about Yurka, Misha travels to Moscow by suburban train on his own. The carriage becomes a miniature portrait of society. Musicians perform, followed by a poet and a magician. Misha enjoys the entertainment but notices how readily passengers accept it without offering the performers anything in return. Embarrassed by their indifference, he gives the magician money he had set aside for his fare.

The generous impulse soon creates a difficulty of its own: on the return journey, Misha no longer has a valid ticket. When the inspector finds out, the boy braces himself for humiliation or being thrown off the train. Instead, the man listens carefully and believes his explanation. He suggests that Misha make up for the missing fare by buying two tickets next time. The experience makes a deeper impression than another adult lecture would have done. Someone has trusted him to do the right thing, and that trust demands an honest response.

At Yurka's home, Misha sees again that his friend has only wanted the road sign to be made properly. The argument seems smaller now, while their friendship becomes more important. Conversations with his grandfather about conscience and the quiet inner voice that judges one's actions help him begin to ask a new question: what makes a deed right or wrong when nobody is watching?

6. Money, Pride, and Two Children Named Pasha and Tanya

Another plot line begins with a family quarrel about money. Lilya points out that her younger brother is used to having everything provided for him. Stung by the accusation, Misha decides to earn his own money. He comes up with a plan to sell cigarettes to motorists waiting at a railway crossing and enlists his grandfather's help. The scheme is naïve, but it represents his first attempt to be something more than a beneficiary of his parents' comfortable life.

A rough encounter with the driver of a red Peugeot humiliates him: the man takes away the cigarettes, and Misha is powerless to stop him. Even the money Misha does manage to earn brings little satisfaction. He begins to discover that earning money and knowing what to do with it are different matters. His resentment toward the Peugeot driver, far from disappearing, will later lead him into one of his least admirable actions.

Near a shop, Misha meets a small brother and sister, Pasha and Tanya, who depend on help from strangers. Their parents suffer from alcoholism, but the children speak of it as an illness and refuse to abandon them. Misha buys food and treats for the children and wants to invite them home so that he can help more substantially. Their loyalty shakes him. In his own secure household he complains endlessly about the adults, while these children struggle to find food for their parents and cannot imagine turning their backs on them.

This encounter does not instantly turn Misha into a wise adult. He still makes hasty judgments, loses his temper, and dreams up improbable solutions. But ideas that once seemed abstract now have names and faces. Pasha and Tanya are no longer anonymous children from a different world. They have entered his life, and their story will eventually intersect with his own in a way he could never have imagined.

7. Changes in the Family That Misha Only Half Understands

Lilya and her chosen partner, Igor, plan to marry. Their decision produces excitement, jokes, and minor family upheavals, especially when the wedding date collides with an important family celebration. Misha listens closely to discussions about marriage, money, fidelity, and trust. As usual, he interprets nearly every argument as evidence of adult hypocrisy: the people who prescribe rules for children cannot even agree on how to follow them themselves.

Later, Lilya quarrels with Igor and returns to her parents in tears, suspecting her husband of infidelity. Misha is severe in his judgment. If someone truly loves another person, he thinks, they ought to talk and find out the truth instead of running away in anger. Yet the boy's own impending experiences with jealousy will show how little he understands the emotions he has been so ready to judge. His sister's predicament quietly anticipates the central romantic conflict of the novel.

Nobody in the Mirov family is ideal. Misha's mother and grandmother disagree, his father sometimes hides seriousness behind humor, and his grandfather can be harsh. Yet these are the same people who remain beside one another during sickness or distress. Slowly, Misha begins to see that family closeness does not mean never quarreling. It means finding a way back to one another. This realization prepares him, without his knowing it, for the arrival of a girl who will transform his summer.

8. Maria Sizokrylaya Arrives

Galina, an old friend of Misha's mother, comes to visit with her daughter Masha. The girl is about Misha's age and has what he considers an extraordinarily beautiful surname: Sizokrylaya. He notices her smile, her voice, the way she speaks. To his own surprise, his behavior begins to change. He looks for excuses to talk to her, longs to seem clever and brave, and fears saying something foolish.

Masha is not simply a pretty visitor to be admired. She is curious, loves poetry, knows how to defend her own views, and has her own ideas about belief, beauty, and friendship. She insists on sincerity even when the truth is inconvenient. Their conversations reveal two different ways of seeing the world: Misha's love of prose and sharp jokes contrasts with Masha's enthusiasm for poetry and music; his instinct is to challenge any authority, while hers is to ask calm questions he may not be able to answer.

They go fishing at a lake, ride bicycles, swim, walk in the woods, and get caught in bad weather. None of these excursions is extraordinary in itself. For Misha, however, each ordinary moment becomes part of the discovery of first love. A jacket offered against the chill, an accidental smile, the light touch of a hand all acquire immense significance. For the first time, he spends less energy thinking about what he wants to prove to adults and more wondering what Masha thinks of him.

9. The Swings and the Hills

The image of hills enters the novel through reading and conversations about poetry. Encountering a poem by Joseph Brodsky, Misha begins to think of life as a line that rises and falls, in contrast with the final, unchanging straightness of death. He has not discovered a complete philosophy. Rather, he has found an image that gives shape to feelings he could not previously name.

When Masha reads a poem of her own about swings, the different motifs come together. A swing rises, pauses, and sweeps downward; the emotions of a boy in love change just as suddenly. Happiness gives way to fear of separation, self-confidence to shyness. Misha discovers that Masha has an imaginative world of her own and dreams of writing poetry. He loves not merely her beauty but her independence of mind.

The scenes on the swings become the emotional center of the book. Here the young people can speak almost seriously about love, or hide their feelings behind teasing remarks. Here Misha finally finds the courage to ask whether Masha likes him. She does not offer a simple answer and asks for time, but sends him an air kiss. From that moment he begins to regard their relationship as something real. What he has yet to understand is that real affection requires more than declarations: it demands responsibility for the words one speaks and the hurt one can cause.

10. Jealousy and the Fear of Appearing Weak

An outing to the cinema becomes Misha's first serious test in love. Carelessly, he invites an acquaintance, Roma Batalin, to join them. Roma is witty and immediately wins Masha's attention. Misha, who has recently been so confident in his opinions about jealousy, suddenly feels excluded. He makes cutting remarks, takes offense at trivial things, and treats an ordinary laugh as evidence that he may be losing her. Masha can see what is happening, but she has no intention of surrendering her independence to his whims.

Their disagreement grows sharper on the way home. Misha says hurtful things, then realizes almost at once that he is in the wrong. Admitting it, however, seems impossibly difficult. He fears that an apology would make him look weak in the eyes of the person whose opinion matters most. It is at this vulnerable moment that a noisy group of teenagers enters their suburban train carriage, turning a painful but ordinary romantic quarrel into something more dangerous.

The youths begin harassing Masha. Misha tries to protect her and declares that she is his girlfriend. The group's leader deliberately humiliates him. The arrival of police officers interrupts the harassment for a while but does not truly resolve the threat. Masha suggests moving to another carriage. Misha refuses, afraid she will see him as a coward. This misguided pride is revealing. He can be genuinely courageous, but he has not yet learned the difference between bravery and the desperate need to appear fearless.

Just before the group leaves, one of the bullies suddenly punches Misha in the face and runs off. Bleeding and bruised, Misha is left with the physical pain and, worse, a sense of humiliation. Masha is frightened and cares for him. When he arrives home with black eyes, the whole family is alarmed. The incident strips the glamour from his adolescent dreams of being a heroic protector: actual violence is frightening, arbitrary, and rarely resembles an adventure story.

11. The Kind of Care That Cannot Be Commanded

For several days Misha barely leaves his room. When Masha visits, he turns his face to the wall, ashamed of how he looks. She neither ridicules him nor lectures him. Instead, she talks gently, strokes his head, and kisses him. Her simple concern brings him a new understanding: love is not a contest that must be won by the loudest, strongest, or boldest person.

His father responds to the incident with restraint, while his grandfather draws Misha into another conversation about school, books, life, and the habit of testing convictions through actions rather than clever words. Misha finds himself back in the familiar world of family discussions he usually mocks. This time he listens more closely. Adults, he realizes, can support someone without turning every mistake into a public trial.

When Masha goes shopping with her mother, he is overwhelmed by loneliness. A day without her seems to lose its point. Alone, he replays their meetings and quarrels, considering what he might have done differently. Her return transforms his mood. On the swings, they timidly admit how much they have missed each other, and moments of shared silence say more than long speeches. Misha is changing: for once, he cares less about proving he is right than about preserving the fragile closeness between them.

12. A Man Named Vladimir

Running alongside the love story is another, quieter narrative: Misha's acquaintance with an elderly man named Vladimir Grigoryevich Raktin. The boy becomes interested in Vladimir's life and discovers a kind of attachment that is neither familial nor romantic. It begins simply with the willingness to listen and to refuse to turn away from another person. Vladimir is lonely, and his loneliness cannot be explained merely by the number of people around him.

Misha and Masha plan to give him an icon depicting Saint Vladimir. The meeting they anticipate never takes place. When they learn that their acquaintance has died, they go to the Bogorodskoye cemetery. There they encounter a particularly disturbing form of adult indifference: a man is dead, yet his closest relatives are nowhere to be found. For Misha, death begins to cease being an abstract opposite of life. It is the loss of a particular person, with a particular story, whose absence can no longer be repaired.

The two young people decide to find Vladimir's sons — Stas, Oleg, and Vladislav — and tell them what has happened. They travel to the address they have obtained, naively assuming that news of their father's death must cause grief and prompt at least a visit to his grave. Instead, they are met with a reaction that shocks them. The relatives see the death not primarily as a loss but as an escape from an unwanted obligation and an opportunity to deal with the inheritance.

13. An Awakening on Koshkina Street

The visit to Vladimir's family is one of the novel's darkest episodes. The children encounter adults who have been drinking, hear callous questions, and watch the news of a father's death turn into an almost jubilant telephone conversation. Misha refuses to shake an offered hand. He and Masha leave feeling insulted and deeply unsettled by the discovery that children can actually welcome their parent's death.

This episode broadens the novel far beyond first love and a boy's rebellion against rules. Misha receives an unexpected answer to questions he has long been asking: what is the point of family, and what makes a person decent? However overprotective his own relatives may be, they would never abandon one another for financial gain. For the first time he compares his familiar complaints about his grandmother's attention with the genuine coldness that exists outside his home. The difference is overwhelming.

On the journey back, Misha remains recognizably himself. He still notices absurdities, argues about how public places are organized, and complains when adults ignore children's needs. Yet his usual observations now have a deeper resonance. He has seen how empty a human life can become when conscience, memory, and gratitude disappear.

14. A Wrong That Anger Cannot Excuse

Later, Misha encounters the driver of the red Peugeot who previously took his cigarettes. His resentment flares, and he scratches the man's car. It is not a brave stand against injustice, but a petty act of revenge. For a short while he manages to persuade himself that the driver deserved it. Then the angry man appears at the family's home, accusing Misha of causing the damage.

In front of the visitor, Misha's father says that he believes his son. Misha takes advantage of that trust and denies everything. When they are alone, however, he confesses to his father that he did indeed damage the car. Now he must face not the rudeness of the driver but the ugliness of his own conduct. Somewhere between defending oneself and striking back lies a boundary he has crossed. This episode is important precisely because Misha is not a flawless hero. The boy who cares passionately about animals and helps impoverished children is also capable of lying, vindictiveness, and angry impulsiveness.

Nor does Masha always agree with him. She can steer a conversation toward what really matters: family love, responsibility, and another person's right to think differently. At one point she asks Misha to imagine life without his parents and grandparents. At first he dismisses the suggestion; gradually he understands that his complaints about being constantly watched over are a luxury available to a child who feels secure in being loved. He can afford to argue with his family because he assumes they will always be there.

15. Back to the Road Sign

Another dog is struck by a car near the village. Misha and Masha discover it injured beside the road, try to help, bandage its legs, and look for a veterinarian. The incident repeats the very suffering that inspired Misha's plan for a warning sign. This time Masha is beside him. Unafraid to confront the animal's blood and pain, she makes it harder for him to postpone action once again.

The triangular sign with its painted cat and dog is still in the shed. Masha convinces Misha to put it up without waiting for Yurka, and he finally agrees. Little Tanya, the girl he met earlier near the shop, happens to be nearby. Misha climbs a ladder to fasten the sign to a post while Masha helps below. Their long-delayed project is at last about to be finished. They have no official permission, but they hope the sign will prevent more animals from being killed.

At that very moment, a balloon slips from Tanya's hand and floats out onto the road. The little girl runs after it. The bushes hide an approaching vehicle from her view, and the driver cannot see the child. Only Misha, higher up on the ladder, has a clear view of the danger. There is no time to deliberate. He lets go of the sign, leaps from the ladder, and throws himself toward Tanya, pushing her away from the path of the car. Brakes scream. Then, for Misha, everything goes black.

16. The Price of Saving a Life

Misha regains consciousness in an ambulance. His mother and Masha are with him. Tanya has been saved, but Misha is seriously injured. At last the accident mentioned in the novel's opening pages is fully explained. The external conflict that began with animals being killed on the road, and continued through the boys' unsuccessful appeal to the traffic police, has led to a decision no rulebook can make on someone's behalf: save another person or think first about one's own safety.

Misha does not think of himself as a hero. He is distressed by his injured leg, the prospect of long confinement, and the fact that he cannot freely spend time with Masha. Yet he also understands something frightening: he could have died. Watching the hospital weights sway above his bed, he remembers the hills, the swings, and the image of a flat line. These are no longer merely intriguing ideas from a poem. He imagines his parents having to choose a place for his grave, thinks about a memorial, and even pictures two hills with a swing between them, in remembrance of Masha and the summer they shared.

The possibility of death does not make the story's ending hopeless. Quite the opposite: it shows how fiercely he wants to live. Suddenly every detail matters — family conversations, books, stubborn Yurka, strangers whose kindness surprised him, and the girl who sat beside him on the swings. Everything that once seemed like an annoying part of everyday life acquires a new value after he has come close to losing it forever.

17. Masha's Departure and Unexpected Recognition

Masha leaves with her mother. For Misha the separation feels like a private catastrophe. Silently, he begs her to return the following summer and promises that he will be less jealous, will not raise his voice, and will try not to hurt her. He admits to himself, perhaps for the first time without qualification, how deeply he loves her. The memory of the swings becomes more than the emblem of a boy's first romance. It is proof that affection can change a person, making him kinder and more attentive, even as it leaves him more vulnerable.

After Masha's departure, an unfamiliar visitor comes to the hospital: Alexander Vasilyevich, a senior police officer. He speaks to Misha with respect, thanks him for saving Tanya, and acknowledges his attempts to protect animals on the road. Misha is astonished when the man calls him a real man. The recognition has nothing to do with physical strength, age, or winning fights. It is about a choice: when another life was in danger, the boy acted.

Even at this moment Misha thinks beyond his own achievement. He asks the visitor not to forget the warning sign. If pets are being killed by traffic, surely drivers need to be warned. Why, he asks, is there an official sign featuring a cow but none showing a cat and dog? The colonel listens with a smile without promising an immediate solution. Thus, even after the story's dramatic climax, the problem that began it remains unresolved. One brave act cannot replace the harder work of changing people's attitudes toward vulnerable lives.

18. The Final Image: The Line of Life

The ending returns the reader to the hospital room where Misha began his account. A hospital attendant accidentally brushes against the suspended weight above the bed, setting it in motion. Misha suddenly recognizes in its movement the shape of his entire summer. The weights, the beds, and the outlines of the patients recall hills and swings. Then he thinks of an electrocardiogram. As long as the trace rises and falls, a person is alive. A straight, unbroken line marks death.

This realization draws the novel's apparently separate plot lines together: first love, with all its exhilaration and hurt; arguments with family members and new gratitude for them; the pursuit of justice and Misha's own dishonest actions; Vladimir's loneliness and his sons' cruelty; the poverty of Pasha and Tanya; the rescue beside the road; and the belief that even a child can change something in the world. These are not random episodes from a summer holiday. Together, they constitute the story of a boy beginning to grow up.

Misha has not lost his sharp tongue, nor has he become faultless or meek. He has, however, learned something that cannot be taught through advice alone: another person's life may truly depend on what he chooses to do. The title therefore means more than the dizzying sensations of first love. It becomes the moral image of the whole novel. Human life does not move smoothly along a straight line. It rises and falls through joy, shame, loss, love, and rescue. As long as there is movement — as long as the heart can love and feel compassion — life goes on.

MIKHAIL SAMARSKY · ON THE SWINGS BETWEEN THE HILLS · ENGLISH SYNOPSIS