The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  He taps my forehead with his pointer and we turn. The spotlights come from everywhere.

  I’m glad I’m blinded and can’t see them. I won’t cry. We’ve been told to keep our eyes open and look straight ahead but the light’s so bright my eyes are watering.

  ‘Turn!’ He taps the back of my head. I turn to face them again, blinded by the spotlights, I take my hand off Masha’s neck to wipe my cheek because my eyes are watering. I hope they don’t think I’m crying or anything stupid like that because I’m not crying. I’m not.

  Crash! There’s a noise like a chair falling over and then the door to the hall bangs. I look at Masha. Did we do something wrong?

  ‘Stand on one leg,’ says Anokhin. Masha lifts hers up because I’m stronger. ‘Run to the edge of the stage and back,’ he says. We run to the edge of the stage and back. ‘Hop,’ he says. We hop.

  He talks and talks and talks while we stand in the spotlight, in the chalk circle, doing what he tells us to with his pointer for ever and ever until he runs out of talk and dismisses us. There’s a round of applause as we walk off. Lydia Mikhailovna is waiting for us backstage. We get dressed slowly in our nappy and then our pyjamas and go down the wooden stairs. She stops us at the door and we can see Boris Markovich standing in the corridor with his hands in his pockets. Doctor Anokhin walks up to him and holds out his hand.

  ‘Comrade Popov. You left the auditorium?’ he says with his eyebrows raised. Boris Markovich takes a step back and doesn’t take his hand out of his pocket.

  ‘Yes, I left. I could watch no more. They are not one of your dogs, Pyotr Kuzmich.’ He says that all quiet, but somehow really loud. ‘We no longer live in Stalin’s Soviet Union. We live in the country that Lenin intended. These are normal, intelligent, fourteen-year-old teenagers, not a dumb animal. They should never be forced to witness the spectacle of a room full of men, analysing their naked anatomy.’

  Anokhin gives a little smile and tips his head on one side.

  ‘Then next time blindfold them,’ he says. And walks off.

  We go to amputate our leg, but I mess it up – as usual

  ‘I got a plane, got a plane!’ shouts Masha, pulling a wooden plank out of the skip. She’s half in the skip and I’m half out. I won’t go all in because it stinks of blood and dead dogs. They incinerate the experimental ones but throw the strays, which hang around the grounds, in here to rot when they die.

  ‘I’m the Soviet fighter pilot and you’re the Fascists!’ she says, jumping back down, and we start racing around with the plank on our back, bombing the little kids playing with us. They run away screaming like we’re really bombing them. Masha whacks one with the plank and he goes flying into a tree trunk and just lies there, so I think he’s actually dead. Then he gets up and goes right back to being a Fascist. There’s all sorts of stuff in the skips. We go out there every day now, and find bits of metal for swords to play Whites and Reds with, or nails to play surgeons and patients with.

  I’d rather be inside, sitting with Olessya, but she’s in the schoolroom, learning. They give all kids an elementary education here, whatever their age. She’s just taught herself up to now with books the kind nannies in her orphanage gave her.

  After a bit, we all sit down to get our breath and sort through what we’ve got; like, who’s got the bloodiest surgical gloves, or sharpest bit of metal. One piece is like a mirror, but I won’t look in that.

  They don’t have mirrors in SNIP to protect us from seeing ourselves, but me and Masha went off one Sunday to the Old Wing where the Party Conferences are held, and went right into the Party Hall where no one has ever been, because it’s strictly off limits. It used to be a ballroom for decadent people before the Great October Revolution, and it had a wooden jigsaw puzzle floor and lights like worlds of falling diamonds. And a massive mirror with a golden twirly frame. I didn’t understand what it was when I first saw our reflection as we walked up to it. I thought it was just a door leading to somewhere. Then we saw this lumbering, ugly thing with bits sticking out everywhere rocking towards us … like nothing we’d ever seen before. It was me and Masha. It was how everyone else sees us. I won’t even think about it now, it makes me sick. It makes me want to cry every time I think of it. Even Masha was so shocked she couldn’t talk for ages. It’s like we’d never really seen what other people see, with our great big stupid third leg waving above us like some scorpion or something. But now we’ve seen we’re all mashed up together and not like anything else on earth, I can’t forget. We hid in bed under the sheet for days and days after that. Aunty Nadya said, over and over, that we were beautiful, but she’s lying. It’s another of their Lies. The Healthies outside by the gate are right. That Nastya, the cleaner in the Pediatriya was right. The driver who took us there was right. We’re urodi. No one in the whole wide world looks as ugly as us. Olessya said some stuff about what matters is what’s on the inside, not the outside, but if we look like this on the outside, no one’s going to bother about what’s on the inside. They’ll just run right away screaming.

  In the end, Aunty Nadya said if it would make us feel any better we could have our third leg amputated as we don’t need it.

  So now the amputation’s all set for next week.

  Masha’s drawing a Nazi swastika in the ground with a metal shard. She shouldn’t. That’s treason or something. She’s crazy, Masha is. The others are laughing at one of the kids, who’s pulled a surgical glove on his head like a cockerel.

  ‘So, Mashdash,’ the kid says, taking it off with a snap, ‘you doing the amputation next week?’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Masha. Like there’s a choice now.

  ‘Well, you can hear them sawing through the bone,’ he says. ‘Karr, karr …’ and he goes like he’s sawing at his good leg with the shard of metal.

  ‘Fuck off, piss-face. They’ll give us anaesthetic. Knock us out.’

  ‘No they don’t! They don’t! Honest they don’t! It’s only local, right? So you’re in there with all the lights and the surgeons and you can see the saw and its sharp teeth and everything. All the time.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah – and the vibrations go all up your body to your head,’ says another kid, all excited to be making Masha cross, ‘and you can see them mopping up all the blood with towels, there’s loads and loads of blood, everything’s red. The whole room goes red, they just can’t get enough towels in there to mop it all up.’

  I put my hands over my ears to stop listening, but I can still hear them all.

  ‘There’s a shortage of anaesthetic, you might not even get any …’

  ‘… Uncle Styopa in our village got caught up in a crop mower and they just gave him a bottle of vodka. He passed out during the operation, but they didn’t know if it was the vodka or the pain!’ They’re laughing.

  ‘You can smell the blood above even the antiseptic,’ says one little kid.

  ‘Fuck off!’ shouts Masha, getting up. ‘Fuck off, the lot of you!’

  We get up to go.

  ‘Aunty Nadya said we’d have anaesthetic,’ I say as we go back inside.

  ‘Yeah, but she didn’t say it was only local. I’m not doing it if it’s only local. Fuck. I like my leg. It’s mine. Well … half of it is.’

  ‘I like it too. It balances us when we climb. How are we going to climb without it? Aunty Nadya says it’s like our tail.’

  Masha shrugs.

  ‘But they gave us general anaesthetic to have our appendix out, Mash, Remember?’

  ‘Yeah … in the end. But they weren’t going to give us anything to start off with – just tie us down.’

  I shiver. That was awful. I had a terrible pain in my stomach, which kept making Masha throw up. But she didn’t want to go to a hospital to be looked at because, whenever we do that, we end up with loads of doctors crawling all over us, poking every bit of us. Like maggots in meat, as Masha says. But we had such a high temperature that our SNIP night-duty doctor diagnosed appendicitis and Lydia Mikhailovna was called back in
from her flat to take us to the Botkin Hospital. The pain was so bad it was making everything dizzy and black, but the doctors wouldn’t operate as they didn’t know how much novocaine to give us and thought they’d kill us by mistake. They wanted a signed form from Professor Popov, or Anokhin, that if we died, it wouldn’t be their fault. But Anokhin was in Amerika and Popov was at his country dacha so in the end they said the best thing to do was operate without any novocaine and just tie us down. We screamed and screamed then, at the very thought, like we were being tortured. Well, actually, it would have been torture – and Lydia Mikhailovna was screaming at the doctors that we had a burst appendix and would die anyway from blood sepsis if they didn’t operate with novocaine, and one of the nurses started screaming when she walked in and saw us screaming. So then Lydia Mikhailovna took us to the Usokovski Hospital instead, but no one would operate on us again, so in the end, she sent a driver to get the forms from Professor Popov in the country. It was early in the morning before they finally put us under. And Lydia Mikhailovna was still there, sitting right by our bed when we woke up, looking like death herself.

  So now, talking about it, we think she actually likes us.

  ‘Hey, I know,’ says Masha, ‘let’s go to Lydia Mikhailovna’s office, right now, like right now, and tell her we don’t want our leg off after all.’

  I nod happily, so we go running off and knock on her door and tell her.

  ‘No, it’s all arranged, girls. Next Wednesday. Amputation.’ Lydia Mikhailovna has her hand up in front of her.

  ‘P-Please, p-please, it’s our leg. We want to k-keep it!’

  ‘No, Dasha. And that’s final.’

  ‘But it will be general anaesthetic? Won’t it?’ asks Masha.

  Lydia Mikhailovna looks down at her desk and starts arranging papers. ‘No. It will be local. Doctor Anokhin will be present with his Medical Sciences film crew to observe your reactions, and Doctor Golubeva from the Brain Institute will be measuring your brain activity with her electroencephalogram helmets. They need you conscious.’ She doesn’t look up. ‘Scientists need you conscious to monitor reactions.’

  It’s the morning of the operation and I’m so scared I can’t see straight. Masha keeps thumping me and saying I’ll ruin it. Olessya’s sitting with us on the bed.

  ‘You won’t feel anything. Nothing at all,’ she’s saying to me in her low, quiet voice, which is like being stroked. ‘And the helmets are so painful anyway, you won’t even be thinking about your leg, will you? It won’t take long. You’ll be back here in a minute … we’ll play draughts.’

  I’m shaking all over though and sobbing. I think I’d rather die.

  ‘Stupid sheep! Bad enough to go through an operation, without having a fucking shipwreck by your side!’ Masha slaps me hard on the cheek.

  ‘Enough of that!’ Aunty Nadya’s walked in. ‘As if she isn’t in enough of a state as it is.’

  ‘Just needs some sense knocked into her,’ grumbles Masha.

  ‘Well, be that as it may, everything’s ready so come along, girls. We’ll have that leg off in a jiffy and you’ll look like new.’

  ‘Now?!! Nyetttt!’ I try to crawl back up the bed away from her, but Masha’s pulling the other way and Aunty Nadya’s pulling my hand and they half drag, half carry me down to the operating floor. I start screaming at the door to the theatre. They’re trying to take my hand out of Aunty Nadya’s and leave her behind and shut it. I scream and scream and don’t even feel Masha’s slaps and won’t let go of Aunty Nadya’s hand until they let her come in too.

  There’s bright hot lights everywhere and the room’s so full with doctors and cameras I hardly see Anokhin until they put us flat on the table, face down, and he looks into my face with his chocolatey eyes. There’s no room for Aunty Nadya round the table because of the surgeons, but I won’t let go of her hand so she has to crawl down under the operating table, still holding on to mine. Doctor Golubeva fits the helmets and turns them on and everything goes juddery like my brain’s being fried. She comes into SNIP every few months with the helmets, but we never get used to it. I scream even more and I can hear Masha yelling at me and then I see the saw that they cut your leg off with, sitting on a tray, right in front of my very own two eyes. It’s like the one Stepan Yakovlich uses to cut down branches, maybe it’s even the same one. Then a man comes at me with a needle as big as my arm.

  ‘Inject all round the root of the leg,’ says another voice I don’t recognize above all the noise. ‘Let’s get on with this. Gospodi! … these two were bad enough as babies …’ The needle goes in like a hot burning skewer and I try and get off the table then, pulling Masha with me, and hear Anokhin shouting:

  ‘Hold her down! Nurse – hold her down! God in Heaven, this is turning into a circus act!’

  I can’t stop shaking and as soon as the injections are done Masha pops up and starts punching me in the head.

  ‘You idiot! You stupid weakling, you coward!’ she screams, hitting and hitting me. The nurse lets go of me to push her down and I try to crawl off the table again, to get down under the operating table with Aunty Nadya.

  ‘This is absurd!’ shouts Anokhin. ‘Tie them both to the table and let’s just get on and saw this wretched limb off!’

  And then everything goes black.

  I wake up in bed and as soon as my eyes open Masha starts hitting me again.

  ‘Bitch! Spineless snake! They didn’t take it off because of you!’

  ‘Stop that this instant, Masha!’ shouts Aunty Nadya.

  Then everything goes black again.

  When I come to properly, Olessya’s sitting with Masha, holding her, to stop her hitting me, and Aunty Nadya’s telling me what happened.

  ‘You fainted. I could just feel your hand shaking and then it went all limp and wet. I thought you’d died.’

  ‘Wish she had. And left me in peace …’

  ‘Do be quiet, Masha …’ She turns back to me. ‘I could hear them all saying: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” And Professor Popov shouting, “Dasha! Dashinka! Wake up!” So I couldn’t help it, I crawled out from under the table and saw your surgeon, Professor Dolyetsky, and Doctor Anokhin and Professor Popov walking out of the door to smoke. They were standing there, sucking away like their lives depended on it in the corridor. I could hear them talking. Professor Dolyetsky said it could only be a reaction you had to the novocaine and that it was strange because you’d had novocaine before, and I was thinking, What’s strange is that they don’t realize Dasha just fainted from sheer terror.’

  ‘Yeah, fainted like a fat fucking fly in the sun,’ says Masha. ‘You’ve ruined all our chances of looking better now, with your lily-livered—’

  ‘Teekha! So, then Professor Dolyetsky turns to Anokhin and asks if they should carry on anyway, since you were still breathing, and Anokhin agrees, but then Popov steps in and says, “No, we will not go on with the operation. These are human beings, not rabbits.” So you were taken back here.’

  ‘And now we’re left with this bloody tree trunk,’ Masha shakes our leg, ‘and you’re the miserable weak worm who hates looking like a freak. You’re a fucking freak with or without the fucking leg!’

  ‘Masha! Stop swearing this instant! Have some pity!’ Aunty Nadya’s holding one of her arms, and Olessya’s holding the other to stop her thumping me. ‘Have some pity.’

  ‘I’m s-sorry …’ I put my hands over my face. ‘I’m s-so, so s-sorry.’

  I wish I was strong like Masha, but however hard I try, all the weakness just comes gushing out like a whole sea that never stops pouring and pouring over me and drowning me.

  All my strength went to her.

  August 1964

  We hear from Olessya in Novocherkassk and Anokhin says we’re one person split in two

  We’ve got a postcard from Olessya. We’re sitting reading it on the back steps by the bath house. It’s quiet here.

  We can eat peaches and apricots right off the trees here and
it’s sunny and hot all the time. They even have white bread and fresh eggs and milk.

  ‘Lucky cow. Hardly ever even seen white bread, and all we get is pickled eggs and powdered milk now,’ says Masha.

  The Director is a kind man and the teachers are kind and we are following the school curriculum for a diploma. The kids are fun too and we have a big courtyard and orchard, inside the walls because it’s in a pre-revolutionary, really rich, merchant’s house. Good thing we’re all equal now! We have a side cupboard by our beds we can keep our own stuff in and no one steals it. Well, write to me too. Olessya.

  She’s in the boarding school for Defectives in the South of Russia. She was here in SNIP for six whole months and Galina Petrovna said that she learnt more in that time than most children learnt in four years and she couldn’t bear to send her back to the orphanage for Uneducables. So she got her into this school in Novocherkassk. Turns out Lydia Mikhailovna knows the Director.

  ‘Lucky Olessya. She escaped,’ says Masha and chews the end of the postcard. I want to hold it, but Masha won’t let me. I sort of think I’d get the smell of peaches and milk from it.

  ‘Bloody blue stamps,’ goes on Masha miserably. ‘Property of SNIP. Sheets, towels, curtains, pyjamas, socks, tin cups, plates, soles of our shoes. Can’t believe they don’t just stamp it on our foreheads.’

  ‘Are we really Property of SNIP, though? Are we going to stay here forever, Mashinka?’

  ‘No fucking way. Once we denounce the Administrator, we’ll be recognized, and then we’ll be let out to work for the Communist cause.’

  ‘But we keep trying to denounce her and don’t find anything. Are you sure she’s an American agent?’

  ‘Course she is, idiot. She looks like all the capitalists in the posters with their mean narrow eyes and low foreheads and long noses. Course she is.’