The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘So, yes, yes,’ she says, turning back to us. ‘Ninochka, my little sunbeam.’ She points at a pretty girl with blonde curls. ‘If you could just recap for the er … newcomers … yes, what have we learnt in the last ten minutes, my little sunbeam …’

  ‘Oooh, if she’s your little sunbeam, I’ll be your little raincloud, Irina Konstantinovna?’ Masha’s waving her hand in the air and the teacher looks at us for the first time. ‘You’re going to need a raincloud in today’s sunshine, not a sunbeam.’ Masha always knows how to make people who first meet us see we’re just two ordinary kids. The others laugh and I look round at them a bit, for the first time, to see what they’re like, and there’s this boy with dark eyes looking right at me. He’s not even looking at Masha at all. And he’s not laughing like the others.

  Then the blonde sunbeam starts talking about how they’ve been taking notes on the Splendid Surgery of the Great October Revolution. I’m not big into surgery at the moment, whatever sort, but I suppose they’re talking about amputating the Tsar’s family and bourgeois elements and all that. She’s going on about Bubnov, Bukharin and Berzin, and I’m taking notes, like I know who they are, but I don’t. Not yet.

  When the bell goes for the end of the lesson, we get up to go out, and the boy with the dark eyes looks right at me and winks, and I blush. Masha feels me flush and looks back at me, frowning.

  ‘Hey? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Mash. Nothing’s wrong at all.’

  September 1964

  We make some friends in school

  I screw my eyes up tight and listen. It’s morning and Masha’s still asleep. I do it every morning because I’m afraid, if I open them, I’ll be back in SNIP and not here, in the school. Everyone’s nice to us now they’ve got to know us. We’ve been here for six weeks, but I still can’t believe my luck. When Aunty Nadya realized we were happy and settled in, she went back to Moscow. Back to her little Vasinka, as Masha said. But actually, she seemed even more upset to be leaving us than we were. She said she’d write and come on visits.

  The bell goes then. It’s the loudest clanging in the world and everyone wakes at once. I open my eyes and sit up. Masha puts her pillow over her head.

  ‘Dashinkaaaa.’

  It’s Little Lyuda from the bed next to ours. We’ve pushed them together, so we can tuck our legs under her blanket, otherwise they just hang over the side of our narrow bed and our feet freeze. She hops up next to me. She’s pale as a flea and jumps like one too.

  ‘Dashinkaaaa … it’s your turn on the rota for the bathchair today, isn’t it? Can I sit on your lap, can I? I get bashed to pieces on the Crocodiles.’ The Crocodiles are these green wheelbarrows that the nannies take kids who can’t walk in, from lesson to lesson. There’s only one proper bathchair; it’s so healthy – just like Uncle Vasya’s. Masha’s the fastest in school at going down the ramps.

  ‘Yes. Yes, you c-can!’ I say and glance quickly at Masha. I don’t think she’ll mind.

  I hug myself. It’s our bathchair day and Olessya’s coming out of San too. This is the best day ever.

  ‘Mwaaah,’ says Masha, throwing the pillow off and shivering because it gets so cold at nights, even though the days are warm. ‘I’m not getting up.’

  She always says this, every morning, so I just pull her out of bed then, and we run down to the washroom as fast as we can.

  ‘How are we supposed to wash our fucking nappy in icy-cold water,’ she says, balancing us by leaning against the wall, while I scrub the nappy out like mad in the sink. ‘It makes our hands raw red.’

  ‘My hands, you mean.’

  She yawns.

  ‘Same thing. And that soap’s black as coal.’

  ‘It’s still soap.’

  ‘And this one’s still damp from last night,’ she says, poking the day-nappy I washed last night. (It’s just a big brown rag really that we knot round us.) ‘What’s the use of hanging them out to dry on the pipes when the pipes aren’t hot? You should wring them out more.’

  ‘I’m wringing as hard as I can, Mash,’ I say, squeezing the last drops out.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ she says crossly. ‘Or we’ll be late for breakfast.’

  We hang it up, get dressed, and run up the stairs to jump into the bathchair, with its three wheels and paddles to push us along. Little Lyuda hops into our lap and we scoot across the courtyard so fast the townspeople by the gates don’t even see us.

  ‘Oooraah! White bread and cheese!’ shouts Masha as we sit down at the long table.

  ‘Cheeeese!’ go all the kids like little monkeys. Everyone loves Masha now.

  ‘Learnt the poem then?’ Slava, the boy who winked at me on our first day, is sitting opposite us. We’re the two top kids in the class, him and me, I’m learning really quickly. He gets better marks, but I’m catching up. He’s looking at me when he asks, but Masha replies, ‘We only have to learn one between us, thank God, so she was up all night reciting it like a sheep bleating in a field.’

  I’ve got all my bread in my mouth so that Masha doesn’t take it from me. I can’t talk, so she slaps me on the back, trying to get me to spit it all out in front of him. She knows I like him. She likes him too, he’s funny, but she doesn’t like him the way I do. He has this nice brown skin, even now, in September, and dark floppy hair. But mostly he just has this way of looking at me, like he’s looking inside my head.

  ‘What are you reciting?’ I ask him, swallowing down the bread.

  ‘Boris Pasternak’s “February”.’

  ‘I thought he was anti-Soviet now?’ says Valya, the girl sitting next to him. Valya’s pretty and clever, but she’s really mean. I don’t know why.

  Slava shrugs. ‘His poetry books are still in the library.’

  ‘You’d better learn them all off by heart then, because they won’t be for long,’ says Valya. ‘And I don’t think he’s a good writer at all. I don’t think you should be reciting that. Does Vera Stepanovna know?’ Slava shrugs again. I bite my lip. Valya’s an Activist. She’s always telling on anyone who says or does anything anti-Soviet. I don’t like her much. I like everyone else, but just not Valya. Not much, anyway.

  ‘Shut it, bitch!’ says Masha, pushing her plate away. ‘Peanut here can recite what he likes. Well, c’mon, shipwreck, let’s get back into that bathchair.’

  I can hear Valya saying in a nasty, shouty sort of voice as we’re leaving ‘… and how did those two get on the bathchair rota when they can run like rabbits?’

  And then I think I hear Slava saying, ‘Masha always finds her place in the sun.’

  October 1964

  Olessya comes out of the San, and tells us about the school

  ‘Olessya!’ we both squeal as we see her being let through the gates.

  We’re sitting in the corner, on the steps, with Sunny Nina next to us and Little Lyuda on our lap. Olessya comes over and hugs and kisses us, and we hug and kiss her, and we’re all of us laughing all over the place.

  ‘Are you b-better?’ I ask. ‘You were in there forever.’

  ‘We thought they’d married you off to one of the doctors,’ says Masha, grinning.

  ‘They keep you in for ages after you’re well,’ says Olessya. ‘I was going crazy with boredom. Come on, let’s go sit behind the laundry room and you can tell me everything.’ Masha tips Lyuda off our lap, then pushes Sunny Nina off the steps in a friendly sort of way, and we paddle off in our bathchair.

  ‘Can’t believe you’re actually here!’ says Olessya, as we squeeze in behind the hut they do the laundry in. It’s the only place you can sit and no one can see you. It’s warm and dusty, even though it’s October now. It hardly ever rains in Novocherkassk. Masha’s squashed me against the fence, so Olessya has to sit next to her, not me.

  ‘How come they let you two leave SNIP?’

  ‘The Minister of Social … Social … whatever-it-is, said we had to go because everyone in Moscow had got to hear of us …’ says M
asha, all excited.

  ‘… Deputy Minister of Social P-Protection …’ I put in.

  ‘No one else wanted us to leave, not Aunty Nadya or Mikhailovna or Anokhin, but Popov did. He’s gone too from SNIP now. Retired. He knows the School Director here, but we haven’t seen him yet …’

  ‘No, he goes off to lots of Party meetings and gets funding,’ says Olessya.

  I wish I could snuggle up to Olessya, like Masha is. Her hair’s grown even thicker and blacker and her eyelashes have too. She looks so beautiful. I wonder if she likes Slava, or if he likes her? Probably. They’re both really clever. I’d just like to snuggle with anyone actually. Masha and I are too far apart to do that.

  ‘Still got a knife under there?’ asks Masha, pointing to her trolley.

  ‘Nyetooshki! Don’t need it here. The kids are all nice.’

  ‘Valya, the Ice Queen’s not nice.’

  ‘She’s just bitter, Masha, that’s what it is. She was a Healthy up until two years ago. She swung on an electric wire and lost both her arms, so she was sent here. She can’t accept that she’s in with the Defectives, and she’s always going to be stared at by the Healthies, and what’s worse is that, now, she can’t even marry one.’

  ‘Is she a Reject?’ asks Masha. I think she sort of hopes she is.

  ‘Yeah. Her parents rejected her when she lost her arms. She’s got two healthy sisters. It was too far for them to come and visit …’

  ‘And what about her precious Slava?’ says Masha, jerking her thumb at me.

  ‘Precious?’ Olessya looks at me in surprise.

  ‘Not precious, that’s just Masha being … Masha. We’re b-both top of the class is all.’

  ‘Teachers’ pets,’ says Masha, and rolls her eyes.

  ‘Slava, yeah, he’s a Congenital, but he’s not a Reject. His mum visits almost every month, he’s a family kid, they bring him a food parcel of milk and eggs and fruit. His family live in a village. He always shares his food though, he’s nice like that. He’s really nice. I like him.’

  I bite my lip. Of course she likes him … We get food parcels too, from Aunty Nadya. She sends us little tins of cod livers and boiled sweets from Moscow. There’s no sweets at all in Novocherkassk, but Masha doesn’t share anything. She just unwraps them and pops them in her mouth when we’re in the dorm and goes mmmmm as she sucks them, so everyone can hear. She sometimes gives me one though.

  ‘Yeah, and his dad comes on a motorbike, with his brother Grisha in a sidecar. All the girls here are in love with Grisha. You should see them swooning around the courtyard when he’s here, like dead flies on a windowsill …’ she laughs. I laugh too, but secretly I bet Grisha’s not half as handsome as Slava. I wouldn’t swoon over Grisha. ‘The teachers are all nice,’ Olessya goes on. ‘Vera Stepanovna’s pretty strict, but she’s honest. She makes sure all the State funds go where they should and aren’t stolen along the way. But the best teacher of all is Valentina Alexandrovna. She’s young and she only came last year. She’s so healthy! She wants every one of us to be the best. The Best of the Best in the Best of All Possible Worlds, as she says!’

  The bell clangs for afternoon lessons.

  ‘I f-forgot to ask – what class are you in?’ I say as we squeeze ourselves back out into the courtyard.

  ‘I’m in class 7, how about you?’

  ‘Class 6,’ I say, and it’s stupid but I feel all good and warm inside that she’s not in our class, even though I really like her. I should want her to be in our class, but actually I don’t. ‘Yeah, we’re in Class 6,’ I say. ‘With Sunny Nina and Little Lyuda. And Slava.’

  We get drunk with Petya and Slava, who likes my hair

  It’s evening time and we should be in the dorm, but we’ve sneaked out to smoke papirosas and get drunk. There’s four of us hiding behind the cobbler’s workshop in the school yard.

  ‘Go on,’ says Petya. He’s in year 7 with Olessya, but he likes Masha because he says she’s dirty (although she’s not, we both wash all the time with soap. Masha says I scrub us both so much there’ll be nothing left of us by the time we’re twenty).

  ‘Take a drag, go on, quick,’ says Petya. Masha sucks on the papirosa she’s found on the ground here. It’s got lipstick on its cardboard end, so it must be from one of the kitchen staff. The teachers don’t smoke because it’s not cultural. Slava’s here with us, so it must be all right, but we might get caught. My heart’s banging around like a drum. Petya kissed Masha on the cheek a week ago and she slapped him. But now he’s got a bottle of cheap wine because he wants to kiss her some more. He bribed Aunty Klava from the kitchen to get it. He’s not a Reject and he gets five roubles a month from his family to spend, so he bribed her to get it from the Vegetable Shop in town.

  Masha keeps on sucking on the papirosa and coughs like a mad thing, like she’s choking to death or something.

  ‘No, no, you’ve got to suck and then hold it in your mouth, and then slowly breathe it in,’ says Petya. ‘Go on.’ Masha does it again and this time she doesn’t cough so much. Petya laughs. ‘See? It’s easy. Go on, go on.’ Masha keeps sucking until I feel all dizzy, and almost fall over backwards. Petya laughs like mad. ‘Dasha fell over first! You two are crazy. Fuck – Dasha’s such a lightweight, she didn’t even take a drag!’ He thinks that’s the funniest thing ever. Slava laughs too and picks me up by pulling on my arm.

  Masha told me that boys go crazy for a kiss. She says that’s all they ever think about in their stupid little heads. She says girls can get them to do all sorts of stuff for them, like getting this bottle of wine, if they let them have a bit of seksy koo koo. Anyway, it’s called Red Sunrise, the wine is – not because it’s red, like I thought, but because of the dawn of Communism. Slava and Petya have been drinking it, and Masha’s been drinking it too, but when she does, she just throws it straight back up. I won’t drink because Aunty Nadya says the Consumption of Alcohol Degrades the Personality. That’s what all the slogans say too. Slava’s drinking, but then he’s a boy, and men need to drink. But women don’t.

  It’s October. Lessons have all finished for the day, but it’s still not completely dark. And it’s still quite warm. Slava can’t stop laughing, and is taking swigs from the wine bottle. And he’s looking at me all the time. He really is. He’s looking at me all the time. It’s really stupid, but I keep thinking about him. It’s like nothing else matters. It’s like everything, like our third leg, and the people outside the gates, and Icy Valya, and even Masha have all been pushed out of my head to make way for all these millions of thoughts about just Slava. How can you even think about one person all the time, and not think any other thoughts hardly at all?

  ‘Go on, Mash, take another swig, get it down you.’ Petya shoves the bottle at her and she takes another few gulps. We stand around looking at her and waiting; and then Khryoosh! up it comes again. Petya laughs and laughs. ‘She keeps throwing up! Hey, wait, wait, think about it … think, think …’ He points a finger at his head and then at Slava’s head, and then falls back against the wall. ‘Think … Masha takes a drag and Dasha falls over. So if Masha can’t keep it down, let’s get Dasha to drink! Right? Right?’ He looks around at us, swaying all over the place. Slava’s swaying too.

  ‘Great idea!’ shouts Masha. ‘Get it down! Get it down!’ She takes the bottle, grabs one of my pigtails and tips my head back, pushing the bottle into my mouth. I try and shut it, but she’s got the neck of the bottle right down my throat and it’s going down, all sweet and nice. ‘Swallow, swallow!’ shouts Masha. I swallow. I shouldn’t, but I do.

  ‘More! More!’ cheers Petya. ‘Davai! C’mon, Dashinka, get it down! Quick!’ Masha’s still holding my head back, and forcing the bottle down me so I keep swallowing. It’s all right really. It’s sweet. Then suddenly, I feel like there’s a hand grabbing the back of my neck. Only there’s no hand there, even though I look round. And then I start feeling sort of like they’re all going into the distance and I can hear them laughing like it�
��s from miles away, and Slava’s still looking at me; all I can see are his big black eyes. I’m not me at all.

  ‘February!’ he says, still looking at me. ‘Take up your pen and weep.’

  ‘Fuck me! Trust Slava to start spouting morbid poetry …’ Petya’s voice sounds miles away. Miles and miles. Petya takes the bottle off Masha and lifts it to his mouth again.

  ‘Write of February through your tears while the burning black slush of spring thunders at your feet …’ It’s the most beautiful poem in the world. He has the most beautiful voice in the world. Really, really beautiful. Write through your tears. I start to cry a bit. I love Pasternak. I love …

  ‘Hey, wrong fucking sister, moron!’ Masha slaps Petya’s hand off my leg. ‘Oooh, wait, it’s working, it’s working, it’s fucking working!’ She waves her hands in the air. ‘I’m drunk! Whoop whoop! Have some more, Shipwreck!’ She gives me the bottle and this time I tip it back and drink it myself.

  ‘Your hair’s soft, Dasha, all soft,’ says Slava. I don’t think the other two can hear him. Just me. He has dimples like Yuri Gagarin, but Slava is a million times better looking than Gagarin. His eyes are shining and they’re looking right into mine, so there’s only his eyes in all the world. He reaches round Masha to touch my hair.

  ‘Oi! Keep your greasy hands off of her!’ Masha slaps his hand. ‘She’s not a fucking tar barrel that you can get all stuck to her. She’s mine, see. All mine.’ The bottle’s finished. Petya’s on the floor and Slava’s staring at Masha now, like he wants to slap her back, right across her face. ‘C’mon you, c’mon, Sheep,’ she says to me in a distant voice. ‘Back to the Home Front. Back to the dorm. C’mon. I’m fucking getting out of here. I’ve fucking had enough. You’re mine. All mine.’

  And then I think I fall over too …

  Masha decides to cut our hair

  We miss our lessons in the morning, saying we’re sick, which we are. Sick as dogs. But I don’t care a bit because now I know for sure that Slava actually likes me. He kept looking at me all the time, and tried to touch my hair last night. I can’t believe it; I just can’t believe someone like Slava actually likes me. But he must, mustn’t he? Yes. He said my hair was soft. He wasn’t touching Masha’s hair; he was touching mine, and looking at me. I lie in bed with my hands under my head just thinking over and over about what it would feel like if he kissed me on the cheek – like Petya kissed Masha. And if he kissed me, he’d be my boyfriend, and then maybe we could go to his village and meet his mother. At the weekends. And maybe go on a boat on the pond … or maybe …