‘Hey, you!’ Masha’s sitting up and kicking my leg. ‘Get up.’
I manage to get myself up, and sit on the edge of the bed. My head’s still going round and round. It’s so strange. She opens our side cupboard and takes out some blunt scissors she found in the skip. She’s got all sorts of stuff from the skip in there, like bent needles and glue pots and leather cut-offs from the cobbler’s workshop. Or old nail varnish which she can’t open.
But now she just wants the scissors.
‘C’mon.’
‘Where are we going, Mash?’
‘You’ll see.’ We go down all the dark corridors because there’s still no electricity, and out into the courtyard. She makes for the secret place where we meet Olessya behind the laundry room, but Olessya’s not there. No one’s there.
‘Stand still,’ she says, and gives me the scissors. ‘You cut my hair off and then I’ll cut yours. Cut it short though, like a boy. It gets in the way.’ She shoves the scissors into my hand but I just stand staring at her, not understanding a thing. Why? ‘Well, go on then, start cutting,’ she says, all sharp and sniffy. ‘Really short.’ I look at the scissors in my hand, as if they’re a knife or something, and she’s asked me to saw us in half. I can’t let her cut off my hair. It’s all long and dark and silky, and Masha brushes it for me, or plaits it, and then I plait hers. I love my hair. Slava loves it. I can’t.
‘Davai!’ she says angrily. ‘Go on!’
I lift my hand and start cutting. Snip, snip. With every cut I tell myself over and over that she’s right. Masha’s always right. We spend ages washing and brushing it. I don’t know what I’d do without Mashinka. Snip. It’s thanks to her that we’re here and not buried in a hospital ward all our lives. Snip. It’s always getting knotted anyway. Snip. I cut right down at the roots, so it’s all sticking up. She runs her hand over her head, then nods.
‘OK. Now you.’ I bow my head as she starts cutting. I watch all my shiny hair fall silently over our feet, and my stupid tears fall silently too, and make it even shinier. When she’s finished, she blows in my face but the hair’s all stuck to my wet cheeks, so she wipes it off with the palm of her hand, then she wipes my nose with her sleeve. She pushes all our hair under the fence, with the tip of her boot, and we go into the food hall for lunch.
Everyone goes all quiet when we walk in. Olessya opens her mouth and then closes it again. ‘What?’ says Slava, and shakes his head a bit, like he can’t believe his eyes. As if my hair was the only thing he liked about me. And it probably was. ‘What …?’ he half asks again.
Masha looks at me quickly, waiting for me to speak. ‘It g-got in the way,’ I explain. ‘So we decided to c-cut it short.’
Age 15
Spring 1965
We see other identical twins and Slava writes an essay about me
It turned out Slava didn’t mind at all. He said it showed off my face, neck and ears.
‘What about my ears, Peanut?’ Masha had said. ‘If hers are little seashells, what are mine? Sea monsters?’
‘Yeah, yours are great big conches, which hear every wicked whisper. Your ears are scary.’ They have this banter back and forth, him and Masha. I’m glad, because if she doesn’t like someone, we don’t go near them, but Slava jokes with her all the time. He still hasn’t kissed me, or tried to touch me, and it’s spring now. But he looks at me. He looks at me like he’s trying to talk to me just through his eyes. Perhaps he doesn’t try to do anything more, like kiss me, because he knows that Masha might get angry again, and then we wouldn’t be able to hang out together at all. So it’s been six months since we got drunk that time, and we haven’t got drunk since. Masha started running around with Vanya after that, but he’s a Reject. He doesn’t have any money for wine.
We’re hanging over the wall now, which runs all round the school, looking into a neighbour’s back yard where this little girl, Manya, lives. She’s only six, but we lie here when it’s warm, watching her play, like two salted fish laid out to dry. Manya chatters to us all the time when she comes out, so we’re just waiting to see if she’ll be out today. She can’t see we’re Together. She tells us about all these crazy things, like how she has a dragon inside the house, who’s a pet but hides in a cupboard, and how the dragon taught her how to do a magic whistle, which brings all the little lizards out of their cracks to listen. She says there’s hundreds of them, all different colours and sizes, who come wriggling out when she does this whistle. But when Masha asked her to show us, she said the dragon would burn the house down with fire if she did.
We’ve both got our cheeks on the warm wall. It’s nice to be warm after the winter. There wasn’t any snow, but it was colder than in SNIP, because quite a lot of the time the heating or hot water went off so we froze like blue icicles in our bed.
I don’t know what Masha’s thinking about, I never do – maybe she doesn’t think about much at all – but I’m thinking about Slava’s essay. I think about that a lot when Masha’s not talking or running. It was in our Russian class. We were asked to write an essay called My Best Friend. I wrote about Olessya. I wrote that she likes me and understands me, and seems to know things about me I hardly know myself. She knows what I’m thinking when even Masha doesn’t. Masha wrote about Vanya, who can run like a rat. She didn’t write that he scrumps apples from the neighbours’ garden for her, and got bitten on his bottom by their dog once. Everyone thinks he’s got rabies now and keeps away. Except Masha. We’re not supposed to go over the wall, but Vanya does. When the teacher pointed to Slava, he said his essay was about Dasha Krivoshlyapova. I couldn’t believe it, I really couldn’t. I think I know it pretty much by heart from that one reading in class.
Dasha Krivoshlyapova is my best friend. She is clever and studies very diligently in order to get her school diploma and thus be able to work with all other citizens of the Soviet Union to build Communism. Dasha is not only very bright and hard working, but she is kind and thoughtful too. She irons the pinafores of girls who have no arms. She helps other girls make their beds in her dorm, and she always cleans up after class and wipes the board without being asked. She does everything she can to help anyone. Dasha never has a bad word to say about anybody, and she never quarrels with anyone or gets involved in gossip, denunciations or rumours. This is because I believe she is incapable of being unkind to anyone. Why? Because she always understands how other people feel, whatever that person’s situation is, and she sympathizes with them and finds a way to admire and respect them. Dasha Krivoshlyapova is the best person I know. That is why she’s my best friend.
He put his piece of paper down after he’d read it and there was silence in the room. I thought they were all going to laugh, I really did. I thought Masha would be the first to start laughing. But she didn’t and they didn’t either. After what seemed like ages, they started smiling and nodding and even clapping in the end. That was the best moment of my life. It really was. Slava never actually says anything nice to me. Not actually anything nice to my face. Not ever. I still can’t believe it. I wanted to ask him if I could keep it, but Masha said that would be stupid, and she’s probably right.
I thought Masha might be cross, as it was all about me, but she had three of the boys in our class dedicate their essays to her, and I only had this one. Besides, Masha’s just been voted Class Leader and she’s been on the Most Popular Pupil of the Week board in the school’s Lenin Corner for three weeks in a row. Everyone think she’s so funny. And she is.
After the lesson, as we were going out, I said, ‘Thanks, Slava,’ because I thought I should say something, and he just sort of shrugged.
‘Hey, Manya! Cuckoo!’ Masha’s waving at Manya, who’s come out with her little pram, with a dolly in it.
‘I’ve got friends today,’ she says proudly. ‘I’ve got friends who are twins like you two. They look just the same. They’re Denticles too.’
‘What’s Denticles?’ asks Masha.
‘Foo! Denticles is when you loo
k the same. Even I know that.’
Her mum comes out and shouts at her to stop talking to us. Her mum doesn’t look at us, she just goes back in, and then two little girls come out pushing prams too. One each. They follow each other down the grass path, in between the rows of vegetables. One of them stops and takes a pretend bottle out, to feed her dolly, and the other one walks on. I know Masha’s thinking the same as me. She thought that Denticles would be twins who were Together like us. They look the same as each other. But they’ve got a whole body each, not a shared one.
They’re dressed the same too, like me and Masha. I wonder if they got separated? How can you have two people looking like one person? It’s amazing.
I stare and stare at them walking up and down different paths, with their prams.
‘Masha, can’t we ask someone why we’re Together and not apart like them? I mean, ask a grown-up?’
Masha doesn’t look at me. ‘Why? We just are. You’re not going to change anything by asking are you?’
‘But don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to know if loads of people are born Together, or only us? Or is it only one in each country, like Ronnie and Donnie in Amerika? And if it’s only us, then why?’
She shrugs and wipes her nose. ‘Not going to make us single, is it? Not like them.’ She nods at the twins, who are in different parts of the garden now.
I suck my bottom lip while I’m thinking. There are lots of Polio or Palsy or Sclerosis kids, but no other Togethers. The senior kids are all Doing It with each other. I don’t really know what ‘Doing It’ means, to be honest, except it’s more than kissing and it’s nyelzya, but it’s the best fun you can ever have. And you can get babies from it. Olessya says Mila was sent off to the San to get rid of her baby and never came back. She didn’t know why. Maybe she died.
‘But, Mash, don’t you want to know if you and me … if you and me can Do It like the others do, and have babies? Can’t we ask someone?’
It comes out in a rush because I’ve been thinking about it loads, but Masha doesn’t talk about stuff like that. She thinks boys are much better fun than girls, but only because she runs with them, and swears, and smokes and jokes like they do, and she says girls are gossipy, boring geese like me. I like girls better, mostly. Like Olessya and Little Lyuda and Sunny Nina. And I only like one boy. I want to get married like everyone does, and push my baby in a pram. But if I can have babies, will they be Together too? Are we like a breed or something? Is that why Anokhin said we should marry Ronnie and Donnie? I don’t want to marry one of them. I want to marry Slava.
‘Foo! I’m not Doing It with anyone, ever!’ She spits over the wall in disgust.
‘Well, we might want to, Masha, some day. We can ask, that’s all …’
‘Who’re you going to ask? High and mighty Anokhin? Might as well try and call the Queen of England.’
‘How about Zinaida, the School Nurse? She’s young and not stuffy. She’ll tell us.’
Masha watches the three kids all getting their dollies out of their prams and giving them bottles in the sunshine. She shrugs again.
‘Yeah, could do. But don’t stutter. You make us sound like a couple of morons.’
It starts raining then. Just warm little drops now and then, but the kids all scream and run into the house, leaving their dollies behind. Me and Masha drop down off the wall and look up at the sky. The raindrops splish on our faces and into our open mouths and Masha laughs and grabs me, and we go dancing round and round in the rain like mad things, dancing round and round and round with our mouths open, catching the rain together.
Age 16
April 1966
We finally ask our School Nurse if we can have sex and get pregnant
It’s taken me exactly one year to work up the courage to do it.
I’m so embarrassed I want to curl up and die, but I’ve asked everyone else I can think of. Olessya said whether or not we can conceive and give birth is a medical question, but she didn’t see why we couldn’t have sex. Masha was so disgusted by that idea she got up and walked right off. But how does she think we’re going to have children if we don’t have sex? I keep telling her it would be me down there, not her, because we’ve got one pizdyets each, but she still shudders at the thought. And I tremble at the thought. I tremble whenever Slava so much as looks at me, let alone touches me, let alone …
‘Well, we’ve run out of people to ask,’ says Masha. We’re standing in front of the shiny green medical room door. ‘Aunty Nadya looked like she’d swallowed an elephant when you asked her …’ Aunty Nadya comes down to visit us every year and bring us food parcels. She just sniffed when she first saw our short, spiky hair and said, ‘Teenagers will be teenagers. No accounting for taste.’ But when I asked her if we could ever have children, she got so angry she stormed out of the room and slammed the door on us. I can still hear it slamming.
‘She still sees us as children,’ I say.
I do feel terrible though, for asking her. That’s why I’m so nervous now.
‘So, the only person to ask is the nurse.’
‘Da-oosh.’ I take a deep breath and knock on her door.
‘Come in! Oh, it’s you two. OK, sit down.’ Zinaida points to a chair. She’s perched on the front of her desk, dressed in her white coat, painting her nails red. I wish I could paint my nails red too, but I keep chewing them, so they’re only stubs. Masha’s nails are long as anything. Good for scratching people in the eyes, she says.
Zinaida’s hair’s all piled up, like it’s tangled in a great big bun. Like spiders’ webs. You do it with a comb, Olessya says, pushing and pushing your hair back up so it looks all big and thick. I wish I could do that too. She reaches for a pack of Zenit cigarettes and lights one up. I don’t like the smell of smoke, but it’s better than horrible surgical spirits, which is what this clinic smells of. That just made me want to be sick when we walked in.
She’s got shiny tights, not woolly ones, and high heels. She swings one leg while she puffs smoke at us.
‘If you want another sick note, Masha, it’ll have to be cholera or leprosy you’ve got. I’m not doing ’flu any more. I know you sit on the radiators to bring your temperature up.’
‘Dysentery?’ asks Masha with her head on one side. ‘The pox?’
Zinaida looks at her watch. ‘Well, I can’t sit here wasting my time,’ she says.
‘W-we w-wanted to ask you s-something.’ She looks at me and raises a pencil eyebrow.
I can hear the first-year kids in the Hall for Extra-Curricular Activities, practising a song in English, for International Women’s Day. The window’s open, so we can hear them clear as anything. My dear, dear Mummy, I Love you Very Much. I want you to be Happy, on the eighth of March. Masha’s looking up at the ceiling and sniffing. She’s waiting for me to say it.
‘Zinaida. We’re sixteen now and w-we w-wanted to know why we’re not having a period like all the others? And C-c-can we have intimate relations? And, and, and, can we have a b-baby? Ever?’
Zinaida forgets her cigarette. It just burns down slowly while she stares at us, sticking to her red lip, in her open mouth with the ash dropping off it. The kids are still singing. Be happy, be happy, on the eighth of March!
She kind of wakes up then, and takes her cigarette out, stabbing it on the desk. Stab. Stab. She looks at us, then stabs again. Then she says:
‘Look at yourselves!’
‘There aren’t any mirrors in school,’ snaps Masha grumpily. This isn’t the answer we wanted.
‘No, I mean just look at yourselves. It’s, it’s … impossible.’
‘Why, why? What p-part’s imp-possible?’ I say.
She stands up, goes round to the back of her desk and sits down with a thump.
‘Every part. It shouldn’t even enter your head … heads.’
‘B-but why?’
‘Why? Why?! Well, if you don’t know yourselves …’
‘W-we don’t.’
‘That’s
why we came to you,’ says Masha. ‘Stupid idea.’
‘W-why though, why?’ I insist, feeling Masha getting up to go. I have to know. I have to.
‘Because … because …’ She looks wildly around the room, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. ‘Because … you’d bleed to death, that’s why. That’s what would happen. And then I’d be for it, for telling you it’s all right.’
‘Why would w-we b-bleed to d-death?’
‘I don’t know! You just can’t have sex, you can’t. You’re not … like everyone else. You can’t!’ She’s pacing around the room now, all upset. Then she comes to a stop in front of us, shakes her head and says again, but this time to me, in a low voice, ‘Look at you.’
‘Right,’ says Masha, all angry, tugging at me. ‘Thanks for that, I look at her all the time. Great advice. C’mon, you, let’s get out of here.’
She gets up then and we walk out. Masha’s furious.
‘Told you not ask,’ she says, ignoring the hoots from the gate as we cross the courtyard. ‘You and your stupid questions.’
‘What makes her think that just because we’re Defectives we can’t fall in love or feel passion and make love? That’s what she was saying, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Mash?’
‘She was saying we’d die if we did. That’s what she was saying, and she’s the nurse so you can stop your mooning about love right now. You wanted an answer and you got an answer.’
The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep Page 14