The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘But that means I can never have sex, never have a baby …’

  ‘I don’t want sex or a yobinny baby, I’ve got one hanging off my side day in, day out. I should never have given in to your nagging.’

  I follow her inside, almost tripping because she’s stomping so fast, but I’m thinking that I don’t believe Zinaida. I don’t think she really knows. But if she doesn’t know, then who does?

  Putting up a propaganda poster on care of Defectives

  I feel like screaming sometimes. No one in the world will tell us anything. No one knows anything about our parents – or if we even have them. Or if we were split in two, or were just two people who fused together somehow. Or if we’ll really die if we have sex. Someone must know.

  But I won’t think about that right now. We’ve got Valentina Alexandrovna as our class teacher. Olessya’s right, she’s the best teacher in the school, she really is. Everyone thinks so, not just me. Masha does too. Me and Masha are helping her put up this banner across the whole of the school. It’s massive; it goes on forever. We’re up a ladder, putting one end up. Well, it’s sort of been put up already, but Masha said it didn’t look straight, so we’re up here straightening it. Uncle Tima, the caretaker, is nervous as a box of cockroaches. He’s standing at the bottom of the ladder with Valentina Alexandrovna, saying he’ll be fired if we fall. The banner says We Are Systematically Perfecting Forms and Methods of Social Care for Defectives. It’s a high ladder, really high actually, and I want to get down. But Masha likes taking risks. I mean, we could fall and smash our skulls, so I’m holding on and she’s banging a nail in with a hammer, but it won’t go in, so she keeps banging and banging. I really don’t think she needs to. The banner looks pretty secure to me. But she wants to, so I just don’t look down.

  ‘You hold on, goose, and I’ll do the man’s work,’ she says. I can’t even talk, I’m so scared, we’re so far up. I can’t even look, I really can’t. I’ll think of something else. I’m good at that.

  Valentina Alexandrovna’s great. She says we can all achieve whatever we want to in life. She’s going to be our class teacher right up until we graduate. We’re her first-ever class and she’s really young for a teacher, maybe twenty? Or twenty-one? She says I can be an accountant because that’s what I want to do now. Masha wants to be a cook, and Valentina Alexandrovna says she can do that too. We’d just have to find time to do everything one by one. She says that just because crayons are broken, it doesn’t mean they can’t colour in. Actually I don’t think we’re broken. We’re just two crayons in one. With different colours each end. And then she said Communism needs every single crayon to form the Great Painting. It’s really exciting. I think I’m going to be better even than the Healthies. I really am. The Best of the Best. I’m the cleverest in class. Cleverer even than Slava now. He wants to be an accountant too. He was saying we could both be accountants on a Collective Farm in the Novocherkassk region. The same Collective Farm. That’s what he said. Masha changes her mind every week about what she wants to do. Yesterday she piped up in class and said that me and her were going to be coal miners and we’d over-fulfil all the quotas because they’d be getting two for the price of one. Everyone laughed at that, even the teacher.

  ‘Stop dreaming, for fuck’s sake!’ Masha pulls at my arm. ‘I said, let’s get down. How can I get down without you?’

  ‘Oh … sorry, sorry, Mash. I was thinking.’

  ‘You’re always thinking. Stop thinking and start moving, otherwise we’ll be up here all night, and Uncle Tima will have our arses for dog food.’

  May 1966

  We go off to Summer Camp, but Slava doesn’t want to come

  ‘Mwaah! It’s like being in Africa today …’ Masha wipes her face, which is all wet with sweat.

  ‘It’s only May, you wait ’til it’s July! Then you’ll be dripping into a puddle,’ says Slava. He rubs the palms of his hands over the cobbles in the courtyard. He has nice hands. I don’t know why, they just are. Brown with white, flat nails.

  ‘Bit stupid that you’re not coming,’ Masha says to him. ‘To Summer Camp.’

  He shrugs.

  He’s not coming. I thought he would be, so I’ve spent ages and ages thinking about what we’d do when we were all alone, us kids, in the woods, in Summer Camp, with the wood fires and the river and swimming and boating and everything. All the kids say that the Educators who are sent to look after us there are drunk most of the time, so you can do what you want. The kids get together and Do It a lot because you’re not watched like you are in school. That’s what they said anyway. We’ve never been before because we get sent off to a Sanatorium in Crimea every summer. We hate it there. It’s for Defectives and it’s by the sea but none of us are allowed down to the beach, of course, and there’s nothing to do there except stupid exercises in the high-walled courtyard. It’s more like a prison camp than a Sanatorium and all the staff there want to do is take photos of themselves sitting with us, one by one, to show their families. So we just stay in our room all the time and play cards or stare out of our window at everyone swimming in the sea. Masha calls it the Crematorium. I don’t even like to think about it. I don’t know why we get sent there instead of Summer Camp, but this year it’s different. Slava always goes to Summer Camp, but this year, the one year we’re being allowed to go, he’s not.

  I don’t want to be sitting here at all, waiting for Slava’s mum to come and get him. We’d all of us been looking forward to Summer Camp like mad, every single day for months, and then Slava said, two days ago, on Tuesday, that his mum and dad wanted him home for summer, so he was going home instead. I don’t care. I really don’t. If he’s stupid enough to want to stay at home with his mum and dad, instead of with us, then I’m not going to be stupid enough to care. That’s what Masha says, and she’s right. She’s always right.

  Anyway, Masha’s so excited about going she’s ready to burst. She wanted Slava to come because he’s a laugh. But she’s got Vanya and Petya and Little Lyuda and all the others. And I’ve got Olessya. She’s coming to camp too. So that’s all right. It’ll be healthy.

  ‘Here’s my mum then,’ says Slava as his mother walks through the gates. They’ve boarded the gates up now, so people can’t see through. His mum waves, but Slava doesn’t look that happy. She runs up and hugs and hugs Slava, and tries not to cry. I look away. Masha spits.

  ‘So, girls,’ she says, looking at us, after all that hugging and trying not to cry, and starts wiping her tears away with her sleeve. ‘I’ve brought you some marmalade sweets.’ I don’t want her stupid, sticky marmalade sweets at all, but I thank her, and she gives them to Masha, telling her to save them. She won’t though. I think marmalade sweets would make me sick. I feel sick just looking at them. ‘Are you looking forward to Summer Camp then, girls?’ Masha’s already eating them and can’t talk as her mouth is all gummy and gooey. It’s going to be ninety-eight days until we get back. I counted.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes. I can’t w-wait.’

  ‘Bye then,’ says Slava. It’s so hot, I can’t even move.

  ‘Bye, Peanut,’ says Masha, with her mouth all full of marmalade. ‘See ya.’

  I don’t even want to look at him. He could have come to Summer Camp if he’d really wanted. He always went before. He could have said to his mum that he’d rather go to Summer Camp with us lot than go back to his stupid village.

  ‘Bye then, Chimp,’ he says, because that’s what he calls her, but he doesn’t move. He might even change his mind, right now, and get on the bus with us instead. I would. I wait. I’m looking down at the cobbles. ‘Bye, Dasha. Have a nice time.’ I just nod and pretend I’m trying to dig one out. One of the cobbles, that is. With my fingernails. I have this great ball in my chest, the one that’s always there somewhere, waiting for the right moment to push up into my throat and make me cry, and if I look up at him, it’ll do it, and I’ll just start crying all over the place. And I won’t do that.

  I don�
��t look at him at all as he goes.

  We get up then. I’d really like to go and find Olessya and talk to her, but Masha doesn’t like me talking to someone else about feelings. I don’t need to talk to Masha about them. She mostly knows how I feel anyway. Without me saying.

  We go off to the place behind the laundry room in the shade, and sit down.

  ‘If he doesn’t want us, we don’t want him,’ says Masha, and tucks my hair back behind my ear.

  I nod, but I can’t talk because the ball has just popped up, and I can’t do anything about it, I start crying like an idiot. Like I’m never, ever going to stop. And Masha just keeps on tucking my hair back behind my ear.

  We take the bus to our Summer Camp by the Don

  ‘Look, look!’ Masha’s bouncing up and down on the front seat of the bus, on the road to Summer Camp. ‘Watermelons! A whole mountain of watermelons! Stop, stop, I want one!’ The bus driver’s used to her telling him to stop every five minutes, and ignores her. Olessya’s sitting behind us with her boyfriend Big Boris and she laughs. I do too. Little Lyuda’s on our lap and she keeps nearly falling off every time Masha bounces, so I’m holding her tight.

  This is the first time we’ve been outside the school since we got here, and everyone’s so happy, it feels like the whole bus is bouncing. I don’t feel that happy, myself, because every kilometre post we pass is leaving Slava further behind, and each one makes me ache more, right down in my stomach.

  The little kids in the back are singing the Pioneer Song, ‘Let there always be Sunshine, Let there always be Blue Skies, Let there always be Mummy, Let there always be Me!’ It’s a stupid song, but they keep on singing it over and over again. It’s driving me mad. Why is every single song for kids about their stupid mummies?

  ‘Look! Look! It’s the Don! I was first to see the River Don!’ says Masha, jumping up and leaning over the driver’s shoulder, tipping Little Lyuda on to the floor. He bats her away. You can’t help being a bit happy though, when Masha is. And the Don looks so beautiful – it’s so big and blue, like the sea in the Crimea. We can see it through clearings in the trees now.

  ‘The camp! There’s our camp!’ she shouts. Everyone crowds to the windows and looks out. There’s this big, white, stone archway that leads along a pink, paved pathway, down to a round flowerbed, just bursting with all sorts of flowers, and in the middle there’s a white statue of a Young Pioneer blowing a bugle. I can make out rows of neat little red-brick blocks in the woods, with red pennants flying on top of them.

  ‘Not yours, love,’ says the driver, swinging the bus past the archway and going on down the road. ‘That’s for the Healthy kids.’

  A few minutes later we turn down a dirt track to a gate with a hand-painted sign, which says Strictly No Entry. There’s an old man in a baggy suit, hung with loads of war medals, sitting outside the gate by a pile of watermelons. He gets up when he sees us, and opens the gates slow as anything. We drive in and stop by a row of low army tents. The Educators are standing around, watching us as we get off – they’re big, fat women chewing sunflower seeds and swatting flies with branches from the pine trees.

  They just sort of look at us, without smiling, as we tumble out.

  ‘Good thing they pay us double for this lot,’ says one, spitting out a husk.

  ‘Come on then, you busload of cripples,’ says another, stepping forward. ‘Let’s get you to work. Davai, davai.’

  Once we’ve put our bags in our tents, they divide us off into groups to go and collect wood for the fire, and bring water for the cauldron from the river, and peel potatoes.

  ‘Yeah, yeah – get to work, everyone! Davai!’ shouts Masha, running off to the woods for sticks. ‘Bags I light the fire!’ The Educators are standing around with their arms folded, shaking their heads a bit, but they’re sort of smiling. I think I’ll be all right. Me and Masha. We’ll be all right.

  June 1966

  Uncle Vova wants to take us to his village and Little Lyuda tells us why she was rejected

  We’ve been here a month now and it’s healthy, even though I can’t stop thinking about Slava and what he’s doing. I still have fun, living in the woods like this and cooking our own food. It makes me feel useful somehow. And we get lessons in the morning and spend the afternoon outside, doing our washing and cleaning and cooking for supper. It’s a very strict regime, like in school, and we’re all fenced in, but we get time to play and pretend stuff, like we’re the Reds hiding from the Cossacks. And although we’re not allowed to swim (Masha’s just desperate to go swimming) we can paddle when the Educators are celebrating something and getting drunk on vodka. They’re always celebrating something, the Educators are.

  They’ve been drinking since lunchtime today, because it’s a Sunday, and they’ve all gone down to the river to paddle, dressed in nothing but their baggy knickers. They don’t think of Defective boys as being real boys.

  ‘C’mon,’ says Masha to me. ‘Let’s go and talk to Uncle Vova by the gate.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to, Masha. They’ll kill us, if they see us.’

  ‘They can’t see anything beyond their saggy tits right now,’ says Masha, and she goes running up the dirt track, and knocks loudly on the wooden gate. Uncle Vova does odd-jobs in the camp like mending things if they’re broken, so Masha always talks to him, because she likes mending things too. We hardly ever meet men. He opens the gate a crack.

  ‘Well, you’re a couple of naughty monkeys, aren’t you?’ he says, when he sees us wriggle through to him. ‘Fancy a slice of watermelon?’

  ‘I fancy ten slices of watermelon,’ says Masha, and he laughs.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he says, after a bit, watching us wiping all the juice off our faces. ‘If you let me take you on my motorbike, in the sidecar, up to my village, I’ll give you all the watermelons you want. Come for just half an hour. They all think I’m lying like the devil back there. I’d show ’em if I turned up with you two in the sidecar. I really would.’

  Masha takes another big bite and nods happily.

  ‘Done then,’ he says, smiling, with all his gold teeth as bright as his medals. ‘Come up next time the grown-ups get drunk, and we’ll be off.’

  ‘But I don’t want to, Masha,’ I say, when we’re back at the camp. We’re so stuffed full of watermelon, we can only lie on our camp bed. I didn’t have half as much as her, but it’s all come down to my side of our tummy somehow and I feel like popping. ‘Everyone will just stare. I don’t like watermelons that much.’

  ‘I do,’ she says.

  ‘Do what?’ says Olessya, coming into the tent with Little Lyuda.

  ‘Uncle Vova says he wants to show us to his villagers,’ I say, all in a sulk.

  ‘Nyetooshki,’ says Olessya, shaking her head. ‘He only wants to exploit you. He’ll probably get them to pay him, for looking at you. And what if he keeps you up there, and the Educators find out? You’ll be sent back to the Crematorium.’

  Masha frowns.

  ‘Don’t, don’t!’ says Little Lyuda, jumping on to her bed, which is pushed next to ours for our legs, like at school. ‘I don’t want you to be sent away!’

  Just then it starts thundering, and there’s this great flash of lightning.

  ‘See, it’s Father Stalin telling you not to,’ says Little Lyuda, and scrambles over to our bed laughing. ‘Let’s tell stories.’

  ‘Tell us about you, if you like,’ says Olessya. ‘You never talk about you.’

  Little Lyuda shrugs. ‘All right. My mum was only sixteen when she had me. I was Healthy as anything, but she had to reject me and send me to a State Baby Home cos she was just a kid herself. I was adopted when I was two years old by this really nice couple in Moscow. He’s an engineer and she’s a doctor.’ The lightning flashes again and we all sort of huddle together.

  ‘They were the ones that named me Lyuda, and they loved me loads. They were really kind. But then, when I was nine, I was playing in a bit of wasteland behind our block of
flats, digging away with a stick, looking for treasure, when I heard this crashing sound and realized the old crumbly wall I was under was giving way. I tried to get away but it all fell on my legs and crushed them. My parents didn’t visit me once in hospital, and when I got better, I was sent to an orphanage. They wrote the Rejection letter to the militia while I was in hospital, but they didn’t write to me. I didn’t even get to go home to say goodbye.’ Her eyes are all white and staring, but she’s not crying or anything. ‘I still write to them though. I’ve been writing for years, telling them what I’m doing, you know. But they haven’t written back.’

  We all just sort of sit around, not saying anything. We’ve all got history.

  ‘Not yet anyway …’ she adds. I know how she feels. I kept writing to my real mummy, right up until we left SNIP. But I don’t any more as there’s no one to send my letters for me. And there’s still no address. In any case, Masha keeps saying Aunty Nadya just put them all in the bin.

  I wonder if it’s better never to have known your mother, like us, and to imagine her, or to have known her, like Olessya and Little Lyuda, and been rejected.

  I can’t quite decide.

  August 1966

  We get the best surprise ever

  Twenty-one days to go.

  Me and Masha are lying on our tummies, on the dock today, doing our washing. I’ve done ours and I’m washing Icy Valya’s too, because she can’t. Masha says I should just let it float away with the current and serve her right.

  It’s August, and so hot, I feel I could melt and drip down into the cool, blue water. I wish Slava was lying here with us. I think about him as much as ever, maybe even more now he’s not here, which sort of makes up for it. Every time the thought of him comes into my head my stomach flips, every single time. Masha’s used to it now. She doesn’t know what’s causing it but she says it’s like me hiccupping inside. She thinks I’ve got never-ending tummy hiccups.