The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  He’s not coming to Summer Camp this year either. He wants to, but his mum won’t let him again. She says he needs some extra looking after. But he’s staying on at school until we leave, even though it’s summer holidays now. He wants to be with me as long as possible.

  We keep on all sitting there in the sun on the ramp, not talking. ‘So … where will you g-go then, Olessya?’ I ask, after we’ve been sitting for ages. She’s leaving on Friday. That’s in three days.

  ‘I’m going back to Moscow. The Ministry of Protection’s assigning me to some Home for Old People for the rest of my life. I can’t even choose which one. I got top marks. I got the best diploma … I tried so hard … I thought … I believed …’ She shakes her head and balls her fists up tight like grenades.

  There’s a kids’ choir singing now on the radio. Everyone on the planet should laugh with the children, should laugh with the children, everyone on the planet should be friends, they should! They should! They should!

  ‘Turn it off, Slavochka,’ says Olessya wearily. He leans over and switches it off. I look around at Big Boris and Sunny Nina and Little Lyuda. ‘What about you three?’

  ‘We’re all being sent to a Home here in Novocherkassk,’ says Lyuda in the smallest voice ever. ‘The green bus is coming for us tomorrow. To take us away. They said not to bother to pack. But I will. I’ll pack just in case.’

  ‘Well. Come back and visit us,’ says Masha. ‘If you’re going to be living here in town. Come back and visit.’

  ‘Yeah. Class of ’68. Don’t forget us, will you, eh?’ says Big Boris. He picks up a twig and throws it at the wall. ‘Don’t forget us while you’re here, playing in the orchestra, and dancing, and swotting like crazy for your yobinny diplomas. Write about us in your memoirs.’

  We sit around on the ramp after that, still not really talking, then Masha says it’s too hot and picks up her crutch and goes in.

  ‘Well, I’m not staying locked away in some stuffy, boring asylum doing nothing all my life,’ she says, as we walk back to the dorm. My heart goes cold. I can’t leave Slava. Not ever. We’ve got another year here. I won’t mention staying with him in his village after we graduate. Not yet. I’ve got a whole year left to soften her up.

  ‘At least we have another year of school. Things might change, Mashinka.’

  ‘Another year of school!’ She spits on the floor. ‘What’s the point of studying if we can never work?’

  ‘They might change the rules on Defectives again. Or Brezhnev might die.’

  ‘I’m not staying in a school where everyone’s a hateful pizdyets waiting for Brezhnev to die. Nyetooshki. I’m off.’

  ‘What?!’ I stop and tug her back. ‘What do you mean – off? We need to graduate, Masha. We can’t leave. We need to get our diploma.’

  ‘Why do you need your yobinny diploma now? It’s all a stupid fucking lie. Everyone’s been shitting themselves trying to pass exams – you’re a nervous wreck by the time it comes to sitting them – and what for? Tell me that? What fucking for?’

  ‘We can’t just go,’ I say stupidly.

  ‘We can. If I want to.’

  ‘No!’ I start pulling at her sleeve. ‘No! We can’t! I won’t!’ I’m shouting at her, and she stares at me like I’ve gone mad. ‘I won’t go. I won’t leave Slava!’

  ‘Slava?’ She turns and looks hard at me. ‘What’s Slava to you? Eh?’ I just stand there, panting. ‘Olessya left Big Boris, didn’t she? And Sunny Nina left Vanya. Everyone leaves each other. What’s so special about you and Peanut?’

  ‘I won’t leave him, Masha. You can’t make me.’ I shouldn’t have said that. I knew it as soon as it spilt out.

  ‘What?! Why? Have you gone and fallen in love or something?’ Her eyes start going black. ‘With Peanut? Nyet, nyet, nyet.’ She shakes her head slowly, still looking at me like that snake in the zoo did, and then she grabs my upper arm so tight it hurts. ‘I told you, I told you, didn’t I? You can mess around a bit, but you’re never to fall in love with anyone. I should never have let him kiss you, I knew I shouldn’t. I’ll kill him! I’ll kill you!’

  ‘No, Masha, no! … You’ve … you’ve got it all wrong.’ I hold her arm too, so our two arms are wound together. ‘All wrong.’ Quick! Think! Think! ‘It’s not that. I haven’t fallen in love. He’s just … he’s fun; you think he’s fun too … I like hanging round him, is all. The kissing’s just a laugh. Everyone kisses.’ Think! Think! Don’t let her know what I’m thinking. ‘When I said I won’t leave Slava, all I mean is that the three of us are having a laugh. That’s all.’ She keeps looking me in the eye like I’m still crazy or something, but after a bit, she slowly releases my arm.

  ‘All right, c’mon then, but just remember – me and you are what it’s all about.’

  ‘Yes, Mash.’

  ‘Just me and you.’

  Not going on the end-of-term trip

  I’ll have to wait, that’s all. She’ll come around to the idea of me and Slava in a year. Just as long as I can keep her here. I wish the other kids were nicer to her, but they don’t like her chortik. That’s what Mummy used to call the Little Devil that rises up inside her when she’s angry and takes her over. It’s when her eyes go black as if there really is the shadow of a devil passing inside her head. It scares me.

  I won’t think of that. This morning is the day of the end-of-term school trip. We have it every summer and we all love it. Last year we drove along the banks of the River Tuzlov, and watched the swans flying over the golden-domed churches. It was all like something out of a real Russian fairy tale. We always sit next to Slava. Everyone’s already on the bus when we go running up to it, because I had to wash our nappies, so we’re a bit late, and when we clamber on, we see he’s saved a seat at the back for us. He’s got himself on the right side of the bus, which means I’m the one pressed up against him. We sit down and wait for the bus to start. Everyone’s so excited, it’s like a real holiday.

  ‘Nyet.’ Mikhail Ivanovich, the driver, is standing at the front and pointing at us. ‘You can’t sit in one seat when there’s two of you.’ He only came to work here a few months ago, but he doesn’t like us. That’s what happens. Some people just like us, and some people just don’t. Masha says it’s their problem, not ours.

  ‘B-but we always sit on one s-seat.’

  ‘Not with me you don’t.’

  Icy Valya’s at the front and she starts tittering into her friend’s shoulder. Then her friend starts tittering, and soon the whole little bus is laughing at us.

  The driver smiles. ‘Right, anyone offering to give up their seat for these two beauties?’ He knows they won’t.

  ‘I will,’ says Slava, and starts to get off his seat, but I push him back down and Masha’s so angry she doesn’t even want to go any more. We stand up slowly, and walk back down the aisle of the bus, past everyone, all watching us, and get off.

  When the bus has driven off, we walk straight to the empty Hall for Extra-Curricular Activities without saying a word. We go into the middle of it, hold each other’s arms and dance slowly round and round. Without a word, without music. We just dance.

  1 June 1968

  We hear what happened to our school friends who graduated

  ‘There’s nothing to do here. Let’s go and sit with Valentina Alexandrovna,’ says Masha, throwing the blanket off our bed and climbing out. It’s strange seeing Little Lyuda’s bed next to ours, all empty now. And Olessya’s and Sunny Nina’s empty too. The others are back from the school trip and are all yapping at the other end of the dorm about what they saw, as if it’s the most amazing trip they’ve ever been on or something.

  ‘OK, Mash,’ I say. I like it when Valentina Alexandrovna tells us about her boyfriend (he’s called Slava too), who’s an engineer in the Locomotive Factory, and how they go out at weekends to his parents’ dacha, and play with their dog Tima, or walk down to Baba Kira who keeps a cow to drink the fresh milk. ‘Foo!’ Masha had said. ‘Milk straight fr
om a cow’s tits!’ Valentina Alexandrovna had laughed at that, and said it was all warm and frothy.

  We knock on her door. There’s no reply but we can see a light from a crack under the door and there’s a strange noise coming from inside.

  ‘Go on, open it,’ says Masha.

  ‘We can’t just barge in, I’ll knock again.’ There’s still no reply so Masha goes and opens the door a crack and tells me to poke my head around. She’s sitting at her desk with only the table lamp on, leaning over awkwardly with her head bent. I think she’s crying.

  ‘What is it?’ whispers Masha and pushes the door open some more so she can see too. Valentina Alexandrovna looks up then, and sees us.

  ‘Girls! Oh, girls!’

  She says it like her heart’s breaking in two, so we take a step back into the shadows. It’s scary.

  ‘Come in, come in!’ She gets up then, and comes walking, well maybe more staggering really, over to us, with her arms open, and hugs us so tight she almost knocks us clean over. She smells strongly of sweet cherries. She said Baba Kira made her own cherry liqueur infusion … is she drunk? She can’t be. Nice, educated, intelligent women don’t get drunk.

  We all kind of stagger over together to her desk, because she’s still clinging on to us, then she sits down with a thump in our armchair and puts her hands over her face.

  ‘I saw them, girls, I went to visit …’ Her voice is muffled, but me and Masha can hear anything when we want to. ‘I wanted to see if they needed anything. The guard wouldn’t let me through the gates. He said I needed a special pass from the Ministry of Social Protection. It took me three weeks to get it and by then I was too late … too late …’ She starts crying again. She just can’t stop.

  ‘Too late for what?’ says Masha, getting up and shaking her by the shoulder. ‘Too late for what?’

  ‘Oh, girls, girls, it’s not a Home at all, it’s an Asylum for the Unwanted. The conditions there … like a Madhouse … the stench, metal beds crammed into small rooms, excrement, people lying on the floor, the elderly there starve to death, and the wailing, the wailing, it’s hell in there … the staff are little more than beasts … they beat them for nothing, I saw them, they don’t feed those who can’t feed themselves, so they’re skeletons … death is everywhere …’ She keeps sobbing, and talking, and then sobbing again. Her face is all blotchy and puffy.

  ‘Little Lyuda, our Little Lyuda, must have known somehow, or suspected. She took a bottle of insecticide with her from our storeroom … I found her alone in agony. It took her twenty-four hours to die, my Little Lyuda … Little Lyuda … the Director refused to have her hospitalized. He said she’d just keep on trying, so best to let her go first time. That’s what he said: “Let the little poppet go first time.”’

  We don’t move, me and Masha. We can’t move. I feel dead with shock.

  ‘I got them to call her mother in Moscow, the one who adopted her before she had her accident. She flew down the next morning, she was weeping over her and pulling out her hair, saying: How could you punish me like this, Lyudochka? How could you punish me? And all Lyuda could say was: I didn’t want to live in a world without love. It’s not so terrible to die among strangers. That’s what she said. And her mother wept even more, and said she did love her, she said she’d always loved her, and had always missed her so much it broke her heart, which is why she cut off all contact. But it was too late to save her then. Oh, girls! Girls! What have we done?’ She looks up at us with her eyes all smudged and wild like she’s been possessed. ‘What have we done?’

  Masha and I take a step back.

  ‘I had no idea … no idea …’ she goes on, babbling like she’s mad. ‘The other teachers here, they didn’t say, they don’t talk about it … they’ve never visited … Aaakh, Sunny Nina, pretty blonde little Nina, she hanged herself from the window latch with her belt. Boris has gone, he escaped somehow, but if they catch him – and they will – he’ll be sent to a prison for invalids … I had no idea … the other teachers suspect, but they don’t go and see for themselves because they only want what’s best for you, girls, they want to believe it’s all for the best … Are we wrong? Aaakh! Are we wrong?’

  We take another step back, and then turn and just run like mad, out of the room. We run and run, our crutches clattering on the wooden floor, leaving the sound of her crying behind. We run out into the courtyard and around the walls of the courtyard, until we get to the closed gate. And then there’s nowhere else to run, so we climb down to the cobbler’s cellar, and sit down with a thump on the floor among the sawdust and leather cut-offs, panting. I look at Masha. Her eyes are glassy, like she’s not seeing anything. And then I start crying, like I’ll never stop, bent over forward with my head in the sawdust. While Masha just sits very still and stares at the wall.

  We tell Slava about the others and that everything was a lie, then we get drunk

  The next morning the bell goes and we get up, just like we always do. We get washed, I scrub our nappy clean and hang it up. Just like I always do. We go to breakfast and we eat our curds and whey. Slava looks across the table at us. He knows something’s happened.

  When we go out, Masha and me sit under the pear tree.

  ‘So shall we tell anyone?’ asks Masha. ‘About what happened? What it’s like when you leave here?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. They’re right. We don’t need to know … they’re right …’

  Slava comes out of the breakfast room and looks over at us. ‘Except Slava,’ I say. ‘He’s our best friend and he’s got family. He won’t have to go there.’ What I’m really thinking is, he won’t let me go anywhere like that either. He’ll want me to stay with him, in his village, where there are ducks and hens and cows, which give warm, frothy milk straight from their udders. I’ll cook and clean for his family, I’ll …

  ‘Hey, girls. What’s happened?’

  ‘Slava,’ we say together. He sits down and then I tell him everything, just like Valentina Alexandrovna did. When I’ve finished, his expression hasn’t changed.

  ‘We need vodka,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘Get us some vodka.’

  Me and Masha get up then, and walk down to the kitchens.

  ‘Morning, girlies! What have you two come to scrounge today?’ Aunty Shura is fat and greasy and smells of cabbage, but she always gets us a bottle in exchange for letting some of the townspeople come and look at us. We don’t do it often. Masha’s always ill after we drink, and I only do it so Slava and I can kiss a bit without her minding. We’ve never had sex again though. Masha hasn’t been drunk enough. The townspeople pay Aunty Shura to see us and she spends some of it to buy us cheap cigarettes or vodka, and keeps the rest for herself. An hour later, we’re in the cold pantry, stripped to our pants and vest, with three of Shura’s clients circling us. They want to see everything, so we keep undressing down to nothing, but it only takes ten minutes and Aunty Shura is always there and won’t let them touch us. She looks after us. Masha always says that if Ronnie and Donnie, the American twins, can get people to give them hundreds of American dollars to look at them, why shouldn’t we get a bottle of Russian vodka?

  We get dressed afterwards and walk out, with the bottle tucked under my shirt.

  ‘What about Olessya?’ I say.

  ‘What about her? She never liked us doing this, but she’s not here to slap our wrists now, is she?’

  ‘No. I mean we must get Aunty Nadya to find out where she is. Make sure it’s not like the place here. Olessya hasn’t written, and she said she would.’

  ‘Aunty Nadya can’t save everyone. She’s ours.’

  I sigh. Sometimes I just want to take her head in my hands and squeeze and squeeze until it cracks like a nut and let some pity for other people seep in. I worry so much about Olessya and Masha doesn’t worry at all. I’ll ask Aunty Nadya anyway, I’ll just come out with it, then Masha can’t stop me. Masha can’t read my mind.

  Slava’s waiting for us and we go down to the cobble
r’s cellar. He puts his transistor radio on the floor and turns the volume up. It’s the Red Army Choir singing a marching song. He takes the first swig. ‘To Big Boris, wherever he is,’ he says.

  I take the next gulp, screwing up my eyes and fighting down nausea.

  ‘To Sunny Nina,’ I say. And then I take another small swig and say, ‘To Little Lyuda.’

  ‘To us!’ says Slava loudly, over the music, as I hand the bottle back to him.

  ‘To survival!’ says Masha, even louder, taking the bottle and handing it to me. ‘To winning!’

  ‘To life!’ I take another gulp.

  ‘To love!’ Slava has a gulp.

  ‘To forgetting …’ My gulp.

  ‘To Dashinkaaaa!’ Slava has another long swig.

  And then he leans in to me. But we’re not drunk enough yet. The bottle’s only half-empty. It won’t have properly reached Masha and we need a double dose to his single one. He usually understands that …

  ‘Dashinkaaa,’ he whispers in my ear. He’s grasping my knee tightly as if he’s drowning and I’m a life raft. ‘To life and love …’ I can hardly hear him ‘… seize it while you can …’

  Masha leans over and pushes him off.

  ‘Whadjuh do that for …’ he says, trying to focus on her and frowning. ‘Leave us alone.’