‘You leave her alone, moodak. Have you no respect for the fucking dead?’ He sits back and takes another wobbly swig. Masha sniffs, then tips my arm to get me to drink as well. More and more. I feel the vodka swilling through my veins and mashing up my brain, taking away the pain. I can feel his warm hand on my back too, under my shirt, I can smell him. God, I wish we were alone. I want to live. I want to have him … just once, just once before I die … alone … and with him and forget …
Kryaaaak! Masha smashes him in the face with her fist and he goes flying on to the floor. ‘Fuck off, pizdyets!’ she screams. The marching music bangs on victoriously as he lies there on his back, not moving. We both stare at him. Then slowly he sits up. His eyes are blazing, black and angry. He’s going to hit her back. I really think he’s going to hit her back. He’s swaying, or maybe it’s me that’s swaying. None of us say anything, and then finally, after what seems like hours, the music ends with a triumphant clash and he says in a slow, horribly quiet voice:
‘What have you done?’
I go cold all over.
‘What’ve I done?’ yells Masha. ‘Me? You mean what’ve you done?! Keep your dirty black hands off my sister, you hear? She’s mine, all mine, my sheep, my slave. All mine!’
Then he speaks again in that whispery, crazy cold voice. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, d’you? Nyet. You don’t know what you’re doing to us, d’you? The three of us? Because you don’t know shit, Masha Krivoshlyapova. We’re in this t’gether, see. We’re all fucked, and we may all stay fucked, and there’s no time … no time … but there’r still things thad make life worth living. Bud you can’t see it can you, you selfish, psychopathic bitch.’
‘No! P-Please! P-Please don’t, Slava!’ I hold both hands out to him trying to get him to stop talking, to stop saying things that will mean we can never be together. If he does, then this is the end.
‘And you …’ He turns to me, his eyes glittering like he has his own chortik. ‘You’re weak, a feather, you won’t stand ub to her, nodeven for me. Nodever. Will ya? Will ya?’ He glares at me like he hates me.
I look at Masha, who’s white with rage, and then back at him, who’s black with rage. I’m shaking all over.
‘I c-can’t …’ I stutter.
‘You can!’ he shouts. ‘Do it now! Do it! Do it for me, do it for you, do it for us! Stand up to her!’
Masha’s getting up. She reaches for her crutch so I reach for mine, automatically, and we almost fall over backwards. I can’t look at him. I can’t do it. He must understand that. I can’t force Masha to let him and me be together. I can’t force Masha to do anything. She’s the strong one. She’s in control. He’s right, I’m weak. A feather blown in the wind. I’m scared of her. I can’t suddenly stop doing what I’ve been doing all my life – doesn’t he understand that? ‘Slava … p-please, Slavochka …’ I say and reach out to him again, but Masha tugs me back.
He grabs the bottle off the floor by the neck like he wants to throttle it.
‘Go’way then, Dasha,’ he says. ‘Just get out of my life.’ Then he tips it up, drinks it to the dregs, and the last thing I hear as we go up the steps is it smashing against the wall.
I make an important decision
We go back to bed. Masha’s banging her crutch around, trying to break everything. She realizes we’ve lost our last friend here in the school and she blames me. I lie back. The room’s going round and round but I can hear her, the other end of the bed, still raging.
‘I’m not staying in this fucking place with these blyadi. I’m gonna call Aunty Nadya and she’ll come as soon as she can and take us back to Moscow. I’m out of here. I’m leaving this shit-hole and all the arseholes in it. We’ll go back to live in SNIP, you can say goodbye to your yobinny sprat of a lover. You can say goodbye, that’s what you can do.’
But I already have, or rather he has. And now I know what I’m going to do. I knew the moment he told me in that cold voice to get out of his life. I knew as we were falling all over the courtyard and up the stairs to our dorm. I know now, clear as a bell what to do.
It’s just a question of how.
I decide to hang myself
The next morning is sunny. Good. We can put the washing out on the line, standing on the upturned washing basket. I’ve got it all worked out. I’m going to hang myself. Just like Sunny Nina did. Well not just like her. Not from a window latch with a belt. I’m going to do it with the washing line, which we knot around a branch of the pear tree. Slava told me once that one of the other girls did it, before we came: she hung herself from the pear tree. No one knows why. She came out at night with a rope but I can’t do it at night, because Masha mustn’t suspect anything.
‘Not eating?’ she points at my bowl of buckwheat porridge.
‘No. Not hungry. You eat it.’
She does, without asking any more questions, and then we go out into the courtyard. Slava’s sitting there under the pear tree with Anyootka. Their dark heads are bent together over a book of poetry, and as we walk past, I see that it’s Pasternak. That should hurt, but strangely it doesn’t matter. It’s as if I’m so sad I couldn’t get any sadder. I’m just looking forward to stopping it all by dying. I’m looking forward to feeling nothing, ever again. He doesn’t look up at us. Good. That makes it easier. We walk to the laundry room. It’s our turn on the rota. They like to teach us how to cook and clean in school so we can be independent.
‘We’re well rid of the little rat,’ says Masha. ‘Sitting there with his next morsel, on the grass. See how much he cared for you?’ She snaps her fingers in my face. ‘This is how much. We’ll find a job in SNIP, that’s what we’ll do. In Moscow. We’re special, we are. Not like these morons. We’ll start again.’ She looks across at me, and I nod, feeling dead already.
Maybe Masha will be all right when I kill myself. It’s only my neck that will break. They’ll probably just amputate me, like they did our leg. They’ll give her another prosthetic leg in SNIP instead of mine, that’s what they’ll do. And if she isn’t all right … well I don’t care. I won’t know. I hate her.
It was quick, apparently. That’s what Slava said, when this girl hung herself. Snap. Like falling under a train. Or a bullet through the heart. It doesn’t hurt. I wouldn’t want it to hurt, like the poison with Little Lyuda, but if it did, I’d do it anyway. I didn’t choose Masha. I chose Slava. But I don’t want to hang myself right in front of him. I don’t hate him. Perhaps they’ll move away?
We walk to the laundry room. I pick up the wicker basket and throw the washing in. Then I pick up the washing line – it’s rough, so I know the knot won’t slip – and place it on the pile of washing. We walk back out into the sunshine. Everything seems to be in slow motion. It’s hard to balance with our crutches and the heavy basket full of wet washing, but we manage it. We manage everything, Masha and me.
I have to make a noose. She won’t notice because she doesn’t suspect and I’m so strangely calm that my heart isn’t even beating fast. Odd really, that we do everything in perfect physical harmony, and yet she doesn’t know I’m about to kill myself. The birds are singing fit to burst, and there’s the usual tinny music coming from Slava’s radio. Music for Anyootka now, instead of for me. We walk to the pear tree. The two of them are on the other side, with their heads still dipped together. They haven’t left. I’m sorry that they’ll have to see me die. We empty the washing on to a plastic sheet on the ground, and then turn the laundry basket over to stand on it. We can stand without crutches now – Aunty Nadya was right, it was all a question of balance. We got there in the end. Everything looks sharply in focus. I can see a tiny ladybird up there on the branch, as if it’s right in front of my nose. I throw the rope over the branch and tie a knot. Then I tie a noose. Then I put it over my head, lift my leg and kick the basket out from under us.
I get told off by Vera Stepanovna for being insane
It didn’t work.
The knot didn’t hold an
d the noose slipped right off over my head. I’m an idiot, and I’m still here, standing outside Vera Stepanovna’s office waiting to be given what the kids here call ‘the suicide talk’. Turns out she gives it a lot. But I didn’t know that. They don’t tell us about the attempted suicides.
Masha’s so furious I think she’s going to kill me and save me the trouble.
‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ she says for the millionth time. ‘You didn’t think what would happen to me, did you? Your sister?’ She’s trembling. She may be angry, but she’s in shock too. ‘Well? Did you? If you’d known what you were actually doing with that noose – fat chance of that – we’d be goners.’
I shrug. All I can feel is this dull, aching despair that I’m still alive. ‘I thought … I thought they’d amputate you or something,’ I say in a sort of croak, ‘and then you’d be free of me.’
‘I don’t want to be free of you, moron! What would I do without you? Who’d wash our nappy? Who’d do everything for me? Who’d … who’d … always be there to talk to? I’d be alone, see? All … alone.’
I shake my head, thinking, And I just go on living half a life in your shadow? I think it. But I don’t say it.
‘Don’t you ever try anything like that again, you hear?’ She shakes her fist in my face. ‘I’ll be watching you now.’ I remember the Director’s words at the Novocherkassk asylum: She’ll just keep trying, so best let the little poppet go first time. Masha probably remembers too. But it was easy for Little Lyuda and Sunny Nina. They weren’t Together like I am. How can you keep trying to kill yourself when you’re Together?
The door to Vera Stepanovna’s office opens, and we’re told to come in and stand on the red rug.
She’s furious too, of course.
‘Pozor! It’s a disgrace for the school, Dasha, a disgrace! To have one of our pupils try to take their own life? You are lucky I’m not sending you to a psychiatric institution for the insane. That is the normal procedure for those who attempt suicide. One must be insane not to want to live in the Soviet Union. We have done everything for you, cared for you, educated you and this is how you show your gratitude?’ She’s doing her usual pacing up and down. Now she stops in front of us. ‘As Ostrovsky said, ‘we have been given this life only once, to live to the full …’ I squeeze my eyes closed and wish I could put my hands over my ears. I really don’t want to hear about Ostrovsky and Mankind right now.
What I want.
Is help.
‘Did you hear her? Did you?’ say Masha. We’re walking back from Vera Stepanovna’s office. Vera Stepanovna’s called Aunty Nadya, to tell her to fly down and take us away as soon as possible. She doesn’t want suicides on her books. ‘If you try anything like that again we’ll be put in a Madhouse. That’s even worse than the Home here in Novocherkassk. And you’ll be sure to muck it up again …’
‘I don’t care. Maybe we’ll both want to kill ourselves if we get put in a Madhouse …’
‘I’ll never want to kill myself. I love life.’
‘Even this life?’
‘What’s wrong with it? Life is what you make it. We’ve just got to keep trying until we find the right place and the right people. To never give up trying. Never. D’you understand? Do you?’
I nod, but I’m thinking that the only place with the right people is somewhere together with Slava.
I say goodbye to Slava
The next morning at midday, we’re sitting in the shade of the pear tree waiting for Aunty Nadya to come. The other kids are lounging around, but I can’t see Slava. He probably asked his mother to take him back to the village. I can’t blame him. What’s the point of saying goodbye?
It’s almost as if my sadness has seeped right through to Masha for once, so we’re both sitting there, not talking, and not doing anything. Not even thinking.
‘Girls!’ We look up as Aunty Nadya walks through the gates. She holds out her arms, but neither of us jump up to run to her like we normally do. We both just sort of sit and stare at her with this dull, dead look. She’s come to take us away. But to what? She walks up to us then, quite slowly, with her head on one side and then leans down to kiss us. Masha first.
‘Nooka? Look at the state of you. Miserable as two damp socks. I won’t ask why you did it, Dashinka. Let’s just go and get you packed. The car will be here to take us away soon.’
All we’ve got to pack is our toothbrushes, our comb, our thermos flask, our spare nappy, one spare pair of socks and our spare shirts. I fold them all into our string bag. I put our red Pioneer scarves and passports in too, but I leave our school uniform behind.
‘Where’s our envelope with the photos in? The photos of all of us?’ Masha asks, rummaging around. I look in the side cabinet, but it’s not there. And under the pillow. I can’t see it anywhere. Masha loves looking at photos of us. I hate it.
‘That yobinny Valya has taken them. I know it! Just like her.’
‘Well, come along, girls. I’m sure they’ll be found and sent on to us,’ says Aunty Nadya, fussing around us. ‘The car will be waiting, come along.’
When we get outside, the Director is waiting at the bottom of the steps. He shakes our hands. This must be about the second time we’ve seen him in four years.
‘Goodbye, girls, goodbye. I’m sorry you didn’t stay to finish your schooling and get your diploma, but if you change your mind, we’re always here.’ He smiles this big smile at us, but I know he’s lying. He doesn’t want potential suicides in his school either. Besides, Masha will never come back. ‘You’re always welcome. If not, I wish you the very best in life. Yes. The very, very best.’ Masha’s sulking because of the photos, and I couldn’t smile if my life depended on it, so he just nods a bit, then turns to Aunty Nadya. ‘Look after them, Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Keep in touch.’
Icy Valya and her gang are leaning up against the school wall, giggling and doing this stupid slow handclap. The Director doesn’t seem to hear or understand; he stands aside and my heart jumps right into my mouth as I see Slava waiting behind him near the car. Just waiting. We’ve got to pass him to get to it.
‘Slavochka!’ says Aunty Nadya, seeing him and getting all excited. ‘There you are, girls! At least someone’s come to see you off. Say goodbye to Slavochka and we’ll be gone.’ She doesn’t know anything about him and me. None of the grown-ups do.
We walk towards him. Why’s he here? Is he going to say anything? Shall I just walk past and not look at him? We’re getting closer. Can’t breathe. Can’t look at him.
‘Wait,’ he says as we come up to him. Masha sticks her nose in the air and makes to walk right on by, but I stop. I can’t just walk past. I don’t lift my foot, so she can’t move. She’s rooted there by me. I look at him. ‘Don’t go, Dasha,’ he says quietly. His eyes look big and he’s sort of rubbing one hand over the other, which is balled into a fist as if he’s holding something precious, and he suddenly looks thinner and paler. I just stare at him with Masha tugging angrily at me. He doesn’t want me to go after all? He wants to be with me, not Anyootka? After all that’s happened? He still loves me and only me? Aunty Nadya’s the other side of the car, tapping her fingernails on the roof.
‘I … I … we’ve got our flight booked …’ I say.
‘Well, come back after summer. Come back to school. I’m sorry. Masha,’ he looks right at her then, but she’s got her head turned away. ‘Masha, I’m sorry for what I said.’ Masha keeps ignoring him, so he looks back at me. ‘Come back after summer.’ The clapping from the girls is getting louder and we can hear them chanting Get lost, Masha, get lost, Dasha …
‘I’ll come back to this hellhole when I hear a crawfish whistling on a mountain,’ Masha sniffs. ‘Have a nice life.’ She never forgives an insult.
I still don’t move though. ‘Dashinka?’ He looks straight into my eyes. ‘Dashinka. Be strong. Be strong for me and come back.’ He’s telling me to stand up to her. All I want to do right then is grab his hand and run away with
him, just run and run and run, him and me and no one else in the world.
‘I’ll write,’ is all I can say, even more quietly than him.
Masha snorts. ‘Just you fucking try it!’
‘Come along then, girls,’ says Aunty Nadya. ‘Come along.’ And so we do.
TWENTIETH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW
1968–88
‘The best weapon in the ideological work of the Party is the truth and the truth alone.’
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
Age 18
September 1968
We move to Moscow
‘Nooka? Got everything, girls? Yes, I’m sure you have.’ Aunty Nadya’s bustling around her flat, looking in every corner as if we’ve left something vital behind, but we’re sitting on the sofa looking at the blank TV. We’re holding one plastic bag each. That’s all we have to take with us to the Twentieth. All our worldly possessions for our new life.
It’s been three months since we left Novocherkassk. Masha wouldn’t let me write to Slava. I tried to because I don’t care how much she hits me – let her kill me, if she wants – but you can’t write a letter when someone’s pulling the pen and paper out of your hand. And I couldn’t ask Aunty Nadya to write it because Masha’s always sitting there listening. Valentina Alexandrovna sent us a postcard, addressed to Aunty Nadya at SNIP, but Slava hasn’t sent anything.
When we first got back to Moscow, Aunty Nadya took us straight to SNIP from the airport. She said we’d talk to Lydia Mikhailovna about getting us admitted to an adult ward, but the guard on the entrance gates wouldn’t even let us in. It was the Director, he said, who left instructions that we shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the hospital. Aunty Nadya was a bit shocked, but she couldn’t very well leave us under a bridge, so she had to take us back to her flat. That’s when she told us Uncle Vasya had died two years ago. We always used to ask after him, and she always told us he sent all his love. She said she didn’t want to upset us. She wanted to protect us. She must have been so sad, and she didn’t even show it. Or share it.
The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep Page 21