The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘Well now, everything’s beautifully clean as usual, well done, well done,’ she says, reappearing from the kitchen. I can tell she’s nervous. So are we. ‘I won’t have my little helpers any more, will I? Not a speck of dust anywhere.’

  I look out of the window. I cleaned those too, with vinegar and screwed-up newspaper, but I had to do it with the lights out, at night, so no one would see us from outside. Poor Aunty Nadya’s a nervous wreck having us here, because it’s illegal. We don’t have a propiska permit to live with her and she says if the authorities knew, she’d be fired from her job and probably put in prison too. Masha’s loved it here, living in a proper flat, with home cooking and the TV and the bath. The bath! We spent so much time lying in the bath I’m surprised we haven’t grown fins. After a week of being locked up inside the little flat with the curtains drawn, Aunty Nadya started taking us outside, but only after midnight and with a rug thrown over us, just to get some fresh air. ‘Like we’re criminals in hiding,’ said Masha. ‘But what’s the crime?’

  We still don’t move from the sofa, even though she’s got our crutches now and is standing in front of us waggling them. The dresser behind her has photos of Uncle Vasya and Little Vasya, in frames, but there’s none of us. They’re all tucked away in a drawer. We’re not saying goodbye to Little Vasya. He’s sixteen now and taller than her and sleeps on this sofa while we sleep on a mattress on the kitchen floor. He’s hardly ever here though. He’s out on the streets getting into trouble most of the time. He hated having us back and ignores us. He ignores Aunty Nadya mostly too – when he’s not talking back to her. Him and Masha got into a fight about that. So much for adopting Little Vasya instead of us …

  ‘Come along, girls, come along,’ she says again. ‘The taxi will be waiting. No use sitting here like daisies waiting to be watered.’

  We get up then and take our crutches from her. If only we could stay here, but she can’t even apply for a propiska for us because that Grade One life sentence means we have to be kept in a State Institution.

  We go out to the landing, get into the lift and go down to the waiting taxi like we’re being taken to the executioner’s block. It’s raining. Moscow looks exactly the same as it did when we went out on our trip to the Mausoleum. Grey blocks of flats, wide, empty streets and lots of bright red slogans.

  The Ministry of Protection assigned us to the Thirteenth Veterans of War and Labour Home. That’s where Olessya is. We went to visit the Home, but even though there were nice grounds with bushes and flowers and some other Defective kids our age there for company, Olessya seemed as if she’d somehow lost her spirit. She didn’t even say much when she saw us again. She didn’t complain – after all, it was nothing like the asylum in Novocherkassk, it was all quite clean, and the staff weren’t too mean. I really wanted to go there, to be with her, and I think she wanted it too. But Masha didn’t. It was a Closed Regime Home, so they don’t let you out at all, and don’t let anyone in to visit either, which means Aunty Nadya couldn’t have come to see us and bring us food and treats. And the rooms were communal. Masha said she didn’t want to share a room with stinky old babushkas.

  We’re driving past the Red October chocolate factory now. There’s a big poster of a sweet, pink-cheeked girl in a headscarf on it. Alyonka, her name is. That’s what the most popular chocolate bar is called, apparently, but it seems there’s still no chocolate in the shops. When one of Aunty Nadya’s doctor friends came for supper one night in the flat (she can keep a secret), they were saying that all the chocolate goes to the special ‘Beriozka’ shops where only important Party members can shop. I suppose that’s why Anokhin always has it … I don’t know anything about politics, but I don’t think Lenin would have wanted chocolate to be only for the children of Party bigwigs …

  Masha wanted a room to herself, with a toilet and sink in the room, so she didn’t have to trek off down the corridor and queue for hours and wipe everyone else’s shit and pee off the seat. That’s what Masha said. So she refused to go to the Thirteenth. ‘Mashinka needs her place in the sun,’ she’d said. Then Aunty Nadya sighed and said she’d do what she could to get us in somewhere else.

  So that was that. No Thirteenth.

  None of us say anything until we draw up outside the barred gates of the Twentieth Veterans of War and Labour Home. It’s the best Home in Moscow. The best in the whole of the Soviet Union. It’s a Show Home, visitors from abroad are taken around. We’re really lucky. It’s the only one in Moscow that has rooms for just two inmates, with a toilet and sink, and it’s Open Regime. Aunty Nadya went to talk to the Director to see if she could get us a room, but he said, flat out, that he wasn’t having something like us in his precious Home. He said he’d never let a Defective in yet, let alone Category Ones, and he wasn’t going to start now. So Aunty Nadya asked Lydia Mikhailovna (who’s the Head Doctor now of all of SNIP) to write a letter to Soldatyenko, the Deputy Minister of Protection. And, wonder of wonders, he told the Director, Barkov, to let us in here. I suppose he just wanted to get rid of us. We were born in Moscow so we’re registered to live in Moscow. We couldn’t live anywhere else unless we had an official job. Or got married. Soldatyenko would have sent us to Siberia if he could, but he couldn’t. It’s the law.

  The gates swing open in front of us and then close behind us with a clang. Slava will still be in his village. It’ll be sunny down south.

  The Twentieth

  We walk into the echoing entrance hall and the guard tells us to sit down and wait on the bench for someone to take us to our room. Masha gives me her plastic bag to hold and Aunty Nadya sits with her handbag on her lap. We all look straight ahead and don’t say anything. It’s quite dark in here. There’s a row of portraits of all the shiny members of the Politburo looking out to our shiny Communist future, with shiny medals on their chests. They’re old. There are a few people shuffling around in the shadows. They don’t notice us in the corner. They’re old too. We’re sitting next to grimy green pot plants, which look like they’ve been growing for a hundred years. It smells OK though. It smells of nothing.

  Masha crosses her leg over mine and starts jiggling her foot up and down.

  I wonder if Slava’s thinking about me back in his village. I wonder if he’s going to bother to go back to school now he knows there’s no point in getting a diploma … or will he stay with his parents? If I wasn’t Together with Masha I could be there with him now in the sun. Him and me. Not Masha and me … but I won’t think about that.

  ‘It’s very nice here, isn’t it?’ says Aunty Nadya after a bit. ‘Very nice indeed.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, because she did everything in the world to get us in here. ‘It’s really very nice.’ I have this stupid ball in my chest again, at being left here without her.

  ‘And I’ll come and visit every week. Bring you whatever you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say again. ‘Thank you.’ Masha just goes on jiggling her foot.

  After what seems like hours, there’s a sharp tap-tap of heels and a woman’s suddenly there, standing in front of us, casting a shadow. She’s tall and heavyset with a face as angry as a walnut. She reminds me of Nasty Nastya, the cleaner from the Ped.

  ‘Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova?’

  ‘Yes,’ we say together.

  ‘My name is Iglinka Dragomirovna. I’m from Administration. Come with me.’ We all shuffle to our feet and she turns sharply to Aunty Nadya.

  ‘You can leave now.’

  Aunty Nadya looks for a moment like she might argue, but the woman is so fierce, she just nods.

  ‘Ah, ladno. Well, I’ll say goodbye to you now then, girls.’ I grab on to her hand. I’m asking her with my eyes please, please, please, don’t leave us here for the rest of our lives. ‘Goodbye then,’ she says. ‘Be good.’ I start to cry then, right there in front of the stupid Administrator and the guard and everyone. I can’t stop myself. Masha doesn’t even slap me because I think she’s trying not to cry too. Aunty Nadya turn
s around and walks right on out without stopping to kiss us. I think she’s almost crying as well.

  ‘Come along.’

  We go up a clanging lift to the sixth floor. When we walk out into the corridor, the stench of urine and disinfectant and old, old people hits us. Masha holds her nose. The walls are painted dark green. There’s brown, warped linoleum on the floor that we keep tripping over, and there are two surnames written on a card on each door. With our two passports we get one room for both of us. I look at the blue ink on cardboard on each door. Dyogtina, Yermushina, Zolina, Ivakina and then Krivoshlyapova.

  She pushes the door open. It’s a very narrow room and painted dark brown. I suddenly feel there’s not enough air in here and I start panting for breath, my heart’s going faster and faster. Masha almost gets knocked sideways by the way it’s suddenly pounding, so we sit on the single metal-framed bed with a thump.

  ‘Room all to yourselves. That’s a one-off anywhere you care to name,’ says the Administrator. My heart’s still pounding away like we’ve run a thousand kilometres and my stomach has turned liquid, so Masha stands up and we try to get into the toilet, but can’t. The doorway’s too small, and we could never both fit on the seat in there anyway.

  ‘There’s one down on the first floor you might get into,’ says the Administrator with her arms on her hips, watching us. She sniffs. ‘This one’s not made for …’ she wants to say urodi. But she doesn’t. ‘So. The basics: supper on ground floor at 18:00. Don’t be late or you won’t get anything. Every room has a balcony, but there are bars, so no jumping off.’ She smiles nastily. ‘Similarly, the door to your room does not lock, so staff can enter at any time in the event of illness or attempted suicide. Our statistics for suicide are the best in Moscow, so if you intend to die, we shall ensure it’s of natural causes. There’s a list of rules and regulations in the Lenin Corner but to summarize: in the rooms there must be no music, no smoking, no drinking, no food, no fraternizing with staff, no soiling, no kettles or sharp instruments, no raised voices, no singing, no photographs and no pictures on walls. Any questions?’

  We both look at her blankly.

  ‘Well, you two teenagers are going to be here for the next sixty-odd years, I’d say, so a few might arise,’ she says. ‘I just hope you enjoy each other’s company.’ And then she smiles again and goes.

  We sit there on the bed looking at the brown wall. The sheet has stains on it and I move over. We’ve been sitting there for maybe an hour, not saying anything, when the door’s pushed open and this old woman comes in and stands staring at us. Then another one comes in and another until the room’s full of them. They don’t say anything at all. Just stare and cross themselves.

  ‘Go away, you dandelions!’ shouts Masha suddenly. ‘Go away.’ She waves her arms at them but they keep on pressing in to look at us. They’ve got fluffy grey hair and they’re all thin as a stalk. They’re dandelions ready to be blown away by the wind. One of them starts dancing round and round with her arms out, singing.

  We get up and push through them, on to the balcony. It’s cold out here. We both grip the bars and breathe in and out. It’s getting dark, but we can see a stack of empty coffins piled up by the side entrance. We don’t say anything to each other, but we turn around together and push past everyone again and then walk straight out to the lift, and press the button.

  When the doors open, we stand there, not going in. After a bit I say:

  ‘We can’t run away, Masha. There’s a guard on the gate and dogs. And if we do escape, they’ll catch us, and send us to a prison or Madhouse.’ She nods. The doors close in front of us. ‘We can go back though,’ I say quietly. ‘We can always go back to school.’

  ‘No, we can’t. They don’t want Suicides like you.’ She turns to go back to our room. ‘Anyway, rather you and me in a Home full of daft dandelions, than you and your sprat, in a school full of bitches.’

  And so that was that.

  Age 19

  20 March 1969

  Slava writes to me, I write back, he writes back, and we meet in Moscow!

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let you reply to his card. I should listen to myself more,’ says Masha. We’re sitting on the bench in reception, in the Twentieth, waiting for Aunty Nadya to take us to see Slava, in SNIP. ‘This is how it ends up,’ she goes on, sniffing. ‘Just a couple of letters and here he is, rolled up on the doorstep like a rotten cabbage.’

  I’m so excited I can’t think straight. I feel like an unexploded bomb. He’s here! Slava’s here, in Moscow, and he’s waiting for us to visit! I know Masha’s excited too, despite all her moaning. She’s great at making friends and we have some nice ones now in the Twentieth, but she’s still bored as anything, locked up in this dark block of musty corridors. If we didn’t have each other, I think we’d go mad.

  ‘I was just so fed up with your lovesick sighs and tears, I couldn’t stand it any more. I was weak, and see where it’s got us?’

  ‘You weren’t weak, Mash, you were kind.’

  ‘Kind – foo!’ She spits on the floor. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, you can be sure of that. It was like walking round with a corpse hanging off me; you might as well have gone ahead and hung yourself for all the life in you. It gets to a person, that does.’

  I feel in my pocket for his card, which we got on our birthday in January. It had a bunch of beautiful purple violets on the front and inside he’d written: To Masha and Dasha, wishing you health, happiness and every success. I take it everywhere because if I leave it in our room it might get stolen. It gave me a tiny spark of hope that lit me up again.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘If you hadn’t let me reply, I’d have strangled you. Hey! That’s an idea, I could always strangle you – I’m stronger than you.’ I laugh.

  ‘So you’d be free to run off into the sunrise with Peanut? Nyetooshki. I’ll poke your eyes out first!’

  We both laugh then. I was so happy that Masha relented and let me reply to him. I sent a letter back to him, and then I waited every day – well, every minute and every second of every day, for a reply. It came in March. I’ve got that in my pocket too. I take it out and look at it, even though I know it off by heart.

  3 March 1969

  Hello girls,

  Greetings from Slava! Thanks for your letter. How is your health? What’s new? I’m sorry we couldn’t talk before you left. I didn’t know you were going so soon. We had the end of year party and Vannya got drunk as a priest and had to be taken to hospital. Dasha, don’t be upset. I wanted to talk to you and give you something, but perhaps you didn’t know that. I’ll try and come up and see you when I can. Perhaps Aunty Nadya can get me a bed in SNIP to be treated? I’m living at home now with my mother and don’t want to go back to school. Have you found a Home in Moscow yet? How is Aunty Nadya?

  Write to me,

  Slava

  ‘All he wants from you is to get his treatment in SNIP, you know that, don’t you?’ grumbles Masha. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that everyone in this world is out for themselves.’ Masha sniffs and looks up at the ceiling. ‘Gospodi! When’s she coming then? If I have to look at those stuffed frogs lined up in the portraits any longer, I’ll start throwing eggs at them.’

  ‘Shhh, Mash!’ I look around nervously, but there’s no one within hearing distance. We’re sitting between two greasy palm trees and a bust of Lenin. She’s right though, I revived like a wilted flower in water after I got his birthday card. Olessya always used to say that happiness lies in three things: having someone to love, something to do and something to hope for. At least I’ve got the first and the last. But having nothing to do except sit and stare at our shiny brown wall, means I go over and over every look, every touch, every word and that last New Year’s love-making in my head, like I’m on some crazy hamster wheel.

  I stare at the gloomy reception with its dark walls and yellow linoleum and wonder for the millionth time why he isn’t going to school. Could it be bec
ause I’m not there? Or is he sick? And what did he want to say to me? What did he want to give me? What? What?

  … We now require the mobilization of all possible forces, highest possible labour productivity, improvement of discipline … Mayak State Radio is droning on, and I yawn. I’m so nervous I just can’t stop yawning. Not one working day, not one working hour is to be wasted … we’ve been sitting here on this chair for ages …

  ‘Hey, girls!’ Sanya, the cleaner, bangs in through the front door for the start of her shift. ‘What are you two doing, looking like two geese trussed up for dinner? What’s the gossip?’

  ‘Juliet here’s off to see her Romeo,’ says Masha.

  ‘Ooooh! Kept that quiet, didn’t you, Dashka. Handsome, is he?’

  He’s the handsomest boy in the USSR but I don’t say that, I just smile happily.

  ‘Well, I want all the gossip, including intimate contact and whispered secrets. Got it?’ She wags her finger at Masha, who winks at her. Sanya and Masha hit it off as soon as she walked into our room with her bucket and mop. She’s quite young and plump and cheerful. She comes from Siberia, but she gets to share a communal room in a barracks in Moscow in exchange for working in a Home. She lives off gossip. So does Masha, come to think of it. They’re two of a kind. (Except Masha would die rather than mop anyone’s room for them.) ‘OK, girls, have fun. If you can’t be good be careful,’ and she waddles off.

  I put the card and letter back in my pocket, then take them out again, then pat my hair.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop fiddling, you’re turning me into a nervous wreck,’ says Masha, slapping my arm. ‘And your hair looked fine before you kept running your fingers through it and turning it into rats’ tails.’ I stop smoothing back my hair then, and start biting my nails instead. I haven’t seen him for a year. How long will he be in SNIP for? Will he come and visit us when he’s better? Will we be able to talk? To … to kiss? My stomach twists inside me and Masha slaps me again.