The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘Ei, girls!’ Ivan Ivanovich, the guard who sits in reception, has come out from behind his desk and is standing stretching in the doorway. ‘Are you two running off to get married?’

  ‘No, Van Vanich, we’re waiting for a proclamation of love from you!’ chirps Masha.

  He laughs, showing his two rows of gold teeth. He’s quite old, he must be at least forty. ‘If you can cast one of your death spells on my old lady, I’m all yours!’

  ‘Bring her on!’

  We all laugh together then. The death spell thing happened when we were down in the canteen in the first week or so after we got here. All the old babas were gawking and asking the usual questions like, how do we Do It with a man, and did we have the same dreams and the same thoughts, and if we had children would they be Together too …? And then this one baba came up and stuck her face in Masha’s and asked if it would be painful for the one left behind to die, and how long it would take? Masha just went crazy then. She pointed her finger right between this old woman’s eyes and said, Yooou are going to die before I do, granny, mark my words, which actually wasn’t rocket science, because she was like a hundred years old, and we’re only nineteen, but this old woman looked like she’d been struck by lightning and her eyes all bulged out in horror, because there’s this gossip going around that we’re the spawn of the devil or something and have evil powers. The next thing we knew, she’d had a heart attack and was lying there dead as a doormouse at our feet. So now all the babas keep away from us, like we’re real live witches.

  ‘Oh yes, Van Vanich, beware the Magic Finger!’ says Masha, wagging it at him. Sometimes I think she actually believes she does have magic powers. She’ll sit there and hold her finger up and just look at it.

  ‘Girls, girls!’ Aunty Nadya bangs open the doors and rushes in. We jump up and run over to her. ‘Right, right, that’s quite enough of the hugs, thank you very much, get off, get off, let me breathe. Have you got your day-release passes?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ We flash them at Ivan Ivanovich.

  ‘Don’t try and escape, will you?’ he says. ‘Who’ll I have to play cards with, when you’re gone?’

  ‘You’ll find a nice sprightly granny or two,’ shouts Masha as we jump outside into the warm spring sun.

  The car from SNIP’s waiting and the journey is only ten minutes, but seems to last an age. We’re led up the back stairs, like we were the first time we got here, and then we walk along the corridor to his door. When we reach it, Aunty Nadya looks at us both and says that we look thin as weeds, so she’s going to get us some fresh vegetables from the kitchens and leave us alone with Slava.

  We stand there outside the door for a bit, not saying anything, then Masha looks at me and I nod. She pushes the door open and we walk in. He’s sitting on the bed with his big dark eyes staring out of his white face. He looks like I feel.

  ‘Yolki palki! You look like you’ve crawled out from under a stone!’ says Masha, as we walk over and sit on his bed.

  ‘Thanks, Mash, just what I need …’ He relaxes and smiles then, and glances at me. ‘You two look good. Pretty as pansies.’

  ‘Don’t get fresh with me.’ Masha punches him on the shoulder.

  ‘Ouch!’ He rubs his arm then smiles. ‘S’pose I should be thankful it wasn’t a slug in the face, given your usual form. Near broke my nose, you did.’

  ‘Should’ve knocked your head off, but there’s always a next time.’

  ‘Not if I see it coming … So, how’s things?’ He cocks his head on one side.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Masha, ‘so we’ve got a room to ourselves, with our own toilet, and we’ve just about worked out how to climb into it – one at a time, like a crab squeezing into a crack.’

  ‘Kha … bet I know who gets in first …’

  ‘… yeah, Dasha knows her place, and that’s behind me. So our room may be small but it’s clean and dry, which is all I care about, and we’ve got our transistor to listen to all day, though the batteries keep running out, and there’s a shortage of batteries, so Aunty Nadya has to stand in queues for days when they appear in the shops.’

  ‘Which is never,’ says Slava. ‘We haven’t seen batteries or stamps in Novocherkassk for months, that’s why I didn’t write sooner …’ He flicks a quick look at me and my heart starts flapping around like a bat.

  ‘So the Director, Barkov, he’s nothing like our School Director,’ goes on Masha, twiddling her button, ‘he’s just there to skim off as much State money as he can. Sanya, our cleaner, says he’s got two Volga cars, and a dacha off the Rublyovsky Highway, with gardeners, cleaners, drivers – you name it. He nabs the money meant to buy a TV set for every floor, and trickles it into a private sauna at his dacha. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘Yeah. Everyone’s on the make, inside and out.’

  ‘Well, not everyone. We’ve got this crazy Komsorg comes in every week – she’s like an Activist for the Komsomol Young Communist League and she’s got a funny name, what is it … hmm … anyway, she’s only about twenty herself, and she comes round to us to make sure our Socialist morale is all topped up with cherries. Doesn’t she? Hey, Sheep. Doesn’t she?’

  ‘What?’ I realize I’m just staring at Slava’s brown hands with the square, white fingernails, wanting to touch them. ‘Oh, yes, yes …’

  ‘So the room’s clean and dry, which is all we want, and they feed us regularly, and the staff are OK if you chat them up. Some of the inmates are OK too. My Scarecrow here gets them talking about their lives, the Great October Revolution, Civil War, Reds and Whites, Peasants and Cossacks, all that crap.’

  ‘At least they lived a life …’ says Slava quietly, and looks at me again.

  I want to talk to him alone. I want to touch his skin and his hair.

  He sighs. ‘So it’s all right then? In the Twentieth?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s all right. Come visit.’

  And it’s then that I get what’s happening. I look from him to Masha, and then back again. Masha wants him to come and live with us. He’s fun, he banters with her and makes her feel good. It’s been a year since they quarrelled; normally she’d bear a grudge forever, but she needs him. She knows I’d be happy, she might even let us …

  ‘So it’s all right there, is it, Dasha?’ He’s looking at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, nodding like mad. ‘Yes, it’s healthy!’

  It’s not though, it’s like all the inmates are sad and bitter and waiting to die, and we’re bullied by most of the staff, especially the Administrator and the Director. But if Slava was there with us, it would be fine. Everything would be fine.

  ‘What about you?’ I say. ‘Why don’t you want to go back to school?’ There. I’ve said it.

  ‘Why? Because I got graded down to a One like you, by the Medical Commission, that’s why, so I’ll never be able to take any real work on. What’s the point in studying?’

  We hadn’t known about that, so we sit there, not saying much, because he’s right.

  ‘Being a One sucks,’ says Masha eventually. ‘But hey, gotta make the most of things, right? Winners see a problem and fix it – losers only see the problem. Gospodi, I’m starting to sound like fucking Olessya!’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughs Slava. ‘But you’re right. I thought if I went back to live with my mum, I could get some work on the side, but that’s not worked out.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I can’t do much being like this. It’s hard for my parents. They both work full time and I need sort of … looking after, I suppose. Grisha, my brother, he’s graduated from school and is studying now in a PTU technical college, living in a dorm.’ I’m breathing quickly, in and out, in and out. I’d look after him. I would, I’d care for him every minute of the day and he’d care for me until we were old and bent. We’d fix everything. Every single problem. I’m sitting there, willing him to read my thoughts, because I can’t say them out loud. I think at him, as hard as I can: I’ll look after you, Slava, I will, I will, forever. And when he looks
at me, I think he’s heard me. I’m sure he has.

  There’s a silence, then Masha, who’s been gazing up at the ceiling suddenly says:

  ‘Dazdraperma! That’s her name, the Komsorg – it’s short for Long Live the First of May! And it suits her, I can tell you. She almost swallowed her Komsomol badge when she got an eyeful of us for the first time. She couldn’t believe that we were hidden away in a dark corner of an Old People’s Home. So turns out Brezhnev’s got this new mentoring scheme for the Komsomol. She’s an Activist – active as a squirrel she is, too. She’s found out that she can get tutors in to teach my fool here maths and science and Russian literature so she can finally get her precious diploma.’

  ‘Really?’ Slava looks at me quickly and I smile and nod.

  ‘It’s only one tutor for an hour a week, but she’ll give me homework. I’ve got plenty of time – not that I need the diploma now …’

  ‘Dazdraperma can’t believe how brilliant my Einstein here is. And she’s going to bring me magazines to read. And there’s this other girl, Gulgunya, who works in the kitchens, she’s one of them blackies from Azerbaijan or some other dirty Republic down there, but she’s really nice too. You know what Princess Turandot here is like,’ she waves at me, ‘she can’t bear the thought of eating out of a badly washed soup bowl, so Gulgunya lets us keep our own bowls and our own cutlery and mugs. Caused a revolt down among the babushkas, I can tell you, but I cast a spell on one of them, Slava, I really did, and she dropped down dead. So now they think I’m a witch and keep their mouths shut.’

  We all laugh and while Masha’s chattering on, I very, very slowly move my hand across the bed until the tip of one of my fingers is touching his.

  June 1969

  Slava visits us in the Twentieth to see if he wants to stay with me

  ‘I wish you’d stop scrubbing and polishing, I’m knackered!’ Masha’s balancing us against the door, while I scour the toilet bowl for the hundredth time. It’s no good though, the stink just seems to come up from the pipes. ‘It is what it is,’ says Masha.

  ‘I don’t want him to think … I want him to …’

  ‘Like I say, it is what it is. If he wants to stay with us, he will. A sparkling toilet won’t make any difference.’

  It’s been three weeks since we saw him in SNIP, and he’s coming to see us before he goes back to Novocherkassk.

  ‘Does the corridor really reek of toilets more than usual, or is that just me? Do you think he’ll notice? Do you, Mash?’

  ‘Yeah, it does. And of course he’ll notice, he’s got a nose, hasn’t he? Just our luck all the babushkas have come out today of all days, and are creeping about like spiders. And I haven’t even got a fag to smoke. Yobinny Dragomirovna and her spot checks.’

  Masha hides her cigarettes behind the toilet roll but somehow the Administrator found them straight away. And we had to bribe Uncle Styopa to get them for us. That was our ten-rouble monthly pension gone. But the worst thing was that she pushed us up against the wall like a battering ram and screamed into my face. I hate it when people do that. I’d rather she actually hit me than screamed at me like I was an idiot child.

  ‘I thought she was going to kill me, Mash … you could at least have told her we both smoke, instead of blaming it all on me. Considering I don’t smoke at all …’

  ‘Stop bleating, don’t you think I was upset too? I hate being humiliated. C’mon, stop fishing around in that toilet, he’ll be here any moment.’

  I wash my hands and we sit down on our bed. I keep brushing non-existent crumbs off the cover, but it’s so stained, a crumb here or there wouldn’t matter. We’re not allowed our own sheets, let alone a bedspread. Masha’s sulking. She’s still upset about the telling off. And she’s nervous, I can tell. And I’m so nervous, I feel like I’m going to tremble myself into pieces.

  Our clock, which Aunty Nadya bought us, ticks slowly on the tumbochka bedside table. Two of the babushkas in the corridor have started a fight right outside. He’s being brought up to our room by one of the nannies, I hope she’s a good one, I hope it’s …

  I stop breathing. Tic, tic, tic. The door’s opening. We put tacks in the floor so we get some warning when someone’s coming in. He’s carried in by Inna, the worst nanny possible, who’s holding him like he’s a pot of urine. She pitches him on to the hard chair across from our bed, and leaves. He just looks down at the floor and not at us. He’s already decided, I can tell. So can Masha. We all sit there, not saying anything, listening to the yelling outside and the wailing pipes as the babushka next door washes her hands for the millionth time that day, moaning to herself through the thin walls.

  After what seems like years, he shifts his weight a bit on the chair. He’s still looking at the floor when he says:

  ‘I’m sorry, Dasha.’

  That’s all. Just, I’m sorry?

  I feel a hard lump of anger inside me.

  ‘Dasha,’ he adds, quietly. ‘I can’t.’

  I feel the lump getting bigger and bigger, rolling up from my stomach. He doesn’t love me enough to live here, in our room in the Twentieth. The anger turns to grief and I can’t help it, I just burst into tears then, and I’m crying like I’ve never cried in my whole life before, as this crazy, hopeless sea of despair washes right over me. I can hear myself yelling at him, as if someone else is shouting the words, Go then! Go on! Go back to your village! Masha starts screaming at him too, telling him not to keep on hurting her sister, and then Inna runs back in, swearing her head off, to take him out. But before she can, he leans towards me and pushes a scrap of paper into my hand with a terrible look in his eyes. And then he’s taken away.

  Masha’s looking around for something to throw and is screaming, ‘Bitch with Balls! Pizduk! Zalupa! Yobinny stik!’ She hasn’t even noticed the note. I just can’t stop crying my heart out though. I can’t do anything but wail.

  Later, when she’s gone to sleep, and I’m lying my end, on the pillow covered in snot and tears and still hiccup-sobbing, I uncurl my fist and read it.

  Dasha, I’ll find a way for us to be together. I promise. It’s our secret. Please wait.

  I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and heave a great, juddering sigh. And then I lie back.

  And start hoping all over again.

  November 1969

  Love among the inmates

  ‘Get a move on, you’ve got a thousand pipettes in that box.’

  ‘I’m trying, Masha, but my fingers are cold. It’s not easy, getting these rubber bulbs on. If you tried it, you’d know …’

  We’ve just had another box delivered. They pay us kopecks, but it keeps Masha in cigarettes, which we now hide beneath a loose tile under the sink and even Iglinka Dragomirovna with her X-ray eyes hasn’t found them. Masha sniffs and goes back to looking at the recipes in her magazine, Krestyanka – Peasant Woman – which Dazdraperma brought her.

  ‘I should be doing my history studies, not this,’ I say.

  ‘Stop whining.’

  It’s been five months since Slava left, and I haven’t heard from him. Not yet. We haven’t talked about it, Masha and me. She just said if he ever showed up again she’d smash him to a pulp. But she’s forgiven him before, and she’ll forgive him again. Meanwhile, I’m waiting and waiting, and thinking of what plans he has for us to be together. It must be in the village … with the hens and the pond, and …

  ‘Aunty Nadya had better hurry up with getting those new batteries, my transistor sounds like a can of snakes.’

  She jabs me to get an answer, so I say, ‘Doctor Golubeva said she’d look for some too.’

  It gave us the shock of our lives (haha) when Dr Golubeva pushed open the door two weeks ago. We half expected her to have the helmets in tow, to fry our heads again, but all she had with her were home-made sour cream buns. She said she thought about us often and would we mind if she started visiting? Masha said if she kept bringing sour cream buns she could come as often as she liked. But I thought it wa
s odd somehow … Our old doctor from the Ped turning up with gifts.

  ‘Yeah, old Golubeva. I thought we’d be falling over Anokhin next, down in reception,’ says Masha, turning a page of her magazine to an article on vegetable plots.

  ‘No chance of that. Anokhin’s lost interest in us … everyone’s lost interest in us …’

  ‘Ei! Don’t say that, girls! I still love you!’

  Uncle Styopa, one of the inmates, has pushed open the door and is standing there, waving a little padlock and chain. ‘See what your old Uncle has got for you!’

  ‘Ooraa!’ Masha jumps up, knocking my box of pipettes over. ‘Now we can lock up our thermos flask.’

  ‘You have to chain everything down in this place, girls. Sooner you learn that, the better. How many have you had stolen? Three? Well, the best place is the leg of your bed, here we go.’ He gets down on the floor and starts chaining the thermos down. He was wounded as a teenager in the Great Patriotic War and was put in here nearly twenty years ago. He likes us. He knows what it’s like to be nineteen and locked up for life.

  ‘Heard from your girlfriend then?’ asks Masha, grinning. ‘She was the only one worth talking to in here.’

  ‘Baba Yulia? Nope, haven’t heard from her. Gone from the eye, gone from the heart.’ He shakes his head. ‘Shame. Bright as a scythe, she was. That’s a rarity in this House of Rejects …’

  Baba Yulia lived on the corridor below, and we used to visit her every day because she was so cheerful and interesting. Her husband was killed in the War and she brought up their baby son, Dima, in a communal flat until he got married. Then Dima went to court and had her put in here, so he could have the room to himself. She still loves him though. She says you never stop loving your own child, whatever happens … blood is thicker than water.

  ‘If I’d been her, I wouldn’t have gone back to that moodak son of hers,’ spits Masha, balancing me while I hang off the bed trying to pick the pipettes up from the floor. ‘He only took her in because of that new Decree of Brezhnev’s saying war widows living with families could get a two-room flat.’