The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘She was so h-happy though, to be going to live with her f-family and g-grand-daughter.’ I look up at Uncle Styopa.

  ‘Yes, yes, and I’m happy for her,’ he says. But he doesn’t look happy, he looks sad. They were the same age and really liked each other. And she hasn’t written to him for months. Once people get to the Outside, they forget about us lot on the Inside. ‘Well, she made the right decision. Better than staying here,’ he says. ‘No one usually leaves the Twentieth on their own two feet. They leave it feet first.’

  ‘Got any vodka for her, Uncle Styopachka?’ says Masha in her little girl voice. She points at me then tips her head on one side and opens her eyes wide. He shakes his head.

  ‘My brother got caught last time with two bottles down his felt-boots. Now they virtually strip-search him.’

  I’ve recovered all the pipettes and go back to popping the rubber bulbs on. I’m glad for Baba Yulia. I wonder for the thousandth time where our own mother is. If she’s still alive, she must be about forty now. Maybe she’s got other children? I sort of imagine her as a doctor. Maybe she’s operating on someone right now? Or maybe she’s sitting somewhere, thinking of us? Looking for us even? Does she know our names? Did she name us, or did …

  ‘Nooka? Want some gossip?’ Sanya the cleaner has popped her head around the door. She sits down on the chair with her mop between her legs and pushes her headscarf back, nodding at Uncle Styopa, who’s still on his knees by the leg of our bed. ‘Baba Agafia went so crazy in the queue for the kettle in the kitchen that she hit out at the old crone in front and knocked her clean out. Before she knew what was happening, the nurses were on top of her with their syringes and she woke up in Stupino! Serve her right. Right mad ’un, she was.’

  ‘Stupino?! Chort!’ say Masha and me together. It’s the prison for Rejects. We know all about Stupino. You don’t live long there. If you’re not killed by another inmate, you’re killed by the guards. And you don’t need to stand before a judge and jury to get sent there. It’s up to the Director of whatever Home you’re in. We’re all scared stiff of the threat of Stupino. You can get sent there for anything, from Spreading Slander to Unacceptable Behaviour.

  ‘Ooh, and did you hear that your Baba Yulia’s coming back?’ We all look at her with our mouths open. Uncle Styopa rocks back on his heels. ‘Yes, that monster of hers, Dima, has moved his wife’s parents into the flat and kicked her back in here.’

  ‘B-but he c-can’t do that!’ I exclaim. ‘He got the flat because of h-her! So she c-could stay there!’

  ‘Course he can do that. And I bet you anything, he’ll be round here, cap in hand, shaking with the White Fever, and begging her for vodka money from her pension. Just like he always used to. Bet you anything.’

  Uncle Styopa jumps up now, looking all excited. He keeps running his hands through his hair and pulling his ear.

  ‘Well, well, better be off,’ he says, smiling all over his face. ‘All done, girls.’

  ‘Mwaah, you’re running back to the girlfriend – and I thought I was in with a chance there,’ says Masha, pretending to look upset. He laughs and runs out.

  Aunty Sanya shakes her head. ‘Da-oosh. Little children bring headaches, and big ones bring heartaches.’

  ‘Well,’ says Masha. ‘If I had a mother who hadn’t thought I was a monster and left me to die, like ours did, I’d help her through every bog and burrow. Not stick her in here to suffocate in her old age.’

  ‘There are monsters and there are monsters,’ says Sanya, and then goes over to look at Masha’s Krestyanka magazine with her. And I go back to fixing the rubber bulbs on to the pipettes.

  Talking about sex, tales from the Twentieth, and another letter from Slava

  ‘Do you think they have sex?’ I ask Masha. It’s the same evening, and dark as death outside. The transistor has finally died and I’m halfway through the box now. Masha’s been fiddling with her button for the last half hour, yawning. She looks at me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Baba Yulia and Uncle Styopa. Do you think they do?’

  ‘Course not! They’re like, what … forty, fifty years old?’ I shrug. ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, sniffing, ‘what’s the big deal about sex and all that kissing stuff? I’ve never wanted it and never will.’

  ‘But don’t you feel … you know, urges, down there? Like it’s this little thumping box or something, waiting to be opened and explode with … with, I don’t know, fireworks or something?’ She stares at me as if I’m mad. ‘And didn’t you like it,’ I go on quickly, ‘when you used to kiss those boys in school? Didn’t you feel like you were just melting and hot and wanted to go on and on doing it because it felt so good? That you wanted them, you know, right inside you?’

  ‘Foo!’ She spits at me. ‘Of course not! When I kissed those rats it was only to get something out of them. I’d rather have been kissing a toilet seat.’

  ‘Really? But don’t you feel a sort of need for boys and for getting with them? Like a proper ache?’

  ‘Are you talking about when you rub yourself down there, like you’re trying to scratch an itch? I wish you’d lay off that, it’s disgusting, and don’t think I don’t know you’re doing it when I’m half asleep.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it, Masha. It’s natural, isn’t it? Why should I not want sex, just because you and me are Together?’

  I pop another bulb on the pipette. I do rub myself and she’s right, I know I could explode if I only knew how. I get close when I think of me and Slava. But I don’t. Perhaps because I can only do it when I think she’s asleep and have to be careful because we’re so close together down there. ‘It’s just strange that you don’t feel anything like that too …’

  She shrugs. ‘I’d rather be me, than you, sitting there, miserable as a cow with colic, waiting for your kisses and sex from that little prick. You can’t think straight, you lot can’t, once you start feeling. Look at Uncle Styopa, running about like a headless chicken. You should be like me – Masha’s the only one I love.’ She keeps flicking through the magazine pages, looking at the patterns for making clothes, and the recipes, then, after a few minutes, she says she wants to go and see Ivan Ivanovich. ‘He’s on duty tonight. I’m bored stiff.’

  We go down in the lift, and find him in the dark reception hall with his feet up at his desk, reading Sovietskyi Sport newspaper and half watching a film from India on his black and white TV. We squeeze in.

  ‘Ooooh, can we watch the film with you, Van Vanich, can we? We’ll hide under your chair if anyone comes! I love watching those beautiful dark Indian women in those sparkly, silky dresses. Their teeth are so white!’

  He chuckles a bit and nods. He’s got a kind face, like an apple. ‘All right then, girls. Man the fort while I slip out for a fag.’ Masha puts her face in her hands and settles down to watch the film. I look up into the pigeonhole box under the letter K to see if there’s anything there. There is! Slava! But there are about fifty of us with surnames beginning with K. It’s probably not for us. No, probably not for us at all. But my heart’s thumping like mad.

  ‘Calm down, you pervert,’ says Masha, not taking her eyes off the TV set, ‘he’s not that handsome.’ I look at the screen and see a young Indian man in a turban, dancing and singing. No, he’s not handsome; he’s nothing like Slava. I look up at the box again, just as Ivan Ivanovich comes back in.

  ‘Oh yes, almost forgot, there’s a letter for you two. Came yesterday.’ He reaches up for it. It’s a blue airmail one, and when he hands it to us, I can see from the writing it’s from Slava! Masha can tell too. She grabs it and opens it with her thumb, while my heart goes on pounding. I’m sweating. She leans away from me so I can’t see it, and starts reading it. I watch her face and her eyes, but she has no reaction. When she’s finished, she tears it in half and then tears those pieces in half, and drops them in the waste-paper bin.

  ‘That’s what he thinks,’ she says. ‘He might as well be asking us to go and see the President
of Amerika.’

  Ivan Ivanovich doesn’t look up from his newspaper, and she goes back to watching the TV. After a bit, when she’s laughing at a dance scene, I lean down slowly and pick up all the bits of paper from the bin, and then piece them together on the desk. She doesn’t look across or say anything. She doesn’t stop me.

  3 November 1969

  Hello girls, greetings from Slava!

  I hope you are well.

  I’m still at home but doing some studies. I was sorry to leave you that way. I hope you forgive me. To be honest, I still don’t want to go to school but it seems I must. Everyone thinks it’s for the best and I suppose it is, though I’ll be put down a year now. Can you come for the end of year school party? How are you? How is your health and how is Aunty Nadya? She’s told Vera Stepanovna that I can come up for treatment in SNIP, so I’m planning on coming next spring. Maybe you could come and see me? I expect Aunty Nadya will tell you the exact date.

  Mother sends her love. I don’t see the village boys much now, as they have motorbikes.

  Write to me,

  Slava

  I put the pieces in my pocket. I’ll find a way to stick them together later. New Year. That’s only a few weeks away. Just a few weeks. If I can only persuade Masha to let me go.

  Age 20

  January 1970

  Another letter from Slava, Masha gets her beloved Lydia, and we visit the privileged eighth floor

  Nyet.

  Masha didn’t want to go down to Novocherkassk for the New Year’s party. She said she wasn’t doing that long trip to see an icy bitch who’d stolen all her photographs and a little pizdyuk who’d insulted her sister. I couldn’t say anything to change her mind. I felt like I’d been hollowed out with a spoon. Slava went to the party though, and he started back at school after New Year. He sent us a card for our twentieth birthday. It was a bit late. I expect he couldn’t find stamps …

  6 January 1970 Internat.

  Hello girls, greetings from Slava. I’m enclosing a card from Vyacheslav Tikhonov. As well as your photos. You thought that someone had stolen them but in fact no one did because I found them in a Russian textbook. You often used to put your photos there for safekeeping and you just forgot about these. So there you are …

  Well, how are you? Probably same as ever. I’m sorry I haven’t heard from you.

  How is Aunty Nadya? Give her my love. Vanya sends his love and the Director, Konstantin Semyonovich also sends his love. He keeps talking about you and asking after you and asking how you are, what you’re keeping yourself busy with and so on.

  Irina Konstantinovna sends her love.

  I’m still hoping to come up in spring if Mum can spare the time. Well, OK, for the moment that’s all I can think of to tell you. I hope to see you in spring.

  Slava

  Everyone sent their love. Except him. Masha didn’t tear up this letter but she wouldn’t let me write back. And he didn’t come in spring, because his mother couldn’t spare the time in the end.

  But he’d given me his promise in that note. After he gave it to me, I crumpled it up until it was soft and then flushed it down the toilet when Masha was getting out of the door.

  I just have to wait. I wish I could write back. I want to write back so much it’s like a physical pain, I want …

  ‘Ai! Ai! Ouch! That hurt, Masha!’ I suck my bleeding thumb.

  ‘You should concentrate then.’

  ‘You did it on purpose. You always do it on purpose.’

  Masha’s happy as a sparrow nowadays, because we’ve been given a sewing machine to hem muslin nappies with. It’s a real honour (there’s only a handful of people in the Twentieth can be trusted with a needle) and it pays more too. Masha’s christened the machine Lydia. She just loves turning the handle while I push the nappy through, but sometimes she jolts it hard, just for fun, so the needle goes right into my finger or thumb.

  ‘I slipped,’ she says.

  ‘No, you didn’t, you did it on purpose. Look – now this nappy’s a reject, it’s got blood on it as well. We’ll get that docked off our pay. If there are too many rejects we’ll get the sewing machine taken away too …’ I keep sucking my finger.

  ‘No, we won’t, because all those nice, new sheets are still there on our balcony.’

  ‘I know.’ I look at my finger to make sure it’s stopped bleeding and pick up another strip of muslin. I still can’t believe that the Twentieth got a delivery of bed sheets. Aunty Nadya says they haven’t been on sale in Moscow, let alone anywhere else in the Soviet Union, for twenty years. There must be another foreign delegation due – not that we ever see them.

  ‘As if any of those sheets will end up on our beds … they’ll all be nicked by the staff to sell on the side,’ sniffs Masha. ‘Or sent to the blatnoi inmates who can afford to give the Administration bribes.’ I nod and stick my tongue out as I carefully edge the corner under the needle. We’re hoping to go up to the eighth floor today where the privileged inmates live. We’ve not been before, but I’ve heard it’s wonderful. I can’t wait. That’s where they take the visiting delegations from abroad, to show how well looked after we ‘all’ are. They’ll get new sheets up there, that’s for sure. Or perhaps they even have their own? ‘It was funny though, wasn’t it,’ Masha goes on, turning the handle slowly, ‘when Inna got caught in that strip-search by the inspectors?’ I smile. I’m glad Inna got caught and fired. She was the one who brought Slava to our room and dumped him on the chair. Apparently she’d undressed, wrapped one of the new sheets around her naked body, and then dressed again. But they caught her. They catch nearly everyone, the inspectors do. Except Dragomirovna. I finish the nappy and pick up another. Dragomirovna will sell the ones she’s hidden on our balcony on the black market for a fortune. Four days ago she pushed open our door and walked in with a whole box of sheets; there must have been twenty of them. New, clean sheets. Never been used. A dream come true. She didn’t even look at us, just marched right through on to our balcony, plonked the box in a corner and dusted off her hands.

  ‘If the inspectors come to your room,’ she’d said, when she walked back in, ‘sit on the box and make faces or something. Not that you need to do that to scare the living daylights out of them.’ And then she’d walked out. So now I go to sleep every night, squirming on my stained sheets, and the last thing I see is the box of new ones on the balcony.

  ‘Stop going so fast with that handle, Masha, I almost missed the corner!’

  She pats the sewing machine. ‘At least we got our Little Fat Lydia here as a reward for hiding her precious sheets.’

  ‘You treat Lydia like a pet or something.’

  ‘And you lust after those sheets every minute of the day. I keep seeing you gazing out at that box like it’s Slava covered in chocolate.’

  ‘All I want is sheets that no one’s ever lain on, Masha. Not our old grey, threadbare ones with all the nasty stains that might be from Uncle Garrik who has open tuberculosis, or Aunty Faina who’s got weeping leg ulcers …’

  ‘… or Baba Alla who sawed herself to pieces in bed with a knife …’

  ‘Urgh! Masha, I forgot about her.’

  ‘Well, you can forget about those clean sheets too. They might as well be sitting in Amerika.’

  I shrug. I’ll have clean sheets in Slava’s village. I’ll wash them ’til they gleam.

  ‘Right, last nappy. Time to go and meet Uncle Styopa and see if he can get us to that old doctor, on the eighth floor. My back’s killing me.’

  We get up and I pack everything away neatly.

  ‘It seems stupid that the nurse here doesn’t know what’s wrong with you …’ I say.

  ‘She’s about twelve years old, and she’s from Tobolsk. What do you expect? She asked us how many hearts we had, for fuck’s sake … we’re joined at the waist, not the neck.’

  Uncle Styopa’s waiting by the lift. He’s happy as anything now Baba Yulia’s back. He doesn’t even get drunk any more.


  ‘Come along, girls, I don’t have all day.’

  ‘I’m in agony here, Uncle Styopa, take pity on your little Mashinka.’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? So right, just so you know: obviously none of us lot are allowed on the eighth floor. You’re gonna get an eyeful, believe me.’ He presses the button for the lift. The doors open and there’s the lift attendant sitting on her stool in the corner looking like a toad with her bulging eyes and warts. She’s the one that presses the buttons.

  ‘Which one?’ she says.

  ‘Eighth,’ says Uncle Styopa, and just as she’s about to spit and say nyet, he gives her a box of Zefir meringues. I gawp at it. Zefir meringues! Where on earth did he get those? ‘For the grandchildren,’ he says, and winks. She sniffs and presses button number eight.

  ‘Yolki palki!’ says Masha as we walk out. ‘It’s like the Kremlin up here!’ We stand gazing around. It’s bright and light with white walls and wooden parquet floors, and loads of shiny pot plants and white lacy curtains, which flutter in the clean windows. The corridors smell sweet and clean too and … of fresh air.

  ‘Here we are. This is a taste of what Communism will look like,’ says Uncle Styopa.

  ‘There’s even a buffet!’ says Masha. There is too. A proper buffet, selling green Tarzan mineral water and little white sandwiches with sliced tinned ham. As we walk past, I see the buffet attendant is standing by a long window that’s slightly open, so there’s a cold puff of fresh air coming in.

  ‘Gospodi! An open window,’ whispers Masha. ‘And no bars. They can even kill themselves up here if they want to!’

  ‘Come on, come on, we don’t want to get caught,’ says Uncle Styopa. ‘Here, this is his room.’

  We knock on the door, and a deep voice says ‘Enter’. Yemil Moseyevich is at his desk writing. He turns around and smiles like we’re normal guests. He has kind little eyes and a large nose with lots of hair sprouting out of his nostrils, and he’s wearing this funny purple waistcoat with yellow flowers on it.