The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

by Juliet Butler

  ‘I hope she’s got that sweet port wine again,’ I say. ‘It’s easier to drink when it’s sweet.’

  She rubs her jaw. ‘Getting drunk is the only way to stop this pain. The only thing I eat nowadays are yobinny painkillers with my toothache, not to mention these kidney stones I get every two minutes.’

  I tuck her hair back behind her ear and stroke her cheek with the back of my hand. I get toothache too but I don’t think it’s as bad as hers.

  I didn’t talk to Masha for eight whole weeks after she told Ivan Ivanovich not to let Slava in, and when I started in on the ninth she gave in and apologized. It was a Monday evening. ‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘Listen, please, please, please, just stop it. I’m sorry, OK? You’re driving me mad with your silence!’ I turned to look at her then, but I still didn’t speak. ‘For God’s sake,’ she went on, ‘what are you going to do? Ignore me for the rest of my life? Isn’t it bad enough in here, without you being an enemy to me too?’

  I turned away. I still wouldn’t talk. She’d tried everything over those eight weeks. Beating me up until she was exhausted and me not caring. Yelling at me. Telling jokes. Tickling me. Then beating me up again. She broke my nose twice but none of the medical staff in the Twentieth asked any questions. They know Masha and me have our problems and they don’t get involved.

  I talked to other people, of course, but I didn’t talk to her. It drove her crazy but it was the only thing I had left in my power to do.

  Then, that Monday, after supper, we’d gone back to our room and I’d just sat there and stared at the wall while she went prattling on about who’d died and who’d been brought in. I still wouldn’t speak, so then she took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Dasha. Stop this. Just fucking talk to me again! Tell me what you want, all right? Just tell me.’

  And then I did speak.

  ‘There’s something you’ve got to understand, Masha,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ve always done everything for you. I wash you, I comb your hair, I play cards when you want to play cards. I go and see whoever you want to see. I do everything you want to do and you don’t do anything I want to do. I don’t even bother to ask you any more. I’ve never asked for anything. Until now. If it was you who wanted to be with someone else, I’d be happy for you. We’d all be friends. We could all be friends.’

  She’d looked up at the ceiling then and sniffed, like she does. ‘All right then. If that’s how it is. All right. Write to your Peanut. We’ll see what happens …’

  But before I could write, we got a letter from him.

  10 June 1970, Novocherkassk

  Hello girls, greetings from Slava. How is your health? What’s new? How is Aunty Nadya doing? I’m fine and my health is OK. Listen, girls, I’m sorry I didn’t write before but I’m just getting used to settling in at home for the summer holidays.

  Dasha, before I left Moscow I did call in to see you but they told me that you were busy and weren’t to be disturbed and they wouldn’t let me up to see you. I was sorry you didn’t come to visit me in SNIP.

  Give my love to Aunty Nadya. I don’t see the staff or the other kids any more. I want to ask Vera Stepanovna to come and visit me. It seems I have to go back to school this year to get my diploma since I missed so much. But now I’ll have to go down again into the class below. I wish this would be over and done with as soon as possible.

  Dasha, don’t be upset. I gave you my promise, didn’t I? And I won’t ever tell anyone. I can’t write any more on that subject in this letter.

  Slava

  ‘What promise?’ Masha asked when she read the letter. ‘How did he give you a promise? Where was I?’ I didn’t tell her. It’s the only secret I have from her. That we’re going to be together. I’ll do my part in getting Masha to agree. And he’ll do his in getting us to live with him. I’ll be strong.

  Everything was all right again after that. I wrote straight back to him. It’s been so long since I’ve actually seen him now, that the Slava in my imagination, living in the village with me, is becoming the real one. He didn’t write back so I wrote another one.

  2 September 1970, Moscow

  Slava!

  Greetings from Masha and Dasha. How are you? How is your health? We haven’t heard from you since June so it seems as if you’ve stopped writing. Perhaps you’re busy at school. We are OK and have made some more friends among the staff and a few of the inmates. There are some nice people here. Olessya writes to us from her Old People’s Home, which isn’t far away but it’s a Closed Regime one, so she’s not allowed out to visit and of course we’re not allowed in. She doesn’t sound that happy, but there you are.

  Aunty Nadya said you wanted records so we bought them. We hope you enjoy them. Aunty Nadya will send them but I wonder why you need them? Doesn’t your transistor work? How is school and everyone there? Give our love to Maria Petrovna, Valya Starozhika in the kitchens and the rest. And especially love to Valentina Alexandrovna, if she’s still there. If anyone comes to Moscow please tell them to visit us.

  Masha and Dasha

  I waited and dreamed and waited but he still didn’t write back so I sent him a card of congratulations on October Revolution day. Finally, he sent us one too on 7 November. It just wished us health, happiness and a long life. The usual. I was a bit disappointed, but there you are. At least there’s hope again. All I need is hope.

  A visitor comes out of the lift and walks across the hall, stopping by the bust of Lenin to do up her coat and I pull the rug a bit further over our legs. She doesn’t even glance at us.

  ‘I’m never going back to the dentist who comes here, Masha, not ever. I almost went through the roof when he dug that drill into me.’

  ‘What about me? He said he’d only just stopped himself from drilling right through an artery after I jumped two metres in the air. Maybe Aunty Nadya can get us some novocaine from SNIP …’

  ‘She’s cross enough about bringing us wine when it’s against the rules. It’s only because she can see how bored we are. Good thing that even Igor Semyonovich never dares to look at the bottom of her bag.’

  ‘That svoloch,’ she mutters under her breath. Ivan Ivanovich was fired for not noticing that Uncle Styopa’s brother had smuggled in another two bottles of vodka. I shiver. Uncle Styopa got so crazily drunk that he went on the rampage and got sent to Stupino. We’ll never see him again … Or Ivan Ivanovich.

  Sanya comes down, dressed in her felt boots and wrapped up in a rabbit fur coat. It’s the end of her shift. She sees us sitting there and sticks her nose in the air as she goes past.

  ‘Bitch. Thinks it’s OK to go stealing our money …’ mutters Masha.

  Sanya and Masha aren’t talking any more. We used to give her money from our pension, to buy cigarettes, but Masha got it into her head that she was buying cheap cigarettes and telling us they cost more so she could pocket the difference. We don’t know the prices Outside. Maybe she was. Sanya got so angry. ‘It’s all right for you,’ she’d said, ‘waited on hand and foot here and lying back in your bed reading magazines and listening to music all day. I have to work, I do. I have to get up at dawn and slave away for you lot, living off the State like parasites.’ Masha was furious but didn’t reply. She never gets into an argument, she just refuses to talk to people who anger her. She refuses to talk to them ever again.

  I go back to looking at the front door, waiting for Aunty Nadya. It’s what Masha would do actually, keep some money back, that’s why she suspects Sanya. But it’s against the rules to buy them for us and sneak them in, so Sanya was doing us a big favour. She deserves a few kopecks for that, and she does work hard, but she doesn’t understand I’d like nothing better than to be allowed to work. All I want is to be useful, to have a purpose in life. But Masha can’t see it. She doesn’t trust anyone, Masha doesn’t.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t just turned against her like that, Masha. You always do that.’

  ‘Don’t you start. Everyone’s out to get us. I hate this place. I hate it.
’ She puts her head in her hands and says fiercely, ‘Where is she?!’

  It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t taken Masha’s beloved Lydia away from us.

  It happened a few months ago, after Barkov called us in. We hardly ever see the Director, but this one time he called us in to his office, which was about twenty times the size of an inmate’s room and all panelled in wood. Three people could have laid end to end on his desk, it was that big. We sat on a high-backed chair on the rug in front of the desk. He’s fat like a pig. And pink. And bald.

  ‘So, girls,’ he said, tapping a pen on his desk. ‘I need to know if there is any slander going on among the staff or inmates.’ Barkov has this way about him that makes everyone shrink. Olessya used to say it was the Party way – Authority makes you shrivel like a salted slug. By slander we knew he meant criticism of the way he runs the Home. ‘I intend to crush dissent from within,’ he went on. ‘Crush it.’ He balled up a piece of paper in his fist to make his point. We just kept looking at him, not really knowing what to say. ‘And in order to do that, I need to have someone from within to give me information.’ He knows Masha lives for gossip. We both realized then that he wanted us to be informers, but everyone knows who the snitches are in an institution like this, and they’re despised. They get perks from the Administration, of course, but they’re despised by everyone for their denunciations.

  I looked down at the floor.

  ‘I don’t know anything, Igor Nikolaevich,’ said Masha. ‘I sit in my room with her and her books and we don’t hear anything. We don’t see anything either. Nothing.’ She looked up at the ceiling.

  He drew his breath in through his nose, picked up a pen and started rapping it on the table like a machine gun.

  ‘Is that your last word?’ He looked at Masha. We all three knew what was happening then. Masha nodded and kept looking at the ceiling.

  The next morning Iglinka Dragomirovna came and took our sewing machine away.

  I stare, for the millionth time, at the row of portraits of the Politburo members glowing with medals. They never change. Or perhaps they do but still all look the same. I wonder what it’s like inside the Kremlin Palace where the Tsars used to live, and now the Politburo do. All golden, probably. The door clatters open.

  ‘Here she is!’ We throw off the rug and run to her for a kiss. If we didn’t have Aunty Nadya, I don’t know what we’d do. She comes to see us every single week.

  ‘I can’t stay long, girls. I’ve brought some cabbage pies and a jar of pickled cucumber. How are you doing?’

  ‘My teeth are killing me,’ moans Masha as we get into the lift, still hugging her as she tries, with pretend anger, to push us off.

  ‘Well, and whose fault is that? How many times have I told you to brush your teeth?’ she tuts. ‘What do you expect when you drink sweet tea and don’t brush?’

  She comes up to our room, empties out her bag, tells us a bit about her new patients in SNIP, then kisses us both on the top of our heads and goes.

  As soon as the door closes, Masha hands me the wine bottle and gets me to push the cork down with my thumb. She’s excited.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon! Blyad! I want to get drunk so bad!’

  ‘I’m trying. It’s stuck.’ I want to get drunk too … It’s shameful, but I do. When I drink I forget. I forget we’re here, I forget who I am and I forget I’m with Masha. I’ve got it on the floor now and I’m pushing and panting. At last the cork pops in. The only place we can drink and not be seen is out on the balcony, lying down. It’s freezing outside but it doesn’t usually take me long to drink it. Two minutes. Maybe three.

  ‘Finally …’

  We go out on to the balcony. The snow is knee-deep but I lie down anyway, and I haven’t even got a coat on. No one can see us from the courtyard, and if someone comes into the room they won’t see us through the window either. I don’t care about the snow. When I’m drunk I don’t feel the cold. Masha pushes my elbow to get me to start, and I tip it up and start drinking it in one, stopping for the occasional breath. So I’m lying there in the snow, glugging it back, with Masha still shoving my elbow, and suddenly I think, Wait – how did this happen? How did I end up here, aged twenty, lying on the floor of a barred balcony, downing a whole bottle of wine like a common alcoholic? I need rescuing … I need … Slava … But before I can get too sad or ashamed or lonely … that wonderful wave of drunken forgetfulness seeps into my blood, washing right over me and sweeping me away with it to a world of numbness and nothingness.

  Age 21

  February 1971

  We arrange to leave the Twentieth to go and live with Slava in the village

  12 December 1970, internat.

  Hello girls, thank you for your letter and a big thank you for the records. I liked them very much.

  Sorry about the delay in replying but I couldn’t find a stamp. I had to ask someone to get one for me but they were a long time in fulfilling the order as there’s such a shortage. My health is OK. I’m not doing too well with my studies. Never mind. I’ve grown used to my new class.

  Dasha, no, my transistor hasn’t broken but I don’t listen to it because I can’t get batteries. Does your transistor work?

  Dasha, thanks for your card of the 7 November. I expected a letter but there you go. Alla sends her love and Nadezhda Lazareva, remember, who works in the kitchens? How’s Aunty Nadya? Send her my love.

  Dasha, have you read any poetry books?

  Dasha, could you come down to see me in the village next summer? I would come up to Moscow if I could, but it won’t be possible because my mother will be working and my brother will be preparing for his entrance exam to university. So you must come here to me. You can stay as long as you like. Mum says I need company.

  Will you?

  Love Slava

  ‘Well, everything’s going according to plan, yes, yes.’ Aunty Nadya’s in our room and I’m holding his last letter as if it’s a straw and I’m a drowning man. ‘Yes, yes, Slava’s mother has written back to me and she says that Slava’s very much looking forward to it and so is she. Yes. And I’ve just been given your leave of absence form, from Barkov …’

  ‘Yeah, I bet he couldn’t write that fast enough … he hates us,’ says Masha cheerfully. ‘Thinks we’re some sort of cancer in the body of his precious Home. Well, we’re getting away from this hell-hole, we are – Masha’s off to dance around the village pond.’

  ‘Well, yes, I had no problem at all in getting it. And I told Slava’s mother that you have no special needs and that you’re very clean and well behaved. I didn’t think I needed to inform the Ministry of Social Protection as this isn’t considered, you know, permanent … as yet … just a holiday … and you will have your invalid pension to buy food and such like.’

  ‘We don’t eat much,’ I say. ‘And we’ll eat anything.’

  ‘Well, just remember to brush your teeth. And you’ve written back to Slava?’

  ‘Yes, I sent him a birthday card,’ I say. ‘It was his birthday on January twenty-seventh.’

  ‘That’s right. His mother said he was having a party in the village for the children from school.’

  ‘I told him we can come to him first thing in summer, in May. I told him we’re arranging it all.’

  ‘Good, good, well, I’ll be off.’ She stops at the door. ‘I must say, I’m so very pleased to see the difference in you both. I’m glad you finally came to an agreement. See how happy it’s made you? See what good things can come in life if you both just agree. And never give up hope …’

  The next day we go down to reception. The crows outside are going kaaa kaaa mournfully and it’s raining, so the snow’s melting into a slush. February. I remember our poem. Take up your pen and weep. He asked if I was still reading poetry in his letter. Well, we’ll read it together now. In ninety-nine days from now. I wonder if he still has that book of poetry by Pasternak. Write of February through your tears, while the burning black slush of spring thunders at you
r feet … And he wrote ‘Love Slava’ in his letter. For the first time ever, he wrote Love.

  ‘Letter for you two,’ says the new guard.

  We jump at it excitedly. Masha snatches it, of course, but I can see it’s not from him. I can tell from the writing it’s not him. It might even be from his mother. Masha opens it and stands, leaning on her crutch while I fidget, wanting to see it too.

  ‘Who’s it from? Who’s it from, Mash?’

  ‘Valentina Alexandrovna. Shut up.’ She starts reading and then all of a sudden I feel her heartbeat punch through to mine like a cannon ball, and I rock back. She draws in a quick breath but reads on and then she hands it to me.

  2 February 1971, Novocherkassk

  Hello girls. Greetings from Valentina Alexandrovna!

  How are you? How is your health? We are busy at school here but we often think of you up in Moscow.

  Girls, I wanted to write to tell you that Slava had a birthday party at his home. He invited all his friends from school to his village and we took the school bus out there. It was a lovely affair and everyone had such a nice time.

  Dasha, Slava said that he wished that you could have been there and that he was looking forward to seeing you in summer.

  I’m very sorry to say that he died the next day.

  I thought I should write and tell you, or you might not have known. And you might have been waiting for his letters. And planning your trip.

  I think I should say, and I hope I don’t upset you, that Slava was the nicest possible pupil. He never complained.

  Anyway, I’m sorry to bear such bad news, girls, but I had to write.