Juliet Butler: The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Shut up!!’ She keeps pacing up and down, up and down, getting tighter and tighter until I feel like I’m going to burst. ‘I want to go OUT! It’s because of you I can’t go out! Because you’re stuck to me. Get off! Get off me! I hate you – go away, I’ll kill you and then they’ll cut you off!’ Then she starts hitting me with her fists and pulling my hair and scratching my face and kicking me in my leg, so I do what I always do and lie back as far as I can with my hands over my face.

Poor Masha. The only time I can ever really go away from her is when I close my eyes and imagine it. But she can’t do that as well as I can. I don’t think she can even do it at all.

After ages and ages of being beaten up, she gets slower and then stops and turns over and puts her head right deep into her pillow. I’m trying to stop my nosebleed, cos the Administrator will kill me if I get blood on the sheets, so I push my pyjama sleeve right up my nostril. I can wash the sleeve out myself later. After a bit, when Masha’s gone to sleep, I decide to think of what I’m going to write in my next letter to Mummy. I’ll write: We hope you’re well. We’re well thank you. We haven’t been punished all week so far for being naughty. We get a bit bored so if you come and visit us that would be nice and you don’t have to stay long if you haven’t much time, and you don’t have to bring anything either. Your daughters, Masha and Dasha.

We’ve been moved into General Ward G now and the little kids are hiding under their beds because Masha’s telling them about how her father’s a Cannibal King in Africa. She says he’s got a bone through his nose, from one of the children he’s eaten up, and she’s told them he’s visiting her today.

‘He makes a soup out of them and spits their bones out,’ Masha’s saying, ‘and makes a necklace for each of his wives. When I was little, I burnt his soup and he took an axe and chopped me in two. That’s why I’m like this, and he’ll do the same to—’

‘Children! I have news for you!’ It’s Lydia Mikhailovna who’s just thrown open the doors. She hardly ever visits the wards so the kids all scream when the doors bang open, because they think it’s the Cannibal King come to visit with his axe.

‘What on earth are you all doing under there? Come out at once.’ She looks across at Masha and I think she’s going to be angry, but she’s not. She’s happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever seen her. ‘ Tak! Everyone come along to the Room of Relaxation. I have an important announcement to make. Something wonderful!’

Wonderful? What? Maybe we’re all being taken to the Circus? The family kids told us about the Circus, where sparkly ladies fall out of the sky, and clowns are so stupid they make you fall off your seat laughing, and lions that eat their trainers right before your very eyes. We all run outside and find the kids from the other wards there, excited as a buzz of bees. I can hear the word kosmos going round and round, and think maybe they’re sending us off in a rocket to start the Soviet moon at last.

We race off to the Room of Relaxation, which we’re never normally allowed in. It’s full, and everyone’s crowded around the new television. We’ve never seen it before, but we heard it was there from the nannies. It’s a little black box where you can see everything that’s happening on the Outside, zooming right inside to it. But only in black and white, not colour like the real world. It’s so healthy!

‘Now then. Quiet!’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s standing with all the staff, even the kitchen staff, by the television. ‘This is a wonderful day!’ she says again. ‘A day of one of the most incredible Soviet Achievements we have ever seen.’ She looks around at the staff, who are all smiling fit to burst. ‘We have sent a man into space!’

There’s a sort of gasp all round. Space? To the moon? Did he die like Laika?

‘That man was Comrade Gagarin,’ she goes on, ‘he orbited once and then returned to earth and the People are rejoicing throughout the Soviet Union.’

Masha’s pushing to the front, round the side of the room, by the windows, and I look out and I can see the People celebrating, I really can, hugging each other and throwing caps in the air and running somewhere.

‘This proves that our country, the Soviet Union, is the most advanced in the world. In the entire world,’ says Lydia Mikhailovna loudly. ‘We are now going to watch Comrade Gagarin being congratulated by First Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich, right here in Moscow.’

‘Gaaa!’ groans Masha. ‘It’s another yobinny Achievement and not the circus.’ But she’s got us to the front so we have the best view of anyone of the television. There he is! I can see him! Walking down a long rug at the airport, dressed in a uniform like Father Stalin’s. He’s so… so handsome . I just stare and stare. Lydia Mikhailovna’s talking about how the Soviet Union has finally proved its superiority, and how Communism will now spread throughout the world, as everyone can see it’s the best system possible, but I can’t stop staring at him. I’ve never seen anyone in my life so perfect before. I kind of all swell up like dough with happiness that he’s been so brave and that he’s Ours. Comrade Khrushchev takes his hat off and hugs him so hard I think they’re both going to cry or something, and then there’s pictures of the crowd holding big banners of Gagarin’s face, and there’s schoolgirls with bows in their hair, running up to him with bunches of flowers. We’re all laughing now and the staff are hugging each other too. I’ve never seen anyone so happy, all at the same time. Masha’s shouting ‘ Oorrraaaa! ’ at the top of her voice and doesn’t even get told off.

When all the huggings are over we all go out of the Room of Relaxation and I think this must really be the best day ever, even if I’m not going to the Circus or to the moon because I’m living here, where Yuri Gagarin is.

In the Best of All Possible Worlds.

‘So. I expect you know why you’ve been called in this time?’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s sitting behind her big desk in her office and we’re standing in front of it. She’s all cross again, like she always is when we’ve been naughty. But everyone else is still happy. It’s like the sun is shining all the time. We cut a photo of Gagarin out of the newspaper, which was stuck up on the news board (that was nyelzya , of course) and keep it folded up under a loose tile in the toilets to look at. He’s got a dimple and light green or maybe blue eyes. I’m not sure, as it’s black and white. I think they’re probably blue. He’s a hero. It just shows, this does, that we’re the best country ever. It just shows.

Masha’s twiddling the button on her pyjama bottoms. We both know we’re being told off because of Boris this time.

‘Boris called me Mashdash-Car-Crash! It’s nyelzya to call Defectives names,’ says Masha quickly. ‘We Must Respect Deformity. That’s what you always say, Lydia Mikhailovna.’

‘True. And breaking his leg in two places is showing respect?’

‘It was an accident,’ she says sulkily.

‘So you accidentally stole a bottle of vegetable oil from the kitchens, while Lucia was pretending to faint, and then accidentally spilt it on the floor, just as Boris was coming out of his ward?’

‘I didn’t know he’d go over with such a crack—’

‘His leg was both fractured and broken. Extremely painful. As if we haven’t got enough work to do in here.’