Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Why didn’t you just untie the laces?’ says Masha in a thick voice because the dice is still in her mouth.

‘Didn’t think of it. All I can think of is this train rolling back towards me with sparks flying, and then ZING!!!’ We both jump. We always do at that bit. ‘I got electrocuted and next thing I know I wake up in hospital with no legs left.’

‘What happened to them?’ says Masha. She knows what happened to them, so do I, but she wants to hear again. ‘The train rolled over me and cut them clean off. If I hadn’t got electrocuted and fallen back, I might’ve been cut in half myself.’

‘But what happened to the legs?’ says Masha again.

‘My dad went back and got them – he thought they’d be able to sew them back on, but they couldn’t because he didn’t put them in ice, see. So he buried them in the garden instead. Maybe he thought they’d grow back into a new me. Anyway, Mum goes out and cries over them every day but they’ll have rotted away and have all worms in them by now.’

‘Healthy!’ says Masha, and takes the dice out of her mouth, wipes it on her sleeve and throws it again. ‘Kiss!’

‘Shhh!’ Pasha puts his hand over her mouth. There are voices by the back door and we’re not allowed to sit on the stone steps. I can smell stinky papirosa smoke.

‘Bloody nightmare, getting in this morning,’ says one of the voices. It’s probably one of the nannies or cleaners because the nurses don’t swear.

‘It’s spread all round town like wildfire; they’re like a pack of slavering dogs out there. It’s disgusting.’

‘Can’t blame them really. They want to see the Two-Headed Girl. Give them something to blab about.’

‘Some of the questions though…’

‘…like – has it been sewn together by Stalin’s scientists as an experiment…’

‘…or come down from Outer Space… heard that one?’

‘Heard them all. Brought back by Gagarin…’

‘Work of the Devil…’

‘Poor kids. One thing they’re right about: they should never have been left to live.’

‘Seem happy enough…’

‘For now…’

They go off then.

We don’t say anything for a bit. I’m shivering. Or trembling or something. I wish Pasha wasn’t here.

‘ Yobinny idiots,’ says Pasha. ‘Ignorant goats, the lot of them. There’s nothing wrong with you two. Except you can’t kiss for peanuts. Well, Masha can’t. How about you, Dash?’ He leans over to me. ‘I should get two kisses for the price of one with a Girl with Two Heads, right?’ He laughs.

I don’t want to. I’m feeling sick, but I kiss him on the cheek anyway, as he’s right there, so close I can smell his soapiness, and I feel all tingly when I do. And stop shaking. And then he kisses me back on my cheek. And that feels all tingly too.

Aunty Nadya always comes in to say night-night before she goes off her shift, so I ask her then. It was Masha who told me to. I ask in a whisper so the other kids can’t hear.

‘Why are we Together? Were w-we sewn together?’ We looked, when we got back to the ward, but we can’t see any stitches or a scar or anything, not even the smallest little trace. ‘Are there other children who are Together like us? Or are we from another p-planet?’ I don’t remember being on another planet but we’d have been babies when we came down. The only thing I do know is that Gagarin didn’t bring us back.

She jumps back, all shocked and cross.

‘Well! What on earth put all that nonsense into your head? What ridiculous questions! I don’t know how you think them up, I really don’t.’

I bite my lip. I have to ask the next one, quick. Masha’s looking out of the window like she’s not listening at all, like she’s not interested. ‘And what… what would happen if we got c-cut in half?’ Masha told me to ask that, after Pasha told us about his legs. We remember that man we saw from the window in the Ped, who got cut in half by the tram and got sewn together, Mummy said. What would have happened if we were on the track?

Aunty Nadya looks like someone’s slapped her. She stands there with her mouth in a big O.

‘Cut in half?!’ She says it so loud some of the other kids look round, so she pushes her hair back into her cap and straightens her white coat a bit. ‘ Gospodi! That’s quite enough of that! It’s nyelzya to ask questions. Do you understand? Nyelzya! ’ We both nod. She straightens our bed covers and then leaves. Just like that, without even kissing us.

‘Told you not to ask,’ says Masha, sniffing. ‘Go to sleep. And don’t wake me up with all your stupid tossing around.’

I can’t sleep. Not knowing why we’re Together gives me lots of nightmares. And now I’ll probably have nightmares about being a slimy monster too. Not Masha though. She sleeps sound as a stone. I wish I’d been born Masha instead of me.

We’re naked down in a well, but it’s not a dark well, it’s all lit up and the walls are made of slippery glass, so though we can see the opening at the top, we can’t climb up to it. There’s people’s faces, lit up white, staring in at us, all around on every little bit of glass with their mouths open wide like leeches sticking to a jar. I can’t hear them but I know they’re screaming and their hands are flat against the glass, trying to get in at us. The glass cracks at the bottom and I see the crack run up past me to the top and know it’s about to break wide open and let them all in to grab us and tear us to pieces like wild dogs, because we shouldn’t be alive… I start screaming too…

‘Shut up!’ Masha slaps me.

‘Arrghh!’ I sit up. She slaps me again.

‘You and your stupid nightmares! You’ve woken the whole ward.’

I blink and look around at the beds lined up against the wall in the darkness, but my head’s still full of those faces.

‘It was that dream, Mash, down in the well… the same one.’

‘With me?’

‘I’m always with you in my nightmares.’

‘Thanks a lot… Well, never mind, you’re awake now, and so am I, what with all that screaming. And anyway, Aunty Nadya says, “Bad Dreams – Good Life. Good Dreams – Bad Life.” See? And today’s the best day ever, because we’re going Outside on our Day Trip!’

She jumps out of bed to pull back the curtain. It’s starting to get light. ‘We’re going to be dressed in our new trousers and shirts.’

‘I know.’ I get up and we go over to the window to look out at the weather. It’s icy cold, but there’s an orange sunrise making everything glow red. It’s going to be sunny. I press my nose against the window, reading the big red slogans as hard as I can, to stop the pictures from the nightmare filling my head. To Have More we must Produce More. To Produce More we must Know More . I see it every morning, but I don’t ever know more. I hate that all the other children in the world are going to school and learning all about everything, so they can work to build Communism, and me and Masha aren’t. We’re fourteen now and we should know loads, but we stopped knowing things at eleven. As Lucia would say, it really sucks. (She said she’d write when she left but she never did, just like all the others. Perhaps she ran away again.)

‘Real trousers made from Boris Markovich’s curtains! Lya-lya topo-lya! ’ laughs Masha. I stop frowning and smile at her. She’s funny. There’s a shortage of fabric Outside, so they used the curtains from Professor Popov’s office to make them with. And we’re going in his black Volga, driven by his own chauffeur. ‘ We’re going to see Lenin! We’re going to see Lenin! ’ sings Masha, dancing down the ward and sticking her tongue out at the other kids who are slowly waking up.