Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

So now, talking about it, we think she actually likes us.

‘Hey, I know,’ says Masha, ‘let’s go to Lydia Mikhailovna’s office, right now, like right now, and tell her we don’t want our leg off after all.’

I nod happily, so we go running off and knock on her door and tell her.

‘No, it’s all arranged, girls. Next Wednesday. Amputation.’ Lydia Mikhailovna has her hand up in front of her.

‘P-Please, p-please, it’s our leg. We want to k-keep it!’

‘No, Dasha. And that’s final.’

‘But it will be general anaesthetic? Won’t it?’ asks Masha.

Lydia Mikhailovna looks down at her desk and starts arranging papers. ‘No. It will be local. Doctor Anokhin will be present with his Medical Sciences film crew to observe your reactions, and Doctor Golubeva from the Brain Institute will be measuring your brain activity with her electroencephalogram helmets. They need you conscious.’ She doesn’t look up. ‘Scientists need you conscious to monitor reactions.’

It’s the morning of the operation and I’m so scared I can’t see straight. Masha keeps thumping me and saying I’ll ruin it. Olessya’s sitting with us on the bed.

‘You won’t feel anything. Nothing at all,’ she’s saying to me in her low, quiet voice, which is like being stroked. ‘And the helmets are so painful anyway, you won’t even be thinking about your leg, will you? It won’t take long. You’ll be back here in a minute… we’ll play draughts.’

I’m shaking all over though and sobbing. I think I’d rather die.

‘Stupid sheep! Bad enough to go through an operation, without having a fucking shipwreck by your side!’ Masha slaps me hard on the cheek.

‘Enough of that!’ Aunty Nadya’s walked in. ‘As if she isn’t in enough of a state as it is.’

‘Just needs some sense knocked into her,’ grumbles Masha.

‘Well, be that as it may, everything’s ready so come along, girls. We’ll have that leg off in a jiffy and you’ll look like new.’

‘Now?!! Nyetttt! ’ I try to crawl back up the bed away from her, but Masha’s pulling the other way and Aunty Nadya’s pulling my hand and they half drag, half carry me down to the operating floor. I start screaming at the door to the theatre. They’re trying to take my hand out of Aunty Nadya’s and leave her behind and shut it. I scream and scream and don’t even feel Masha’s slaps and won’t let go of Aunty Nadya’s hand until they let her come in too.

There’s bright hot lights everywhere and the room’s so full with doctors and cameras I hardly see Anokhin until they put us flat on the table, face down, and he looks into my face with his chocolatey eyes. There’s no room for Aunty Nadya round the table because of the surgeons, but I won’t let go of her hand so she has to crawl down under the operating table, still holding on to mine. Doctor Golubeva fits the helmets and turns them on and everything goes juddery like my brain’s being fried. She comes into SNIP every few months with the helmets, but we never get used to it. I scream even more and I can hear Masha yelling at me and then I see the saw that they cut your leg off with, sitting on a tray, right in front of my very own two eyes. It’s like the one Stepan Yakovlich uses to cut down branches, maybe it’s even the same one. Then a man comes at me with a needle as big as my arm.

‘Inject all round the root of the leg,’ says another voice I don’t recognize above all the noise. ‘Let’s get on with this. Gospodi! … these two were bad enough as babies…’ The needle goes in like a hot burning skewer and I try and get off the table then, pulling Masha with me, and hear Anokhin shouting:

‘Hold her down! Nurse – hold her down! God in Heaven, this is turning into a circus act!’

I can’t stop shaking and as soon as the injections are done Masha pops up and starts punching me in the head.

‘You idiot! You stupid weakling, you coward!’ she screams, hitting and hitting me. The nurse lets go of me to push her down and I try to crawl off the table again, to get down under the operating table with Aunty Nadya.

‘This is absurd!’ shouts Anokhin. ‘Tie them both to the table and let’s just get on and saw this wretched limb off!’

And then everything goes black.

I wake up in bed and as soon as my eyes open Masha starts hitting me again.

‘Bitch! Spineless snake! They didn’t take it off because of you!’

‘Stop that this instant , Masha!’ shouts Aunty Nadya.

Then everything goes black again.

When I come to properly, Olessya’s sitting with Masha, holding her, to stop her hitting me, and Aunty Nadya’s telling me what happened.

‘You fainted. I could just feel your hand shaking and then it went all limp and wet. I thought you’d died.’

‘Wish she had. And left me in peace…’

‘Do be quiet , Masha…’ She turns back to me. ‘I could hear them all saying: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” And Professor Popov shouting, “Dasha! Dashinka! Wake up!” So I couldn’t help it, I crawled out from under the table and saw your surgeon, Professor Dolyetsky, and Doctor Anokhin and Professor Popov walking out of the door to smoke. They were standing there, sucking away like their lives depended on it in the corridor. I could hear them talking. Professor Dolyetsky said it could only be a reaction you had to the novocaine and that it was strange because you’d had novocaine before, and I was thinking, What’s strange is that they don’t realize Dasha just fainted from sheer terror.’

‘Yeah, fainted like a fat fucking fly in the sun,’ says Masha. ‘You’ve ruined all our chances of looking better now, with your lily-livered—’

‘ Teekha! So, then Professor Dolyetsky turns to Anokhin and asks if they should carry on anyway, since you were still breathing, and Anokhin agrees, but then Popov steps in and says, “No, we will not go on with the operation. These are human beings, not rabbits.” So you were taken back here.’

‘And now we’re left with this bloody tree trunk,’ Masha shakes our leg, ‘and you’re the miserable weak worm who hates looking like a freak. You’re a fucking freak with or without the fucking leg!’

‘Masha! Stop swearing this instant! Have some pity!’ Aunty Nadya’s holding one of her arms, and Olessya’s holding the other to stop her thumping me. ‘Have some pity.’

‘I’m s-sorry…’ I put my hands over my face. ‘I’m s-so, so s-sorry.’

I wish I was strong like Masha, but however hard I try, all the weakness just comes gushing out like a whole sea that never stops pouring and pouring over me and drowning me.

All my strength went to her.

We’ve got a postcard from Olessya. We’re sitting reading it on the back steps by the bath house. It’s quiet here.

We can eat peaches and apricots right off the trees here and it’s sunny and hot all the time. They even have white bread and fresh eggs and milk.

‘Lucky cow. Hardly ever even seen white bread, and all we get is pickled eggs and powdered milk now,’ says Masha.

The Director is a kind man and the teachers are kind and we are following the school curriculum for a diploma. The kids are fun too and we have a big courtyard and orchard, inside the walls because it’s in a pre-revolutionary, really rich, merchant’s house. Good thing we’re all equal now! We have a side cupboard by our beds we can keep our own stuff in and no one steals it. Well, write to me too. Olessya.

She’s in the boarding school for Defectives in the South of Russia. She was here in SNIP for six whole months and Galina Petrovna said that she learnt more in that time than most children learnt in four years and she couldn’t bear to send her back to the orphanage for Uneducables. So she got her into this school in Novocherkassk. Turns out Lydia Mikhailovna knows the Director.