Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Was it really necessary to inform the staff? Surely they’re used to deformity?’ They’re speaking in low voices, but we can hear everything. Aunty Nadya knows we’ve got hearing like a bat.

‘I’m afraid it was Konstantin Semyonovich, the Director, who decided to hold a meeting for all the pupils and staff to explain…’

‘Pupils as well?! Aaakh! ’

‘Yes, yes, pupils too, he just wanted to tell them that though the girls may be ah… together… they should be given the same respect and—’

‘Of course they should!’ interrupts Aunty Nadya crossly. ‘Does that really need explaining in a school like this?’

Vera Stepanovna undoes a button on her collar. She’s wearing a shiny, grey suit that looks like the pearly buttons are going to pop off.

‘Yes, yes, perhaps it was a mistake, I think it must have been the kitchen staff…’ Masha rolls her eyes. (Telling kitchen staff a secret is like handing them a megaphone and a platform.) ‘The worst thing,’ she goes on ‘is that the children, who are already upset that our school is nicknamed the Cripple Can, in town, now think that with…’ she starts whispering, ‘so-called freaks coming here, the school will be turned into a circus. There are dozens of townspeople outside the gates as we speak.’

‘What exactly are you saying?’

‘Um… the children might not be too… welcoming… just to start with. Although Olessya has, of course, told them all about them… Poor Olessya. She’s in the Sanatorium at the moment with pneumonia, but we hope for the best… Well,’ she raises her voice then, looks over to us, beaming, and shouts as if we’re deaf or something, ‘I’ll be off, girls. You make yourselves comfortable!’

Aunty Nadya comes over to say the car’s waiting to take her to her lodgings in town. She’s going to stay here in Novocherkassk for a few weeks to make sure we have everything we need. She kisses us goodbye quickly, then stomps out.

Masha thumps the pillow. ‘Olessya’s sick? That’s all we fucking need.’

‘What did she mean, she “hopes for the best”? Will she be all right? Do you think we can contact her?’

‘In the San? No chance, she’ll be in quarantine a month.’

There are footsteps on the stairs and we look up as the other girls come in. They don’t even look at us.

‘Screw them,’ says Masha. ‘If they don’t need us, we don’t need them.’ She pulls our blanket over her head and lies down on the pillow. I don’t have a pillow at the foot of the bed, so I fold my hands under my head and close my eyes tight to stop the tears squeezing out. I’m worried about Olessya, that’s all. I don’t care about the girls. I don’t care at all. I’ve got Masha, I have. I’ve always got Masha.

Next morning the kids get washed and dressed and go off to their lessons, still not looking at us, and we’re taken down to a little classroom for a test to see which class we should go in.

I’m feeling a bit dizzy. Everything smells different. Everything looks different. We went to breakfast in the food hall, but everyone sat away from us like we stink or something. I hoped we’d get a boiled egg at least, like Olessya said, a real fresh egg instead of powdered eggs, but it was just buckwheat porridge with water and salt.

‘Right, girls. I’ve made this board, you see, to put between you, so we can have no copying.’

‘ Chort! ’ says Masha under her breath. She always copies from me.

‘Here’s the test. Nothing too daunting. I do understand you’ve only had a primary education. Off you go.’

I get writing. It’s not too hard; basic maths and Russian grammar. Our elbows clash as we write. Seems odd if we really did split in two from one person, like Anokhin said, that we use our inside arms not our outside ones. Masha keeps sucking her pencil and looking up in the air. She finishes way before me.

Next morning we get black bread (not white) and lard (not butter) and are taken to the 8th form classroom of fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds like us. None of them even look up. They’re just ignoring us. Vera Stepanovna’s at the front by the blackboard. We slip into a desk right at the back, and Masha starts dipping her fingers in the inkwell and flicking ink at me, which makes me really cross as I’ll never get it off my blouse.

‘This is Masha and Dasha, girls and boys, I’m sure you’re all acquainted…’ No one says anything or looks round. ‘Yes, well now, I have just had the results of your test back, girls,’ she flaps our test papers at us, ‘and I’m afraid we have a problem. You, Dasha, attained good marks, so in theory should go in the 7th form; but you, Masha, need a lot more catching up on the four years you’ve both missed, and should really go down into the 5th form.’

There’s some titters round the class.

‘That’s no problem, Vera Stepanovna,’ says Masha, sticking her inky hand up. You can put us both in the 7th form and knock a hole between the two classes. Then I’ll just poke my head through into the other one!’ The kids turn round to look at her then and start laughing a bit, in a nice way, not a nasty way.

Vera Stepanovna raps her ruler on the desk, but she sort of smiles too.

‘I think we can find a better compromise than that, Masha. You shall both go into the 6th form. I might as well take you there now. You children sit quietly and read your text.’ Some of them sneak looks at us as we walk out, but they’re not unkind. Just interested.

The 6th form looks the same as the 8th form, but the kids are younger. The only free desk is at the front, so we have to walk right through the classroom and sit down. It’s dark in here. I’m glad. There’s no electricity or hot water in the school in summer. There’s this bright red slogan above the blackboard saying Indoctrinate the Next Generation into the Collective Way of Life! But everything else is kind of dim and brown.

‘So, yes, where were we…’ says our history teacher, Irina Konstantinovna, once Vera Stepanovna has gone. She’s all jittery and jumpy, and looking everywhere except at us as Masha clatters around looking for pencils in the desk. The teacher’s fat and has got purple hair. She’s scared stiff of us. We can always tell when new people are scared stiff. Some aren’t, like the head teacher and the kids, of course, but some are. She turns to write on the blackboard, but keeps dropping the chalk because her hands are trembling.

‘So, yes, yes,’ she says, turning back to us. ‘Ninochka, my little sunbeam.’ She points at a pretty girl with blonde curls. ‘If you could just recap for the er… newcomers… yes, what have we learnt in the last ten minutes, my little sunbeam…’

‘Oooh, if she’s your little sunbeam, I’ll be your little raincloud, Irina Konstantinovna?’ Masha’s waving her hand in the air and the teacher looks at us for the first time. ‘You’re going to need a raincloud in today’s sunshine, not a sunbeam.’ Masha always knows how to make people who first meet us see we’re just two ordinary kids. The others laugh and I look round at them a bit, for the first time, to see what they’re like, and there’s this boy with dark eyes looking right at me. He’s not even looking at Masha at all. And he’s not laughing like the others.

Then the blonde sunbeam starts talking about how they’ve been taking notes on the Splendid Surgery of the Great October Revolution. I’m not big into surgery at the moment, whatever sort, but I suppose they’re talking about amputating the Tsar’s family and bourgeois elements and all that. She’s going on about Bubnov, Bukharin and Berzin, and I’m taking notes, like I know who they are, but I don’t. Not yet.

When the bell goes for the end of the lesson, we get up to go out, and the boy with the dark eyes looks right at me and winks, and I blush. Masha feels me flush and looks back at me, frowning.