Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Hey? What’s wrong with you ?’

‘Nothing’s wrong, Mash. Nothing’s wrong at all.’

I screw my eyes up tight and listen. It’s morning and Masha’s still asleep. I do it every morning because I’m afraid, if I open them, I’ll be back in SNIP and not here, in the school. Everyone’s nice to us now they’ve got to know us. We’ve been here for six weeks, but I still can’t believe my luck. When Aunty Nadya realized we were happy and settled in, she went back to Moscow. Back to her little Vasinka, as Masha said. But actually, she seemed even more upset to be leaving us than we were. She said she’d write and come on visits.

The bell goes then. It’s the loudest clanging in the world and everyone wakes at once. I open my eyes and sit up. Masha puts her pillow over her head.

‘Dashinkaaaa.’

It’s Little Lyuda from the bed next to ours. We’ve pushed them together, so we can tuck our legs under her blanket, otherwise they just hang over the side of our narrow bed and our feet freeze. She hops up next to me. She’s pale as a flea and jumps like one too.

‘Dashinkaaaa… it’s your turn on the rota for the bathchair today, isn’t it? Can I sit on your lap, can I? I get bashed to pieces on the Crocodiles.’ The Crocodiles are these green wheelbarrows that the nannies take kids who can’t walk in, from lesson to lesson. There’s only one proper bathchair; it’s so healthy – just like Uncle Vasya’s. Masha’s the fastest in school at going down the ramps.

‘Yes. Yes, you c-can!’ I say and glance quickly at Masha. I don’t think she’ll mind.

I hug myself. It’s our bathchair day and Olessya’s coming out of San too. This is the best day ever.

‘Mwaaah,’ says Masha, throwing the pillow off and shivering because it gets so cold at nights, even though the days are warm. ‘I’m not getting up.’

She always says this, every morning, so I just pull her out of bed then, and we run down to the washroom as fast as we can.

‘How are we supposed to wash our fucking nappy in icy-cold water,’ she says, balancing us by leaning against the wall, while I scrub the nappy out like mad in the sink. ‘It makes our hands raw red.’

‘ My hands, you mean.’

She yawns.

‘Same thing. And that soap’s black as coal.’

‘It’s still soap.’

‘And this one’s still damp from last night,’ she says, poking the day-nappy I washed last night. (It’s just a big brown rag really that we knot round us.) ‘What’s the use of hanging them out to dry on the pipes when the pipes aren’t hot? You should wring them out more.’

‘I’m wringing as hard as I can, Mash,’ I say, squeezing the last drops out.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ she says crossly. ‘Or we’ll be late for breakfast.’

We hang it up, get dressed, and run up the stairs to jump into the bathchair, with its three wheels and paddles to push us along. Little Lyuda hops into our lap and we scoot across the courtyard so fast the townspeople by the gates don’t even see us.

‘ Oooraah! White bread and cheese!’ shouts Masha as we sit down at the long table.

‘Cheeeese!’ go all the kids like little monkeys. Everyone loves Masha now.

‘Learnt the poem then?’ Slava, the boy who winked at me on our first day, is sitting opposite us. We’re the two top kids in the class, him and me, I’m learning really quickly. He gets better marks, but I’m catching up. He’s looking at me when he asks, but Masha replies, ‘We only have to learn one between us, thank God, so she was up all night reciting it like a sheep bleating in a field.’

I’ve got all my bread in my mouth so that Masha doesn’t take it from me. I can’t talk, so she slaps me on the back, trying to get me to spit it all out in front of him. She knows I like him. She likes him too, he’s funny, but she doesn’t like him the way I do. He has this nice brown skin, even now, in September, and dark floppy hair. But mostly he just has this way of looking at me, like he’s looking inside my head.

‘What are you reciting?’ I ask him, swallowing down the bread.

‘Boris Pasternak’s “February”.’

‘I thought he was anti-Soviet now?’ says Valya, the girl sitting next to him. Valya’s pretty and clever, but she’s really mean. I don’t know why.

Slava shrugs. ‘His poetry books are still in the library.’

‘You’d better learn them all off by heart then, because they won’t be for long,’ says Valya. ‘And I don’t think he’s a good writer at all. I don’t think you should be reciting that. Does Vera Stepanovna know?’ Slava shrugs again. I bite my lip. Valya’s an Activist. She’s always telling on anyone who says or does anything anti-Soviet. I don’t like her much. I like everyone else, but just not Valya. Not much, anyway.

‘Shut it, bitch!’ says Masha, pushing her plate away. ‘Peanut here can recite what he likes. Well, c’mon, shipwreck, let’s get back into that bathchair.’

I can hear Valya saying in a nasty, shouty sort of voice as we’re leaving ‘…and how did those two get on the bathchair rota when they can run like rabbits?’

And then I think I hear Slava saying, ‘Masha always finds her place in the sun.’

‘Olessya!’ we both squeal as we see her being let through the gates.

We’re sitting in the corner, on the steps, with Sunny Nina next to us and Little Lyuda on our lap. Olessya comes over and hugs and kisses us, and we hug and kiss her, and we’re all of us laughing all over the place.

‘Are you b-better?’ I ask. ‘You were in there forever.’

‘We thought they’d married you off to one of the doctors,’ says Masha, grinning.

‘They keep you in for ages after you’re well,’ says Olessya. ‘I was going crazy with boredom. Come on, let’s go sit behind the laundry room and you can tell me everything.’ Masha tips Lyuda off our lap, then pushes Sunny Nina off the steps in a friendly sort of way, and we paddle off in our bathchair.

‘Can’t believe you’re actually here!’ says Olessya, as we squeeze in behind the hut they do the laundry in. It’s the only place you can sit and no one can see you. It’s warm and dusty, even though it’s October now. It hardly ever rains in Novocherkassk. Masha’s squashed me against the fence, so Olessya has to sit next to her, not me.

‘How come they let you two leave SNIP?’

‘The Minister of Social… Social… whatever-it-is, said we had to go because everyone in Moscow had got to hear of us…’ says Masha, all excited.

‘…Deputy Minister of Social P-Protection…’ I put in.

‘No one else wanted us to leave, not Aunty Nadya or Mikhailovna or Anokhin, but Popov did. He’s gone too from SNIP now. Retired. He knows the School Director here, but we haven’t seen him yet…’

‘No, he goes off to lots of Party meetings and gets funding,’ says Olessya.

I wish I could snuggle up to Olessya, like Masha is. Her hair’s grown even thicker and blacker and her eyelashes have too. She looks so beautiful. I wonder if she likes Slava, or if he likes her? Probably. They’re both really clever. I’d just like to snuggle with anyone actually. Masha and I are too far apart to do that.

‘Still got a knife under there?’ asks Masha, pointing to her trolley.

‘ Nyetooshki! Don’t need it here. The kids are all nice.’

‘Valya, the Ice Queen’s not nice.’

‘She’s just bitter, Masha, that’s what it is. She was a Healthy up until two years ago. She swung on an electric wire and lost both her arms, so she was sent here. She can’t accept that she’s in with the Defectives, and she’s always going to be stared at by the Healthies, and what’s worse is that, now, she can’t even marry one.’