Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

A few minutes later we turn down a dirt track to a gate with a hand-painted sign, which says Strictly No Entry . There’s an old man in a baggy suit, hung with loads of war medals, sitting outside the gate by a pile of watermelons. He gets up when he sees us, and opens the gates slow as anything. We drive in and stop by a row of low army tents. The Educators are standing around, watching us as we get off – they’re big, fat women chewing sunflower seeds and swatting flies with branches from the pine trees.

They just sort of look at us, without smiling, as we tumble out.

‘Good thing they pay us double for this lot,’ says one, spitting out a husk.

‘Come on then, you busload of cripples,’ says another, stepping forward. ‘Let’s get you to work. Davai, davai .’

Once we’ve put our bags in our tents, they divide us off into groups to go and collect wood for the fire, and bring water for the cauldron from the river, and peel potatoes.

‘Yeah, yeah – get to work, everyone! Davai! ’ shouts Masha, running off to the woods for sticks. ‘Bags I light the fire!’ The Educators are standing around with their arms folded, shaking their heads a bit, but they’re sort of smiling. I think I’ll be all right. Me and Masha. We’ll be all right.

We’ve been here a month now and it’s healthy, even though I can’t stop thinking about Slava and what he’s doing. I still have fun, living in the woods like this and cooking our own food. It makes me feel useful somehow. And we get lessons in the morning and spend the afternoon outside, doing our washing and cleaning and cooking for supper. It’s a very strict regime, like in school, and we’re all fenced in, but we get time to play and pretend stuff, like we’re the Reds hiding from the Cossacks. And although we’re not allowed to swim (Masha’s just desperate to go swimming) we can paddle when the Educators are celebrating something and getting drunk on vodka. They’re always celebrating something, the Educators are.

They’ve been drinking since lunchtime today, because it’s a Sunday, and they’ve all gone down to the river to paddle, dressed in nothing but their baggy knickers. They don’t think of Defective boys as being real boys.

‘C’mon,’ says Masha to me. ‘Let’s go and talk to Uncle Vova by the gate.’

‘We’re not supposed to, Masha. They’ll kill us, if they see us.’

‘They can’t see anything beyond their saggy tits right now,’ says Masha, and she goes running up the dirt track, and knocks loudly on the wooden gate. Uncle Vova does odd-jobs in the camp like mending things if they’re broken, so Masha always talks to him, because she likes mending things too. We hardly ever meet men. He opens the gate a crack.

‘Well, you’re a couple of naughty monkeys, aren’t you?’ he says, when he sees us wriggle through to him. ‘Fancy a slice of watermelon?’

‘I fancy ten slices of watermelon,’ says Masha, and he laughs.

‘Tell you what,’ he says, after a bit, watching us wiping all the juice off our faces. ‘If you let me take you on my motorbike, in the sidecar, up to my village, I’ll give you all the watermelons you want. Come for just half an hour. They all think I’m lying like the devil back there. I’d show ’em if I turned up with you two in the sidecar. I really would.’

Masha takes another big bite and nods happily.

‘Done then,’ he says, smiling, with all his gold teeth as bright as his medals. ‘Come up next time the grown-ups get drunk, and we’ll be off.’

‘But I don’t want to, Masha,’ I say, when we’re back at the camp. We’re so stuffed full of watermelon, we can only lie on our camp bed. I didn’t have half as much as her, but it’s all come down to my side of our tummy somehow and I feel like popping. ‘Everyone will just stare. I don’t like watermelons that much.’

‘I do,’ she says.

‘Do what?’ says Olessya, coming into the tent with Little Lyuda.

‘Uncle Vova says he wants to show us to his villagers,’ I say, all in a sulk.

‘ Nyetooshki ,’ says Olessya, shaking her head. ‘He only wants to exploit you. He’ll probably get them to pay him, for looking at you. And what if he keeps you up there, and the Educators find out? You’ll be sent back to the Crematorium.’

Masha frowns.

‘Don’t, don’t!’ says Little Lyuda, jumping on to her bed, which is pushed next to ours for our legs, like at school. ‘I don’t want you to be sent away!’

Just then it starts thundering, and there’s this great flash of lightning.

‘See, it’s Father Stalin telling you not to,’ says Little Lyuda, and scrambles over to our bed laughing. ‘Let’s tell stories.’

‘Tell us about you, if you like,’ says Olessya. ‘You never talk about you.’

Little Lyuda shrugs. ‘All right. My mum was only sixteen when she had me. I was Healthy as anything, but she had to reject me and send me to a State Baby Home cos she was just a kid herself. I was adopted when I was two years old by this really nice couple in Moscow. He’s an engineer and she’s a doctor.’ The lightning flashes again and we all sort of huddle together.

‘They were the ones that named me Lyuda, and they loved me loads. They were really kind. But then, when I was nine, I was playing in a bit of wasteland behind our block of flats, digging away with a stick, looking for treasure, when I heard this crashing sound and realized the old crumbly wall I was under was giving way. I tried to get away but it all fell on my legs and crushed them. My parents didn’t visit me once in hospital, and when I got better, I was sent to an orphanage. They wrote the Rejection letter to the militia while I was in hospital, but they didn’t write to me. I didn’t even get to go home to say goodbye.’ Her eyes are all white and staring, but she’s not crying or anything. ‘I still write to them though. I’ve been writing for years, telling them what I’m doing, you know. But they haven’t written back.’

We all just sort of sit around, not saying anything. We’ve all got history.

‘Not yet anyway…’ she adds. I know how she feels. I kept writing to my real mummy, right up until we left SNIP. But I don’t any more as there’s no one to send my letters for me. And there’s still no address. In any case, Masha keeps saying Aunty Nadya just put them all in the bin.

I wonder if it’s better never to have known your mother, like us, and to imagine her, or to have known her, like Olessya and Little Lyuda, and been rejected.

I can’t quite decide.

Twenty-one days to go.

Me and Masha are lying on our tummies, on the dock today, doing our washing. I’ve done ours and I’m washing Icy Valya’s too, because she can’t. Masha says I should just let it float away with the current and serve her right.

It’s August, and so hot, I feel I could melt and drip down into the cool, blue water. I wish Slava was lying here with us. I think about him as much as ever, maybe even more now he’s not here, which sort of makes up for it. Every time the thought of him comes into my head my stomach flips, every single time. Masha’s used to it now. She doesn’t know what’s causing it but she says it’s like me hiccupping inside. She thinks I’ve got never-ending tummy hiccups.

I like washing things. I like to be useful. I’d like to spend my whole life washing Slava’s clothes for him… Masha’s just dabbling her hands in the water, seeing if any fish will come up and nibble her.