Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Dashulya! Dashinka!’ We both turn to see Lyuda scooting down the dock on her trolley. ‘Guess what? Guess what?!’

‘What?’ we say together.

‘Slava’s come! Slava’s here! He’s just come with his dad, in the sidecar of his motorbike.’

Slava!

We jump up so fast I almost lose all the clothes in the river. Slava!

I can see him. He’s there, under the pine trees with all the kids around him, talking away at him, and laughing like mad. We jump up and run to him, pushing through the others, and then just stand there panting, looking at him.

‘What’s up, Peanut?’ says Masha, all cool and everything, but really excited too. ‘Been a bad boy?’

‘Nah, what the hell, it was boring back home. My brother’s got a bicycle now, so he was never there, and if I poked my nose out the door, the village kids chucked stones at me… you know how it is…’ We don’t because we’ve never lived on the Outside, so we haven’t been stoned yet, but I nod my head all over the place. ‘Sooo…’ he goes on, and then shoots me that dark look of his that makes my insides turn over and over, and his mouth turns up in a smile, ‘so, that gets a bit boring after a while…’ I nod again and think my heart’s going to burst right out of my chest, it suddenly seems so big. So big that it’s swallowed up the big black hole that’s been in there all summer. ‘Yeah, so I thought it’d be more fun here. Right, Dasha?’

I nod again, smiling all over my face. ‘Right, Slava.’

The next day’s a Sunday, and it’s so beautiful I can hardly believe it. We’re sitting under the pines with Olessya and Boris. And Slava. He chucks a pine cone at the small wooden Rescue boat which is rocking a little way out.

‘Why don’t we take the row boat out?’ he says.

‘No one can row,’ says Olessya. ‘The Educators said if you can row, you can take it out, but none of us can.’

‘Of course, Masha here told them she could,’ says Big Boris. ‘So her and Dasha sat in it, and went round and round in circles, bashing each other on the head with the oars, while the Educators stood on the shore laughing their heads off.’

‘I was just getting the hang of it when they pulled us back in! It was worth a try though – you know what they say: you can’t fetch wood if you don’t go into the forest.’

‘I can row,’ says Slava. ‘Dad taught me on the pond in our village.’

We all stare at him, then Masha yells: ‘ Ooorrah! – I’m going boating!’ We jump up and run off to get changed into our bikinis while the two boys go and ask for the oars. Ten minutes later he’s rowing us out into the Don with the Educators standing watching, to make sure he does know how to do it, from the bank. And he does. He’s just in his shorts and he’s got these big muscles in his shoulders and arms. He rows really well.

The water’s flat as glass, and to start off with, we’re all whooping and splashing each other as we go further and further out into the wide river, watching the bank growing smaller and smaller. The Educators turn and go back into the woods, leaving us. It seems to me we’re rowing away from the world, right out into real Russia where everyone else lives, able to go wherever they want, whenever they want.

It’s strange, but when we went from the walled school to the fenced camp, it was sort of like being taken from one enclosure to another. But now I feel free, right out in the open. Slava stows the oars and we all lie back, Big Boris and Olessya at the front are curled up in each other’s arms, and me and Masha are at the back. Some geese fly overhead in a V shape, flapping their wings with a whooshing sound, flying away. I close my eyes and wonder if Slava’s watching me.

After what seems like hours, I open my eyes again. Masha’s asleep with her head half hanging over the edge of the boat. Olessya and Big Boris are asleep too. Slava’s not. He’s looking at me. Then very quietly he moves over towards me, still looking at me all the time. He pushes in next to me, the other side to Masha, not waking her. I can feel his warm, bare skin on mine and I sort of gasp. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. He makes me tingly and melting and throbbing all at the same time. He keeps just looking at me, like he can’t ever get enough of looking, and then he tilts his head towards me and his lips touch the corner of mine, and then he kisses me little by little, over and over on my lips and my nose and my cheeks. My whole body goes limp, and even though his lips are cool, they burn my skin. He puts his hand round my neck and pulls me in to him, so I can smell his sweat and his breath all mixed up with mine. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before; it’s a million times better than anything I’ve ever felt before! Everyone’s right: sex is the best thing ever! His fingers push under my bikini top and touch my nipple… I want to explode. I’m throbbing in between our legs where my peezdets is. I can’t breathe, my heart’s pounding and pounding…

‘Ei! Ei! Ei! What?! Cut it out, Moodak! ’ Masha’s woken up. We weren’t touching her or anything, it must have been my stupid, stupid heart banging through to her. ‘Leave my sister alone, you horny bastard,’ she yells, pushing him off me. ‘Or you’ll get an oar up your arse!’

He looks like he wants to kill her then. She knocks him into the bottom of the boat and he glares at her with his lips tight closed, breathing through his nose. Then he puts his head in his hands and closes his eyes, and just sits there, still breathing hard. Olessya and Big Boris have woken up but they’re not saying anything, just watching us. After a bit Slava looks up, and he’s different. He’s in control again. ‘Oh yeah,’ he says, pulling himself on to the middle seat, ‘and how you gonna row back then, Chimp?’

‘You’ll just have to paddle with your arse,’ says Masha, calming down too when she sees he’s not going to get into a fight about it. ‘C’mon, get back to your work post, and we’ll go catch some crayfish.’

Later on that evening, Masha and me are sitting behind our tent. She’s trying to carve her name into the bark with a fork but I can hardly see what she’s doing, I’m so happy I just feel like laughing all the time, like it’s all bubbling inside and trying to pop out in loads of little laugh bubbles. He kissed me! He kissed me! I’m still tingling all over, right from the soles of my feet, and every time I remember him starting in to kiss me on the corner of my lips, my stomach flips right over and sends sparks all through me. And this is only the start, the girls say. It gets better and better until you just explode in pure pleasure… I can’t imagine anything being better than this, but I can’t wait. I hug myself, all smiling inside.

Masha stops stabbing the bark and looks at me. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Trying to sneak some Do It time with Peanut, were you?’

‘It was just a kiss, Mashinka. You kiss all sorts of boys and I don’t mind. Not at all.’

‘That’s not real kisses. That’s just to keep them sweet.’ She stabs at the bark again. ‘So. Just to make it clear, don’t even think about having real Do It time, right? I mean, apart from the fact you’ll kill us, what am I supposed to do? I can’t send you off into a corner, can I? I can’t close my eyes and think of Lenin, can I?’

I stare at her then, and it’s as if all the air has been thumped right out of my body. Like she’s just thumped me hard in the chest. I can’t breathe.

‘What?’

‘Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t want you having some boy climbing all over me to satisfy his needs with you and leave us in a pool of blood.’