Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘You’re early, girls! No one’s here.’ The nanny, Aunty Traktorina, is laying the table. There are only two nannies looking after us and Valentina Alexandrovna is in charge, but she must still be in the kitchens. Masha puts her icy-cold hand down the back of my neck to warm it up. I shiver. He’ll be here soon. The boys are in their dorm getting ready too. I can’t think of anything but Slava. Not being able to have him makes me want him all the more. It’s like being starving hungry and having a steaming plate of the tastiest food in the world sitting right in front of you. You can smell it all the time but you can never eat it. Masha lets us sneak a kiss sometimes, when she’s in a good mood, but as soon as she thinks it’s getting too heavy, she pushes him off. ‘A bit of a kiss is all right, but I’m not having you falling in love. You’re mine, all mine,’ she always says. I can tell Slava’s frustrated. There’s this new girl, Anyootka, who’s just come to our school. She’s really pretty. And sweet. And clever. She’s in our class and of course she likes Slava. And poetry.

Masha’s got her leg over my knee and is jiggling it up and down angrily.

‘Thank goodness there are boys here,’ she says. ‘Boys aren’t bitches. Girls are bitches.’

I look up at the frosty window, and blow on my hands. Masha would never let me put my cold hand down her neck. Slava would. I’m worried though, because if Slava ever gets too fed up of not being able to be with me, he might start seeing someone else. Like Anyootka. If he did that, I’d die. I would – I’d die, I know it. Sometimes it feels like I’m just waiting all the time, every stupid second of the day, for him to stop liking me, and start liking her instead. It’s torture.

‘I should set Uncle Mikoyan on them…’

I sigh and push her hair back over her ear. ‘That’s part of the problem, Mash,’ I say. ‘When you started going on all the time about how he really was our uncle, at least our real great-uncle, it got them all angry. I mean, you did go on all the time about it…’

‘They’re just jealous.’

‘Making people envious doesn’t make them like you, Mash. It makes you feel better, but not them…’ She’s not listening. ‘It does the opposite,’ I add quietly. Sometimes I don’t think Masha understands what people think – or cares. I hear a noise and look over at the door again, but it’s only Valentina Alexandrovna coming in. Masha does think up all these really crazy things, like she tells everyone now that we were created in a laboratory by Professor Dolyetsky and Anokhin, and that when we graduate with our diplomas we’ll be taken on a trip all over the world as one of the great Soviet Achievements, and get awarded the Order of Lenin. If I’m honest, she believes these things so hard that she gets me half believing them too. I don’t want to be taken away from Slava though, not ever. Not for anything.

The door opens again, and this time the boys all come in, laughing and whooping when they see the food. They’ve already been drinking. I’m afraid for a moment that Slava’s not there, but he’s right at the back, and when he sees me, he comes straight over to us.

‘All right, girls? C’mon then, let’s go somewhere quiet and sort this out.’ He taps a bulge under his shirt. Vodka. Masha laughs.

Midnightish, dark, very very dark and swirly-wirly… soooo drunk can’t see… Masha laughing’n’laughing’n’music’s thumping thumping’n’Slava kissing kissing… his hand ’nder my shirt on my breasts. Mmm, can smell his breath’n’sweat… reaching down and down to touch me, feel me… heavy on top of me… inside me… ’n’ I hold him so haaaard, so haaaard, can’t breathe… joined in one, him’n’me… together… Slava… Slava… at last… aaakh… Slava!

Masha doesn’t know I’m not a virgin any more. I didn’t bleed at all. I was beautifully throbbingly, sore, but she wasn’t. Obviously. I don’t remember what happened after we had sex, or even how long we did it for. All I know is that when me and Masha woke up, in our bed, she had a headache but no memory of me and Slava. But I did. Oh yes, it was all a bit muddled, but I did… he was so hard and his lips so soft…

The sun’s all warm, even though it’s evening time, so we’re all sitting on the grass under the pear tree listening to music on Slava’s transistor radio. He gave me a hot secret smile when we walked up to meet them just now. He always gives me this hot secret smile. Masha wants Aunty Nadya to bring us a transistor radio next time she comes. Last time she visited, Little Lyuda asked her to look up her parents, to see if they were still at the address she was writing to. She thought maybe they’d moved, but they hadn’t. Aunty Nadya did go. She’s kind like that. She knocked on the door and said she’d come from Lyuda in Novocherkassk but they wouldn’t even open the door properly. They kept it on the chain and told her through the crack that they’d adopted another daughter now. They said that they’d named the second one Lyuda too, and to go away.

I knew I wasn’t going to get pregnant because we haven’t got our periods yet. I smile inside. I’ve had sex! Masha said we couldn’t, but we have. Kha!

We’re all sitting here together, Masha, Slava, Olessya, Little Lyuda, Big Boris and Anyootka. She’s sitting next to Slava. We’re talking about the Medical Commission. We all get graded by how defective we are when we’re eighteen years old, by this panel of defectologists. No one talks much about the grading system, but everyone hates it.

Top grade is Four. That’s for the kids like us in the school, who are clever and can walk and work for a living. It goes down to One for the totally paralysed who can only be dumped into full State Care and treated like rotting vegetables.

‘What are you going to d-do, Olessya, when you leave here?’ I ask. She’s leaving school in two months. So are Little Lyuda and Big Boris, because they’ll be graduating. She’s leaning back against the tree trunk with her eyes closed.

‘If I get top marks in my diploma, I’m going to apply to the Moscow Technology College,’ she says, without opening her eyes. ‘And live in a student dorm.’

Big Boris is registered to live in Novocherkassk, so he’ll have to study and work here, but the two of them don’t seem too bothered about splitting up. Valentina Alexandrovna wants him to apply for the Engineering College, and then maybe go and work in the Locomotive Factory. Little Lyuda’s not sure where she’s registered now.

‘I hope it’s Moscow,’ she says. ‘Because that’s where I lived…’

‘Do you think we’ll get Grade F-Four?’ I ask no one in particular, and no one in particular answers. ‘I mean we can do everything. It doesn’t make any d-difference being Together. Right?’ Anyootka looks up then, but she’s looking at our third leg, not us. Then she just looks back down again to her stupid book of poetry.

Olessya opens one eye. ‘Why don’t you ask Valentina Alexandrovna, Dasha? She’ll know.’

‘Yeah,’ says Masha, who’s been quiet up to now. ‘She’s on night duty. Let’s go now; she’ll be in her study.’ I don’t want to leave Slava and Anyootka alone, even though I really think he wants me more than ever, now we’ve Done It, but I have this ache, sort of chewing away all the time inside me, which is me being afraid I’ll somehow lose him. ‘C’mon, scarecrow. Let’ s go,’ says Masha. And pulls me away.

We knock on her study door and walk in. She’s looking through some essays, but she gets up with a big smile, and goes over to the samovar of hot water. We often come in to sit with her, just for a chat, now that Icy Valya’s gang aren’t talking to us.