Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘So how are you doing this evening, girls?’ she says, and waves her hand at the chair we always sit in. It’s a cosy armchair. All around the room there are vases of flowers that she’s been given for International Women’s Day, so it smells like a garden in here.

We sit down and Masha looks at me in her Go on then way.

‘W-we just w-wondered,’ I start, ‘if you knew w-what grade we’re likely to get for the Medical Commission?’

She gives us a glass of sweet tea each, and sits down herself. ‘Well… hmm… it’s always difficult to tell what their criteria is, you know, about the severity of the disability, even though it’s all set out in the rules. Of course you’re perfectly agile and intelligent, so it should definitely be a Grade Four… I would easily give you a Grade Four myself, everyone here would…’

‘B-but what about the Commission?’

‘Well, I have heard some rumours, just rumours you know, that there’s been some law passed, tightening up the criteria. So, I know it doesn’t get in your way or anything, but maybe your leg might make a difference to them… it shouldn’t, of course, it doesn’t make any difference to you , and that’s the main thing, but they’re assessing whether or not you can go out to work, you know, in the workplace, at desks or in factories. I just wonder…’

I stare at her with the tea halfway to my mouth. I know what she’s going to say. I just don’t want her to say it.

‘It feels strange being back,’ says Masha. She pokes at the pillow. ‘Same old blue stamp, Property of SNIP on everything. Same old staff, same old routine right to the minute with all the bells. And Mikhailovna looked almost pleased to see us. Cracked half a smile, she did.’ I nod and look around our isolated room. It’s the same one we had when we first moved in. ‘It feels strange, not having our leg too,’ says Masha, and goes to shake it, but can’t. I laugh.

‘Thank goodness they used general anaesthetic,’ I say again. I still can’t quite believe we’ve actually done it.

‘I wasn’t having you ruin it for us again. Coming all the way up here just to be humiliated by my worm of a sister.’

‘And it doesn’t even hurt much now, does it?’

‘Speak for yourself. I’m in agony.’

‘No, you’re not. I wonder what people will think? Back at school?’

What I actually mean is, I wonder what Slava will think. We’ve been here two weeks and we’ve got two more to go. I can’t bear to think of him and Anyootka together every day, sitting next to each other in class, and under the pear tree. Olessya wrote us a card but she didn’t say anything about them. He hasn’t written any cards. Not one. I miss him all the time. All the time. I can’t wait to go back. Today’s the first day we can get out of bed and start walking again.

‘I’ll tell you what they’ll think, they’ll think we’re idiots. It won’t make any difference to them, will it?’ says Masha. ‘I mean, the kids don’t care if we’ve got five legs. It’s all for the yobinny Medical Commission. We have to go and mutilate ourselves, don’t we? We have to go and lop bits of ourselves right off, just to please the morons on the panel.’

‘I was thinking, Masha… you know how they’re all defectologists on the panel? Well, I was thinking maybe we could study to be defectologists ourselves? You never see any who are actually Defective themselves. It makes sense though, doesn’t it?’

‘You can study whatever you like. I’m going to be a trapeze artist in a circus, now we haven’t got the leg.’

I laugh. ‘I’m not going up any trapeze! I’m scared of heights!’

‘And I’m not training to be a defectologist. I’m fed up of seeing scarecrows like you day in, day out!’

The door bangs open and Aunty Nadya comes in. Aunty Nadya! We smile and hold out our arms to be hugged. We all laughed so much when she brought us back to SNIP, in the very same room. It’s like Masha says, it’s really strange. So much has changed in us since we left. I never thought that my life would be filled with the thought of one boy instead of thoughts of being Together, and of Masha. Slava has pushed all that into a corner.

‘Right then, girls, on your feet!’ she says, not even hugging us. ‘Today’s the day we get up and walk.’

‘Get up and run , you mean!’ shouts Masha. ‘Run and run!’

‘Well, let’s do the walking bit first, shall we,’ she sniffs. ‘Right then, legs over the bed, up we get, arms round each other and…’

Plookh! We fall right over, flat on our faces. She picks us up, laughing.

‘ Ladno … try just standing first.’ She lets go of us and plookh! down we go again, head first. It hurts. ‘Hmm, your balance is going to be a bit different now, girls, the leg was heavy, fifteen kilos—’

‘I wanted to keep it, why wouldn’t they let us keep it? I wanted to pickle it in a jar.’

‘ Aaakh , Masha, you say the oddest things,’ says Aunty Nadya, shaking her head. ‘I suppose you’d have it on display by your bed? Well, enough of that. Right, this time try and lean back to compensate for the leg. That’s it. Aaakh! ’ She shouts as we’re over again with even more of a bang. I can’t keep us standing up, not for a second. Not even for half a second.

‘I’m s-scared.’ I look up at Aunty Nadya. ‘What’s wrong? What’s h-happening?’

‘Now, now, none of that talk. Remember, it took us months to get you to walk. It will just take a bit of time, that’s all.’

‘I’m going to be black and blue, and have two broken arms by that time,’ grumbles Masha, as Aunty Nadya lifts us back on the edge of the bed.

‘Right. We’ll start off with a chair, like we did when you were little. Here you are.’ She pushes one towards us, and we grab the back of it. ‘ Tak … I’ll hold you from behind and you stand up… Aaakh! ’ This time we fall over, right into the chair, and she catches us just in time to stop us breaking our noses, but we all three end up in a stupid heap on the floor.

‘It’s as if every time we try and stand, something’s p-pushing us down,’ I say. ‘As if someone’s p-pushing us right down flat.’ I won’t cry. I look at Masha. She’ll tell me to stop being a sheep. She’ll tell me everything’s going to be all right. But she doesn’t. She just looks up at Aunty Nadya and bites her bottom lip.

The next day we’re sitting in bed not talking much, waiting for Aunty Nadya to come back for more physiotherapy. The State radio speaker in the room is playing really sad classical music, going on and on and on, with no talking in between, and not even any news every half hour, like there always is. The music’s playing exactly the same tunes as the funeral orchestra plays when it passes the School with a body in the back of a bus on its way to the cemetery at the end of Red Decembrist Street. There’s this little brass band that walks behind the bus, playing the same depressing thing.

‘I wish they’d stop playing that yobinny music,’ says Masha, after we’ve been listening for what seems like hours. She bangs her fist on the bed. ‘You’d think someone had died.’

We don’t talk to each other until the cleaner, Aunty Vladlena, comes in to mop the floor.

‘Someone’s died,’ she says, pointing her mop up at the speaker.

‘Wh-who?’

‘Dunno, Dasha. Some big pine cone. Someone from the Presidium or the Central Committee, most likely. Not Brezhnev though, he’s too young. Could be any of the others though.’