Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Wh-why don’t they say who it is?’

‘They will. Eventually. Not likely to be poor old Khrushchev either. He’s been banished, so he wouldn’t get the whole funeral music treatment.’

‘I don’t care who it is,’ says Masha. ‘I just wish they’d drop it.’

‘Last time someone important died, we had three days of this music, so get used to it, love.’

She’s mopping under our bed by the time Aunty Nadya comes in carrying a pair of crutches under her arm.

‘Well, Vladlena, who do we think’s died then?’

She’s not looking at us.

Crutches? Me and Masha stare at each other and then back at them. What do we need crutches for? We haven’t needed those since we were first learning to walk.

‘Could be anyone, Nadezhda Fyodorovna.’

‘Not Brezhnev though.’

‘ Nyet … Too young.’

‘Wait a minute. I think it’s stopped.’

They both stand there, looking up at the speaker, waiting for an announcement.

It is officially announced , says the deep, slow voice of Mayak State Radio… we all hold our breath. Except Masha. She doesn’t really care who’s died… that the Hero of the Soviet Union, Yuri Gagarin, the world’s first cosmonaut, has perished.

I feel like someone’s punched me in the stomach. Gagarin? No! No, no, no! How? Aunty Vladlena claps her hand over her mouth. We can’t stop staring up at the speaker. The announcement of Colonel Gagarin’s death has just been made by the Communist Party’s Central Committee, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Council of Ministers … on and on he goes about who’s made the announcement that Gagarin is dead, but he doesn’t say the most important thing – how did it happen?

‘P-Perished? What d-does that mean?’

I look up at Aunty Nadya, but she’s gone completely white. ‘It means killed,’ she says after a bit. ‘But who killed him? How? What?’ And then, she and Aunty Vladlena run right out of the room, leaving us alone.

When they’ve gone, I see she’s dropped the crutches on the floor.

Our crutches.

You’d have thought the world had ended that day. In a way it had. Everyone just seemed to lose heart somehow.

‘You really shouldn’t take this so badly, girls, you really shouldn’t.’

Aunty Nadya’s sitting in the chair by our bed. It’s been two weeks since we first tried to walk. Two weeks since Yuri Gagarin was killed.

‘How can we not take it badly? That we’ll never walk again? Not by ourselves, at any rate,’ says Masha, thumping the pillow. Masha cried a week ago when Aunty Nadya told us that amputating the leg had altered our balance so much, we’d probably never be able to walk without crutches. The last time I saw her cry was when Lucia left SNIP. Lucia had hopped into our room to say goodbye, and had given Masha a slap on the shoulder, saying, ‘Right, back to the Home Front. If I don’t run away again, I’ll write,’ and when she’d gone, Masha had put her head under her pillow and cried and cried and cried, all muffled. We never talked about that. And she did again, a week ago. She hated herself for crying, but she couldn’t keep it in. We weren’t cripples before, we were just… Together. At least I know it won’t make any difference to Slava. As long as Anyootka hasn’t stolen him away from me…

‘Now come along. At least you can learn to walk with crutches. Look on the bright side.’

‘What bright side?’ Masha’s all knotted up inside. ‘We did the amputation to look better for that stupid Committee, we did it so we’d be graded Four, and now we’re on crutches they’ll probably grade us Three. We’ve just gone and assassinated our chances of a good future…’

‘Now, don’t talk such silliness, Masha. We’ve got to leave tomorrow… assassinated your chances, indeed…’

‘Talking of assassinations,’ says Aunty Vladlena, walking in through the open door. ‘Did you hear it was the Americans that killed Gagarin?’

‘Well, so they say… Vladlena, we really shouldn’t believe rumours—’

‘What else are we supposed to believe, when we don’t get told nothing?’

‘The less you know…’ says Aunty Nadya, getting up with a sigh.

‘It’s like the whole country’s died with him, isn’t it?’ goes on Aunty Vladlena, ‘just like the whole country’s been shot in the heart somehow, like Gagarin was by Uncle Sam.’

‘Please stop that, Vladlena, I’m having enough of a problem with the girls. Dasha can’t stop sniffling about him and neither can any of the kitchen staff. We’ve had salty soup all week…’

‘ Da-oosh! Well, whatever you may say, Nadezhda Fyodorovna, it’s like we’ve not just lost Gagarin, it’s like we’ve lost the will to go on and fight for everything, you know? He was our shining light. Those yobinny Americans! We should nuke the lot of ’em.’

‘That’s quite enough, Vladlena – as if Masha’s language isn’t bad enough as it is. I do believe you’ve been drinking. Now off you go, shoo, shoo.’ She shuts the door on Vladlena, turns back to us and sighs again. We all know Aunty Vladlena’s right, though. Everyone’s going around looking like deflated balloons. The Soviet Union just doesn’t seem to be the Best of all Possible Worlds any more without Yuri Gagarin in it. I hate the Americans more than ever now. ‘Come on then.’ Aunty Nadya gets up and shakes her head. ‘Let’s try to walk with those crutches again.’

‘Two heads, two passports, two tickets,’ says the official at the boarding desk. She’s supposed to be processing our tickets for the Aeroflot flight, from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don. She goes back to shuffling papers, and doesn’t look up when Aunty Nadya leans over the counter with our three passports.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, comrade! They don’t need two seats. They need one!’

We got here really early, to avoid queues, but I can see out of the corner of my eye that other people are catching sight of us and slithering up to look.

‘Now you just listen to me, comrade,’ she goes on, waving the passports at the official. ‘The Ministry of Social Protection has allotted enough money for only two air fares. Mine and theirs. They were given one ticket between them on the train up here because they lie on one bunk. Now they are post-operational amputees and must fly, but again, they only sit on one seat. Are you going to question the Ministry of Social Protection?’

The woman doesn’t look up. She just says loudly: ‘Next.’ Aunty Nadya elbows the next passenger in the chest as he tries to get past, and turns back to the official.

‘They’re tiny, see? Like children, and they have one bottom for one seat. Turn round and show them your bottom, girls.’ We do, but I don’t think the woman is even looking at us. Everyone else is though. ‘And the flight is in less than an hour. I demand you let us through.’

‘ Nyet ,’ says the official.

‘What do you mean, nyet? ’

‘I mean nyet. Like I say, two heads, two passports – two tickets. Buy another one or stay behind.’

‘ Pozor! ’ She angrily digs in her handbag and hands over her own money for our extra ticket. That must be a month’s wages for her.

Masha gets to sit by the window in the plane and I put my head on Aunty Nadya’s lap. She’s still cross as a box of cockroaches, but Masha’s bouncing up and down, all excited to be flying, forgetting that we can’t walk by ourselves any more, and that the Commission is next week. And that Aunty Nadya’s had to pay for another ticket. I wish I could forget things, like Masha does.