Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Well now, everything’s beautifully clean as usual, well done, well done,’ she says, reappearing from the kitchen. I can tell she’s nervous. So are we. ‘I won’t have my little helpers any more, will I? Not a speck of dust anywhere.’

I look out of the window. I cleaned those too, with vinegar and screwed-up newspaper, but I had to do it with the lights out, at night, so no one would see us from outside. Poor Aunty Nadya’s a nervous wreck having us here, because it’s illegal. We don’t have a propiska permit to live with her and she says if the authorities knew, she’d be fired from her job and probably put in prison too. Masha’s loved it here, living in a proper flat, with home cooking and the TV and the bath. The bath! We spent so much time lying in the bath I’m surprised we haven’t grown fins. After a week of being locked up inside the little flat with the curtains drawn, Aunty Nadya started taking us outside, but only after midnight and with a rug thrown over us, just to get some fresh air. ‘Like we’re criminals in hiding,’ said Masha. ‘But what’s the crime?’

We still don’t move from the sofa, even though she’s got our crutches now and is standing in front of us waggling them. The dresser behind her has photos of Uncle Vasya and Little Vasya, in frames, but there’s none of us. They’re all tucked away in a drawer. We’re not saying goodbye to Little Vasya. He’s sixteen now and taller than her and sleeps on this sofa while we sleep on a mattress on the kitchen floor. He’s hardly ever here though. He’s out on the streets getting into trouble most of the time. He hated having us back and ignores us. He ignores Aunty Nadya mostly too – when he’s not talking back to her. Him and Masha got into a fight about that. So much for adopting Little Vasya instead of us…

‘Come along, girls, come along,’ she says again. ‘The taxi will be waiting. No use sitting here like daisies waiting to be watered.’

We get up then and take our crutches from her. If only we could stay here, but she can’t even apply for a propiska for us because that Grade One life sentence means we have to be kept in a State Institution.

We go out to the landing, get into the lift and go down to the waiting taxi like we’re being taken to the executioner’s block. It’s raining. Moscow looks exactly the same as it did when we went out on our trip to the Mausoleum. Grey blocks of flats, wide, empty streets and lots of bright red slogans.

The Ministry of Protection assigned us to the Thirteenth Veterans of War and Labour Home. That’s where Olessya is. We went to visit the Home, but even though there were nice grounds with bushes and flowers and some other Defective kids our age there for company, Olessya seemed as if she’d somehow lost her spirit. She didn’t even say much when she saw us again. She didn’t complain – after all, it was nothing like the asylum in Novocherkassk, it was all quite clean, and the staff weren’t too mean. I really wanted to go there, to be with her, and I think she wanted it too. But Masha didn’t. It was a Closed Regime Home, so they don’t let you out at all, and don’t let anyone in to visit either, which means Aunty Nadya couldn’t have come to see us and bring us food and treats. And the rooms were communal. Masha said she didn’t want to share a room with stinky old babushkas.

We’re driving past the Red October chocolate factory now. There’s a big poster of a sweet, pink-cheeked girl in a headscarf on it. Alyonka, her name is. That’s what the most popular chocolate bar is called, apparently, but it seems there’s still no chocolate in the shops. When one of Aunty Nadya’s doctor friends came for supper one night in the flat (she can keep a secret), they were saying that all the chocolate goes to the special ‘Beriozka’ shops where only important Party members can shop. I suppose that’s why Anokhin always has it… I don’t know anything about politics, but I don’t think Lenin would have wanted chocolate to be only for the children of Party bigwigs…

Masha wanted a room to herself, with a toilet and sink in the room, so she didn’t have to trek off down the corridor and queue for hours and wipe everyone else’s shit and pee off the seat. That’s what Masha said. So she refused to go to the Thirteenth. ‘Mashinka needs her place in the sun,’ she’d said. Then Aunty Nadya sighed and said she’d do what she could to get us in somewhere else.

So that was that. No Thirteenth.

None of us say anything until we draw up outside the barred gates of the Twentieth Veterans of War and Labour Home. It’s the best Home in Moscow. The best in the whole of the Soviet Union. It’s a Show Home, visitors from abroad are taken around. We’re really lucky. It’s the only one in Moscow that has rooms for just two inmates, with a toilet and sink, and it’s Open Regime. Aunty Nadya went to talk to the Director to see if she could get us a room, but he said, flat out, that he wasn’t having something like us in his precious Home. He said he’d never let a Defective in yet, let alone Category Ones, and he wasn’t going to start now. So Aunty Nadya asked Lydia Mikhailovna (who’s the Head Doctor now of all of SNIP) to write a letter to Soldatyenko, the Deputy Minister of Protection. And, wonder of wonders, he told the Director, Barkov, to let us in here. I suppose he just wanted to get rid of us. We were born in Moscow so we’re registered to live in Moscow. We couldn’t live anywhere else unless we had an official job. Or got married. Soldatyenko would have sent us to Siberia if he could, but he couldn’t. It’s the law.

The gates swing open in front of us and then close behind us with a clang. Slava will still be in his village. It’ll be sunny down south.

We walk into the echoing entrance hall and the guard tells us to sit down and wait on the bench for someone to take us to our room. Masha gives me her plastic bag to hold and Aunty Nadya sits with her handbag on her lap. We all look straight ahead and don’t say anything. It’s quite dark in here. There’s a row of portraits of all the shiny members of the Politburo looking out to our shiny Communist future, with shiny medals on their chests. They’re old. There are a few people shuffling around in the shadows. They don’t notice us in the corner. They’re old too. We’re sitting next to grimy green pot plants, which look like they’ve been growing for a hundred years. It smells OK though. It smells of nothing.

Masha crosses her leg over mine and starts jiggling her foot up and down.

I wonder if Slava’s thinking about me back in his village. I wonder if he’s going to bother to go back to school now he knows there’s no point in getting a diploma… or will he stay with his parents? If I wasn’t Together with Masha I could be there with him now in the sun. Him and me. Not Masha and me… but I won’t think about that.

‘It’s very nice here, isn’t it?’ says Aunty Nadya after a bit. ‘Very nice indeed.’

‘Yes,’ I say, because she did everything in the world to get us in here. ‘It’s really very nice.’ I have this stupid ball in my chest again, at being left here without her.

‘And I’ll come and visit every week. Bring you whatever you want.’

‘Yes,’ I say again. ‘Thank you.’ Masha just goes on jiggling her foot.

After what seems like hours, there’s a sharp tap-tap of heels and a woman’s suddenly there, standing in front of us, casting a shadow. She’s tall and heavyset with a face as angry as a walnut. She reminds me of Nasty Nastya, the cleaner from the Ped.

‘Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova?’

‘Yes,’ we say together.

‘My name is Iglinka Dragomirovna. I’m from Administration. Come with me.’ We all shuffle to our feet and she turns sharply to Aunty Nadya.