Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘You can leave now.’

Aunty Nadya looks for a moment like she might argue, but the woman is so fierce, she just nods.

‘Ah, ladno . Well, I’ll say goodbye to you now then, girls.’ I grab on to her hand. I’m asking her with my eyes please, please, please, don’t leave us here for the rest of our lives. ‘Goodbye then,’ she says. ‘Be good.’ I start to cry then, right there in front of the stupid Administrator and the guard and everyone. I can’t stop myself. Masha doesn’t even slap me because I think she’s trying not to cry too. Aunty Nadya turns around and walks right on out without stopping to kiss us. I think she’s almost crying as well.

‘Come along.’

We go up a clanging lift to the sixth floor. When we walk out into the corridor, the stench of urine and disinfectant and old, old people hits us. Masha holds her nose. The walls are painted dark green. There’s brown, warped linoleum on the floor that we keep tripping over, and there are two surnames written on a card on each door. With our two passports we get one room for both of us. I look at the blue ink on cardboard on each door. Dyogtina, Yermushina, Zolina, Ivakina and then Krivoshlyapova.

She pushes the door open. It’s a very narrow room and painted dark brown. I suddenly feel there’s not enough air in here and I start panting for breath, my heart’s going faster and faster. Masha almost gets knocked sideways by the way it’s suddenly pounding, so we sit on the single metal-framed bed with a thump.

‘Room all to yourselves. That’s a one-off anywhere you care to name,’ says the Administrator. My heart’s still pounding away like we’ve run a thousand kilometres and my stomach has turned liquid, so Masha stands up and we try to get into the toilet, but can’t. The doorway’s too small, and we could never both fit on the seat in there anyway.

‘There’s one down on the first floor you might get into,’ says the Administrator with her arms on her hips, watching us. She sniffs. ‘This one’s not made for…’ she wants to say urodi . But she doesn’t. ‘So. The basics: supper on ground floor at 18:00. Don’t be late or you won’t get anything. Every room has a balcony, but there are bars, so no jumping off.’ She smiles nastily. ‘Similarly, the door to your room does not lock, so staff can enter at any time in the event of illness or attempted suicide. Our statistics for suicide are the best in Moscow, so if you intend to die, we shall ensure it’s of natural causes. There’s a list of rules and regulations in the Lenin Corner but to summarize: in the rooms there must be no music, no smoking, no drinking, no food, no fraternizing with staff, no soiling, no kettles or sharp instruments, no raised voices, no singing, no photographs and no pictures on walls. Any questions?’

We both look at her blankly.

‘Well, you two teenagers are going to be here for the next sixty-odd years, I’d say, so a few might arise,’ she says. ‘I just hope you enjoy each other’s company.’ And then she smiles again and goes.

We sit there on the bed looking at the brown wall. The sheet has stains on it and I move over. We’ve been sitting there for maybe an hour, not saying anything, when the door’s pushed open and this old woman comes in and stands staring at us. Then another one comes in and another until the room’s full of them. They don’t say anything at all. Just stare and cross themselves.

‘Go away, you dandelions!’ shouts Masha suddenly. ‘Go away.’ She waves her arms at them but they keep on pressing in to look at us. They’ve got fluffy grey hair and they’re all thin as a stalk. They’re dandelions ready to be blown away by the wind. One of them starts dancing round and round with her arms out, singing.

We get up and push through them, on to the balcony. It’s cold out here. We both grip the bars and breathe in and out. It’s getting dark, but we can see a stack of empty coffins piled up by the side entrance. We don’t say anything to each other, but we turn around together and push past everyone again and then walk straight out to the lift, and press the button.

When the doors open, we stand there, not going in. After a bit I say:

‘We can’t run away, Masha. There’s a guard on the gate and dogs. And if we do escape, they’ll catch us, and send us to a prison or Madhouse.’ She nods. The doors close in front of us. ‘We can go back though,’ I say quietly. ‘We can always go back to school.’

‘No, we can’t. They don’t want Suicides like you.’ She turns to go back to our room. ‘Anyway, rather you and me in a Home full of daft dandelions, than you and your sprat, in a school full of bitches.’

And so that was that.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have let you reply to his card. I should listen to myself more,’ says Masha. We’re sitting on the bench in reception, in the Twentieth, waiting for Aunty Nadya to take us to see Slava, in SNIP. ‘This is how it ends up,’ she goes on, sniffing. ‘Just a couple of letters and here he is, rolled up on the doorstep like a rotten cabbage.’

I’m so excited I can’t think straight. I feel like an unexploded bomb. He’s here! Slava’s here, in Moscow, and he’s waiting for us to visit! I know Masha’s excited too, despite all her moaning. She’s great at making friends and we have some nice ones now in the Twentieth, but she’s still bored as anything, locked up in this dark block of musty corridors. If we didn’t have each other, I think we’d go mad.

‘I was just so fed up with your lovesick sighs and tears, I couldn’t stand it any more. I was weak, and see where it’s got us?’

‘You weren’t weak, Mash, you were kind.’

‘Kind – foo! ’ She spits on the floor. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, you can be sure of that. It was like walking round with a corpse hanging off me; you might as well have gone ahead and hung yourself for all the life in you. It gets to a person, that does.’

I feel in my pocket for his card, which we got on our birthday in January. It had a bunch of beautiful purple violets on the front and inside he’d written: To Masha and Dasha, wishing you health, happiness and every success. I take it everywhere because if I leave it in our room it might get stolen. It gave me a tiny spark of hope that lit me up again.

‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘If you hadn’t let me reply, I’d have strangled you. Hey! That’s an idea, I could always strangle you – I’m stronger than you.’ I laugh.

‘So you’d be free to run off into the sunrise with Peanut? Nyetooshki. I’ll poke your eyes out first!’

We both laugh then. I was so happy that Masha relented and let me reply to him. I sent a letter back to him, and then I waited every day – well, every minute and every second of every day, for a reply. It came in March. I’ve got that in my pocket too. I take it out and look at it, even though I know it off by heart.

3 March 1969

Hello girls,

Greetings from Slava! Thanks for your letter. How is your health? What’s new? I’m sorry we couldn’t talk before you left. I didn’t know you were going so soon. We had the end of year party and Vannya got drunk as a priest and had to be taken to hospital. Dasha, don’t be upset. I wanted to talk to you and give you something, but perhaps you didn’t know that. I’ll try and come up and see you when I can. Perhaps Aunty Nadya can get me a bed in SNIP to be treated? I’m living at home now with my mother and don’t want to go back to school. Have you found a Home in Moscow yet? How is Aunty Nadya?

‘All he wants from you is to get his treatment in SNIP, you know that, don’t you?’ grumbles Masha. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that everyone in this world is out for themselves.’ Masha sniffs and looks up at the ceiling. ‘ Gospodi! When’s she coming then? If I have to look at those stuffed frogs lined up in the portraits any longer, I’ll start throwing eggs at them.’