Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Yeah. Everyone’s on the make, inside and out.’

‘Well, not everyone. We’ve got this crazy Komsorg comes in every week – she’s like an Activist for the Komsomol Young Communist League and she’s got a funny name, what is it… hmm… anyway, she’s only about twenty herself, and she comes round to us to make sure our Socialist morale is all topped up with cherries. Doesn’t she? Hey, Sheep. Doesn’t she?’

‘What?’ I realize I’m just staring at Slava’s brown hands with the square, white fingernails, wanting to touch them. ‘Oh, yes, yes…’

‘So the room’s clean and dry, which is all we want, and they feed us regularly, and the staff are OK if you chat them up. Some of the inmates are OK too. My Scarecrow here gets them talking about their lives, the Great October Revolution, Civil War, Reds and Whites, Peasants and Cossacks, all that crap.’

‘At least they lived a life…’ says Slava quietly, and looks at me again.

I want to talk to him alone. I want to touch his skin and his hair.

He sighs. ‘So it’s all right then? In the Twentieth?’

‘Yeah, yeah, it’s all right. Come visit.’

And it’s then that I get what’s happening. I look from him to Masha, and then back again. Masha wants him to come and live with us. He’s fun, he banters with her and makes her feel good. It’s been a year since they quarrelled; normally she’d bear a grudge forever, but she needs him. She knows I’d be happy, she might even let us…

‘So it’s all right there, is it, Dasha?’ He’s looking at me.

‘Yes,’ I say, nodding like mad. ‘Yes, it’s healthy!’

It’s not though, it’s like all the inmates are sad and bitter and waiting to die, and we’re bullied by most of the staff, especially the Administrator and the Director. But if Slava was there with us, it would be fine. Everything would be fine.

‘What about you?’ I say. ‘Why don’t you want to go back to school?’ There. I’ve said it.

‘Why? Because I got graded down to a One like you, by the Medical Commission, that’s why, so I’ll never be able to take any real work on. What’s the point in studying?’

We hadn’t known about that, so we sit there, not saying much, because he’s right.

‘Being a One sucks,’ says Masha eventually. ‘But hey, gotta make the most of things, right? Winners see a problem and fix it – losers only see the problem. Gospodi , I’m starting to sound like fucking Olessya!’

‘Yeah,’ laughs Slava. ‘But you’re right. I thought if I went back to live with my mum, I could get some work on the side, but that’s not worked out.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I can’t do much being like this. It’s hard for my parents. They both work full time and I need sort of… looking after, I suppose. Grisha, my brother, he’s graduated from school and is studying now in a PTU technical college, living in a dorm.’ I’m breathing quickly, in and out, in and out. I’d look after him. I would, I’d care for him every minute of the day and he’d care for me until we were old and bent. We’d fix everything. Every single problem. I’m sitting there, willing him to read my thoughts, because I can’t say them out loud. I think at him, as hard as I can: I’ll look after you, Slava, I will, I will, forever. And when he looks at me, I think he’s heard me. I’m sure he has.

There’s a silence, then Masha, who’s been gazing up at the ceiling suddenly says:

‘Dazdraperma! That’s her name, the Komsorg – it’s short for Long Live the First of May! And it suits her, I can tell you. She almost swallowed her Komsomol badge when she got an eyeful of us for the first time. She couldn’t believe that we were hidden away in a dark corner of an Old People’s Home. So turns out Brezhnev’s got this new mentoring scheme for the Komsomol. She’s an Activist – active as a squirrel she is, too. She’s found out that she can get tutors in to teach my fool here maths and science and Russian literature so she can finally get her precious diploma.’

‘Really?’ Slava looks at me quickly and I smile and nod.

‘It’s only one tutor for an hour a week, but she’ll give me homework. I’ve got plenty of time – not that I need the diploma now…’

‘Dazdraperma can’t believe how brilliant my Einstein here is. And she’s going to bring me magazines to read. And there’s this other girl, Gulgunya, who works in the kitchens, she’s one of them blackies from Azerbaijan or some other dirty Republic down there, but she’s really nice too. You know what Princess Turandot here is like,’ she waves at me, ‘she can’t bear the thought of eating out of a badly washed soup bowl, so Gulgunya lets us keep our own bowls and our own cutlery and mugs. Caused a revolt down among the babushkas, I can tell you, but I cast a spell on one of them, Slava, I really did, and she dropped down dead. So now they think I’m a witch and keep their mouths shut.’

We all laugh and while Masha’s chattering on, I very, very slowly move my hand across the bed until the tip of one of my fingers is touching his.

‘I wish you’d stop scrubbing and polishing, I’m knackered!’ Masha’s balancing us against the door, while I scour the toilet bowl for the hundredth time. It’s no good though, the stink just seems to come up from the pipes. ‘It is what it is,’ says Masha.

‘I don’t want him to think… I want him to…’

‘Like I say, it is what it is. If he wants to stay with us, he will. A sparkling toilet won’t make any difference.’

It’s been three weeks since we saw him in SNIP, and he’s coming to see us before he goes back to Novocherkassk.

‘Does the corridor really reek of toilets more than usual, or is that just me? Do you think he’ll notice? Do you, Mash?’

‘Yeah, it does. And of course he’ll notice, he’s got a nose, hasn’t he? Just our luck all the babushkas have come out today of all days, and are creeping about like spiders. And I haven’t even got a fag to smoke. Yobinny Dragomirovna and her spot checks.’

Masha hides her cigarettes behind the toilet roll but somehow the Administrator found them straight away. And we had to bribe Uncle Styopa to get them for us. That was our ten-rouble monthly pension gone. But the worst thing was that she pushed us up against the wall like a battering ram and screamed into my face. I hate it when people do that. I’d rather she actually hit me than screamed at me like I was an idiot child.

‘I thought she was going to kill me, Mash… you could at least have told her we both smoke, instead of blaming it all on me. Considering I don’t smoke at all…’

‘Stop bleating, don’t you think I was upset too? I hate being humiliated. C’mon, stop fishing around in that toilet, he’ll be here any moment.’

I wash my hands and we sit down on our bed. I keep brushing non-existent crumbs off the cover, but it’s so stained, a crumb here or there wouldn’t matter. We’re not allowed our own sheets, let alone a bedspread. Masha’s sulking. She’s still upset about the telling off. And she’s nervous, I can tell. And I’m so nervous, I feel like I’m going to tremble myself into pieces.

Our clock, which Aunty Nadya bought us, ticks slowly on the tumbochka bedside table. Two of the babushkas in the corridor have started a fight right outside. He’s being brought up to our room by one of the nannies, I hope she’s a good one, I hope it’s…

I stop breathing. Tic, tic, tic. The door’s opening. We put tacks in the floor so we get some warning when someone’s coming in. He’s carried in by Inna, the worst nanny possible, who’s holding him like he’s a pot of urine. She pitches him on to the hard chair across from our bed, and leaves. He just looks down at the floor and not at us. He’s already decided, I can tell. So can Masha. We all sit there, not saying anything, listening to the yelling outside and the wailing pipes as the babushka next door washes her hands for the millionth time that day, moaning to herself through the thin walls.