Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

6 January 1970 Internat.

Hello girls, greetings from Slava. I’m enclosing a card from Vyacheslav Tikhonov. As well as your photos. You thought that someone had stolen them but in fact no one did because I found them in a Russian textbook. You often used to put your photos there for safekeeping and you just forgot about these. So there you are…

Well, how are you? Probably same as ever. I’m sorry I haven’t heard from you.

How is Aunty Nadya? Give her my love. Vanya sends his love and the Director, Konstantin Semyonovich also sends his love. He keeps talking about you and asking after you and asking how you are, what you’re keeping yourself busy with and so on.

Irina Konstantinovna sends her love.

I’m still hoping to come up in spring if Mum can spare the time. Well, OK, for the moment that’s all I can think of to tell you. I hope to see you in spring.

Everyone sent their love. Except him. Masha didn’t tear up this letter but she wouldn’t let me write back. And he didn’t come in spring, because his mother couldn’t spare the time in the end.

But he’d given me his promise in that note. After he gave it to me, I crumpled it up until it was soft and then flushed it down the toilet when Masha was getting out of the door.

I just have to wait. I wish I could write back. I want to write back so much it’s like a physical pain, I want…

‘ Ai! Ai! Ouch! That hurt, Masha!’ I suck my bleeding thumb.

‘You should concentrate then.’

‘You did it on purpose. You always do it on purpose.’

Masha’s happy as a sparrow nowadays, because we’ve been given a sewing machine to hem muslin nappies with. It’s a real honour (there’s only a handful of people in the Twentieth can be trusted with a needle) and it pays more too. Masha’s christened the machine Lydia. She just loves turning the handle while I push the nappy through, but sometimes she jolts it hard, just for fun, so the needle goes right into my finger or thumb.

‘I slipped,’ she says.

‘No, you didn’t, you did it on purpose. Look – now this nappy’s a reject, it’s got blood on it as well. We’ll get that docked off our pay. If there are too many rejects we’ll get the sewing machine taken away too…’ I keep sucking my finger.

‘No, we won’t, because all those nice, new sheets are still there on our balcony.’

‘I know.’ I look at my finger to make sure it’s stopped bleeding and pick up another strip of muslin. I still can’t believe that the Twentieth got a delivery of bed sheets. Aunty Nadya says they haven’t been on sale in Moscow, let alone anywhere else in the Soviet Union, for twenty years. There must be another foreign delegation due – not that we ever see them.

‘As if any of those sheets will end up on our beds… they’ll all be nicked by the staff to sell on the side,’ sniffs Masha. ‘Or sent to the blatnoi inmates who can afford to give the Administration bribes.’ I nod and stick my tongue out as I carefully edge the corner under the needle. We’re hoping to go up to the eighth floor today where the privileged inmates live. We’ve not been before, but I’ve heard it’s wonderful. I can’t wait. That’s where they take the visiting delegations from abroad, to show how well looked after we ‘all’ are. They’ll get new sheets up there, that’s for sure. Or perhaps they even have their own? ‘It was funny though, wasn’t it,’ Masha goes on, turning the handle slowly, ‘when Inna got caught in that strip-search by the inspectors?’ I smile. I’m glad Inna got caught and fired. She was the one who brought Slava to our room and dumped him on the chair. Apparently she’d undressed, wrapped one of the new sheets around her naked body, and then dressed again. But they caught her. They catch nearly everyone, the inspectors do. Except Dragomirovna. I finish the nappy and pick up another. Dragomirovna will sell the ones she’s hidden on our balcony on the black market for a fortune. Four days ago she pushed open our door and walked in with a whole box of sheets; there must have been twenty of them. New, clean sheets. Never been used. A dream come true. She didn’t even look at us, just marched right through on to our balcony, plonked the box in a corner and dusted off her hands.

‘If the inspectors come to your room,’ she’d said, when she walked back in, ‘sit on the box and make faces or something. Not that you need to do that to scare the living daylights out of them.’ And then she’d walked out. So now I go to sleep every night, squirming on my stained sheets, and the last thing I see is the box of new ones on the balcony.

‘Stop going so fast with that handle, Masha, I almost missed the corner!’

She pats the sewing machine. ‘At least we got our Little Fat Lydia here as a reward for hiding her precious sheets.’

‘You treat Lydia like a pet or something.’

‘And you lust after those sheets every minute of the day. I keep seeing you gazing out at that box like it’s Slava covered in chocolate.’

‘All I want is sheets that no one’s ever lain on, Masha. Not our old grey, threadbare ones with all the nasty stains that might be from Uncle Garrik who has open tuberculosis, or Aunty Faina who’s got weeping leg ulcers…’

‘…or Baba Alla who sawed herself to pieces in bed with a knife…’

‘Urgh! Masha, I forgot about her.’

‘Well, you can forget about those clean sheets too. They might as well be sitting in Amerika.’

I shrug. I’ll have clean sheets in Slava’s village. I’ll wash them ’til they gleam.

‘Right, last nappy. Time to go and meet Uncle Styopa and see if he can get us to that old doctor, on the eighth floor. My back’s killing me.’

We get up and I pack everything away neatly.

‘It seems stupid that the nurse here doesn’t know what’s wrong with you…’ I say.

‘She’s about twelve years old, and she’s from Tobolsk. What do you expect? She asked us how many hearts we had, for fuck’s sake… we’re joined at the waist, not the neck.’

Uncle Styopa’s waiting by the lift. He’s happy as anything now Baba Yulia’s back. He doesn’t even get drunk any more.

‘Come along, girls, I don’t have all day.’

‘I’m in agony here, Uncle Styopa, take pity on your little Mashinka.’

‘That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? So right, just so you know: obviously none of us lot are allowed on the eighth floor. You’re gonna get an eyeful, believe me.’ He presses the button for the lift. The doors open and there’s the lift attendant sitting on her stool in the corner looking like a toad with her bulging eyes and warts. She’s the one that presses the buttons.

‘Which one?’ she says.

‘Eighth,’ says Uncle Styopa, and just as she’s about to spit and say nyet , he gives her a box of Zefir meringues. I gawp at it. Zefir meringues! Where on earth did he get those? ‘For the grandchildren,’ he says, and winks. She sniffs and presses button number eight.

‘ Yolki palki! ’ says Masha as we walk out. ‘It’s like the Kremlin up here!’ We stand gazing around. It’s bright and light with white walls and wooden parquet floors, and loads of shiny pot plants and white lacy curtains, which flutter in the clean windows. The corridors smell sweet and clean too and… of fresh air.

‘Here we are. This is a taste of what Communism will look like,’ says Uncle Styopa.

‘There’s even a buffet!’ says Masha. There is too. A proper buffet, selling green Tarzan mineral water and little white sandwiches with sliced tinned ham. As we walk past, I see the buffet attendant is standing by a long window that’s slightly open, so there’s a cold puff of fresh air coming in.