Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘ Gospodi! An open window,’ whispers Masha. ‘And no bars. They can even kill themselves up here if they want to!’

‘Come on, come on, we don’t want to get caught,’ says Uncle Styopa. ‘Here, this is his room.’

We knock on the door, and a deep voice says ‘Enter’. Yemil Moseyevich is at his desk writing. He turns around and smiles like we’re normal guests. He has kind little eyes and a large nose with lots of hair sprouting out of his nostrils, and he’s wearing this funny purple waistcoat with yellow flowers on it.

‘Sit down, girls, and you, Stepan Yanovich, do sit down.’

He’s only just moved in but already he’s got his walls all covered from top to bottom with photos and pictures, and he has bright curtains and a bedspread from home.

‘So, now then, how can I help?’

‘Well, it’s M-Masha,’ I say. ‘She’s got this p-pain in her back, just here,’ I point at the bit where we join, ‘and since you’re a d-doctor, we wondered if you’d l-look at her?’

‘Certainly, certainly, lie down on my bed here, my dear, that’s right.’ He pushes and prods her a bit, and asks her some questions, and then sits back and says he thinks it’s a large kidney stone that she can’t pass.

‘You’ll need to see a urologist urgently. I know a very good one who will come here and see you at no cost. A good man. I’ll organize it. Tea, anyone?’ He gets up and puts a kettle on. A kettle! In his own room. And a TV set. All to himself.

‘So why are you in here with us lot, Yemil Moseyevich?’ asks Masha, feeling a bit more relaxed now.

‘Well now, Mashinka, I married a War Widow with a baby son, you see. We brought him up, but when she died, my stepson, who has a growing family now, decided there was no room for an old fool like me… rightly so, I’m sure… and a doctor like myself, you know, earns less than a welder in our Worker’s State. No doubt that’s a good thing, no doubt it is. Wonderful, all this equality. So we decided on this option, instead of me staying in my flat. Must make way for the young generation, you know. My time is past. But I do like my creature comforts. I couldn’t do without those, I’m afraid. And the others on this floor are generally from the… ahh… intelligentsia, so very pleasant to converse with.’ He smiles. He’s got a rug on the floor and loads of books too, all stacked up on a bookshelf. He sees me looking at them. ‘Your body can be imprisoned, my dear…’ he’s looking right into my eyes ‘…But not your mind.’

Masha sniffs. ‘Got a TV too. All right for some. I’d watch Spartak footballers playing day and night, I would.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m very lucky. My stepson is deputy director of the Mikoyan Meat Factory – hence the eighth-floor option.’ He winks at us. ‘He’s very good to me, my stepson is.’

We nod, but I’m thinking that throwing your stepfather out of his own flat isn’t being very good. Meanwhile, Barkov’s getting paid in all the meat chops that he and all his cronies need, while we get boiled bones and cabbage.

‘Now then,’ he says, once we’ve got our Georgian tea – in proper glasses too, not cracked tin mugs – ‘how about a little game of chess?’ We nod again although neither of us have ever played chess before. I could stay up here forever. It’s like being back in Aunty Nadya’s flat, it’s cosy, it’s like… being on the Outside.

‘I expect you know about the great chess match,’ he goes on, ‘the USSR versus the Rest of the World? Hmm?’ We shake our heads this time, and I feel stupid. He pats his purple jacket. ‘Ahh, well, we won of course. Of course we won. We always win. Now then, here’s the board, let me see, black or white? Do you mind if I have a cigar? Since I’ve got my smoking jacket on, eh?’ He smiles and pats his silky waistcoat again. He reminds me of Professor Popov. He starts puffing on his sweet-smelling cigar and tells us about how he used to train dogs in the Great Patriotic War to run under the wheels of oncoming German tanks with explosives strapped to their collars. ‘We used to always feed them under tanks you see, working on Pavlov’s theory of conditioning.’

‘Poor dogs,’ I say.

He shrugs. ‘Well, they weren’t told, were they? What you don’t know can’t harm you, they say… And it was all a sacrifice for the greater Soviet good. Better dogs than people…’

Masha winces in pain. I hope he gets us that urologist.

We couldn’t work today. It’s been a week since we saw Yemil Moseyevich, and Masha’s getting worse. She keeps groaning and moaning, and clutching at her back, and she’s been sick three times. We went to Katya, the nurse, for painkillers, and she wanted to take her to hospital, but Masha wouldn’t go, so now we’re just sitting here, hoping this urologist is going to turn up soon.

‘I really think you should’ve gone to hospital, Mash, you look green, you really do.’ We’re just sitting on the bed, staring at the shiny brown wall.

‘I don’t want to be laid out on a slab and mauled by perverts, even if you do. I’d rather suffer in silence.’

‘Hardly silence. Our entire floor thinks you’re being tortured.’

‘I am being tortured. By this yobinny kidney stone. All right for you, sitting there like a cat on a cushion.’

‘I’m not, I’m worried about you.’

‘Like fig you are, you’re just being smug, because you got your precious diploma.’

Yes. I finally did it. I got top marks – one hundred per cent. One hundred! Dazdraperma cried when she brought me the diploma. She said my physics teacher cried too. They were crying because it was such a waste. Such a waste of an incredible brain, they said.

‘Waste of space, more like,’ Masha had muttered. ‘Dear Dashinka, lovely Dashinka, clever Dashinka, pretty Dashinka… makes you want to gag.’ Dazdraperma had looked a bit shocked at that. And left. I asked her to take the diploma with her, in case it got stolen.

We both look up as the tacks on the floor go tic tic tic . But it’s only Sanya, not the urologist.

‘I was just going home, girls, but thought I’d drop by for a bit of gossip.’ Masha perks up a bit then. ‘Right,’ she goes on, ‘so I’ve got three really juicy bits for you today. Ready? First off, Nyusha – you know, the tart from accounts who’s been having it off with Viktor Vladimirovich, the head accountant?’ We both nod, no one has any secrets in the Twentieth. ‘Well, he chucked her, so she tried to blackmail him. She said she’d tell his wife and kids if he didn’t siphon off something from the Twentieth’s pocket for her. And what do you think he did?’

‘What?’ we say together.

‘He went straight to Barkov and told him everything. Informed on her, he did.’

‘What about Nyusha?’ I say. ‘Did she go and inform on him – to his wife?’

‘Yeah, but turned out the wife was having an affair with her boss too, so she couldn’t care less.’ I shake my head. If I married Slava, I’d never cheat. And neither would he. No, not if… when… when I marry Slava. I clench my fists. He’ll write soon. I’ll deal with Masha. I will . I’ll be strong.

‘So next up is Baba Keesa, the old bag who’s in with Baba Yulia. She makes funeral wreaths, right?’ I shiver. That’s the only other job we’re allowed to do here, along with the pipettes and the nappies. We can make funeral wreaths. But I won’t. We see dead bodies in here all the time, either laid out in their rooms, or being wheeled around on gurneys, or even outside in the yard in open coffins. I won’t make wreaths.

‘So she made one for herself, see, a really fancy one, took her forever, and then she refused to take any food or water until she shrivelled away and died. Yesterday it was, that she went. No one’s gonna force-feed you in here, are they?’