Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘What’s number three then?’ says Masha, wincing again. The pain seems to come in bouts.

‘Yemil Moseyevich, that snooty doctor on the eighth floor.’ We both stare at her. What? What? ‘So, turns out his stepson stopped supplying Barkov with his steaks or whatever, so he’s being moved down to the third floor. He’ll have three roommates there – nice little troika they are, I can tell you. One’s a zek ex-con who’d bite your arm off soon as look at you, the other’s an alkash who’s always thrashing around with the White Fever because he can’t get vodka, and the other’s got less sense than a duck.’

‘No!’ We both say it at once.

‘Yeah. Why, what’s the big deal?’

‘He’s getting me a urologist,’ says Masha, ‘that’s the big deal. He might forget or something if he’s down there. He might…’

We both know what Yemil Moseyevich might do.

‘Yeah, well, he won’t be able to put all his pretty pictures up on the wall on the third floor, I can tell you that.’

When Aunty Shura’s gone, me and Masha try to get up to the eighth floor to see him, but the old toad in the lift won’t let us. So we go back to our room and sit there on our bed. Neither of us feels like going down to the canteen for the evening meal. It’s still warm out, so after a bit, we both stand up without saying anything and go on to the balcony. It’s strange, but we always do that – get up at the same time and do the same thing, without even talking about it. Masha thinks it’s because we read each other’s minds, but it’s not exactly that. She can’t read my mind. I think it’s just when one starts moving it’s like, I don’t know, instinctive for the other to move too, and we don’t even know which one started it.

We both hold on to the bars and look up into the blocks of flats around our courtyard wall. It’s dusk and we can see the Healthies coming out on to the balconies to smoke, or take in washing, or put a baby in its pram out to sleep in the fresh night air. Some balconies have flowers, and some have sledges, car-tyres, ice-hockey sticks, Spartak football banners, bicycles…

‘He shouldn’t be moved down there. It’s all so wrong,’ I say after a bit, pressing my forehead against one of the bars. ‘How can these things happen?’

‘How does it happen that my little budding atomic physicist here is stuck sewing nappies?’ snaps Masha. ‘Or Miracle Masha the Trapeze Artist is trapped behind bars? Shit happens.’

She doesn’t seem to care, but I can’t stop thinking what state of mind Yemil Moseyevich must be in right now. I just can’t stop it. We can hear music from over the wall. It’s not Soviet marching bands or ballads or the Red Army Choir. It’s popsa music.

‘D’you think that’s the Beatles?’ she says.

I remember Slava talking about the Beatles. Masha starts tapping her fingers on the bars to the beat. She likes it.

Just then we see something fall to the right of us, about three rooms over. It looks like a piece of sacking someone’s getting rid of. But it’s not. When it hits the ground with a thud it moves around for about two or three minutes, which is when we know it’s a person. And when the yard lights go on, we see it’s a person wearing a purple waistcoat with bright blobs of yellow on it.

The next morning Sanya told us that after Yemil Moseyevich was informed he was being moved, he wrote a note to his stepson, smoked a last cigar, tidied his room and then walked on to his balcony with no bars, and tipped himself off it. I can’t bear to think of him, still moving down there on the ground. I can’t bear to.

That afternoon we got a visit from Mikhail Ilyich, a urologist who says he received an urgent call the day before, from a friend who asked him to come and see us.

He examined Masha and told her she did have a kidney stone and he massaged her a bit to try and help her pass it, then told her to drink three litres of water a day and if that didn’t help, she’d need to come into hospital.

‘I’m going to pop if I drink any more,’ she says, screwing up her face as she forces more water down herself.

We’re sitting on our bed the next morning. She still doesn’t feel like doing any sewing, so we’re just sitting there. We’ve done our morning exercises in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, we’ve been down for breakfast and now we’re back here, with nothing to do all day. Except imagine. When Masha’s not talking, I go into this other world I have, of living in the village with Slava. I’m not Together with Masha there, and Slava and me are both Healthy. He works as an accountant and I’m a science teacher in the primary school. I can picture it all in my head: the stove, the tables and chairs, the rug on the wall, the books we have and the vegetable plot in the garden. I have all these different situations I think up and I go through the conversations, word by word, in my head. It’s my other world. My real world.

‘Girls! Girls! I have great news!’

Aunty Nadya bursts into our room all out of breath and red in the face. We weren’t expecting her.

‘What! What!’ we say together.

‘Slava’s here! Slava’s in SNIP. His mother sent him up for urgent treatment and he didn’t want me to say anything until he was actually here. He wants you to visit.’

I look across at Masha.

‘ Nyet ,’ she says, and looks out of the window.

There’s this shocked silence, which bounces off the walls.

No, she can’t do this. No! Slava! Slava’s here! She can’t stop me going – she can’t! Not this time, not now he’s here, just ten minutes away, waiting for me!

‘What do you mean, nyet ?’ splutters Aunty Nadya. ‘Of course you’re going. The car’s waiting outside. Get up this minute!’

‘ Nyet.’

‘ Da! Da! I’m going, Masha, I’m going.’ I struggle to stand up, but she doesn’t move, so I grab her arm and tug at her, but she still won’t budge. She’s like a dead weight. I keep trying to get up, and end up half on the floor. Aunty Nadya picks me up and puts me back on the bed. I’m sobbing now and still pulling to go, lifting my arms to Aunty Nadya for help, but it’s no good. Masha’s made up her mind and we both know it.

‘How can you be so… so… selfish and heartless and cruel!’ shouts Aunty Nadya, going even redder in the face. ‘They want to see each other, can’t you see how you’re hurting her? Can’t you see what torture this is for her?’

‘You haven’t seen her crying every time he hurts her!’ Masha shouts back. ‘You haven’t been together with her when she’s tearing herself into a million pieces with her pain! That’s torture! He’s the one who’s torturing her and he wants to do it again. He thinks he can whistle and she’ll just crawl back into the boxing ring, to get punched to the floor again. I can’t go on seeing her being mutilated like that all the time – she’s my sister, I love her. I’m not going! You couldn’t get me to see the little moodak if you chained me to a locomotive.’

‘No, Masha, no! You don’t understand,’ I sob, still pulling at her, ‘not being able to see him is the torture. He only hurts me because you and me are Together, which means we can’t be together… him and me… it’s so hard for him, can’t you see that? Can’t you?’ I’m trying to talk through my tears, trying to get her to understand. ‘I must see him, I must talk to him… he promised…’

‘Promised what?’ She looks at me sharply. ‘And why would you believe his stupid promises anyway?’