Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘He… he…’

‘I’m not letting him make you miserable as sin all over again. It’s like dragging the devil along beside me…’

‘If you don’t let me go I’ll be so miserable you’ll wish you were dead! I will, I will, I swear I’ll never talk to you again!’ I thump the bed. ‘Let me make my own mistakes!’

She looks back out of the window. ‘ Nyet .’

‘Well, Masha,’ says Aunty Nadya, going almost purple in the face now, ‘if you can’t see that you’re burning down the house to get rid of the mouse, there’s only one thing for it. I’ll tell the little lad to come here to see you. That’s what I’ll do.’ She nods firmly at me and stalks out.

When I finally stop crying, hours and hours later, I won’t talk to her. I’ll show her what our life will be like if she doesn’t let me see Slava when he comes here. It’s the only thing I can do. I’ll stand up to her, I will. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll stand up to her. Just like he said.

‘Finally stopped all that bawling?’ she says. ‘About time too. Here’s me, downing all this water, and you’re crying it all out again as fast as it goes in.’ She’s trying to be funny, thinking a stupid joke will make it all right again. I hate her. I turn the other way.

By evening Masha’s passed her kidney stone and wants to go and see Ivan Ivanovich down in reception. I don’t want to do anything she wants to do, but I also don’t want her to ruin Slava’s visit, so I get up.

He’s watching Vremya news.

‘Heard the rumours, girls? About the Americans having landed on the moon?’

‘That’s just rumour, spread by Uncle Sam, everyone knows that,’ sniffs Masha. ‘No one except us can land on the moon. And we’d have read about it if they had. Or it would be on the news.’ She points at the TV set.

Ivan Ivanovich shrugs. ‘Not everything gets reported in our news…’

‘They just hate us because we’re better than them,’ says Masha angrily. ‘They want to drop one of their atomic bombs on us. They’re bullies. And they’re jealous.’

‘All right, all right, Miss Politics. You should join the Politburo,’ he chuckles. ‘That’d shake them up.’

We sit and watch the news for a bit. It’s all about our Five-Year Plan and more Over-fulfilled Quotas and Brezhnev opening the biggest dam in the world, which has just been built here in the Soviet Union. I wonder if Slava will come tomorrow. I wonder how long he’s been here. I wonder why he needed urgent treatment.

Masha yawns.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘back off to the cell,’ and she gets up to go. We tap across the dark hallway to the lift. The doors open and we step inside. Then, as if as an afterthought, she holds the closing doors and pops her head out.

‘Van Vanich!’ she shouts. ‘If someone called Slava Dionego comes to visit us, tell him we’re busy, OK?’

He nods and goes back to watching the TV.

The lift doors close on us.

‘I wish Aunty Nadya would hurry up. I need a drink like a camel needs water,’ says Masha.

It’s December now, and we’re sitting in reception on two chairs pushed together with a rug over our legs. Barkov has said we can’t come down here any more, unless we sit on the two chairs with this rug, as he’s had complaints from visitors who were traumatized. There are hardly any visitors in the Twentieth though, because all the inmates here are unwanted. So I don’t know who we managed to traumatize this time.

‘I hope she’s got that sweet port wine again,’ I say. ‘It’s easier to drink when it’s sweet.’

She rubs her jaw. ‘Getting drunk is the only way to stop this pain. The only thing I eat nowadays are yobinny painkillers with my toothache, not to mention these kidney stones I get every two minutes.’

I tuck her hair back behind her ear and stroke her cheek with the back of my hand. I get toothache too but I don’t think it’s as bad as hers.

I didn’t talk to Masha for eight whole weeks after she told Ivan Ivanovich not to let Slava in, and when I started in on the ninth she gave in and apologized. It was a Monday evening. ‘All right, all right ,’ she said. ‘Listen, please, please, please, just stop it. I’m sorry, OK? You’re driving me mad with your silence!’ I turned to look at her then, but I still didn’t speak. ‘For God’s sake,’ she went on, ‘what are you going to do? Ignore me for the rest of my life? Isn’t it bad enough in here, without you being an enemy to me too?’

I turned away. I still wouldn’t talk. She’d tried everything over those eight weeks. Beating me up until she was exhausted and me not caring. Yelling at me. Telling jokes. Tickling me. Then beating me up again. She broke my nose twice but none of the medical staff in the Twentieth asked any questions. They know Masha and me have our problems and they don’t get involved.

I talked to other people, of course, but I didn’t talk to her. It drove her crazy but it was the only thing I had left in my power to do.

Then, that Monday, after supper, we’d gone back to our room and I’d just sat there and stared at the wall while she went prattling on about who’d died and who’d been brought in. I still wouldn’t speak, so then she took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Dasha. Stop this. Just fucking talk to me again! Tell me what you want, all right? Just tell me.’

And then I did speak.

‘There’s something you’ve got to understand, Masha,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ve always done everything for you. I wash you, I comb your hair, I play cards when you want to play cards. I go and see whoever you want to see. I do everything you want to do and you don’t do anything I want to do. I don’t even bother to ask you any more. I’ve never asked for anything. Until now. If it was you who wanted to be with someone else, I’d be happy for you. We’d all be friends. We could all be friends.’

She’d looked up at the ceiling then and sniffed, like she does. ‘All right then. If that’s how it is. All right. Write to your Peanut. We’ll see what happens…’

But before I could write, we got a letter from him.

10 June 1970, Novocherkassk

Hello girls, greetings from Slava. How is your health? What’s new? How is Aunty Nadya doing? I’m fine and my health is OK. Listen, girls, I’m sorry I didn’t write before but I’m just getting used to settling in at home for the summer holidays.

Dasha, before I left Moscow I did call in to see you but they told me that you were busy and weren’t to be disturbed and they wouldn’t let me up to see you. I was sorry you didn’t come to visit me in SNIP.

Give my love to Aunty Nadya. I don’t see the staff or the other kids any more. I want to ask Vera Stepanovna to come and visit me. It seems I have to go back to school this year to get my diploma since I missed so much. But now I’ll have to go down again into the class below. I wish this would be over and done with as soon as possible.

Dasha, don’t be upset. I gave you my promise, didn’t I? And I won’t ever tell anyone. I can’t write any more on that subject in this letter.

‘What promise?’ Masha asked when she read the letter. ‘How did he give you a promise? Where was I?’ I didn’t tell her. It’s the only secret I have from her. That we’re going to be together. I’ll do my part in getting Masha to agree. And he’ll do his in getting us to live with him. I’ll be strong.

Everything was all right again after that. I wrote straight back to him. It’s been so long since I’ve actually seen him now, that the Slava in my imagination, living in the village with me, is becoming the real one. He didn’t write back so I wrote another one.