Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Can’t believe Olessya’s been moved here,’ says Masha. ‘It’s gonna be so healthy having her here.’

‘Except she’s in the Lying Down Block next door, so we can’t visit…’

‘She’s allowed out though. We can meet her outside every day for as long as we like.’

‘It’s minus twenty out now.’

‘For God’s sake, stop moaning. I thought this would cheer you up for once in your miserable life… C’mon, let’s put our coats on, she’ll be waiting.’

When Brezhnev died six years ago, everyone thought the world was coming to an end. Like when Gagarin died. Just like I thought the world was coming to an end when Slava died. It wasn’t though. More’s the pity. We’ve got a new General Secretary now, Gorbachev. He’s much younger. ‘Not going to keel over dead as soon as he’s sworn in like the two old horse radishes before him,’ Masha had cackled when we heard the news. We’ve seen him on TV promising changes and condemning the old order for not telling the people the truth. For concealing flaws. Flaws like us. He has kind eyes, Gorbachev does. But then, so did Stalin. So life goes on, and me and Masha play cards with each other, day in, day out.

But now Olessya’s here. My Olessya. I haven’t seen her in twenty years.

As we go out of the back door into the walled yard, we pass Uncle Zhenya, sitting bolt upright on the bench.

‘Ei, Uncle, you’ll freeze to death sitting there!’ Masha pokes him but he’s fast asleep. ‘ Yobinny stik , stay there then, I’m not your nanny.’ Masha pulls her scarf over her nose, and we crunch into the snow, careful not to slip over. The Lying Down Block (called the Goners Block by the staff), for inmates who can’t walk, is at the far end of the Home. One of the kitchen staff, Lala, is acting as our go-between and we don’t even have to bribe her to take messages. She’s sweet, Lala is.

‘You should’ve let me put those plastic bags on over our socks, Mash. My foot is freezing already…’

‘Stop bleating… c’mon.’

We pick our way along the path, packed hard with ice. I can hardly believe Olessya is waiting for us just around the corner. We don’t know why, but she’s been transferred to the Twentieth with lots of other Defectives – except they call us invalids now. There still aren’t any proper Homes for adult invalids, because it seems that officially there are still no invalids in the Soviet Union – so how can there be Homes for them? There are still only perfectly formed citizens in our country. I’m sure Olessya will have something to say about that. Olessya hates injustice.

‘Look! Oh my God! There she is! Olessinka!’ I squeak, and start laughing and laughing.

We run up to her through a snow drift, almost falling over, and then all hug and kiss and laugh some more.

‘Well, girls, how many winters has it been? Twenty? You haven’t changed a bit, you really haven’t.’

‘Neither have you, Olessinka,’ I say. I mean it. She’s just as beautiful as ever with her soft skin and big dark eyes. Like Slava’s eyes.

‘Look at you in your fuck-off wheelchair!’ says Masha, laughing. ‘What happened to the trolley with the sheath?’

‘You know me, Mashinka, I know my rights. I get the Komsorg in the Thirteenth to bring me the latest decrees from the Ministry of Protection and it said we can get one wheelchair per five invalids.’

‘B-Barkov’s dead set against inmates having wheelchairs,’ I say.

‘Yeah, I know. He says the Lying Down Block means you lie down and stay there, so it was a battle to bring it to the Twentieth. But here I am. With a wheelchair.’

‘I want one,’ says Masha. ‘Why can’t I have one?’

Olessya laughs. ‘We’ll work on it, Mash. So what’s been happening then?’ she asks. ‘Two decades in the Twentieth… what’s been happening? You hardly ever wrote to me.’

Masha and I look at each other.

‘Nothing,’ we say together.

‘We get up,’ says Masha, ‘we eat, and we go to bed. Every day. Over and over again.’

‘I d-don’t want to talk about it,’ I say. ‘But now you’re here, Olessinka!’ I lean down and hug her again.

‘So why did they send you and all the other Defectives over here to the Twentieth from the Thirteenth then?’ asks Masha, rubbing her cold nose. ‘Did they run out of rooms? Or run out of patience?’

‘Bit of both. It’s all those young soldiers coming back from the war in Afghanistan with bits of them missing. Thousands of them, and nowhere to put them. So they’ve had to start transferring us Congenitals to Homes that wouldn’t have taken us before. Shame, in a way – some of those lads were gorgeous…’ She smiles slowly. Her teeth are still white and even. Ours are awful. All brown and rotting. ‘But as soon as those poor boys saw what they were in for, they were topping themselves so fast they couldn’t get enough coffins in. These Homes take some getting used to when you’ve lived life as a Healthy.’

‘Well, my shipwreck here was born Defective,’ says Masha, nodding across at me as if she wasn’t, ‘but she’d be topping herself too, given half a chance. You heard about Slava?’ Olessya nods and glances at me with those eyes that still see right inside me. ‘Well, after we got that letter from Valentina Alexandrovna, she wouldn’t eat. Got it into her head she could starve herself to death, so I had to stuff my face all day and every day to keep us going until she realized it wasn’t going to work. Just as well – I’d have ended up like a lard balloon!’

Olessya smiles but puts her gloved hand on my arm and tips her head on one side.

‘I’m sorry, Dashinka. Slava was a good boy. Aaakh…’ Her breath puffs in a cloud around her head. ‘It all seems so long ago now… But you know what they say: death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal… right?’

Masha rolls her eyes but I whisper, ‘Right.’ I’m not sure she is, though. Memories are painful. The only time I’ve ever felt really alive was when I knew Slava. Since he died, I’ve been living half a life.

‘Oh, gospodi , don’t remind her, she’ll be at it again – trying to end it all,’ says Masha. ‘First it was boric acid powder. Swiped it off the kitchen counter, she did, and was tipping it down her throat before I knew what was happening. That was two days of torture for me, being turned inside out while she threw up after all the emetics they gave her. Then it was a knife, the idiot; she tried to cut her throat, but I got to her first that time. Just about. Don’t know why I bother.’ I rub the scar on my neck. Olessya’s shaking her head. ‘And her next little stunt,’ Masha goes on, ‘was when we managed to get up to the eighth floor to get chocolate from the buffet, and what does my moron here do? Only tries to chuck us out of the open window. If I hadn’t grabbed on to the curtains, we’d be two metres under by now. Lucky for us they didn’t send us to a Madhouse for attempted suicide. Both of us. And what am I supposed to say if we’re put in front of a psychiatric panel? Am I gonna stick my little hand up and quack: “But I’m not depressed, comrades. I’m sane. I love Socialism, just like everyone else – so send her off to your Madhouse, please do; but not me, comrades. No, not me.”’ We all smile and Olessya shakes her head again.

‘Same old Masha.’

‘Life’s just a constant process of waiting to die for her. And if she had chucked us out of that window, chances are, knowing our luck, we’d just be maimed, so then we’d be in a Goners Block like you. I have to have eyes in the back of my head to keep her from ending it all. I was scared to go to sleep, Olessya, I tell you I was, in case she strangled me. No offence and all that, but there’s three things I’m frightened to death of – being in a Madhouse, being in a Goners Block and waking up dead.’