Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

Olessya smiles again and shrugs. ‘We’re all afraid of the Madhouse – and Stupino, come to that – aren’t we? That’s how they keep us in line. And as for the Goners Block, yeah, they die like snowflakes in the sun in there. But the worst thing is the humiliation.’ Her eyes flash. ‘It’s run like a prison camp and the staff treat us like animals, just because we can’t walk. The Administration drags in the cheapest possible village idiots from god-knows-where, instead of employing professionals, and then they pocket the difference in wages for themselves. And what makes those peasants think they’re so superior to us? Just because they have straight legs and don’t squint?’ She bangs her mittened fist on the arm of her wheelchair.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ says Masha. ‘They think we have porridge for brains if we look different. And Dragomirovna barks at us like a mad dog if we so much as fart.’

‘Exactly! They treat us like subhuman pigs!’ Olessya bangs her fist against the chair again. ‘There’s all this talk about this new Openness of Gorbachev’s, but no one writes about invalids in the press – the so-called Organs of Enlightenment.’ She snorts. ‘That’s a laugh.’

‘Or they could at least change the management,’ I say. ‘Barkov and Dragomirovna have been here forever. Everyone knows they’re crooks. And cruel. Everyone. They must have both been here since Stalin…’

‘Gold sinks and shit floats,’ says Masha.

‘And you know what they say in their Organs of Enlightenment?’ goes on Olessya. I shrug. We don’t read the newspapers. ‘That the campaign for human rights is an imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet State. What crap! Giving us wheelchairs instead of trays with wheels is an imperialist plot? Chort! ’

‘Well, Gorbachev might change things…’ I suggest, and blow on my hands. It’s freezing out here. My eyelashes have iced over and my nose is going numb. I rub it, then rub Masha’s nose and pull her fur hat down over her ears. (We always wear men’s hats and men’s clothing because she likes them better.) ‘He seems different… Gorbachev does.’

‘He is different,’ says Olessya. ‘I’ve heard one half of his forehead is covered by a red birthmark – that’s enough to get you put in a Home from birth. He must have had one strong mum.’

‘But Gorbachev hasn’t got a birthmark,’ I say, frowning. ‘We see him on TV in the guard room. And his portrait’s up with all the rest of the Politburo in reception. He hasn’t got a birthmark.’

‘They airbrush it out, that’s what they do. He’s got one, all right. But if he’s flawed himself, you’d think he’d help the Defectives, wouldn’t you? Not hide his own defect. He’s like all the rest of them; if you can crawl out of the dung heap into the garden you stay there… it’s one big cover-up…’

‘Shhh…’ Masha says, looking around. An old woman is shuffling about in the snow not far away, muttering to herself. ‘You should be careful, Olessya, you’ll get put in the Isolation Hut for slander. You won’t survive a week in there.’

‘I don’t care. I’m going to get a petition up to have the food improved. We get fed slops a dog wouldn’t eat here. It was much better in the Thirteenth.’

‘A petition?’ I say, gawping at her. ‘No, no – don’t do that, Olessya. We’ll get Aunty Nadya to bring you oranges. And tomatoes.’

‘I want everyone to have oranges and tomatoes. Not just me. And bananas and green beans too – fresh ones.’

‘Well, don’t get me involved in your little uprising. I’m not signing any bananas petition,’ says Masha. ‘It’s hard enough keeping our heads below the parapet as it is.’

‘Good for you, Olessya,’ I say. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

‘As long as it’s not me,’ says Masha. ‘I look after Number One, I do, and that’s a full-time job. Well, I’m freezing my tits off out here. Let’s meet tomorrow, yeah? Same time?’

Olessya nods. ‘OK, OK… Just give me a hand up the ramp, girls. Forward to Communism. Haha! That’ll be the day.’

As we walk back, I feel things are getting better. I feel things can change. Olessya’s inspiring. She always was.

‘She’s crazy, Olessya is,’ says Masha. ‘Getting up a petition, for God’s sake! Where does she think we are – Amerika?’

‘But maybe she’s right. Maybe this is the—’

‘Hang on a minute – how long’s Uncle Zhenya been out here?’

She’s stopped in front of him by the bench. He’s only forty-seven but after he was crippled in a car accident his wife put him in here and took another husband. A Healthy one, of course. He loves being outside in the yard. He’s in the Lying Down Block because he’s crippled, but he always sits on the bench outside our Walking Block as if he thinks one day he might simply stand up and be invited in. We sometimes sit with him and listen to him talk about his old life in his country dacha where he had a log stove and grew giant marrows and taught his kids how to ride a bicycle. Like me and Slava… in my dreams…

I lean down and push his dog-fur hat back. He’s dead. We both realize it immediately – we’ve seen enough corpses. Masha shrugs.

‘You can’t teach a fool how to die well.’

We walk away from him then, and up the steps. It’s a common enough way for the men to go here. Drink a lot of vodka, and then go and sit outside and hope to freeze to death.

‘It’s terrible,’ I say as we step inside, into the warmth.

‘What’s so terrible about it? Haven’t you seen enough people die?’

‘Yes.’ I stop inside the door. ‘That’s the point. It’s not terrible about Uncle Zhenya, it’s terrible that I don’t feel anything any more.’ I look at her in growing alarm. ‘I’m like you.’

‘Thank God for that. Not feeling saves your sanity,’ says Masha shortly and starts us off walking again, past the Politburo. ‘You torture yourself in these places if you allow yourself to feel everyone’s pain. Or allow yourself to feel something for someone. Because they always go, one way or another… like Lucia… and Slava.’

I stop her again.

‘But, Masha, compassion makes you human. Doesn’t it? Have they killed my compassion?’

‘Compassion makes you weak,’ she snaps, and pulls us over to the lift. ‘If it’s gone, then good riddance to it.’ The door opens. The Toad is still working here and she watches us walk in with her cold, loathsome eyes.

As the doors close I feel empty. I feel that they’ve won. Because when I think of Uncle Zhenya, a frozen block on the bench, I feel indifference.

When we go back outside the next day, Uncle Zhenya’s still sitting there, but now he has a sack over his head. There’s a militiaman next to him, because the cause of death was unknown. He’s smoking a papirosa.

We’ve seen this militiaman before at other deaths, so Masha says in a friendly way, ‘Hey, you keeping him out here all winter then, Fedya? ’Til he thaws out?’

He spits tobacco on to the snow. ‘No hurry, is there? He’s not going anywhere.’ Then he looks away. We disgust him, I can tell. I don’t care.

We walk on. Olessya’s out there with a group of her friends who were moved with her from the Thirteenth. They’re all laughing. I’m so happy she’s here. I’ve been lonely in the Twentieth.

‘ Yolki palki – I think our Olessya has a boyfriend,’ says Masha as we make our way slowly towards them through the snow. The narrow raised path of packed snow is still icy and worn down by footsteps, but our crutches sink deep into the snowdrifts either side, so we’re wobbling all over the place.