Juliet Butler: The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘You do understand plain Russian, don’t you?’ says the grey woman, and I nod again, to be polite. ‘You certainly speak plain Russian, so I’ve heard. Very plain. Hmm.’

She touches the other woman’s arm. ‘Come along with me, Nadya, into the nurses’ room. Let them settle in for a bit, while we wait for Boris Markovich.’

They walk across our big room and open the other door, but it’s not bright white with lots of lights like inside the Laboratory. It’s a small dark place with a desk and two chairs. My heart stops being all tight at that. We’re still up in the corner of our cot with no bars, as we’re afraid we might fall right off the edge. I like bars better. I can see Aunty Nadya through the crack in the half-closed door. I can see her put her head in her hands and start shaking and crying all over the place.

‘She’s crying, Masha,’ I whisper. But Masha just sniffs.

‘Stop this at once, Nadya!’ says the other woman in a crunchy, bad voice. ‘One would think you’d never seen Defective children before. Pull yourself together!’

People think we can’t hear. I don’t know why. Maybe other children can’t hear so well as us? But if we couldn’t hear really, really well, we wouldn’t know anything at all, because we don’t get told anything. I can see Masha’s listening to them too.

‘ Ai, ai, ai! It’s the state of them, Lydia Mikhailovna. It’s not that they’re together, it’s not that at all, it’s the state of them. They’re like two frightened wild animals – that’s what they are. What did they do to them in there?’

I make a humming noise. I don’t know why she thinks we’re like wild animals when we’ve never been on the Outside before. I’ve seen wild dogs on the street from the Window; they’re thin and mean.

‘I’m told by Comrade Anokhin that his scientists merely observed their behaviour, Nadya. I have no reason to disbelieve a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and neither should you.’

‘But just look at them,’ she’s sobbing and sniffing now, ‘they flinch as soon as you look at them, they can’t feed themselves, and if they do speak, it’s in the worst common language of the cleaners.’ I squish up my nose. That’s not fair. I don’t swear like Masha does. Mummy told us not to. It’s Masha that swears. I try and stop listening and think of Mummy instead, coming to take us back home. But all I can see of Mummy in my head is her holding on to our cot hard as if she’s going to be blown over, and that makes me want to cry again. Masha feels my crying bubbling up, and pinches me hard so she can keep hearing them.

‘Oh, do stop snivelling, Nadya. You’re a physiotherapist whose job is to treat them, not a simple peasant woman to sit and weep over them. You’ll be praying next! Your task is to rehabilitate them.’

‘But, Lydia Mikhailovna, how am I to do that? Did you see their legs? Completely withered. And their arms, too – the muscles are non-existent. It’s a terrible thing, just skin and bone… ai, ai ai , how am I to work on that, Lydia Mikhailovna? How am I ever to get those little stick legs…’

‘None of that talk. You will get them to walk. You are the best physiotherapist in this hospital. And this is the best Prosthetics Hospital in the USSR. And that means the best in the world. As for Comrade Anokhin, his job was to observe them, in whatever way he desired. As a student of Dr Pavlov, he is pushing back the boundaries of Soviet scientific achievements and that is why his observations will continue while they are in our care. At least for as long as they survive.’

Survive? I look at Masha, just at the same moment she looks at me. Her eyes are open wide. Survive means not being dead. Yet.

She pinches me again to stop me crying, but then the door goes Boom again and a thin old man comes into the room. His face is nearly all nose and big glasses. He’s smiling and his teeth are yellow as old garlic cloves.

When they hear the door, Aunty Nadya and the other woman come quickly out of their room. He nods at them and walks over to us.

‘ Nooka! Well now! What’s all this then? So they had enough of you two bedbugs in the Paediatric Institute, did they?’

He lifts his eyebrows and pushes his glasses up his nose with a finger so his eyes grow big and they gawp at us through them. After a bit I stop thinking of crying, and look at his gawpy eyes instead, like great big popping fish eyes.

‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘Right, so we’re going to get you two on your feet, are we?’

Aunty Nadya shakes her head. ‘It’ll take an eternity, Boris Markovich, to get those bony little legs to support them – completely atrophied, they are. I’ve seen a lot of children in my time, but this, this… Aaakh nyet , an eternity…’

‘We don’t have an eternity, Nadya, as you know. We have Plans. Five-Year Plans, new Targets, new Thoughts. So there’ll be no going back for them, thank God, only forwards. And I’ll wager, if anyone can get those two trotting along these corridors of ours, it’s you. We both know that…’

Aunty Nadya sucks her spongy lips in. The gawpy-eyed man leans towards us. ‘I’m the Director of this…’ he waves round the room ‘…um, hospital. SNIP. That’s easy, isn’t it? It stands for the Scientific National Institute of Prosthetics – Snip for short. This is your home now.’

‘Snip!’ says Masha. ‘Snip!’

It’s the first thing we’ve said to them and everyone laughs as if it’s a big joke, so she says it again, louder. Masha likes making people laugh.

‘Snip!!’

‘That’s right!’ The man’s smiling even more, crinkling his face into lots of lines, and Masha’s smiling too. ‘Easy, isn’t it? So, is there anything we can get you now? A jigsaw, perhaps? Picture books? Mmm?’

We don’t know what they are, so we don’t say anything.

He lifts his eyebrows up again. ‘Well, would you like to meet some of the other children then? Eh? Don’t suppose you’ve met many children before, have you? Come along, what would you like? I can tell by those bright little eyes of yours, you can understand me.’

I know what I’d like more than anything in the world.

‘I’d like to go back home,’ I say. ‘To Mummy.’

His eyebrows go right up, and he looks back at the two women, but their eyebrows go right up too, so they’re all standing there with their eyebrows right up as if they’re not hearing me, and I remember to tell them what everyone else calls Mummy in the Ped.

‘I want to go back to Anna Petrovna. We want to go home to her.’

He laughs and pats my head. ‘No, no, no. Snip is your home now, not the Paediatric Institute, and you have Aunty Nadya to look after you instead of Anna Petrovna. Anna Petrovna must stay in her own hospital.’ I start crying again in silly sobs that won’t stop, so he pats my head again. ‘Now don’t you worry, you’ll have lots of fun with us – Aunty Nadya will show you how to do a jigsaw.’ He smiles again, then bangs the palm of his hand on the bedstead as if he’s angry about something, and makes the bed jump. ‘Come along, comrades.’ He turns to go. But when they’re all at the door, he stops.

‘Nadya?’ She looks at him. ‘Clean them up properly and then let the other children in to play with them, will you?’

They’re all talking at the same time and bouncing and tumbling and saying stuff I can’t hear because it’s all being said at the same time. ‘Dima… your name… stand on my head… three months here… upside downs… Mummy…’ and jumping and laughing, ’til my head’s buzzing like nasty shiny equipment that won’t turn off.