Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘And I know you’ve been listening to Sanya and her petty gossip,’ she went on. ‘As if in a million years I’d take money from Barkov to harm you. But you can’t trust anyone to just be nice, out of the goodness of their heart, can you? Because there’s no goodness in yours – it all went to Dasha.’ I squirmed. Please stop talking. ‘Well, so be it. Enjoy the rest of your new life as celebrities without me.’ And then I’d heard the door slam and everyone started talking at once. But I heard Masha say under her breath ‘good riddance’.

I sit down on our bed, which is four times the size of the one in the Twentieth. I still can’t understand why Aunty Nadya wanted us to stay in the Twentieth. All this is wonderful, the new sheets, the shower and the wallpaper. But without Aunty Nadya to share it with us, it’s just… I don’t know… empty somehow. There’s a knock on the door and I look up with a thumping heart, I keep thinking she might…? But it’s only Timur, the caretaker, who’s come in to put a new lock on the door. Masha wants new keys.

‘All right, comrades?’ he says, tipping his cap back and looking around the room at us all. ‘Come to put the lock on, keep these two princesses safe in their tower.’ He chuckles.

‘As long as you’ve got a key, Timosha,’ grins Masha. ‘You can come in and see us any time. We could always do with a strong pair of male hands…’ Olessya rolls her eyes.

‘Cheeky bitch,’ he says, grinning back. ‘I’m a married man, Masha.’

‘ Zhena ne stena – a wife is not a wall.’

He grins again and shakes his head. ‘Well, won’t take me boots off though, I’ll just stay out here in the corridor and keep out of temptation’s way. Won’t be long.’

‘Right then,’ says Olessya, ‘it’s supper-time. I’m off to get in the queue.’ Garrick gives us a mock salute and follows her.

‘Yes, yes, off you all go, down to eat with the starving masses,’ says Masha, happily waving them out. ‘We’re staying up here, we are, to get room service. And Baba Iskra said she’d buy us some apples, if she can find them. And vodka.’ Baba Iskra shakes her grizzly old head, but I think that means yes.

‘Double lock, Timosha, da ?’ says Masha, standing over him and opening and closing our cupboard door with a klik, klyak . He nods and starts telling us about how we should get some nice pot plants in our room. He’s the gardener too.

‘You’ll be getting us a bust of Lenin next, and portraits of the Politburo,’ jokes Masha. He laughs and while he works, he tells us a bit about what’s going on in the Outside. They’ve brought ration cards in for meat, cheese and other basics now. Just like in the Great Patriotic War. So much for Gorbachev. ‘You’re lucky,’ he says, talking with some screws between his teeth. ‘No queuing for rationed food in here. Just your room service. The only thing there’s no shortage of out there is vodka, now that they’ve stopped prohibition, thank God. I saw grown men dying in agony from drinking turps or cologne.’ He takes off the lock and cocks his head on one side, looking at the hole in the door. ‘Disaster, that was. The one thing that oils the works in this country is vodka.’ He looks round at us and winks. It’s nice to talk to a Healthy man for once.

There’s another knock at the door and this time it’s Joolka, who almost falls over him.

‘Ooh, yolki palki! Sorry, sorry! I’m Julietka,’ she says to Timur, and holds out her hand. He stares at it blankly. ‘Yes, sorry…’ She says, taking it back and looking embarrassed. ‘Hey, girls, guess what? Here it is – here’s the magazine article!’

Joolka plonks something down outside the open door in the corridor and edges round Timur, who’s still gawping at her. He’s never seen a foreigner before. No one has.

‘Here’s the Sunday Times Magazine . You’re on the front cover, see?’ She holds it out to us. It’s us, all right, there on the glossy cover. Masha looks at it and sniffs. It shows us walking off across a field, taken from behind. Why didn’t they show our faces? Why have us walking off to nowhere, full-length, looking stupid and clumsy? I don’t like it. Neither does Masha. We don’t know what the words say because it’s all written in strange wiggly letters.

‘Brought any Western goodies then, Maht? In your Beriozka bag?’ asks Masha, turning from the magazine. She calls Joolka Maht – Mother – because she’s just had a baby girl, Sashinka. She says she’ll bring her in to see us, but I know she won’t. Lots of the staff in the Twentieth and the Stom had babies but they would have died rather than bring them in to see us. So we’ve never seen a baby before, not even out of the window.

‘Yes, yes, here you are, I dropped in on the way here.’

It turns out it’s not only Party big-wigs who can shop in the Beriozka food shops that are filled with any food and drink you want. It’s foreigners too. ‘Tinned cod roe, cheese balls, ham and chocolate biscuits, just like you asked.’ Masha takes the bag and looks for vodka, but there isn’t any. She sniffs again. At least everything’s firmennaya – goods from the West, labelled in that same squiggly writing. Joolka looks around the room as I put the food in the empty fridge. She doesn’t seem that impressed. I wonder what her Moscow flat is like.

‘So, anyway, here’s the article,’ she says, shrugging off her coat and kicking off her snow boots. She pulls her hat off too and runs her fingers through her hair. She doesn’t seem to own a hairbrush and her jeans are splattered with paint. We thought Westerners would dress in designer clothes and have manicures and perfect hair, but this one’s the opposite. Maybe they all are? She speaks good Russian because she’s married to one of us. A Soviet citizen. ‘Had the whole world to pick from with her Golden Passport and she goes for one of our cretins,’ Masha had said, tapping her finger to her temple.

We first met Joolka back in the Stom. She’s a journalist from England. She’d seen Vzglyad and wanted to interview us for this magazine. We decided to see her for two reasons. Firstly, we’d never met anyone from abroad before, so when Irina Krasnopolskaya told us she’d been contacted by a Western journalist, it was exciting. Secondly, we’d been in the Stom for a month and although we knew that, thanks to the publicity, we’d never have to go back to the Twentieth, we weren’t being allowed into the Sixth. The Director here said it was full and she had no rooms to assign us. She didn’t even say we could get on a waiting list, just told us to find another one. But Masha had other ideas.

‘Well, we’ve used the power of our press to keep us out of the Twentieth, now we need to use the power of the Western press to get us in the Sixth,’ she’d said.

Joolka turned up at the Stom in the same clothes she’s wearing today. Exactly the same clothes. I wonder if she even washes them? She must though. I wash our clothes all the time. She seemed really pleased to see us, just to meet us. She didn’t seem to notice we were Together; she was like Vlad, only interested in what had happened to us and how we’d been treated. When we told her we couldn’t get into the Sixth, she went back to her office and called up the Ministry of Protection, just like that, called them up and said she was writing this article and that her colleagues in the BBC and CNN wanted to do a report on us, and exactly why couldn’t we get into the Sixth? After that, we were told there was a room available, after all. The best room. Smeshno . We’ve spent seventy years despising the Imperialist, decadent, Western dogs, but when we come eye to eye with them, we just fawn, as if it’s us who are the dogs.