Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

A little girl in a flowery dress walks past holding her mother’s hand. She glances at us but that’s all.

‘Right then, you two,’ says Matthius. ‘Let’s get over to the hospital. We’ve got that appointment with the urologist.’

‘I preferred that handsome psychiatrist,’ says Masha. ‘Johann, the one who speaks some Russian. He said he’d take us around, he did; said he’d give us a tour of the city.’

‘Well, I’m sure he will then, Masha. Fine by me. Right, let’s get on. Quick march.’

As we tap down the street I look up at the trees, which are starting to turn yellow. I can look around at everything here. In Russia I just look at the ground so I don’t see the eyes. I still get my nightmare about being in the glass well…

‘Maybe Johann can take us to the circus,’ Masha says to me. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to the circus.’

I nod. ‘Yes, that would be nice. We’ll be able to sit anywhere we like.’

At first she wouldn’t see him – Johann, that is, the psychiatrist. She said she didn’t need any shrink trying to scrabble about in her head, trying to prove she’s crazy. But he came to our room in the hotel with a bunch of roses one morning and told us his mother was born in Russia and he really wanted to practise the language and would we mind spending a bit of time with him? He’s young and fun, with his long blond hair and baggy suit, so Masha said yes.

‘Just don’t tell him you’ve always wanted to be a trapeze artist, Mash,’ I say with a smile. ‘He will think you’re crazy.’

‘I’ll tell him whatever I want,’ she says. And sniffs. ‘Hey, there’s a sweetie shop. Matthius, can we go in there and get chocolate? Can we?’ He smiles and nods at Billy the cameraman. ‘Sure you can. As much as you can eat.’

We wake up and go to look out of our thirteenth-floor window at the view over the blue river, sparkling away in the sunshine. I’m so happy I just feel like smiling all the time. I feel I belong here. Matthius has been busy with some story brewing back home. ‘Probably those blackies in the republics rioting again,’ Masha had said to me. So Johann has been taking us around instead. We haven’t been to the circus yet, but we visited a cathedral and went for a boat ride on the river, and to restaurants in the evenings.

‘So,’ Johann had said, yesterday morning, ‘I’ve got an interesting trip for you today. It’s a Home for the Disabled run by the Red Cross.’

We thought it would be like the Sixth, but it wasn’t. It was like a gleaming hotel with all sorts of special equipment to make life as easy as possible for the residents. They don’t call them Defectives here, or even invalids. They call them people with Special Needs. ‘Told you we’re special!’ Masha had laughed. We walked through all the rooms with soft sofas and TVs and everyone smiled at us like we were the King and Queen of England rolled into one, and we chatted to Johann about the Twentieth. Or at least Masha did.

Then last night, when Masha ordered vodka for me in the restaurant, she started telling Johann about Slava and how I kept trying to kill myself, and about our mother. He was really interested. Masha talked and talked that evening, while I drank. I don’t remember how we got home.

‘Mashinka,’ I say, pressing my forehead against the window in our hotel room, ‘maybe we could stay here, in that nice Red Cross Hotel? Perhaps they’d let us stay there? Then we could live a normal life?’

The sun’s twinkling on the river. Masha shrugs. ‘Maybe.’ My heart jumps. Would she really agree? To live an invisible life? Would she?

There’s a knock on the door then, and Matthius walks in. We turn from the window and he nods at us and goes over to switch the TV on. Then he picks up our phone and starts dialling.

‘Feel free,’ says Masha. ‘To use our phone. Why not take a shower in our bathroom while you’re at it?’ He looks up at her, frowning, not getting the joke.

‘Matthius,’ I say quickly, before Masha can stop me, ‘is there any way, do you think, that we could stay here? In the Red Cross place? Stay here to live?’ He looks surprised then and puts the phone down.

‘Here? Well… I suppose it might be possible. I could make some calls.’

‘Just for a bit,’ mutters Masha. ‘See what it’s like.’ She peels back our blanket. ‘ Ei hande hoch! – they came to change our sheets yesterday, Matthius. We only slept in them once.’ He’s picked up the phone again and is speaking into it in German with one eye on the TV ‘ Ei! Achtung! ’ Masha says loudly. ‘We’re clean, we are! Tell them we have a bath every day. And what about that vodka? My sister here can’t go a day without her bottle.’ He waves her away, still talking on the phone, so Masha leans over and takes an apple out of a bowl of fruit by our bed. She eats it all, including the core, and swallows down the pips.

Matthius starts flicking through the channels, then stops at one and sits down on the end of our bed to watch. There’s a big house by the sea being filmed from above on the screen. His phone rings again and he goes out of the room, talking into it urgently. We keep watching and realize the house is in Russia. The picture keeps flashing back to Moscow. There are tanks. Tanks in the streets of Moscow! But we can’t understand a word, so Masha switches it over to cartoons.

Nobody else comes to our room after that, except a maid with a tray of food, and it’s only after about six hours that Matthius comes back and sits on our bed. His face is white and he keeps jiggling his foot.

‘Listen, there’s been a coup d’état in the Soviet Union by the Communist hardliners who oppose Gorbachev’s reforms. They’ve declared a State of Emergency and put Gorbachev under house arrest in his government dacha in the Crimea. Tanks have been rolling into Moscow all day and they’ve closed down the TV and radio stations. Muscovites are rioting, they’re out putting barricades round the White House to protect it from the Army. I have to go back to report on it. My flight’s in ninety minutes.’

‘B-but what about us? What about our t-trip?’

‘I’m sorry, Dasha, we’ll have to scrap the documentary. This coup is huge news. It could well mean a return to hard-line Communism. Yanayev, Gorbachev’s deputy, has taken control of the country. We’ll arrange flights back for you, but it will have to be soon because they might close the borders.’

He goes to the door and stops, then turns to look at us.

‘Unless… unless you’re serious about wanting to stay here? If they do close the borders, you won’t be permitted back in anyway, and then you’d have to be cared for here…’ There’s a pause as he waits for an answer.

I glance quickly at Masha.

‘ Nyet ,’ she says.

He shrugs and closes the door.

‘Masha, why not?’ I ball up my hands into fists because I want to shake her. ‘Masha, think about it, we could stay here, we’d learn German, we’d be able to work, we’d be treated like the Healthies… We don’t have any friends back home. Olessya won’t talk to us because of our – my – drinking… we could start a new life, we could travel—’

‘ Molchee! Russia is my home, not Germany. Russia is my Motherland. I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone or joke with them. I’m not staying here forever. What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you a patriot? Aren’t you?’ She thumps the bed. ‘We’re Russian, we love Russia. Russians are the greatest people in the world. What are you? A Nazi, that you want to live here? A Fascist?’

‘No, no, Masha, it’s just that if the Communists come back in, everything will go back to how it was. We’ll lose our room in the Sixth. We might get sent back to the Twentieth… Don’t you see, Mashinka? It’s all going to go back to how it was. Please? Just this once, just this once. Listen to me.’