Juliet Butler: The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Go away!’ shouts Masha. We’re in the corner of our bed, but they’re on that too, all different sizes and colours and making such a shouting they can’t even hear us.

‘Here!’ It’s a boy who’s tall as a proper grown-up. ‘Piggyback!’

He moves to pick us up and put us on his back.

‘Hold on to me!’ he shouts. I hold on like mad because I’m scared he’ll drop us with a bang on the floor. The other children run round after us, whooping. Masha’s holding on too, and we’re thumping up and down on his back. She’s grabbing his hair, which isn’t razored, and he yells in pain and dumps us back on the bed, but it’s covered with children and we squish some of them so they yell too. We’ve never seen real children before and we never, ever get touched normally, except to have our Procedures, so Masha hates other people’s skin on hers. She starts hitting and scratching and yelling at them to go away and the children start squealing, and one howls with a big open mouth, like a hole, making so much noise, like there’s a monster coming out of it or something, that I put my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes closed.

‘ Tak! All right, you lot, all right, that’s enough!’ It’s Aunty Nadya who’s come into the room. She claps her hands and they all go quiet as quiet. ‘Shoo, off you go, back to your ward. That will do for one day.’ Then the door goes Boom as Aunty Nadya closes it after them. We lie on the bed breathing in and out loudly and I can feel Masha’s heart banging. Aunty Nadya goes out too then, tut-tutting, leaving us alone.

‘Stupid children,’ Masha says after a bit.

‘Stupid children,’ I say.

I hurt all over, like I do when Masha’s been kicking me, but it’s not just the bits she kicks this time. It’s everywhere. And I’m so hot I tremble all the time. Masha’s the same but worse. She’s gone all floppy and hardly talks at all.

‘Well, well and how’s the fever today?’ Aunty Nadya comes in with her trolley. She’s been looking after us since we got sick from the children’s germs. That was weeks and weeks ago. I knew we’d get germs, but I can’t always be holding my breath. Mummy told us about how germs are our enemies, but I wish she’d told them here in SNIP too. No one listens to us.

‘Well, you’re over the worst. Nearly lost you, we did!’

‘Where?’ I say. ‘Where did you nearly lost us?’

She just laughs and says, ‘You’ll be glad to hear we’ll have no mustard plasters today.’

‘ Ooraaa! ’ I clap my hands. Mustard plasters are hot as hot.

Masha lifts her head up. We get a pillow here, which is for your head to rest on. We didn’t back home. One each.

‘No banki? ’ she asks.

‘No banki ,’ says Aunty Nadya. I look at the trolley, just to make sure, because grown-ups trick you like mad. Banki are little glass cups, which she lights a fire in, so it can suck up our skin in lots of round, pink lumps. It doesn’t really hurt, not like proper hurting, but when she plips them off they leave these bumps all over, like soft jellyfish. I can count to ten now, because she’s taught us all the way up to ten, and I always count the ten red lumps on our backs. It’s easy-peasy. I bet I could count to a hundred, but there’s only ten cups.

‘No cupping. We’ve got the little leeches today.’

‘ Fooo! ’ Masha hates leeches more than anything. I look hard at the trolley and I can see them now, all squelchy and squishy and black, in a nasty big jar of muddy water.

‘Won’t!’ says Masha. But she’s too floppy to be too cross. I see them sticking on the glass and want to cry. Every time they take that first bite I feel sick, and won’t look at them or think of them, slimy-slithery on my tummy.

‘ Teesha, teesha… hush now. You know they suck out all the fever and badness. They’re good little worms with magic healing juice for you. You’re two funny little fish, you are – you don’t so much as blink at the sight of our biggest needles, but show you a leech and you’re all over the place. You’re squeamish, that’s all. I’ll put them on your backs today so you won’t have to see them.’

‘ Nyet …’ moans Masha and wriggles and wiggles. ‘ Nyet …’

‘ Da. Just lie still.’

‘Tell us the fairy story then,’ I say and pull at her sleeve. ‘About Lyuba. Loud as loud can be, so we can’t hear them eating our blood.’

‘Well, what nonsense, you can’t hear leeches… But very well. Once upon a time…’ I hear her pop open the jar and splash inside for a leech. I can smell them. They smell like the porter who took us away. Like dirty mops. I grit my teeth together and listen as hard as I can to get everything else out of my head. ‘…in a faraway land, there lived an old couple, who thought they could never have children. But one fine morning they found a baby girl who’d been left on their doorstep, and brought her up as their own.’ I go all tight and put my fist in my mouth, waiting for the leech, but she puts it on Masha first.

‘ Aiiii! ’ she squeals, but I know it’s not the hurt, it’s the thought of its slimmery slimy body. That’s the worst thing.

‘She grew up to be perfectly beautiful. Lips like rosebuds, eyes as blue as the summer sky and hair like spun gold. They adored her and gave her everything she wanted and called her Lyuba – which means Love.’

I think hard as anything of Perfect Lyuba as Aunty Nadya puts the leech on me and holds it ’til its teeth dig inside me. ‘By the time she was sixteen, her parents had been forced to sell their house and their land to buy dresses for her perfect figure and rings for her perfect fingers and fine food for her perfect little mouth. But she still wanted more.’

‘ Ai, ai, ai, ai! ’ cries Masha.

‘ Teekha , Masha! Listen! And then they said: “Lyuba, my love, we must find a husband for you who will love you as much as we do and give you everything you desire.” So word went out over the land that Lyuba was looking to be wed. Handsome princes came from far and wide, and to every one, she gave a task. The first had to bring her pink river-pearls, the second golden sea-pearls and the third a necklace of black diamonds.’

She only puts three each on us, so I’ve got two to go. If I was Lyuba, I’d want to stay with my mummy forever, not marry a prince and get pearls and things.

‘Then a young peasant boy came to her, and said he would give her the greatest gift of all, his True Love.’

Masha groans. She thinks love’s stupid. She likes the next bit best.

‘Lyuba laughed scornfully and struck him over the head with her gem-encrusted cane, intending to kill him, but instead she was at once turned into an ugly leech squirming in the mud. “There!” said the peasant boy. “You have what you deserve. You are a spoilt, blood-sucking leech. But now you have the power to do good, and heal the sick. When you have healed a hundred thousand humans, you will be returned to your original form.”’

‘What’s a hundred thousand?’ I ask through my pillow.

‘It’s more tens than you could ever count. So Lyuba sadly swam through many ponds and rivers and streams until one day she was picked up in the Moscow River and put into a big jar in a city pharmacy. The jar was sent to a big hospital where she was used for her magic juice to save a hundred thousand sick citizens. The hundred thousandth one was the peasant boy who was dying of pneumonia, and she saved his life too.’

‘Are these leeches saving our lives?’ I always ask this.