Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘But you’re so pretty, Maht , and you never get near me. Least you can do is let me love you a bit.’

‘If you were a man, I’d hit you! Stop pawing at me, Mashinka – listen, listen.’

‘ I’m listening,’ I say quickly. ‘Was there anyone there we knew?’ What I really want to know was did she find Slava’s family.

The storm clouds have burst and the rain’s thundering down on our balcony and against the windows like a wild animal trying to get in.

‘Wow, glad I made it before that broke,’ she says. ‘So, right. There were no teachers still there who knew you, but they told me where Vera Stepanovna, the headmistress, lived and I went to see her. She remembered you very well. She says hello. She lives in a log cabin on the outskirts of town and was sitting in a big armchair, looking small and frail. Also not what I imagined. She says she reads about you in the papers and that she saw Vzglyad and you hardly looked any older. But she looks as old as the world. She told me that Valentina Alexandrovna left the school soon after Slava died. She didn’t know where she is now.’

‘D-did you ask about S-Slava?’

‘Yes, yes, I did. She said they all liked Slava very much. She said he was extraordinary.’ She stops then and gets some papers out of her rucksack and starts shuffling through them. She looks a bit nervous. ‘So anyway, I’ve got her interview here, but it’s still in English so I’ll type it up in Russian and then you can read all of it, but I’ll just give you the gist.’ She’s talking quickly, hardly pausing for breath. ‘She told me where Anyootka was, so I chatted to her too, only on the phone though – she’s moved to Rostov.’

Anyootka. Pretty Anyootka. I can still feel the rip of jealousy. Was she there on his last birthday? Did he spend his last day on earth with Anyootka?

‘What’s she doing these days?’ asks Masha.

‘Well, she’s married to a Healthy and has two children. Here, here’s the interview, but it’s in English, so I’ll read this little bit to you.

It was like having two completely different people living in one body, but Masha was totally in charge. I know that was hard for Slava… He said half the time he just wanted to tear them both apart with his bare hands so he could get at Dasha.

Tear us apart? He didn’t tell me that. But how could he, with Masha there? He could only tell Anyootka.

He told me he wanted to give her a ring before she left the school. It was his babushka’s ring, but he didn’t get the chance.

Joolka looks at me then with her head on one side, but I don’t say anything. What’s there to say? Masha’s about to make a joke about putting a ring through my nose, but she doesn’t.

‘Anyootka said she was like a sister he never had. He said he could talk to her, like he couldn’t talk to his mother and his friends. He told her that he gave you a promise and that he’d keep it. He didn’t tell her what it was, though. Secrets are just for two people.’

Masha snorts. She still doesn’t know our secret. But he didn’t keep his promise, did he? And he didn’t give me the ring. I remember him waiting in the courtyard as we were leaving the school, telling me to be strong, holding something in his fist. The ring. I could have had his ring to keep with his letters. But no, I couldn’t, Masha would probably have thrown it away.

‘Anyway…’ says Joolka, looking back through her notes. ‘Anyootka was lucky to be able to live a normal life. I asked Vera Stepanovna if she and the other teachers were aware that their pupils were pretty much doomed to a living death in homes for the elderly when they left…’

I want to hear about Slava. I don’t want to think about Little Lyuda and Sunny Nina. Masha’s fiddling with her button.

‘…and she said she supposed they did, but they just didn’t talk about it. She never visited the Novocherkassk Home and advised Valentina Alexandrovna against it. She told me that after that visit, Valentina Alexandrovna lost all her passion to teach. Here…’ she starts reading from the interview with her. We wanted to protect them, to give them a childhood with hopes and dreams. But their fate didn’t depend on us. It depended on the grade of disability they received from the Medical Commission. So we hoped for the best. We did our best for them. We still do.

‘And S-Slava?’ I ask.

‘Well, yes, we talked about Slava too. I don’t know if you know, I think you don’t, that Slava was dying.’

Dying? What does she mean – dying? What of? We both stare at her, baffled.

‘He had a lot of… of difficult conditions. Vera Stepanovna listed them all; something like severe kyphosis and scoliosis of the spine, and polio as well, but basically, whatever he had was terminal. No one expected him to live as long as he did. It was like he was… holding on…’ She coughs and shuffles the papers again and doesn’t look at me. ‘Yes, he was in a lot of pain all the time. His parents had a good doctor for him, a family friend, but his body was sort of impacting in on itself. Crushing him really.’

The stupid rain keeps crashing in on the windows so loudly that I can hardly hear her. I clasp my hand on Masha’s knee to try and pull myself closer to Joolka.

‘Vera Stepanovna knew, but she never talked about it with his parents, or him. But she thinks they must have known too. I went to their village; it’s a bit run-down, but still very pretty with rows of painted log cabins, but they don’t live there any more. One old babushka remembered them, but she said they moved after Slava died. She didn’t know where. I looked in the yellow pages but there were no Dionegos. Anyway, Vera Stepanovna said his parents kept him in the school because he loved it so much.’ There’s a lightning flash and the rain pounds down even louder, I can’t hear her ‘…friends and… summer camp… and then after you left he didn’t really want to go to school any more… they thought it would be good for him though… medical care in Novocherkassk…’ The thunderclap comes, rolling right over us, and we all look across at the window and don’t say anything.

Then I ask: ‘Did he know? That he was dying?’

Joolka bites her bottom lip and looks back at the papers. But the answer’s not there.

‘Well, the thing is, Dashinka, I just don’t know. Kids weren’t told anything about their illnesses or prognosis. You should know that, if anyone should. Good God, even parents weren’t told. And the teachers only guessed because of their experience with disabled kids. But I think maybe… he did know… deep down, don’t you?’ I don’t say anything, neither does Masha, but we’re both thinking he must have known. ‘He would have been suffering a lot, I imagine,’ Joolka adds, and looks at me sadly. ‘And there would have been a lot of pressure on his heart and lungs.’

‘Tea?’ asks Masha.

‘OK,’ says Joolka.

We get up and put the kettle on and then strain the tea leaves through the silver spoon strainer, and I think, looking at it, that I can see every tiny hole in the strainer really, really sharply, just like I saw the ladybird on the leaf before I tried to hang myself.

‘Sugar?’ says Masha.

‘Sugar,’ agrees Joolka.

We sit back on the bed with our glasses of tea.

‘So, I’ll come back first thing tomorrow and give you copies of the interviews. We’ve got this deadline to write up your book, so we’d better get a move on.’

It’s four in the morning and my mind’s buzzing like a nest of wasps. I’ve taken his letters out from under the pillow and I’m holding them on my chest. If he did kill himself, was it because he didn’t want me to see him die slowly? Or perhaps the pain was just too much? Or he might have died of heart failure after the party? If he did commit suicide, wouldn’t he have written me a note… but he would have known that Masha would read it first. Masha… A suicide note could never have been for my eyes only…