Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

Psychopaths are unfamiliar with and unempathetic towards the emotions associated with depression. Hence we have a situation where two sisters have inherited the personalities of two warring parents – the father being psychopathic and the mother clinically depressed – yet these two are condemned to share the same body. A psychological tragedy.

A tragedy? Why has Joolka given me this? If Masha is a psychopath, if she really is, it’s untreatable. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel? I want to give it back to her. To cry, but I don’t. I keep reading.

People who are trusting, empathetic, sensitive and forgiving tend to fare worse in these connections and are often profoundly traumatized by the experience. It is very important that those in a relationship with a psychopath know what they are dealing with. Psychopaths are unable to experience love, which they consider to be a weakness that creates vulnerability.

I need help – not to feel helpless. How will it make me feel better, knowing that she’s, she’s, what? A monster? She’s not. She’s strong, she loves me. Has she ever told me she loves me though? No. Never. She… she doesn’t need to. Do I love her? Of course I do, despite everything, I do.

It is advisable for the victim to leave the psychopath. However, in the case of conjoined twins this is impossible. One of the best approaches for compromise and restoring a balance in the relationship is limited re-parenting, where the therapist – in this case Dasha – takes on the role of a mother figure.

Compromise. Re-parenting. One of the best approaches is to take on the role of a mother figure. The one we never had. Is that possible? Is it? Can I? Do I want to? Aren’t we happy as we are? Am I happy never being able to make a decision? Being controlled like a puppet on a string?

I fold up the sheet of paper and put it on the bed beside me with my head in a whirl. The interviews, the ones Masha has, were underneath it. Joolka gets up quickly, takes the assessment and pops it in her rucksack.

Then she puts her hand on my shoulder and gives me a little nod.

I can do this, I can do this. One foot in front of the other, mine then Masha’s, as we walk over the long, wide pedestrianized bridge to the Kremlin. Olessya’s on one side in her wheelchair and Aunty Nadya’s on the other, holding our tickets. Mind over matter. Face your fears. I have my eyes on the ground. It’s not far now. When Masha heard that Modern Talking were giving a concert in Moscow, she was mad keen to go. I sometimes think the only thing Masha and I have in common is loving Modern Talking. Their music makes us both feel happy at the same time. We sing along to all the English lyrics even though we only know what the words mean because Joolka translated them for us, otherwise it’s all just abracadabra. I didn’t want to go at first, because who wants to take the world’s freakiest body out into the public eye?

I think I could have stopped Masha if I’d really wanted to. It’s working, this mothering thing. It’s slow, like a constant drip, hollowing out a stone, but it’s working. It would be easier if we didn’t drink. Every time we do, I’m not me any more, I lose myself and when I wake up all battered by her, it seems we’re right back to where we started.

But in the end, I decided to do it. I decided to come out to this concert.

‘Do buck up, girls,’ says Aunty Nadya as we pass under the red Kremlin walls. ‘Stop dawdling.’

I’m not dawdling though, I’m going as fast as we can. Aunty Nadya got a taxi to bring us here but the driver can’t take us over the bridge. We have to walk all the way. Step by awful step. I keep my eyes down. We haven’t been out in public for a long time, so this is a trial. If we had a wheelchair and a rug like Olessya, no one would notice us, but we can’t fit into one. The Kremlin bells ring out as if to herald our coming. It doesn’t take long for people to realize what’s happening and the whispers rise to a babble as they come closer, circling round us. I don’t look up, so all I can see are their feet. I feel the familiar nausea rising in my stomach and the trickles of sweat running down my back. How would they like it? How would they like to be us? Won’t they ever understand and just leave us alone?

‘That’s right, take pictures, you morons!’ Masha’s shaking her fist at them. ‘Show the grandchildren you saw the great Masha and Dasha!’ She can’t help shouting at them, Masha can’t. Well, good for her. I can hear the clicking of their cameras and even though it’s still sunny, flash bulbs keep going off in my face.

‘Do calm down, Masha!’ hisses Aunty Nadya. ‘Remember your dignity.’

‘Where’s their dignity?’ growls Masha. ‘If someone comes up and spits in your eye, you spit right back.’

Aunty Nadya tuts but she starts waving away the bystanders saying, ‘Comrades, leave them in peace. Where is your compassion?’

I’m worried that when we get in the concert hall everyone’s going to forget Modern Talking and focus on us, but when we finally make it across the terrifyingly open Kremlin Square, and go through the doors, it’s almost empty. We got here early on purpose. We run down the aisle, whooping, and get settled in our soft blue seats, right at the very front, with Aunty Nadya on one side and Olessya in the aisle. I’m getting excited now, and Masha’s forgotten the crowds outside and is fiddling with her button and singing yo ma khat, yo ma sol and clapping. We all laugh. It’s a huge conference hall where all the Party congresses were held. We’re all half in love with Thomas and Dieter; even Aunty Nadya is, I think, though she’d never say so. Modern Stuff and Nonsense, more like, she said.

Masha’s jiggling her foot up and down. ‘Let’s go backstage, come on, let’s nip up those steps and say hi to the boys!’

‘You’ll sit right there in your seat and calm down, my beauty,’ says Aunty Nadya sternly as Masha makes to get up, and she puts her hand firmly on her knee. We didn’t even drink before we came out because we thought they might not let us in if we did.

I look around. People are starting to trickle into the hall. It’s nearly all women. I can’t believe we’re actually here, I can’t believe Modern Talking has finally come to Moscow! Slava would have loved this, he’d have loved their music. I wonder if he ever got to hear the Beatles before he died?

There’s one more reason that I decided to steel myself and come to the concert. Sanya. Hearing the news about Sanya made me realize that we should take our pleasures where we find them. Baba Iskra came into our room about two months ago to tell us what happened. She knocked. She doesn’t normally knock. Masha had been playing a game on the computer and I was reading one of my Mills and Boon books: The Surgeon She’s Been Waiting For – funny how you remember little things when something terrible happens. We could tell straight away something was very wrong.

‘Bad news I’m afraid, girls.’ She sat down with a thump in the armchair by the bed. ‘Very bad news.’ Masha turned off the computer and I put my book down. We waited. She sighed heavily. ‘It’s about Sanya. I’m afraid she’s dead.’

‘Dead?!’ We both stared at her. Not Sanya, not dead. No, no! ‘She’s our age, she can’t be dead,’ exclaimed Masha. Baba Iskra shook her head.

‘It was that bastard of a husband of hers that did it. He came in, drunk as usual, apparently, and didn’t like the fact she hadn’t cooked him supper. So what did he do?’ We both keep gawping at her. What? ‘He picked up the empty frying pan and took an almighty swing at her. She went down like a felled tree, she did. But he didn’t stop there, he kept on battering her with everything that came to hand, just to make sure. The iron, a chair, even the butter dish. Seems he always used to beat her – but we knew that, didn’t we? She’d come in bruised as a fallen apple most days towards the end, but he always stopped himself before he did her to death. Something must have just clicked in his head.’