Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘H-How – h-how do you know?’ I asked, still not able to believe that she’s gone. ‘About the butter dish and everything?’

‘Their daughter was there in the flat, hiding behind the door, watching her mother being smashed to a pulp on the kitchen floor.’

‘ Yobinny moodak! ’ Masha thumped the bed with her fist. ‘Vicious fucking bully! How could she put up with that? What sort of a person puts up with that?’

Baba Iskra shrugged. ‘A Russian woman.’

I felt an icy-cold chill run through me as if someone had walked over my grave. Sanya, our Sanya, dead? We see the inmates dying all the time. And poor Zabka was murdered – it was Sanya who told us that news…

‘Oh fuck,’ said Masha, maybe thinking the same thing. ‘No more gossip from Sanochka. You’ll have to fill us in now, Baba Iskra.’

‘Masha,’ she said, frowning. ‘Show some common decency.’

Masha just shrugged. ‘If I cried for everyone who died I’d be a puddle on the floor.’

Baba Iskra shook her head and wiped some of her own tears away with her hand. Then she got up to go because Masha had turned the computer back on. After she’d left, I got to thinking that Masha could take anything to hand when she beats me and we’re blind drunk. She could take the heavy telephone, the thermos, even a knife, but she never does. She only ever uses her fists and nails. She can’t kill me with those. And then I realized that, however drunk she is, however angry, however vicious, she never wants to kill me. Because then she’d be killing herself.

There’s a low excited buzz behind me as the concert hall fills up. Olessya puts her hand on my arm. ‘All OK, Dashinka?’

I nod. Olessya seems to see right into my mind, just like Slava did. More than Masha ever could. She’s been trying to help me in all sorts of ways. She came into our room and showed me a site about stuttering to see if I could learn to get better. It was all about taking control. The site was for children, because most of these sites are, it seems, and talked about the ‘stammer monster’ which is crafty and wants you to fight him because he knows he’ll win – he thrives on taking away your power and humiliating you. But like all bullies he has a weakness – he’s secretly terrified that one day you will find out that he needs to be fed fear in order to exist. And that fear is only in your head.

I’d sat there, looking at the screen with her while Masha flicked through a magazine on black and white magic, running her finger down all the adverts from witches and wizards hawking their various spells. Fear. Fear is only in your head. Only? The head is an important place. But thinking about the stammer monster as being secretly terrified of me helped. I concentrate on that thought, over and over again. And it’s working.

‘Oh my God, are you crazy, Dieter is to die for, just to die for. How can you like Thomas? I’m going to orgasm as soon as Dieter comes on stage! Literally, I’m going to come as he comes on!’ Two girls have sat down behind us and are giggling and squealing together as they settle down. Olessya grins at me and Masha’s clapping again and singing, ‘The Night Is Yours – The Night Is Mine’. The hall’s filling up with people who love them like we do. I suddenly feel a part of them, like a bee in a hive, part of a happy, humming community. It makes me feel invisible, like everyone else here in the hall, looking up to the stage, waiting for the curtains to open. I have a sudden blinding flash of recollection of me and Masha up on the stage in SNIP at Anokhin’s conferences. That’s all in the past though. I won’t think of that.

The hall darkens and everyone screams. Masha screams and I laugh and scream too. The music starts thumping so loud and so deep that I feel it deep down inside of me, like a heartbeat. And then we hear the opening bars of ‘You’re My heart, You’re My Soul’ and everyone screams even louder and stands up together in a sort of fanatical ecstasy. I’m so happy! I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my whole life! Everyone’s waving their arms and cheering in a frenzy of excitement and love, waiting for them, and then, there they are! Right in front of us! Walking on stage with the cone spotlights following them and they take the microphones, smiling and clapping and then like some miracle from Heaven they start singing the song we know so well, the song the whole of Russia knows better than our own national anthem and I feel like I’m bursting with joy. You’re my heart you’re my soul… deep in my heart there’s a fire… I’m dying in emotion, it’s my world in fantasy, I’m living in my, living in my dreams … Girls are rushing past me to get to the stage and give them bouquets of flowers and they’re saying spasibo in Russian, which makes everyone scream even more, and then they start singing ‘You Can Win If You Want’, and Masha grabs my hand with hers and lifts them up high, waving them from side to side. We’re here, we did it, we’re happy! I sing along at the top of my voice, like everyone else in the whole hall is singing along: I’ll be holding you forever, stay with me together.

We decided in the end not to publish the book in Russia. We haven’t been giving interviews to the press, but that doesn’t stop them printing mean and hurtful articles in our new tabloid press, based on gossip and lies. Times have changed so much in the ten years since we appeared on Vzglyad . That kind presenter, Vlad Listyev, was shot dead in his stairwell four years ago. Who knows why people are being assassinated everywhere nowadays? Usually because of money, I suppose. Masha wanted to go to his funeral but we didn’t in the end, of course. I didn’t want to be among people any more. There’s no one as loyal and loving and kind as a Russian who knows you like Aunty Nadya, Baba Iskra, Slava, Olessya, Little Lyuda and Sunny Nina… But if you’re Together you can’t be loved for you alone, you’re a Mashdash–Mishmash.

And if they don’t know you, they may pity you, but not for long. The mood has changed here and the sheep have turned into wolves. Everyone out for their own. So much for Communism.

Money. We’ve got more money than we can count. That’s what Masha wrote the book for. But all I wanted from our story is to show Healthy readers that Defectives are people too. Because what I’ve learnt is that if you don’t know one, you can’t really understand one, so I want readers to know us.

We can give bribes to members of staff to get us vodka now. Bribes big enough to make the risk worth their while. It’s not good, not good at all. We’ve been drinking almost every day. A litre. Sometimes two, if I can get it down quick enough not to pass out. But I know now that the only way to take back control from Masha is to take control of the drinking.

It was after the Modern Talking concert that we decided to stop. We’d woken up the next morning needing a bottle and I’d said, ‘Listen, Masha. We’re not going down to find someone to get us vodka. We can be happy without it. We can do so many things if we’re not shaking from a hangover or the White Fever. We have our life ahead of us.’

To my surprise she nodded and said, ‘Let’s try.’

Everyone wanted to help us. Aunty Nadya, Olessya, Joolka. But it’s like being madly in love – all you can think about every minute of the day is the bottle. It makes your heart race, it beckons you. You need it so badly it sometimes feels like life’s not worthwhile without it. We never knew it would be this hard.