Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

I grab the newspaper then and crumple it up into a tight ball, refusing to read any more. The soup trickles through my fingers as I squeeze it, staining my hand red. I feel a hard rock of resentment rising up inside me, of anger and strangely – of a new-found power. I keep the balled-up newspaper in my hand, lift my fist up into the air and look slowly across at Masha. Her head is down and she won’t look back at me.

‘She lied…’ she says weakly, in a small voice, still with her head down. ‘I thought she was a doctor…’

Everything that happens in life is a stepping stone to success. That’s what Olessya keeps telling us. After that article, everything changed. Everything. I was never, ever going to drink again. Just like when I was six and decided I was never, ever going to fight back. And I was going to take control of my Masha. That article is online now, word for word. If anyone wants to research Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, they get taken to that link. If they look for an image of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, they get taken to the photo on the front page. And whenever I want, desperately, to drink, I go to that link too: a link that will be there for ten years, twenty years, a hundred years.

It’s ironic really. Kisska Lazareva, star journalist for Moskovskii Novostii , did for us what no real narcologist had succeeded in doing. She stopped us drinking and she made me strong enough to stand up to Masha.

I wasn’t too angry with Kisska. She was only doing her job. You’ve got to admire her in a way for her persistence and for fooling Zlata. And it was all recorded, word for word, on her tape recorder. She didn’t make anything up. I’m at fault too. If I hadn’t been drunk, I wouldn’t have let Masha say all that. Slandering everyone we’ve ever known. Slandering me. But I mind that Masha lied to Lazareva about our mother abandoning us and going mad. I mind that she lied about the teachers. And I mind that she lied about Slava. His mother may still be alive. But then, in Masha’s mind, it wasn’t lying. It’s what Johann called her ‘biological neuro-disorder’. So I forgave her too in the end. But I never forgave myself. I never drank again. And I never let her force me to drink again. I finally found the strength I needed to break our addiction.

‘Fifty years old! Fifty! We’re in the Guinness Book of Records , look, look, here we are!’ Masha’s laughing and dancing about holding the glossy silver book that Joolka has given us for our birthday. ‘Have you got all the food? Did you make your English salads?’ Masha’s still jumping up and down like a seven-year-old and I laugh. We’ve only got Aunty Nadya, Olessya and Joolka coming to our celebration. But that’s enough. Those three are our trusted friends. Joolka got us medication, which really helps with the White Fever. She got us pills too, which make you so sick if you do go back to alcohol that you never want to do it again. It was hard. It is hard. But now we’re sober.

‘So what do you think of your new President?’ Joolka says, pulling a bottle of children’s non-alcoholic champagne from her bag. ‘That was a turn up for the books, wasn’t it?’

Masha grabs a shrimp and pops it into her mouth without peeling it. ‘Putin? He looks like Tintin,’ she says and spits the shell into her hand. ‘What we need is a Stalin, not a Tintin-Putin. He won’t last long.’ She grabs the Guinness Book of Records again. ‘Oldest living conjoined twins. Older than those Americans, Ronnie and Donnie, our betrothed. Haha! Aunty Nadya! Aunty Nadya!’ Masha jumps up as Aunty Nadya walks in with two heavy bags bulging with food.

‘Calm down, calm down, you’ll knock me over. Well, where’s the table? Let’s get these pies and salads all laid out. Get away from me, Masha. Get away this minute!’

The door pushes open and Olessya comes in, holding a bunch of big ox-eye daisies.

‘Where did you get those, Olessinka?’ asks Masha, laughing. ‘Been rummaging in the hedgerows?’

‘ Molchee! These cost me my pension, these did!’

‘Do stop bobbing about like a rubber ball, Masha, and put those flowers in a vase,’ says Aunty Nadya crossly. ‘Come along, davai, davai! ’

Masha obediently grabs the flowers and sticks one in her hair. Masha likes being told what to do. All the women she respected and liked were strong: Mummy, Lydia Mikhailovna, Aunty Nadya and even Baba Iskra, who brooks no argument at all. And she despised those who were weak, like Mother and me. So now I’m becoming strong too. It’s easier than I thought, because when I really stand up to her, her chortik flickers out. Just like the stammer monster.

Ten minutes later, the five of us are seated around the table with a feast of caviar, sliced sturgeon, and stolichni salad. Our Modern Talking tape is thumping out the beat of ‘You Can Win If You Want!’ on our cassette player and Joolka’s bought a cake with five blue candles on it. One for each decade.

‘Shall I light them twice, for each of you to blow out separately?’ she asks.

‘No,’ we say together. ‘We’ll blow them out at the same time.’

‘You’ll have to make a wish each, though,’ she says.

‘I know what I want,’ I say. ‘But it won’t come true if I say it aloud.’

I want to turn the tide. I don’t want to suffer from Masha’s whims any more. I want to be in control. I want us both to realize that she’s not always right. She’s tough, but I’m wise. We can work together to be happy together. Happier than we’ve ever been. I deserve a life too.

‘I’ve got a million wishes – I don’t know where to start,’ laughs Masha.

‘We haven’t got time for all of those! Give us one. A toast to your wish.’ Joolka raises her glass.

‘To the next fifty years!’ says Masha, raising hers. I roll my eyes and we all laugh again.

When we’ve finally finished and everyone’s leaving, Joolka turns at the door.

‘Ooh, I almost forgot, I’ve got something here. I keep meaning to give it to you, but I haven’t seen you in ages.’

It’s been two months since she last came because she’s getting ready to move back to England. The day she told us she was leaving Russia, she came with all three of the children. Anya went straight to our dressing table, took my lipstick out of the drawer and started painting her face. Sasha, who’s twelve now, asked if we had any cheese balls (which she loves as much as Masha does) and sat with a can of them in front of the computer playing games with Masha. Both of them were popping them into their mouths one by one and shrieking at the video. Two children. And Bobik, who’s six, crawled into my lap and said he didn’t want to go to England because they didn’t have the Noddy cartoons in Russian there. I don’t know who Noddy is, but it made me sad. Because I didn’t want him to go to England either. I didn’t want any of them to leave. It was like they were family and they were leaving me.

That’s OK, though. I’m used to loss. Life goes on.

‘It’s just that things are getting so dangerous here,’ Joolka had said, folding her legs up on the armchair and taking Bobik back. ‘I sent Sasha out a month ago, after she got back from school, for some sweets from the local bootka kiosk up the road, and while she was out this big black jeep pulled up into our courtyard and gunned down two of our neighbours who were walking across our courtyard. By the time Sasha came back with her gummy bears it had been cordoned off by the militia and she couldn’t get into the flat. She was just, you know, wandering up and down the street in the dark, not knowing what to do, until I went out and found her. And there are all these car bombings and the shootings in restaurants… it’s, it’s like you never know in Moscow, nowadays, when you’re going to get caught up in the crossfire. So with these three’ – she gestured round at the children – ‘we need to go.’