Juliet Butler: The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘No, you’re zhivoochi . They’re just helping you get better faster.’ We get called zhivoochi lots. Even back in the Box. It means you’re a survivor, which means you keep not being dead even when you should be. ‘So do you know what happened then?’ Aunty Nadya asks and looks at us. We do, but shake our heads. ‘She changed back into a beautiful girl. But now that she wasn’t spoilt, she had a beautiful soul too.’

‘So the peasant boy fell in love with her…’ I say, quick as quick.

‘And she fell in love with him…’ says Masha, quick as quick too.

‘And they lived happily ever after!’ we say together, and then we all laugh because we always finish the fairy tale like that. Together.

She takes the leeches off with a shlyop shlyop and plops them back in the jar. I don’t want to look, but I can see they’re all fat as her fingers now, and happy. I wonder if one of them is a mean prince who will turn back into him and marry me.

‘So, girls,’ she says, leaning over us and rubbing stinky spirits on the bites. ‘Tomorrow Uncle Vasya will come and visit, and he’ll have a present for you to keep.’

‘What? What? A jellyfish?!’ asks Masha, getting herself up on her elbow.

‘It’s a secret.’

‘One present each?’ I ask. Because I know, if it’s only one, Masha will keep it.

‘You’ll see,’ says Aunty Nadya.

We like Uncle Vasya more than anything. He was in SNIP too, after he got both his legs blown off in the Great Patriotic War, and she was his physiotherapist, just like she’s our physiotherapist. And because she loved him, and he loved her, she took him home when he was all better. And they married and live happily ever after.

‘Masha,’ I say, when Aunty Nadya has gone and it’s all quiet, ‘do you think she’ll take us home when we’re better too?’

‘No. She doesn’t love us.’

‘Yes, but what if she did love us?’

‘Mummy loved us and she didn’t take us back to her home.’

‘Mummy still might come and get us. She might be just waiting until we get better here.’

Masha looks up at the ceiling for a bit.

‘I don’t think I love Mummy any more.’

‘Why not?’ I ask.

‘Because she made us go away.’

‘But she made us go away to get better.’

‘We were better anyway,’ Masha says.

‘Well… she said she’d visit.’

‘And she hasn’t. So I don’t think Mummy loves us any more. Why should I love her, if she doesn’t love me?’ She sniffs so much then that her nose goes all sideways.

Well, I don’t care what Masha says, I still love Mummy. But I won’t tell her that. It’s my secret.

‘She’s called Marusya,’ I tell Masha.

‘I know, idiot. You’ve told me a thousand times.’

I’ve got a dolly. All of my own. Uncle Vasya gave her to us yesterday. She’s all soft and rubbery and when I hug her inside my pyjama top she’s just as warm as me, and I can feel her little heart, like I can feel Masha’s, but Marusya’s goes faster, plip, plop, plip because she’s so small.

‘Anyway, how do you know she’s called Marusya?’ asks Masha. ‘Uncle Vasya just called her Kooklinka – plain Dolly.’

‘She told me.’

Masha shrugs.

Uncle Vasya told me she got lost from her last little girl and has been very sad waiting for another one. That’s me. She fell out of a car, he said and almost got run over and was very frightened at being alone but she walked and walked and hid in a train until he found her all dirty and tired, hiding in a cardboard box in his street. So he told her he knew just the little girl for her. Marusya’s Defective like us, he says, but I can’t see why, except that she’s got only one ear, which is the one I whisper into, so not even Masha can hear what we say.

‘I can’t hear her talking. How can you hear her talking?’ says Masha after I’ve been whispering a bit to Marusya.

‘She only talks to me. Uncle Vasya said she didn’t talk to him hardly at all, except to say she was sad at being lost, and that she came from East Germany.’

‘Where’s East Germany?’

‘Outside Moscow. A long long way away.’

‘How did she get to Moscow?’

‘Wait. I’ll ask her.’

‘I don’t want her to talk to me anyway,’ says Masha, sniffing. ‘I wanted a tractor. Like in the picture book.’ I’m really glad about that. Masha took Marusya for herself to start with, but just bounced her off my head for a bit and then got bored. So I get to keep her to myself now. ‘I know!’ she says, all laughing suddenly. ‘Let’s do roll-overs!’

‘All right.’ I put Marusya under my pillow. I’ll ask her later.

‘I’m a hedgehog!’ shouts Masha and we roll over and over on our bed to one end, and then upside down on our heads, to the other end, laughing like mad as the room goes round and round. And Masha keeps trying to get us to fall off and I keep trying to get us to stay on.

‘I’m a hedgehog too!’ I shout.

‘You can’t be one too, I was one first!’

‘All right, I’ll be a… a… curly caterpillar!’

Boom! Aunty Nadya comes in with her white cap and popping eyes.

‘ Tak, tak, tak . What’s all this? I told you to do your leg exercises, not break your necks!’

‘We was, we was! Look!’ says Masha, and kicks her leg in the air, so I do too, laughing like anything. Aunty Nadya does her special frowning, which is a smile really, and slaps our legs.

‘Were, not was. We were. Right. Time for another massage to get those muscles working. Sit up straight.’

‘Can Marusya have her legs massaged too?’

‘Yes, Dasha, you can do her, and I’ll do you. Now then, we must work extra hard because I have some very exciting news.’ Her eyes pop at us like she’s trying to keep them in, but the exciting news is pushing them both out of her head.

‘What? What?!’ We shout together.

‘We are going to be visited in a month’s time by a Very Important Guest. He wants to see what progress you’ve made since you left his care in the Paediatric Institute, so you must make me proud of you. It’s the great Doctor Anokhin himself! Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin!’ Her eyes are all bright and sparkly.

We don’t know who he is and where his care was, but she’s so happy about him coming that we’re all happy too. I want to make her proud of us lots. Perhaps she’ll love us then. And take us home with her. That’s if Mummy doesn’t come for us first.

‘They’re here! The cavalcade has arrived. They’re here!’ Aunty Nadya is standing by the window. She’s been standing by the window for hours. ‘Now then, just do as you’re told and try your very hardest.’

‘How Very Important is he again?’ asks Masha, bouncing up and down.

‘Well, he’s the successor to the Great Doctor Pavlov…’

‘So more important than a Professor and a Hospital Director, like Boris Markovich…’ I say.

‘Or even a Tsar…’ laughs Masha, still bouncing.

‘Well, I don’t know about a Tsar, I’m sure,’ Aunty Nadya laughs back. ‘But he’s not quite as important as our First Secretary. Nearly, though! He’s very famous. And he’s bringing people to film you for a documentary for the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. That’s why we’ve got flowers and this nice rug in your room, and pink ribbons in your hair.’

I pat my own pink ribbon on top of my head, which must be the same as Masha’s, and feel it all puffy like a butterfly. They don’t shave our heads any more so we have two little plaits each. Aunty Nadya said Anna Petrovna (Mummy, that is) worked with Doctor Anokhin and that she might come to see us too. That’s what I’m more excited about than anything in the world: seeing Mummy again. Because I miss her all the time, every minute and second. And most of all at night. Even after all these months.