Juliet Butler: The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

‘Who’s going to get us bananas in April?’

‘They must sell them somewhere. In one of those superskii supermarkets.’ She takes out a handkerchief and starts wiping the leaves, one by one, making them gleam in the spring sunlight.

‘Why’s it got to be outside? Can’t we have it inside? It looks pretty on our table with those little white flowers.’

‘She needs direct sunlight. Baba Iskra says that sunlight through a window hasn’t got all the healing properties. She’s not getting her vitamin D.’

I laugh. ‘Do you remember when you got us all to play truant in school because we weren’t getting our vitamin D? And everyone followed you out like a flock of sheep! Do you?’

‘Course I do. Valentina Alexandrovna sat right down there on that log, didn’t she, and we had our lesson in the sunshine.’

‘You were throwing pears at us. Or was it peaches?’

‘Pears. Juicy nyelzya pears.’

‘So, wait, you’re not leaving your Lyuba out all night, are you?’

‘Of course not.’ She digs her fingers into the earth of the pot and gently stirs it about. ‘She needs to be acclimatized, bit by bit. I’ll bring her in every night. Plants need nurturing, you have to really care for them. These things take time.’ She strokes the leaves again tenderly.

I’ve never been into plants. Or sewing machines… Masha’s funny. She lights up a cigarette and backs up against the wall so she’s as far from Lyuba as possible. ‘Cigarette smoke kills,’ she says softly and puffs carefully into the wind away from the little tree.

‘You’ve never cared about killing me with your cigarette smoke,’ I say.

She sniffs. ‘You don’t need nurturing.’

When we go back inside, Nina’s trundling in with our supper of fish soup.

‘Remember fish soup in the Ped?’ I say, once she’s gone. ‘They brought it in the same bucket as they do here. Except there they slammed the bucket on the floor with that great clanging sound, and here it’s on a trolley. And you always wanted the eyes. Remember?’

‘Don’t know why you’re getting all starry-eyed about that place,’ says Masha, wincing a bit as she takes her spoon. ‘Reminiscing like an old…’ She winces again and puts the spoon down.

‘Mash, you OK?’

‘My side hurts a bit,’ she says, squirming to get comfortable.

She never complains about pain, unless it’s really bad, so I rub her side for a while.

‘Is it your kidney stones again?’

‘No… Oof! I feel like something’s sitting on me,’ she groans. ‘I can’t breathe.’

I put my bowl down and stack some pillows behind her, but that doesn’t seem to help either.

‘Let’s watch the six o’clock news then,’ I say and pick up the remote control. She turns to the TV with a twisted, hurting expression on her face. I hate it when she’s in pain. ‘I’ll call the duty nurse, Mash,’ I say, leaning over her for the phone on her side of the bed. Yulia, the nurse picks up, says she’s busy and puts the phone down.

‘I’ll get you painkillers then,’ I say. But my mind’s racing. What’s wrong? Why has she got such a bad pain? Is it serious? ‘I’ll get them now, Masha, that’ll help. Then we’ll just go to sleep.’ As I get up to open the drawer, she groans, but stands while I reach for them and then obediently pops two of them into her mouth.

Two hours later the pain’s worse. It’s moved to her back. I’ve called Yulia about five times but she’s not picking up. Masha won’t let me get up for more painkillers because it hurts too much. I don’t feel her pain anywhere except in my helpless head. Like I felt her pain in the Ped. I want to help her. How can she be hurting this much? My Mashinka, who was once stabbed in the leg by one of the boys in SNIP and who drew the knife out slowly, as if she was taking a spoon out of a bowl of ice cream and said, ‘So who’s blood is going to mingle with mine now?’ You should have seen them run. They ran so fast, they slammed straight into the walls.

‘I think… I think you should call Aunty Nadya, Dashinka,’ she pants. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes. Of course,’ I say. I lean over her and pick up the phone again.

‘Aunty Nadya? Masha’s got a pain in her back, it started out in her side and now it’s in her back and she’s feeling nauseous.’

‘All right, Dasha,’ she says. ‘Stay calm. Good girl. Can she talk to me to tell me the symptoms?’

‘No, she can’t, not really, she’s in too much pain.’

‘That’s OK, that’s OK. So ask her if her arm hurts?’

‘Does your arm hurt, Mashinka?’

‘Yes,’ she groans in a whisper.

‘Right,’ says Aunty Nadya. ‘I think she might possibly be having a small heart attack. Don’t worry, it’s only the early signs. She’ll be fine. Call the duty nurse immediately.’

Heart attack? I stare at the phone and my own heart contracts.

‘I’ve been calling her,’ I say. ‘I’ve been calling her all the time, Aunty Nadya. She said she was busy, and now she’s not picking up the phone.’

‘Call again. Keep calling and tell her it’s urgent. I’ll call too.’

I put the phone back on its cradle until I hear the click and then pick it up and dial the medical room’s number, closing my eyes tight and willing Yulia to pick up.

‘Yes?’

Thank God!

‘Yulia! You need to call the ambulance right now. I think Masha might have had a heart attack. Aunty Nadya says so.’

‘Nonsense,’ says Yulia shortly. ‘Give her more painkillers and go back to sleep. I’m all over the place this evening. I’ll get round to you later.’

‘When?’

‘Later. In an hour or two.’

‘No! You’ve got to come now!’

The phone goes dead.

I wait for two hours, watching the minute hand click agonizingly slowly round the clock. Masha keeps moaning quietly. She’s lying here in a cold sweat. She’s vomited over the pillow and is still squirming in pain. When the two hours is up I call Yulia. No reply. I call Aunty Nadya again. She’s the only one who can help us. The only one.

‘Can you come, Aunty Nadya? Please? Yulia’s not answering, and I can’t get up and go to the medical room – Masha’s too ill.’

‘I can’t, Dashinka, I can’t. You know they wouldn’t let me into the Sixth at night, even if my hair was on fire. Keep trying to get through to them and tell them to call an ambulance immediately. Does Olessya not have a phone? No no, of course she doesn’t… I can’t call an ambulance from here, it won’t come to you without permission from the Sixth Administration. Don’t worry, Dasha. Don’t worry. Just keep her comfortable.’

I put the phone down and look at her, she’s still panting and sweating and then she vomits again. I use the sheets to wipe it up. I stroke her arm and soothe her. Why will no one come? Why? I keep fingering the cross around my neck. The only thing I can do now is pray – just pray until Aunty Nadya gets here in the morning.

The cross feels warm in my hand. We were given our two crosses by Father Alexander. He’s the Russian Orthodox priest who comes to the Sixth every week. Masha always used to despise God. ‘What sort of kind Creator would put something like us down on his earth to be mocked?’ But once Father Alexander approached us and started talking in his soft, reassuring voice, we were both drawn to him. And to God, I suppose… We were sitting outside with him in all his long black robes, only the other day, in the garden, on a bench in the warm spring sunshine. The snowdrops were just starting to push through the snow, nudging their pretty little heads out to show us there was life after six months of winter. One of the inmates, an old woman we didn’t know, had walked up to him and bowed low while he held out the back of his hand to be kissed. Then she’d looked at us with that typical head-cocked-on-one-side look we know so well, and said, ‘What’s it like to be Together?’