The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep

‘You two will kill yourselves if you carry on fighting like this,’ she says, leaning over us with her eyes all screwed up small and angry. ‘Do you understand? You’re black and blue from fighting all the time, but one day, one of you could die.’

She leans right into me then. ‘Do you want to die, Dasha?’

I shake my head. I really, really don’t want to die. I hate being hungry. And I hate the dark. So I decide then and there that I’ll do something which will make sure we never die.

I won’t ever, ever fight back again.

Looking out of the window to the real Outside

The next day Mummy comes back into the Box.

‘What you are, is bored,’ she says. She puts her notebook down on her chair. She’s with a nurse. ‘You need some fun.’

‘Oooh, can we have Jellyfish back?’ asks Masha, sitting up on one arm, with her mouth open. Jellyfish has gold and yellow and black and blue patches on his hard back, and lots of dangly legs, which rattle and shake when he’s wound up with the key. He makes a buzz, and trembles and we only had him for once. For one day. He’s loads and loads of fun.

‘No. You know you’re not allowed toys. That’s only for the filming. But I’ll tell you what: as a treat, I’ll let you look right down out of the window at Moscow. Now that you’re not in the Laboratory so much, you have nothing to do, day in, day out.’

And then she does this wonderful, wonderful thing.

She gets the nurse to push our cot right over to the side of the Box, which is by the wall. Right under the Window.

‘Now then. Hold on to the top bar of your cot and pull yourselves up.’ Our legs don’t stand by themselves, but our arms do, so we keep pulling and pushing until our chins and arms are on the bottom of the Window.

And then we look out and round and down and up, and we can see all of the Outside at once. I can’t think at all for looking and laughing.

‘Well?’ she asks. But we’re so bursting to happy bits with looking and laughing, we can’t talk. It’s full as full can be of new things, moving and happening.

‘Those grey blocks across there and all down the street are like our hospital block,’ says Mummy. ‘We’re six floors up here, which means six windows up from the street. The black holes are windows, like this one. The little black things moving down there on all the white snow are people. And the bigger black things, going faster, are cars carrying people inside them …’

I’m still so bursting inside with happy bits I can’t hardly hear her talking.

‘Those orange sparks come from the trams on the tramlines – they’re the black lines in the snow. The trams carry lots of people. And all the red banners up there on the buildings have slogans, which help people to work harder and be happier.’ I don’t know a lot of the words she’s saying, but I have no breath to ask.

One side of a block is all covered from top to bottom with the face of a giant man with kind eyes and a big moustache, which turns up at the ends, and makes him look like he’s smiling a big smile to go with his gold skin and gold sparkly buttons.

I point at him and look up at Mummy, but I still can’t talk.

She looks at the giant for a bit and then says, ‘That’s Stalin. Father Stalin. A great man. He’s dead now, but he will always live in our hearts. Just like Uncle Lenin.’

Questions we’re not allowed to ask about life on the Outside

‘Look! Look! That one’s fallen flat! Look! Haha!’

‘Where? Where?’

Masha’s pointing, and I’m looking and laughing too, but I can’t see it yet. There’s so much on the Outside, I need a hundred eyes or a hundred heads to even start seeing it all. ‘There! See the people trying to get him up. There!’ I follow her finger.

‘I can see! Haha! It’s the ice, Masha, they’re slipping on the ice because the snow’s melting, isn’t it, Mummy?’

I turn to her. She’s sitting behind us, writing in her notebook on her stool. She nods. We stay by the window all the time now, and it’s the best thing in the world. My head and eyes are all whizzing and whirring like Jellyfish legs, with all the things down there. Like fat green lorries full of soldiers who keep us all safe, but whose faces look like boiled eggs, looking out of the back, or children being pulled along by their mummies on trays, or packs of dogs, or lines of people waiting to get food from shops, or the clouds going on and on forever, getting smaller like beans, and the blocks going on and on forever, getting smaller too. And all watched by giant Father Stalin.

‘Why are some people allowed on the Outside and some aren’t?’ I ask after a long bit. ‘Like us?’

‘Because on the Out— I mean, out there, everyone is ordinary and you’re Special.’

‘When we get Single, will we be ordinary too?’ asks Masha.

‘What do you mean, “get single”?’ She stops writing and her eyes go small.

‘Aunty Shura said, when we grow up, we’ll get single and grow an extra leg each.’

‘Hmm. Aunty Shura should chatter less and work more,’ says Mummy, and makes a sniff as she rubs her nose. ‘Aunty Shura will get a talking to.’

‘Aunty Shura said all children are like us, but they’re not, see.’ She points at the street. ‘Not on the Outside, anyway, not even the baby ones.’

‘That’s quite enough of that. How many times have I told you not to listen to the nonsense your nannies talk, what with their prayers and their fantasies.’

We look back out again. I still don’t know why we’re Special. I hope it’s not nonsense that we’ll get single. I hope it’s true. I’ll go Outside then.

‘Can we see all the whole wide world from here?’ I ask.

‘No, Dasha,’ says Mummy. ‘I’ve told you before. This is only a small part of Moscow, which is the city where you live. I do wish you’d listen.’

‘Are there lots of cities? What happens when the city stops?’

‘Yes, there are lots of cities. And when it stops there’s grass and trees and a road, until you get to the next one.’

‘What’s grass and trees? Can you draw them for me?’ asks Masha. Mummy makes a whooshing with her mouth like when she’s tired or cross.

‘I really can’t draw everything, Masha. In fact, I can’t draw at all. I’m here to write. Why don’t you both try and stay quiet for five minutes?’

‘How long’s five minutes for?’ I ask.

‘Just please be quiet, and I’ll tell you when five minutes is up.’

I take a deep breath, to see if I can hold it for five minutes, and look straight at giant Father Stalin to help me. I hold my breath forever, but then it starts to snow and Masha laughs, so I do too, with a big sssshhhh as my breath blows out, and we pretend to reach our hands out and snap the fat flakes up as they bobble past our window. I’m getting lots of breaths in now, to make up for not having one for hours, and Masha looks round at Mummy.

‘Why can’t we go on the Outside too? Why are we in the Box all the time?’

‘Five minutes isn’t up,’ she says.

We wait again for more hours, and I hold my breath again, and count to five Jellyfish over and over, and then forget, because I keep seeing things, like how the snowflakes make the black clothes all white when they land on them.

I start breathing again, but I keep my mouth tight closed to stop all the questions spilling out. I don’t want Mummy to be cross with me, so I stuff them all in my head for later. Like, what sort of noise does snow make? How do the trams and cars move? Why can children smaller than us walk? I look up. And what does the sky smell like?

‘AAAKH!’ Masha screams all excited in my ear, so I scream too, and Mummy shouts crossly, and I start shouting, ‘What? What?’ until Masha points at a man who’s fallen under a tram. Everyone’s stopped in the snow to look and the tram’s stopped too, but then it goes on forward a bit, and the man is left squished in two pieces with all his red blood out on the snow.

‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’ shouts Masha, all excited as anything and laughing, and she jumps so much, we fall back into the cot.

‘And now you can stay there!’ says Mummy, and pulls the thick curtains closed, shutting the Outside all out.

‘Is he really dead, Mummy?’ I ask, panting.

‘No, no. He’s not. He’s just … ill.’ She peeks through the curtains.

‘Will the doctors mend him?’

‘Yes, Dasha. They’ll take him to hospital to be sewn together and made all better.’

‘But he’s in two bits. Can they sew two bits together?’

‘Yes.’ She doesn’t look up.

‘Will they take him to a hospital like ours?’

‘Well … a hospital for grown-ups, not children, but yes.’

‘Are we sewed together? Are we ill too? Is that why we’re in hospital?’ I ask.

‘Do stop asking questions, Dasha!’ Mummy stands up, picks up her pencil and notebook. She looks all tired and old. ‘You know it’s nyelzya. Not allowed.’

‘Nyelzya, nyelzya,’ mutters Masha. ‘Everything’s nyelzya.’

The door to our room opens then, and Mummy looks round to see who it is. She’s tall enough to see over the glass walls of our Box, but we can’t.

‘I don’t want to be ill!’ shouts Masha. ‘I’m not ill! I want to go on the Outside!’

‘Molchee!’ hisses Mummy.

‘I won’t be quiet! I yobinny won’t! I’ll run away I will, I want to be single like all the other people there on the Outside, I want—’ Mummy reaches down then, quick as quick, and slaps her hand over Masha’s mouth to stop all the shouting coming out, but it’s too late because the glass door opens and Doctor Alexeyeva walks in with the porter, the one who carries us in to the Laboratory.

We both get all crunched into the corner of the cot to hide when we see it’s Doctor Alexeyeva come in, and we start crying, because it means it’s time for our Procedures. Masha covers her face with her hands and I squeeze my fists tight and my eyes tight too, waiting, until I make everything go black and empty in my head.

February 1956

Leaving the Box

It’s sunny today and our cot is back in the middle of the Box, not over by the window any more.

Serves us right, said Mummy, for being so naughty. But it was Masha who was naughty … not me.

It’s worse, being back in the middle, than it was when we were always in the middle, because now I know the world’s happening through the window and I can’t get over there and see it happening. I can only do lots of imaginings about it in my head. But it’s not the same.

And I ache and ache, thinking that Mummy is cross with me, which is even worse than missing the world. I know it must have been Doctor Alexeyeva who got us back in the middle of the Box. I heard her shouting at Mummy, just before I switched myself off, saying me and Masha were being spoilt and treated like real children.

There’s a white patch of sunlight on the floor, which is moving. I can’t see it moving but when I close my eyes and count to five Jellyfish over and over again, for hours and hours, it’s hopped a tiny bit over when I open them again.

Masha’s asleep, but after a bit she wakes up and yawns.

She looks up at the ceiling and then at the window and then she asks me, ‘What did she mean when she said real children? Why aren’t we real?’

‘I don’t know, Mashinka. I asked Mummy, didn’t I? I asked why we’re not real, and she wouldn’t say.’

‘Why doesn’t anyone ever say anything? Why not?’ And then she starts hitting me and punching me and telling me to go away so she can be real like everyone else. But I don’t fight back any more. I just curl up small as a snowflake, until she gets too bored to keep hitting me. And then we both cry.

After a bit Masha goes back to sleep.

After a bit more, the door to our room opens.

‘Girls!’

It’s Mummy. Her voice is all high, instead of low like it normally is. ‘I have a wonderful surprise.’

Masha wakes up again, and does another big yawn as Mummy opens the glass door, klyak. She doesn’t have her notebook and pencil in her hands, she has clothes instead.

‘Nooka – I have these beautiful white blouses for you, see?’ She holds them up in front of us. ‘And a pair of trousers, specially tailored, just for you.’ She holds them up too.

Masha starts bobbing around all excited and smiley, and reaches out her hand to grab one.

‘That’s right, good, good, let’s get you all dressed up,’ says Mummy in the same high voice, like she’s not her, but someone else. I’m not as excited as Masha, because she really does sound like she’s someone else. ‘Look at the frills on the front, and the buttons. How many buttons, Dashinka?’ She holds out the blouse, so I take it.

It’s all soft, not like our nappy or our night sheet, which scrapes my skin.

‘Can I have a yellow blouse, not a white one?’ asks Masha, still bobbing around as she tries to get it on, but can’t, because she needs one arm to keep sitting up.

‘Of course not. Goodness, what a spoilt little princess you are.’ She turns away then, and has her back to us.

‘I’ll help then, Masha,’ I say. But I don’t know how to tie buttons up, so I pull through the bars to catch Mummy’s coat and get her to help. She turns round, but her nose is all red and her eyes are shining. It’s almost like she’s crying, like some of the nannies do when they see us for the first ever time. Sometimes they cry and cry and cross themselves and don’t stop forever. And Masha and me just watch them and don’t talk, but we sit there thinking it’s funny how some grown-ups cry even more than we do. Then she puts my blouse on too, and ties the buttons up. She tells us to lie flat and puts our legs in all the sleeves of the trousers, and ties them up at the front with two big buttons.

‘Well, well, yolki palki, you’ll look as pretty as two bridesmaids in this when you go to your new home. Yes, as pretty as two little—’

‘New home?’ I stare at her. ‘What new home?’

Masha stops playing with the frills and stares at her too. Then we both push ourselves away into the corner of our cot.

‘Don’t be silly. Nothing to be afraid of. Now then, are we all ready? The porter’s waiting to take you away.’

‘Porter?’

‘Away?’

‘Nyet!!’

‘We want to stay here!’

‘This is our home!’

‘You’re here.’

‘I’ll be good, Mummy!’

‘We won’t ask any more questions.’

‘Don’t let us go!’

‘When?’

‘Are you coming with us?’

‘MUMMEEEE!’

Masha and me are talking all over each other, but Mummy has her eyes closed and is shaking her head from side to side, and holding tight on to the top of our cot as if it’s going to roll away.

‘Stop this at once!’ She opens her eyes all of a snap, lets go of the cot and goes out of the Box to open the door to our room. ‘You may take them away now,’ she says. ‘They’re ready.’

A porter walks in, but not Doctor Alexeyeva’s one. He’s different. He smells different and has no mask but has a moustache like Father Stalin. But it’s not Father Stalin. This man doesn’t have kind, smiley eyes. He looks at us for a bit, then goes all yukky like he’s going to be sick. I feel like I’m going to be sick too.

‘Go away!’ shouts Masha as he bends to pick us up, and she starts hitting him with her fists.

‘Stop that at once, young lady, and do as you’re told!’ shouts Mummy. ‘Just do as you’re told! Do as you’re …’ she chokes, like she’s swallowed a fish bone, so Masha stops hitting him.

He smells like old mops as he lifts us out of the cot, but we have to hold him tight round the neck to stay on. We’re both scared as anything and crying.

Mummy kisses us both on the tops of our heads, like she does always, every night after she’s sung to us, and then she opens the door to the Box. Klyak. He pushes out through it sideways.

‘Nyyyyyyet!’ I’m holding his neck with one hand and leaning to Mummy with the other, I’m screaming for her to take me back. Masha’s doing the same.

The porter staggers a bit. ‘Hold still, you little fuckers, or I’ll drop you on your heads, and then you’ll be going nowhere!’

Then Mummy opens the door to our room as well, to let us out for the first time ever. She’s swallowing and coughing and her face is all blurry and wet. ‘I’ll visit you, girls. I’ll come and visit. I promise.’

‘Mummeeeee!’ I scream. ‘Mummeeee!’

She’s holding on to the door handle now, tight as tight, not saying anything. As he takes us away from her, I look at her over his shoulder, getting smaller as she stands in the door to our room, not moving to run and take us back. Until I can’t see her at all because of all the tears in my eyes.

Then I hear her voice. ‘You’ve got each other!’ she calls as we go through another door. ‘Always remember – you’ve got each other …’

SCIENTIFIC NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PROSTHETICS (SNIP), MOSCOW

1956–64

‘Stalin often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet Government.’

Nikita Khrushchev – General Secretary of the Communist Party 1955–64, in his Secret Speech denouncing Stalin; 25 February 1956

Age 6

February 1956

Being brought to our new hospital and told we can walk

I’m still holding on to the porter, taking us away from Mummy, and I can feel Masha’s fingers round the back of his neck, holding on too, but I can’t see her. He takes us down a long thin room that goes on and on, to some gates, which pull open with a crashing, banging, into a small box room with a woman sitting in it who says, ‘What floor?’ The gates crash again, and I’m just thinking we’re taken to be drowned because the scientists are all finished with us, like Nastya said, but then the little room shakes and my tummy whooshes up and out of my head.

We land with a crunch and come out of the room into a big space with green walls. The porter carrying us keeps banging through more and more doors until we’re on the real Outside. I look up and try to breathe, but my mouth gets filled with icy air that rushes down inside me like a freezy tube, and I feel like my cheeks are being slapped.

‘Quick, get this thing into the car,’ gruffs the porter, talking to a nurse. ‘Dressed in frills as it is.’

The door of a black car opens and he pushes us into it, pulling my fingers off his neck. The nurse gets in too, but we’re all tumbled as it’s not flat like a cot so our other leg is all in the way.

‘Gospodi! It’s like trying to get ten cats in a bag,’ hisses the nurse, and she pushes us on to our tummies so we have our faces in the seat. I think of kittens being drowned, and want to cry, but can’t find the air to breathe.

The car makes a roar and starts shaking. I turn my head a bit and can see a man dressed in black holding a round bar in the front seat. He has a little white tube in his mouth, which makes smoke and smells prickly and hard.

‘God, what a stink,’ he says and sucks so hard his cheeks pop in.

‘What do you expect?’ says the nurse. ‘They can’t hold it in. And they’re shit scared.’ She says nooka to us then, like the nice nannies do, and starts picking us up and plonking us the right way round.

‘You’ll suffocate, you two will,’ she says, ‘before we get you there – and then I’ll be for it.’

Get us where though? A bucket? A hole? I wish Masha would ask, but I can feel her tummy turning right over and bumping into mine turning over too. I’m yelling inside, yelling for help. I can hear me, loud as anything, but it’s not coming out. Help, Masha! Don’t let them drown us! But she won’t even look at me, she just takes my hand and holds it tight as tight can be, while all the buildings rush past through the windows, like they’re running away as fast as they can, turning the world in a spin.

‘Here it is, thank God. I need some fresh air,’ says the man, and stops and makes the window go down so that another man in a hat can stick his head in and look at us.

‘You got the urod?’

‘Yeah. I wouldn’t look at it, mate, it’ll give you nightmares for weeks,’ says the man in the front. I sit right up then and I can see eyes with no head, staring at me out of a shiny bit of glass in the front. I shut my eyes tight, because it’s a monster, and hold Masha’s hand even tighter.

‘OK, take it round the back. They don’t want anyone to see it.’

‘Not fucking surprised.’

The car goes off and we go through hundreds of blobs of snow. I can see a building with a long red strip on the top telling people what to do, but there’s no picture of our Father Stalin here.

We stop. The door opens, and a porter pulls us out into the cold and carries us up a curly, dark staircase, round and round, then through doors and into a big room with shiny green walls and long windows, as tall as the wall. There’s a cot with no bars, pushed against the wall and there’s no Box. It’s got a dry white sheet on it, not a sticky one, but he puts us down on it anyway and leaves, booming the door closed. My heart’s banging like it’s jumped into my head and so’s Masha’s. We try and breathe and listen. Really hard.

Boom. The door opens and two nannies come in with a trolley. No masks.

‘Well, well,’ says one, ‘you’ll need a bit of cleaning up.’

I see then that Masha’s been sick on her blouse, and it’s over her mouth, too, and hair. The nanny goes to wipe Masha’s face with a cloth but Masha hits her.

‘Fuck off!’ yells Masha. She’s scared we’re going to be drowned. The nannies gasp. ‘Fuck off, urodi!’ Masha yells again. She’s so scared, I can feel her trembling coming all through to me.

‘Yolki palki! These two are like rabid dogs! Nooka … we’re here to feed you and care for you. Look, look, see? Here’s some nice soup for you both.’ She takes two bowls with spoons off the trolley and gives it to us and I can smell it’s yummy cabbage soup, but I’m holding my breath because they don’t have masks and I’ll get their germs. Masha always, always, eats so she takes the bowl and pours the soup in her mouth. Then she takes mine and pours that in her mouth too. Then she sicks it all up over the bed. The two nannies don’t shout, they just make lots of tuts, and clean up, then go out.

We don’t say anything for a bit.

‘Where’s Mummy, Masha?’ I say after we’ve been sitting, looking at the door for hours and hours.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Is this our new home?’ I ask.

‘Don’t know.’

‘There’s no glass Box here. I want a glass Box to be in.’

We look over at another door, like the one in our own room, which goes into the Laboratory. It’s white too. I go cold and look at the window instead, and the snowflakes.

‘Big window,’ I say.

We both think that’s maybe good, but I want Mummy here anyway. I want her here so much that the wanting is bursting inside me, pushing everything else out and making me cry again.

BANG! The door opens and a woman comes in with a white coat and cap, like all the staff at the Pediatriya. She’s not wearing a mask though, and she has big red floppy lips like sponges. She walks up near to us. Not too close to hurt us, but I still hold my breath against the germs.

‘I’m Nadezhda Fyodorovna. You can call me Aunty Nadya, if you like.’ She crosses her arms and puts her head on one side. ‘Tak tak, you needn’t look so frightened. We’re going to look after you now. You’re here to learn to walk.’

I swallow lots of air in surprise. Walk! Like the children on the Outside? Will they wait ’til we get single first? Or maybe they’ll make us single? I want to ask her everything, but my voice is all buried inside still and won’t work. I nod.

BANG! The door opens again and another woman in a white coat and white cap comes in, and walks right up to us. She sticks her head in Masha’s face and then mine. I put my hands over my eyes because she’s got thick eyebrows like Nastya, and grey skin, and looks cross. I start hiccupping so I put one hand over my mouth and keep the other over my eyes.