The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep

‘Take those ridiculous ribbons out of their hair, Nadya. We’re expecting scientists, not school boys!’

‘I thought … for the filming …’

‘Take them out.’ Masha grabs on to her bow and holds tight, but Aunty Nadya pulls them out anyway, tugging so hard it hurts. ‘Right!’ says Lydia Mikhailovna. ‘They’re here. Everything in the entire hospital is scrubbed and clean. The children are all quiet in their wards. Boris Markovich is outside meeting them. They’ll be here in a moment.’ She pulls down at her lab coat and goes all straight and starched. ‘You have the corsets and the pole ready, Nadya?’

‘Of course.’

Everything’s ready! Everyone’s been going crazy all morning, running outside our room, up and down, and bringing stuff in like posters of Young Pioneers blowing trumpets, and lots of flowers and more red rugs and other pretty things. But now it’s quiet as a stone everywhere.

We wait. Then we can hear voices and steps in the corridor. Lydia Mikhailovna’s still standing up all straight, like she’s blowing a trumpet too, and Aunty Nadya keeps tucking her hair back under her cap, and I can hardly breathe for waiting for them to get closer and closer and then Boom!

The door opens.

A man in a suit comes in and says: Nooka? It must be Him. He’s in front and he holds out his arms to us like he’s known us forever.

‘My little girls!’ He’s smaller than all the other people crowding into the room behind him and has a smiley, crinkly face that looks kind and not Very Important at all. He’s got no moustache or golden uniform or faraway eyes like Father Stalin. His eyes are like apple pips and his suit is all floppy. ‘My little girls!’ he says again. His girls? Why are we his girls?

‘Well now, Comrade Doctor, and here they are indeed.’ It’s Boris Markovich. I didn’t even see him. ‘Your little charges. I believe you’ll see an improvement. I shall leave you in the capable hands of Doctor Voroboiskaya.’ He waves at Lydia Mikhailovna, who’s standing by our bed, and then pushes out through everyone, and leaves.

‘Yes, yes. So here we are again, my little berries. How time flies,’ says the Great Doctor.

I don’t remember him a bit. Neither does Masha. I keep trying to look through all the people crowded in our room to find Mummy. ‘And here are your old friends Doctors Alexeyeva and Golubeva.’ He turns to two women behind him and my heart goes all shrunken like a nut because I do remember them. They’re two of the ones we always shut off for in the Laboratory. Doctor Alexeyeva nods at us and we back up on to the corner of the bed and squeeze into the wall. Lydia Mikhailovna tuts with her tongue crossly. Masha puts her fingers in her mouth and sucks so hard that Lydia Mikhailovna tuts again, even louder.

‘Now don’t you worry!’ says the Great Doctor, laughing as if we’ve done a joke. ‘Doctor Alexeyeva won’t be working on you today. Haha.’ Then he comes and sits on our bed where I’m nearest and brings two green, shiny things out of his pocket in crackly paper. ‘Here we are. Two sweeties. Chocolate sweeties. Had any chocolate before?’ We both shake our heads. ‘Haha! Thought not.’ He gives them to us and Masha unwraps hers and pops it in her mouth, then reaches round and takes mine to unwrap and pops it in her mouth too.

‘Haha!’ He laughs again, and everyone smiles a bit with him but I don’t think it’s funny. I wanted to taste chocolate too. ‘Nothing changes with these two, I see!’

I’m looking and looking at all the faces and men putting up big lights on poles with round, black cameras with glass in them, but I can’t see Mummy anywhere in the room at all.

‘And what have you lost, Dashinka?’ he says, looking behind him.

I want to ask if she’s come, and I try and say it, but it doesn’t come out of my mouth loud. It doesn’t really come out at all.

‘What’s that?’ He leans into me with his ear and I can smell something sweet, like he’s had lots of chocolates already.

‘Has Mummy come?’ I say again and this time he hears and looks round at the doctors with a frown.

‘Mummy?’ he asks.

‘Ah, yes, that must be the … late Anna Petrovna,’ says Doctor Alexeyeva in a quiet voice and shakes her head all sadly. I nod and nod like mad. That’s her! And if she’s just late we can wait a bit.

‘Hmm. Anna Petrovna, eh?’ He looks back at me. ‘No. She couldn’t come today, I’m afraid. Not today. But she’ll be sure to visit before long, eh? In a twinkle. We’ll see to that.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes, yes, Dasha. Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. Right, let’s see what you two little berries can do then, shall we? Cameras at the ready? Yes? Off you go!’

Aunty Nadya nods at us and we start undoing our pyjama tops, every button by ourselves, having a race, and all smiling because of Mummy coming tomorrow and because we want to show off too. When we’re all naked we lie back on the bed and Aunty Nadya slides the metal pole under us, flat on the bed, so we can hold on to it with our four hands, pulling higher and higher up the pole to squeeze us closer and closer. That’s because we have to be close as anything in order to walk. Like scissors cutting. Masha’s laughing, all excited at showing off, which makes me laugh too. I bet I get closest to the pole, because I always try the hardest to be good.

‘And now show your coordination, girls.’ It’s Lydia Mikhailovna. Coordination means lifting our two legs together for ten times and then lifting them one at a time for ten times. I could do hundreds of times, but we can’t count that far. We’ll be able to count when we walk though, because then we’ll go to the SNIP schoolroom and get taught writing and reading and counting, like real children. I bet Mummy will be surprised as surprised when she sees us really walking. I can’t wait to see her face.

Then Aunty Nadya dresses us in the two corsets and ties the laces tight as anything between the two of us until we’re nearly pulled right together. She stops when Masha squeals. It hurts.

‘Wonderful, wonderful.’ He claps his hands. ‘Now then, we’ve brought your old friend the electroencephalogram to see what’s happening in here.’ He taps our heads with his two fingers. Doctor Golubeva steps towards us with two metal helmets and all the wires like sizzling, biting snakes coming out of them, plugged into a trolley. We both can’t stop from shouting out then and reaching for Aunty Nadya to make her stop it, because of remembering them in the Laboratory. I don’t want to even think of them. Aunty Nadya looks all goggle-eyed at us but doesn’t move, and Lydia Mikhailovna stamps her foot and goes, ‘Tssss!’

Anokhin gets up then, and holds us down so she can put the helmets on. His eyes are still all kind and twinkly, but his fingers are digging into my shoulder.

‘Now, now, girls. There’s no need for this, is there? Done it all before many a time. Same old routine. Sit still. That’s good.’

Doctor Alexeyeva comes over too, to watch us while they stick the helmets on, and I remember her dead fish eyes and sharp smell and get some sick in my mouth, which I swallow, and I’m trembling with being scared as anything of her. More of her than Doctor Golubeva even, who’s pushing buttons now. The helmet starts buzzing like stinging wasps and squeezing my head like it’s going to be cracked open like an egg. I try to look at Aunty Nadya to get her to help us, but I can’t see because of my shaking eyes and we both can’t stop from yelling with the hurting. But Aunty Nadya doesn’t stop them.

When it’s over, I feel like my head is all buzzed to bits and has come off my neck, and I’m crying and so’s Masha, even though Lydia Mikhailovna is stamping at us not to, as she wants to be proud of us, and I want that too, but I just can’t stop crying and shaking. I hate myself.

Aunty Nadya has her hands all tied in knots in front of her, twisting them.

‘Pyotr Kuzmich,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry, but was that necessary?’ There’s a Big Sucked-in Silence in the room except for me and Masha sniffling.

‘Now don’t you worry about them, Nadya, it doesn’t really hurt … simply squeezes a little. All necessary in the name of Soviet Science, I’m sure you’ll agree?’

There’s another Big Silence as they wait for her to agree.

‘It’s just …’ she starts.

I look up at her because she’s still talking but she’s all blurred with my tears.

‘It’s just that we were told you simply observed the girls … in the Paediatric Institute.’

‘Yes, yes.’ He’s rubbing his hands like he’s washing them. Like they’re sticky. I’m glad I didn’t eat his nasty chocolate sweetie now. ‘Active Observation is what we choose to call it. Active Observation of the brainwaves in this case. Anything else?’ He looks round. ‘Thought not. Well, good work, comrades. In six months’ time they’ll be trotting around like ponies – an achievement to show the whole world.’ He gives a little salute. ‘Until the next time then.’

After they all go out Aunty Nadya stays to dress us in our nappies and pyjamas and says we did really well not to leak, which just shows we can, if we try.

She then holds my face in her two hands and kisses my nose and does the same to Masha before she leaves because her shift is ending. She closes the door behind her.

‘Didn’t like him,’ says Masha, after a bit.

‘Didn’t like him too. I’m glad Mummy sent us away from there with him, to here,’ I say. ‘She’s coming tomorrow, Mummy is. To see us.’

‘Mmm …’

‘Masha. Why’s he going to show us to the whole world?’ I ask after another bit. ‘What’s the whole world?’

‘Don’t know,’ she says. ‘No one tells me anything.’

She puts her head on her pillow, her end of the bed, and I put my head on my pillow, my end of the bed, and wish I had Marusya.

I’d hold her so tight I could hear her heart and I’d kiss her all over. Not just the tip of her nose.

3 November 1957

We walk to the schoolroom and learn about Laika the space dog

‘What’s the date today? Dasha?’ Galina Petrovna, our teacher, points her stick at me. I have my hand up.

‘It’s November the third, 1957!’

She asks us this every morning and I always know what the exact right date is. Masha doesn’t. She keeps forgetting. I know the months and the four seasons and what’s a vegetable and what’s a fruit. The only fruit I’ve seen in real life are apples and oranges. We’ve had an orange twice. But there are lots of other ones too.

‘Yes, yes, Dashinka,’ she says. ‘And what’s the day, Masha?’ Masha screws up her eyes and I put my hand up high as high again because I know it’s Tuesday. She keeps looking at Masha though, who just puts her pencil up her nose while she’s thinking and makes the others laugh.

We sit right at the front of the classroom, which is really the canteen and smells of cabbage and fish. I know almost more than any of the other children, because the most they ever stay in SNIP is three months, but we’ve been here for more than seven times three months now, so that’s seven times longer than anyone else.

‘Well, it was Monday yesterday, so today is …’

‘Tuesday!’ grins Masha.

‘Exactly. And I want you to remember this day forever and rejoice because this is the day of a Great Soviet Achievement.’ Masha yawns. There are lots of Great Soviet Achievements going on all the time. Like dams and bridges being built and quotas being fulfilled and Five-Year Plans being met. I think me and Masha were a sort of achievement too, when we first walked, but I don’t think anyone rejoiced except Aunty Nadya. She fell in a pile on the floor as if getting our legs to work had stopped hers from working. I keep thinking how much I wanted Mummy to see us walking. She’d be so amazed she’d fall off her chair! But she never did come the day after Anokhin visited. We waited all day with our hearts beating so fast I thought mine would burst in two. But she didn’t come at all.

I won’t think about that. We had to use crutches to start off with and then we learnt to walk by just putting our arms round each other and balancing like that. And then once we’d started we couldn’t stop, we could go everywhere all by ourselves. We went running in and out of all the wards and bumping down the stairs to see Lydia Mikhailovna in her office and into the schoolroom-canteen, and even down to the kitchens.

Galina Petrovna looks round now, with her eyebrows up to make sure we’re all listening. She looks like a bird with a beak for a nose and big ringed glasses and smooth black hair. She’s my favourite (apart from Aunty Nadya) of all the grown-ups we know – that’s the doctors and nurses and nannies and cleaners. She’s so happy at this Achievement, whatever it is, that she’s almost dancing in one place. I’d like to see the People rejoicing in the streets about it, but we’re still a Big Secret so we don’t go Outside. If I can never, ever, ever go Outside I want to do schoolwork hard, as well as I can all the time, so I can be a doctor, and work in here when I grow up. Masha wants to work in the kitchens so she can eat oranges all day.

‘Yes, Pasha?’ I look back at him with his silly hand high up. He’s ten and we’re seven so it’s not fair when he knows stuff and I don’t.

‘Our scientists have launched a dog into space, Galina Petrovna.’

‘Exactly! We are the only country in the world advanced enough to do this. And what country are we in, children?’

‘The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!’ we all chant – even Masha.

‘And where is that?’

‘In the Best of All Possible Worlds!’

‘Tak tochno! Any questions? Hands up.’

‘How do you launch a dog into space, Galina Petrovna?’ asks Masha. ‘With a catapult? Does she float? Will she drop back?’

‘I said hands up, Masha … How many times …’

She holds up the front page of Pravda to show us a photo of a dog inside a metal kennel with cushions. ‘She’s called Laika and she was sent up in this capsule in a big space rocket. Soon we will send a man into space. The first man in the history of mankind. Then we will put the first man on the moon and perhaps soon, in our lifetime, everyone on earth will be living on a Soviet moon.’

She looks round at us, smiling as proud as can be of this first Space Achievement. I’m proud as can be too, but I don’t want to be fired up in a rocket and go whizzing through blackness from star to star forever, or even live on a Soviet moon. I’d always be afraid of falling off it into space. Masha would though.

Then I think of another question and put my hand up, quick as quick, before Pasha can. ‘Where did Laika come from?’

‘Ah. She was a stray on the streets of Moscow. Scientists take strays for their experiments because they’re zhivoochi, they’re survivors, and don’t belong to anyone.’

‘Like the dogs kept in cages on the top floor?’ asks Masha.

Galina Petrovna nods. We’ve never seen the dogs up there, but we can hear them sometimes at night, howling. They’re used by the scientists in SNIP. Aunty Nadya told us that Doctor Anokhin started out working with Doctor Pavlov, who’s famous all over the world for working with dogs in laboratories. She says Pavlov built the best laboratory ever, called the Tower of Silence where they experiment on them. I wouldn’t like to be one of his dogs in a Tower of Silence. It sounds scary. There’s rabbits up on the top floor of SNIP too but we never hear them. I wonder what noise rabbits make?

‘Why will a man be next? Can I go up next instead, Galina Petrovna?’ asks Masha, and the kids giggle all over again, and I do too.

‘Well, I’m not sure Dasha would like that …’ She’s smiling too.

‘She can stay here and watch me go zoooom!’ She shoots her hand in the air. ‘I want to go into space. I’m zhivoochi too.’

‘Will the dog Laika come back down again?’ I ask, with my hand up.

‘No, I’m afraid not. The technology to de-orbit hasn’t been developed yet so she’ll just be flying around looking at the stars out of the window for a few days.’

‘Will she die?’ That’s Pasha again.

‘Yes, yes. She’ll be painlessly put to sleep, ah … killed, that is … after one week of umm … flying …’ she coughs, ‘round and round in space.’ There are no hands up now because it’s a bit sad to think of her being killed up there, all on her own. ‘But she doesn’t know that now, does she? So she’ll be looking out at earth all beautiful and blue, and thinking what a lucky Laika she is.’ Galina Petrovna smiles a big smile at us and we all smile a big smile back.

Age 11

March 1961

We have our weekly bath and meet Lucia

The best day ever in the week is Saturday. It’s bath day in the bannya down in the basement of SNIP. We get a whole tub for just us and one other kid. We’re at the front of the line. We’re always at the front. We’ve been here a million times longer than anyone else, so Masha’s the boss of everyone, even if they’re older than eleven, which is what we are.

‘Yolki palki! Stop shivering,’ says Masha. ‘You make me shiver too.’

‘It’s cold …’

I hug myself to see if I can stop, but it doesn’t help. I keep hugging myself anyway.

Tomorrow’s Sunday, which is Visiting Day, so we all need to be soapy clean for parents. We don’t have any parents, of course, but Aunty Nadya says we need to be soapy clean all the same, in case the other kids’ parents see us. But they wouldn’t ever do that, because we have to stay stuck away in our room all day on Visiting Day so we don’t traumatize the Healthies.

The door to the bannya’s open and we can see the rows and rows of free-standing tubs, all being filled up with steaming hot water from jugs. I’m so excited I almost forget to shiver.

‘Hey, I’m first in, see?’ It’s a girl, loads taller than us. Her head is shaved so she’s from a State Children’s Home, not a family home, and she thinks she can get right to the front where Masha is, because she’s new and doesn’t know Masha.

‘Get lost,’ says Masha.

‘Get lost yourself, midget.’

‘This is my place. Get to the back of the line, shit-face. Don’t want you making my bath stinky.’

‘Who are you calling shit-face?’

I shrink back, away from them. No one messes with my Masha. Last week we were walking down the stairs from Ward C and there was this gang of boys at the bottom, waiting to beat us up, and Masha got her skewer out, the one she’d stolen from the kitchens when I was talking to the cooks on purpose so they wouldn’t notice. She keeps it stuck down our nappy. It’s almost longer than anyone’s chest and she pushed the point into the skin of the neck of the first boy and said ‘Just try it, fucker’ and then walked on right through all of them without looking back or anything. I swear I’d die without Masha.

But she’s got no skewer now. We’re all naked so it’s only her.

‘How long you been here?’ she says to the girl.

‘Week.’

‘Well, I’ve been here five years and this is my hospital and my spot and everyone knows it, don’t they? So get the fuck to the back of the line.’

‘Yeah, you, get lost.’ All three of us turn. It’s Pasha who’s in line behind us. He keeps coming back to have more prosthetic legs that fit as he grows. I haven’t seen him for ages and ages though. He’s got a deep voice now but it’s still him. I can tell easily. I didn’t even know he was back.

‘She’ll come and skewer you to your bed if you don’t,’ he says and laughs. It comes out all deep again but it’s still his Pasha laugh. The girl looks back at Masha and shrugs, but stays where she is.

I didn’t know Pasha was right behind us. Right there, behind us, only half a metre away, but I didn’t know. I hug myself again and wish we’d get called in right now. There are loads and loads of us here, all standing naked, waiting forever, and Pasha is older than us. I wish he wasn’t right there behind us.

‘Yeah? Try it and you’ll get stuck first,’ says the new girl.

‘That’s a laugh. Whatcha gonna stick me with? Babushka’s knitting needle?’

‘OK, children. Come along, come along!’ It’s Aunty Mila the bath attendant calling us in.

‘Oooraaa!’ Masha and me go running in, slipping and sliding on the wet tiles and jump with a swish and a plop into the very first tub. The girl runs in with us and jumps into ours too, squealing like anything.

‘Splash!’ laughs Masha and kicks her foot to splash the girl. ‘What’s your name? Besides Shit-Face?’

‘Lucia,’ she goes. ‘What’s yours? Besides Midget?’

‘Mashdash. I’m Masha and she’s Dasha, but we just get called Mashdash.’

‘All right then, Mashdash. I can hold my breath underwater longer than you. Ready?’ She holds her nose and so does Masha, but I don’t. I like floating, not getting all wet in my mouth and eyes and stuff. It makes me scared that I’ll never come up and get air again. Lucia goes down and blows loads of bubbles but Masha doesn’t, she just waits ’til Lucia starts coming up, then she ducks her head in and comes right back up again.

‘I won!’ she shouts. I laugh because Lucia doesn’t know she cheated. Masha’s funny.

Aunty Mila comes to scrub us with a brush and soap and Masha goes miaow like a cat and tells her not to bother with me, as she wants double time. But Aunty Mila does me too and then she does Lucia and pulls Masha’s ear before she goes to the next bath to scrub them. I’m floating in the water like a fish in the sea or green seaweed, and I’m melting away until I’m nothing at all except water too. It’s like being all single in the water, like it’s just me floating away. I’ll be sucked down the plughole and swooshed right out to sea and then get washed up on a warm shore. And there’ll only be Pasha there but that won’t matter because there’ll be coconuts to live off and we’ll learn to climb the coconut trees and swim …

Ding Ding! The bell goes to say our ten minutes is up, clanging like the fire alarm, and we have to get out, quick as anything, and run for our sheets to get dried with, while the next three jump into the bath.

‘What ward you in, Mashdash?’ asks Lucia.

‘None of them. We got an Isolated room,’ says Masha, because Lucia wasn’t talking to me.

‘Fuck you. Why? You infectious?’

‘Nah. We’re special. Not like you.’

‘Fuck you. I’m in Ward D. You a State kid or Family kid?’

‘State.’

‘Good. Family kids suck.’

‘Yeah. They suck. Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, I want marmalade and oranges …’

‘Yeah, makes you sick. I’ll come see you tomorrow then.’ She’s dried herself in two seconds flat. Quicker even than us.

‘OK. Ask for Mashdash.’

‘See ya then.’

‘See ya.’ She hops really fast, back to the changing room, and then I see she’s got only one and a half legs.

We make four wishes because we’re bored

‘She was all right,’ Masha says, stuffing a chunk of black bread into her mouth all at once when we’re back in our room. She stole it off the plate of a little kid in the canteen and hid it down our nappy for later. We get all our bread and food weighed out on scales by the gramme. I lie back on my pillow with my leg hanging over the bed and think a bit about what we’re going to do all day, now we don’t go to school any more. It only goes up to primary school in SNIP, so now we’re eleven, it’s stopped. Aunty Nadya has other kids to work on because we can walk, and run, and climb, and if we haven’t leaked in our nappy for more than an hour, we’re allowed to ride our red tricycle round the Physio hall as a treat. It’s Masha that leaks anyway, not me. She can’t be bothered to try not to. But I do. I squeeze down there like mad. Uncle Vasya bought us the red tricycle. Apart from Marusya, it’s the best present in the world.

I try not to look at the chunk of spongy black bread because I’m starving. I know we get Fully Provided For, and I’m grateful, but I still always seem to be starving. There’s only a bit left now and Masha’s chewing away at it, looking out of the window. She never shares.

I make a steeple with my fingers and press it against my nose. I miss not learning. It’s like I’ve only just started knowing things. It’s like opening a bag of all different sweets and trying a few, then having it taken away. It’s like when we were taken away from the Window.