The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep

We go on the Outside for the first time ever

‘Mwaah! It’s hitting me! It’s hitting me!’

We’ve walked down the steps into the Outside and the wind is all slapping us, trying to knock us over, and Masha’s shouting like anything and waving her arm around because we can’t balance. My head’s spinning like it does when we do loads of somersaults. The grass is mushy, not hard like the floor, and there are no walls anywhere to keep us upright. Plookh! We sit down with a bang that makes me hiccup.

‘Get up this instant!’ shouts Lydia Mikhailovna, turning around. She was walking off down the path, thinking we were behind her. ‘I’ve taken you outside to exercise, and exercise you shall!’

‘Caaaaan’t,’ goes Masha in a high voice, the one she has when she’s really scared. ‘It’s all moving!’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Nothing’s moving.’

But she’s wrong. It is. All the trees are waving and the grass and the bushes and leaves are jumping about like crazy so we can’t stand up in case the ground comes up right in our faces too. We hardly know which way is up with the clouds all moving too.

‘It’s too big, there’s too much space, there’s nothing keeping us in! Caaaaan’t!’ goes Masha again. I can’t even breathe because the air’s colder than me, not the same as me like it is inside, and it keeps trying to whoosh in my mouth when I don’t want it to. Lydia Mikhailovna stands over us for ages, trying to get us up, and stamping her foot, getting crosser and crosser until Stepan Yakovlich, the groundsman, comes over and picks us up, laughing like anything, and carries us back inside.

We go out with Lucia to play

‘I can throw a pine cone so high it never comes back down and gets burnt up by the sun,’ claims Lucia.

‘Bet I can throw it high enough to kill a dirty old crow,’ says Masha. ‘Watch!’ She picks one up off the grass, and throws it at Lucia. I laugh when it bounces off her head.

We kept trying, every day, for weeks and weeks to stay standing outside, because Aunty Nadya (who was cross she wasn’t even told we were going out for the first time) said we could learn easy-peasy to walk on squishy ground in the wind, just like we learnt on firm floors with no wind before.

Now we’re so good at balancing that we’ve been let out to play with Lucia for a bit. Just us. We even get to wear the trousers and red shirts they keep for when the Academy of Sciences come in to film us because they don’t want us in the pyjamas we wear all the time. Proper clothes for proper playing, not just for show!

‘Aiii! That hurt! I’ll show you where this one’s fucking well going!’ Lucia picks the cone up and grabs us, pushing us down into a tumble on the ground, and then stuffs it into Masha’s mouth. I’m laughing like anything.

‘Stop, stop! Let’s play tag,’ says Masha, pushing her off and spitting out bits of cone. ‘You’re it, count to five.’

We go running off across the grass like mad things, zigzagging and then running straight on and on and on because the grounds are so big you can run forever and not even hit anything except a tree. I look round and see Lucia’s cutting us off to tag us from the side, so we both stop in our tracks to run back the way we came. She’s even faster than us though, and pushes me instead of tagging me, so we all go down in a tumble again, hardly able to breathe for running so much.

‘Hide and seek!’ shouts Masha, tickling Lucia off her. ‘You’re it.’

‘Get lost! I was it last time.’

‘Well, now you’re it again. Shut your eyes and count to twenty.’ Masha pushes Lucia’s face in the grass, and we run off to the bushes because the tree trunks wouldn’t hide us both. There’s a big bush by the gates with purple berries that Lucia says shrivel your insides up, turn them black and tie them into knots if you eat them, but we run towards that faster than anything. We’re not going to eat them. Just hide in them.

Then I hear someone screaming, really screaming, like when Boris broke his leg. We both stop and stare. It’s coming from the gate. There’s loads of Healthies from the street standing there, holding on to the bars and they’re shouting and yelling, Monster, it’s a monster!

Monster? Where?! We look back, but there’s only Lucia, who’s got up and is running towards us, but we’re so scared we don’t move to run and hide from her in the bushes any more, we just keep standing there, thinking we’re going to be eaten up by a monster which we can’t see but everyone else can.

‘Fuck off, you lot! Fuck off!’ Lucia’s caught up with us and she’s waving at the crowd, which is getting bigger all the time as more people run over and start screaming too, saying things like Help! Help me, God! One of them’s fainted, but for real, not pretend like Lucia does, and all her apples spill out of her bag and run under the gate. I’m shaking all over for fear. I can’t see anything, I keep looking all around me.

Lucia’s not scared. She’s angry, and starts yelling and swearing at the Healthies. Then she grabs a hosepipe and turns it on them full blast. ‘You’re the fucking monsters! Have this to wash your fucking mouths out with!’

‘Comrades! Comrades!’ Stepan Yakovlich the groundsman has run up and starts shouting at them all too. ‘For the love of God, comrades!’ His dog, Booyan, jumps up at the gate barking and snarling like he wants to eat them and Lucia’s still spraying them, then Stepan Yakovlich turns and picks us up because we can’t move from being scared stiff of the monster and runs with us both clinging round his neck. I hear a woman wailing, ‘How could they let that live?’ And then we’re back inside.

We’re told not to traumatize the Healthies

It was us.

Us that’s the monster.

But why? How? Monsters are ugly and evil and scaly and breathe fire. Monsters are Imperialists, or leeches, they’re green and slimy and mean. Monsters aren’t us! I can’t stop crying, however much Masha swears at me and punches me. She’s just angry. Not hurt like me.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Lydia Mikhailovna has been called in because I’m so upset that the nurse thought I was going to have a fit. She’s standing over me with her hands on her hips. ‘You’re going to run out of tears at this rate!’

‘She’s using all mine too. I’m getting all dried out. I’ll drop off of her like a prune, soon.’

‘Do be quiet, Masha. You could show a little sympathy.’

‘They were screaming at me too. The pigs—’

‘And how many times did I tell you both to stay close to the building? Eh? And not to go traumatizing the Healthies? Not to draw attention to your condition? Now we’ll never see the back of them. SNIP is virtually surrounded by baying crowds looking for a two-headed mutant.’

‘B-But, but, but, why?’ I say through all my snotty tears. ‘What’s wrong with us? Why are we a m-mutant?’ I can hardly get the words out, I’m crying so much.

‘Have a handkerchief, for goodness’ sake,’ she says, getting one out of her pocket and snapping it in front of my face. ‘You’re not monsters. As such. You’re different. Deformed. And healthy people are not used to deformity of any kind. It is our duty to protect them from you, but sometimes, especially when orders are disobeyed, this proves impossible. However,’ she sniffs and looks out of the window, ‘this attention from them is something you must accustom yourself to in life.’ I go to hand her back the hanky. ‘Keep it,’ she says with another sniff, ‘as well as that word of advice.’ Then she goes out and bangs the door.

After a bit, Masha looks up at the ceiling. ‘Stop whimpering,’ she says, ‘we’re only monsters to those pigs. If they don’t need us, we don’t need them. Not like we’re monsters to anyone who matters, is it? Not to anyone in here. You heard what she said, we’ve just got to get used to it.’

I nod. But how do you get used to someone fainting in terror when they see you? I put a pillow over my head. I don’t want to go back Outside ever, ever, ever. We turn into monsters when we go Outside.

We hear about Pasha losing his legs and he kisses Masha

‘You’re a sheep. A stupid. Silly. Stubborn. Shitty. Sheep!’ Masha thumps my arm to emphasize each word.

There are only two kids in Ward G right now, and they’re sitting in silence, watching her hitting me. Masha doesn’t normally hit me in front of other people. Most of the kids in our ward are doing schooling or physio at the moment, so we’re just sitting on our bed by the window. The crowds are still there by the gate.

‘No. Won’t go out,’ I say, holding my bruised arm. ‘Won’t.’

‘They’ll take us out the back door through the kitchens, that’s what they said. We can play in the yard where the skips are.’

‘Won’t. Can’t make me.’ She’s tried, but she can’t. I won’t even start to walk.

‘But think what we’ll find in the skips. All sorts. It’ll be like looking for treasure. We might find dog brains or … or, gold nuggets.’

‘Won’t.’

‘Or scrunched-up newspapers with pictures of Yuri Gagarin.’ She looks at me hopefully. ‘Loads and loads of photos of him.’ I shake my head. It’s stupid now to think of going up in space with Yuri Gagarin like I did in my dreams. He’s a Healthy.

‘Won’t.’

She slams her fist down on the bed.

‘Yolki palki! I’ll smash your skull in!’

‘Hey, Mashdash!’

It’s Pasha. He’s poked his head round the door. ‘Wanna go play with my dice on the stairs?’

‘Yeah, I’ll come,’ says Masha, hopping down from the bed. ‘Better than staying here talking to this Cretin.’

Playing dice with Pasha isn’t going Outside so I hop down with her and we run off down the corridor with Pasha scooting in front on his trolley. He hasn’t got his new legs yet. Aunty Nadya’s husband, Uncle Vasya, has no legs either but he has a proper fat chair like a wooden car to sit in with three big wheels and two paddles which he pulls and pushes himself along with. Everyone else just uses trolleys on the floor until they get given new legs. Uncle Vasya didn’t want false legs. He liked his own best. Pasha’s fast. Faster than anyone. Bet he’d be faster than Uncle Vasya even.

‘Let’s play Kiss or Pinch,’ Masha says, once we’re all sitting on the stone stairs by the half-open back door. Pasha’s sitting next to her. I’m glad he’s not sitting next to me. Kiss or Pinch is a silly game. She throws the dice.

‘Odd number! Pinch!’ She can pinch him anywhere and she always pinches really hard.

‘Aiii! You pinch like a crocodile!’ He throws the dice.

‘Odd! Kiss!’ He kisses her in her ear so loud I can hear and she jumps back.

‘You kiss like an exploding bomb!’

I don’t get turns. I’m glad. I don’t want to get kissed by Pasha. I don’t even want to watch him kissing Masha.

They go on playing for a bit and then Masha says, ‘Tell us about how you got your legs chopped off.’

‘Again?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘You’re strange, you are. OK. I’d gone down with my mates to watch the prisoners working on digging this ditch outside our village. We played this game that whenever the guard wasn’t looking, one of us would jump out and tag a prisoner.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Cos you get some of his meanness passed on. See?’ He tags Masha then goes to bite me, growling. We all laugh. He’s got dimples like Yuri Gagarin. ‘I was lookout on the railway track, it was a dead-end track, see, so there was never any trains. Then I hear this noise and turn round and there’s a train reversing down the track. Come out of nowhere, it did.’ Masha’s sucking the dice in her mouth. I think she might swallow it when it comes to this next bad part.

‘So I’m wearing my cousins’ shoes, which are too big and laced up round the sole and my ankles to keep them on, so when I go to get off the track, one of them’s stuck in the rails, see? So I’m sitting there screaming my head off and pulling to get the shoe out and the kids are running up the bank to the train, to get the driver to stop …’

‘Why didn’t you just untie the laces?’ says Masha in a thick voice because the dice is still in her mouth.

‘Didn’t think of it. All I can think of is this train rolling back towards me with sparks flying, and then ZING!!!’ We both jump. We always do at that bit. ‘I got electrocuted and next thing I know I wake up in hospital with no legs left.’

‘What happened to them?’ says Masha. She knows what happened to them, so do I, but she wants to hear again. ‘The train rolled over me and cut them clean off. If I hadn’t got electrocuted and fallen back, I might’ve been cut in half myself.’

‘But what happened to the legs?’ says Masha again.

‘My dad went back and got them – he thought they’d be able to sew them back on, but they couldn’t because he didn’t put them in ice, see. So he buried them in the garden instead. Maybe he thought they’d grow back into a new me. Anyway, Mum goes out and cries over them every day but they’ll have rotted away and have all worms in them by now.’

‘Healthy!’ says Masha, and takes the dice out of her mouth, wipes it on her sleeve and throws it again. ‘Kiss!’

‘Shhh!’ Pasha puts his hand over her mouth. There are voices by the back door and we’re not allowed to sit on the stone steps. I can smell stinky papirosa smoke.

‘Bloody nightmare, getting in this morning,’ says one of the voices. It’s probably one of the nannies or cleaners because the nurses don’t swear.

‘It’s spread all round town like wildfire; they’re like a pack of slavering dogs out there. It’s disgusting.’

‘Can’t blame them really. They want to see the Two-Headed Girl. Give them something to blab about.’

‘Some of the questions though …’

‘… like – has it been sewn together by Stalin’s scientists as an experiment …’

‘… or come down from Outer Space … heard that one?’

‘Heard them all. Brought back by Gagarin …’

‘Work of the Devil …’

‘Poor kids. One thing they’re right about: they should never have been left to live.’

‘Seem happy enough …’

‘For now …’

They go off then.

We don’t say anything for a bit. I’m shivering. Or trembling or something. I wish Pasha wasn’t here.

‘Yobinny idiots,’ says Pasha. ‘Ignorant goats, the lot of them. There’s nothing wrong with you two. Except you can’t kiss for peanuts. Well, Masha can’t. How about you, Dash?’ He leans over to me. ‘I should get two kisses for the price of one with a Girl with Two Heads, right?’ He laughs.

I don’t want to. I’m feeling sick, but I kiss him on the cheek anyway, as he’s right there, so close I can smell his soapiness, and I feel all tingly when I do. And stop shaking. And then he kisses me back on my cheek. And that feels all tingly too.

Aunty Nadya always comes in to say night-night before she goes off her shift, so I ask her then. It was Masha who told me to. I ask in a whisper so the other kids can’t hear.

‘Why are we Together? Were w-we sewn together?’ We looked, when we got back to the ward, but we can’t see any stitches or a scar or anything, not even the smallest little trace. ‘Are there other children who are Together like us? Or are we from another p-planet?’ I don’t remember being on another planet but we’d have been babies when we came down. The only thing I do know is that Gagarin didn’t bring us back.

She jumps back, all shocked and cross.

‘Well! What on earth put all that nonsense into your head? What ridiculous questions! I don’t know how you think them up, I really don’t.’

I bite my lip. I have to ask the next one, quick. Masha’s looking out of the window like she’s not listening at all, like she’s not interested. ‘And what … what would happen if we got c-cut in half?’ Masha told me to ask that, after Pasha told us about his legs. We remember that man we saw from the window in the Ped, who got cut in half by the tram and got sewn together, Mummy said. What would have happened if we were on the track?

Aunty Nadya looks like someone’s slapped her. She stands there with her mouth in a big O.

‘Cut in half?!’ She says it so loud some of the other kids look round, so she pushes her hair back into her cap and straightens her white coat a bit. ‘Gospodi! That’s quite enough of that! It’s nyelzya to ask questions. Do you understand? Nyelzya!’ We both nod. She straightens our bed covers and then leaves. Just like that, without even kissing us.

‘Told you not to ask,’ says Masha, sniffing. ‘Go to sleep. And don’t wake me up with all your stupid tossing around.’

I can’t sleep. Not knowing why we’re Together gives me lots of nightmares. And now I’ll probably have nightmares about being a slimy monster too. Not Masha though. She sleeps sound as a stone. I wish I’d been born Masha instead of me.

Age 14

March 1964

We go on a day trip to see Uncle Lenin

We’re naked down in a well, but it’s not a dark well, it’s all lit up and the walls are made of slippery glass, so though we can see the opening at the top, we can’t climb up to it. There’s people’s faces, lit up white, staring in at us, all around on every little bit of glass with their mouths open wide like leeches sticking to a jar. I can’t hear them but I know they’re screaming and their hands are flat against the glass, trying to get in at us. The glass cracks at the bottom and I see the crack run up past me to the top and know it’s about to break wide open and let them all in to grab us and tear us to pieces like wild dogs, because we shouldn’t be alive … I start screaming too …

‘Shut up!’ Masha slaps me.

‘Arrghh!’ I sit up. She slaps me again.

‘You and your stupid nightmares! You’ve woken the whole ward.’

I blink and look around at the beds lined up against the wall in the darkness, but my head’s still full of those faces.

‘It was that dream, Mash, down in the well … the same one.’

‘With me?’

‘I’m always with you in my nightmares.’

‘Thanks a lot … Well, never mind, you’re awake now, and so am I, what with all that screaming. And anyway, Aunty Nadya says, “Bad Dreams – Good Life. Good Dreams – Bad Life.” See? And today’s the best day ever, because we’re going Outside on our Day Trip!’

She jumps out of bed to pull back the curtain. It’s starting to get light. ‘We’re going to be dressed in our new trousers and shirts.’

‘I know.’ I get up and we go over to the window to look out at the weather. It’s icy cold, but there’s an orange sunrise making everything glow red. It’s going to be sunny. I press my nose against the window, reading the big red slogans as hard as I can, to stop the pictures from the nightmare filling my head. To Have More we must Produce More. To Produce More we must Know More. I see it every morning, but I don’t ever know more. I hate that all the other children in the world are going to school and learning all about everything, so they can work to build Communism, and me and Masha aren’t. We’re fourteen now and we should know loads, but we stopped knowing things at eleven. As Lucia would say, it really sucks. (She said she’d write when she left but she never did, just like all the others. Perhaps she ran away again.)

‘Real trousers made from Boris Markovich’s curtains! Lya-lya topo-lya!’ laughs Masha. I stop frowning and smile at her. She’s funny. There’s a shortage of fabric Outside, so they used the curtains from Professor Popov’s office to make them with. And we’re going in his black Volga, driven by his own chauffeur. ‘We’re going to see Lenin! We’re going to see Lenin!’ sings Masha, dancing down the ward and sticking her tongue out at the other kids who are slowly waking up.

The 7 a.m. bell clangs and we run down to the washroom to be first in line.

Two hours later we’re in the car on our way.

‘What’s that? What’s that?’ shouts Masha, bouncing up and down in the back seat.

‘It’s the Red October chocolate factory – see, it says Red October across the top,’ says Aunty Nadya, who’s sitting with us.

‘It’s huge! How come it’s so huge when there’s no chocolate? Where does all the chocolate go?’

‘Well now … there’s a shortage because it has to supply the whole of the Soviet Union, you see. That’s a lot of chocolate.’

The only time we ever get chocolate is when Anokhin comes to visit us in SNIP. None of the other kids have ever tasted it. Not ever. Not even the Family kids.

‘When we build Communism, we’ll eat it all the time!’ says Masha. ‘For breakfast, lunch and dinner! There’ll be chocolate factories everywhere instead of just this one!’

Ivan Borisovich, the chauffeur, winds down his window. ‘You can smell the chocolate fumes,’ he says, smiling into the mirror. We both sniff with our noses in the air and we can, we really can smell nothing but chocolate. Everyone’s happy, even Aunty Nadya is bursting with happiness through her frowny face, I can always tell.

‘Does all of Moscow smell of chocolate?’ asks Masha. ‘All of it?’

‘No,’ he says, smiling. ‘Only here.’

‘Can we go to the Red October chocolate f-factory instead?’ I ask. ‘I don’t think I want to go to the M-Mausoleum.’

‘Now then, Dasha, how many times have I told you that we’ll drive right over Red Square, up to the door, and give you a king’s chair ride with a rug over your laps, so you’ll look like two Healthy girls.’

‘Red Square! Red Square!’ sings Masha, bouncing again. ‘Look! What’s that? What’s that?’

‘That’s a ferry boat which takes tourists up and down the Moskva River.’

‘Can we go on a f-ferry boat instead?’ I ask.

‘No, Dashinka. This is an educational trip, before you join the Young Pioneers. The ceremony’s soon and all the children in Moscow go to the Mausoleum before they join. You know all that. About time you joined the Pioneers. Better late than never …’

I look out, pressing my nose to the window, staring at all the flat-faced, grey blocks of flats, all looking the same, with their hundreds of windows where families live. The pavements are full to bursting with people who’ve just come out of the Metro, walking in black coats and black boots. I’ve never walked on a street before. I’ve never been down in the trains that run through tunnels in the ground. Aunty Nadya says the Metro stations are like palaces, with sculptures and chandeliers and sparkling mosaics. Palaces for the People, she says. They’re lucky. I’d love to walk on a street and go on a train under the ground and be like everyone else.

‘What’s that, with the golden hat?’

‘Cupola, not hat, Masha. It’s a Russian Orthodox church where ignorant people used to pray to their god.’ I stare at it as we drive past, it looks all small and scared, squashed between the big grey blocks, but its gold cupola shines brighter than anything I’ve ever seen before.

‘Is it real gold?’ I ask.

‘Yes, yes, it is.’ She sniffs. ‘Very thin gold leaf.’ Then she shakes her head. ‘Pozor.’

I don’t know what’s disgraceful about it, but I don’t say anything. The road’s wide but it’s empty, like the river, except for some lemon-yellow taxis and some other official black Volgas with chauffeurs like ours.

‘What’s that? What’s that with the spire? It looks like a fairy castle. Is it a fairy castle?’

‘No, Masha, of course not. Gospodi, you are about to join the Pioneers, do stop dreaming. It’s one of Stalin’s towers. There are eight of them. They’re the tallest buildings in Moscow. See, there’s another one over there.’ I stare out to where she’s pointing and see it for myself, all soaring and beautiful. I love Moscow! There are trees and islands and flowers and chocolate factories and People’s underground Palaces. Moscow must be the best city in the whole wide world.

I just don’t really want to go to the Mausoleum.

We drive down a cobbled side street near Red Square. There are still no other cars. My heart’s beating like a drum and I keep wiping my hands on the rug because they’re sweaty. I want to keep driving and driving and looking and looking and never stop.

‘Chort!’ Ivan Borisovich brakes hard and we nearly knock our heads on the back of his seat. There’s a militiaman standing with his hand up right in front of us, on the edge of Red Square. We look past him, across all the cobbles going on and on for ages and ages, across to the little black Mausoleum surrounded by crowds where Lenin is. Ivan Borisovich gets out to talk to him, but we can only hear bits, like only official cars and nyelzya. He gets back in the car and lights up a papirosa.