The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘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.

      Uncle Vasya gives me a dolly called Marusya

      ‘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.

      Age 7

      September 1957

      The great Doctor Anokhin comes to see us with his lesser doctors

      ‘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.

СКАЧАТЬ