The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ Urod! Get off me! Get off!’

      I get scared as anything when Masha is angry. She kicks and scratches and punches and pinches, and I kick and scratch too, to keep her away. But I know it won’t make us get single.

      ‘Girls! Girls!’ After we’ve been fighting for hours and hours, Aunty Shura runs back in the Box, but she screams when she sees us, and I look, and see all red blood on us, but I keep kicking and punching to keep Masha away, and Shura runs out again.

      She comes back with Mummy, who pulls at us both, and tells the nurse to tie us up to one and the other end of the cot with bandages. Masha hates being tied up all the time, so she starts shouting with bad, Nastya swear words, and so Mummy stuffs a bandage in her mouth too.

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ