The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ