The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

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.