The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

USSR, and this time from all over the world, have been driving up all morning outside the window. We watched. Loads of them. Like cockroaches swarming up to rotting food.

      ‘What’s so bad then?’ Olessya’s sitting with us. ‘About the Delegation?’

      Masha’s twiddling the button on our pyjamas and both of us are jiggling our legs up and down like mad things. I wish those marbles really could make you invisible. I’d swallow them all, however big they were, and disappear right now.

      ‘Dunno,’ says Masha.

      ‘You two get delegations in to see you all the time, don’t you?’

      ‘Yeah, but they’re usually in a little room, for doctors from our Soviet republics,’ says Masha. ‘They lay you out naked as a baby on a slab and get all these pip-eyed medical students in from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and Fuckistan to poke at you, and pick at you like a piece of meat, with all their medical jargon. But the ones with Anokhin are different. That’s like being up on the yobinny Bolshoi Ballet stage.’

      ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘the small ones aren’t f-fun but they’re OK. One of the K-Kazakh students asked our doctor, “Can theys tork?” And Masha sits right up and says, “Hey, we can speak Russian better than you’ll be able to in five lifetimes, you illiterate camel!” and he looked like he’d been shot through the heart, d-didn’t he, Mash? D-didn’t he?’ But Masha doesn’t even smile. She just keeps jiggling her leg, making the floor thump.

      Olessya’s sitting on my side. Everyone sits on Masha’s side normally, except Olessya.

      ‘That’s what keeps you in here, isn’t it? The delegations … the research …’ she says slowly.

      ‘Yeah, well, right now I don’t want to be here,’ says Masha.

      ‘Girls!’ It’s Lydia Mikhailovna, come to get us. My tummy turns right over in a somersault. ‘Come along. Everyone is gathered in the Conference Hall.’

      We get up slowly and follow her. Down the corridor, on and on, round one corner and then another and another.

      ‘Come along, stop dawdling.’

      We go round the back of the Conference Hall to where the stage is. It’s dark as anything. There are wooden stairs going up to the stage, which is all covered off by a heavy red curtain with a gold sickle and hammer on it so we can’t see them all sitting in rows and rows of black suits.

      ‘Right. You know the routine. Get undressed.’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s standing over us. I can hear them all buzzing in the hall behind the curtain. Like wasps waiting to sting. We undo our buttons, take off our pyjamas and untie our nappy. Masha’s sick then, and Lydia Mikhailovna’s all cross, saying she should have asked for a bucket if she felt nauseous, not thrown up on the floor.

      ‘Fucking kefir for breakfast,’ mutters Masha, wiping her mouth. ‘Knew it was off.’

      We’re naked now and shivering like anything. Waiting. We can hear Doctor Anokhin on the stage. Very rare example of ischiopagus tripus twins … under our care, quite remarkable that they have survived into their teens … under our care … remarkable … survived … There’s a circle drawn in chalk on the stage that we have to stand in, behind the curtain. I want to swallow marbles. We walk up slowly and step into it. We wait. I won’t fall down, I won’t. Soviet Progress. Grateful. Grateful. Grateful. Best of. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up. They always gasp.

      Anokhin comes up on to the stage with a pointer. Two hearts, two brains, two kidneys, two nervous systems, two upper intestines, one blood system, one liver, one lower intestine, one leg each and a shared leg at the back. Turn!

      He taps my forehead with his pointer and we turn. The spotlights come from everywhere.

      I’m glad I’m blinded and can’t see them. I won’t cry. We’ve been told to keep our eyes open and look straight ahead but the light’s so bright my eyes are watering.

      ‘Turn!’ He taps the back of my head. I turn to face them again, blinded by the spotlights, I take my hand off Masha’s neck to wipe my cheek because my eyes are watering. I hope they don’t think I’m crying or anything stupid like that because I’m not crying. I’m not.

      Crash! There’s a noise like a chair falling over and then the door to the hall bangs. I look at Masha. Did we do something wrong?

      ‘Stand on one leg,’ says Anokhin. Masha lifts hers up because I’m stronger. ‘Run to the edge of the stage and back,’ he says. We run to the edge of the stage and back. ‘Hop,’ he says. We hop.

      He talks and talks and talks while we stand in the spotlight, in the chalk circle, doing what he tells us to with his pointer for ever and ever until he runs out of talk and dismisses us. There’s a round of applause as we walk off. Lydia Mikhailovna is waiting for us backstage. We get dressed slowly in our nappy and then our pyjamas and go down the wooden stairs. She stops us at the door and we can see Boris Markovich standing in the corridor with his hands in his pockets. Doctor Anokhin walks up to him and holds out his hand.

      ‘Comrade Popov. You left the auditorium?’ he says with his eyebrows raised. Boris Markovich takes a step back and doesn’t take his hand out of his pocket.

      ‘Yes, I left. I could watch no more. They are not one of your dogs, Pyotr Kuzmich.’ He says that all quiet, but somehow really loud. ‘We no longer live in Stalin’s Soviet Union. We live in the country that Lenin intended. These are normal, intelligent, fourteen-year-old teenagers, not a dumb animal. They should never be forced to witness the spectacle of a room full of men, analysing their naked anatomy.’

      Anokhin gives a little smile and tips his head on one side.

      ‘Then next time blindfold them,’ he says. And walks off.

      We go to amputate our leg, but I mess it up – as usual

      ‘I got a plane, got a plane!’ shouts Masha, pulling a wooden plank out of the skip. She’s half in the skip and I’m half out. I won’t go all in because it stinks of blood and dead dogs. They incinerate the experimental ones but throw the strays, which hang around the grounds, in here to rot when they die.

      ‘I’m the Soviet fighter pilot and you’re the Fascists!’ she says, jumping back down, and we start racing around with the plank on our back, bombing the little kids playing with us. They run away screaming like we’re really bombing them. Masha whacks one with the plank and he goes flying into a tree trunk and just lies there, so I think he’s actually dead. Then he gets up and goes right back to being a Fascist. There’s all sorts of stuff in the skips. We go out there every day now, and find bits of metal for swords to play Whites and Reds with, or nails to play surgeons and patients with.

      I’d rather be inside, sitting with Olessya, but she’s in the schoolroom, learning. They give all kids an elementary education here, whatever their age. She’s just taught herself up to now with books the kind nannies in her orphanage gave her.

      After a bit, we all sit down to get our breath and sort through what we’ve got; like, who’s got the bloodiest surgical gloves, or sharpest bit of metal. One piece is like a mirror, but I won’t look in that.

      They don’t have mirrors in SNIP to protect us from seeing ourselves, but me and Masha went off one Sunday to the Old Wing where the Party Conferences are held, and went right into the Party Hall where no one has ever been, because it’s strictly off limits. It used to be a ballroom for decadent people before the Great October Revolution, and it had a wooden jigsaw puzzle floor and lights like worlds of falling diamonds. And a massive mirror with a golden twirly frame. I didn’t understand what it was when I first saw our reflection as we walked up to it. I thought it was just a door leading to somewhere. Then we saw this lumbering, ugly thing with bits sticking out everywhere rocking towards us … like