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The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep
Juliet Butler
‘Do yourself a favour and read this wonderful book’ ScotsmanBased on the true story of conjoined Russian twins, Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.No one expects Dasha and Masha to live beyond childhood. Not the Soviet scientists who study them, the other ‘defective’ children who bully them, or the ‘healthies’ from whom the twins must be locked away.But they don’t know Masha like her sister does. While Dasha is gentle and quiet and fears everything, her twin is fearless and irrepressible and determined they will survive. Whatever the cost.Through the seismic shifts of Stalin’s communism to the beginnings of Putin’s democracy, the sisters strive to be more than just ‘the together twins’, finding hope – and love – in the unlikeliest of places.But strength can come in many different forms and if Dasha is to live more than half a life she must find the courage to emerge from her sister’s shadow.
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Copyright (#u0246ad18-8fbb-5131-a946-452b57ee433a)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright © Juliet Butler 2017
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Cover images © plainpicture/Cavan Images
‘You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul’, Words and music by Steve Benson © copyright 1985 Blue Obsession Music OHG. Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group Australia. Also reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
This book is based on the author’s experiences. Some names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed, reconstructed or fictionalised.
Juliet Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008276096
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008290481
Version: 2018-04-20
Dedication (#u0246ad18-8fbb-5131-a946-452b57ee433a)
To David Llewelyn – literary consultant – without whose persistence Dasha’s story would never have been told.
Epigraph (#u0246ad18-8fbb-5131-a946-452b57ee433a)
‘A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.’
Helen Keller
Contents
Cover (#u216d57cb-c66d-5257-a0e4-93a43a569767)
Title Page (#ub9fbdb7c-eaf1-51a7-b605-d02787cbaa40)
Copyright (#u8bcdf9e1-bae9-5ea0-866a-949c697b6bcd)
Dedication (#u2d7ede47-b7ca-5416-bed8-13e63cd70f55)
Epigraph (#u24a5e570-62fd-54ae-aa01-cb10b49708fc)
THE END (#u3f44af2a-079e-5cb3-8b48-97008990998c)
PAEDIATRIC INSTITUTE, MOSCOW (#u1e6cd199-3035-5676-91da-6b499b9e54bf)
SCIENTIFIC NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PROSTHETICS (SNIP), MOSCOW (#u78edac33-665e-5e89-bb1c-56a3aa766d40)
SCHOOL FOR INVALIDS, NOVOCHERKASSK (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTIETH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Characters (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
THE END (#u0246ad18-8fbb-5131-a946-452b57ee433a)
12 April 2003, 12:05
I know I’m dying. I just don’t know how.
The ceiling rushes past me in the First City Hospital as we’re pushed down the corridor in a white-coated swirl of medics. First City; we’ve been here before. Masha, my Mashinka, you’re here with me. But this time it’s different. This time I’m alone.
Two nurses are running along with us, one on each side. They’re talking, their voices muffled through their surgical masks.
How long has she got?
God knows!
Where are we taking them?
Emergency unit.
Do the doctors know? Can they separate them?
No, no, of course not, they’d need a team of twenty surgeons.
Everyone’s always thought we’re fools. That we can’t understand, because we’re Together.
What do we tell her?
Nothing, of course. Tell her nothing.
The nurse bends over me and speaks loudly and slowly.
Masha’s fine, she’s just sleeping, that’s all.
I start crying.
Hush, hush now, everything’s going to be fine …
PAEDIATRIC INSTITUTE, MOSCOW (#u0246ad18-8fbb-5131-a946-452b57ee433a)
1956
‘One cannot hold on to power through terror alone. Lies are just as important.’
Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, 1922–53
Age 6
January 1956
Mummy
‘I’m bored,’ says Masha.
Mummy’s sitting by our cot, and she doesn’t look up from all her writing.
‘I’m really, really booored.’
‘You’re always bored, Masha. Play with Dasha.’
‘She’s booooring.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say. ‘You’re boring.’
Masha sticks her tongue out at me. ‘You stink.’
‘Girls!’ Mummy puts down her pencil and stares at us over the bars, all cross.
We don’t say anything for a bit, while she goes back to writing. Skritch. Skritch.
‘Sing us the lullaby, Mummy – bye-oo bye-ooshki – sing that again,’ says Masha.
‘Not now.’
Skritch. Skritch.
‘What you writing, Mummy?’
‘None of your business, Masha.’
‘Yes, but what you writing?’
No answer.
Masha squashes her face through the bars of the cot. ‘When can we have those all-colours bricks back to play with? The all-colours ones?’
‘What’s the point of that, when Dasha builds them and you just knock them down?’ Mummy doesn’t even look up.
‘That’s because she likes building, and I like knocking.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Can I draw, then?’
‘You mean scribble.’
‘I can draw our Box, I can, and I can draw you with your stethoscope too.’
A bell rings from outside the door to our room, and Mummy closes her book. A bit of grey hair falls down so she pushes it behind her ear with her pencil.
‘Well, it’s five o’clock. Time for me to go home.’
‘Can we come home with you, Mummy?’ I say. ‘Can we? Now it’s five clock?’
‘No, Dashinka. How many times do I have to tell you that this hospital is your home.’
‘Is your home a hospital too? Another one?’
‘No. I live in a flat. Outside. You live in this cot, in a glass box, all safe and sound.’
‘But all children go home with their mummies, the nannies told us so.’
‘The nannies should talk less.’ She stands up. ‘You know exactly how lucky you are to be cared for and fed in here. Don’t you?’ We both nod. ‘Right, then.’ She gets up to kiss us on top of our heads. One kiss, two kisses. ‘Be good.’ I push my hand through the cot to hold on to her white coat, but she pulls it away all sharp, so I bang my wrist. I suck on where the bang is.
The door to the room opens. Boom.
