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‘Why though?’ I ask. ‘Why?’
‘Because … well … because all children are born like you, with … one leg each …’ She pulls her mask up higher, then she loosens the laces on her cap and does them up again tighter.
‘So all children are born stuck together, like us?’
‘Yes, yes, Dashinka. They’re all born together …’
‘And then what happens?’
‘Then … they … ahh … become single. Like grown-ups …’
‘So, do we grow another leg each, when we get single?’
‘When do we get single?’ asks Masha, trying to pull herself up on the top cot bar. ‘When? When? When do we get single?’
‘Now then, you two Miss Clever Clogs, you know you’re not allowed to ask questions …’
‘But when? When do we get single?’ Masha asks again. ‘Tomorrow?’
Aunty Dusya looks all round the Box for something she must have lost, and doesn’t look anywhere at us. Then she goes out with a klyak of the glass door, without saying anything at all.
‘I want to get single now,’ says Masha crossly, and grabs with both her hands on to the bars. I can see the black in her eyes that gets there when she’s angry. She snatches my hand, and twists my fingers all back, and starts shouting: ‘I want to get single now! Go away! 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 grass and trees and a road, until you get to the next one.’
‘What’s grass and trees? Can you draw them for me?’ asks Masha. Mummy makes a whooshing with her mouth like when she’s tired or cross.
‘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.
