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Lucia shrugs. ‘She was an alkasha, I s’pose. The militia make them send their kids to orphanages.’
That’s strange. Alcoholics normally have Uneducable kids, but Lucia’s as sharp as a knife. Our real mummy can’t have been an alkasha, because we’re sharp as knives too.
‘C’mon! Let’s go out into the grounds and knock over some kids who’re learning to walk,’ says Lucia, jumping off the bed and grabbing her crutches.
‘We can’t,’ says Masha. ‘We’re a Secret, remember?’
‘What? You’re too secret to even go into the grounds? Chort! That sucks to China and back. Well …’ she makes for the door. ‘I’m off. It’s stuffy as fuck in here. Can’t you open the window?’
‘Nyet. They think we’ll fall out.’
‘That sucks too. All right. See ya.’
Once she’s gone, Masha’s eyes start getting black like they do, and she walks fast round the room, up and down and across and back again. I can feel her crossness at being stuck in here with nothing to do, growing up and up inside her. She thumps the wall.
‘Let’s play Who’s-What?’ I say quickly. ‘Or pretend to be a fighter pilot … I’ll be the Fascist and you can be the Red.’
‘Shut up!!’ She keeps pacing up and down, up and down, getting tighter and tighter until I feel like I’m going to burst. ‘I want to go OUT! It’s because of you I can’t go out! Because you’re stuck to me. Get off! Get off me! I hate you – go away, I’ll kill you and then they’ll cut you off!’ Then she starts hitting me with her fists and pulling my hair and scratching my face and kicking me in my leg, so I do what I always do and lie back as far as I can with my hands over my face.
Poor Masha. The only time I can ever really go away from her is when I close my eyes and imagine it. But she can’t do that as well as I can. I don’t think she can even do it at all.
After ages and ages of being beaten up, she gets slower and then stops and turns over and puts her head right deep into her pillow. I’m trying to stop my nosebleed, cos the Administrator will kill me if I get blood on the sheets, so I push my pyjama sleeve right up my nostril. I can wash the sleeve out myself later. After a bit, when Masha’s gone to sleep, I decide to think of what I’m going to write in my next letter to Mummy. I’ll write: We hope you’re well. We’re well thank you. We haven’t been punished all week so far for being naughty. We get a bit bored so if you come and visit us that would be nice and you don’t have to stay long if you haven’t much time, and you don’t have to bring anything either. Your daughters, Masha and Dasha.
April 1961
We get the news about Yuri Gagarin and watch him on television
We’ve been moved into General Ward G now and the little kids are hiding under their beds because Masha’s telling them about how her father’s a Cannibal King in Africa. She says he’s got a bone through his nose, from one of the children he’s eaten up, and she’s told them he’s visiting her today.
‘He makes a soup out of them and spits their bones out,’ Masha’s saying, ‘and makes a necklace for each of his wives. When I was little, I burnt his soup and he took an axe and chopped me in two. That’s why I’m like this, and he’ll do the same to—’
‘Children! I have news for you!’ It’s Lydia Mikhailovna who’s just thrown open the doors. She hardly ever visits the wards so the kids all scream when the doors bang open, because they think it’s the Cannibal King come to visit with his axe.
‘What on earth are you all doing under there? Come out at once.’ She looks across at Masha and I think she’s going to be angry, but she’s not. She’s happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever seen her. ‘Tak! Everyone come along to the Room of Relaxation. I have an important announcement to make. Something wonderful!’
Wonderful? What? Maybe we’re all being taken to the Circus? The family kids told us about the Circus, where sparkly ladies fall out of the sky, and clowns are so stupid they make you fall off your seat laughing, and lions that eat their trainers right before your very eyes. We all run outside and find the kids from the other wards there, excited as a buzz of bees. I can hear the word kosmos going round and round, and think maybe they’re sending us off in a rocket to start the Soviet moon at last.
We race off to the Room of Relaxation, which we’re never normally allowed in. It’s full, and everyone’s crowded around the new television. We’ve never seen it before, but we heard it was there from the nannies. It’s a little black box where you can see everything that’s happening on the Outside, zooming right inside to it. But only in black and white, not colour like the real world. It’s so healthy!
‘Now then. Quiet!’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s standing with all the staff, even the kitchen staff, by the television. ‘This is a wonderful day!’ she says again. ‘A day of one of the most incredible Soviet Achievements we have ever seen.’ She looks around at the staff, who are all smiling fit to burst. ‘We have sent a man into space!’
There’s a sort of gasp all round. Space? To the moon? Did he die like Laika?
‘That man was Comrade Gagarin,’ she goes on, ‘he orbited once and then returned to earth and the People are rejoicing throughout the Soviet Union.’
Masha’s pushing to the front, round the side of the room, by the windows, and I look out and I can see the People celebrating, I really can, hugging each other and throwing caps in the air and running somewhere.
‘This proves that our country, the Soviet Union, is the most advanced in the world. In the entire world,’ says Lydia Mikhailovna loudly. ‘We are now going to watch Comrade Gagarin being congratulated by First Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich, right here in Moscow.’
‘Gaaa!’ groans Masha. ‘It’s another yobinny Achievement and not the circus.’ But she’s got us to the front so we have the best view of anyone of the television. There he is! I can see him! Walking down a long rug at the airport, dressed in a uniform like Father Stalin’s. He’s so … so handsome. I just stare and stare. Lydia Mikhailovna’s talking about how the Soviet Union has finally proved its superiority, and how Communism will now spread throughout the world, as everyone can see it’s the best system possible, but I can’t stop staring at him. I’ve never seen anyone in my life so perfect before. I kind of all swell up like dough with happiness that he’s been so brave and that he’s Ours. Comrade Khrushchev takes his hat off and hugs him so hard I think they’re both going to cry or something, and then there’s pictures of the crowd holding big banners of Gagarin’s face, and there’s schoolgirls with bows in their hair, running up to him with bunches of flowers. We’re all laughing now and the staff are hugging each other too. I’ve never seen anyone so happy, all at the same time. Masha’s shouting ‘Oorrraaaa!’ at the top of her voice and doesn’t even get told off.
When all the huggings are over we all go out of the Room of Relaxation and I think this must really be the best day ever, even if I’m not going to the Circus or to the moon because I’m living here, where Yuri Gagarin is.
In the Best of All Possible Worlds.
Lydia Mikhailovna tells us off for Masha being naughty
‘So. I expect you know why you’ve been called in this time?’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s sitting behind her big desk in her office and we’re standing in front of it. She’s all cross again, like she always is when we’ve been naughty. But everyone else is still happy. It’s like the sun is shining all the time. We cut a photo of Gagarin out of the newspaper, which was stuck up on the news board (that was nyelzya, of course) and keep it folded up under a loose tile in the toilets to look at. He’s got a dimple and light green or maybe blue eyes. I’m not sure, as it’s black and white. I think they’re probably blue. He’s a hero. It just shows, this does, that we’re the best country ever. It just shows.
Masha’s twiddling the button on her pyjama bottoms. We both know we’re being told off because of Boris this time.
‘Boris called me Mashdash-Car-Crash! It’s nyelzya to call Defectives names,’ says Masha quickly. ‘We Must Respect Deformity. That’s what you always say, Lydia Mikhailovna.’
‘True. And breaking his leg in two places is showing respect?’
‘It was an accident,’ she says sulkily.
‘So you accidentally stole a bottle of vegetable oil from the kitchens, while Lucia was pretending to faint, and then accidentally spilt it on the floor, just as Boris was coming out of his ward?’
‘I didn’t know he’d go over with such a crack—’
‘His leg was both fractured and broken. Extremely painful. As if we haven’t got enough work to do in here.’
I shiver. It was horrible. I feel sick remembering it. The bone was sticking out all white and knobbly in his only leg.
‘Yolki palki! It was him who got the other kids to hang us over the banisters by our feet. I thought my last hour had come, Lydia Mikhailovna!’
‘I will hear no more excuses. What am I to do with you?’
‘Send us into space?’ says Masha and does her little kitten look.
‘Don’t tempt me.’ She picks up a piece of paper. ‘So. Here is a list of your recent activities. One. Playing hide-and-seek in the top-floor laboratory, which is strictly out of bounds, and being eventually found trapped in a rabbit cage.’ I bite my lip and look past her at the paintings of Comrade Khrushchev and Uncle Lenin. That was so scary. I was crying loads. I thought we’d never ever be found, but once we got in, we couldn’t get out. Masha couldn’t get the door back open and the rabbits just sat there with their bulging eyes staring at us for hours and hours and I thought we’d die in there.
There’s an empty patch on the wall where they’ve taken Father Stalin down. Maybe they’ll put Yuri Gagarin up now instead.
‘Next … calling up all the emergency services from the guardroom phone while Lucia again feigned a fainting fit. We were treated to the fire service, the militia … and you even managed to call an ambulance to a hospital. Three. Stealing syringes and scalpels from the Medical Room and skewers and knives from the kitchens to use as threatening weapons on fellow patients, one of whom claims he was stabbed through the hand.’
‘I tripped,’ says Masha, being sulky again.
‘Four. Traumatizing young patients with some ridiculous story of a severed hand that stalks SNIP and then placing surgical gloves filled with water in their beds. And Five, riding a food trolley down the kitchen stairs. Repeatedly. Well. The list goes on, culminating in Boris.’
I’m biting my lip so hard now I can feel blood in my mouth. The worst punishment is having our pyjamas taken away so we’re just in our nappy. Last time was for two weeks and we couldn’t leave the ward then for anything.
‘And you, Masha, you beat your sister black and blue behind closed doors.’
‘Don’t too. She keeps falling off the bed.’
‘And you, miraculously, stay on it?’ She’s rapping a pen on the table with a toc toc toc like a time bomb. I hold my breath and I’m thinking the same thing, over and over, hard in my head. She’s going to send us away. Please, please, please don’t send us to an orphanage for Uneducables. ‘Well,’ she says eventually, ‘I think it’s high time we got you out.’
‘Out? No, no, no!’ I jump up. ‘Please, please, Lydia Mikhailovna! We’ll never be naughty again.’ I lean right over the desk with my arms out to her. ‘Don’t send us away! Please! Please!’
‘Gospodi! I don’t mean away, Dasha,’ she says, putting the pen down. ‘I mean out. Outside. To exercise. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, because there’s a chance you might be seen by the Healthies in the street …’
Outside? I stop crying. Out into the grounds? Into the fresh air? I can hardly hear her for the swirling in my head. ‘… but,’ she goes on, ‘we have planted high bushes around the fence and Boris Markovich believes it will benefit you both to get out of the building.’
‘Ooooraaa!’ shouts Masha. ‘We’re going out to play! When? Now? Right now?’
‘No. Tomorrow. The Administrator will sort some clothes out.’
We go on the Outside for the first time ever
‘Mwaah! It’s hitting me! It’s hitting me!’
We’ve walked down the steps into the Outside and the wind is all slapping us, trying to knock us over, and Masha’s shouting like anything and waving her arm around because we can’t balance. My head’s spinning like it does when we do loads of somersaults. The grass is mushy, not hard like the floor, and there are no walls anywhere to keep us upright. Plookh! We sit down with a bang that makes me hiccup.
‘Get up this instant!’ shouts Lydia Mikhailovna, turning around. She was walking off down the path, thinking we were behind her. ‘I’ve taken you outside to exercise, and exercise you shall!’
‘Caaaaan’t,’ goes Masha in a high voice, the one she has when she’s really scared. ‘It’s all moving!’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Nothing’s moving.’
But she’s wrong. It is. All the trees are waving and the grass and the bushes and leaves are jumping about like crazy so we can’t stand up in case the ground comes up right in our faces too. We hardly know which way is up with the clouds all moving too.
‘It’s too big, there’s too much space, there’s nothing keeping us in! Caaaaan’t!’ goes Masha again. I can’t even breathe because the air’s colder than me, not the same as me like it is inside, and it keeps trying to whoosh in my mouth when I don’t want it to. Lydia Mikhailovna stands over us for ages, trying to get us up, and stamping her foot, getting crosser and crosser until Stepan Yakovlich, the groundsman, comes over and picks us up, laughing like anything, and carries us back inside.
We go out with Lucia to play
‘I can throw a pine cone so high it never comes back down and gets burnt up by the sun,’ claims Lucia.
‘Bet I can throw it high enough to kill a dirty old crow,’ says Masha. ‘Watch!’ She picks one up off the grass, and throws it at Lucia. I laugh when it bounces off her head.
We kept trying, every day, for weeks and weeks to stay standing outside, because Aunty Nadya (who was cross she wasn’t even told we were going out for the first time) said we could learn easy-peasy to walk on squishy ground in the wind, just like we learnt on firm floors with no wind before.
Now we’re so good at balancing that we’ve been let out to play with Lucia for a bit. Just us. We even get to wear the trousers and red shirts they keep for when the Academy of Sciences come in to film us because they don’t want us in the pyjamas we wear all the time. Proper clothes for proper playing, not just for show!
‘Aiii! That hurt! I’ll show you where this one’s fucking well going!’ Lucia picks the cone up and grabs us, pushing us down into a tumble on the ground, and then stuffs it into Masha’s mouth. I’m laughing like anything.
‘Stop, stop! Let’s play tag,’ says Masha, pushing her off and spitting out bits of cone. ‘You’re it, count to five.’
We go running off across the grass like mad things, zigzagging and then running straight on and on and on because the grounds are so big you can run forever and not even hit anything except a tree. I look round and see Lucia’s cutting us off to tag us from the side, so we both stop in our tracks to run back the way we came. She’s even faster than us though, and pushes me instead of tagging me, so we all go down in a tumble again, hardly able to breathe for running so much.
‘Hide and seek!’ shouts Masha, tickling Lucia off her. ‘You’re it.’
‘Get lost! I was it last time.’
‘Well, now you’re it again. Shut your eyes and count to twenty.’ Masha pushes Lucia’s face in the grass, and we run off to the bushes because the tree trunks wouldn’t hide us both. There’s a big bush by the gates with purple berries that Lucia says shrivel your insides up, turn them black and tie them into knots if you eat them, but we run towards that faster than anything. We’re not going to eat them. Just hide in them.
Then I hear someone screaming, really screaming, like when Boris broke his leg. We both stop and stare. It’s coming from the gate. There’s loads of Healthies from the street standing there, holding on to the bars and they’re shouting and yelling, Monster, it’s a monster!
Monster? Where?! We look back, but there’s only Lucia, who’s got up and is running towards us, but we’re so scared we don’t move to run and hide from her in the bushes any more, we just keep standing there, thinking we’re going to be eaten up by a monster which we can’t see but everyone else can.
‘Fuck off, you lot! Fuck off!’ Lucia’s caught up with us and she’s waving at the crowd, which is getting bigger all the time as more people run over and start screaming too, saying things like Help! Help me, God! One of them’s fainted, but for real, not pretend like Lucia does, and all her apples spill out of her bag and run under the gate. I’m shaking all over for fear. I can’t see anything, I keep looking all around me.
Lucia’s not scared. She’s angry, and starts yelling and swearing at the Healthies. Then she grabs a hosepipe and turns it on them full blast. ‘You’re the fucking monsters! Have this to wash your fucking mouths out with!’
‘Comrades! Comrades!’ Stepan Yakovlich the groundsman has run up and starts shouting at them all too. ‘For the love of God, comrades!’ His dog, Booyan, jumps up at the gate barking and snarling like he wants to eat them and Lucia’s still spraying them, then Stepan Yakovlich turns and picks us up because we can’t move from being scared stiff of the monster and runs with us both clinging round his neck. I hear a woman wailing, ‘How could they let that live?’ And then we’re back inside.
We’re told not to traumatize the Healthies
It was us.
Us that’s the monster.
But why? How? Monsters are ugly and evil and scaly and breathe fire. Monsters are Imperialists, or leeches, they’re green and slimy and mean. Monsters aren’t us! I can’t stop crying, however much Masha swears at me and punches me. She’s just angry. Not hurt like me.
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Lydia Mikhailovna has been called in because I’m so upset that the nurse thought I was going to have a fit. She’s standing over me with her hands on her hips. ‘You’re going to run out of tears at this rate!’
‘She’s using all mine too. I’m getting all dried out. I’ll drop off of her like a prune, soon.’
‘Do be quiet, Masha. You could show a little sympathy.’
‘They were screaming at me too. The pigs—’
‘And how many times did I tell you both to stay close to the building? Eh? And not to go traumatizing the Healthies? Not to draw attention to your condition? Now we’ll never see the back of them. SNIP is virtually surrounded by baying crowds looking for a two-headed mutant.’
‘B-But, but, but, why?’ I say through all my snotty tears. ‘What’s wrong with us? Why are we a m-mutant?’ I can hardly get the words out, I’m crying so much.
‘Have a handkerchief, for goodness’ sake,’ she says, getting one out of her pocket and snapping it in front of my face. ‘You’re not monsters. As such. You’re different. Deformed. And healthy people are not used to deformity of any kind. It is our duty to protect them from you, but sometimes, especially when orders are disobeyed, this proves impossible. However,’ she sniffs and looks out of the window, ‘this attention from them is something you must accustom yourself to in life.’ I go to hand her back the hanky. ‘Keep it,’ she says with another sniff, ‘as well as that word of advice.’ Then she goes out and bangs the door.
After a bit, Masha looks up at the ceiling. ‘Stop whimpering,’ she says, ‘we’re only monsters to those pigs. If they don’t need us, we don’t need them. Not like we’re monsters to anyone who matters, is it? Not to anyone in here. You heard what she said, we’ve just got to get used to it.’
I nod. But how do you get used to someone fainting in terror when they see you? I put a pillow over my head. I don’t want to go back Outside ever, ever, ever. We turn into monsters when we go Outside.
We hear about Pasha losing his legs and he kisses Masha
‘You’re a sheep. A stupid. Silly. Stubborn. Shitty. Sheep!’ Masha thumps my arm to emphasize each word.
There are only two kids in Ward G right now, and they’re sitting in silence, watching her hitting me. Masha doesn’t normally hit me in front of other people. Most of the kids in our ward are doing schooling or physio at the moment, so we’re just sitting on our bed by the window. The crowds are still there by the gate.
‘No. Won’t go out,’ I say, holding my bruised arm. ‘Won’t.’
‘They’ll take us out the back door through the kitchens, that’s what they said. We can play in the yard where the skips are.’
‘Won’t. Can’t make me.’ She’s tried, but she can’t. I won’t even start to walk.
‘But think what we’ll find in the skips. All sorts. It’ll be like looking for treasure. We might find dog brains or … or, gold nuggets.’
‘Won’t.’
