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‘Or scrunched-up newspapers with pictures of Yuri Gagarin.’ She looks at me hopefully. ‘Loads and loads of photos of him.’ I shake my head. It’s stupid now to think of going up in space with Yuri Gagarin like I did in my dreams. He’s a Healthy.
‘Won’t.’
She slams her fist down on the bed.
‘Yolki palki! I’ll smash your skull in!’
‘Hey, Mashdash!’
It’s Pasha. He’s poked his head round the door. ‘Wanna go play with my dice on the stairs?’
‘Yeah, I’ll come,’ says Masha, hopping down from the bed. ‘Better than staying here talking to this Cretin.’
Playing dice with Pasha isn’t going Outside so I hop down with her and we run off down the corridor with Pasha scooting in front on his trolley. He hasn’t got his new legs yet. Aunty Nadya’s husband, Uncle Vasya, has no legs either but he has a proper fat chair like a wooden car to sit in with three big wheels and two paddles which he pulls and pushes himself along with. Everyone else just uses trolleys on the floor until they get given new legs. Uncle Vasya didn’t want false legs. He liked his own best. Pasha’s fast. Faster than anyone. Bet he’d be faster than Uncle Vasya even.
‘Let’s play Kiss or Pinch,’ Masha says, once we’re all sitting on the stone stairs by the half-open back door. Pasha’s sitting next to her. I’m glad he’s not sitting next to me. Kiss or Pinch is a silly game. She throws the dice.
‘Odd number! Pinch!’ She can pinch him anywhere and she always pinches really hard.
‘Aiii! You pinch like a crocodile!’ He throws the dice.
‘Odd! Kiss!’ He kisses her in her ear so loud I can hear and she jumps back.
‘You kiss like an exploding bomb!’
I don’t get turns. I’m glad. I don’t want to get kissed by Pasha. I don’t even want to watch him kissing Masha.
They go on playing for a bit and then Masha says, ‘Tell us about how you got your legs chopped off.’
‘Again?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘You’re strange, you are. OK. I’d gone down with my mates to watch the prisoners working on digging this ditch outside our village. We played this game that whenever the guard wasn’t looking, one of us would jump out and tag a prisoner.’
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Cos you get some of his meanness passed on. See?’ He tags Masha then goes to bite me, growling. We all laugh. He’s got dimples like Yuri Gagarin. ‘I was lookout on the railway track, it was a dead-end track, see, so there was never any trains. Then I hear this noise and turn round and there’s a train reversing down the track. Come out of nowhere, it did.’ Masha’s sucking the dice in her mouth. I think she might swallow it when it comes to this next bad part.
‘So I’m wearing my cousins’ shoes, which are too big and laced up round the sole and my ankles to keep them on, so when I go to get off the track, one of them’s stuck in the rails, see? So I’m sitting there screaming my head off and pulling to get the shoe out and the kids are running up the bank to the train, to get the driver to stop …’
‘Why didn’t you just untie the laces?’ says Masha in a thick voice because the dice is still in her mouth.
‘Didn’t think of it. All I can think of is this train rolling back towards me with sparks flying, and then ZING!!!’ We both jump. We always do at that bit. ‘I got electrocuted and next thing I know I wake up in hospital with no legs left.’
‘What happened to them?’ says Masha. She knows what happened to them, so do I, but she wants to hear again. ‘The train rolled over me and cut them clean off. If I hadn’t got electrocuted and fallen back, I might’ve been cut in half myself.’
‘But what happened to the legs?’ says Masha again.
‘My dad went back and got them – he thought they’d be able to sew them back on, but they couldn’t because he didn’t put them in ice, see. So he buried them in the garden instead. Maybe he thought they’d grow back into a new me. Anyway, Mum goes out and cries over them every day but they’ll have rotted away and have all worms in them by now.’
‘Healthy!’ says Masha, and takes the dice out of her mouth, wipes it on her sleeve and throws it again. ‘Kiss!’
‘Shhh!’ Pasha puts his hand over her mouth. There are voices by the back door and we’re not allowed to sit on the stone steps. I can smell stinky papirosa smoke.
‘Bloody nightmare, getting in this morning,’ says one of the voices. It’s probably one of the nannies or cleaners because the nurses don’t swear.
‘It’s spread all round town like wildfire; they’re like a pack of slavering dogs out there. It’s disgusting.’
‘Can’t blame them really. They want to see the Two-Headed Girl. Give them something to blab about.’
‘Some of the questions though …’
‘… like – has it been sewn together by Stalin’s scientists as an experiment …’
‘… or come down from Outer Space … heard that one?’
‘Heard them all. Brought back by Gagarin …’
‘Work of the Devil …’
‘Poor kids. One thing they’re right about: they should never have been left to live.’
‘Seem happy enough …’
‘For now …’
They go off then.
We don’t say anything for a bit. I’m shivering. Or trembling or something. I wish Pasha wasn’t here.
‘Yobinny idiots,’ says Pasha. ‘Ignorant goats, the lot of them. There’s nothing wrong with you two. Except you can’t kiss for peanuts. Well, Masha can’t. How about you, Dash?’ He leans over to me. ‘I should get two kisses for the price of one with a Girl with Two Heads, right?’ He laughs.
I don’t want to. I’m feeling sick, but I kiss him on the cheek anyway, as he’s right there, so close I can smell his soapiness, and I feel all tingly when I do. And stop shaking. And then he kisses me back on my cheek. And that feels all tingly too.
Aunty Nadya always comes in to say night-night before she goes off her shift, so I ask her then. It was Masha who told me to. I ask in a whisper so the other kids can’t hear.
‘Why are we Together? Were w-we sewn together?’ We looked, when we got back to the ward, but we can’t see any stitches or a scar or anything, not even the smallest little trace. ‘Are there other children who are Together like us? Or are we from another p-planet?’ I don’t remember being on another planet but we’d have been babies when we came down. The only thing I do know is that Gagarin didn’t bring us back.
She jumps back, all shocked and cross.
‘Well! What on earth put all that nonsense into your head? What ridiculous questions! I don’t know how you think them up, I really don’t.’
I bite my lip. I have to ask the next one, quick. Masha’s looking out of the window like she’s not listening at all, like she’s not interested. ‘And what … what would happen if we got c-cut in half?’ Masha told me to ask that, after Pasha told us about his legs. We remember that man we saw from the window in the Ped, who got cut in half by the tram and got sewn together, Mummy said. What would have happened if we were on the track?
Aunty Nadya looks like someone’s slapped her. She stands there with her mouth in a big O.
‘Cut in half?!’ She says it so loud some of the other kids look round, so she pushes her hair back into her cap and straightens her white coat a bit. ‘Gospodi! That’s quite enough of that! It’s nyelzya to ask questions. Do you understand? Nyelzya!’ We both nod. She straightens our bed covers and then leaves. Just like that, without even kissing us.
‘Told you not to ask,’ says Masha, sniffing. ‘Go to sleep. And don’t wake me up with all your stupid tossing around.’
I can’t sleep. Not knowing why we’re Together gives me lots of nightmares. And now I’ll probably have nightmares about being a slimy monster too. Not Masha though. She sleeps sound as a stone. I wish I’d been born Masha instead of me.
Age 14
March 1964
We go on a day trip to see Uncle Lenin
We’re naked down in a well, but it’s not a dark well, it’s all lit up and the walls are made of slippery glass, so though we can see the opening at the top, we can’t climb up to it. There’s people’s faces, lit up white, staring in at us, all around on every little bit of glass with their mouths open wide like leeches sticking to a jar. I can’t hear them but I know they’re screaming and their hands are flat against the glass, trying to get in at us. The glass cracks at the bottom and I see the crack run up past me to the top and know it’s about to break wide open and let them all in to grab us and tear us to pieces like wild dogs, because we shouldn’t be alive … I start screaming too …
‘Shut up!’ Masha slaps me.
‘Arrghh!’ I sit up. She slaps me again.
‘You and your stupid nightmares! You’ve woken the whole ward.’
I blink and look around at the beds lined up against the wall in the darkness, but my head’s still full of those faces.
‘It was that dream, Mash, down in the well … the same one.’
‘With me?’
‘I’m always with you in my nightmares.’
‘Thanks a lot … Well, never mind, you’re awake now, and so am I, what with all that screaming. And anyway, Aunty Nadya says, “Bad Dreams – Good Life. Good Dreams – Bad Life.” See? And today’s the best day ever, because we’re going Outside on our Day Trip!’
She jumps out of bed to pull back the curtain. It’s starting to get light. ‘We’re going to be dressed in our new trousers and shirts.’
‘I know.’ I get up and we go over to the window to look out at the weather. It’s icy cold, but there’s an orange sunrise making everything glow red. It’s going to be sunny. I press my nose against the window, reading the big red slogans as hard as I can, to stop the pictures from the nightmare filling my head. To Have More we must Produce More. To Produce More we must Know More. I see it every morning, but I don’t ever know more. I hate that all the other children in the world are going to school and learning all about everything, so they can work to build Communism, and me and Masha aren’t. We’re fourteen now and we should know loads, but we stopped knowing things at eleven. As Lucia would say, it really sucks. (She said she’d write when she left but she never did, just like all the others. Perhaps she ran away again.)
‘Real trousers made from Boris Markovich’s curtains! Lya-lya topo-lya!’ laughs Masha. I stop frowning and smile at her. She’s funny. There’s a shortage of fabric Outside, so they used the curtains from Professor Popov’s office to make them with. And we’re going in his black Volga, driven by his own chauffeur. ‘We’re going to see Lenin!We’re going to see Lenin!’ sings Masha, dancing down the ward and sticking her tongue out at the other kids who are slowly waking up.
The 7 a.m. bell clangs and we run down to the washroom to be first in line.
Two hours later we’re in the car on our way.
‘What’s that? What’s that?’ shouts Masha, bouncing up and down in the back seat.
‘It’s the Red October chocolate factory – see, it says Red October across the top,’ says Aunty Nadya, who’s sitting with us.
‘It’s huge! How come it’s so huge when there’s no chocolate? Where does all the chocolate go?’
‘Well now … there’s a shortage because it has to supply the whole of the Soviet Union, you see. That’s a lot of chocolate.’
The only time we ever get chocolate is when Anokhin comes to visit us in SNIP. None of the other kids have ever tasted it. Not ever. Not even the Family kids.
‘When we build Communism, we’ll eat it all the time!’ says Masha. ‘For breakfast, lunch and dinner! There’ll be chocolate factories everywhere instead of just this one!’
Ivan Borisovich, the chauffeur, winds down his window. ‘You can smell the chocolate fumes,’ he says, smiling into the mirror. We both sniff with our noses in the air and we can, we really can smell nothing but chocolate. Everyone’s happy, even Aunty Nadya is bursting with happiness through her frowny face, I can always tell.
‘Does all of Moscow smell of chocolate?’ asks Masha. ‘All of it?’
‘No,’ he says, smiling. ‘Only here.’
‘Can we go to the Red October chocolate f-factory instead?’ I ask. ‘I don’t think I want to go to the M-Mausoleum.’
‘Now then, Dasha, how many times have I told you that we’ll drive right over Red Square, up to the door, and give you a king’s chair ride with a rug over your laps, so you’ll look like two Healthy girls.’
‘Red Square! Red Square!’ sings Masha, bouncing again. ‘Look! What’s that? What’s that?’
‘That’s a ferry boat which takes tourists up and down the Moskva River.’
‘Can we go on a f-ferry boat instead?’ I ask.
‘No, Dashinka. This is an educational trip, before you join the Young Pioneers. The ceremony’s soon and all the children in Moscow go to the Mausoleum before they join. You know all that. About time you joined the Pioneers. Better late than never …’
I look out, pressing my nose to the window, staring at all the flat-faced, grey blocks of flats, all looking the same, with their hundreds of windows where families live. The pavements are full to bursting with people who’ve just come out of the Metro, walking in black coats and black boots. I’ve never walked on a street before. I’ve never been down in the trains that run through tunnels in the ground. Aunty Nadya says the Metro stations are like palaces, with sculptures and chandeliers and sparkling mosaics. Palaces for the People, she says. They’re lucky. I’d love to walk on a street and go on a train under the ground and be like everyone else.
‘What’s that, with the golden hat?’
‘Cupola, not hat, Masha. It’s a Russian Orthodox church where ignorant people used to pray to their god.’ I stare at it as we drive past, it looks all small and scared, squashed between the big grey blocks, but its gold cupola shines brighter than anything I’ve ever seen before.
‘Is it real gold?’ I ask.
‘Yes, yes, it is.’ She sniffs. ‘Very thin gold leaf.’ Then she shakes her head. ‘Pozor.’
I don’t know what’s disgraceful about it, but I don’t say anything. The road’s wide but it’s empty, like the river, except for some lemon-yellow taxis and some other official black Volgas with chauffeurs like ours.
‘What’s that? What’s that with the spire? It looks like a fairy castle. Is it a fairy castle?’
‘No, Masha, of course not. Gospodi, you are about to join the Pioneers, do stop dreaming. It’s one of Stalin’s towers. There are eight of them. They’re the tallest buildings in Moscow. See, there’s another one over there.’ I stare out to where she’s pointing and see it for myself, all soaring and beautiful. I love Moscow! There are trees and islands and flowers and chocolate factories and People’s underground Palaces. Moscow must be the best city in the whole wide world.
I just don’t really want to go to the Mausoleum.
We drive down a cobbled side street near Red Square. There are still no other cars. My heart’s beating like a drum and I keep wiping my hands on the rug because they’re sweaty. I want to keep driving and driving and looking and looking and never stop.
‘Chort!’ Ivan Borisovich brakes hard and we nearly knock our heads on the back of his seat. There’s a militiaman standing with his hand up right in front of us, on the edge of Red Square. We look past him, across all the cobbles going on and on for ages and ages, across to the little black Mausoleum surrounded by crowds where Lenin is. Ivan Borisovich gets out to talk to him, but we can only hear bits, like only official cars and nyelzya. He gets back in the car and lights up a papirosa.
‘Won’t let us drive across. Now what?’
‘Nyetnyetnyet!’ I grab at Aunty Nadya. ‘I’m not w-walking, there’s a long, long queue, they’ll all be watching us g-getting c-closer! I’m not, I’m not!’
‘Of course not! Outrageous!’ says Aunty Nadya, and gets out of the car leaving the door open. ‘Now then, Comrade Militiaman, I have two girls here who are Defective, but they are about to join the Young Pioneers. You cannot deny them the right to visit the Mausoleum as part of their propaganda education. This car belongs to the Director of the Central Scientific Prosthetics Institute and as such is official. Everything is arranged. I demand that you let us past.’
‘Nyelzya,’ says the militiaman again. He spits on the ground and taps his baton on the bonnet. ‘Turn around.’
‘We will NOT turn around!’ storms Aunty Nadya. ‘These girls are invalids, they cannot walk across Red Square.’
‘Let them crawl then. And invalids should be locked away, not paraded across town for Healthies to see.’ He spits again.
I want to cry but I can’t even breathe. Masha’s bobbing all up and down like a rubber ball trying to see him.
