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