Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [219]
“It is as if she is living in a mortuary,” one very well-known spin doctor informed me one time. “A normal person cannot be exposed to a constant torrent of deaths and describe it endlessly.”
“A normal person cannot help feeling that in front of their eyes part of the country is being turned into a mortuary and cannot help wanting to do their utmost to hinder it. Even less can they adapt so completely to being in a mortuary that they wander in eating cake,” I told him. “And this really is an endless topic. Who is more normal, the person who cries out in pain, or the person who pretends there’s no problem? ‘Ooh, you were quite right to stamp on my foot. It doesn’t hurt a bit, I’m enjoying it! Please go ahead and stamp on my other foot too, because …’ ” Well, because that way, even though you are powerless, you can still seem to be in control.
But you aren’t in control, and it isn’t normal! The world is topsy-turvy and, hanging down head first, you so much want to be included in the society of morally decent people. It wouldn’t be decent to hate Anna, but you can not love her quite enough without losing face. Something is nevertheless hiding in there behind that “not quite enough,” perhaps the way people feel about themselves, a feeling deep inside that the life they are living in Russian society in the guise of decent people is not close enough to really being alive. They tried so hard to live as good people, but somehow they weren’t really; while once upon a time Anna did, and was, and that was not a fairy tale.
I remember once we were discussing some film with a lot of parts, something about special operations. It was one of those conversations fitted in while we were both busy with something else. We were checking through something on our computers and in the process exchanging comments about how disgusting this kind of false romanticisation was, abundantly spiced with racism and violence. We were going through examples which I no longer remember, and wondered what the people who created such a product would get out of it.
“Well nothing, I suppose, except a lot of money and some prizes,” I said, not taking my eyes off the monitor.
“They will bring shame on themselves,” Anna said with such conviction that I turned round and looked at her, uncertainly and with a half-smile at first: what was this? Did she really mean it?
“They will bring shame on themselves!” she repeated heatedly.
She had just been very decently brought up; that was the whole explanation. Of course, we all had explained to us when we were little what was good and what was bad. Everybody knows that. It’s just that as we grow up, we tend to drop the heavy stuff, some to a greater and some to a lesser extent. Some unload it on to the scrap heap, others just relegate it to the cellar or the attic of their consciousness, because it is difficult to live wearing these penitential chains of morality, especially when most people have long ago chosen the easy way. In any case, there are attributes of “merit” – like cynicism, or scepticism, or that sure-fire winner, wit – which hardly weigh anything at all. With wit you are received into the society of morally decent people, you turn a caustic phrase and, even if there is no action behind your words, the topic is closed. You are sharp. You are cool.
The quandary was formulated long ago: “To Be or To Seem?” If you choose the latter, you will live long. Whereas Anna chose the former and has been murdered.
I remember how I first heard the news, and to this day it is as if I have a foreign body lodged in my brain: “Anna has been killed.” It is as if a red streamer flares up in my mind, and hurts, and gives me no peace, and cuts into me and oppresses me. “Anna has been killed.” “They have killed Anna.” “Anna …” It was exactly as if a fire had engulfed a virtual space needed simply to take the fact in. I remember those first hours, our friends