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By Root 1125 0

ashen faced, the businesslike investigators, the television cameras. While you are answering their questions, you feel you are going around with a watering can, putting things out, trying to rescue what has not already been burned to a cinder, some features. You move the markers they are already putting down in a way that makes you rise up in revulsion and shout “No!” You say, “What are you talking about? What sort of “iron lady” was she? You haven’t even read her! “Indefatigable soldier” – who are you talking about? Anna? For heaven’s sake, the minute she came into the office she could tell me what perfume I was wearing. What kind of bloody soldier does that? She dressed elegantly, stylishly. She was an amazingly devoted mother to her children.”

Our children grew up together not in front of our eyes but because we talked about them. When you sit next to someone in a small room for seven years, you know about every boil, every joy and torment, all the enthusiasms and achievements of your colleague’s children, and she knows all about yours.

Anna treated her children with such care and respect, and such a reserved tenderness came into her voice. You might not have heard her say their names, but you could tell immediately from her tone of voice that she was talking to one of them. There was so much pain when things were not going well, and so much delight and pride when there was cause for celebration. “Galya, my son is now earning more than I do!”

Her tone was light, as if to say, “There, we’ve lived to see the day!” But the exclamation marks were dancing in her eyes: “I have lived to see my son completely grown up. I don’t need to worry about him now. Everything is going well!”

And now, here we are.

I remember how much she loved coffee, and brought a coffee-maker to work. After she was poisoned on the way to Beslan she wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything she liked. She seemed to be sustained by air and work. I don’t believe that people suddenly become mortal. There’s nothing sudden about it. We just find it easier to believe that. If someone isn’t dead then everything must be pretty much OK. We had used up all our reserves of concern for her, and that’s always the way: as soon as you stop worrying, something bad happens.

She was edgy and run-down, and frequently in tears, but it was amazingly easy to comfort her. A long time ago I stumbled upon a method and thereafter used it shamelessly. She could be comforted like a child by distracting her attention. It was useless to start arguing with her or giving her advice when she was in that kind of state. You needed to hear her out, and then as if quite randomly tell her something amusing. The tears would still be flowing, but already there was a smile, so open, so genuine. And then that infectious laugh. Everybody who knew her remembers how she could laugh.

Anna was very much alive, a real human being.

Anna was? I remember the phrase, “He is a coward. He will kill someone if he is afraid of them.” If she hated someone’s acts she brought them out into the light, to be judged. They, furtively, sneaking along a wall, inside a lift, killed Anna.

I’m really not that interested in what happens to those cowards, I know it already. I believe the theory that we live several lives and I read an elaboration, I don’t remember where, but it very much appealed to me. It was to the effect that in this life conscience makes things awkward for us. That’s true, isn’t it? It causes a lot of trouble. It’s at the root of all our problems. It’s like a hermit’s chains, why deny it? In fact it really doesn’t seem to serve any useful purpose. But if we imagine that a mother’s womb is a different world in which the human embryo lives, and we know that it lives there for a long time with its little hands and feet, we can equally well ask: what does he need them for, in that life? They just get in the way. They don’t serve any purpose. It’s completely incomprehensible what they are for until the moment of birth, but if then you were born without them, it would be a disaster. You would be a cripple.