Butterfly Skin (11 page)

“An expert site?”

“Well, yes. An expert site with a strong community-oriented component. A system of forums, a chat room, blogs.”

“You think people will go for it?”

“Of course they will.”

“Okay, they’ll show up once from the banners or the links, but what’s going to make them come back? What are they going to discuss in the forums?”

“Suggestions about the psychological profile of the killer, previous similar cases in history, possible motives… there’s plenty of stuff!”

“You idealize our subscribers. Everything you just mentioned is material for expert articles. The simple reader will only visit a forum for one reason: to say what should be done with this man when they catch him.”

“All right. If that’s so, we’ll drop the forums. But I think the site could become a gateway for the public to talk with the authorities. The police could use the site to warn the people of Moscow, people could report their suspicions, demand that measures be taken, etc.”

“You’re an idealist
. What makes you think the authorities are prepared to talk to the public?”

“
The authorities need to exploit every possible channel for getting information across. They won’t close the site down, and they won’t take it away from us either. That’s too much hassle – they’ll have to give us interviews and write press releases for us. Apart from that, we’ll get the charities and non-profit organizations involved: psychological help for parents of the victims, fundraising for those who can still be helped by money, announcements of people who have gone missing. My experience as a journalist tells me there’ll be more than enough content
.”

“OK. If that’s right, your site will get into the news programs. And you get five or seven thousand unique visitors a day.”

“Wow! We’re in the Rambler top ten!
”

“
And then we’ll start selling advertising and make it into a commercial project.”

“Will we sell a lot?”

“You won’t make much on banners. But the targeted ads – that’s a real wow!”

“And where will we get them from?”

“All the fitness clubs that have anything remotely like courses of self-defense for women; online bookshops who sell books like the hundred most famous killers of our time; CDs and DVDs like
Murder Ballads
or
The Silence of the Lambs
. The promotion company for any new film about a psycho – and they come out every month. Shops that sell weapons for self-defense. And there must be something else I’ve forgotten.”

“Is this all realistic?”

“IMHO yes. You collect the material, and I’ll find the clients.”

“Wow, at last we’ll be working together!”

“Like in the good old days
.”

“Okay, all I have to do now is talk to Pasha.”

* * *

The medium, as Marshall McLuhan once said, is the message. That is, the means for the mass distribution of information is more important than the information itself. Or to put it slightly differently, the messenger is the message. Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian academic who studied means of communication. He died a long time ago, and his most famous phrase was spoken about television. It would be amusing to hear what he would have said if he’d seen the internet. But Marshall McLuhan isn’t saying anything and there’s no way he can know if his prophecies came true. Anyway, almost fifty years ago, he forecast that with the appearance of national TV, local dialects would die out. Well, now half a century has passed and what’s happened? Local dialects are still the same as they were – and not just in Russia, but in America, where there’s far more TV around. This alone would be enough for the Canadian academic McLuhan to be forgotten forever. But in our business, as I know only too well, what’s valued is not how accurate a prediction is, but how neatly it’s formulated, how catchy the idea is. The form is the content, the messenger is the message, a rose is a rose is a rose.

I’ve been working as a journalist for ten years now, and I have a pretty good nose for ideas. Not that I’ve come up with anything absolutely brilliant all that often, but when it comes to grasping other people’s ideas, I’m as good as it gets. And now this evening, as I’m sitting in the Rake Restaurant (fabulous design and equally fabulous low prices), having dinner with my boss Ksenia, I understand immediately what she has in mind. This special project is going to be a real bombshell. Because we can take the subject away from the gutter press and do it so people won’t be ashamed to visit the site. We’ll create an environment where they can express their secret fears and secret desires. And the environment is the intermediary, as Marshall McLuhan didn’t say. Ksenia says it’s an intermediary between the authorities and the public, but I think it’s between every one of us and our most secret dream.

I’ve been working as a journalist for ten years now, and most of my bosses were firmly convinced that journalism is a form of PR. Commercial PR, political PR, election PR. Our big boss Pasha Silverman once read somewhere that the ideal photo model should have a completely blank face, so that you can draw anything you like on it. And he’s very fond of saying that a journalist should have a completely blank brain, so that you can draw any idea on it. I feel rather offended when I hear that, and not just because I have a very high opinion of my own brain. Deep in my heart, I still believe that a journalist is an intermediary. If not between the public and the authorities, then at least between people. Someone who can tell some people about others.

I regret that I didn’t go to Chechnya four years ago. Oxana lay down across the threshold, with her red hair that hadn’t started turning gray yet flowing free, like Andromache.

“You’re not going to make our children orphans,” she said, “you’re not going anywhere.”

“It’s pretty safe there,” I lied.

“It can’t be safe there,” said Oxana, “remember Moscow in ’93, isn’t that enough for you? And anyway, you’ll come back from there a sick man. Normal people don’t go to war voluntarily, especially to a war like that.”

I tried to protest, but I already knew I wasn’t going anywhere, because a profession is all well and good, but I had a family, Oxana and two children. And so the Second Chechen War happened without me, if, of course, you can say that, bearing in mind that I put information about explosions and casualties on the news every day. But I still regret that I didn’t go. I thought being there was a debt I owed to the boy who went to the faculty of journalism in order to conquer the lies of the state, a debt I ought to repay.

That evening when I decided to stay in Moscow, Oxana and I made love again. We don’t make love very often, especially since our second child was born. Six years of marriage will cool any ardent passion, but that evening I threw her down on her back and forced myself into her body desperately, as if I was knocking at a locked door. I came quickly and suddenly burst into tears. During the years we’ve been together, I’ve made love to many women, but I’ve never wanted to cry with my arms still round them, or as I unclasped my embrace immediately after the final eruption. But that evening I lay with my face pressed into her red hair and sobbed, without even knowing why, and Oxana stroked my hair and looked up at the ceiling and kept repeating
Lyoshenka, Lyoshenka
, perhaps thinking some thoughts of her own. The speaker is more important than what is spoken – and I pressed my entire body against her and felt like Hector, who never did see his Troy.