 But this is, again, not our
original track!?
—
transsib — transsib — transsib
...
 On 19th May
1891, the first
pickaxes dug into frozen Siberian soil.
More than seventy thousand workers were
employed, most of them convicts.
Thousands perished. The Transsib was
built on bones, the Russians say ...
„… and I love the luxury
offered by it today …“
And, who are you, please?
„Karl-Heinz Jeller, born 1954,
enthusiastic traveller, in the Seventies
of last century as hitch-hiker through
Europe, in the Eighties as backpacker
through Asia and Latin America —
today professionally around the world. I
am Head of the travel-staff at the
Austrian daily KURIER.
… And you know, my colleagues there
were surprised to see me preparing my
next project: You will need the fidgets,
they said, and, honestly, I did not
expect much apart from the experience of
time and of the wideness of Asia. Birches
to the left, birches to the right. Much
of a region, no landscape. However, it
turned out to be different.
7.865 Kilometres across Asia, seemingly
endless. Crossing the Taiga, the steppes,
the Gobi Desert, without a stop-over you
are on the train for one hundred and
seventy hours, seven days and seven
nights.
Perhaps, no other travel is calling for
an explanation like this one; a distance
you could cover in seven hours by plane
which is like the flight of a rocket
compared with the voyage on the Transsib.
One week to get to your destination. In
times of weekend-flights to New York and
of virtual speed on Internet, it has got
its prickling charm. What to do with so
much time? What to do with yourself?
A new dimension — a delightful
involvement in slow motion, a
chess-player’s move against
stupefaction by speed, with an average of
46,2 km/h around almost one quarter of
the globe …
To be on the safe side, I decided against
the regular Rossija-train whose toilets
will be clogged after one day and thirty
travellers have to share two washing
basins. Instead, I chose the special
train for tourists, the Zarengold, booked
by a GERMAN TRAVEL-AGENCY (?) several
times a year to roll from Moscow to
Beijing.
The carriages of highest standard were
built in the Fifties of last century on
order of Nikita Khrushchev for use of the
government. Brezhnev used them, so did
Vladimir Putin. Precious wooden panels,
polished brass, plush fauteuils in each
compartment for two, perfectly working
showers, service of the highest grade and
the food — a poem — including
mounts of caviar. The GERMAN
TRAVEL-AGENCY (??) hired Putin’s
chef of the board-restaurant. And he
accepts comments of the tourists with
pokemon-tie on proudly swollen chest.
Moscow-Beijing — you are right, that
is not the classical route of the
Transsib. The original one is leading
over 9.289 km to Vladivostok in Russia‘s
Southeasterly corner. But for tourists it
is much more interesting … the
GERMAN TRAVEL-AGENCY (???) …“
—
transsib — transsib — transsib
...
Thanks, Herr Jeller … we
are at a loss to provide more question
marks in order to cover your sneaking
promotional attempts …
„Wait! Before you hook me off …
Much more interesting than a
railway-station made of marble, so much
featured by your Messr’s Trotsky and
Witte, is the station of Yekaterinburg
not far away from the imagined line
between Europe and Asia! …“
We were at that already, Herr
Jeller! Fourty kilometres outside, where
the bodies of the Tsar’s family had
been dumped, a Romanov-memorial is being
erected …
„Ach was, something else is the real
attraction for visitors to Yekaterinburg
— the cemetery on which the local
mafia buries its heroes with bombastic
creations of gravestones showing
life-size images of the deceased, in
photographic details: golden chains on
hairy chest, Rolex-watches at the wrist,
a glittering cell phone to the ear
…“
„Do they have in Kiev as well, but
including a penguin as status symbol
… great idea, should I use for my
Internet-portal minimovie.com ...“
„It would be plagiarism, Dimitri
Lesnewski — unless you would bargain
with your Ukrainian colleague Andrej
Kurkow, perhaps during a picnic on Ice?
Did we miss a connexion? Who are
these gentlemen, Lesnewski and Kurkow?
And what, please, is this
penguin-business about?
„TRAVELLING made by Jeller fixes
your know-how!
I brought you two profiteers of
post-revolutionary development in Russia
and in the Ukraine.
Both — so-called post-Soviet-people.
Both — no mafia-people.
Both — media-workers like me!
The first one produces TV, the other one
books.
The first one says:“
„At
home, everyone
knows me; here I am asked: who is this
man from Russia?“
„The second one says:“
„In my
heart, as in the
heart of every post-Russian person, there
is a bit nostalgia with regard to olden
times. We compare permanently our life
today with the life in the past, in the
Soviet Union, not even wanting to turn
back, but the experience does not let
loose.“
„Whereupon we have arrived at the
‚Death and the Penguin‘, your
success-novel, Andrej Kurkow.“
„Well, my
main-protagonist is Viktor, a writer who
,got stuck between journalistic trials
and small works of prose‘. He has no
profession, no income, no family, no
woman. But he has an unusual companion.
He shares his place with a king-penguin
whom he had saved from the
liquidation-chunk of Kiev’s zoo. The
Editor of the capital’s newspaper
engages him as a writer of necrologies.
His task: to prepare necrologies for
prominent people who are still alive; but
he shall write them in a way ,as never
before anything was written about them‘.
And Viktor writes, he pops up dry facts
with pathetic-philosophical tirades,
about factory-owners and politicians,
about artists and army-men, and he signs
his works, as recommended, with four
question marks. He notices that the
records of those VIPs are sprinkled with
dark spots, however, it does not bother
him. ,People with a clean record do not
exist’; the trails of those who
climbed up in society would show,
necessarily, the one or the other bend.
Viktor’s moral indifference is en
vogue; if the battle is going on between
hostile mafia-clans outside you don’t
go near the window. And it is somehow
natural that his editor disappears and
that he himself must hide for a while in
a dacha outside of town.
Misha, someone with a doubtful
mafia-background, hands him over his four
year old daughter and a wade of money
before he gets somehow chopped as the
involuntary step-father is being told.
Viktor engages a maid, asks her to stay
over night and he ,plays family‘,
with picnic, excursions and the dream of
a little house in the countryside:
without conviction, without love, only
because it happens. Unfortunately, his
small happiness does not fit into the
criminal upheavals of Kiev. Viktor’s
necrologies turn out to be really unique:
suspiciously soon after the necrologies
are written those who are described in
them meet a sudden death, they are either
murdered or fall victim to an ,accident‘.
Behind this, it is hinted, there are some
people who want to ,clean the country‘.
But it is the criminal syndicate with
most victims that puts soft pressure on
Viktor to appear on the cemetery together
with his penguin. They take the bird as a
symbol of a high class funeral. The
penguin is turned by that murderous
section of Kiev’s society not only
into a symbol of status but, at the same
time, into a symbol of death.“
.„You have
to sell me the
film-rights, Andrei Jurjewitsch! Next
year I am going to buy a private
TV-station in Germany — daily one
hour with short films from my
minimovie-stock. The penguin could be a
starter …“
„Dimitri Lesnewski,
thirteen million Euro, that is the amount
you have spent on this mini-station which
German TV-watchers know under the label
‚Das Vierte‘ and which they
have to look for with a magnifying glass
...“
„The penguin … or even
mini-movies from this rolling
railway-stage? I like what you are doing
here, and why should I do something which
is already available in abundance?
STOP HOLLYWOOD! …
German TV compensated the absence of
own ideas for too long with deals on the
British or the American TV-market.
Whether I want it or not, I’ll have
to challenge German habits by approaching
everything in a more unorthodox manner.
I am thirty-eight now. In Russia, Ren TV,
founded by me and my mother in 1997, just
held a percentage of viewers which never
rose above five per cent. But the content
tickled the Kreml, and during Putin’s
second term we got in trouble.
In 2005 banks close to the Kreml and the
RTL-group took over. What they have done
with it? Well, everyone rushes to Russia
and to China in order to make money.
I am an artist and an independent
film-producer, I was not keen to join the
classical league of oligarchs, and I did
not want to join the fate of ex-TV-boss
Wladimir Gussinski or ex-billionaire
Michail Chodorkowski either, one in
exile, the other one in jail …
In Russia, we do not have a free press
but many free people. It cannot be turned
back, but, you see, the drive within the
wide range of Russian society is not
clear yet …
At the
moment, there is no
serious demand for genuine freedom —
but there is a big demand for the freedom
to earn much money.“
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