FIRST MEMORIES

Here is Deep State Kuba's first Substack contribution

Often I will ask people about their first memories. There are several reasons why I do this, not all of which are devious. It’s a relatively unusual type of question, especially as an ice breaker, so it gets people to lower their defenses; likewise, few people have a pat answer, so they have to think, to recall, and then they provide you with a genuine anecdote, which may not always be interesting but is usually true. It also asks them to remember their early childhood, so it regresses them to a time where they were more open, more direct and more trusting. The result is sometimes amusing, occasionally memorable, but always an insight into the character of your companion. I can still remember on of my friend’s stories, of riding around in a grocery cart along with the shopping, a few items in easy reach. Her distracted mother was focussing on other things, so she completely missed her toddler devouring all of the florets off of a bunch of broccoli, that is until she arrived at the check out and pulled a bundle of gnawed green stems from out the trolley. There is also, of course, Louis CK’s first memory, of a childhood bowel movement so epic and intense it booted his conscious mind online in the middle of it. From those beginnings, it’s difficult not to identify a touch of inevitability to the course of his life and career.

The reason why first memories are of particular interest to me is partly because of my own early childhood. I have lived through grand adventures and momentous events, most of which occurred while I still a drooling, gurgling baby and therefore have no recollection. I was born in late Communist Poland, a year or two before the first outbreak of the Solidarity movement, as the old system spiraled down in terminal political and economic decline and the benighted Poles began to mobilize against it in massive, non-violent protest. My parents tell stories of the lives ruined by blacklists and repression, of cities made grim at night by austerity-induced power cuts that blacked out cities of millions, and of sad socialist stores offering nothing to their long-queuing customers but salt and vinegar. I remember none of this. Nor do I remember the scheme my parents hatched to deliver us from that system - one which they believed would go on forever or, at the very least, outlive all of us - by gaining passports to work in Nigeria. I imagine the scene of my mother screaming at the immigration official who initially withheld the documents for my sister and myself, or the first flight to Lagos where we changed planes in Tripoli where, as a result of a spat between Qaddafi and his erstwhile Soviet allies, bearded Libyan storm troopers, bandoliers of ammunition slung over their chests, formed a wall to block the untrustworthy Eastern Bloc passengers from the domestic side of the terminal. I know that I fell seriously ill in Nigeria, probably with malaria, and that my father flattened our VW bug in a major car accident that he, mercifully walked away from, and that my sister was once stranded at school by a negligent neighbor and had to walk across a completely unknown suburb with only three words of English, picking her course through instinct and desperation. I know this, but I do not remember any of it, any of Nigeria at all - not the markets, not the riots, not the rains, not the call of the muezzin. We returned to Poland after I had turned three, but this was to a brief and final visit before we left the Eastern Bloc a final time, illegally and irreversibly. My parents wanted to say farewell to their families, to see them one last time before what they believed would be a life-long separation. It was summer in Krakow, and I remember none of it - not the castle, not the oak trees, not the protests and lamentations of my grandmother who accused my father of abandoning her and his homeland for that woman, as she called my mother. Poland would loom in my life as the source of my culture and identity, but I took none of it with me when we left, my infant mind still innocent and clean. Nor do I recall our anxious escape - our papers were in order, thanks to a return ticket to Nigeria via Vienna, so in theory nothing should come up. In practice, the train ride from Krakow to Vienna through Czechoslovakia was a torment of tension for my family, hearts jumping each time the compartment door opened, panic mounting as border guard in the middle of the night patrolled the corridors - with dogs! Snarling, angry hounds - rousing people to check documents, occasionally demanding passengers off of the bus to unknown fates. It was tense for my family, but not for me - I remember none of it, and apparently I slept through the worst of it, snoring cozily in my seat while guards barked orders and a German shepherd growled at my sister. And then we arrived in Austria...

Herzlich wilkommen!

Austria I do remember, though not all of it. I do not recall our arrival into Vienna, and I do not know all of the details of our reception there. The choice of Austria was deliberate and crucial. The passports my parents had finagled for us by working in Nigeria were our ticket out of Poland, but the visa regimes in Western countries were then - as they are today - strict and remorseless for poor-country nationals who had not gone through proper channels. As fugitives from communism, proper channels were unavailable to us, so we had to rely on asylum to protect us from repatriation. The Austrians, witnessing the brutality of the suppression of Solidarity right on their doorstep, had announced their willingness to extend asylum to any Polish citizens who arrived on their soil. This wasn’t a painless process, however - the first step was getting to Austria, thankfully now behind us, and the second was to present yourself to Austrian authorities for processing and evaluation. This was conducted, with the famous German sensitivity and consideration, at Treiskirchen, a massive holding center that had previously served as a prison and a Soviet army barracks. Dutifully we arrived there, presented our papers and stated our case, filling out the appropriate paperwork and answering questions through my father’s deeply imperfect German. Once processed, we were assigned to a room - more of a cell, really - that we shared with another family. Of them I know nothing, where they were from, how long they had been there, what became of them. All I do know is that were there when we arrived, and remained there when we left.

We waited in the cell as the bureaucracy scrutinized our case and decided our fate. I do not know what the rule of Trieskirchen was like - this was still before I had any memory - but I know we were locked in at night, and our freedom severely curtailed. We did not know how long we would remain there - some people, even ones with perfectly reasonable cases, would languish in detention for months, uncertain if they would be sent back or not. One day passed, and then a second, and then a third and we were mercifully delivered from detention - asylum had been granted, and we were restored to liberty, even provided with housing, food and a small daily allowance in a refugee center in Baden, a spa town at the outskirts of Vienna, a delightful toy box of a village, complete with parks and castles and palaces and strudel. This was strictly temporary - the Austrians were generous with refugees but had no appetite for immigrants, and the rules of our status required us to find a third country that would accept us permanently. Even if temporary, though, Baden was a lovely and welcome refuge, and the beginning of a new life of freedom and opportunity.

I want to pause here to underline that fact - it was the Austrians who welcomed us into the fold of free and prosperous nations. My whole subsequent life - growing up in Canada, where I could learn French and English at school but still be proudly Polish; pursuing my education in the United States, where the best university in the world extended me a scholarship to put that degree within reach; the countless opportunities for travel, for creativity, for work and for joy that followed - is a consequence of that Austrian decision to take in this nervous and awkward, close to penniless Slavic family that had no friends or family in their country, no connection at all beyond (perhaps) a common humanity and a few European cultural ticks. If they had opted to reject our application - which was certainly within their power - the consequences would have been as grave in the other direction. My family would have been deported to the untender mercies of an sympathetic Communist government, with prison inevitable for my parents (possibly, though not probably, at a camp), leaving my sister and myself to drift between relatives, raised, in all likelihood, by elderly grandmothers made even frailer by their heartbreak at the fate of their children. I am prone to irony, sometimes bitterness, and there are hatreds I cherish in my heart, but even I am not so churlish as to deny the incalculable debt of gratitude that my family collectively and I personally owe to Austria and the Austrian people - thank you. That is all the reward I can realistically offer, but the appreciation and the gratitude is pure, and deep, and sincere.

That said, the Austrians are a f*cked up people.

Dungeon Daughters

Reductio ad Nazium is a rhetorical tick best avoided, but allow me to briefly point out that Austrians were over-represented in both the Nazi party and the SS, and that the government overthrown to make way for the Anschluss was not a cuddle-worthy liberal democracy but a nasty and repressive fascist despotism that disagreed with Hitler only about the relative centrality of the Roman Catholic Church and specialness of the Austrians with respect to the rest of the German Herrenvolk. So I’ll put that aside, although Jörg Haider, the deceased Austrian far-right political leader (whose movement won 28% of the vote in the last election), did not when referred to SS veterans as “fine fellows,” and enumerated a list of felonies with a perfect correspondence to Slavic and Balkan ethnicities. But I’m better than that, just as I’m too good to flush my colon with vodka-enemas before speeding off to visit my mom in my Volkswagen sports car (even his automotive taste had hints of the Third Reich), predictable killing myself in a speed induced car accident as I gun through Alpine passes at twice the already generous 70km/h speed limit.

But let us leave politics and instead concentrate on family, that most wholesome of institutions. Since 2008, not one but two cases of dungeon daughters were discovered in Austria, and I’m not even including Natascha Kampuscha who, though held captive and abused for more than 8 years, it was by a man who was not her father. Two different fathers were found to have raped, beaten and I prisoner their own daughters in their own homes. The Fritzl case is more famous, as Joseph Fritzl build an actual dungeon to imprison his daughter for 24 years, and then went on to father a clutch of children with her, half of whom he raised in the regular home, while the other half spent their whole lives in a dark, windowless cell with their sister-mother. No less horrifying but less well know is the case of Gottfried W., who kept his two daughter locked in the basement for 40(!) years, subjecting them to violence and sexual abuse until he became too frail to force himself on them. Now go and watch the Sound of Music.

But putting aside politics and incest, let us turn to Christmas, that unifying, European celebration. Though the whole continent celebrates the season, individual cultures do it in different ways - some limit festivities to Christmas Day, others celebrate on Christmas Eve, while most Catholic countries join the holiday to the feast day of St. Nicholas (December 6th). While British children are used to having Santa Claus descend down their chimney December 24th to put gifts in their stockings, Catholic kids on the continent have him pay a visit to deliver gifts on the 6th. Other variations abound - in Poland, we eat carp, while Scotts have Christmas puddings. Christmas trees are Scandinavian, while bells and chimes come from France and Italy. Every country has its own Christmas foods, Christmas songs and Christmas decorations. But only one country, Austria, has a Christmas demon.

Enter der Krampus

If you are imagining a naughty elf, pointy-eared and mischievous, playing pranks around the Yuletide holidays, you are wrong. If you are imagining a grumpy goblin, fattened on stolen cookies and cakes, pilfering presents and tracking snow into the house, you are wrong. If you are imaging a full-on devil, horned, cloven-hoofed, sheathed in coarse black hair, pornographic tongue lolling through needle-fangs, congratulations! You’re on the right track. You just missed the birch switch he carries in his hand to beat children, and the iron basket on his back for storing them and dragging them back to Hell. There is nothing cute or harmless about der Krampus - he is a predator straight from the nightmares of the European barbarians, preserved as a punisher-God by a uniquely perverse Alpine people, who decided that he would fit in perfectly with the festive and giving spirit of Christmas. In Austria, you see, he is Santa’s companion, traveling with him to scourge the naughty children even as the virtuous ones are rewarded. And the Austrians love der Krampus - while he shares December 6th with St. Nicholas, the nit of the fifth - Krampusnacht - is his alone, and men throughout Austria don their Krampus-clothesen to run amok spreading holiday terror. In Austria, apparently, it really doesn’t feel like the Christmas season until the hills ring with the screams of children.

We had arrived in Vienna in late Autumn, when I was three and a half. We were processed and settled in Baden, where the fall and early winter were resplendent in their beauty, though for this I have to take my parents word. The Austrians were generous and thoughtful, and only became more so as the Christmas season approached. As a Christian gesture towards the refugee families, they arranged a celebration for Saint Nicholas Day, with mulled wine and cognac for the parents, and free child are and a visit by Santa Claus for the kids. Predictably for a three-and-a-half year old, I was ecstatic at the prospect of meeting Santa Claus, who I knew as a magic-working Father Winter, who would arrive, dispense avuncular cheer, and deliver presents for all of us. No one briefed me about der Krampus. The other kids had been briefed - maybe they were older, maybe a little more in tune with the local culture, but for one reason or another they just knew. I did not.

My parents were seated in the lounge area, canoodling over a mug of spiced wine. I was with the other children, huddled by the door, waiting for our promised visitor. The Austrian staff were very good at stoking our anticipation. There were false alarms just designed to keep us on edge, and then an announcement - Santa Claus was getting close! I strained up on my little tip-toes hoping to peep him through the windows. The other children crowded another few inches in, and hushed. Another announcement - he had arrived at the building! More straining, and an even more intense quiet. Then, with a violent suddenness, the door was flung open, and through it leapt -

- a goat horned, cloven-hoofed, coarse black-furred Devil beast, brandishing a birch switch at us, bellowing through a fang-toothed jaw. My world became very still, though I was aware that I was surrounded by cheering, jumping, laughing children, as horror and terror dueled for primacy in my child-mind. The terror was the simple, animal fear of being devoured by a superior predator, and it was fierce. The horror was more abstract but no less real - I had not forgotten about Santa Claus, and the fact that this infernal abomination strutted and jabbered before me could only mean one thing: it had murdered, and possibly devoured, Father Christmas, and if the magical personification of holiday generosity could not withstand this monstrosity, what hope could I have? That is what I thought. This is what I did: I spun on me heel and launched myself away, running (toddling?) as fast as my chubby child-limbs could take me.

For a moment, let us shift perspectives - don’t worry, the terror will return - and consider the scene from inside der Krampus-suit. A young man, in the seasonal spirit (and I mean schnapps as much as cheer) and looking for a bit of excitement volunteers to do some kid and entertain das refugee-kinder at the asylum center. Tipsy, hopped up on performance adrenalin, he leaps inside the meeting room and launches into character. The kids love it, screaming and hopping, pretending to be frightened, running around, begging for attention. And there’s this one, right in the middle of the group, a fair-haired, cherub-cheeked Polish boy, who seems to be getting in the spirit more than the others. A natural actor, he’s managing to look genuinely terrified - what a great improv partner! We have the makings of a memorable scene here! So when the boy turns and bolts, what do you do? Why, you go after him of course!

I looked over my shoulder and with existential fear that rose from bowls through my limbic system, that I felt in my lungs, in my heart, all over the surface of my skin, I realized that der Krampus had fixed his gaze on me, and gave heavy-hoofed chased as I tried to run away. I felt increasingly desperate, hysterical. What chance had I if Santa Claus had fallen to this creature? A precocious awareness of mortality settled over, physically numbing my nerve endings. This, I thought, was it, this was how it ends. But at that moment a sliver of hope breached the terror - my parents! Mom and dad! I knew they were in the adjacent room - perhaps if I found them, they would succor me from the beast, with parental powers that eclipse even those of Father Christmas. That is where ran, out of the children’s room and into the parents lounge, filled with impossibly tall adults that blocked my view, with der Krampus still hot on my heels. I picked my way past people, though to me all they were were obstacle-legs keeping me from my destination, until I found their table, and sprinted as fast as I humanly could (so really not very fast) until I was close enough to throw myself beneath it, and wrap my arms around my mother’s knees. Eyes closed tight, I had reached my last best hope for safety. Der Krampus had followed me, and I could hear him growl and hiss, I could sense him circling the table, threatening me, unbanished and unafraid. He would even duck down to snarl and threaten me in his hideous Krampus-voice. That was bad, but I could hear something else as well - laughter, the unmistakeable cadences of maternal mirth and paternal guffaws. It dawned on me that, far from challenging der Krampus, they were laughing along with him, finding a source of great amusement in my inevitable dismemberment and devouring. All hope fled, and the hot fear that propelled me to their table was superseded by the cold certainty of death. It was then, probably that I began sobbing, and those tears alerted my parents that this wasn’t - had never been - play to me, but genuine shock and horror. Wiping tears of mirth for their eyes, they patted my shoulder and asked the nice young man in der Krampus-clothesen to maybe go back to the other kids - this one had had enough.

For this part of the story, unlike the rest of my account, I do not need to rely on second-hand sources but can write it entirely from memory. Indeed, this is my first memory of the refugee center, of Christmas - of life.

Life - it’s where you’re promised Santa Claus only to be delivered into the paws of of Austrian devil-beast while your parents laugh.