First
Memories
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 Jรถrg 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.
Merry
Christmas!
