Mark
01-07-2005, 01:32 PM
Aaaages ago, back in the ERE, the first three chapters of Acid Christ's autobiography were serialised. After chatting with Colin last night I decided to post them here.
**********
Acid Christ: You've got to laugh, haven't you?
Chapter 1
I was born Igor Vasily Konstantin Mikulchik on the twenty-fifth day of February in the year 1948, In the district of Kirovskiy situated on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the city now known as St Petersburg, to Klavdiya and Vasily Mikulchik. I was a sickly child, born more than three weeks prematurely and this being the Communist Soviet Union, my parents had to trust to luck rather than the medical system.
I don't remember much from birth until around the age of ten. I believe I was educated well, but by whom I'm unable to say. I do remember that in the Kirovsky district the winds blowing in from the Gulf of Finland to the west were the iciest I've encountered in all my long years. At ten years old I was already working, as a newspaper boy. I would stand on that corner from dawn until dusk, waving the current issue of Pravda at people to poor to buy it, too downtrodden to care for its contents.
The job did bring a wage, however, and every rouble counted for my family. My mother, Klavdiya (always shortened to Klava), worked in the textile mill, across the river to the North. As I recollect, her days were longer even than mine. She would usually be up at least an hour before my father and me. Always, our tattered clothes were laid out ready for when we finally rose from our beds. The clothes were seamed and darned but always clean, Klava being a very proud woman. As I said, she'd always be up before my father and me, but she'd never be home before I'd gone to bed. When I think of it now, it seems I always stayed awake, waiting for the slotted wooded door to clatter open with the wind and announce her arrival home, before I'd be able to sleep.
My mothers hours of work did mean that I spent a good deal more of my time with my father, Vasily, or Vasya. He was a mountain of a man; handsome, as I recall, with the deepest, darkest brown eyes you ever saw. He eyes would twinkle when he regarded you but that was, at least half of the time, down to drink. My father worked for what became known as the KGB. Having seen James Bond and various other spy films since I came to the West, I'm aware of an enormous gulf between the usual view of secret agents and the reality. My father wasn't a spy in the traditional sense: he never once foiled a plot to assassinate Khrushchev, nor were there any moonlit-chases across rooftops with counter-agents. My father's branch of the service was that of internal security which boiled down to the infiltration of native dissidents. The feeling in 50s Russia, much like 50s America, was one of paranoia and my father's job was a by-product of that.
I would return home in the middle of the evening and my father would be sat in the tired bentwood chair, rocking back and forth slightly, a miasmic fog of vodka rising around him. As I entered he'd look up and a grin would split his face. He'd rise to greet me and wrap me up in his bear-like arms.
"Igor my boy! How was your day?"
He'd set me down in the chair opposite his and give me a glass of water with a drop of vodka before seating himself and asking me about what I'd seen that day.
"Not much father, it was very cold, people just rushed by," I'd usually say, for it was generally the truth.
Unfortunately, the paranoia I've mentioned ran strongly through my father and, as the vodka coursed through his veins and his weathered brown face became ruddier he would become exasperated at my lack of activity.
"Nothing? You saw nothing? You stand all day in the Nevsky prospect and yet you see nothing?"
Now, even though I knew that no good would come of it I would sometimes elaborate. Sometimes truthfully, other times not.
"Nothing at all. Just people marching like tin soldiers. I did smell a woman though," I offered.
"Smell? How do you mean, smell?"
"I mean she smelled different, better, than most women,"
"And?"
"And... what?"
Did you follow her? What did she look like? Wait! let me get my pencil and book!" and he would bluster into his room to fetch said implements. When he returned he would become more and more dismayed at my answers.
"You don't now what she looked like. You don't know which direction she went in. You don't even know what colour her coat was!" and he would rise from the bentwood chair, unfasten his belt and raise his arm in fury.
Many was the night I wept, laying on my front so as not to put pressure on the welts across my back and legs. I would hear my mother enter the house and, hearing my father's deep-throated rumble of a snore from the next room, I'd rise silently to welcome her home.
I can still see her care-worn face trying to smile as silent tears coursed down her face; unable to embrace her only son for fear of hurting his injuries even more.
***
It was one of those very evenings, in 1962. She was bathing my wounds with swabs made from rags, murmuring to herself, "My poor dear Igor, what has he done to my sweet little Kostya?" when my father, unheard, burst into the kitchen.
My mother rose rapidly, her hand on her breast in surprise.
"Vasya, you startled me, how was work?" she cried in a quavering voice.
"Artur," he growled.
"Artur? Who is Artur?" she replied, her fear rising, mine at its peak already.
"Artur Rassnur!" he bellowed and punctuated the statement with a clubbing blow across her beautiful face.
She collapsed immediately, silently, as he strode from the room. I fell to her side crying "Mother, mother!"
She didn't speak to me but in a series of quiet yelps came my fathers name "Vasya, Vasya, Vasya"
Her cheek and temple became purple and misshapen before my eyes and she bade me with a horrible, contorted smile, "Go to bed boy,".
I left her on the kitchen floor, disgusted with myself for not being able to stop this from happening; disgusted with my father for his cruelty; disgusted with my mother for sharing a bed with him that night.
***
Two days later she was gone.
I arose at six in the morning to find my father in his chair, the bottle of vodka close at hand.
"Where's mother?" I asked, a feeling of lurching horror making its presence felt in my stomach.
My father looked at me with hooded eyes blazing with contempt.
"She is gone, she was conspiring against the party, and now she is gone."
"Gone where?" I cried, my fourteen year old vocal chords producing a strangely booming voice in my anger.
"Just... gone." He replied with a hideous leer.
I walked towards him and he knew my intentions so rose to his feet, bottle in hand.
***
I will not permit anymore of my childhood in Leningrad. Suffice to say, I left that very day, parentless, penniless and wanted.
I never found out who Artur Rassnur was. He could have been a conspirator against the Communist party with my mother. Both could have been guilty of nothing more than an affair. I prefer to cling to the idea that it was all a figment of my father's paranoia and it led him to have her taken away by the secret service. I hope she died swiftly, I can't bear to think of her lovely hands ruined at hard labour in the northern wastes with the other political prisoners, her face, no longer purple and swollen, but pitted and grimy. Better to remember her smile in the mornings as she laid out my clothes, or with the present of an apple and a ruffling of my hair told me more than she ever put into words.
***
As I say, that morning I left.
With nothing but a bundle of clothes and blankets, half a loaf of dark bread and a knife, I walked east.
**********
Acid Christ: You've got to laugh, haven't you?
Chapter 1
I was born Igor Vasily Konstantin Mikulchik on the twenty-fifth day of February in the year 1948, In the district of Kirovskiy situated on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the city now known as St Petersburg, to Klavdiya and Vasily Mikulchik. I was a sickly child, born more than three weeks prematurely and this being the Communist Soviet Union, my parents had to trust to luck rather than the medical system.
I don't remember much from birth until around the age of ten. I believe I was educated well, but by whom I'm unable to say. I do remember that in the Kirovsky district the winds blowing in from the Gulf of Finland to the west were the iciest I've encountered in all my long years. At ten years old I was already working, as a newspaper boy. I would stand on that corner from dawn until dusk, waving the current issue of Pravda at people to poor to buy it, too downtrodden to care for its contents.
The job did bring a wage, however, and every rouble counted for my family. My mother, Klavdiya (always shortened to Klava), worked in the textile mill, across the river to the North. As I recollect, her days were longer even than mine. She would usually be up at least an hour before my father and me. Always, our tattered clothes were laid out ready for when we finally rose from our beds. The clothes were seamed and darned but always clean, Klava being a very proud woman. As I said, she'd always be up before my father and me, but she'd never be home before I'd gone to bed. When I think of it now, it seems I always stayed awake, waiting for the slotted wooded door to clatter open with the wind and announce her arrival home, before I'd be able to sleep.
My mothers hours of work did mean that I spent a good deal more of my time with my father, Vasily, or Vasya. He was a mountain of a man; handsome, as I recall, with the deepest, darkest brown eyes you ever saw. He eyes would twinkle when he regarded you but that was, at least half of the time, down to drink. My father worked for what became known as the KGB. Having seen James Bond and various other spy films since I came to the West, I'm aware of an enormous gulf between the usual view of secret agents and the reality. My father wasn't a spy in the traditional sense: he never once foiled a plot to assassinate Khrushchev, nor were there any moonlit-chases across rooftops with counter-agents. My father's branch of the service was that of internal security which boiled down to the infiltration of native dissidents. The feeling in 50s Russia, much like 50s America, was one of paranoia and my father's job was a by-product of that.
I would return home in the middle of the evening and my father would be sat in the tired bentwood chair, rocking back and forth slightly, a miasmic fog of vodka rising around him. As I entered he'd look up and a grin would split his face. He'd rise to greet me and wrap me up in his bear-like arms.
"Igor my boy! How was your day?"
He'd set me down in the chair opposite his and give me a glass of water with a drop of vodka before seating himself and asking me about what I'd seen that day.
"Not much father, it was very cold, people just rushed by," I'd usually say, for it was generally the truth.
Unfortunately, the paranoia I've mentioned ran strongly through my father and, as the vodka coursed through his veins and his weathered brown face became ruddier he would become exasperated at my lack of activity.
"Nothing? You saw nothing? You stand all day in the Nevsky prospect and yet you see nothing?"
Now, even though I knew that no good would come of it I would sometimes elaborate. Sometimes truthfully, other times not.
"Nothing at all. Just people marching like tin soldiers. I did smell a woman though," I offered.
"Smell? How do you mean, smell?"
"I mean she smelled different, better, than most women,"
"And?"
"And... what?"
Did you follow her? What did she look like? Wait! let me get my pencil and book!" and he would bluster into his room to fetch said implements. When he returned he would become more and more dismayed at my answers.
"You don't now what she looked like. You don't know which direction she went in. You don't even know what colour her coat was!" and he would rise from the bentwood chair, unfasten his belt and raise his arm in fury.
Many was the night I wept, laying on my front so as not to put pressure on the welts across my back and legs. I would hear my mother enter the house and, hearing my father's deep-throated rumble of a snore from the next room, I'd rise silently to welcome her home.
I can still see her care-worn face trying to smile as silent tears coursed down her face; unable to embrace her only son for fear of hurting his injuries even more.
***
It was one of those very evenings, in 1962. She was bathing my wounds with swabs made from rags, murmuring to herself, "My poor dear Igor, what has he done to my sweet little Kostya?" when my father, unheard, burst into the kitchen.
My mother rose rapidly, her hand on her breast in surprise.
"Vasya, you startled me, how was work?" she cried in a quavering voice.
"Artur," he growled.
"Artur? Who is Artur?" she replied, her fear rising, mine at its peak already.
"Artur Rassnur!" he bellowed and punctuated the statement with a clubbing blow across her beautiful face.
She collapsed immediately, silently, as he strode from the room. I fell to her side crying "Mother, mother!"
She didn't speak to me but in a series of quiet yelps came my fathers name "Vasya, Vasya, Vasya"
Her cheek and temple became purple and misshapen before my eyes and she bade me with a horrible, contorted smile, "Go to bed boy,".
I left her on the kitchen floor, disgusted with myself for not being able to stop this from happening; disgusted with my father for his cruelty; disgusted with my mother for sharing a bed with him that night.
***
Two days later she was gone.
I arose at six in the morning to find my father in his chair, the bottle of vodka close at hand.
"Where's mother?" I asked, a feeling of lurching horror making its presence felt in my stomach.
My father looked at me with hooded eyes blazing with contempt.
"She is gone, she was conspiring against the party, and now she is gone."
"Gone where?" I cried, my fourteen year old vocal chords producing a strangely booming voice in my anger.
"Just... gone." He replied with a hideous leer.
I walked towards him and he knew my intentions so rose to his feet, bottle in hand.
***
I will not permit anymore of my childhood in Leningrad. Suffice to say, I left that very day, parentless, penniless and wanted.
I never found out who Artur Rassnur was. He could have been a conspirator against the Communist party with my mother. Both could have been guilty of nothing more than an affair. I prefer to cling to the idea that it was all a figment of my father's paranoia and it led him to have her taken away by the secret service. I hope she died swiftly, I can't bear to think of her lovely hands ruined at hard labour in the northern wastes with the other political prisoners, her face, no longer purple and swollen, but pitted and grimy. Better to remember her smile in the mornings as she laid out my clothes, or with the present of an apple and a ruffling of my hair told me more than she ever put into words.
***
As I say, that morning I left.
With nothing but a bundle of clothes and blankets, half a loaf of dark bread and a knife, I walked east.