Tears of a Komsomol Girl is an experimental concept novel based on the real-life crimes of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was finally executed in 1994 having been convicted of murdering 52 people between 1978 and 1990.
USSR, Rostov, 1980s. Arina, a young girl — insolent, obnoxious, but most importantly musically gifted, poses as the ideal student — upstanding, hardworking, and a member of Komsomol — the Soviet Union’s Communist Youth League. Fantasising unrealistically about becoming an internationally famous classical violinist, and yet simultaneously behaving as cynically and hypocritically as she can, Arina uses her Komsomol duties as a pretext for strutting unsupervised around town of an evening, fraternising with soldiers and Party bureaucrats alike, compulsively lying to cover her tracks. And yet her sleep is punctuated by obsessive and oppressive dreams concerning a certain killer who’s been on the loose for years — a ruthless, sadistic and thoroughly vicious opportunist referred to in rumours as Citizen X, the Rostov Ripper, or simply Satan — a monster who brutally slays children and adolescents having assaulted them at knifepoint. As the killings become ever more tortuous and frenzied, and the number of innocent victims tragically swells, it’s only a matter of time before Arina finally crosses paths with Satan, and her nightmares turn into a reality.
Audrey Szasz, Destroy Everything You Touch | Infinity Land Press, 2022
With photographs by Karolina Urbaniak
A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent. Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children.
Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech. Unaware of her parents’ true whereabouts – or whether in fact they are even alive – Tamara struggles to make herself understood and to survive in this alien environment where chaos reigns and brutality – or sheer indifference – unfortunately appears to be the norm.
A sinister cast of characters duly appears, including the glamorous but corrupt Director, her overbearingly sadistic partner the Doctor, not to mention the Father – a perverse cleric with a penchant for cruelty – amongst other unsavoury and remorseless individuals, all enforcing a strict hierarchy between the adults and the children (and thus the perpetrators and the victims of institutionalised violence).
Meanwhile, a number of different voices or alters jostle for psychic dominance over Tamara’s internal narrative; through various temporal shifts, rotations and leaps in chronological perspective our heroine’s journey – both geographical and psychological – is described in a disintegrating arc of obscure recollections, fragmented diary entries and increasingly obscene erotic fantasies.
Conversely, these kaleidoscopic projections, delirious daydreams and compulsive diatribes gradually accumulate to articulate a traumatised inner topography that mirrors the devasted and desolate external landscape of a perpetual war zone….
Szasz’s dark imagination – brutal scenes of cold sadism – is matched by her intimidatingly brilliant writing. Not only that, but Szasz possesses the skill to find the balance between a piece of dazzling experimental writing that is also completely readable in an addictive, page-turning way. —Thomas Moore
Szasz’s writing reads like controlled frenzy, a limpid prose which – antithetically – contains all of the darkness and monsters we refuse to acknowledge. We might even have a genius on our grubby hands. —Steve Finbow
Excerpts:
They told me that my name is Tamara. But maybe it’s not my real name. I can’t remember anything anyway. I don’t even know where my parents are. The Director told me that my parents are dead. She told me that they were shot in the square. In the city. There was a big shooting there. The people were all lined up in the square, and the soldiers who were standing up on the balconies or lying on the roofs of the buildings fired their guns. They shot everyone in the square. Nobody could escape because the army put tanks at either end of the square so nobody could run away. They all got shot. The Director says my parents are dead but I don’t believe her. One day my parents will come and get me. The Director tells me not to worry. She says I am safe now. She says nobody will ever find me. (p.8)
* * * *
I’m basically ignorant and if possible I’d like to keep it that way — illumination is so overrated — and I heard a belt coming down, felt it instantaneously lashing my lower limbs, my thighs, my ass and I didn’t know exactly who was responsible because I was blindfolded and I’d taken too many of those tranquillisers and had too many cocktails and I was probably drooling like an imbecile — I’d been tied to a rocking horse — my tormentors often commented on the youthful innocence of my smile and contrasted it with the perversity of my behaviour — you can put a label on anything but ultimately it’s meaningless — because I am an incorrigible ant in insect time broken burning drowning in the mire of destiny — like all infamous creatures, I have done my share of questionable things — sometimes I feel something approaching shame or guilt — but in reality I have no remorse and after I’ve been particularly cruelly treated I like to examine myself using mirrors — so narcissistic right? — and then they take photographs of me — so we can all remember the contusions that blossom on my skin so brightly, like meadows of lavender in Provence or jacaranda petals inundating the streets of Bulawayo, like a storm of violet confetti — of course they’re precious to me these days, particularly the marks given to me by those whom I love or despise the most and I must like emotionally unavailable people because I scorn intimacy and I have certain needs that must be fulfilled, and I have to select my tormentors carefully just like a designer ponders over their fabrics — yes, I maintain strict criteria and I can’t allow myself to become enslaved to just anyone — not that it would even be possible to give myself away so easily because I have such contempt in my heart for most people — virgo fidelis, my dream childhood, conjuring up images of pink-kneed, dewy-eyed girls trampling wildflowers, across the emerald expanse of lush meadows free from landmines or camouflaged snipers — sinking into cement-grey quicksand — adolescent romance smothered in multiple layers of contaminated sediment — buried beneath various levels of so-called original sin — easing into self-recrimination, day after day — climaxing occasionally — groping soundlessly in the direction of a forgotten sun — and I tell myself that my life ought to have been a bed of roses — on the surface of things — that superficial layer of ice which obscures the depths beneath — I guess it could have been — and it could be yet, in theory — if I could just turn things around — I’m still young, reasonably intelligent, and if I could be bothered, I could probably make something of myself — but anxiety — inexplicably — seizes me, grips my little heart in a vice of trepidation and obscure longing, like a sadistic woman clutching my skinny wrists with her firm hands, clamping them behind my back, or twisting my arms painfully at the elbow, and putting me over her knee, as though I’m still a recalcitrant pupil, an infernal bad girl, who has committed some minor infraction — and naturally, she then goes on to lift my skirt, pull down my tiny black knickers, and having composed herself — I’m wriggling, probably, like a piglet — begins to spank me with unexpected zeal — and if it seems like she’s done this before, it’s because she has — and apparently she likes injured ballerinas, Eastern European waifs, and selective-mute know-it-all brats with black eyes — of course if they happen to look slightly young for their age, it’s a bonus…. (pp.57-59)
* * * *
You would love to tie me spreadeagled on the classroom floor and repeatedly stamp on me until you’ve broken my ribs. You call me ugly, hideous, paint freckles on my face, take me to the dentist and pay him to fix totally unnecessary and unsightly metal braces to my upper teeth that hurt my gums and make me look like I’m twelve years old. Barely literate teenagers, predictably outraged by the provocation that my altered appearance represents, mock me mercilessly and pelt me with KFC whilst subjecting me to a tirade of barely comprehensible verbal abuse. They drag me into the road and I am run over by a big yellow school bus. Then I lie in hospital with my jaw wired shut so I can’t speak and my limbs in plaster. Luckily someone has thoughtfully painted rainbows and butterflies on the walls in an attempt to cheer me up during my convalescence. (p.62)
* * * *
I hate you. I hate you. Why don’t you love me? You think I can’t give you what you want? You think I can’t turn anyone on? I could go out into the street and get torn to shreds by eighty soldiers in one afternoon. I could have them booting my lifeless little corpse around a crater that used to be a supermarket car park, hoofing me into the trash like a deflated beach ball. I could have them crucifying me with a nail-gun in the gutted remains of the National Museum. All I know is suffering — hate and death. That’s all I understand now. It’s my heritage. My birthright. Our collective legacy. Distilled brutality. I enjoy my punishment. I am a filthy little cunt. I don’t know any better. Look at me you filthy whore. Looking at my crushed and crippled hand? You think that’s fucking funny? Maybe a tank should flatten your car when you’re in it, attempting to traverse a junction. Maybe you get shot right through the skull as your engine idles at an army checkpoint. Maybe you get cut down in a terrorist attack and your body and head are shredded by white-hot shrapnel but you survive it all. I really don’t care. (pp.113-14)
* * * *
My name is Minnie Mouse. I squeak incessantly like a little rodent. God told me to gas you then skin your corpse. Your skin so soft, so luxurious. I’d look good as a lampshade. Light of my life. Fire in my groin. Put it inside me. I want to feel it. I need to lose gracefully, like a good sport. I need to step aside. I need a pump-action shotgun and a shopping mall full of unwilling victims. I need a shot of rhythm and blues. Just give me some of that rock and roll music, any old way you choose it. If you wanna dance with me. Takes two to tango. Takes one to know one. One of a kind. One in a million. A million mouths sucking your tits. A thousand fingers flicking my switch. Milk it. Buy it. Love it. Own it. Bought and sold. Used and abused. First hand, second hand, handouts, left hanging, hung out to dry, lay it on the line, somewhere along the line, line them up, knock them down, knock them dead, knock it off, knock some sense into them, a senseless killing, mindless violence, an act of cowardice, a sickening stunt, creaming your pants, egg on your face, scream like a baby, throw your toys out of the pram, eight days a week, in roller-skates, like a pretentious piece of shit. I am stupid and I know it. I am an irredeemably tedious cunt. I am a brat. Just beat me to death with a baseball bat. I would enjoy it. It’s what I want. That would be paradise. I masturbate thinking about it. But I can’t even get close to coming. Nothing will take me all the way anymore. I go to the old people’s home. It stinks of ammonia and excrement. I roll around in their unwashed beds and sniff their linen. It makes me gag and retch and I masturbate hopelessly for hours in futile search of an ever- elusive climax whilst manipulative power-hungry nurses pull on rubber gloves and massage my slender limbs and pour castor oil down my throat until I heave and vomit. It is revolting, idiotic, disgusting, depraved yet utterly banal. I begin to drown in my own sick. I indulge each of my otiose fantasies. I wish the nurse would tie me up so tightly my blood circulation is cut off and then smash a vase over my head and suffocate me with duct tape and a pillow filled with Canadian goose feathers. I wish a mortar shell would land on this building. I wish for air force drones to bomb this town repeatedly for days on end until there is nothing left except a vast lifeless wasteland. A cratered moonscape. I wish for walls of fire to consume this yokel country. I wish a phalanx of marauding cyborgs would stroll through the towns and villages executing any living creature their sensors detect. I hate everyone but I hate myself most of all. I vouch for no one. (pp.131-32)
“Basking like a reptile in your reflected glories. I just respond. Sometimes I don’t even do that. I just do whatever I end up doing. No thought. No plan. No real motive. No overarching theories or philosophies. I can’t even stick to a routine. I lack discipline. Can you give it to me? Can you tell me what to do? Can you force me to do whatever is necessary to survive? From one day to the next, until the very end? Will you give me the beating I deserve? “
“I wish the nurse would tie me up so tightly my blood circulation is cut off and then smash a vase over my head and suffocate me with duct tape and a pillow filled with Canadian goose feathers. I wish a mortar shell would land on this building. I wish for air force drones to bomb this town repeatedly for days on end until there is nothing left except a vast lifeless wasteland. A cratered moonscape. I wish for walls of fire to consume this yokel country. I wish a phalanx of marauding cyborgs would stroll through the towns and villages executing any living creature their sensors detect. I hate everyone but I hate myself most of all. I vouch for no one.”
‘Shut your mouth,’ Mother tells me. I shut my mouth. ‘Wipe that idiotic grin off your face,’ she says. I wipe the idiotic grin off my face. And as I emerge from diazepam slumber I realize that our train has pulled into the station. Pain, invisible, but etched within me like crystal. Welcome to London St. Pancras International, where this journey terminates.
Richard Marshall: BRIEF NOTES ON AUDREY SZASZ: “IF YOU CAN BEARTHIS THEN YOU’LL PASS THE TEST.”
Audrey Szasz (aka Zutka) is a London-based writer. Infinity Land Press published her debut in print, Plan for the Abduction of J.G. Ballard (a collaboration with Jeremy Reed) in 2019, followed by her first novel Tears of a Komsomol Girl in 2020. Szasz is also the author of the novella Invisibility: A Manifesto (2020) and a second novel, Zealous Immaculate (2022) via Amphetamine Sulphate.
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