ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
YOUNG AND MARXIST
by Dennis DiClaudio



Oh, to be young and Marxist. It is the dream; to have dark, tousled hair hanging above my olive-drab collar, my face bearded and shaggy, with a pistol in one hand and a copy of Das Kapital in the other. If only…if only…

I often watch the young Marxists from my sitting room window, hanging their propaganda posters on the wall across the street; the boys' faces inflamed with seditious fervor, their eyes like knives penetrating their wire-rimmed glasses, fixated upon their task; and the girls - oh, the girls - their full, rounded breasts jutting out from beneath their plain shirts, their simple, unadorned hair falling in wisps upon their obstinate lips. And if you stare at them long enough, you can make out the curved figure of their bodies hidden under the shapeless fabric of their dresses. I spend a great deal of time watching them.

I'm afraid that, for me, it is too late. I cannot join the Revolution. I have spent too many years living my life as a conservative to change now. And would they even have me? Several weeks ago, I was walking down the street, returning to the office from lunch, when I found a beautiful angel standing before me on the street corner. She could not have been older than nineteen. She was handing pamphlets to passers-by. The street corner was littered with discarded pamphlets, dropped by other conservatives, like myself, who did not care for their rebellious message. As I approached the girl, she gazed upon me with her deep, soulful eyes and uttered one sentence. "The Revolution is for the people," she said, and she stretched out her arm to hand me a pamphlet. I took the offering and paused to read the headline crudely printed on it. "We can no longer tolerate the government's deplorable treatment of the every-man," it read. As I looked down at the paper, my glance fell briefly upon the young rebel's feet. The leather sandals half-covering them did little to protect them from the dust of the city street. They were layered with a thin, yellowish film. Then I continued to walk.

When I had reached the next corner, I stopped to look back at the girl. Through the crowd of pedestrians, I saw that a young man, also holding a pile of pamphlets had stopped to speak with her. I knew at once that he was her lover. I knew that when the couple dispensed the last of the pamphlets, they would return to their small, stark hovel of an apartment and make a meal of wine and bread - and perhaps some inexpensive meat - while discussing the philosophy of Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the inevitable dissolution of the bourgeoisie. And then they would make love, and afterwards she would caress the back of his neck and ask him if their noble cause would ever be realized. And he would say yes, the despicable upper-class will eventually fall, even if it took their own deaths to make it happen. And then they would make love some more. I turned around and walked back to my office.

I keep the pamphlet the girl gave me in a bible in my night stand drawer (although I'm sure that she would not like that. I'm sure that she is an atheist, like most Marxists. "Religion is the opiate of the masses," she would say. Still, I don't want my wife to find it, and the bible is a good hiding place.) I made a point to cross that same street corner on my way back from lunch for the next several days, but I did not find the girl. One day, instead of eating, I wandered into a small bookstore and looked for the writings of Marx and Engels. The bookstore clerk asked if he could help me find anything, but I pretended I was browsing. I did not find anything by the men. I do not suppose that such seditious literature is legal to sell. Besides, I don't believe I would have purchased any books I did find. I'm far too old to become a radical now.

Eventually I ceased looking for the girl on the street, but not of thinking of her. She occupied my mind in much the same way the revolutionaries sought to do with the capital building. I was hostage to her memory. "The Revolution is for the people." Was I not one of "the people?" Was it not looking after my best interest as much as the next man's? Was I any less worthy of protection, of happiness?
I longed to remove her sandals and, with soap and warm water, rinse the dust from her feet. And afterwards I would raise a soft, petite foot to my lips, kiss it tenderly and console her that all of her worries, all of her preoccupations with rebellion were unnecessary and that under my watchful gaze, no harm would come to her.

As luck would have it, a few days ago, as I exited the stairwell to leave the building, I found the young activist being forcibly removed from my office building. A burly security guard had her by the arm and was handling her quite harshly. The officer led her to the main entrance, while she shouted contumacious comments, and pushed her into the street. I slipped out after her and caught her about a half block away. I told the girl that the way she had been treated was deplorable and asked of her well-being. She told me she was not hurt, but that the bourgeois businessmen inside had better learn to treat the proletariat common man with more respect, for soon they would be their supervisors. I agreed and asked if she remembered me from several weeks earlier. She didn't. I told her that she had given me a pamphlet and that I had been greatly "enlightened" by its message. Was there a way that I could learn more of the revolutionary cause? I asked. Just before a policeman arrived to usher her away, she gave me the address and time of the Party's next assemblage. I wrote it down on the pamphlet in my bible.

For the days preceding the meeting, I considered how the young revolutionaries would take to my attendance of a Party assembly. I'm sure that there would be at least fifty Marxists packed into a hot basement, only large enough hold twenty comfortably. Heated arguments of politics, sociology, economics and religion would fill the air, stale with the smell of perspiration, like a din. Now and again, an individual's voice would rise above the others and he would slam his fist onto a tabletop and say something like, "You obviously know nothing of societal margins!" Through the throng and the haze of cigarette smoke, I would see my young rebel leaning against an unfinished brick wall, engrossed in a discussion on the apathy of the middle class. Upon seeing me, she would smile and motion for me to join her. "I'm glad you decided to come," she would say. Her companion would sneer, "What is he doing here?" But once the meeting was underway, I would show him. I would show them all. I would bide my time and wait my turn, and after one of the activists gave a particularly rousing denouncement of the middle class, I would rise and say, "Look here, can you not see that your accusations are unfounded? Not all of the middle class is heedless of the workers. Am I not standing here as proof? The Revolution is for the people. Am I not one of the people?" With that, a silence would fall upon the room. And then applause; it would start slowly, but gather momentum and culminate a roar of acclamation. And I would look to my young rebel and she would be applauding the loudest.

I didn't attend the meeting, of course, for reasons I have previously explained. Since the time I'd seen the girl, I had been anticipating it the way a child does a holiday in which he will receive a new toy. I looked to my calendar and counted down the days. The mere mention of the particular day, by one of my business companions, would send a tingle through my stomach.

Instead, on that particular date, I attended an associate's dinner party with my wife. We ate cheese from fine china and sipped wine from crystal glasses. As I looked about the room, the guests seemed to me obscenely obese beneath their finely tailored apparel. Their conversation seemed vapid, a hollow batch of stock figures and societal gossip. I spent a great deal of the evening sitting by myself, in an antique cushioned cathedra. At one point, I considered the repercussions of my sticking a silver fork into a particular gentleman's neck. My young rebel would wretch at the sight of the company.

I had a vision of all the young Marxists departing their assembly, arms in hand, and marching through the city streets toward that very dinner party. Suddenly the doors would burst open and fifty hairy proletariats would descend upon the awestruck bourgeois dinner guests. With one thrust of a bayonet, one of my business associates would go down. A quick spurt of machine gun fire and ten of my other businessmen and their wives would be decimated. "The Revolution has begun!" a young man would howl.

Amidst the carnage, my young rebel, brandishing an automatic rifle, would find me in my chair. Would she be able to turn her weapon on me? Would she be able to pull the trigger? She would have to, for we are from different worlds, we are star-crossed. Her covenant with the Party would obligate it. I would understand, and I would forgive her.