Episode Two of Love Among The Reds
by Sylvie Kringe
(Episode One here)
"What's the revolution but a backdrop to our flaming love?" asked Vladimir Ilyich, coming up for air.
"Why, you are my very own Vlad the Impaler," breathed Inessa huskily. "Your penetration is without par. You do it with such flair and imagination."
"Yes," he said, stroking his goatee thoughtfully as he eyed his text, "it is vital to dispel the mysticism that counter-revolutionaries wish to weave around the Great Marx. If only I had been there at the time to make him more accessible to the masses. I might even have got him on the Jeremy Vine Show. Come, back to my speech. I must perfect it to ensure even the dimwits in the Party can understand it."
"Such fools. I sometimes wonder why you waste your time when a sharp axe would do the job just as well."
"It is such an uphill struggle having to repeat and repeat louder and louder, even illustrating my thoughts with hand-movements and whirling my arms like Pete Townshend on amphetamines until the penny drops.”
Weary of his Promethean task, he dropped his head into his hands. ”You are the one little petite chou who understands me. Without your help ... "
“And that is why our love is of historic proportions. As is everything about you. Grrr.”
“Yowza!” He gazed into her huge warm eyes the source of such human sympathy and kindness that the world had never known. Kissed her soft yielding lips with fervour.
“But people are talking, Vladdy.”
“Gossip and tittle-tattle. Who cares what the little people think? Those in the Left Ghetto will never know a love such as ours. Stroke my brow again, ma cherie, you know I love it.”
“You will rule these people one day, and my love will give the strength to carry on making all those hard decisions such as who to expel and who to pay wages to and who not, and whose labour we need to appropriate for the revolution …”
“Labia? But it was only a rumour …”
“No, my sweet yet rough tough leader of the revolution, 'labour'. Remember? Sometimes I suspect you have a one-track mind.”
“But it is a big one, yes?”
“Well, you be a size queen if you must, but of course. It is the very biggest one in the whole socialist pantheon and there were some right whoppers there. I should know, I’ve seen a few. How come we have to deal with the dross?"
“Such is the human material we have to work with, liebchen."
"Huh! Useless wastes of space. I should be doing their job. And those women in the party. The clever ones and the pretty ones. Put them in their place for ickle me?”
"If only I had one bullet for the lot of them."
“What, you'd shoot them down like partridges?" She sprung to her feet and clapped her hands with glee.
“No, I’d shoot them down like comrades. One day I too will have my Kronstadt and then they’ll be sorry, the witch-hunting bastards. And that jumped up DJ with his Iberian villa. He never invites me back for holidays, does he? No respect!”
She sat on his lap and stroked his poor aching but capacious head.
“Calm down, my precious. You might need to get some anger management happening if Freudian introspection and insight isn’t too bourgeois an expectation in such momentous times such as what these are. Anyhow, want to hear my contribution to your speech?”
“Of course, my darling. So wise. So talented.”
She picked up the sheet of paper upon which she had been working all of five minutes, taxing her mind, pouring into it her passion for the man, for the revolution, for the masses.
“Ahem. So Marx was right. And anyone who doesn’t geddit is gonna get it, see? I am right because I am the new Marx and only I understand. And Gramsci, he was dead good, he was. But now he’s only dead. What a writer, loved his diaries. Could have sold them to Hello! magazine if he was alive today. And Lukacs, I really like him. Really, REALLY!”
Vlad groaned.
“So it’s that good? You going to include it in your speech, huh? Huh? Pretty please. You are so sweet to me, Vladdy Daddy. I wuv you, wuv you, WUV you!” She threw herself across him, enveloped him in her warm embrace as the other comrades in the office averted their gaze, seeing nothing, hearing nothing and saying sweet FA.
The lovers instantly unclinched as the unmistakeable pounding of Krupskaya's footsteps thundered through the corridor, as if shaking the very foundations of the system itself to the core. They would have to break the news to her one day in a way that allowed her to keep the dignity and pride he was even now stripping from her. Hmm ... how to couch it in terms that would not end up with his smart wardrobe scissored to ribbons? Again. How to aid her rationalisation and let him have his little cupcake and eat it ...
Inessa ArmandWhy socialists should read this rubbish here
2 comments:
Nothing like this could ever happen in Real Life. The British Left is too sensible, too principled and too thoroughly informed by the ideological guidelines of Marxist-Leninist thought to allow opportunistic, self-glorifying chancers such as those depicted herein anywhere near positions of power and influence.
Oh, you are awful!
I thought the article on romance novels was interesting - there's a thesis to be developed there, and actually some really good writers (and demanding readers) in the field. Genre convention is genre convention, though, and always ripe for sending up.
When we come across purpleness especially. I don't mind dipping into Mrs Radcliffe now and again, but if every novel you read was in the style of The Castle of Otranto it would just drive you insane.
Fiction at its best should be escapist, should be about taking us into a bigger, brighter, bolder world than the one we live in. But it's just as well that nobody we know would romanticise themselves in that way. The left is far too sober for that.
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