Editing Suspended Enthusiasm (section)

=== The Emperor ===
“I express my love in collaboration and agreement. I will agree with anything I love. This is the essence of Marxism-Leninism, and Christianity.” Dr. Frank paused for a moment to light a cigarette. “The way I love is Catholic - it is the only way I can retrieve peasant simplicity, the object of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is pure, vital, brutal, perfect devotion, pure ecstasy of reason and madness.” He stared intently at the small crowd at his feet without any discernible emotion or intent. Watching him was like watching an owl. There was something going on behind the eyes, never clear, never certain. His audience today were the youth of the Party, most of them boys, all between 12 and 16. “Picture Stalin, the boyish Emperor, laughing in his study, writing obscenities in the margins of his reports, a studious boy, 500 pages a day, precocious, intelligent. Putting tomatoes in his friends’ pockets.” The audience gazed at Dr. Frank intently, in the strange stillness of his face, the small vague eyes that gave away nothing, white hair softly radiant in the glow of halogen lamps. “I want to be like Stalin. I wish he was my friend.” He paused again to take another drag. Some of the youths at the side of his chair took cigarettes from his table and smoked with him. No-one could tell if he realised or cared. “I love Stalin so much, such a profound, total, absolute devotion and love. I want to collaborate, I want to be a Communist.” The boys smoked their cigarettes, emulating the way Dr. Frank moved, so slowly, so ungracefully. “‘Joy is time’s material and the essence of the instant.’ - J.V. Stalin. Printed on a banner 20 metres suspended above the palaces and the workshops, smokestacks, steeples, warriors spinning out into the cafes and the railways to their sweethearts, to the bookshops and the clubs and the bars.” Smoke rose above the boys and whipped sluggishly about the ceiling fan. “I love Joseph Stalin. When I look at him I want to cry. The world spirit behind his desk, writing ‘faggot’ in the margins of his reports. Wrestling his central committee, up past early, drinking, laughing, smoking, lying on the floor of the empty politburo with his friends. I feel like I could touch him, his intensity burns into me like a typewriter, flesh pierced in words, ''Logos'', reason brands me, madness takes form, crystal, true, revealed real, and history is in me, it is me, I am Stalin’s friend, I love him so much I could cry.” Dr. Frank stubbed his cigarette out and called on the boys to leave. There was no consistency to how Dr. Frank smoked, and that irritated some of the boys. He had no grace at all. To have any kind of grace you must be consistent. Inconsistency in gesture betrays inconsistency in thought, and not in a good way. A small group of them wandered together into McDonalds, nodding politely to the world-weary security guard whose dazzling smile shone beneath black matted beard. Pleasant contemporary classical music muddled in the familiar tics and beeps of the kitchen as the boys took turns ordering from the one functioning self-service panel. They ate their food on a wall overlooking the green, bathed in LED lights, gently kicking at the brickwork as they ate, and spoke. Some of them had saved cigarettes from the meeting and were evenly sharing drags between each other so as not to leave anyone out.