The Imbecile
By: Andrew Sweeny
Tags: Literature, Ideology, Short Story, Psychology, Politics

The Imbecile

A story of ideological possession

The Young Joseph Stalin

I first met the mild mannered Poe at the bus-stop near the University where where we both worked. We had a lot in common. He was a teacher and a writer — an intellectual of sorts. He was from a small town in Ireland and we talked about Irish writers like Joyce and Becket.

It turned out we were neighbours, and glad to meet and talk ideas, we went out to the pub for a few pints. I told him that I had been conceived in Dublin and had an Irish grandmother, and I liked to think that my Irish roots ran deep. We got along like a house on fire. In the dim light I saw Poe’s true Irish colours — he could certainly drink me under the table.

I first pegged Poe as a typical leftist when he started talking politics—which weren’t really my thing. He talked about American imperialism, class struggle, the Palestinian occupation—the usual grab bag of leftist concerns. However, there was something different about Poe: he didn't look like the usual hipster leftist but more like an old school revolutionary, with his tweed cap, red tie, and suit jacket.

The conversation took a bizarre turn when he began to talk about Joseph Stalin in glowing terms—Stalin the statesman, Stalin the poet he called him. The 5 to 60 million corpses (take your pick) were merely imperialist lies, he told me. The Gulags were actually nice reform camps.

Poe had some weird ideas—to understate the case. His version of history was quite different than anyone else’s I knew—he lived in an alternative universe. Historical record didn’t really exist in his world — all that was made up by the imperialists. He believed himself to be in possession of the truth, the real story.

Where did he get his alternative information? I wondered. How could a smart guy who had read Michel Foucault and who spoke several languages really believe this stuff? What caused him to be engaged in such diabolical research? His whole world seemed quite intricate and uncanny to me, like a dark Alice in Wonderland.

After a couple of pints we took the conversation over to his place, and he pulled out the Irish Whiskey. We talked late into the night, and I am ashamed to say I got totally wasted that night—in a way I hadn’t been since I was a student. I’m sure I made a pretty sorry impression on his attractive young lawyer wife, when she came home and found her husband’s new friend passed out on the couch.

The wife was kind enough to drive me home, and I found out that she was not a ‘revolutionary’ like Poe but a seemingly ordinary woman. She was a bit concerned about her husbands revolutionary fervour. Therapy might be a good thing for Poe, she told me. They had a young boy who was four years old, and I imagine she was worried about his future.

My memory of that night is a bit wobbly, but I do recall a dark and slightly comical feeling rising up in me when Poe talked about ‘the true science of socialism’. Perhaps my puking in the toilet may have been more than a just a reaction to the cheap whiskey. There was something unwholesome about Poe—a dark aura that surrounded him.