GNAWING

Marx and the Mouse

Karl Marx used to write at night. It’s well known. There’s a reason why so many authors write in the nocturnal hours. It’s because there aren’t enough hours in the day. However, if you close the door, as they say, the night could last forever. He’d sit there at his desk, quill in hand, page in front of him, cigar in the ashtray, bottle of port within reach, and do battle with his foe, that succubus feeding off the degradation and misery of man, the ghoul of capitalism, for hours on end upon end. Sometimes there would be a plate of food next to him lovingly prepared by Jenny depending on he behaved that week and the household finances. Often there wouldn’t be.
  O! Prometheus am I, he would cry, this work, this albatross, these buzzards, this never ending peck at my gut, how I am afflicted with it. All his life his the ultramundane shadow of his father’s death to liver cancer shaded Marx’s life. All for what! He’d resume, For trying to enlighten the enslaved! For suggesting there was something other than the dark! For telling Sisyphus to toss aside his accursed boulder! He would despair. I must be the loneliest genius in the world, he would lament. And all geniuses are lonely. He imagined himself Lear, the fool offering him a nuncle to go in place of the crown of his intellect. Tears would fill his eyes. Yes, the loneliest genius in the world. 
  But then, one night; HARK! A sound. Something other than the noise of the scratching of a nib on paper pervaded the desolate chamber. Who could this be, he thought, and, before realising the words forming on his mouth, called out, Papa? Instantly he realised his error and blushed. What a blush. The blush of a great man. If men could die from blushing surely he should have perished. However, more pressing thoughts entered his mind. Perhaps it was an old adversary, some bourgeois intellectual, an agent of mediocrity, whom he’d publicly humiliated, come to taint the work. He sat guarded. No, he thought. The creature, either daemon or mortal, did not sound malevolent. Quite the contrary. It sounded scared. Carefully he traced the sound to its source. Oh look. There it was. A little mouse had found its way into his study. Company. His loneliness lifted. Now how to coax his new comrade- nay, his new friend- to his side. Ah! he exclaimed, once again Lear, this time locked up in jail, abandoned, but now not alone, and he quoted the play aloud, a little melted cheese should do’t. And he put down his plate of scraps beside his chair. The mouse; all eyes, ears, trepidation and fur; approached and nibbled. However, he scurried away before they had chance to get properly acquainted.
  Marx, feigning an air of whimsy, told Engels about this the next day.
  Why Marx, chuckled Engels, it’s not cheese that mice love, it’s chocolate.
  Quite the little decadents, scowled Marx. Yes, quite the little decadents!
  As he made this proclamation Marx wondered where he could pick up a bar of dairy milk on the way home. But how shall I ever be able to attain it, he wondered. Why! By hook or by crook! However else?