A Confederacy of Dunces (16 page)

"Ouch!" his mother cried at one point.

Ignatius found the subdued and solitary din in the bathroom annoying and wished that she would finish. At last he heard the light click off. She knocked at his door.

"Ignatius, honey, I'm going."

"All right," Ignatius replied icily.

"Open the door, babe, and come kiss me goodbye."

"Mother, I am quite busy at the moment."

"Don't be like that, Ignatius. Open up."

"Run off with your friends, please."

"Aw, Ignatius."

"Must you distract me at every level? I am working on something with wonderful movie possibilities. Highly commercial."

Mrs. Reilly kicked at the door with her bowling shoes.

"Are you ruining that pair of absurd shoes that were bought with my hard-earned wages?"

"Huh? What's that, precious?"

Ignatius extracted the pencil from his ear and opened the door.

His mother's maroon hair was fluffed high over her forehead; her cheekbones were red with rouge that had been spread nervously up to the eyeballs. One wild puff full of powder had whitened Mrs. Reilly's face, the front of her dress, and a few loose maroon wisps.

"Oh, my God," Ignatius said, "you have powder all over your dress, although that is probably one of Mrs. Battaglia's beauty hints."

"Why you always knocking Santa, Ignatius?"

"She appears to have been knocked a bit in her life already. Up rather than down. If she ever nears me, however, the direction will be reversed."

"Ignatius!"

"She also brings to mind the vulgarism 'knockers.' "

"Santa's a grammaw. You oughta be ashamed."

"Thank goodness Miss Annie's coarse cries restored peace the other night. Never in my life have I seen so shameless an orgy.

And right in my very own kitchen. If that man were any sort of law enforcement officer, he would have arrested that 'aunt'

right there on the spot."

"Don't knock Angelo, neither. He's got him a hard road, boy.

Santa says he's been in the bathroom at the bus station all day."

"Oh, my God! Do I believe what I'm hearing? Please run along with your two cohorts from the Mafia and let me alone."

"Don't treat your poor momma like that."

"Poor? Did I hear poor? When the dollars are literally flowing into this home from my labors? And flowing out even more rapidly."

"Don't start that again, Ignatius. I only got twenty dollars out of you this week, and I almost had to get down on my knees and. beg for it. Look at all them thing-a-ma-jigs you been buying. Look at that movie camera you brung home today."

"The movie camera will shortly be put to use. That harmonica was rather cheap."

"We never gonna pay off that man at this rate."

"That is hardly my problem. I don't drive."

"No, you don't care. You never cared for nothing, boy."

"I should have known that every time I open the door of my room I am literally opening a Pandora's Box. Doesn't Mrs.

Battaglia want you to await her debauched nephew and her at the curb so that not one invaluable moment of bowling time will be lost?" Ignatius belched the gas of a dozen brownies trapped by his valve. "Grant me a little peace. Isn't it enough that I am harried all day long at work? I thought that I had adequately described to you the horrors which I must face daily."

"You know I appreciate you, babe," Mrs. Reilly sniffed.

"Come on and gimme a little goodbye kiss like a good boy."

Ignatius bent down and lightly bussed her on the cheek.

"Oh, my God," he said, spitting out powder. "Now my mouth will feel gritty all night."

"I got too much powder on?"

"No, it's just fine. Aren't you an arthritic or something? How in the world can you bowl?"

"I think the exercise is helping me out. I'm feeling better."

A horn honked out on the street.

"Apparently your friend has escaped the bathroom," Ignatius snorted. "It's just like him to hang around a bus station. He probably likes to watch those Scenicruiser horrors arrive and depart. In his world-view the bus is apparently a good thing.

That shows how retarded he is."

"I'll be in early, honey," Mrs. Reilly said, closing the miniature front door.

"I shall probably be misused by some intruder!" Ignatius screamed.

Bolting the door to his room, he grabbed an empty ink bottle and opened his shutters. He stuck his head out of the window and looked down the alley to where the little white Rambler was visible in the darkness at the curb. With all of his strength, he heaved the bottle and heard it hit the roof of the car with greater sound effects than he had expected it to.

"Hey!" he heard Santa Battaglia shout as he silently closed the shutters. Gloating, he opened his looseleaf folder again and picked up his Venus Medalist.

Dear Reader,

A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.

-Macaulay

Another working day is ended, gentle reader. As I told you before, I have succeeded in laying a patina, as it were, over the turbulence and mania of our office. All non-essential activities in the office are slowly being curtailed.

At the moment I am busily decorating our throbbing hive of white-collared bees (three). The analogy of the three bees brings to mind three b's which describe most aptly my actions as an office worker: banish, benefit, beautify. There are also three b's which describe most aptly the actions of our buffoon of an office manager: bait, beg, blight, blunder, bore, boss, bother, bungle, burden, buzz. (In this case, I am afraid that the list gets somewhat out of hand.) I have come to the conclusion that our office manager serves no purpose other than one of obfuscation and hindrance. Were it not for him, the other clerical worker (La Oama del Comercio) and I would be quite peaceful and content, attending to our duties in an atmosphere of mutual consideration. I am certain that his dictatorial methods are, in part, responsible for Miss T.'s desire to retire.

I can at last describe to you our factory. This afternoon, feeling fulfilled after having completed the cross (Yes! It is completed and gives our office a needed spiritual dimension.), I set out to visit the clank and whirr and hiss of the factory.

The scene which met my eyes was at once compelling and repelling. The original sweatshop has been preserved for posterity at Levy Pants. If only the Smithsonian Institution, that grab-bag of our nation's refuse, could somehow vacuum-seal the Levy Pants factory and transport it to the capital of the United States of America, each worker frozen in an attitude of labor, the visitors to that questionable museum would defecate into their garish tourist outfits. It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Fritz Lang's Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. (Were they in the picking stage of their evolution, they would at least be in the healthful outdoors singing and eating watermelons

[as they are, I believe, supposed to do when in groups al fresco].) My intense and deeply felt convictions concerning social injustice were aroused. My valve threw in a hearty response.

(In connection with the watermelons, I must say, lest some professional civil rights organization be offended, that I have never been an observer of American folk customs. I may be wrong. I would imagine that today people grasp for the cotton with one hand while the other hand presses a transistor radio to the sides of their heads so that it can spew bulletins about used cars and Sofstyle Hair Relaxer and Royal Crown Hair Dressing and Callo wine about their eardrums, a filtered menthol cigarette dangling from their lips and threatening to set the entire cotton field ablaze. Although residing along the Mississippi River [This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a treacherous and sinister body of water whose eddies and currents yearly claim many lives. I have never known anyone who would even venture to stick his toe in its polluted brown waters, which seethe with sewage, industrial waste, and deadly insecticides. Even the fish are dying. Therefore, the Mississippi as Father-God-Moses-Daddy-Phallus-Pops is an altogether false motif begun, I would imagine, by that dreary fraud, Mark Twain. This failure to make contact with reality is, however, characteristic of almost all of America's "art."

Any connection between American art and American nature is purely coincidental, but this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for those who do know reality when they see it.], I have never seen cotton growing and have no desire to do so. The only excursion in my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. In some future installment, a flashback, I shall perhaps recount that pilgrimage through the swamps, a journey into the desert from which I returned broken physically, mentally, and spiritually. New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive. At least its climate is mild; too, it is here in the Crescent City that I am assured of having a roof over my head and a Dr. Nut in my stomach, although certain sections of North Africa [Tangier, etc.] have from time to time excited my interest. The voyage by boat, however, would probably enervate me, and I am certainly not perverse enough to attempt air travel even if I were able to afford it. The Greyhound Bus Line is sufficiently menacing to make me accept my status quo. I wish that those Scenicruisers would be discontinued; it would seem to me that their height violates some interstate highway statute regarding clearance in tunnels and so forth. Perhaps one of you, dear readers, with a legal turn of mind can dredge the appropriate clause from memory. Those things really must be removed.

Simply knowing that they are hurtling somewhere on this dark night makes me most apprehensive.)

The factory is a large, barn-like structure that houses bolts of fabric, cutting tables, massive sewing machines, and furnaces that provide the steam for pressing. The total effect is rather surreal, especially when one sees Les Africains moving about attending to their tasks in this mechanized setting. The irony involved caught my fancy, I must admit. Something from Joseph Conrad sprang to my mind, although I cannot seem to remember what it was at the time. Perhaps I likened myself to Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness when, far from the trading company offices in Europe, he was faced with the ultimate horror. I do remember imagining myself in a pith helmet and white linen jodhpurs, my face enigmatic behind a veil of mosquito netting.

The furnaces keep the place rather warm and toasty on these chill days, but in the summer I suspect that the workers once again enjoy the climate of their forebears, the tropic heat somewhat magnified by those great coal-burning steam-producing contrivances. I understand that the factory is not working at capacity currently, and I did observe that only one of these devices was operating, burning coal and what looked like one of the cutting tables. Also, I saw only one pair of trousers actually completed during the time that I spent there, although the factory workers were shambling about clutching all sorts of scraps of cloth. One woman, I noticed, was pressing some baby's clothing and another seemed to be making remarkable progress with the sections of fuchsia satin which she was joining together on one of the large sewing machines. She appeared to be fashioning a rather colorful but nonetheless rakish evening gown. I must say that I admired the efficiency with which she whipped the material back and forth under the massive electric needle. This woman was apparently a skilled worker, and I thought it doubly unfortunate that she was not lending her talents to the creation of a pair of Levy Pants . . . pants. There was obviously a morale problem in the factory.

I looked for Mr. Palermo, the foreman of the factory, who is, incidentally, normally only a few steps from the bottle, as the many contusions that he has sustained from falling down among the cutting tables and sewing machines can testify, with no success. He was probably quaffing a liquid lunch in one of the many taverns in the vicinity of our organization; there is a bar on every corner in the neighborhood of Levy Pants, an indication that salaries in the area are abysmally low.

On particularly desperate blocks there are three or four bars at every intersection.

In my innocence, I suspected that the obscene jazz issuing forth from the loudspeakers on the walls of the factory was at the root of the apathy which I was witnessing among the workers. The psyche can be bombarded only so much by these rhythms before it begins to crumble and atrophy. Therefore, I found and turned off the switch which controlled the music.

This action on my part led to a rather loud and defiantly boorish roar of protest from the collective workers, who began to regard me with sullen eyes. So I turned the music on again, smiling broadly and waving amiably in an attempt to acknowledge my poor judgment and to win the workers'

confidence. (Their huge white eyes were already labeling me a

"Mister Charlie." I would have to struggle to show them my almost psychotic dedication to helping them.)

Obviously continual response to the music had developed within them an almost Pavlovian response to the noise, a response which they believed was pleasure. Having spent countless hours of my life watching those blighted children on television dancing to this sort of music, I knew the physical spasm which it was supposed to elicit, and I attempted my own conservative version of the same on the spot to further pacify the workers. I must admit that my body moved with surprising agility; I am not without an innate sense of rhythm; my ancestors must have been rather outstanding at jigging on the heath. Ignoring the eyes of the workers, I shuffled about beneath one of the loudspeakers, twisting and shouting, mumbling insanely, "Go! Go! Do it, baby, do it! Hear me talkin' to ya. Wow!" I knew that I had recovered my ground with them when several began pointing to me and laughing. I laughed back to demonstrate that I, too, shared their high spirits. De Casibus Virorum Illustrium! Of the Fall of Great Men! My downfall occurred. Literally. My considerable system, weakened by the gyrations (especially in the region of the knees), at last rebelled, and I plummeted to the floor in a senseless attempt at one of the more egregiously perverse steps which I had witnessed on the television so many times. The workers seemed rather concerned and helped me up most politely, smiling in the friendliest fashion. I realized then that I had no more to fear concerning my faux pas in turning off their music. In spite of all to which they have been subjected, Negroes are nonetheless a rather pleasant folk for the most part. I really have had little to do with them, for I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one. Upon speaking with several of the workers, all of whom seemed eager to speak with me, I discovered that they received even less pay than Miss Trixie.