A Confederacy of Dunces (28 page)

"You realize what a serious violation that is, you big ape?"

"No, I am afraid I don't," Ignatius said angrily. "It has apparently been taken for granted that the cat was unclean.

How do we know that? Cats are notoriously sanitary, continuously licking at themselves when they suspect that there is the slightest cause for offense. That inspector must have some prejudice against cats. This cat hasn't been given a chance."

"We not talking about this cat!" Mr. Clyde said with such vehemence that Ignatius was able to see the purple veins swelling around the whitened scar on his nose. "We talking about you."

"Well, I certainly am clean. We've already discussed that. I just wanted to see that the cat got a fair hearing. Sir, am I going to be endlessly harassed? My nerves are nearing total decay already. When you checked my fingernails a moment ago, I hope that you noticed the frightening vibration of my hands. I would hate to sue Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, to pay the psychiatrist's fees. Perhaps you do not know that I am not covered by any hospitalization plan. Paradise Vendors, of course, is too paleolithic to consider offering its workers such benefits. Actually, sir, I am growing quite dissatisfied with conditions at this disreputable firm."

"Why, what's wrong?" Mr. Clyde asked.

"Everything, I'm afraid. On top of that, I don't feel at all appreciated."

"Well, at least you show up every day. I'll give you that."

"That is only because I would be beaten senseless with a baked wine bottle if I dared stay at home. Opening the door of my home is like intruding into the den of a lioness. My mother is becoming increasingly abusive and vicious."

"You know, Reilly, I don't wanna fire you," Mr. Clyde said in a paternal tone. He had heard the sad tale of vendor Reilly: the drunken mother, the damages that had to be paid, the threat of penury for both son and mother, the mother's lascivious friends. "I'm gonna fix you up with a new route and give you another chance. I got some merchandising gimmicks maybe help you out."

"You may send a map of my new route to the mental ward at Charity Hospital. The solicitous nuns and psychiatrists there can help me decipher it between shock treatments."

"Now shut up."

"You see that? You've destroyed my initiative already,"

Ignatius belched. "Well, I do hope that you have selected a scenic route, preferably something in a park area where there are ample seating accommodations for sufferers from tired, stunned feet. When I rose this morning, my ankles gave way.

Fortunately I grabbed for the bedpost in time. Otherwise, I would have landed on the floor in a broken heap. My tarsi are apparently about to throw in the towel completely."

Ignatius limped around Mr. Clyde to illustrate, his desert boots scuffing along the oily cement. "Stop that, you big slob. You ain't crippled."

"Not completely as of yet. However, various small bones and ligaments are beginning to wave a white flag of surrender. My physical apparati seem to be preparing to announce a truce of some sort. My digestive system has almost ceased functioning altogether. Some tissue has perhaps grown over my pyloric valve, sealing it forever."

"I'm gonna put you down in the French Quarter."

"What?" Ignatius thundered. "Do you think that I am going to perambulate about in that sinkhole of vice? No, I am afraid that the Quarter is out of the question. My psyche would crumble in the atmosphere. Besides, the streets are very narrow and dangerous there. I could easily be struck down in traffic or be wedged against a building."

"Take it or leave it, you fat bastard. That's the last chance you get." Mr. Clyde's scar was beginning to whiten again.

"It is? Well, please don't have another seizure. You may tumble into that vat of franks and scald yourself. If you insist, I imagine that I shall have to trundle my franks down into Sodom and Gomorrah."

"Okay. Then it's settled. You come in tomorrow morning, we'll fix you up with some gimmicks."

"I can't promise you that many hot dogs will be sold in the Quarter. I will probably be kept busy every moment protecting my honor against those fiends who live down there."

"You get mostly the tourist trade in the Quarter."

"That's even worse. Only degenerates go touring. Personally, I have been out of the city only once. By the way, have I ever told you about that particular pilgrimage to Baton Rouge?

Outside the city limits there are many horrors."

"No. I don't wanna hear about it."

"Well, too bad for you. You might have gained some valuable insights from the traumatic tale of that trip. However, I am glad that you do not want to hear of it. The psychological and symbolic subtleties of the journey probably wouldn't be comprehended by a Paradise Vendors mentality. Fortunately, I've written it all down, and at some time in the future, the more alert among the reading public will benefit from my account of that abysmal sojourn into the swamps to the inner station of the ultimate horror."

"Now listen here, Reilly."

"In the account I struck upon an especially suitable simile in comparing the Scenicruiser bus to a loop-the-loop in a surrealistic amusement park."

"Now shut up!" Mr. Clyde screamed, waving his fork menacingly. "Let's go over your receipts for today. How much did you sell?"

"O, my God," Ignatius sighed. "I knew that we'd get to that sooner or later."

The two haggled over the profits for several minutes. Ignatius had actually spent the morning sitting at Eads Plaza watching the harbor traffic and jotting some notes about the history of shipping and Marco Polo in a Big Chief tablet. Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked. The afternoon had been wasted on the cat; Ignatius had tried to trap the cat in the bun compartment and take it home for a pet. But it had escaped.

"It seems to me that you would be generous enough to give some sort of discount to your own employees," Ignatius said importantly after an audit of the day's receipts showed that, upon subtracting the cost of the hot dogs he had eaten, his take-home pay for the day was exactly a dollar and twenty-five cents. "After all, I am becoming your best customer."

Mr. Clyde stuck the fork in Vendor Reilly's muffler and ordered him out of the garage, threatening him with dismissal if he didn't show up early to begin working the French Quarter.

Ignatius flapped off to the trolley in a dark mood and rode uptown belching Paradise gas so violently that, although the car was crowded, no one would sit next to him.

When he walked into the kitchen, his mother greeted him by falling to her knees and saying, "Lord, tell me how come you sent me this terrible cross to bear? What I done, Lord? Tell me. Send me a sign. I been good."

"Stop that blasphemy this moment," Ignatius screamed. Mrs.

Reilly was questioning the ceiling with her eyes, seeking an answer among the grease and cracks. "What a greeting I receive after a discouraging day battling for my very existence on the streets of this savage town."

"What's them bo-bos on your hand?"

Ignatius looked at the scratches he had received in trying to persuade the cat to remain in the bun compartment.

"I had a rather apocalyptic battle with a starving prostitute,"

Ignatius belched. "Had it not been for my superior brawn, she would have sacked my wagon. Finally she limped away from the fray, her glad rags askew."

"Ignatius!" Mrs. Reilly cried tragically. "Every day it seems you getting worst and worst. What's happening to you?"

"Get your bottle out of the oven. It must be done by now."

Mrs. Reilly looked at her son slyly and asked, "Ignatius, you sure you not a communiss?"

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed. "Every day I am subjected to a McCarthyite witchhunt in this crumbling building. No! I told you before. I am not a fellow traveler. What in the world has put that into your head?"

"I read someplace in the paper where they got plenty communiss at college."

"Well, fortunately I didn't meet them. Had they crossed my path, they would have been beaten to within an inch of their lives. Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life."

"A king? You want a king?"

"Oh, stop babbling at me."

"I never heard of nobody wanted a king."

"Please!" Ignatius pounded a paw into the oilcloth on the kitchen table. "Sweep the porch, visit Miss Annie, call the Battaglia bawd, practice with your bowling ball out in the alley. Let me alone! I am in a very bad cycle."

"What you mean, 'cycle'?"

"If you do not stop molesting me, I shall christen the prow of your broken Plymouth with the bottle of wine in the oven,"

Ignatius snorted.

"Fighting with some poor girl in the street," Mrs. Reilly said sadly. "Ain't that awful. And right in front a weenie wagon.

Ignatius, I think you need help."

"Well, I am going to watch television," Ignatius said angrily.

"The Yogi Bear program is coming on."

"Wait a minute, boy." Mrs. Reilly rose from the floor and pulled a small manila envelope out of a pocket in her sweater.

"Here. This come for you today."

"Oh?" Ignatius asked with interest, seizing the little tan envelope. "I imagine that you have memorized its contents by now."

"You better stick your hands in the sink and wrench out them scratches."

"They can wait," Ignatius said. He ripped at the envelope. "M.

Minkoff has apparently responded to my missive with a rather frantic urgency. I told her off quite viciously."

Mrs. Reilly sat down and crossed her legs, swinging her white socks and old black patent leather pumps sadly while her son's blue and yellow eyes scanned the unfolded Macy's bag on which the letter was written.

Sirs:

Well, at last I heard from you, Ignatius. And a sick, sick letter it was. I won't go into the "Levy Pants" letterhead on that stationery. It is probably your idea of an anti-Semitic prank.

It's a good thing that I'm above attack on that level. I never thought that you would stoop so low. Live and learn. Your comments about the lecture showed a very petty jealousy I didn't expect from someone who claims to be so broad and non-committed. Already the lecture is beginning to interest several dedicated people I know. One person who has promised to come (and bring several sharp friends, too) is a brilliant new contact I made during rush hour on the Jerome Avenue line.

His name is Ongah, and he is an exchange student from Kenya who is writing a dissertation at N.Y.U. on the French symbolists of the 19th cent. Of course, you would not understand or like a brilliant and dedicated guy like Ongah. I could listen to him talk for hours. He is serious and does not come on with all of that pseudo stuff like you always did.

What Ongah says is meaningful. Ongah is real and vital. He is virile and aggressive. He rips at reality and tears aside concealing veils.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau."

"What's that?" Mrs. Reilly asked suspiciously.

"Go turn on the television set and warm it up," Ignatius said absently and returned to his furious reading of the letter.

He is not a bit like you, as you can imagine. He is also a musician and a sculptor and spends every minute in some real and meaningful activity, creating and sensing. His sculpture almost leaps out and grabs you, it is so filled with life and being.

At least your letter let me know that you are still alive, if you can call what you do "living." What were all these lies about being connected with the "food merchandising industry?" Is this some attack on my father's restaurant supply business? If so, that didn't get to me either because my father and I have been at ideological odds' for years. Let's face it, Ignatius. Since I saw you last, you have done nothing but lie around rotting in your room. Your hostility to my lecture is a manifestation of your feelings of failure, nonaccomplishment, and mental(?) impotence.

"This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion," Ignatius mumbled furiously.

"What? What's that, boy?"

Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy, and it would probably be non-taxing on your valve and other things. Get out of that womb-house for at least an hour a day. Take a walk, Ignatius. Look at the trees and birds. Realize that life is surging all around you. The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve.

If you are having any sex fantasies, describe them in detail in your next letter. I may be able to interpret their meaning for you and help you through this psycho-sexual crisis you are having. When I was at college, I told you many times that you would undergo a psychotic phase of this sort.

I thought you might be interested in knowing that I've just read in Social Revulsion that Louisiana has the highest illiteracy rate in the U. S. Come out from under the mess before it's too late. I really don't mind what you wrote about the lecture. I understand your condition, Ignatius. The members of my group therapy group are all following your case with interest (I have told it to them chapter by chapter beginning with the paranoid fantasy, adding certain background commentaries), and they are all rooting for you. If I were not so busy with the lecture, I would take off on a long-overdue inspection tour and come to see you personally. Hold on until we meet again.

M. Minkoff

Ignatius folded the letter violently; then he rolled the folded Macy's bag into a ball and heaved it into the garbage pail. Mrs.