John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“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. Reilly looked at her son’s reddened face and asked, “What that girl wants? What she’s doing nowadays?”

“Myrna is preparing to bray at some unfortunate Negro. In public.”

“Ain’t that awful. You sure pick up with fine friends, Ignatius. Them colored people already got it hard, boy. They got a hard road, too. Life’s hard, Ignatius. You’ll learn.”

“Thank you very much,” Ignatius said in a businesslike manner.

“You know that poor old colored lady sells them pralines in front the cemetery? Aw, Ignatius. I really feel sorry for her. The other day I seen her wearing a little cloth coat full of holes, and it was cold out. So I says to her, I says, ‘Hey, honey, you gonna catch your death of cold wearing that little cloth coat full of holes.’ And she says…”

“Please!” Ignatius shouted furiously. “I am not in the mood for a dialect story.”

“Ignatius, listen to me. That lady’s pitiful, yeah. She says, ‘Oh, I don’t mind the cold, sugar. I’m used to it.’ Ain’t that brave?” Mrs. Reilly looked emotionally at Ignatius for agreement but was treated only to a sneering moustache. “Ain’t that something. So, you know what I done, Ignatius. I give her a quarter and I says, ‘Here, darling, go buy you a trinket for your little granchirren.’”

“What?” Ignatius exploded. “So that is where our profits are going. While I am almost reduced to begging on the streets, you are flinging our money away at frauds. That woman’s clothing is all a ruse. She has a wonderful, lucrative location at that cemetery. Doubtlessly she makes ten times more than I do.”

“Ignatius! She’s all broke down,” Mrs. Reilly said sadly. “I wish you was as brave as she is.”

“I see. Now I am being compared to a degenerate old female fraud. Worse, I am losing in the comparison. My own mother daring to malign me so.” Ignatius thrust a paw onto the oilcloth. “Well, I have had enough of this. I’m going into the parlor to watch the Yogi Bear program. Between wine breaks, bring me a snack of some sort. My valve is screaming for appeasement.”

“Shut up over there,” Miss Annie screamed through her shutters as Ignatius gathered his smock about him and swept into the hall contemplating his most important problem: organizing a new assault against the minx’s effrontery. The civil rights assault had failed because of defections in the ranks. There must be other assaults which could be launched in the fields of politics and sex. Preferably politics. The strategy deserved his full attention.