John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

Santa guffawed in a voice huskier than usual and hung up.

“What in the world do you and that old bawd babble about?” Ignatius asked.

“Shut up!”

“Thank you. I see that things about here are as cheerful as ever.”

“How much money you brought in today? A quarter?” Mrs. Reilly screamed. She leaped up and stuck her hand into one of the pockets of the smock and pulled out the brilliant photograph. “Ignatius!”

“Give that to me,” Ignatius thundered. “How dare you besmirch that magnificent image with your vintner’s hands.”

Mrs. Reilly peeked at the photograph again and then closed her eyes. A tear crept out from beneath her closed eyelids. “I knew when you started selling them weenies you was gonna be hanging around with people like this.”

“What do you mean, ‘people like this’?” Ignatius asked angrily, pocketing the photograph. “This is a brilliant, misused woman. Speak of her with respect and reverence.”

“I don’t wanna speak at all,” Mrs. Reilly sniffed, her lids still sealed. “Go sit in your room and write some more of your foolishness.” The telephone rang. “That must be that Mr. Levy. He already rang up here twice today.”

“Mr. Levy? What does that monster want?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. Go on, crazy. Answer that. Pick up that phone.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to speak with him,” Ignatius thundered. He picked up the telephone, and in an assumed voice rich with Mayfair accents said, “Yus?”

“Mr. Reilly?” a man asked.

“Mr. Reilly is not here.”

“This is Gus Levy.” In the background, a woman’s voice was saying, “Let’s see what you’re going to say. Another chance down the drain, a psycho escaped.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Ignatius enunciated. “Mr. Reilly was called out of town this afternoon on rather crucial business. Actually, he is at the state mental hospital in Mandeville. Since being so viciously dismissed by your concern, he has had to commute back and forth regularly from Mandeville. His ego is badly bruised. You may yet receive his psychiatrists’ bills. They are rather staggering.”

“He cracked up?”

“Violently and totally. We had something of a time with him here. The first time that he went to Mandeville, he had to be transported in an armored car. As you know, his physique is rather grand. This afternoon, however, he left in a state patrol ambulance.”

“Can he have visitors at Mandeville?”

“Of course. Drive out to see him. Bring him some cookies.”

Ignatius slammed the telephone down, pressed a quarter into the palm of his still sniffling, blinded mother, and waddled to his room. Before opening the door, he stopped to straighten the PEACE TO MEN OF GOOD WILL sign that he had tacked to the peeling wood.

All signs were pointing upward; his wheel was revolving skyward.

There had been a flurry of excitement. The wild blowing of the postman’s whistle, the chugging postal truck out on Constantinople Street, his mother’s excited screaming, Miss Annie’s calling to the postman that his whistle had frightened her—all had interrupted Ignatius’s dressing for the kickoff rally. He signed the postal delivery receipt and rushed back to his room, locking his door.

“What is it, boy?” Mrs. Reilly asked in the hall.

Ignatius looked at the AIR MAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY stamping on the manila envelope and at the little hand-written pleas, “Urgent” and “Rush.”

“Oh, my goodness,” he said happily. “The Minkoff minx must be beside herself.”

He tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter.

Sirs:

Did you really send me this telegram, Ignatius?

MYRNA FORM PEACE PARTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE NORTHEASTERN ZONE AT ONCE STOP ORGANIZE AT EVERY LEVEL STOP RECRUIT SODOMITES ONLY STOP SEX IN POLITICS STOP DETAILS WILL FOLLOW STOP IGNATIUS NATIONAL CHAIRMAN STOP

What does this mean, Ignatius? Do you really want me to recruit fags? Who wants to be a registered Sodomite? Ignatius, I am very worried. Are you hanging around with some queers? I could have guessed that this would happen. The paranoid fantasy of the arrest and accident was the first clue. Now the whole thing is out in the open. Your normal sexual outlets have been blocked for so long that now the sexual overflow is seeping out into the wrong channels. Since the fantasy, which was the beginning of it all, you have been undergoing a period of crisis which is culminating in overt sexual aberration. I could tell that you were going to flip sooner or later. Now it has happened. My group therapy group will really be depressed when they hear that your case has taken a turn for the worse. Please leave that decaying city and come north. Call me collect if you want to and we can talk over this problem of sexual orientation that you are having. You must have therapy soon or you will become a screaming queen.

“How dare she?” Ignatius bellowed.

Whatever happened to the Divine Right party? I had several people who were all ready to join. I don’t know if they’ll go for this Sodomite business, although I can see that we might use this Sodomite party to drain off the fringe-group fascists. Maybe we could split the right wing in half. Still I don’t think this is a good idea at all. Suppose non-Sodomites want to join and we refuse. We will be accused of being prejudiced, and the whole thing will flop. The lecture was not exactly a success, I’m afraid. It went over all right—right over the people’s heads. There were two or three middle aged people in the audience who tried to heckle me with these very hostile remarks, but a couple of my friends from the group therapy group challenged them hostility for hostility and finally drove those reactionaries out of the auditorium. Just as I suspected, I was a little too advanced for the neighborhood audience. Ongah did not show up, that crumb. As far as I’m concerned, they can send him back to Africa. I really thought that guy had something on the ball. Apparently he’s very apathetic politically. He promised me he would be there, that schmuck. Ignatius, this Sodomite plan does not sound very practical at all. In addition, I think it is only a dangerous manifestation of your declining mental health. I don’t know how I can tell my group therapy group about this weird development—however predictable it might have been. The group has been really pulling for you all along. Some are even identifying with you. If you go, they might go, too. I need immediate communication from you. Please call collect anytime after 6 P.M. I am very, very worried.

M. Minkoff

“She’s totally confounded,” Ignatius said happily. “Wait until she hears of my apocalyptic meeting with Miss O’Hara.”

“Ignatius, what’s that you got?”

“A communication from Myrna minx.”

“What that girl wants?”

“She’s threatening suicide unless I swear that my heart is hers alone.”

“Ain’t that awful. I bet you been telling that poor girl a Iota lies. I know you, Ignatius.”

Behind the door there were sounds of dressing; something that sounded like a piece of metal fell to the floor.

“Where you going to?” Mrs. Reilly asked the peeling paint.

“Please, Mother,” a basso profundo voice answered. “I’m rather rushed. Stop bothering me, please.”

“You might as well stay at home all day long for all the money you bringing in,” Mrs. Reilly screamed at the door. “How I’m gonna meet the note I gotta pay that man?”

“I wish that you would let me alone. I am addressing a political meeting tonight, and I must organize my thoughts.”

“A political meeting? Ignatius! Ain’t that wonderful. Maybe you’ll make good in politics, boy. You got you a fine voice. What club, honey? The Crescent City Democrats? The Old Regulars?”