John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

He had asked Gonzalez to cancel his spring practice reservations. This Abelman case had to be cleared up. Mr. Levy straightened his newspaper and realized again that, were his digestive system able to take it, he should have given his time to supervising Levy Pants. Things like this would not happen; life could be peaceful. But just the name, just the three syllables of “Levy Pants,” caused acid complications in his chest. Perhaps he should have changed the name. Perhaps he should have changed Gonzalez. The office manager was so loyal, though. He loved his thankless, low-salaried job. You couldn’t just kick him out. Where would he find another job? Even more important, who would want to replace him? One good reason for keeping Levy Pants open was keeping Gonzalez employed. Mr. Levy tried, but he could think of no other reason for keeping the place open. Gonzalez might commit suicide if the factory were shut down. There was a human life to consider. Too, no one apparently wanted to buy the place.

Leon Levy could have named his monument “Levy Trousers.” That wasn’t too bad. Throughout his life, but especially when he was a child, Gus Levy had said, “Levy Pants,” and had always received a standard reply, “He does?” When he was about twenty, he had mentioned to his father that a change of title might help their business, and his father had moaned, “‘Levy Pants’ all of a sudden isn’t good enough for you? The food you’re eating is ‘Levy Pants.’ The car you’re driving is ‘Levy Pants.’ I am ‘Levy Pants.’ This is gratitude? This is a child’s devotion? Next I should change my name. Shut up, bum. Go play with the autos and the flappers. Already I got a Depression on my hands, I don’t need smart advice from you. Better you should give with the advice to Hoover. You should go tell him to change his name to Schlemiel. Out of my office! Shut up!”

Gus Levy looked at the pictures and the article on the front page and whistled through his teeth, “Oh, boy.”

“What is it, Gus? A problem? Are you having a problem? All night you were awake. I could hear the whirlpool bath going all night. You’re going to have a crackup. Please go to Lenny’s doctor before you become violent.”

“I just found Mr. Reilly.”

“I guess you’re happy.”

“Aren’t you? Look, he’s in the papers.”

“Really? Bring it over here. I’ve always wondered about that young idealist. I guess he’s received some civic award.”

“Just the other day you were saying he was a psycho.”

“If he was clever enough to send us over to Mandeville like two stooges, he’s not that psycho. Even somebody like the idealist can playa joke on you.”

Mrs. Levy looked at the two women, the bird, the grinning doorman.

“Where is he? I don’t see any idealist.” Mr. Levy indicated the stricken cow in the street. “That’s him? In the gutter? This is tragic. Carousing, drunken, hopeless, already a bloated derelict. Mark him down in your book next to Miss Trixie and me as another life you’ve wrecked.”

“A bird bit him on the ear or something crazy. Here, look at the bunch of police characters in these pictures. I told you he had a police record. Those people are his buddies. Strippers and pimps and pornographers.”

“Once he was dedicated to idealistic causes. Now look at him. Don’t worry. You’ll pay for all of this someday. In a few months, when Abelman has finished with you, you’ll be out on the streets again with a wagon like your father. You’ll learn what happens when you play games with somebody like Abelman, when you operate a business like a playboy. Susan and Sandra will go into shock when they find out they don’t have a penny to their name. Will they give you the big go-by. Gus Levy, ex-father.”

“Well, I’m going into town right now to speak with this Reilly. I’ll get this crazy letter business straightened out.”

“Ho ho. Gus Levy, detective. Don’t make me laugh. You probably wrote the letter one day after you won at the track and felt good. I knew it would end like this.”

“You know, I think you’re actually looking forward to Abelman’s libel suit. You actually want to see me ruined, even if you go down with me.”

Mrs. Levy yawned and said, “Can I fight what you’ve been leading up to all your life? This really proves to the girls that what I’ve said about you all along was right. The more I think about Abelman’s suit, the more I realize that the whole thing is inevitable, Gus. Thank goodness my mother has some money. I always knew I’d have to go back to her someday. She’ll probably have to give up San Juan, though. You can’t keep Susan and Sandra alive for peanuts.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“You’re telling me to shut up?” Mrs. Levy bounced up and down, up and down. “I’m supposed to watch your smashup in silence? I have to make plans for myself and my daughters. I mean, life goes on, Gus. I can’t end up on skid row with you. We can only be grateful that your father has left us. If he had lived to see Levy Pants lost because of some practical joke, you’d really pay. Believe me. Leon Levy would have you run out of the country. That man had courage, determination. And whatever happens, the Leon Levy Foundation goes through. Even if Mother and I have to do without, I’m making those awards. I’m going to honor and reward people who have the kind of courage and bravery that I saw in your father. I won’t let you drag his name down with you on your journey to skid row. After Abelman’s finished, you’ll be lucky to get hired as a water boy on one of those teams you love so much. Boy, will you have to work then, running around with a bucket and a sponge like a bum. But don’t feel sorry for yourself. You had it coming.”

Now Mr. Levy knew that his wife’s strange logic made it necessary for him to be ruined. She wanted to see Abelman victorious; she would see in the victory some peculiar justification. Since his wife had read the letter from Abelman, her mind must have been working over the matter from every angle. Every minute that she was pedaling the exercycle or bouncing on the board, her system of logic was probably telling her more and more convincingly that Abelman must win the suit. It would be not only Abelman’s victory, but hers, also. Every conversational and epistolary roadsign and guidepost that she had held up before the girls pointed to their father’s final, terrible failure. Mrs. Levy couldn’t afford to be disproved. She needed the $500 thousand libel suit. She wasn’t even interested in his speaking with Reilly. The Abelman case had passed from a purely material and physical plane to an ideological and spiritual one where universal and cosmic forces decreed that Gus Levy must lose, that a childless and desolate Gus Levy must wander endlessly with bucket and sponge.

“Well, I’m going after Reilly,” Mr. Levy said finally.

“Such determination. I can hardly believe it. Don’t worry, you won’t be able to pin anything on the young idealist. He’s too clever. He’ll play another joke on you. Just watch. Another wild-goose chase. Back to Mandeville. This time they’ll keep you there, a middle-aged man driving a little toy of a collegian’s sports car.”

“I’m going right to his house.”

Mrs. Levy folded her Foundation notes and turned off her board, saying, “Well, if you’re going to town, take me with you. I’m worried about Miss Trixie since Gonzalez reported that she bit that gangster’s hand. I must see her. Her old hostility toward Levy Pants is out in the open again.”

“Do you still want to play around with that senile bag? Haven’t you tormented her enough already?”

“Even a little good deed you don’t want me to do. Your type isn’t even in the psychology books. You should at least go to Lenny’s doctor for his sake. Once your case was in the psychiatric journals, they’d be inviting him to Vienna to speak. You’d make him a famous man just like that crippled girl or whoever it was put Freud on the map.”