John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

Mr. Levy could think of no reason for her having moved to this particular location. But the Ignatius Reilly story had made him depressed, and he wished he were away from Constantinople Street.

“Well,” the woman rushed on, eager for the audience to hear her tale of suffering, “this stuff in the paper’s the last straw. Look at the bad publicity the block’s got now. If they start anything now, I’m gonna call up the police and get him put under a peace bond. I can’t take it no more. My nerves is shot to hell. Even when that Ignatius takes a bath, it sounds like a flood’s coming in my own house. I think all my pipes is busted. I’m too old. I had enough with them people.” Miss Annie glanced over Mr. Levy’s shoulder. “It’s been nice talking to you, mister. So long.”

She raced back into her house and slammed her shutters. Her sudden disappearance confused Mr. Levy as much as her strange biography of Mr. Reilly had. What a neighborhood. Levy’s Lodge had always been a barrier against knowing people like this. Then Mr. Levy saw the old Plymouth trying to dock at the curb, scraping its hubcaps against its moorings before finally coming to rest. In the rear seat he saw the silhouette of the big kook. A woman with maroon hair climbed down from the driver’s seat and called, “Okay, boy, get out that car!”

“Not until you clarify your relationship with that drooling old man,” the silhouette answered. “I thought that we had escaped from that degenerate old fascist. Apparently I was wrong. All along you’ve been carrying on an affair with him behind my back. You probably planted him there in front of D. H. Holmes. Now that I think of it you probably planted that mongoloid Mancuso there, too, to start this vicious cycle whirling. How unsuspecting, how ingenuous I’ve been. For weeks now I’ve been the dupe of a conspiracy. It’s all a plot!”

“Get down from that car!”

“You see?” Miss Annie said through her shutters. “They’re at it again.”

The rear car door swung rustily open and a bursting desert boot stepped down onto the running board. The kook’s head was bandaged. He looked tired and pale.

“I will not stay under the same roof with a loose woman. I’m shocked and hurt. My own mother. No wonder you’ve turned on me so savagely. I suspect that you are using me as a scapegoat for your own feelings of guilt.”

What a family, Mr. Levy thought. The mother did look like something of a floozie. He wondered why the undercover agent had wanted her.

“Shut up your dirty mouth,” the woman was screaming. “All this over a fine, decent man like Claude.”

“Fine man,” Ignatius snorted. “I knew you’d end like this when you started traveling around with those degenerates.”

Along the block a few people had come out on their steps. What a day this was going to be. Mr. Levy ran the risk of getting into a public scene with these wild people. His heartburn was spreading out to the limits of his chest.

The woman with the maroon hair had fallen to her knees and was asking the sky, “What I done wrong, God? Tell me, Lord. I been good.”

“You’re kneeling on Rex’s grave!” Ignatius shouted. “Now tell me what you and that debauched McCarthyite have been doing. You probably belong to some secret political cell. No wonder I’ve been bombarded with those witch hunt pamphlets. No wonder I was trailed last night. Where is the Battaglia matchmaker? Where is she? She must be lashed. This whole thing is a coup against me, a vicious scheme to get me out of the way. My God! That bird was doubtlessly trained by a band of fascists. They’ll try anything.”

“Claude’s been courting me,” Mrs. Reilly said defiantly.

“What?” Ignatius thundered. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been permitting some old man to paw all over you?”

“Claude’s a nice man. All he done is hold my hand a few times.”

The blue and yellow eyes crossed in anger. The paws closed over the ears so that he would not have to listen to more.

“Goodness only knows what unmentionable desires that man has. Please don’t tell me the whole truth. I would have a total breakdown.”

“Shut up!” Miss Annie screamed from behind her shutters. “You people are living on borrowed time in this block.”

“Claude ain’t smart, but he’s a nice man. He’s good to his family and that’s what counts. Santa says he likes the communiss because he’s lonely. He ain’t got nothing else to do. If he was to ax me to marry him this very minute, I’d say, ‘Okay, Claude.’ I would, Ignatius. I wouldn’t haveta think twice about it. I got a right to have somebody treat me nice before I die. I got a right not to haveta worry about where my next dollar’s coming from. When Claude and me went to get your clothes from that head nurse and she hands us over your wallet with almost thirty dollars in it, that was the last straw. All your craziness was bad enough, but keeping that money from your poor momma…”

“I needed the money for a purpose.”

“For what? To hang around with dirty women?” Mrs. Reilly lifted herself laboriously from Rex’s grave. “You ain’t only crazy, Ignatius. You mean, too.”

“Do you seriously think that Claude roué wants marriage?” Ignatius slobbered, changing the subject. “You’ll be dragged from one reeking motel to another. You’ll end up a suicide.”

“I’ll get married if I want to, boy. You can’t stop me. Not now.”

“That man is a dangerous radical,” Ignatius said darkly. “Goodness knows what political and ideological horrors lurk in his mind. He’ll torture you or worse.”

“Just who the hell are you to try to tell me what to do, Ignatius?” Mrs. Reilly stared at her huffing son. She was disgusted and tired, disinterested in anything that Ignatius might have to say. “Claude is dumb. Okay. I’ll grant you that. Claude is all the time worrying me about them communiss. Okay. Maybe he don’t know nothing about politics. But I ain’t worried about politics. I’m worried about dying halfway decent. Claude can be kind to a person, and that’s more than you can do with all your politics and all your graduating smart. For everything nice I ever done for you, I just get kicked around. I want to be treated nice by somebody before I die. You learnt everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being.”

“It’s not your fate to be well treated,” Ignatius cried. “You’re an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you.”

“Go to hell, Ignatius. You broke my heart so many times I can’t count them up no more.”

“That man shall never enter this house while I am here. After he had grown tired of you, he would probably turn his warped attentions on me.”

“What’s that, crazy? Shut up your silly mouth. I’m fed up. I’ll take care of you. You say you wanna take a rest? I can fix you up with a nice rest.”

“When I think of my dear departed father barely cold in his grave,” Ignatius murmured, pretending to wipe some moisture from his eyes.

“Mr. Reilly died twenty years ago.”

“Twenty -one,” Ignatius gloated. “So. You’ve forgotten your beloved husband.”

“Pardon me,” Mr. Levy said weakly. “May I speak with you, Mr. Reilly?”

“What?” Ignatius asked, noticing for the first time the man standing up on the porch.

“What you want with Ignatius?” Mrs. Reilly asked the man. Mr. Levy introduced himself. “Well, this is him in person. I hope you didn’t believe that funny story he give you over the phone the other day. I was too tired to grab the phone out his hands.”

“Can we all go in the house?” Mr. Levy asked. “I’d like to speak with him privately.”

“It don’t matter to me,” Mrs. Reilly said disinterestedly. She looked down the block and saw her neighbors watching them. “The whole neighborhood knows everything now.”