“I know what it is, sugar. Remember I lived down there on Dauphine when I was a girl. The anonymous letters my poppa useta get… about me. Vicious. I always thought my cousin, that poor spinster girl, was writing them.”
“Which cousin was that?” Santa asked with interest. Irene Reilly’s relatives always had gory biographies that were worth hearing.
“That was the one knocked a pot of berling water on her arm when she was a child. She was kinda scalded looking. You know what I mean? I always seen her writing away at the kitchen table at her momma’s house. She was prolly writing about me. She was very jealous when Mr. Reilly started seeing me.”
“That’s the way it goes,” Santa said. A scalded relative was a dull figure in Irene’s dramatic gallery. Then she said hoarsely and cheerfully, “I’ll have a little party with you and Angelo and his wife, if she’ll come.”
“Aw, that’s sweet, Santa, but I don’t feel much like a party these days.”
“It’ll do you good to shake yourself a little, girl. If I can find out about that old man, I’ll invite him over too. You and him can dance.”
“Well, if you see the old man, babe, tell him Miss Reilly said, ‘Hello.’”
Behind the bathroom door Ignatius was lying passively in the tepid water pushing the plastic soap dish back and forth across the surface with one finger and listening now and then to his mother on the telephone. Occasionally he held the soap dish down until it filled with water and sank. Then he would feel for it on the bottom of the tub, empty it, and sail it again. His blue and yellow eyes rested on an unopened manila envelope on the top of the toilet. For quite a while Ignatius had been trying to decide whether or not he would open the envelope. The trauma of having found employment had affected his valve negatively, and he was waiting until the warm water in which he wallowed like a pink hippopotamus had a calming effect upon his system. Then he would attack the envelope. Paradise Vendors should prove to be a pleasant employer. He would spend his time parked somewhere by the river accumulating notes for the Journal. Mr. Clyde had a certain paternal quality that Ignatius liked; the old man, the scarred and wizened mogul of the frankfurter, would be a welcome new character in the Journal.
At last Ignatius felt relaxed enough and, raising his dripping hulk out of the water, picked up the envelope.
“Why must she use this sort of envelope?” he asked angrily, studying the little circle of a Planetarium Station, New York, postmark on the thick tan paper. “The contents are probably written in marking pencil or worse.”
He tore the envelope open, wetting the paper, and pulled out a folded poster that said in large letters:
LECTURE! LECTURE!
M. Minkoff speaks boldly about
“Sex in Politics: Erotic Liberty as a weapon Against Reactionaries”
8 p.m. Thursday, the 28th
Y.M.H.A. - Grand Concourse
Admission: $1.00 - OR - Sign M. Minkoff’s Petition Which Aggressively Demands More and Better Sex for All and a Crash Program for Minorities! (The petition will be mailed to Washington.) Sign now and save America from sexual ignorance, chastity, and fear. Are you committed enough to helpin this bold and crucial movement?
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius spurted through his dripping moustache. “Are they letting her speak in public now? What in the world does the title of this ludicrous lecture mean?” Ignatius read the poster again, viciously. “At any rate, I know that she will speak boldly, and in a perverse way I wish that I could hear that little minx babbling before an audience. This time she has outdone herself in offending taste and decency.”
Following a handwritten arrow at the bottom of the poster and the word over, Ignatius complied and looked at the other side of the poster, where Myrna had written something:
Sirs:
What is wrong, Ignatius? I have not heard from you. Well, I don’t really blame you for not writing. I guess I came on a little strong in my last letter, but it was only because your paranoid fantasy disturbed me, rooted as it possibly was in your unhealthy attitude toward sex. You know that ever since I first met you I have directed pointed questions at you in order to clarify your sexual inclinations. My other desire was to aid you in finding your true self-expression and contentment through satisfying, natural orgasm. I respect your mind and I have always accepted your eccentric tendencies and that is why I want to see you reach the plateau of perfect mental-sexual balance. (A good, explosive orgasm would cleanse your being and bring you out of the shadows.) Just don’t be angry at me about the letter.
I will explain this poster a little later in this letter because I imagine you are interested in knowing how this bold, dedicated lecture came about. First, though, I must tell you that the movie is off, so if you were planning to play the landlord, forget it. Basically, we had trouble with funds. I could not milk another drachma out of my father, so Leola, the Harlem find, got very hostile about salary (or lack of it) and finally dropped a remark or two that sounded a little anti-Semitic to me. Who needs a girl who isn’t dedicated enough to work gratis in a project that would benefit her race? Samuel has decided to become a forest ranger in Montana because he is planning a dramatic allegory set in a dark woods (Ignorance and Custom) and he wants to get the feel of the forest. From what I know of Samuel, he will be a big flop as a ranger, but the allegory, I know, will be challenging and controversial, full of unpleasant truths. Wish him well. He is fantastic.
To get back to the lecture. At last it seems that I am finding a platform for my philosophy, etc. It all happened in a strange way. A few weeks ago I was at a party that some friends were giving for this very real boy who had just returned from Israel. He was unbelievable. I mean that.
Ignatius emitted a little Paradise gas.
For hours and hours he sang these folk songs he had picked up over there; really significant songs that proved my theory that music should basically be an instrument of social protest and expression. He kept us all in that apartment for hours and hours listening and asking for more. Later we all started talking — on many levels — and I let him know what was on my mind in general.
“Ho, hum,” Ignatius yawned violently.
He said, “Why are you keeping all of this to yourself, Myrna? Why haven’t you let the world in on this?” I told him that I often spoke in discussion groups and in my group therapy group. I also told him about these letters of mine to the editor that have been printed in The New Democracy and Man and Masses and Now!
“Get out of that tub, boy,” Ignatius heard his mother scream outside the door of the bathroom.
“Why?” he asked. “Are you going to use it?”
“No.”
“Then please go away.”
“You been in there too long.”
“Please! I am attempting to read a letter.”
“A letter? Who wrote you a letter?”
“My dear friend, Miss Minkoff.”
“The last thing you said was she got you fired outta Levy Pants.”
“Well, she did. However, it might have been a favor in disguise. My new work may prove rather agreeable.”
“Ain’t that awful,” Mrs. Reilly said sadly. “You get fired outta a two-bit clerk job in a factory and now you selling weenies in the streets. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Ignatius, you better not get fired by the weenie man. You know what Santa said?”
“I’m sure that it was rather perceptive and incisive, whatever it was. I would imagine that it is rather difficult to comprehend her assaults upon the Mother tongue.”
“She said somebody oughta punch you right in the nose.”
“Coming from her, that’s rather literate.”
“What that Myrna’s doing now?” Mrs. Reilly asked suspiciously. “How come she’s writing so much? She needed a good bath, that girl.”
“Myrna’s psyche is only capable of dealing with water in an oral context.”
“What?”
“Will you please stop shrieking like a fishmonger and run along? Don’t yo
u have a bottle of muscatel baking in the oven? Now let me alone. I’m very nervous.”
“Nervous? You been in that hot water over an hour.”
“It’s hardly hot anymore.”
“Then get out the tub.”
“Why is it so important to you that I leave this tub? Mother, I really don’t understand you at all. Isn’t there something that, as a housekeeper, you feel compelled to do at the moment? I noticed this morning that the lint in the hallway is forming into spheres almost as large as baseballs. Clean the house. Telephone for the correct time. Do something. Lie down and take a nap. You’re looking rather peaked these days.”
“Of course I am, boy. You breaking your poor momma’s heart. What would you do if I dropped dead?”
“Well, I am not going to participate in this idiotic conversation. Carry on a monologue out there if you wish. Quietly. I must concentrate upon the new offenses that M. Minkoff has conceived in this letter.”
“I can’t take it no more, Ignatius. You gonna find me laying in the kitchen one of these days with a stroke. Just watch, boy. You gonna be all alone in the world. Then you gonna fall on your knees and pray to God for the way you treated your poor dear mother.”
From the bathroom there came only silence. Mrs. Reilly waited for at least a splash of water or a rustle of paper, but the bathroom door might as well have been the door of a tomb. After a minute or two of fruitless waiting, she walked off down the hall toward the oven. When Ignatius heard the oven door creak open he returned to the letter.
He said, “With that voice and personality, you should be appearing before the people in prison.” This guy was really amazing; in addition to his tough mind, he was a real mensch. He was so gentlemanly and thoughtful I could hardly believe it. (Especially after dealing with Samuel, who is dedicated and unafraid but all a little too loud and something of a clod.) I never met anybody so dedicated to fighting reactionary ideas and prejudice as this folk singer. His very best friend was a Negro abstractionist, he said, who made magnificent smears of protest and defiance across the canvas, sometimes slashing the canvas to shreds with a knife. He handed me this brilliant pamphlet that showed in detail how the Pope is trying to assemble a nuclear armory; it really opened my mind, and I forwarded it to the editor of The New Democracy to aid him in his battle against the Church. But this guy also had this big thing against WASPS. Like he hated them. I mean, this fellow was sharp.
The next day I got a telephone call from him. Would I lecture to this social action group he was going to form somewhere in Brooklyn Heights? I was overcome. In this world of dog eat dog, it is rare to find a friend… a really sincere friend… or so I thought. Well, to make my point as briefly as possible, I had learned the hard way that the lecture circuit is something like show business: the casting couch and that routine. Get what I mean?
“Do I believe this egregious offense against good taste that I am reading?” Ignatius asked the floating soap dish. “This girl is without shame entirely!”
Again I have been awakened to the fact that my body appeals to some people more than my mind.
“Ho hum,” Ignatius sighed.
Personally, I feel like exposing this phony “folk singer” who I guess is preying on some other dedicated young girl liberal at this moment. Somebody I know said she heard this “folk singer” guy is really a Baptist from Alabama. Boy, what a fraud he was. So then I checked on this pamphlet he had given me and discovered that it was printed by the Klan. This will give you some idea of the ideological subtleties which we have to deal with today. It sounded like a good liberal pamphlet to me. Now I have had to humiliate myself by writing to the editor of The New Democracy to tell him that the pamphlet, although challenging, was written by the wrong people. Well, the WASPS struck back and got me this time. The incident reminded me of the time in Poe Park when this squirrel I was feeding turned out to really be a rat which at first glance could have passed for a squirrel any day. So live and learn. This phony gave me an idea. You can always learn something from crumbs. I decided to ask up here at the ‘Y’ if I could get the auditorium one night. After a while, they said o.k. Of course, the audience up here at the Bronx ‘Y’ will probably be a little parochial, but if I make good in the lecture, I might one day end up speaking down at the Lex. Ave. ‘Y’ where great thinkers like Norman Mailer and Seymour Krim are always airing their views. It won’t hurt to try.
I hope that you are working on your personality problems, Ignatius. Is the paranoia getting any worse? The basis for the paranoia, I think, is the fact that you’re always sealed up in that room and have become suspicious of the outside world. I don’t know why you insisted on living way down there with the alligators. In spite of the complete overhaul that your mind is crying for, you have a brain that could really grow and flower here in N.Y. As it is, you are thwarting yourself and your mentality. The last time I saw you, when I was passing through from Mississippi, you were in pretty bad shape. You’ve probably regressed completely by now living in that substandard old house with only your mother for company. Aren’t your natural impulses crying for release? A beautiful and meaningful love affair would transform you, Ignatius. I know it would. Great Oedipus bonds are encircling your brain and destroying you.
I don’t imagine that your sociological or political ideas are getting any more progressive either. Have you abandoned your project to form a political party or nominate a candidate for president by divine right? I remember that when I finally met you and challenged your political apathy, you came up with this idea. I knew that it was a reactionary project, but it at least showed that you were developing some political consciousness. Please write to me about the matter. I am very concerned. We need a three-party system in this country, and I think that day by day the fascists are growing in strength. This Divine Right Party is the sort of fringe-group scheme that would syphon off a large part of the fascist support.
Well, let me stop. I hope the lecture is a success. You, especially, would benefit from its message. By the way, if you ever do activate the Divine Right movement, I can give you some help in organizing a chapter up here. Please get out of the house, Ignatius, and enter into the world around you. I am worried about your future. You have always been one of my most important projects and I am interested in hearing of your current mental condition, so please get out of the pillows and write.
M. Minkoff
Later, his puckered pink skin wrapped in the old flannel robe that a safety pin held around his hips, Ignatius sat at the desk in his room filling his fountain pen. In the hall his mother was speaking to someone else on the telephone saying, “And I used every last cent of the insurance money his poor old Grammaw Reilly left just to keep him in college. Ain’t that awful? All that money down the drain.” Ignatius belched and opened a drawer to search for the stationery that he believed he still had; there he found the yo-yo that he had bought from the Filipino who had been selling them in the neighborhood a few months ago. On one side of the yo-yo there was a palm tree which the Filipino had carved at Ignatius’s request. Ignatius spun the yo-yo downward, but the string snapped and it rattled across the floor and under the bed where it landed on a pile of Big Chief tablets and old magazines. Removing the piece of string that hung from his finger, he dug into the drawer again and found a sheet of paper with a Levy Pants letterhead.
Beloved Myrna:
I have received your offensive communication. Do you seriously think that I am interested in your tawdry encounters with such sub-humans as folk singers? In every letter of yours I seem to find some reference to the sleaziness of your personal life. Please confine yourself to discussing issues and such; thereby you will at least avoid obscenity and offense. I did think, however, that the symbolism of the rat and squirrel or rat-squirrel or squirrel-rat was evocative and rather excellent.
On the dark night of that dubious lecture, the sole member of your audience will probably be some desperately lonely old male librarian who saw a light in the window of the lectu
re hall and hopefully came in to escape the cold and the horrors of his personal hell. There in the hall, his stooped figure sitting alone before the podium, your nasal voice echoing among the empty chairs and hammering boredom, confusion, and sexual reference deeper and deeper into the poor wretch’s bald skull, confounded to the point of hysteria, he will doubtlessly exhibit himself, waving his crabbed organ like a club in despair against the grim sound that drones on and on over his head. If I were you, I would cancel the lecture immediately; I am certain that the ‘Y’ management would be only too glad to accept your withdrawal, especially if they have had a chance to see that tasteless poster which is now no doubt tacked to every telephone pole in the Bronx.
The comments upon my personal life were uncalled for and revealed a shocking lack of taste and decency.
Actually, my personal life has undergone a metamorphosis: I am currently connected in a most vital manner with the food merchandising industry, and therefore I doubt quite seriously whether I shall have much time in the future to correspond with you.
Busily,
Ignatius
Eight
“Let her alone,” Mr. Levy said. “Look, she’s trying to sleep.”
“Let her alone?” Mrs. Levy propped up Miss Trixie on the yellow nylon couch. “Do you realize, Gus, that this is the tragedy of this poor woman’s life. She’s always been alone. She needs someone. She needs love.”
“Ugh.”
Mrs. Levy was a woman of interests and ideals. Over the years she had given herself freely to bridge, African violets, Susan and Sandra, golf, Miami, Fannie Hurst and Hemingway, correspondence courses, hairdressers, the sun, gourmet foods, ballroom dancing, and, in recent years, Miss Trixie. She had always had to settle for Miss Trixie at a distance, an unsatisfactory arrangement for carrying out the program outlined in the psychology correspondence course, the final examination of which she had failed resoundingly. The correspondence school had even refused to give her an F. But now that Mrs. Levy had played her card correctly in the game dealing with the firing of the young idealist, she had Miss Trixie in the wrinkled flesh, visor, sneakers, and all. Mr. Gonzalez had gladly given the assistant accountant an indefinite vacation.
A Confederacy of Dunces Page 19
