Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [21]
Mrs. Reilly stood in the hall looking at the DO NOT DISTURB sign printed on a sheet of Big Chief paper and stuck to the door by an old flesh-colored Band-aid.
“Ignatius, let me in there, boy,” she screamed.
“Let you in here?” Ignatius said through the door. “Of course I won’t. I am occupied at the moment with an especially succinct passage.”
“You let me in.”
“You know that you are never allowed in here.”
Mrs. Reilly pounded at the door.
“I don’t know what is happening to you, Mother, but I suspect that you are momentarily deranged. Now that I think of it, I am too frightened to open the door. You may have a knife or a broken wine bottle.”
“Open up this door, Ignatius.”
“Oh, my valve! It’s closing!” Ignatius groaned loudly. “Are you satisfied now that you have ruined me for the rest of the evening?”
Mrs. Reilly threw herself against the unpainted wood.
“Well, don’t break the door,” he said finally and, after a few moments, the bolt slid open.
“Ignatius, what’s all this trash on the floor?”
“That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.”
“And all the shutters closed. Ignatius! It’s still light outside.”
“My being is not without its Proustian elements,” Ignatius said from the bed, to which he had quickly returned. “Oh, my stomach.”
“It smells terrible in here.”
“Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”
“If I know it was like this, I’d been in here long ago.”
“I do not know why you are in here now, as a matter of fact, or why you have this sudden compulsion to invade my sanctuary. I doubt whether it will ever be the same after the trauma of this intrusion by an alien spirit.”
“I came to talk to you, boy. Get your face out them pillows.”
“This must be the influence of that ludicrous representative of the law. He seems to have turned you against your own child. By the way, he has left, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, and I apologized to him over the way you acted.”
“Mother, you are standing on my tablets. Will you please move a little? Isn’t it enough that you have destroyed my digestion without destroying the fruits of my brain also?”
“Well, where I’m gonna stand, Ignatius? You want me to get in bed with you?” Mrs. Reilly asked angrily.
“Watch out where you’re stepping, please!” Ignatius thundered. “My God, never has anyone been so totally and so literally stormed and besieged. What is it anyway that has driven you in here in this state of complete mania? Could it be the stench of cheap muscatel that is assaulting my nostrils?”
“I made up my mind. You gonna go out and get you a job.”
Oh, what low joke was Fortuna playing on him now? Arrest, accident, job. Where would this dreadful cycle ever end?
“I see,” Ignatius said calmly. “Knowing that you are congenitally incapable of arriving at a decision of this importance, I imagine that that mongoloid law officer put this idea into your head.”
“Me and Mr. Mancuso talked like I used to talk to your poppa. You poppa used to tell me what to do. I wish he was alive today.”
“Mancuso and my father are alike only in that they both give the impression of being rather inconsequential humans. However, your current mentor is apparently the type of person who thinks that everything will be all right if everyone works continually.”
“Mr. Mancuso works hard. He’s got a hard road at the precinct.”
“I am certain that he supports several unwanted children who all hope to grow up to be policemen, the girls included.”
“He’s got three sweet chirren.”
“I can imagine.