Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [80]
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 you 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,