A Confederacy of Dunces (41 page)

"Get back in here, Ignatius."

"Hey, knock it off, you two," Miss Annie shouted from behind her front shutters. "My nerves is shot to hell."

"Take a look at Ignatius," Mrs. Reilly called to her. "Ain't that awful?"

Ignatius was waving to his mother from the brick sidewalk, his earring catching the rays of the streetlight.

"Ignatius, come in here like a good boy," Mrs. Reilly pleaded.

"I awready got me a headache from the goddam postman's whistle," Miss Annie threatened loudly. "I'm gonna ring up the cops in about one minute."

"Ignatius," shouted Mrs. Reilly, but it was too late. A taxi was cruising down the block. Ignatius flagged it down just as his mother, forgetting the disgrace of the shredded nightgown, ran down to the curb. Ignatius slammed the rear door right in his mother's maroon hair and barked an address at the driver. He stabbed at his mother's hands with the cutlass and ordered the driver to move along immediately. The taxi sped off, churning up some pebbles in the gutter that stung Mrs. Reilly's legs through the torn rayon gown. She watched the red taillights for a moment, then she ran back into the house to telephone Santa.

"Going to a costume party, pal?" the driver asked Ignatius as they turned onto St. Charles Avenue.

"Watch where you're going and speak when you're spoken to,"

Ignatius thundered.

During the ride the driver said nothing else, but Ignatius practiced his speech loudly in the back seat, rapping his cutlass against the front seat to emphasize certain key points.

At St. Peter Street he got out and first heard the noise, dim yet frenetic singing and laughing coming from the three-story stucco building. Some prosperous Frenchman had built the house in the late 1700s to house a ménage of wife, children, and spinster tantes. The tantes had been stored up in the attic along with the other excess and unattractive furniture, and from the two little dormer windows in the roof they had seen what little of the world they believed existed outside of their own monde of slanderous gossip, needlework, and cyclical recitations of the rosary. But the hand of the professional decorator had exorcised whatever ghosts of the French bourgeoisie might still haunt the thick brick walls of the building. The exterior was painted a bright canary yellow; the gas jets in the reproduction brass lanterns mounted on either side of the carriageway flickered softly, their amber flames rippling in reflection on the black enamel of the gate and shutters. On the flagstone paving beneath both lanterns there were old plantation pots in which Spanish daggers grew and extended their sharply pointed stilettos.

Ignatius stood before the building regarding it with extreme distaste. His blue and yellow eyes denounced the resplendent façade. His nose rebelled against the very noticeable odor of fresh enamel. His ears shrank from the bedlam of singing, cackling, and giggling that was going on behind the closed black patent leather shutters.

Testily clearing his throat, he looked at the three brass doorbells and at the little white cards above each: Billy Truehard

Raoul Frayle -3A

Frieda Club

Betty Bumper

Liz Steele -2A

Dorian Greene -1A

He jabbed a finger into the bottom bell and waited. The frenzy behind the shutters abated very slightly. A door opened somewhere down the carriageway, and Dorian Greene came walking toward the gate.

"Oh, dear," he said when he saw who was out on the sidewalk.

"Where in the world have you been? I'm afraid that the kickoff rally is fast getting out of hand. I have tried unsuccessfully once or twice to call the group to order, but apparently feelings are running rather high."

"I hope you've done nothing to dampen their morale," Ignatius said gravely, tapping his cutlass impatiently on the iron gate.

He noticed somewhat angrily that Dorian was walking toward him a little unsteadily; this was not what he had expected.

"Oh, what a gathering," Dorian said as he opened the gate.

"Everyone is simply letting his hair down."

Dorian did a rapid and uncoordinated pantomime to illustrate this.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius said. "Stop that appalling obscenity."

"Several people will be completely ruined after this evening.

There's going to be a mass exodus for Mexico City in the morning. But then Mexico City is so wonderfully wild."

"I certainly hope that no one has tried to inflict any warmongering resolutions upon the gathering."

"Oh, goodness, no."

"I'm relieved to hear that. Heaven knows what opposition we may have to face even at the outset. We may have some

'enemy within.' Word may have leaked out to the whole military combine of the nation and, for that matter, the world."

"Well, come along, Gypsy Queen, let's get inside."

As they walked down the carriageway, Ignatius said, "This building is repellingly flamboyant." He looked at the pastel lamps concealed behind the palms along the walls. "Who's responsible for this abortion?"

"I, of course, Magyar Maiden. I own the building."

"I should have known. May I ask where the money comes from to support this decadent whimsy of yours?"

"From my dear family out there in the wheat," Dorian sighed.

"They send me large checks every month. In return I simply guarantee them that I'll stay out of Nebraska. I left there under something of a cloud, you see. All that wheat and those endless plains. I can't tell you how depressing it all was. Grant Wood romanticized it, if anything. I went East for college and then came here. Oh, New Orleans is such freedom."

"Well, at least we have a gathering place for our coup. Now that I've seen the place, however, I would have preferred your renting an American Legion hall or something equally appropriate. This place looks more like the setting for some perverted activity like a tea dance or a garden party."

"Do you know that a national home decorating magazine wants to do a four-page color spread on this building?" Dorian asked.

"If you had any sense, you would realize that that is the ultimate insult," Ignatius snorted.

"Oh, Girl with the Golden Earring, you are driving me out of my mind. Look, here's the door."

"Just a moment," Ignatius said cautiously. "What is that awful noise? It sounds as if someone's being sacrificed."

They stood in the pastel light of the carriageway listening.

Somewhere in the patio a human was crying in distress.

"Oh, dear, what are they doing now?" Dorian's voice was impatient. "Those little fools. They never can behave themselves."

"I would suggest that we investigate," Ignatius said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "Some obsessed military officer may have slipped into the meeting incognito and may be trying to extricate our secrets from some faithful party member by means of torture. The dedicated military will stoop to anything. It could even be some foreign agent."

"Oh, what fun!" Dorian shrieked.

He and Ignatius tripped and waddled to the patio. There someone was crying for help in the slave quarters. The door of the slave quarters was slightly ajar, but Ignatius threw himself against it anyway, shattering several panes of glass.

"Oh, my God!" he screamed when he saw what was before him. "They've struck!"

He looked at the little sailor shackled and chained to the wall.

It was Timmy.

"Do you see what you've done to my door?" Dorian was asking behind Ignatius.

"The enemy is among us," Ignatius said wildly. "Who tattled?

Tell me. Someone is on to us."

"Oh, get me out of here," the little sailor pleaded. "It's awfully dark."

"You little fool," Dorian spat at the sailor. "Who chained you in here?"

"It was that terrible Billy and Raoul. They're so awful, those two. They brought me out here to show me how you're redecorating the slave quarters, and the next thing I knew they locked me in these dirty chains and ran back into the party."

The little sailor rattled his chains.

"I've just had this place redone," Dorian said to Ignatius. "Oh, my door."

"Where are those agents?" Ignatius demanded, unpinning his cutlass and waving it about. "We must apprehend them before they leave this building."

"Please get me out. I can't stand the dark."

"It's your fault that this door is broken," Dorian hissed at the deranged mariner. "Playing games with those two tramps from upstairs."

"He broke the door."

"What can you expect from him? Just look at him."

"Are you two deviates talking about me?" Ignatius asked angrily. "If you're going to get this excited about a door, I seriously doubt whether you'll survive for long in the vicious arena of politics."

"Oh, get me out of here. I'm going to scream if I stay in these tacky chains much longer."

"Oh, shut up, Nellie," Dorian snapped, slapping Timmy across his pink cheeks. "Get out of my house and go back on the streets where you belong."

"Oh!" the sailor cried. "What a terrible thing to say."

"Please," Ignatius cautioned. "The movement must not be sabotaged by internal strife."

"I did think that I had at least one friend left," the sailor said to Dorian. "I see I was wrong. Go ahead. Slap me again if it gives you so much pleasure."

"I wouldn't even touch you, you little tramp."

"I doubt whether any hack, under pressure, could pen such atrocious melodrama," Ignatius observed. "Now stop all of this, you two degenerates. Exercise at least a little taste and decency."

"Slap me!" the sailor shrieked. "I know you're dying to do it.

You'd love to hurt me, wouldn't you?"

"Apparently he won't settle down until you've agreed to inflict at least a little physical injury upon him," Ignatius told Dorian.

"I wouldn't put a finger on his stupid slut body."

"Well, we must do something to silence him. My valve can take only so much of this deranged mariner's neuroses. We shall have to politely drop him from the movement. He simply does not measure up. Anyone can smell that heavy musk of masochism which he exudes. It's stinking up the slave quarters at this very moment. In addition, he appears rather drunk."

"You hate me, too, you big monster," the sailor screamed at Ignatius.

Ignatius tapped Timmy soundly on the head with his cutlass, and the seafarer emitted a little moan.

"Goodness knows what debased fantasy he's having," Ignatius commented.

"Oh, hit him again," Dorian chirped happily. "What fun!"

"Please let me out of these awful chains," the sailor pleaded.

"My sailor suit's getting all rusty."

While Dorian was unlocking the shackles with a key he took from over the door, Ignatius said, "You know, manacles and chains have functions in modern life which their fevered inventors must never have considered in an earlier and simpler age. If I were a suburban developer, I would attach at least one set to the walls of every new yellow brick ranch style and Cape Cod split level. When the suburbanites grew tired of television and Ping-Pong or whatever they do in their little homes, they could chain one another up for a while. Everyone would love it. Wives would say, 'My husband put me in chains last night. It was wonderful. Has your husband done that to you lately?' And children would hurry eagerly home from school to their mothers who would be waiting to chain them. It would help the children to cultivate the imagination denied them by television and would appreciably cut down on the incidence of juvenile delinquency. When father came in from work, the whole family could grab him and chain him for being stupid enough to be working all day long to support them. Troublesome old relatives would be chained in the carport. Their hands would be released only once a month so they could sign over their Social Security checks. Manacles and chains could build a better life for all. I must give this some space in my notes and jottings."

"Oh, my dear," Dorian sighed. "Don't you ever shut up?"

"My arms are all rusty," Timmy said. "Just wait till I get my hands on that Billy and Raoul."

"Our little convention seems to be getting rather unwieldy,"

Ignatius said of the mad noises issuing from Dorian's apartment. "Apparently feeling about the issues is striking more than one nerve center."

"Oh, heavens, I'd rather not look," Dorian said, pushing the glass-paneled wisp of a French provincial door open.

Inside Ignatius saw a seething mass of people. Cigarettes and cocktail glasses held like batons flew in the air directing the symphony of chatter, shrieking, singing, and laughing. From the bowels of a huge stereophonic phonograph the voice of Judy Garland was fighting its way through the din. A small band of young men, the only stationary ones in the room, stood before the phonograph as if it were an altar. "Divine!"

"Fantastic!" "So human!" they were saying of the voice from their electric tabernacle.

His blue and yellow eyes traveled from this rite to the rest of the room, where the other guests were attacking one another with conversation. Herringbones and madras and lamb's wool and cashmere flashed past in a blur as hands and arms rent the air in a variety of graceful gestures. Fingernails, cuff links, pinky rings, teeth, eyes-all glittered. In the center of one knot of elegant guests a cowboy with a little riding crop flicked the crop at one of his fans, producing a response of exaggerated screaming and pleased giggling. In the center of another knot stood a lout in a black leather jacket who was teaching judo holds, to the great delight of his epicene students. "Oh, do teach me that," someone near the wrestler screamed after an elegant guest had been twisted into an obscene position and then thrown to the floor to land with a crash of cuff links and other, assorted jewelry. "I only invited the better people,"

Dorian said to Ignatius.

"Good gracious," Ignatius spluttered. "I can see that we're going to have a great deal of trouble capturing the conservative rural red-neck Calvinist vote. We are going to have to rebuild our image along lines other than those I see here."

Timmy, who was watching the black leather lout twist and dump eager partners sighed, "How fun."