A Confederacy of Dunces (48 page)

"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 witchhunt 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 roue 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."

But she opened the front door and the three of them stepped into the tiny entrance hall. Mrs. Reilly put down the paper bag she was carrying that contained her son's scarf and cutlass, and asked, "What you want, Mr. Levy? Ignatius! Come back here and talk to this man."

"Mother, I must attend to my bowels. They are revolting against the trauma of the last twenty-four hours."

"Get out that bathroom, boy, and come back here. Now what you want with crazy, Mr. Levy?"

"Mr. Reilly, do you know anything about this?"

Ignatius looked at the two letters that Mr. Levy produced from his jacket and said, "Of course not. That is your signature.

Leave this house immediately. Mother, this is the fiend who fired me so brutally."

"You didn't write this?"

"Mr. Gonzalez was extremely dictatorial. He would never permit me near a typewriter. Actually, he cuffed me once rather viciously when my eyes chanced to stray across some correspondence which he was composing in rather dreadful prose. If I was permitted to shine his cheap shoes, I was grateful. You know how possessive he is about that cesspool company of yours."

"I know. But he says he didn't write this."

"An obvious untruth. His every word is false. He speaks with a forked tongue!"

"This man wants to sue us for a lot of money."

"Ignatius done it," Mrs. Reilly interrupted a little rudely.

"Whatever went wrong, Ignatius done it. He makes trouble everyplace he goes. Go on, Ignatius. Tell the man the truth. Go on, boy, before I knock you in the head."

"Mother, make this man leave," Ignatius cried, trying to push his mother against Mr. Levy.

"Mr. Reilly, this man wants to sue for $500 thousand. That could ruin me."

"Ain't that awful!" Mrs. Reilly exclaimed. "Ignatius, what you done this poor man?"

As Ignatius was about to discuss the circumspection of his behavior at Levy Pants, the telephone rang.

"Hello?" Mrs. Reilly said. "I'm his mother. Of course I'm sober." She glared at Ignatius. "He is? He did? What? Aw, no." She stared at her son, who was beginning to rasp one paw against the other. "Okay, mister, you'll get your stuff, all except the earring. The bird got that. Okay. Of course I can remember what you telling me. I ain't drunk!" Mrs. Reilly slammed down the telephone and turned on her son with,

"That was the weenie man. You're fired."

"Thank God," Ignatius sighed. "I couldn't stand that cart again, I'm afraid."

"What you told him about me, boy? You told him I was a drunk?"

"Of course not. How ludicrous. I don't discuss you with people. No doubt he's spoken with you previously when you were under the influence. You've probably had a date with him for all I know, a drunken spree in several hot dog bmtes."

"You can't even peddle hot dogs in the streets. Was that man angry. He says you gave him more trouble than any vendor he ever had."

"He resented my worldview rather actively."

"Oh, shut up before I slap you again," Mrs. Reilly screamed.

"Now tell Mr. Levy here the truth."

What a squalid homelife, Mr. Levy thought. This woman certainly treated her son dictatorially.

"Why, I am telling the truth," Ignatius said.

"Lemme see that letter, Mr. Levy."

"Don't show it to her. She reads rather dreadfully. She'll be confused for days."

Mrs. Reilly knocked Ignatius in the side of the head with her purse.

"Not again!" Ignatius cried.

"Don't hit him," Mr. Levy said. The kook's head was already bandaged. Outside of the prizefighting ring, violence made Mr. Levy ill. This Reilly kook was really pitiful. The mother ran around with some old man, drank, wanted the son out of the way. She was already on the police blotter. The dog was probably the only thing that the kook had ever really had in his life. Sometimes you have to see a person in his real environment to understand him. In his own way Reilly had been very interested in Levy Pants. Now Mr. Levy was sorry that he had fired Reilly. The kook had been proud of his job at the company. "Just let him alone, Mrs. Reilly. We'll get to the bottom of this."

"Help me, sir," Ignatius slobbered, grabbing histrionically at the lapels of Mr. Levy's sports jacket. "Fortuna only knows what she will do to me. I know too much of her sordid activities. I must be eliminated. Have you thought of speaking to the Trixie woman? She knows far more than you suspect."

"That's what my wife says, but I never believed her. After all, Miss Trixie is so old. I wouldn't think she could write a grocery list."

"Old?" Mrs. Reilly asked. "Ignatius! You told me Trixie was the name of some cute girl worked at Levy Pants. You told me you two liked each other. Now I find out she's a grammaw can't hardly write. Ignatius!"

It was sadder than Mr. Levy had thought at first. The poor kook had tried to make his mother think he had a girlfriend.

"Please," Ignatius whispered to Mr. Levy. "Come into my room. I must show you something."

"Don't believe a word Ignatius says," Mrs. Reilly called after them as her son dragged Mr. Levy through the door into the musty chamber.

"Just let him alone," Mr. Levy said to Mrs. Reilly somewhat firmly. This Reilly woman wouldn't even give her own child a chance. She was as bad as his wife. No wonder Reilly was such a wreck.

Then the door closed behind them and Mr. Levy suddenly began to feel nauseated. There was a scent of old tea leaves in the bedroom that reminded him of the teapot that Leon Levy had always had near his elbow, the delicately cracked china pot in whose bottom there was always a residue of boiled leaves. He went to the window and opened the shutter, but as he looked out his eyes met those of Miss Annie, who was staring back at him from between the blinds of her shutters. He turned from the window and watched Reilly thumbing through a loose-leaf folder.

"Here it is," Ignatius said. "These are some notes that I jotted while working for your company. They will prove that I loved Levy Pants even more than life itself, that my every waking hour was spent in contemplating means of helping your organization. And often at night I had visions. Phantoms of Levy Pants flitted gloriously across my slumbering psyche. I would never write a letter like that. I loved Levy Pants. Here.

Read this, sir."

Mr. Levy took the loose-leaf folder and, where Reilly's fat forefinger indicated a line, he read, "Today our office was at last graced by the presence of our lord and master, Mr. G.

Levy. To be quite honest, I found him rather casual and unconcerned." The forefinger skipped a line or two. "In time he will learn of my devotion to his firm, of my dedication. My example, in turn, may lead him to once again believe in Levy Pants." The guidepost of a forefinger indicated the next paragraph. "La Trixie still keeps her own counsel, thereby proving herself even wiser than I had thought. I suspect that this woman knows a great deal, that her apathy is a facade for her seeming resentment against Levy Pants. She grows most coherent when she speaks of retirement."

"There is your evidence, sir," Ignatius said, snatching the folder from Mr. Levy's hands. "Interrogate the Trixie jade. The senility is a guise. It is part of her defense against her work and the company. Actually, she hates Levy Pants for not retiring her. And who can blame her? Many times when we were alone, she would babble for hours about plans to 'get'

Levy Pants. Her resentment surfaced in the form of vitriolic attacks upon your corporate structure."

Mr. Levy tried to assess the evidence. He knew that Reilly had really liked the company; he had seen it at the company, the woman next door had told him, he had just read it. Trixie, on the other hand, hated the company. Even though his wife and the kook claimed that the senility routine was a front, he doubted that she would be able to write a letter like that. But now he had to get out of the claustrophobic bedroom before he possibly got ill all over the tablets that covered the floor.

When Mr. Reilly had been standing next to him pointing out the passages in the notebook, the scent had grown overpowering. He felt for the doorknob, but the Reilly kook threw himself against the door.

"You must believe me," he sighed. "The Trixie trollop had a fixation about a turkey or a ham. Or was it a roast? It was all rather fierce and confusing at times. She swore vengeance in connection with not being retired at the proper age. She was filled with hostility."

Mr. Levy eased him aside and got out into the hall, where the maroon-haired mother was waiting like a doorman.