A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole

  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.”

  The room itself was what decorators would probably call severe. The walls and high ceilings were white, and the room itself was sparsely furnished with a few pieces of antique furniture. The only voluptuous element in the large room was the champagne-colored velvet drapes tied back with white ribbons. The two or three antique chairs had apparently been chosen for their bizarre design and not for their ability to seat anyone, for they were delicate suggestions, hints at furniture with cushions barely capable of accommodating a child. A human in such a room was expected not to rest or sit or even relax, but rather pose, thereby transforming himself into a human furnishing that would complement the decor as well as possible.

  After Ignatius had studied the decor, he said to Dorian, “The only functional item in here is that phonograph, and that is obviously being misused. This is a room with no soul.” He snorted loudly, in part over the room and in part over the fact that no one in the room had even noticed him, even though he complemented the decor as well as a neon sign would have. The participants in the kickoff rally seemed much more concerned about their own private fates this evening than they were about the fate of the world. “I notice that no one in this whitened sepulcher of a room has so much as even looked at us. They haven’t even nodded to their host, whose liquor they are consuming and whose year-round air conditioning they are taxing with all of those overpowering colognes. I feel rather like an observer at a catfight.”

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ve been simply dying for a good party for months. Come. You must see the decoration that I’ve made.” He took Ignatius over to the mantelpiece and showed him a bud vase containing one red, one white, and one blue rose. “Isn’t that wild? It’s better than all of that tacky crepe paper. I did b
uy some crepe paper, but nothing that I could do with it satisfied me.”

  “This is a floral abortion,” Ignatius commented irritably and tapped the vase with his cutlass. “Dyed flowers are unnatural and perverse and, I suspect, obscene also. I can see that I am going to have my hands full with you people.”

  “Oh, talk, talk, talk,” Dorian moaned. “Then let’s go into the kitchen. I want you to meet the ladies’ auxiliary.”

  “Is that true? An auxiliary?” Ignatius asked greedily. “Well, I must compliment you upon your foresightedness.”

  They entered the kitchen where, except for two young men who were having an emotional argument in a corner, all was quiet. Seated at a table were three women drinking from beer cans. They regarded Ignatius squarely. The one who was crushing a beer can in her hand stopped and tossed the can into a potted plant next to the sink.

  “Girls,” Dorian said. The three beer girls raised a raucous Bronx cheer. “This is Ignatius Reilly, a new face.”

  “Put it there, Fats,” the girl who had been crushing the can said. She grabbed Ignatius’s paw and worked it over as if it, too, were a prospect for crushing.

  “Oh, my God!” Ignatius screamed.

  “That’s Frieda,” Dorian explained. “And they’re Betty and Liz.”

  “How do you do,” Ignatius said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his smock to prevent any further handshaking. “I’m sure that you’ll be of invaluable help to our cause.”

  “Where did you pick him up?” Frieda asked Dorian while her two companions studied Ignatius and nudged each other.

  “Mr. Greene and I met through my mother,” Ignatius answered grandly for Dorian.

  “No kidding,” Frieda said. “Your mother must be a very interesting person.”

  “Hardly,” Ignatius replied.

  “Well, grab yourself a beer, Tubby,” Frieda said. “I wish we had it in bottles. Betty here could open you one with her teeth. She’s got teeth like an iron claw.” Betty made an obscene gesture at Frieda. “And one of these days she’s going to get them all knocked down her fucking throat.”

  Betty hit Frieda on the head with an empty can.

  “You’re asking for it,” Frieda said, raising one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Now stop it,” Dorian spat. “If you three can’t behave, you can just leave right now.”

  “Personally,” Liz said, “we’re getting very bored just sitting here in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah,” Betty screamed. She grabbed a rung of the chair that Frieda was holding over her head, and she and Frieda began wrestling for possession of it. “How come we have to sit out here?”

  “Put that chair down this minute,” Dorian said.

  “Yes, please,” Ignatius added. He had retreated to a corner. “Someone will be injured.”

  “Like you,” Liz said. She heaved an unopened beer can at Ignatius, who ducked.

  “Good heavens!” Ignatius said. “I think I shall return to the other room.”

  “Beat it, bigass,” Liz said to him. “You’re using up all the air in here.”

  “Girls!” Dorian was screaming at the wrestling Frieda and Betty, whose T-shirts were growing damp. They were huffing and heaving around the room with the chair, mashing each other against the wall and sink.

  “Okay, cut it out,” Liz screamed at her friends. “These people are going to think you’re crude.”

  She picked up another chair and got between the two contestants. Then she slammed her chair down onto the one that Frieda and Betty were wrestling over, knocking the girls aside. The two chairs rattled and clattered to the floor.

  “Who told you to butt in?” Frieda demanded of Liz, grabbing her by her cropped hair.

  Dorian, stumbling over the chairs, tried to push the girls back to the table, snapping, “Now sit down there and be decent.”

  “This party stinks,” Betty said. “Where’s the action?”

  “How come you invited us down here if all we’re gonna do is sit here in this frigging kitchen?” Frieda demanded.

  “You’ll only start brawling in there. You know it. I thought it would be a neighborly thing to do to ask you down out of courtesy. I don’t want any trouble. This is the nicest party we’ve had in months.”

  “Okay,” Frieda growled. “We’ll sit out here like ladies.” The girls punched one another about the arms in agreement. “After all, we’re only paying tenants. Go in there and be nice to that phony cowboy, the one that sounds like Jeanette MacDonald, the one that tried to bitch us on Chartres Street the other day.”

  “He’s a very fine and friendly person,” Dorian said. “I’m sure he didn’t see you girls.”

  “He saw us all right,” Betty said. “We copped him on the head.”

  “I’d like to kick his superior balls in,” Liz said.

  “Please,” Ignatius said importantly. “All I see about me is strife. You must close ranks and present a unified front.”

  “What’s with him?” Liz asked, opening the beer can she had thrown at Ignatius. A spray of foam shot out and wet Ignatius on his distended Paradise product stomach.

  “Well, I’ve had enough of this,” Ignatius said angrily.

  “Good,” Frieda said. “Shove off.”

  “The kitchen is our territory tonight,” Betty said. “We decide who uses it.”

  “I certainly am interested in seeing the first sherry party that the auxiliary gives,” Ignatius snorted and lumbered to the door. As he was exiting, an empty beer can struck the door frame near his earring. Dorian followed him out and closed the door. “I can’t imagine how you decided to besmirch the movement by inviting those rowdies here.”

  “I had to,” Dorian explained. “If you don’t invite them to a party, they break in anyway. Then they’re even worse. They’re really fun girls when they’re in a good mood, but they had some trouble with the police recently, and they’re taking it out on everyone.”

  “They shall be dropped from the movement immediately!”

  “Anything you say, Magyara,” Dorian sighed. “I myself feel a little sorry for the girls. They used to live in California, where they had a grand time. Then there was an incident about assaulting a bodybuilder at Muscle Beach. They had been Indian arm wrestling with the boy, or so they say, and then it seems that things got out of hand. They literally had to flee southern California and dash across the desert in that magnificent German automobile of theirs. I have given them sanctuary. In many respects they’re wonderful tenants. They guard my building better than any watchdog could. They have loads of money that they get from some aging movie queen.”

  “Really?” Ignatius asked with interest. “Perhaps I was hasty about dropping them. Political movements must get their money from whatever source they can. The girls have, no doubt, a charm which their blue jeans and boots obscure.” He looked over the seething mass of guests. “You must get these people quiet. We must bring them to order. There is crucial business at hand.”

  The cowboy, the phony bitch, was tickling an elegant guest with his riding crop. The black leather lout was pinning an ecstatic guest to the floor. Everywhere there were screams, sighs, shrieks. Lena Horne was now singing within the phonograph. “Clever,” “Crisp,” “Terribly cosmo,” the group around the phonograph was saying reverently. The cowboy broke away from his aroused fans and began to synchronize his lips to the lyrics on the record, slinking around the floor like a chanteuse in boots and Stetson. With a barrage of squeals, the guests gathered around him, leaving the black leather lout with no one to torture.

  “You must stop all of this,” Ignatius shouted to Dorian, who was winking at the cowboy. “Aside from the fact that I am witnessing a most egregious offense against taste and decency, I am also beginning to smother from the stench of glandular emissions and cologne.”

  “Oh, don’t be so drab. They’re just having fun.”

  “I am very sorry,” Ignatius said in a businesslike tone. “I am here tonight on a mission of the utmost seriousn
ess. There is a girl who must be attended to, a bold and forward minx of a trollop. Now turn off that offensive music and quiet these sodomites. We must get down to brass tacks.”

  “I thought you were going to be fun. If you’re just going to be tacky and dreary, then you’d better leave.”

  “I shall not leave! No one can deter me. Peace! Peace! Peace!”

  “Oh, dear. You are serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Ignatius broke away from Dorian and rushed across the room, pushing through the elegant guests, and unplugged the phonograph. As he turned around, he was greeted by the guests’ emasculated version of an Apache war cry.

  “Beast.” “Madman.” “Is this what Dorian promised?” “That fantastic Lena.” “The outfit — grotesque. And that earring. Oh, my.” “That was my very favorite song.” “Horrible.” “How unbelievably gross.” “So monstrously huge.” “A bad, bad dream.”

  “Silence!” Ignatius bellowed over their enraged babbling. “I am here tonight my friends, to show you how you may save the world and bring peace.”

  “He’s truly mad.” “Dorian, what a bad joke.” “Where in the world did he come from?” “Not even vaguely attractive.” “Filthy.” “Depressing.” “Someone turn on that delicious record again.”

  “The challenge,” Ignatius’s continued at full volume, “Is placed before you. Will you turn your singular talents to saving the world, or will you simply turn your backs on your fellow man?”

  “Oh, how awful!” “Not at all amusing.” “I’ll have to leave if this tacky charade continues.” “In such poor taste.” “Someone turn on that record again. Dear, dear Lena.” “Where is my coat?” “Let’s go to a smart bar.” “Look, I’ve spilled my martini on my most priceless jacket.” “Let’s go to a smart bar.”

  “The world today is in a state of grave unrest,” Ignatius screamed against the mewing and hissing. He paused for a moment to glance down in his pocket at some notes he had scribbled on a piece of Big Chief paper. Instead he pulled out the torn and dogeared photograph of Miss O’Hara. Several guests saw it and shrieked. “We must prevent the apocalypse. We must fight fire with fire. Therefore, I turn to you.”