“Just wait till they hear all that originality pouring out of your head.”
“Ho hum,” Ignatius yawned. “Perhaps my mother has done me a great favor by planning to remarry. Those Oedipal bonds were beginning to overwhelm me.” He threw his yo-yo into the bag. “Apparently you had safe passage through the South.”
“I didn’t have a moment to really stop along the way. Almost thirty-six hours of drive, drive, drive.” Myrna was making piles of the Big Chief tablets. “I did stop at a Negro diner last night, but they wouldn’t serve me. I think the guitar threw them off.”
“That must have been it. They took you for some red-neck hillbilly singer. I’ve had some experience with those people. They’re rather limited.”
“I can’t believe that I am actually taking you out of this dungeon, this hole.”
“It is unbelievable, isn’t it? To think that I fought your wisdom for years.”
“We are going to have the most fantastic time in New York. Honestly.”
“I can’t wait,” Ignatius said, packing his scarf and cutlass. “The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the thrill of opening night on Broadway with my favorite musicomedy stars. Gab sessions in the Village over espresso with challenging, contemporary minds.”
“You’re coming to grips with yourself at last. Really. I can hardly believe what I’ve heard in this shack tonight. We’ll work on your problems. You’re going into a whole new and vital phase. Your inactivity is over. I can tell. I can hear it. Just think of the great thought that is going to come streaming out of that head when we’ve finally cleared away all the cobwebs and taboos and crippling attachments.”
“Goodness knows what will happen,” Ignatius said disinterestedly. “We must leave. Now. I should warn you that my mother may return momentarily. If I see her again, I’ll regress horribly. We must dash.”
“Ignatius, you’re jumping all over the place. Relax. The worst is over.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ignatius said quickly. “My mother may return with her mob. You should see them. White supremacists, Protestants, or worse. Let me get my lute and trumpet. Are the tablets gathered together?”
“This stuff in here is fascinating,” Myrna said, indicating the tablet through which she was flipping. “Gems of nihilism.”
“That is merely a fragment of the whole.”
“Aren’t you even going to leave your mother some very bitter note, some articulate protest or something?”
“It would hardly be worthwhile. She’d be weeks in comprehending it.” Ignatius cradled the lute and trumpet in one arm and the overnight bag in the other. “Please don’t drop that looseleaf folder. It contains the Journal, a sociological fantasy on which I’ve been working. It is my most commercial effort. Wonderful film possibilities at the hands of a Walt Disney or a George Pal.”
“Ignatius.” Myrna stopped in the doorway, her arms laden with tablets, and moved her colorless lips for a moment before she spoke, as if she were formulating an address. Her tired, highway-drugged eyes searched Ignatius’s face through the sparkling lenses. “This is a very meaningful moment. I feel as if I’m saving someone.”
“You are, you are. Now we must flee. Please. We’ll, chat later.” Ignatius pushed past her and lumbered down to the car, opening the rear door of the little Renault and climbing in among the placards and piles of pamphlets that covered the seat. The car smelled like a newsstand. “Hurry up! We don’t have time to stage a tableau-vivant here before the house.”
“I mean, are you really going to sit back there?” Myrna asked as she dropped her load of tablets through the rear door.
“Of course I am,” Ignatius bellowed. “I am certainly not going to sit up in that deathtrap of a front seat for highway travel. Now get in this go-cart and get us out of here.”
“Hold on. I left a lot of tablets behind,” Myrna said and ran into the house, her guitar thumping against her side. She came down the steps with another load and stopped on the brick sidewalk, turning to look at the house. Ignatius could tell that she was attempting to record the scene: Eliza crossing the ice with a particularly large genius in her arms. Unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, Myrna was still around to offend. At last, in response to Ignatius’s cries, she came down to the car and threw the second load of tablets onto Ignatius’s lap. “There are still some left under the bed, I think.”
“Never mind about those!” Ignatius screamed. “Get in and start this thing. Oh, my God. Don’t stick that guitar in my face like that. Why can’t you just carry a purse like a decent young lady?”
“Go fall in a hole,” Myrna said angrily. She slid into the front seat and started the car. “Where do you want to spend the night?”
“Spend the night?” Ignatius thundered. “We’re not spending the night anywhere. We must drive straight.”
“Ignatius, I’m about to drop dead. I’ve been in this car since yesterday morning.”
“Well, get across Lake Pontchartrain at least.”
“Okay. We can take the causeway and stop in Mandeville.”
“No!” Myrna would drive him right into the alerted arms of some psychiatrist. “We can’t stop there. The water’s polluted. They’re having an epidemic.”
“Yeah? Then I’ll take the old bridge to Slidell.”
“Yes. It’s far safer anyway. Barges are always hurtling into that causeway. We’ll plunge into the lake and drown.” The Renault was dragging very low in the rear and accelerated slowly. “This car is rather small for my frame. Are you sure that you know how to get to New York? I seriously doubt whether I can survive more than a day or two in this fetal position.”
“Hey, where are you two beatniks going?” Miss Annie’s voice called faintly from behind her shutters. The Renault moved into the center of the street.
“Does that old bitch still live there?” Myrna asked.
“Shut up and get us out of here!”
“Are you going to bug me like this?” Myrna glared at the green cap in the rearview mirror. “I mean, I’d like to know.”
“Oh, my valve!” Ignatius gasped. “Please don’t make a scene. My psyche will crumble entirely after the assaults it has recently received.”
“I’m sorry. For a while it sounded like old times with me playing chauffeur and you bugging me from the back seat.”
“I certainly hope it isn’t snowing up north. My system simply will not function under those conditions. And please watch out for Greyhound Scenicruisers along the way. They’ll demolish a toy like this.”
“Ignatius, all at once you’re your old horrible self. All at once I think I’m making a very big mistake.”
“A mistake? Of course not,” Ignatius said sweetly. “But watch out for that ambulance. We don’t want to begin our pilgrimage with an accident.”
As the ambulance passed, Ignatius hunched over and saw “Charity Hospital” printed on its door. The rotating red light atop the ambulance splashed over the Renault for a brief moment as the vehicles passed each other. Ignatius felt insulted. He had expected a massive barred truck. They had underestimated him in sending out an old, well-used Cadillac ambulance. He would easily have been able to smash all of those windows. Then the glowing Cadillac fins were two blocks behind them and Myrna was turning onto St. Charles Avenue.
Now that Fortuna had saved him from one cycle, where would she spin him now? The new cycle would be so different from anything he had ever known.
Myrna prodded and shifted the Renault through the city traffic masterfully, weaving in and out of impossibly narrow lanes until they were clear of the last twinkling streetlight of the last swampy suburb. Then they were in darkness in the center of the salt marshes. Ignatius looked out at the highway marker that reflected their headlights. U.S. 11. The marker flew past. He rolled down the window an inch or two and breathed the salt air blowing in over the marshes from the Gulf.
As if the air were a purgative, his valve opened. He breathed again, this time more deeply. The dull headache was lif
ting.
He stared gratefully at the back of Myrna’s head, at the pigtail that swung innocently at his knee. Gratefully. How ironic, Ignatius thought. Taking the pigtail in one of his paws, he pressed it warmly to his wet moustache.
About The Author
John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937 and died in 1969. He received a master’s degree in English from Columbia University and taught at Hunter College, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Dominican College in New Orleans.
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John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
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