“Oh, my God. What is it now?”
Ignatius imagined it was something in his mother’s family, a group of people who tended to suffer violence and pain. There was the old aunt who had been robbed of fifty cents by some hoodlums, the cousin who had been struck by the Magazine streetcar, the uncle who had eaten a bad cream puff, the godfather who had touched a live wire knocked loose in a hurricane.
“It’s poor Miss Annie next door. This morning she took a little fainting spell in the alley. Nerves, babe. She says you woke her up this morning playing on your banjo.”
“That is a lute, not a banjo,” Ignatius thundered. “Does she think that I’m one of these perverse Mark Twain characters?”
“I just come from seeing her. She’s staying over by her son’s house on St. Mary Street.”
“Oh, that offensive boy.” Ignatius climbed the steps ahead of his mother. “Well, thank God Miss Annie has left for a while. Now perhaps I can play my lute without her rasping denunciations assailing me from across the alley.”
“I stopped off at Lenny’s and bought her a nice little pair of beads filled with Lourdes water.”
“Good grief. Lenny’s. Never in my life have I seen a shop filled with so much religious hexerei. I suspect that that jewelry shop is going to be the scene of a miracle before long. Lenny himself may ascend.”
“Miss Annie loved them beads, boy. Right away she started saying a rosary.”
“No doubt that was better than conversing with you.”
“Have a chair, babe, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”
“In the confusion of Miss Annie’s collapse, you seem to have forgotten that you shipped me off to Levy Pants this morning.”
“Oh, Ignatius, what happened?” Mrs. Reilly asked, putting a match to a burner that she had turned on several seconds before. There was a localized explosion on the top of the stove. “Lord, I almost got myself burnt.”
“I am now an employee of Levy Pants.”
“Ignatius!” his mother cried, circling his oily head in a clumsy pink woolen embrace that crushed his nose. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so proud of my boy.”
“I’m quite exhausted. The atmosphere in that office is hypertense.”
“I knew you’d make good.”
“Thank you for your confidence.”
“How much Levy Pants is gonna pay you, darling?”
“Sixty American dollars a week.”
“Aw, that’s all? Maybe you should of looked around some more.”
“There are wonderful opportunities for advancement, wonderful plans for the alert young man. The salary may soon change.”
“You think so? Well, I’m still proud, babe. Take off your overcoat.” Mrs. Reilly opened a can of Libby’s stew and tossed it in the pot. “They got any cute girls working there?”
Ignatius thought of Miss Trixie and said, “Yes, there is one.”
“Single?”
“She appears to be.”
Mrs. Reilly winked at Ignatius and threw his overcoat on top of the cupboard.
“Look, honey, I put a fire under this stew. Open you a can of peas, and they’s bread in the icebox. I got a cake from the German’s, too, but I can’t remember right off where I put it. Take a look around the kitchen. I gotta go.”
“Where are you going now?”
“Mr. Mancuso and his aunt, they gonna pick me up in a few minutes. We going down by Fazzio’s to bowl.”
“What?” Ignatius screamed. “Is that true?”
“I’ll be in early. I told Mr. Mancuso I can’t stay out late. And his aunt’s a grammaw, so I guess she needs her sleep.”
“This is certainly a fine reception that I am given after my first day of work,” Ignatius said furiously. “You can’t bowl. You have arthritis or something. This is ridiculous. Where are you going to eat?”
“I can get me some chili down by the bowling alley.” Mrs. Reilly was already going to her room to change clothes. “Oh, honey, a letter come for you today from New York. I put it behind the coffee can. It looks like it came from that Myrna girl because the envelope’s all dirty and smudged up. How come that Myrna’s gotta send out mail looking like that? I thought you said her poppa’s got money.”
“You can’t go bowling,” Ignatius bellowed. “This is the most absurd thing that you have ever done.”
Mrs. Reilly’s door slammed. Ignatius found the envelope and tore it to shreds in opening it. He pulled out some art theater’s year-old schedule for a summer film festival. On the reverse side of the rumpled schedule there was a letter written in the uneven and angular hand that constituted Minkoffian penmanship. Myrna’s habit of writing to editors rather than friends was always reflected in her salutation:
Sirs:
What is this strange, frightening letter that you have written me, Ignatius? How can I contact the Civil Liberties Union with the little evidence that you have given me? I can’t imagine why a policeman would try to arrest you. You stay in your room all the time. I might have believed the arrest if you hadn’t written about that “automobile accident.” If both of your wrists were broken, how could you write me a letter?
Let us be honest with each other, Ignatius. I do not believe a word of what I read. But I am frightened—for you. The fantasy about the arrest has all the classic paranoid qualities. You are aware, of course, that Freud linked paranoia with homosexual tendencies.
“Filth!” Ignatius shouted.
However, we won’t go into that aspect of the fantasy because I know how dedicated you are in your opposition to sex of any sort. Still your emotional problem is very apparent. Since you flunked that interview for the teaching job in Baton Rouge (meanwhile blaming it on the bus and things—a transferral of guilt), you have probably suffered feelings of failure. This “automobile accident” is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence. Ignatius, you must identify with something. As I’ve told you time and again, you must commit yourself to the crucial problems of the times.
“Ho hum,” Ignatius yawned.
Subconsciously you feel that you must attempt to explain away your failure, as an intellectual and soldier of ideas, to actively participate in critical social movements. Also, a satisfying sexual encounter would purify your mind and body. You need the therapy of sex desperately. I’m afraid—from what I know about clinical cases like yours—that you may end up a psychosomatic invalid like Elizabeth B. Browning.
“How unspeakably offensive,” Ignatius spluttered.
I don’t feel much sympathy for you. You have closed your mind to both love and society. At the moment my every waking hour is spent in helping some dedicated friends raise money for a bold and shattering movie that they are planning to film about an interracial marriage. Although it will be a low-budget number, the script itself is chock full of disturbing truths and has the most fascinating tonalities and ironies. It was written by Shmuel, a boy I’ve known since Taft High days. Shmuel will also play the husband in the movie. We have found a girl from the streets of Harlem to play the wife. She is such a real, vital person that I have made her my very closest friend. I discuss her racial problems with her constantly, drawing her out even when she doesn’t feel like discussing them—and I can tell how fervently she appreciates these dialogues with me.
There is a sick, reactionary villain in the script, an Irish landlord who refuses to rent to the couple, who by this time have been married in this subdued Ethical Culture ceremony. The landlord lives in this little womb-room whose walls are covered with pictures of the Pope and stuff like that. In other words, the audience will have no trouble reading him as soon as they get one glimpse at that room. We have not cast the landlord yet. You, of course, would be fantastic for the part. You see, Ignatius, if you would just decide to cut the umbilical cord that binds you to that stagnant city, that mother of yours, and that bed, you could be up here having opportunities like this. Are you interested in the part? We can’t pay much, but you can stay with me
.
I may play a little mood music or protest music on my guitar for the soundtrack. I hope that we can finally get this magnificent project on film soon because Leola, the unbelievable girl from Harlem, is beginning to bug us about salary. Already I’ve bled about $1,000 from my father, who is suspicious (as usual) of the whole enterprise.
Ignatius, I’ve humored you long enough in our correspondence. Don’t write to me again until you’ve taken part. I hate cowards.
M. Minkoff
P.S. Also write if you’d like to play the landlord.
“I’ll show this offensive trollop,” Ignatius mumbled, throwing the art theater schedule into the fire beneath the stew.
Four
Levy Pants was two structures fused into one macabre unit. The front of the plant was a brick commercial building of the nineteenth century with a mansard roof that bulged out into several rococo dormer windows, the panes of which were mostly cracked. Within this section the office occupied the third floor, a storage area the second, and refuse the first. Attached to this building, which Mr. Gonzalez referred to as “the brain center,” was the factory, a barnlike prototype of an airplane hangar. The two smokestacks that rose from the factory’s tin roof leaned apart at an angle that formed an outsized rabbit-eared television antenna, an antenna that received no hopeful electronic signal from the outside world but instead discharged occasional smoke of a very sickly shade. Alongside the neat gray wharf sheds that lined the river and canal across the railroad tracks, Levy Pants huddled, a silent and smoky plea for urban renewal.
Within the brain center there was more than the usual amount of activity. Ignatius was tacking to a post near his files a wide cardboard sign that said in bold blue Gothic lettering:
DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH AND REFERENCE
I. J. REILLY, CUSTODIAN
He had neglected the morning filing to make the sign, spreading himself upon the floor with the cardboard and blue poster paint and painting meticulously for more than an hour. Miss Trixie had stepped on the sign during one of her occasional pointless tours of the office, but the damage was limited to only a small sneaker print on one corner of the cardboard. Still, Ignatius found the tiny imprint offensive, and over it he painted a dramatic and stylized version of a fleur-de-lis.
“Isn’t that nice,” Mr. Gonzalez said when Ignatius had stopped hammering. “It gives the office a certain tone.”
“What does it mean?” Miss Trixie demanded, standing directly beneath the sign and examining it frantically.
“It is simply a guidepost,” Ignatius said proudly.
“I don’t understand all this,” Miss Trixie said. “What’s going on around here?” She turned to Ignatius. “Gomez, who is this person?”
“Miss Trixie, you know Mr. Reilly. He’s been working with us for a week now.”
“Reilly? I thought it was Gloria.”
“Go back and work on your figures,” Mr. Gonzalez told her. “We have to send that statement to the bank before noon.”
“Oh, yes, we must send that statement,” Miss Trixie agreed and shuffled off to the ladies’ room.
“Mr. Reilly, I don’t want to pressure you,” Mr. Gonzalez said cautiously, “but I do notice that you have quite a pile of material on your desk that hasn’t been filed yet.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Well, when I opened the first drawer this morning, I was greeted by a rather large rat which seemed to be devouring the Abelman’s Dry Goods folder. I thought it politic to wait until he was sated. I would hate to contract the bubonic plague and lay the blame upon Levy Pants.”
“Quite right,” Mr. Gonzalez said anxiously, his dapper person quivering at the prospect of an on-the-job accident.
“In addition, my valve has been misbehaving and has prevented me from bending over to reach the lower drawers.”
“I have just the thing for that,” Mr. Gonzalez said and went into the little office storeroom to get, Ignatius imagined, some type of medicine. But he returned with one of the smallest metal stools that Ignatius had ever seen. “Here. The person who used to work on the files used to wheel back and forth on this along the lower drawers. Try it.”
“I don’t believe that my particular body structure is easily adaptable to that type of device,” Ignatius observed, a gimlet eye fixed upon the rusting stool. Ignatius had always had a poor sense of balance, and ever since his obese childhood, he had suffered a tendency to fall, trip, and stumble. Until he was five years old and had finally managed to walk in an almost normal manner, he had been a mass of bruises and hickeys. “However, for the sake of Levy Pants, I shall try.”
Ignatius squatted lower and lower until his great buttocks touched the stool, his knees reaching almost to his shoulders. When he was at last nestled upon his perch, he looked like an eggplant balanced atop a thumb tack.
“This will never do. I feel quite uncomfortable.”
“Give it a try,” Mr. Gonzalez said brightly.
Propelling himself with his feet, Ignatius traveled anxiously along the side of the files until one of the miniature wheels lodged in a crack. The stool tipped slightly and then turned over, dumping Ignatius heavily to the floor.
“Oh, my God!” he bellowed. “I think I’ve broken my back.”
“Here,” Mr. Gonzalez cried in his terrorized tenor. “I’ll help you up.”
“No! You must never move a person with a broken back unless you have a stretcher. I won’t be paralyzed through your incompetence.”
“Please try to get up, Mr. Reilly.” Mr. Gonzalez looked at the mound at his feet. His heart sank. “I’ll help you. I don’t think you’re badly injured.”
“Let me alone,” Ignatius screamed. “You fool. I refuse to spend the remainder of my life in a wheel chair.”
Mr. Gonzalez felt his feet turn cold and numb.
The thud of Ignatius’s fall had attracted Miss Trixie from the ladies’ room; she came around the files and tripped on the mountain of supine flesh.
“Oh, dear,” she said feebly. “Is Gloria dying, Gomez?”
“No,” Mr. Gonzalez said sharply.
“Well, I’m certainly glad of that,” Miss Trixie said, stepping onto one of Ignatius’s outstretched hands.
“Good grief!” Ignatius thundered and sprang into a sitting position. “The bones in my hand are crushed. I’ll never be able to use it again.”
“Miss Trixie is very light,” the office manager told Ignatius. “I don’t think she could have hurt you much.”
“Has she ever stepped on you, you idiot? How would you know?”
Ignatius sat at the feet of his co-workers and studied his hand.
“I suspect that I won’t be able to use this hand again today. I had better go home immediately and bathe it.”
“But the filing has to be done. Look how behind you are already.”
“Are you talking about filing at a time like this? I am prepared to contact my attorneys and have them sue you for making me get on that obscene stool.”
“We’ll help you up, Gloria.” Miss Trixie assumed what was apparently a hoisting position. She spread her sneakers far apart, toes pointing outward, and squatted like a Balinese dancer.
“Get up,” Mr. Gonzalez snapped at her. “You’re going to fall over.”
“No,” she answered through tight, withered lips. “I’m going to help Gloria. Get down on that side, Gomez. We’ll just grab Gloria by the elbows.”
Ignatius watched passively while Mr. Gonzalez squatted on his other side.
“You are distributing your weight incorrectly,” he told them didactically. “If you are going to attempt to raise me, that position offers you no leverage. I suspect that the three of us will be injured. I suggest that you try a standing position. In that way you can easily bend over and hoist me.”
“Don’t be nervous, Gloria,” Miss Trixie said, rocking back and forth on her haunches. Then she fell forward onto Ignatius, throwing him on his back once again. The edge of her celluloid visor hit him in the throat.
r /> “Oof,” gurgled from somewhere in the depths of Ignatius’s throat. “Braah.”
“Gloria!” Miss Trixie wheezed. She looked into the full face directly beneath hers. “Gomez, call a doctor.”
“Miss Trixie, get off Mr. Reilly,” the office manager hissed from where he squatted beside his two underlings.
“Braah.”
“What are you people doing down there on the floor?” a man asked from the door. Mr. Gonzalez’s chipper face hardened into a mask of horror, and he squeaked, “Good morning, Mr. Levy. We’re so glad to see you.”
“I just came in to see if I had any personal mail. I’m driving back to the coast right away. What’s this big sign over here for? Somebody’s going to get his eye knocked out on that thing.”
“Is that Mr. Levy?” Ignatius called from the floor. He could not see the man over the row of filing cabinets. “Braah. I have been wanting to meet him.”
Shedding Miss Trixie, who slumped to the floor, Ignatius struggled to his feet and saw a sportily dressed middle-aged man holding the handle of the office door so that he could flee as rapidly as he had entered.
“Hello there,” Mr. Levy said casually. “New worker, Gonzalez?”
“Oh, yes sir. Mr. Levy, this is Mr. Reilly. He’s very efficient. A whiz. As a matter of fact, he’s made it possible for us to do away with several other workers.”
“Braah.”
“Oh, yeah, the name on this sign.” Mr. Levy gave Ignatius a strange look.
“I have taken an unusual interest in your firm,” Ignatius said to Mr. Levy. “The sign which you noticed upon entering is only the first of several innovations which I plan. Braah. I will change your mind about this firm, sir. Mark my word.”
“You don’t say?” Mr. Levy studied Ignatius with certain curiosity. “What about the mail, Gonzalez?”
“There’s not much. You received your new credit cards. Transglobal Airlines sent you a certificate making you an honorary pilot for flying one hundred hours with them.” Mr. Gonzalez opened his desk and gave Mr. Levy the mail. “There’s also a brochure from a hotel in Miami.”