When the credits had ended and Ignatius had noted that several of the actors, the composer, the director, the hair designer, and the assistant producer were all people whose efforts had offended him at various times in the past, there appeared in the technicolor a scene of many extras milling about a circus tent. He greedily studied the crowd and found the heroine standing near a sideshow.

“Oh, my God!” he screamed. “There she is.”

The children in the rows in front of him turned and stared, but Ignatius did not notice them. The blue and yellow eyes were following the heroine, who was gaily carrying a pail of water to what turned out to be her elephant.

“This is going to be even worse than I thought,” Ignatius said when he saw the elephant.

He put the empty popcorn bag to his full lips, inflated it, and waited, his eyes gleaming with reflected technicolor. A tympany beat and the soundtrack filled with violins. The heroine and Ignatius opened their mouths simultaneously, hers in song, his in a groan. In the darkness two trembling hands met violently. The popcorn bag exploded with a bang. The children shrieked.

“What’s all that noise?” the woman at the candy counter asked the manager.

“He’s here tonight,” the manager told her, pointing across the theater to the hulking silhouette at the bottom of the screen. The manager walked down the aisle to the front rows, where the shrieking was growing wilder. Their fear having dissipated itself, the children were holding a competition of shrieking. Ignatius listened to the bloodcurdling little trebles and giggles and gloated in his dark lair. With a few mild threats, the manager quieted the front rows and then glanced down the row in which the isolated figure of Ignatius rose like some great monster among the little heads. But he was treated only to a puffy profile. The eyes that shone under the green visor were following the heroine and her elephant across the wide screen and into the circus tent.

For a while Ignatius was relatively still, reacting to the unfolding plot with only an occasional subdued snort. Then what seemed to be the film’s entire cast was up on the wires. In the foreground, on a trapeze, was the heroine. She swung back and forth to a waltz. She smiled in a huge close-up. Ignatius inspected her teeth for cavities and fillings. She extended one leg. Ignatius rapidly surveyed its contours for structural defects. She began to sing about trying over and over again until you succeeded. Ignatius quivered as the philosophy of the lyrics became clear. He studied her grip on the trapeze in the hope that the camera would record her fatal plunge to the sawdust far below.

On the second chorus the entire ensemble joined in the song, smiling and singing lustily about ultimate success while they swung, dangled, flipped, and soared.

“Oh, good heavens!” Ignatius shouted, unable to contain himself any longer. Popcorn spilled down his shirt and gathered in the folds of his trousers. “What degenerate produced this abortion?”

“Shut up,” someone said behind him.

“Just look at those smiling morons! If only all of those wires would snap!” Ignatius rattled the few kernels of popcorn in his last bag. “Thank God that scene is over.”

When a love scene appeared to be developing, he bounded up out of his seat and stomped up the aisle to the candy counter for more popcorn, but as he returned to his seat, the two big pink figures were just preparing to kiss.

“They probably have halitosis,” Ignatius announced over the heads of the children. “I hate to think of the obscene places that those mouths have doubtlessly been before!”

“You’ll have to do something,” the candy woman told the manager laconically. “He’s worse than ever tonight.”

The manager sighed and started down the aisle to where Ignatius was mumbling, “Oh, my God, their tongues are probably all over each other’s capped and rotting teeth.”

Ignatius staggered up the brick path to the house, climbed the steps painfully, and rang the bell. One stalk of the dead banana tree had expired and collapsed stiffly onto the hood of the Plymouth.

“Ignatius, baby,” Mrs. Reilly cried when she opened the door. “What’s wrong? You look like you dying.”

“My valve closed on the streetcar.”

“Lord, come in quick out the cold.”

Ignatius shuffled miserably back to the kitchen and fell into a chair.

“The personnel manager at that insurance company treated me very insultingly.”

“You didn’t get the job?”

“Of course I didn’t get the job.”

“What happened?”

“I would rather not discuss it.”

“Did you go to the other places?”

“Obviously not. Do I appear to be in a condition that would attract prospective employers? I had the good judgment to come home as soon as possible.”

“Don’t feel blue, precious.”

“‘Blue’? I am afraid that I never feel ‘blue.’”

“Now don’t be nasty. You’ll get a nice job. You only been on the streets a few days,” his mother said and looked at him. “Ignatius, was you wearing that cap when you spoke to the insurance man?”

“Of course I was. That office was improperly heated. I don’t know how the employees of that company manage to stay alive exposing themselves to that chill day after day. And then there are those fluorescent tubes baking their brains out and blinding them. I did not like the office at all. I tried to explain the inadequacies of the place to the personnel manager, but he seemed rather uninterested. He was ultimately very hostile.” Ignatius let out a monstrous belch. “However, I told you that it would be like this. I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it.”

“Lord, babe, you gotta look up.”

“Look up?” Ignatius repeated savagely. “Who has been sowing that unnatural garbage into your mind?”

“Mr. Mancuso.”

“Oh, my God! I should have known. Is he an example of ‘looking up’?”

“You oughta hear the whole story of that poor man’s life. You oughta hear what this sergeant at the precinct’s trying…”

“Stop!” Ignatius covered one ear and beat a fist on the table. “I will not listen to another word about that man. Throughout the centuries it has been the Mancusos of the world who have caused wars and spread diseases. Suddenly the spirit of that evil man is haunting this house. He has become your Svengali!”

“Ignatius, get a holt of yourself.”

“I refuse to ‘look up.’ Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man’s fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”

“I ain’t miserable.”

“You are.”

“No, I ain’t.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Ignatius, I ain’t miserable. If I was, I’d tell you.”

“If I had demolished private property while intoxicated and had thereby thrown my child to the wolves, I would be beating my breast and wailing. I would kneel in penance until my knees bled. By the way, what penance has the priest given you for your sin?”

“Three Hail Mary’s and a Our Father.”

“Is that all?” Ignatius screamed. “Did you tell him what you did, that you halted a critical work of great brilliance?”

“I went to confession, Ignatius. I told Father everything. He says, ‘It don’t sound like your fault, honey. It sounds to me like you just took a little skid on a wet street.’ So I told him about you. I says ‘My boy says I’m the one stopping him from writing in his copybooks. He’s been writing on this story for almost five years.’ And Father says, ‘Yeah? Well, don’t sound too important to me. You tell him to get out the house and go to work.’”

“No wonder I cannot support the Church,” Ignatius bellowed. “You should have been lashed right there in the confessional.”

“Now tomorrow, Ignatius, you go try some other place. They got plenty jobs in the city. I was talking to Miss Marie-Louise, the old lady works in the German’s. She’s got a crippled brother with a earphone. He’s kinda deaf, you know? He got himself a good job over by the Goodwill Industries.”