Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

These things are difficult for such as do not read the smart set to understand— John Straher was after all more lucid— Yet one wished for his own sake that he had a word or two to spare. A tremendous deal of shy sympathy — for Lucy was idiotically delightful — and a superhuman wrestle with his mind — at least achieved his fullest measure of expression.

I feel, I feel, that if she were ever sick, I should take her home to my house and nurse her— Yes! More, I should give her the best there is.

I do like Lucy.

Gosh she’s a nice girl is Lucy—

If she were sick I would nurse her.

This is a clean thing mind you. I could look her husband in the eyes any day.

But suppose she were to fall sick when her husband was in New York— Why shouldn’t I take her home and nurse her? I never seen such a nice girl as Lucy.

With nothing but a pocket vocabulary a man that looked at you like that — could have done horrible damage. As things were, it was his pleasingly redemptive doom to disappoint woman at once — but not later—

Lucy did just wish he had lived in Manhattan—

Love can talk to its “each other” with many couplings of languages as Malayan and French — but not in the language of Maine — to Maine.

I have tried to imagine how Mr. and Mrs. Granger for instance whose enlarged bridal portraits hung over the cottage grand had initiated the honeymoon with

Gosh you are a clean man—

Say but you’re a clean girl

— there was the son in the den to account for.

This stranger, this guest entertained unawares whose incognito Freud has forever unveiled. The worthies of Maine in banishment from their own breasts preferred to have taken murky refuge in their neighbours’.

They denounced “it” for they knew it must be somewhere about.

The ray of the clean mind of Maine swept through its habitations like a search light, in which those poor stark unprotected wooden houses gave a perfect representation of living “morally” inside out.

The guest that lurks even as it lurked in those steaming swamps of a yet unpopulated planet — in the hot mud and the primeval bottom of the Maine consciousness.

We were driving back. John’s horse was hoofing up a cloud of dust and John having relieved himself of his unpronounceable aspirations, his Maine masked élan vers l’idéal had his reaction. He became voluble. He was talking about the neighbours.

He told me that Mrs. Granger’s son had syphilis — that he was a devil with the women — and had imparted it to every school girl — in the village. Where every moment of everyone’s time was so meticulously “counted,” where every door and every window — so collectively and so incessantly watched — where everyone one with every reason had ascribed that particular attribute of God — allseeing — to the villagers.

Young Granger had violated the innocent who returned from school along the short straight roadway under the long straight eyes of the Maine mothers watching from their well scoured stoops. He had walked diabolically abroad when doors were doubly locked and dogs barked — and grandparents slept lightly.

He had lived “conquering” while his mother’s manifold chores had to be accomplished, his spirit like the werewolf — had miraculously emanated while he sat nightly by the window of the den without shades, transparent curtains in the bright light of the lamp, fondling his fraternity relics on the wall — and learning the danger of incurring the enmity of a people that have the gift of song.

When John Straher sang his song of Young Granger, he had that same suspicious, half tame gesture of self protectingly pushing something out of him into anywhere — no matter where else — with which I had seen Young Granger regard the women from New York, and indeed everyone except his excellent Mamma.

This black magical quality seemed according to my raconteur to be inherent to every inhabitant of Maine — and gradually as we neared the village post office where from so very far away — we could descry the most fearful miscreants leaning, as they did every night against the wooden posts and door jambs, dangling their unformulated legs from the fence — chewing their wisps of chaw — and looking seemingly out onto the infinite horizon of blind men—

As we neared this post office, I learned that some members of “our” party had already, after an unwilling stay of 48 hours, become intricated in the local saga.

The Prince who divided his attention seemingly between his monocle and his motherless boy — had issued out upon the evening of our arrival — at such time as he was actually telling us ghost stories round the log fire — to patting John Staher intimately on the back—“the filthy libertine” enquired, “Where can I find one about here?”

And had been directed to the only thing they had of that description—

“Bad Mary of Maine.”

Bad Mary was pretty bad — she was old angry and dusty and when I saw her, she was tramping up from a great distance with a basket of raspberries as her official presentation to the visitors, and she also proffered her desire to sweep anything up, to shake anything out.

There had been, according to John, nobody who had not benefitted by the embraces of those branchlike work-ridden arms and hands — the glances of that slightly glazing eye.

It was widely known that she preserved the portrait of a Spanish sailor who had once lain low with measles in her husband’s shack — and had moreover received a letter of thanks from him on his subsequent voyage.

The Strumpet!

Though this underworld could never become very real to me there was yet a mystery which spurred my curiosity. On the road from the village to the lake woods — I passed a crazy sign.

“Green’s Colony”

What is Green’s Colony I asked in turn of everyone in the village — and of each one in turn I received — the answer of a deadly silence. It cost me great pains to discover the grim secrets of this colony of Greens.

Well you know said my informant most reluctantly, what a moron is — what a cretin is, what a degenerate is?

yes — yes—

Well that’s what they are in Green’s Colony—

Having at last decided on telling me, he meant to tell me really well. And as if the subject were one too vast for him he called together a few of his friends to help—

They presented it to me surprisingly well.

Nobody any longer dared to take that menacing path beyond the crazy sign — it was more than one’s life was worth—

But they could remember. Now things were getting more and more fearful, someone had once unwittingly strayed there and had not returned — either at all — or at least not what they were before.

They were not very clear as to which.

These degenerates were a race sprung from an unnatural brother and sister and had in a few filthy hovels continued to breed prodigiously in the same biblical manner—

They were dwarfed, they were hunched, some of them were web-footed, some web-fingered and from the half demolished hedges of that ostracised domain — their microcephalus heads with bulging eyes would “start out at you”. Their major impulse was murder then minor rape. They bred at deplorably infantile ages — their lives were spent in one long loathsome lust. In one infested lair, you could find if anyone dared to go there, five generations, forming the seraglio of the same pappa.

They had their own fearsome language of signs and snarls.

A tremendous interest in this race of dithering imbeciles supporting, clothing, protecting themselves without a keeper sprang up in me.

I must go and see. It was hard to take no heed of the frightened admonitions and vehement warnings — for one who finds it good sport to be alive — I should be flayed by the first prowling maniac for they were superhumanly strong, and then I should remember what they had told me. But my curiosity refused to die — by what amazing instinct did they light fires for themselves against the rigorous winters, who wove their clothes— How breed those more decently domestic animals on whom to feed— I enquired of many details — but was assured they were absolutely witless with their heads the size of an orange. They only knew how to kill and fornicate.