Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

Like a cloud in a wind her grey figure would curve hither and thither. And as Jove Ivon watched her he saw how she conjured the beautiful water with her wand from out of a circular receptacle made of a metal that was most probably dead silver from the craters of the moon. While the pillars reflected in its contents danced in zig-zags of sky white.

The soul of Jove Ivon Corvon was exalted and when he discovered that some of her hairs were made of light, so purely argent they shone, in spite of his fear that the vision would evaporate, he revealed himself. And allowing his smile to steal — like dawn — across his lips, lifting ever so little that left corner ———he waited for it to take effect.

The vision entirely overcome by his garment of humming emeralds, planted one hand on her hip —a powerfully archaic gesture —and cried in a voice unlike other voices

“Lookit the guy!”

“O rarest of women,” said Jove Ivon Corvon, “My name is not Guy, but if such is the appellation you choose to bestow upon me, you have only to baptise me with that beautiful water, and under that name I will live and die.”

And stretching out his arms towards her in the great longing of his newborn heart, he did indeed receive a shower of the marvellous liquid on his impassioned brow.

With this supreme encouragement he gathered the unearthly creature to his breast, whereupon she with her magic did something passing strange to his head with the wand; allowing him the privilege of perceiving in their brilliancy an undiscovered constellation of stars.

And even as he reflected that here was a super-woman Good Fortune had trailed across his triumphant path did he become aware that she evaded him ——was fleeing away from him!

As he gave chase he could observe the captivating detail of her clothes. Beneath the back of her bodice was arranged a peeping space of folded white and two fluttering ends of some unshining ribbon tinged like ancient alabaster, enrapturing his pursuit.

As often as he caught up with her she would repulse him, and Jove Ivon Corvon was soon leaping at her in a shower of iridescent blue feathers and sparkling emeralds, while the object of his Adoration swept him off from her with the mop of matted twilight, or jerking the wand with lightning dexterity among his feet ——

Jove Ivon, elated with these Eleusinian mysteries incident to his introduction to the favours of his super-woman, hopped in and out of the beautiful water with ecstatic alacrity.

The super-woman, to the syncopated accompaniment of her wand upon the pavement, chanting meanwhile

“Young manile

Aveyouno

asima lidy

Iamm”

How long it was before Jove Ivon Corvon lost consciousness, or if that Monde Triple-Extra ever learned that its most elusive idol was vanquished by a matutinal charwoman, I do not know.

Should you protest that owing to his origin which I have touched upon, Jove Ivon Corvon in his youth must have been only too familiar with middle-aged women who earn the rewards of virtue by mopping other people’s floors, which renders her metamorphosis in his imagination glaringly improbable, I can only suggest that Youth is occasionally incapable of aesthetic reaction to womankind prior to adolescence.

Thus she was enabled to appear to him in the light of a virginal visitation.

Camelio has disappeared ——

he is sitting upon the table of the ladies’ cloak room holding his bronze flame in his hands — the bronze flame suffers horribly — apparently — from champagne.

A woman with a horse’s face her lips coloured crooked — and a dirty toby frill — has taken Camelio in her arms—

Darling, wails she, I cannot bear to see you killing yourself—

Camelio crawls down the tremendous marble steps and splashes goldenly into the gutter.

Camelio is unconscious—

A big fat motor is backing into Camelio—

Woman attempts to drag him out of the gutter, unconsciousness is heavy—

Within an inch of the wheels Camelio somersaults onto the sidewalk—

He is stuffed into a taxi—

A woman puts her little finger into Camelio’s mouth—

he sucks it like a young calf

The woman is meditating primevally on how unconsciousness relapses to the tremendous suction of life that drew man out of chaos — —

Do you suppose asks Camelio that you can behave yourself at least while we are in the elevator—

Camelio profile of a Bach prelude is lying on the table like a plate.

The woman with the toby frill whose mouth is now on her forehead — is moaning over his approaching dissolution—

It is known that Camelio has — Camelio has heart disease

There was once a woman, and some golden hair is all the incognito I shall allow her.

In her boudoir, where I found myself by chance, the long windows opened on to a garden so overloaded with foliage that the infrequent flowers seemed to invite reproof for being gaudy. This Pazzarella, for so I have named her, succeeded in diffusing in the atmosphere a vague evaporative quality so illusively irritating that it exasperated me as nothing had ever done before.

Surrounded by fading colours and clouded mirrors, seated before the tarnished gilding of a dilapidated clavichord, she let her idle fingers under their crepuscular jewels crawl over the keys, evoking tired melodies that sobbed and slipped into the silence without defining their complaint.

When she was unoccupied she was just as disturbing. Her eyes resembled two bewildered swallows flown by accident into her face and caught in lines of suffering as yet undefined. Eyes that, being lost, had become fixed in patient expectation of clairvoyance, neglecting the present to search for the unknown. There was something about her of a plant that has matured in a cellar as though she had had to draw her alimentary light from an enduring twilight.

She spoke but little, replying to the remarks addressed to her with a desperate finality as if for some inscrutable reason she had been forbidden to speak.

The indiscernible traces of agony predicted on her youthful face provoked my ire — I was spurred by a desire to see them defined. Her unrevealing conversation filled me with a wild necessity to silence her, once and for all.

Her fragile body, whose voluptuous frustration seemed to evoke the couplings of butterflies and reptiles, rather than seduce the full-blooded male, forbidding in advance any possible illusion of satiety, congealed my veins in a glacial passion.

I approached her with the full intention of throwing myself upon her, when in the nick of time I recovered my reason. One possesses a woman out of desire; there is no known biological law that forces a civilized man to exterminate a perfectly amiable hostess for the sake of a couple of musical grimaces between two cups of tea.

I launched myself on a philosophical argument to thaw my arteries, which my companion punctuated with occasional gleams of intelligence, and little by little I began to feel safe in my superior acumen and the obvious appreciation of my audience.

My fantastic fury died down as I entrenched myself in my lucidity. It seemed as if, after all, there were definite points of contact between myself and this disquieting person. The butterfly fluttered away, the reptile undulated into oblivion, and I was beginning to feel quite at ease with her when, after apparently listening to all I had to say, she suddenly exclaimed, “But whatever is philosophy, and why do your eyes strike off such icy green sparks?”

Ah, then there was no withholding myself, and I did throw myself upon her. In a sadistic delirium of destruction I determined to put an end to her. When I regained my calm, I found I had only possessed her.