Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

“Indisputably you suffer from suicidal mania. In the beginning it astounded me that you made not the slightest effort to save yourself. Now you are even helping me. You are incomprehensible.”

“Dearest, you enjoy the secret distinction of being loved by the biggest imbecile in existence.”

“Obviously that is a lie. Nevertheless, I have not yet been able to make out why you take the line of action you do, or rather why you don’t take any line of action.”

“Am I not Passivity ?”

“And that’s why you are odious to me.”

“It is to this your intellect condemns me.”

– — – — –

“I, falling in love with just a man, as any girl of the people has a crush on the barber’s assistant’s beautiful moustache, found I had bumped into an intellect, the male intellect that reduces me to absurdity. I weighed in advance my possible coquetteries, dignities, the fictitious value I could assume, the pretentious gestures I could make in the luckless position of being — what am I?

“There seemed nothing to be hoped for, nothing to be done. I could be unfaithful to you? A lot of impression that made on you. Enhance my beauty? You are short-sighted. Lie? You could do it better than I. Dishonestly hew myself a niche in your animal propensities? Not to be thought of — you have yourself so thoroughly in hand.

“You might suppose that I should have surrendered to total discouragement. But no. In spite of all, I existed for you. I, woman, irritated you for that very passivity you impose upon me. I irritated you to such a degree that you could not keep your hands off me! Have you not often confessed to me how utterly I irritate you; to the point of wanting to conquer me?

“But you did not guess that if there are difficult conquests that inflame a man, and conquests so easy they rattle a man — you did not guess, that I could imagine a conquest so easy that it staggers the intellect itself. Do I irritate you?” she inquired.

“Sufficiently,” I answered.

“ Amore, caro ,” burbled Pazzarella, “Can’t you see ? If you had been an ordinary man, with no great intellect — that irritation you feel whenever I come near you would have been love! You would have loved me at night to return in the daytime to see if I was still on earth. You would have taken me by the hand and together we should have run against the blowing wind to show how beautiful and how young we are. But as you are only an intellect—”

“You think perhaps I have done the worst I can to you? But if I have shown you an outrage on elemental womanhood, there still remains the civilized woman, whose death-rattle lasts much longer in an agony infinitely more complicated. I can extend the scope of your sensibility until it comprises a universe, and this universe being myself, can disappear from one moment to another. I can animate your latent voluble wit, nourish your vanity, and, when growing ever more beautiful, more debonair, you are sure you have arrived at a state of security, can unexpectedly remove your animator. I can play any tricks upon you I please while you will rest assured they are the natural working out of Destiny — because I can give you what you want. In short, I will love you, if you feel equal to it?”

“I have only the strength of my longing for you.”

“Take warning. There will be moments when you will look into my eyes and see your salvation — moments in which my one preoccupation is to enjoy you, as you enjoy me — in which defence, irony, paradox, disdain, suspicion have vanished. We shall exchange the limpid glances of newborn seraphim in a celestial innocence of mutual possession. You will have the illusion of all barriers being overthrown, of the ‘unknown’ being revealed, inequalities being razed — in that sweet and absolute union which is —ephemeral!

“But beware of that moment following when you are suffused with the glow of my weakness from which, in a triumphant spasm, I have liberated myself. You will remember. I shall have forgotten.

“My regard scarcely recognising you will be fixed anew in the eternal urge to know. This is the wound in woman which never heals, even in subsequent ecstasies. This is the knowledge the last mother to dwell on earth will not dare to impart to the ultimately sophisticated maiden when preparing her for the last honeymoon.”

“How beautifully you talk.”

“You haven’t understood anything?”

“There are things a woman understands without accepting,” replied Pazzarella, settling down in my arms with a smile of relief.

“You certainly have an indomitable courage.”

“I feel so cozy with you.”

“Now that I have taken the road to Death,” she continued.

“Which leads through felicity.”

“Do you mean it?” clapping her hands.

“Indeed, this is to be the happiest time of your life.”

“Yes, I feel sure there is some elemental truth concealed in woman’s love that men do not suspect, but which will some day make amends for our monotony. It is my ambition to reveal it to you, and so be more to you than what you expect of me.”

“My dear, I ask nothing better than to vary that monotony. I give you carte blanche . I am here for a whole evening— Let us sample a little of this brimming secret reservoir in woman of which we men disdain to take advantage. See, I, in my turn, am passive. Profit by it!”

Pazzarella broke into a laugh of joyous discomfiture. “I can’t.”

“Ha?”

“Forgive me if I fail you at this crucial moment — it has just occurred to me — Womanhood cannot be consummated without a collaborator.”

“Pazzarella,” I asked her, “do you feel like making a little love this evening?”

“Actually, when one talks so much about love as we do, one hardly thinks of it.”

“Ah — if one comes to think of it, it is such a comical business.”

“So it seems to me,” she made friendly assent.

“Then for once we agree.”

“Miraculous!”

“And yet,” I pursued, “every now and then we shall find ourselves invaded by this indefinable yearning.”

“Fortunately,” she sighed, closing her eyes then opening them again. “Geronimo, you are delightful — you look like a little boy hiding in the corner with a lump of sugar.”

When at last we let go of each other Pazzarella fell into meditation. “How mysteriously designed is love— Here are we, the fundamental enemies whose dearest desire is to be rid of each other — yet when the flesh unites, how exquisite— It really tempts one to believe in a power above us.”

Only some minutes later, a complete change had come over her, so that eventually I was led to demand, “Why the depression?”

“After all, it’s idiotic loving you — there’s no reason for it — I didn’t want to— I don’t know where passion comes from — I object .”

I wondered how she would make defensive love — for day by day I found my enemy paler, her eyelids darker, but steadily fortifying herself in a new dignity.

“Be on your guard,” she greeted me at last with a smile of great reserve. “I begin to feel the need of saving you.”

“From yourself?” I inquired, “That is hardly your concern. I am perfectly capable of taking my own precautions.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” she went on with majestic severity. “I have got to talk to you. I am more serious than you think. I am a superior woman — you, also, are a superior man. That being the case, do you suppose that this, our love, is worthy of us? Do you think it is moral that I, knowing very well that you do not understand me , should say to myself, ‘I don’t care, his embraces content me,’ and let it go at that? No! You, being so supremely sophisticated, think there is enough to satisfy a woman in physical super-refinements and in your virility — above all your virility.” Then, as it were, in parentheses, “I am worn out. For the last two days I have lain on this sofa.”