Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

“Surely.”

“Then, disappear now — at once. I command you!”

“I should be delighted.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“To put an end to my life.”

“There’s no need for you to wait.”

“But my life?”

“Yes, your life.”

“But my life? Where is it? You have confiscated it. Where can you have tucked it away?” Feverishly Pazzarella patted my clothes, searched under my curls — to fall back once more, extenuated upon the pillows. “Tell me what is there, what is there about you that so satisfies me when I touch you?”

“Maybe that is your life?”

“Therefore —?”

Her pulse had become imperceptible — I admired the sensitive hollows under the cheek-bones, sculptured by the sophisticated compromises of my lips.

“If you really cared for me, you would tell me what it is sustains you in so miraculously remaining alive.”

And Pazzarella murmured this incredible word in my ear.

“Hope.”

“But my poor thing, what could you hope for? Even if I had not already completely spoiled you, you so fine, so fragile — you are not my type.”

“Really?”

“Hadn’t you realized it?”

“No. I thought it was just your way of amusing yourself.”

“There is also a little of that,” I laughed in answer to this gleam of intelligence. “But that alters nothing,” I went on decidedly.

“So be it,” and taking what I prayed should be her last look at me, she arose from where she lay, and all tottering, blindly left the room.

“What are you up to?” I called to her.

“Can’t you understand that I shall never be able to die as long as you are near me?” And so saying, she threw herself on the stone stairs as if seeking a refuge unquestionably kinder than my adamant embraces.

I settled down comfortably and lit a cigarette. What peace. The bed, scarcely disarranged by its lethargic occupant, was a razed plane, clear of all insoluble enigmas, and the primitive monkey seemed to look at me in quite brotherly fashion from the Javanese stuff.

But this peaceful interlude did not last long, for all at once, the silence, my obedient and compatible silence, so unlike the gravid, disquieting silence of woman, was broken by a supreme sob — an irruption of cardiac blood and boiling tears — it was Pazzarella. She was crying at last; for the first time, outside on the stairs whither she had retired to vomit her soul on sordid blocks of granite.

“I don’t care for that noise,” I cried.

“I don’t care for it myself,” she spluttered. “I feel like the heroine of a melodrama. Couldn’t you have found anything better to do with me? This business of dying is so extremely usual any charwoman goes through with it — it’s not at all as you litterateurs seem to believe, an agony reserved for their mistresses.”

I was thoroughly frightened. The contrariness of woman! Her voice was actually growing stronger — a shade of enmity was creeping into it. She could not die at my side, yet had she not once confessed to me that in my absence her love for me diminished? If she was to die of love, there was still some danger that she would not succeed even out there on the cold stairs. I was desperate, fearing that at a few yards’ distance I lost some of my power over her.

However, the crying continued, and every outburst seemed to blow up her being. What a catastrophic result of all my labors. Could there not exist a more aesthetic conception of “finishing off” a woman? Was there perhaps something wrong with my method, when it came to naught but a horrible noise?

As a painter, struck for the first time with a higher conception of his art, regards his “earlier” work with disparagement, I contemplated my Pazzarella de le Scala di Pietra critically. How could I have failed in such an academic manner? Such sticky technique! This mixture of quivering mucous and clammy flesh running with tears!

I seated myself beside her and began tracing with my forefinger the swelling festooned from the arch of her nose across her hot wet face, leaving her bloodshot eyes in a purple pit.

Pazzarella, quieting under my touch, sank into a state of coma, leaving me at liberty to investigate. I picked her up and carried her back to bed. Then I arranged myself in such a position as best to contemplate her.

After all, even if she loved me, she was still a human being. And in that propitious hour when she could neither talk nor cry nor appear so pitifully conscious of being inarticulate, I could consider her case at my leisure, impartially.

Set free by this state of coma, this female soul presented itself clearly, for closer observation, and with every star that vanished from the night the mysteries of her silence likewise vanished, one by one.

This female Buddha sensed my power over her better than I myself. This was the reason for her calm eye and her laisser aller . Her pardon before the act and her maternal irony. There was no possible doubt but that she had understood. She must have cogitated every possible means of escape — theories of the laws and harmonies of sex, the rights of women which, once having been won, leave woman as solitarily woman as before. Pazzarella had known all along what she was — woman aware of herself. This seductive creature who was so feminine, so tender, found herself stranded with the awful certainty that intellectual self-respect for a woman is a juggling with lies. She had nothing more to say to other women or to men, either. Intrepid pilgrim of enlightenment, she had found one truth, and this one sufficed to render her immune to all illusion.

To me, keeping company with her coma, it seemed as if, her spirit having come apart from her, I could hold it like an object in my hands. It had the translucent opacity of an oyster, and, on looking into it deeply, I saw a flux of nebulous matter stirred by internal currents and countercurrents. The vital rhythm was disjointed— Ideas, facts, form and sound advanced, receded, grew large, then small, bright or dim, louder or fainter.

Every now and then a spark engendered would for a flash illumine the whole inside of this soul with a crazy half-light without ever throwing anything particular into relief. For always, on the verge of definition, the contents confused, spun round and round at a flighty velocity to evaporate at last in a vortex of mist — in which my enemy disappeared.

In the divine manner, it was from this chaos I drew my inspiration. At once I grew enormous — omnipotent. After centuries of mystery, I had found the solution — a solution that lay in myself. The secret of woman is that she does not yet exist. Being a creator, I realized I can create woman. I decided to “create” Pazzarella.

Until now she had nothing but her breath and the everlasting attraction toward man, lacking an axis about which to revolve. I am man and I shall be her axis. All this while she had lain at my flank, weak for the want of “a life” I could make for her, waiting for me to impregnate her mind as I impregnate her body, to organize that revolving chaos which is the source of variety among the individuals begotten of it. For she being identified with “everything,” partakes of that universal “unity” sought by the mystic; with this paradoxical result that if man is promiscuous physically, woman is promiscuous spiritually.

But such reflections were powerless to deter me. I had found a fresh instrument for my intellect, a raw material with which to create; material so plastic in its untouched condition, that it offered untold possibilities of formation.

Stirred with a new enthusiasm, all the passion I had hitherto devoted to pen and paper welled up in my heart—