Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

The next scene is moonlight— The youth has been lying asleep on the moss — and over him bends a dryad incorporated with a tree — the form of her ballet skirt repeats the form of the tree’s foliage. She emerges from the tree and as they are about to embrace the blue ribbon floats in between them and the youth dances away — in his dance he is arrested on the point of tripping over something at his feet — it is the fairy ring — under a clump of white thorn bushes, through which the wires can be manipulated by a sitting figure, a group of exquisite marionettes dance beside a black glass pool surrounded by very luminous arum lilies — while the youth and the dryad dance a slow dance of admiration— The fairy queen is riding a fairy tiger reined with a daisy chain — when she sees the youth she descends from the tiger and dances to the youth and at last flies into his arms — and gets all wrapped up in the blue ribbon— The scene fades.

The youth is confronted by a towering column of narrow glass steps — and on its summit is a maiden bound — and round her feet curves the first curve of a dragon, with flames — tiny flames — darting from its tongue— The rest of the serpent-like dragon curves all down round the pinnacle of stairs— On either side of the maiden the sun and moon shed rays accompanied by stars — as in the old prints. The sun and moon with human faces. The scene is terrifically cold and pure in line and whiteness — even the flames of the dragon’s mouth are blue like low burning gas jets. The youth dances a magnificent dance of courageous attack — always in the rhythm of to-and-fro — he darts towards the dragon — the dragon darts his head at him — the dragon draws back its head— The youth renews the attack — he has an enormous yellow gilt shield, sword, helmet and winged sandals like Mercury. At last he strikes the dragon— The pinnacle of stairs falls apart — giving an amusing cubistic pattern of white oblongs in the air at different angles to each other between the falling-apart blocks. The maiden descends, floatingly, to earth while the dragon falls apart to reveal nothing but the maiden’s mother holding up her lorgnette— The maiden flies into the youth’s arms — and after embraces he takes her blue ribbon out of his pocket— The scene fades.

The maiden and the youth are seated on a white china horse which gallops but never moves— Behind them every imaginable scenery passes in a brief space (cast by a magic lantern). They are on their honeymoon— The scene fades.

The crystal becomes clouded, only to light up again partially for a moment, to reveal a crystalline baby tumbling over and over itself swiftly out of the sky, while the blue ribbon, in momentous curves, with, as in old story books, “The End” written upon it, rises up to receive the baby as it falls.

Invisible

Obvious

Picked

People

Houseless

Loony

Porcelain breath — Sèvres bow — Gilded crimson — Curved flutings — Brocade — Tailored muscles — Whipped cream — Blue spirals — Salved lips — Salon — Debussy — Azaleas — Ancestors — Armorial complacencies — Ooze

Picked People melted by a distinguished method among the upholstery.

TAG ENDS OF OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

The social fabric is a curtain. . and that warm garnet foldshadow there, for souls’ hide and seek. .

Decency shudders in the bare moment, taut between vestibule and auto. .

. . my crystalline lorgnette, . trees. . at this season all are undressed.

The earth a poignant undertaker. .

I wish I had a wig darling.

. . Observe the legs, the agony of the crucified. . the tendons. . delicate as Dresden china 15th century. . ah yes! the troubles of the steam-heating plant. . man from Milan knows his business. .

Oh Prince how charming of you. . and what is your opinion of the sex question?

How simple. . still I can’t quite agree with you. . we shall never give up wearing silk stockings.

SOMEBODY. Ossy you know has discovered a genius. . coming from the club. . wonderful chap, see his predatory eye. .picking up cigar ends. . the grand passion. . pockets full. .

SOMEBODY. Picasso uses all sorts of odds and ends.

OSSY. No critic dare anticipate the masterpiece this man may stack. .

SOMEBODY. Mud larks and geniuses!

OSSY. There’s a revival in THE THING being a patron. . I’ve got a Medici Villa somewhere. . put the fellow in the stables here. . heart’s content. . counting fags Wait and see; fond of my dinner doesn’t prevent me having an enormous respect for these creative sky-rocket-in-the-sewer chaps; wait and see

I’ve got flair. . taken two of you to have got onto those cigar ends. . like that . . my God!

I’d forgotten Diana. . Diana collects geniuses!

SOMEBODY. She’s got perfect toes. . pedicured on a diamond footstool. .

SOMBODY ELSE. Bach played for her bath. .

SOMEBODY. Isadora Allen to dance her awake

S. E. Bought a museum to wear at a ball

SOMEBODY. Has to have the Daily Mail transposed into the Arabic for the autumn, British Jour-nalese has a bite in it. . superfluously supplements the morning frost. .

S. E. Steam from hot cocoa is so suggestive of breathing in the open

SOMEBODY. But she has so many butterflies in her nightcap. .

S. E. Avoiding the vulgarity of looking expensive she waters the aloe in sack-cloth. Does nothing to her complexion, but a penny worth of ice

Has her own bran-mash prepared for her at the Ritz. . reads Mahabharata through cotillions. .

SOMEBODY. So bored. . has the most perfect yawn in Europe. . virgin eyelashes, and abortive morals. . why Di dear, we were just talking about you. .

(DIANA turns off the light, sits on the pekinese which sinking still deeper into cushions notices nothing; and meditates in a fussy silence on the dial of a lumi- nous watch. )

( Two intimate FRIENDS sidle into the conservatory )

1ST FRIEND . Can I trust you?

2ND FRIEND . Did I trust you?

1ST F. Then I will tell you where I really was last week. . at home with a black eye.

2ND F. And where. .?

1ST F. Oh, he was at home with a black eye too.

2ND F. How ripping!

1ST F. Delicious, we wore Longhi masks and had Watsiswinski play Handel on the spinet

2ND F. Life can be very beautiful with a lover

1ST F. The Wedgewood and the Venetian lustres are in splinters and the ceiling had to be repainted

2ND F. It is your passion for danger, serves you your incontestable hold on our social circle, whose criterion the intactness of porcelain, the watchword. . “No china is ever broken here; here where the vir-ginity of white carpets, sanctifies the passage of the correct”

1ST F. Profundity of superficies

2ND F. While to Stavinski’s meteors the animal whines a million moons behind evening dress

1ST F. Split passion to the forty gold pieces of a manicure set. . and there it still is

2ND F. Strew souls in fractions on dressing tables

1ST F. Oh keep it up. . disintegratedly above those others . . what do you suppose they do. . with insufficient money to do it with?

2ND F. Nature looks after them. .

1ST F. When you consider what our régime has done to Nature

2ND F. Diversion for our old age, in patching them up

1ST F. Well, I suppose we’re rotten. . thank God, we’re rotting soft

2ND F. Double pile. . or an intellect walking about on it. .

1ST F. Don’t make me think. . might drive me to anything. .

2ND F. Come Di’s lit up again. . Ossy’s cocktails Remember . . no china broken here. .