Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

The easier equilibrium of Life,

With patient love

To raise them where they lay

A tear of absolution

For the weak

Sucked to impersonality

By

The Zoroastrian mud.

While every here and there

The glowing ones. .

Flare to the common call

Till numerously Enough

For Life

Fourpence for dinner, sixpence for love

My life!

Among the geometric static of your bric-à-brac

Your idle wills

Exile the unforeseen

The nice initiative of “nosing about”

Wilts to the barren orderly

Where bells and butlers

Places to put things in

Rob days of discovery

I ask what have you to find

Where can you pick things up?

(DIANA indicating an ashtray, he reverently pockets half a manilla.)

There, there! my good people. . Don’t ask me to say anything. . but forgive me

(Retiring semi-despondently to his throne.)

The grandest of us

Have phases of diminished elasticity

The most expansive

Periodically contract

Can it be possible I am getting narrow?

(Looking with new interest at DIANA , who is still more preparedly posing.)

And is it likely that women have other qualities besides their smell?

I have learnt something to-day

And in exchange

The spiritual explorer’s

Footprints

Humanize

The shameless purity

of that padding on your floor.

Let them remain

For ever

Encouraging

Your tentative toddle towards other ends. .

OSSY. O. . oo. . oh. . aah. . aah! thanks offly. . cocktail?

( The LOONY , lifting each cocktail successively from the gold tray handed to him, drinks them all off with appreciation. )

SOMEBODY. Di dear! as you’re still looking intense would you mind very much if we left him to you?

DIANA. I have never met a genius I couldn’t manage yet.

SOMEBODY. You sure you’re not getting let down on this one? The fellow uses the oldest-hat blank verse!

DIANA. The cosmic form of the idea behind it!

SOMEBODY. Well if you think a drop or two of sulphuric would help you at all. . send to the chemist.

Picked People evaporate .

(The LOONY has laid himself sublimely on a brocaded chaise-longue.

DIANA rather at a loss, as she remarks his drowsiness, plays a precocious trump taking off one shoe and stocking. )

LOONY. ( snoozily as he blinks at the little white thing blazing under the electric light )

This little pig. .

That little pig. .

( But falls asleep .)

(DIANA entirely at a loss, replaces the stocking and shoe. . and calls — James!)

DIANA. Tell the men there is one thousand pounds for any one who will take that to a bath-room. . and entirely clean it up. . not boil it you know. . but any other possible means. . and oh yes, dress it. . the Duke’s will be about the right size. . and then determinedly. . you can bring it back to me.

AFTER THE IMMERSION

(DIANA minus one shoe and stocking. The LOONY minus one shoe and stocking. They sit on the edge of the chaise-longue wriggling toes thoughtfully up and down . .)

DIANA. You see after all they’re very much alike. ( anxiously ) I am losing my self-respect.

DIANA. Oh not at all I assure you. . you’ll feel all right. . it’s only the first five minutes.

LOONY. Look here my dear. . ( resolutely drawing on foot gear ). . if you’ve mistaken me for a blooming canary bird. .

Well. . I didn’t size you up at first. . For you’re a woman you are — white. . pulpy. . wheedle-em-round your finger would you. .?

not me. .!

You’d like to sap my brain to make a face cream of. . tack a string to my jaw and pull it. . “pretty, pretty”. . say Grand louder for his precious!

You’ve made a boss shot. . a holy error. . thought I depended entirely on me protective cake of mud. . nothing inside but slosh. . active because itchy. . think you can drain off the creative impulse through a bath tube. . just be- cause you depend entirely on your tags and tatters ( tearing savagely at the Mechlin on her shoulders through which a mi- raculous white gleam bursts upon him . .)Ah. . (clenching his fists. . to a superhuman brake. . he sits down on the chair opposite her. . smoothing his hair from his brow in sudden weariness )

Ah! you thought you’d got me that time?

DIANA. I maintain that any time will do.

SILENCE

DIANA. Stand up — Sir — and dress your soul for dinner. Throw out your chest and don’t walk heels first. . remember

It takes a genius five minutes to acquire what it takes five centuries to breed into us. .

Those tirades about the Grand are the thing. . dock them a bit. . muddle people up more. . But when you’re not holding forth you must be like us. . you ( hypnotically ) are like us. .

No use picking up cigar ends— Here . . are the whole cigars. . ( handing him the box. . the genius picks out a cigar entirely at his ease ).

Here the Grand is the infinitesimal. . nothing so vulgar as the obvious.

When you talk to a Duchess treat her as if she were a prostitute at the same time hold fast to the ethics of property.

Shown a picture. . look at the left-hand corner. .

A book? Pass an innocuous finger-nail down the back of the binding.

Turn everything upside down and inside out. . and you’ll get on. . you’ve got to get on. . I have just telephoned you to every daily paper in the kingdom and now . . look at me with those in-domitable eyes . .

( turning to a step ). .

Dear DUKE. . I must present Houston Loon to you. .

The great Vitalist

. . Europe raves about him. . tomorrow. .

DUKE. A pleasure. . ah I see. . you’ve got a cigar. .

I’d just like to have your opinion on this Benozzo Gozzoli.

LOONY. ( holding his nose carefully to the left-hand corner ) Are you sure it’s a Benozzo Gozzoli?. . By the direction of the scratches. . you can’t scratch a Bennozo Gozzoli from right to left. . from the way he put the paint on. . More probably a Genozzo Bozzolini.

My dear. . ( breathes DIANA devoutly ). .you’ll DO .

THE END

OF THEM ALL

by BJUNA DARNES

ROSA TRINKLESTEIN

JERABOAM WINERED

( who would like to be ROSA’s lover )

THREE OAFS

SERAMINKA a maid.

JERABOAM WINERED sits in an armchair enfolding him like a middle-aged woman’s breasts. His boots are magenta kid, and one is standing meticulously under his chair.

ROSA TRINKLESTEIN is reclining in antagonistic repose upon a Recamier sofa upholstered in purple and yellow stars, a red glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling. On the wall a single composite painting, Raphael’s MADONNA enshrined in a house of prostitution.

ROSA is juggling with three huge swords, a couple of pistols, and a slim knife for carving canvas-backed ducks. She has just left off kissing JERABOAM's foot.

JERABOAM. I cannot count my stock — the flying pigs evade me—. . I am getting tired.

ROSA. ( deftly pinning the Madonna in the left eye with the longest sword) I too have lived — have sat in a hansom cab and counted the tails on the horse.

JERABOAM. Rosa why do you hate me so?

ROSA. Do you suppose a ploughed field needs overturning?

JERABOAM. Thank you!

ROSA. Gratitude is pitiful — rather than be pitiful I would prefer you to twist your moustache.

JERABOAM. Rosa you are cruel.