THE STOMACH

By MINA LOY

There sat the father.

Where the flesh should have been there was knitted
wool--- the wits of the aged go wool-gathering, dutiful
relatives knit them into a frowsty comfort for the
blinking, twitching, wheezing forgetter of many delights.

His blind eye floated like a decaying fish
in the dregs of her lucidity. There must have been
parts of him even more terrifying than those that
were exposed --- in 'out of use' there is ugliness.

How delicate how decent however were the appoint-
ments of the sitting-room, the cleared and garnished
tabernacle for this bundle of human garbage.

Ladies of some culture--and some titled, asked
the daughter little questions about mother, as if tak-
ing a dig at his flesh to see if She were still
alive.

Virginia devotedly cossetted her father, giving
evidence that she had found no time for marriage.
Every day a fostering coachmandrove her with the aged
gentleman slowly through the more fashionable streets

Every desirable visitor she could muster into
the half-conscious paternal presence would remember the
even temperature of his sitting-room, the southern aspect,
the cheerful flowers, the particular fleeciness of the
wool which enwrapped him.

2

Virginia Cosway employed her leisure with the
Arts.

chosen as model

Years ago a sculptor had used Virginia Cosway for
'La Tarantella', had taken her fingers between two of
his own and slid them further down and apart upon
her hip; then with accurate gesticulations he had
inspired her with 'the pose'.

The famous statue had been standing for a quar-
ter of a century in the public gallery visited by
the processional tourists. Wrinkling a nostril and an
under eye-lid, thousands of noses had lifted to it
over catalogues.

The figure was over lengthy on it's pedestal,
and the small head with it's arched eye- brows
sneered with a simultaneous invitation and repulse.

But because of the great height of the figure,
it's significance for the spectator seemed rather to
center in the region of the hips, and also on account
of the 'pose' inspired by the master, the outswung allure-
ment, the momentary momentous projection of the stomach in
the 'danza Espagnol.'

The tourists stared at 'La Tarantella' and sup-
posed that she implied that there was a transcendental
anatomy to be studied in the land of the Alhambra.
The tourists were not allured by the tilted pelvis,
each one dismissed it as being the concern of the
next one. The tourists kept their mouths open to air
their house of limitation in which they preferred to
abide.

abode

3

For a quarter of a century, the permanent physical adoption of that Spanish pose had defined the daughter's status---the authorised edition of Virginia Cosway issued by the Master for the international society of the Elite parasites of the Arts.

She wore it as a tag of identification in the grand monde, where one must let off a rocket, to be rescued from the masses.

She performed her Hispano-abdominal XXX ceremony at 'les vernissages', the private views, auctions of the Hotel Druot and the birthdays of new movements; it served her as a bass accompaniment to her spoken verdicts. IT became familiar to the whole of Europe, and by middle-age had brought an utter reverence upon her.

She had also accumulated her mythology, women who often wore mourning whispered how the heart of the Master had been broken. Callous women deprecated her shortsightedness on the occasion of his proposal. Elderly bachelors pointed her out as the great man's guiding star.

Only too early after she had refused him the sculptor had leapt to a rare and official celebrity, and Virginia found herself powerless to cap him with a husband of greater distinction.

So she clung to that trifle of her destiny; she had restricted herself to accepting XXXX from him-- the pose.

4

Important people would be enticed at re-
ceptions into the shadows of Spanish leather or Chinese
lacquer screens, for a significant talk with Virginia
Cosway the life long friend of the Master.
There under the arc of the handshake, with a brief
undulation of the hips, and the adjustment of the
forefinger, the stomach outswung to it's notable attitude
as if enticing aesthetic culture into her womb to be re-
born for her audience.

This authoritative and challenging gesture became the formative process of her critique; this continuous besumption of her primal creation by the Master, who had, with his studio directions hammered her into a posture in which she was to become fixed for life.

Her erstwhile suitor with due realisation
that marriage is not the unique entanglement for the
mighty, became grosser of feature and of cigar and con-
tinued to devote a cup of tea to her, whenever he was
in the neighbourhood; for she not only was intimate with
some of his wealthiest clients, but & added very voice-
fully to that chorus without sound of which the approach
to our celebrities might not so easily be located.

Where Virginia went, always companioned by
women of greater age, hereditary prestige than herself —
as reinforcement— she expounded the gesture that had
gradually attained to insolence, while conducting her well
attended inquisition of the muses.

The stomach had become an arbiter of aesthetics.

ago
AND

["5", "The father grew daily colder in his wool-\nens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .