Venus in Furs

by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  “First of all, I would like our contract to stipulate that you will never fully leave me and then that you will never subject me to the brutality of any of your admirers—”

  “But Severin,” cried Wanda in a saddened voice, with tears in her eyes. “You can believe that if a man loves me so deeply, puts himself so entirely in my hands—” She faltered.

  “No! No!” I said, covering her hands with kisses. “I fear nothing from you that could dishonor me. Forgive me for that ugly lapse.”

  Wanda smiled blissfully, put her cheek on mine, and seemed to be musing.

  “You’ve forgotten something,” she whispered, now roguishly, “the most important thing.”

  “A condition?”

  “Yes, that I must always appear in fur,” cried Wanda. “But this I promise you: I’ll wear it simply because it makes me feel like a despot, and I want to be very cruel to you—do you understand?”

  “Should I sign the contract?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” said Wanda. “I want to add your conditions. Besides, you’re going to sign it in the right place.”

  “Constantinople?”

  “No. I’ve thought it over. What good is having a slave where everyone has slaves? I want to be alone in having a slave in our educated, sober, Philistine world—a slave with no will of his own, a slave who is put into my hands not by the law, not by my privilege or brutal violence, but solely by the power of my beauty and my being. I find that piquant. At any rate, we’re going to a country where nobody knows us, so that you can appear as my servant before the entire world without any ceremony. Perhaps Italy, perhaps Rome or Naples.”

  We were sitting on Wanda’s sofa, she in the ermine jacket, her loosened hair like a lion’s mane down her back, and she clung to my lips, sucking my soul from my body. My head whirled, my blood began to seethe, my heart pounded violently against hers.

  “I want to be completely in your hands, Wanda,” I suddenly exclaimed in a frenzy of passion, unable to think clearly or make a free decision. “With no qualification, with no restriction on your power over me, I want to surrender to your despotism unconditionally.” While speaking, I had slipped down from the couch to her feet and now I gazed up at her euphorically.

  “How handsome you are now,” she cried. “Your eyes are half broken as in a trance—they delight me, they sweep me away. If you were whipped to death, your gaze would have to be wonderful as you breathed your last. You have the eyes of a martyr.”

  At times I nevertheless felt somewhat queasy about handing myself over to a woman so totally, so unconditionally. What if she abused my passion, her power?

  Well, then I would experience what has occupied my imagination since childhood, always filling me with sweet horror. A foolish anxiety! It was a mischievous game she was playing with me, nothing more. She did love me, and she was so good, a noble nature, incapable of any breach of trust. But it was up to her—she could if she wished. What charm in that doubt, that fear!

  Now I understood Manon Lescaut and the poor chevalier, who worshiped her even when she was another man’s mistress—and even in the pillory.

  Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason, nor do the assets or blemishes that we discover tempt us to devotion or intimidate us. It is a sweet, mournful, mysterious power that drives us, and we stop thinking, feeling, wishing, we let ourselves drift along and never ask where we are drifting.

  A Russian prince appeared on the Promenade for the first time that day, causing a sensation with his athletic build, his marvelous face, the splendor of his bearing. The women in particular gaped at him as if at a wild beast, but he strode sullenly along the park walks, heeding no one. He was accompanied by two servants: an African dressed entirely in red satin and a Circassian in full, flashing military garb. Suddenly the Russian spotted Wanda. He riveted his cold, piercing gaze upon her, indeed turned his head toward her; and once she had passed, he remained standing and peered after her.

  And she—she simply devoured him with her sparkling green eyes—and did all she could to run into him again.

  Her sly coquetry when walking, when moving, when looking at him made my heart bleed. As we were going home, I made a comment about it. She frowned.

  “What do you want?” she said. “The prince is a man who could please me, who even dazzles me, and I am free, I can do as I like—”

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” I stammered in terror.

  “I love only you,” she retorted, “but I will let the prince court me.”

  “Wanda!”

  “Aren’t you my slave?” she said calmly. “Am I not Venus, the cruel Nordic Venus in furs?”

  I held my tongue; I literally felt crushed by her words; her cold gaze stabbed my heart like a dagger.

  “You will immediately find out the prince’s name and address and all his circumstances,” she went on, “—do you understand?”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue! Obey!” cried Wanda with a severity that I would never have thought possible in her. “Do not let me set eyes on you again until you can answer all my questions.”

  It was not until afternoon that I could bring Wanda the desired information. She had me stand before her like a domestic while she leaned back in the easy chair, listening with a smile. Then she nodded: she appeared satisfied.

  “Get me the footstool!” she tersely ordered.

  I obeyed, and after I set it in front of her and she put her feet on it, I remained on my knees.

  “How will this end?” I asked sadly after a brief pause.

  She burst into mischievous laughter. “It hasn’t even started.”

  “You’re more heartless than I thought,” I replied, offended.

  “Severin,” Wanda began earnestly. “I’ve done nothing as yet, not the slightest thing, and you already call me heartless. What will happen when I carry out your fantasies, when I lead a free and merry life, surround myself with a circle of admirers, and, entirely as your ideal, kick you and whip you?”

  “You’re taking my fantasy too seriously.”

  “Too seriously? Once I go through with it, I can’t just stop with a quip,” she countered. “You know how I hate all games, all playacting. You wanted this. Was it my idea or yours? Have I inveigled you or did you inflame my imagination? Now, of course, I’m serious.”

  “Wanda,” I replied lovingly, “please listen to me. We love each other so endlessly, we’re so happy—do you want to sacrifice our whole future to a whim?”

  “It’s no longer a whim!” she cried.

  “What is it then?” I asked, terrified.

  “It must have been latent in me,” she murmured, lost in thought. “Perhaps it would never have seen the light of day, but you awoke it, developed it, and now that it has become a powerful drive, now that it fills me entirely, now that I enjoy it, now that I can’t and won’t help it—now you want to back out. You—are you a man?”

  “Dear, darling Wanda!” I began caressing her, kissing her.

  “Leave me alone—you’re not a man—”

  “And you?” I flared up.

  “I’m obstinate,” she said, “you know that. I’m not strong in fantasizing and I’m as weak as you in carrying fantasies out. But when I decide on something, I go through with it, and all the more definitely the more resistance I find. Leave me alone!”

  She shoved me away and stood up.

  “Wanda!” I likewise stood up and faced her eye-to-eye.

  “Now you know me,” she went on. “I warn you again. You still have the choice. I’m not forcing you to be my slave.”

  “Wanda,” I answered, moved. Tears came to my eyes. “You don’t know how much I love you.”

  Her lips twitched scornfully.

  “You’re wrong. You’re making yourself out to be uglier than you are. Your character is much too good, too noble—”

  “What do you know about my character?” she vehement
ly interrupted me. “You will get to know my true nature.”

  “Wanda!”

  “Decide. Do you want to submit unconditionally?”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then …”

  She stepped toward me, cold and scornful, and as she now stood before me, her arms crossed on her bosom, with that nasty smirk on her lips, she was truly the despotic woman of my fantasies. Her features seemed hard, and there was nothing in her gaze that promised goodness or mercy. “Well …” she finally said.

  “You’re angry,” I said, “you’re going to whip me.”

  “Oh, no!” she retorted. “I’m letting you go. You’re free. I won’t hold you.”

  “Wanda—me, the man who loves you so much—”

  “Yes, you, Sir, who worship me,” she cried disdainfully, “but you are a coward, a liar, and not a man of your word. Leave me immediately—”

  “Wanda—!”

  “Sir!”

  The blood rushed to my heart. I prostrated myself at her feet and started crying.

  “Tears into the bargain!” she began to laugh. Oh! That laughter was dreadful. “Go away—I never want to see you again.”

  “My God!” I exclaimed, beside myself. “I want to do everything you command, be your slave, your thing, which you can do with as you like—but don’t push me away … I’ll die—I can’t live without you.” I threw my arms around her knees and covered her hand with kisses.

  “Yes, you must be my slave, feel the whip—for you’re not a man,” she murmured. And that was what cut me to the quick—the fact that her words were not angry, not even agitated; instead she was fully composed. “Now I know you, you dog, you. You worship when you’re kicked and you worship all the more deeply the more you’re mistreated. Now I know you, but you’re really going to know me.”

  She strode back and forth while I remained kneeling, crushed, my head hanging, tears running.

  “Come to me,” Wanda snarled, settling on the sofa. I obeyed and sat at her side. She glared at me; then all at once her eyes virtually lit up from the inside. With a smile she drew me to her bosom and began kissing the tears from my eyes.

  That was what was so humorous about my situation: Like the bear in Lili’s park, I could flee but didn’t want to, and I tolerated everything the instant she threatened to give me my freedom.

  If only she had picked up the whip again! There was something eerie about her kind treatment of me. I felt like a small, trapped mouse with which a beautiful cat is daintily playing, ready at any moment to tear it to shreds—and my mouse heart was in danger of bursting.

  What was she up to? What did she have in store for me?

  She seemed to have completely forgotten about the contract, forgotten about my slavehood. Or was it mere willfulness? Had she given up the entire plan the instant I had stopped resisting, the instant I had bowed to her sovereign whim?

  How good she was to me now, how tender, how loving. We spent blissful days together.

  Once she had me read aloud the scene between Faust and Mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as an itinerant Scholastic; her eyes hung on me with a strange contentment.

  “I don’t understand,” she said when I was done, “how a man can act out and expound great and beautiful thoughts with such marvelous clarity, acuity, and perception and yet be such a dreamer, a suprasensual Peter Schlemihl.”9

  “So you were satisfied,” I said, kissing her hand.

  She tenderly stroked my forehead. “I love you, Severin,” she whispered. “I don’t think I could love any other man. Let’s be sensible, all right?”

  Rather than answering, I took her in my arms. A deeply intimate, melancholy happiness filled my breast, my eyes moistened, a tear dropped upon her hand.

  “How can you cry?!” she exclaimed. “You’re a child.”

  During a pleasure drive we ran into the Russian prince in his carriage. It was obvious that he was unpleasantly surprised to find me at Wanda’s side and he seemed to want to drill through me with his gray, electric eyes. But she appeared not to notice him. At that moment I would have preferred to kneel before her and kiss her feet. Her gaze glided indifferently over him as over an inanimate object, say, a tree, and she then turned to me with her gracious smile.

  When I said good night to her, she suddenly looked distracted and out of sorts for no reason. What could have been on her mind?

  “I’m sorry you’re going,” she said as I stood on the threshold.

  “It’s entirely up to you to shorten the period of my testing. Give up torturing me,” I pleaded.

  “So you don’t think that this constraint is a torture for me too,” Wanda threw in.

  “Then end it,” I cried, embracing her. “Be my wife.”

  “Never, Severin,” she said gently, but very firmly.

  “What do you mean?”

  I was terrified to the very core of my soul.

  “You are not the man for me.”

  I looked at her, slowly withdrew my arm from around her waist, and left the room; and she—she didn’t call me back.

  A sleepless night. I made so many decisions and discarded them again. In the morning I wrote her a letter declaring that our relationship was over. My hand trembled while writing, and when I sealed the letter I burned my fingers.

  As I climbed the stairs to hand the letter to the chambermaid, my knees were buckling.

  Now the door opened, and Wanda stuck out her head, which was covered with curlers.

  “My hair isn’t done,” she said, smiling. “What’ve you got there?”

  “A letter—”

  “To me?”

  I nodded.

  “Ah! You want to break off with me,” she taunted.

  “Madam, didn’t you tell me yesterday that I’m not the man for you?”

  “I will repeat it for you, Sir,” she said.

  “Very well then.” I trembled from head to toe, my voice faltered, I handed her the letter.

  “Keep it,” she said, eying me coldly. “You forget that it no longer matters whether or not you are satisfactory to me as a man. In any case you are good enough as a slave.”

  “Madam!” I cried, indignant.

  “Yes, that is how you must address me in the future,” replied Wanda, tossing her head with unspeakable contempt. “Arrange your affairs within twenty-four hours. I’m leaving for Italy the day after tomorrow, and you will come along as my servant.”

  “Wanda—”

  “I will brook no familiarity,” she cut me off sharply. “Nor will I stand for your entering my quarters without my calling you or my ringing for you, and you will not speak to me unless spoken to. From now on your name is no longer Severin, it is Gregor.”

  I trembled with rage and yet also—I cannot, alas, deny it—with enjoyment and tingling excitement.

  “But, Madam, you are acquainted with my circumstances,” I began confusedly. “I am still dependent on my father and I doubt whether he will give me the large sum I would need for this journey—”

  “In other words, you have no money, Gregor,” Wanda remarked in delight. “So much the better. Then you will be completely dependent on me and be truly my slave.”

  “You fail to consider,” I tried to object, “that as a man of honor I cannot possibly—”

  “I have indeed considered,” she retorted, almost in a tone of command, “that you as a man of honor must above all keep your word, your oath to follow me as a slave wherever I order you and to obey any and all of my commands. Now go, Gregor!”

  I turned toward the door.

  “Not yet—you may first kiss my hand.” She held out her hand with a certain haughty nonchalance, and I—I, a dilettante—I, an ass—I, a wretched slave—pressed her hand with a forceful tenderness to my lips, which were dry with heat and excitement.

  A gracious nod. Then I was dismissed.

  Late in the evening I still kept a light on and a fire in the large green stove, for I had to put a number of letters a
nd documents in order, and as usual in our area, autumn had broken in with all its might.

  Suddenly she tapped the handle of her whip on my window.

  I opened the window and saw her standing outside in her ermine-trimmed jacket and a high round Cossack hat of ermine such as Catherine the Great loved to wear.

  “Are you ready, Gregor?” she asked grimly.

  “Not yet, Mistress,” I replied.

  “I like that word,” she then said. “You may always address me as ‘Mistress,’ do you understand? We are leaving here tomorrow at nine A.M. Until we reach the district seat you will be my escort, my friend. The instant we board the train you will be my slave, my servant. Now close the window and open the door.”

  I did as she commanded, and when she came in, she asked, sarcastically knitting her eyebrows, “Well, how do you like me?”

  “Wanda—”

  “Who permitted you to call me that?” She struck me with the whip.

  “You are marvelously beautiful, Mistress—”

  Wanda smiled and sat down in the armchair. “Kneel here—here next to my chair.”

  I obeyed.

  “Kiss my hand.”

  I took hold of her small, cold hand and kissed it.

  “And my lips—”

  In a surge of passion I flung my arms around the cruel, beautiful woman and covered her face, her lips, her bust with hot kisses, and, shutting her eyes as if in a dream, she responded with the same fire—until past midnight.

  At nine A.M. sharp, as she had ordered, everything was ready for the journey. Getting into a comfortable calash, we left the Carpathian resort, where the most interesting drama of my life had woven its plot, its epitasis, and no one could have had an inkling of how it would unravel.

  So far, everything was going smoothly. I sat at Wanda’s side, and, brimming with charm and wit, she chatted with me, as with a good friend, about Italy, about Pisemsky’s10 new novel and Wagner’s music. She was wearing a kind of riding habit, a black cloth frock and a short jacket of the same material with a dark fur trimming; her frock and her jacket adhered snugly to her slender form, emphasizing it marvelously; and she was covered with a dark travel fur. Her hair, knotted in a classical chignon, lay under a small, dark fur hat with a black veil dropping all around. Wanda was in very high spirits, thrusting bonbons into my mouth, playing with my hair, untying my cravat and winding it into a charming little bow, covering my lap with her fur and then stealthily squeezing my fingers. Whenever our Jewish coachman systematically nodded off for a while, she even kissed me, and her cold lips had that fresh, chilly scent of a lone young rose blossoming in autumn amid bare shrubs and yellow leaves, its calyx hung with the small, icy diamonds of the first frost.