Ah! How I longed for a slap from her hand.
Tears came to my eyes; I felt how deeply she had degraded me—so deeply that she didn’t even think it worthwhile torturing me, mistreating me.
Before she went to bed, her bell summoned me.
“You will sleep in my room tonight. Last night I had repulsive dreams and I’m afraid of being alone. Take a cushion from the ottoman and lie on the bearskin at my feet.”
After snuffing the lights so that only a small lamp hanging from the ceiling illuminated the room, Wanda got into bed. “Don’t stir, so you won’t wake me.”
I did as she ordered, but for a long time I couldn’t fall asleep. I saw the beautiful woman, beautiful as a Goddess, lying on her back in her dark sleeping fur, her arms behind her neck, inundated by her red hair. I heard her magnificent bosom rising in deep, regular breathing; and whenever she stirred even lightly, I was awake and listening to see whether she needed me.
But she didn’t need me.
I had no other function, no greater significance for her than a night lamp or a revolver that one places at one’s bedside.
Was I crazy, or was she? Did all this stem from an inventive and mischievous female brain that tried to outdo my suprasensual fantasies? Or did that woman really have one of those Neronian natures that take a devilish pleasure in controlling people who think and feel and have a will like theirs, in having them underfoot like a worm?
The things I experienced!
When I knelt before her with the coffee tray, Wanda suddenly put her hand on my shoulder, and her gaze plunged deep into mine.
“What beautiful eyes you have,” she murmured, “and especially now that you’re suffering. Are you terribly unhappy?”
I bowed my head and kept silent.
“Severin! Do you still love me?” she suddenly cried in passion. “Can you still love me?” And she yanked me over so violently that the tray capsized, the cups and the coffeepots fell on the floor, and the coffee ran across the rug.
“Wanda—my Wanda!” I shouted, embracing her violently and covering her lips, her face, her bosom with kisses. “That’s my misery—that I keep loving you more and more intensely, more and more insanely the worse you treat me, the more often you betray me! Oh! I’m going to die of pain and love and jealousy.”
“But I haven’t yet betrayed you, Severin,” Wanda countered with a smile.
“No? Wanda! For God’s sake! Don’t make fun of me so ruthlessly,” I cried. “Didn’t I personally carry the letter to the prince—?”
“Certainly. A déjeuner invitation.”
“Since our arrival in Florence, you’ve—”
“Remained completely faithful to you,” Wanda retorted. “I swear by all that’s holy to me. I’ve done everything purely to make your fantasy come true, purely for your sake.
“But I will take on an admirer. Otherwise it’s only a halfway measure, and you’ll end up reproaching me for not being cruel enough to you. My dear, beautiful slave! Today you’re to be Severin again, you’re to be only and entirely my lover. I didn’t give your clothes away, you’ll find them here in the chest. Dress the way you did in the small Carpathian resort, where we loved each other so ardently. Forget everything that’s happened since then. Oh, you’ll easily forget it in my arms—I’ll kiss all your cares away.”
She started caressing me, cuddling me, kissing me like a child. Finally, with a sweet smile, she said, “Get dressed now. So will I. Should I wear my fur jacket? Yes, yes, I know. Just get going!”
When I returned, she was standing at the center of the room in her white satin robe and in her red, ermine-trimmed kazabaika; her hair was powdered white, with a small diamond tiara over her forehead. For a moment she reminded me intensely of Catherine the Great. But she left me no time for reminiscing. She drew me down on the ottoman, and we spent two blissful hours. Now she was not the severe, capricious Mistress, she was entirely the fine lady, the affectionate beloved. She showed me photographs, books that had just appeared, and she commented on them with so much intelligence and clarity and good taste and I was so delighted that I brought her hand to my lips more than once. She then had me recite a few poems by Lermontov, and when I got truly enthusiastic, she lovingly placed her little hand on mine and asked, with a sweet expression and a gentle gaze, “Are you happy?”
“Not yet.”
She then leaned back in the cushions and slowly opened her kazabaika.
But I swiftly covered her half-exposed breasts with the ermine. “You’re driving me insane,” I stammered.
“Then come.”
I was already lying in her arms, she was already kissing me with a tongue like a snake. Then she again whispered: “Are you happy?”
“Infinitely!” I cried.
She laughed. It was a shrill and nasty laugh that sent shivers up and down my spine.
“Earlier you, the slave, dreamed of being a beautiful woman’s toy. Now you imagine you’re a free person, a man, my beloved—you fool! A gesture from me and you’ll be a slave again. On your knees.”
I sank down to her feet, my eyes still clinging skeptically to her eyes.
“You can’t believe it,” she said, viewing me with her arms crossed on her chest. “I’m bored, and you’ll do to while away a few hours. Don’t look at me like that.”
She kicked me.
“You’re simply whatever I want—a person, a thing, an animal.” She rang. The African women came in.
“Tie his hands behind his back.”
I remained on my knees and put up no resistance. They took me down to the garden, to the small vineyard closing it off toward the south. Corn had been planted in between the vines, and a few dry cobs were still looming here and there. A plow stood off to the side.
The Africans tied me to a post and amused themselves by needling me with their gold hairpins. Before long, however, Wanda came, with the ermine cap on her head and her hands in her jacket pockets. She had the Africans untie me, bind my arms on my back, put a yoke around my neck, and harness me to the plow.
Then her black she-devils pushed me toward the field: One guided the plow, the second led me with a rope, the third drove me along with the whip. And Venus in Furs stood on the side and watched.
When I was serving her dinner the next evening, Wanda said, “Bring me another setting. I want you to dine with me tonight.” And when I was about to sit opposite her, she said, “No, sit with me, very close to me.”
She was in the best of moods, feeding me soup with her spoon, feeding me morsels with her fork. Then she rested her head on the table like a playful kitten and flirted with me. Haydée was serving the dishes in my stead, and as ill luck would have it, I gazed at her longer than perhaps necessary. I now first observed her noble, almost European features, her splendid, statuesque bust virtually sculpted in black marble. The beautiful she-devil noticed that I was drawn to her and she grinned, baring her teeth. Scarcely had she left the room than Wanda leaped up, blazing with anger.
“What? You dare look at another women in my presence? You must like her better than me—she’s more demonic.”
I was terrified. I had never seen her like this. Her face and even her lips were suddenly pale and her entire body was trembling. Venus in Furs was jealous of her slave. She tore the whip from its nail and struck me across the face. Next she summoned the black maidservants, and had them tie me up and drag me down to the cellar, where they threw me into a dark, dank subterranean vault—a bona fide dungeon cell.
Then the door slammed shut, was bolted, a key sang in the lock. I was trapped, buried.
I lay there—I don’t know how long—trussed up like a calf being hauled to slaughter. I was on a bundle of damp straw, without light, without food, without drink, without sleep. She was perfectly capable of letting me starve to death if I didn’t freeze to death first. I was shaking with cold. Or was it fever? I felt myself starting to hate that woman.
A blood-red streak cut across the ground. It was light
falling through the opening door.
Wanda appeared on the threshold, wrapped in her sable, and clutching a torch.
“Are you still alive?” she asked.
“Have you come to kill me?” I replied in a dull, hoarse voice.
With two hasty strides Wanda was next to me, kneeling by my pallet, and took my head in her lap. “Are you sick? Your eyes are glowing so intensely. Do you love me? I want you to love me.”
She produced a short dagger. I recoiled as its blade flashed before my eyes. I really believed that she was about to kill me. But she laughed and cut the ropes that were binding me.
She would send for me every evening after dinner, have me read to her, and she would discuss all sorts of interesting issues and subjects with me. At such times she seemed like a completely different person. It was as if she were ashamed of the barbarity she had revealed to me, the brutality with which she had treated me. A poignant gentleness transfigured her entire being, and when she held out her hand to me when we said good night, her eyes had that superhuman force of love and goodness that draws our tears, that makes us forget all sufferings of life and terrors of death.
I read Manon Lescaut to her. She felt the connection; and though not uttering a word, she smiled from time to time, until she finally closed the small book.
“Don’t you wish to read anymore, Madam?”
“Not today. Today we will act out Manon Lescaut ourselves. I have a rendezvous in the Cascine, and you, my dear chevalier, will escort me there. I know you’ll do it, won’t you?”
“You order me.”
“I’m not ordering you, I’m asking you,” she said with irresistible charm. Then she rose, placed her hands on my shoulders, and gazed at me. “Those eyes!” she cried. “I love you so much, Severin—you have no idea how much I love you.”
“Yes,” I retorted bitterly. “So much that you’re having a rendezvous with another man.”
“Goodness, I’m doing that only to provoke you,” she replied vivaciously. “I have to have admirers so I won’t lose you. I never want to lose you, never, do you hear? I love only you, you alone.”
She clung passionately to my lips.
“Oh, if I could only surrender my entire soul to you in a kiss, as I would like to do! But … Well, now come.”
She slipped into a simple black velvet paletot and enveloped her head in a dark bashlik. Then she walked swiftly through the gallery and mounted the carriage.
“Gregor will drive me,” she called to the coachman, who withdrew in astonishment.
I climbed up to the driver’s seat and angrily whipped the horses.
In the Cascine, Wanda got out in the area where the main boulevard turns into a bower with dense foliage. It was night; only a few stars were twinkling through the gray clouds drifting across the sky. By the Arno stood a man in a dark coat and a highwayman’s hat, gazing at the yellow waves. Wanda hurried through the side bushes and tapped him on the shoulder. I could see him turning to her, taking hold of her hand—then they vanished behind the green wall.
An agonizing hour. At last the leaves rustled off to the side: they were returning.
The man escorted her to the carriage. The lantern light fell full and harsh on a gentle and enraptured face that I had never seen, an infinitely juvenile face surrounded by long blond curls.
She held out her hand, which he so respectfully kissed; then she signaled to me, and instantly the carriage was flying past a long green wall of foliage that screens off the river.
Someone rang at the garden gate. A familiar face. The man from the Cascine.
“Whom shall I announce?” I asked in French. He shook his head, embarrassed.
“Do you understand a little German?” he asked timidly.
“Jawohl. I am asking for your name.”
“Ah, I don’t have one as yet,” he answered, abashed. “Just tell your Mistress the German painter from the Cascine is here and would like—but there she is herself.”
Wanda stepped out on the balcony and nodded at the stranger.
“Gregor,” she called to me, “bring the gentleman up.”
I showed the painter to the staircase.
“That’s all right, I’ll find my way. Thank you, thank you very much.” Then he loped up the steps. I remained below, peering after the poor German with deep pity.
Venus in Furs had trapped his soul in the red snares of her hair. He would paint her and lose his mind.
A sunny winter day; the leaves in the clumps of trees and the green grass on the meadow were trembling golden. The camellias at the foot of the gallery shone splendidly in the beautiful wealth of their buds. Wanda sat in the loggia, drawing, while the German painter stood opposite her, folding his hands as if in prayer and watching her—no, he was gazing at her face, utterly absorbed, entranced.
But she didn’t see him; nor did she see me clutching a spade, turning over the flowerbeds, merely to see her, feel her presence, which affected me like music, like poetry.
The painter was gone. It was a risk, but I dared. I went up to the gallery, very close, and asked Wanda, “Do you love the painter, Mistress?”
She looked at me without anger, shook her head, and finally even smiled.
“I feel sorry for him,” she replied, “but I don’t love him. I don’t love anyone. I did love you, as ardently, as passionately, as profoundly as I could love, but now I don’t love you anymore either. My heart is bleak, dead, and that makes me melancholy.”
“Wanda!” I cried, painfully moved.
“Soon you’ll stop loving me too,” she went on. “Tell me as soon as it happens. At that point I’ll restore your freedom.”
“Then I’ll remain your slave all my life, for I worship you and I will always worship you,” I cried, seized with that fanaticism of love that had repeatedly been so pernicious for me.
Wanda contemplated me with a bizarre pleasure. “Think about it,” she said. “I loved you endlessly and I’ve been despotic with you in order to make your fantasy come true. Now something of that sweet feeling is still quivering in my breast as ardent sympathy for you. Once this too has vanished, then who knows whether I’ll release you? I may become really cruel, ruthless, indeed brutal to you and, while being indifferent or loving someone else, I may take a diabolical pleasure in tormenting, in torturing the man who idolizes and worships me, I may delight in seeing him die of love for me. Think about it!”
“I’ve long since thought about all this,” I replied feverishly. “I can’t exist, I can’t live without you. I’ll die if you give me my freedom. Let me remain your slave—kill me, but don’t push me away.”
“Well, then be my slave,” she answered. “But don’t forget that I no longer love you, and so your love has no greater value for me than a dog’s—and dogs get kicked.”
Today I visited the Medici Venus.
It was still early, the small, octagonal room in the Tribuna was filled with twilight like a sanctuary; and I stood with folded hands, in deep devotion to the mute idol.
But I did not stand for long.
There was no one else in the gallery, not even an Englishman; and I was already kneeling and gazing at the lovely, slender figure, the budding breasts, the virginal and also voluptuous face with its half-closed eyes, its foaming curls, which seemed to be hiding small horns on both sides of the forehead.
The Mistress’s bell.
It was noon. But she was still in bed, her arms behind her neck.
“I’m taking a bath,” she said, “and you will attend me. Shut the door.”
I obeyed.
“Now go and make sure the downstairs door is also locked.”
I descended the spiral staircase leading from her bedroom down to the bathroom. My legs buckled, I had to lean on the iron banister. After making sure the door to the loggia and the garden was locked, I returned. Wanda now sat on the bed, in her green velvet fur and with her hair undone. During a swift movement on her part, I saw that she was wearing only the fur, and I
was terrified—I don’t know why—as terrified as a condemned man who knows he is heading toward the scaffold, yet starts to tremble the moment he sees it.
“Come, Gregor, lift me up.”
“Excuse me, Mistress?”
“Well, you are to carry me, don’t you understand?”
I lifted her up so that she lay in my arms, while hers were wound around my neck. And as I slowly descended the staircase with her, step by step, and her hair struck my cheek every now and then and her foot lightly braced against my knee, I shook under the beautiful load and felt that I would have to collapse at any moment.
The bathroom was a broad and high rotunda, which received its soft, calm light from the red glass dome overhead. Two palms spread their huge fronds as a green canopy over a sofa made up of red velvet cushions, from which steps covered with Turkish rugs led down to the vast marble basin occupying the center.
“There’s a green ribbon upstairs on my nightstand,” said Wanda as I put her down on the sofa. “Bring it and also bring me the whip.”
I flew up the staircase and back down and, kneeling, delivered both objects to my Mistress, who then had me tie her heavy, electric hair into a large chignon held together by the green velvet ribbon. Then I drew the bath—and proved quite clumsy, since my hands and legs failed me. The beautiful woman lay on the red velvet cushions, and from time to time I watched her shining now and then amid the dark fur—I couldn’t help it, I was compelled by a magnetic force. And whenever I saw her, I felt that all voluptuousness, all lasciviousness is inspired by things that are half concealed, by piquant exposure. And I felt it even more vividly when the basin was full at last, and Wanda threw off her fur coat in a single motion and stood before me like the Goddess in the Tribuna.
At that instant, she looked so chaste, so holy in her uncloaked beauty that I knelt before her as I had knelt before the Goddess, and I pressed my lips devoutly to her foot.
My soul, which, moments ago, had been churned up by such wild waves, all at once flowed calmly, and Wanda likewise displayed no more cruelty toward me.
Venus in Furs Page 12
