“Now get out!” Still a kick—and then I can go to bed.
Tonight I accompanied her to a soiree. In the entrance hall she ordered me to help her out of her furs; then with a proud smile, confident of victory, she entered the brilliantly illuminated room. I again waited with gloomy and monotonous thoughts, watching hour after hour run by. From time to time the sounds of music reached me, when the door remained open for a moment. Several servants tried to start a conversation with me, but soon desisted, since I knew only a few words of Italian.
Finally I fell asleep, and dreamed that I murdered Wanda in a violent attack of jealousy. I was condemned to death, and saw myself strapped on the board; the knife fell, I felt it on my neck, but I was still alive—
Then the executioner slapped my face.
No, it wasn’t the executioner; it was Wanda who stood wrathfully before me demanding her furs. I am at her side in a moment, and help her on with it.
There is a deep joy in wrapping a beautiful woman into her furs, and in seeing and feeling how her neck and magnificent limbs nestle in the precious soft furs, and to lift the flowing hair over the collar. When she throws it off, a soft warmth and a faint fragrance of her body still clings to the ends of the hairs of sable. It is enough to drive one mad.
Finally a day came when there were neither guests, nor theater, nor other company. I breathed a sigh of relief. Wanda sat in the gallery, reading, and apparently had no orders for me. At dusk when the silvery evening mists fell she withdrew. I served her at dinner, she ate by herself, but had not a look, not a syllable for me, not even a slap in the face.
I actually desire a slap from her hand. Tears fill my eyes, and I feel that she has humiliated me so deeply, that she doesn’t even find it worthwhile to torture or maltreat me any further.
Before she goes to bed, her bell calls me.
“You will sleep here tonight, I had horrible dreams last night, and am afraid of being alone. Take one of the cushions from the ottoman, and lie down on the bearskin at my feet.”
Then Wanda put out the lights. The only illumination in the room was from a small lamp suspended from the ceiling. She herself got into bed. “Don’t stir, so as not to wake me.”
I did as she had commanded, but could not fall asleep for a long time. I saw the beautiful woman, beautiful as a goddess, lying on her back on the dark sleeping furs; her arms beneath her neck, with a flood of red hair over them. I heard her magnificent breast rise in deep regular breathing, and whenever she moved ever so slightly. I woke up and listened to see whether she needed me.
But she did not require me.
No task was required of me; I meant no more to her than a night-lamp, or a revolver which one places under one’s pillow.
Am I mad or is she? Does all this arise out of an inventive, wanton woman’s brain with the intention of surpassing my supersensual fantasies, or is this woman really one of those Neronian characters who take a diabolical pleasure in treading underfoot, like a worm, human beings, who have thoughts and feelings and a will like theirs?
What have I experienced?
When I knelt with the coffee tray beside her bed, Wanda suddenly placed her hand on my shoulder and her eyes plunged deep into mine.
“What beautiful eyes you have,” she said softly, “and especially now since you suffer. Are you very unhappy?”
I bowed my head, and kept silent.
“Severin, do you still love me,” she suddenly exclaimed passionately, “can you still love me?”
She drew me close with such vehemence that the coffee tray upset, the can and cups fell to the floor, and the coffee ran over the carpet.
“Wanda—my Wanda,” I cried out and held her passionately against me; I covered her mouth, face, and breast with kisses.
“It is my unhappiness that I love you more and more madly the worse you treat me, the more frequently you betray me. Oh, I shall die of pain and love and jealousy.”
“But I haven’t betrayed you, as yet, Severin,” replied Wanda smiling.
“Not? Wanda! Don’t jest so mercilessly with me,” I cried. “Haven’t I myself taken the letter to the Prince—”
“Of course, it was an invitation for luncheon.”
“You have, since we have been in Florence—”
“I have been absolutely faithful to you,” replied Wanda, “I swear it by all that is holy to me. All that I have done was merely to fulfill your dream and it was done for your sake.
“However, I shall take a lover, otherwise things will be only half accomplished, and in the end you will yet reproach me with not having treated you cruelly enough, my dear beautiful slave! But today you shall be Severin again, the only one I love. I haven’t given away your clothes. They are here in the chest. Go and dress as you used to in the little Carpathian health resort when our love was so intimate. Forget everything that has happened since; oh, you will forget it easily in my arms; I shall kiss away all your sorrows.”
She began to treat me tenderly like a child, to kiss me and caress me. Finally she said with a gracious smile, “Go now and dress, I too will dress. Shall I put on my fur jacket? Oh yes, I know, now run along!”
When I returned she was standing in the center of the room in her white satin dress, and the red kazabaika edged with ermine; her hair was white with powder and over her forehead she wore a small diamond diadem. For a moment she reminded me in an uncanny way of Catherine the Second, but she did not give me much time for reminiscences. She drew me down on the ottoman beside her and we enjoyed two blissful hours. She was no longer the stern capricious mistress, she was entirely a fine lady, a tender sweetheart. She showed me photographs and books which had just appeared, and talked about them with so much intelligence, clarity, and good taste, that I more than once carried her hand to my lips, enraptured. She then had me recite several of Lermontov’s poems, and when I was all afire with enthusiasm, she placed her small hand gently on mine. Her expression was soft, and her eyes were filled with tender pleasure.
“Are you happy?”
“Not yet.”
She then leaned back on the cushions, and slowly opened her kazabaika.
But I quickly covered the half-bared breast again with the ermine. “You are driving me mad.” I stammered.
“Come!”
I was already lying in her arms, and like a serpent she was kissing me with her tongue, when again she whispered, “Are you happy?”
“Infinitely!” I exclaimed.
She laughed aloud. It was an evil, shrill laugh which made cold shivers run down by back.
“You used to dream of being the slave, the plaything of a beautiful woman, and now you imagine you are a free human being, a man, my lover—you fool! A sign from me, and you are a slave again. Down on your knees!”
I sank down from the ottoman to her feet, but my eye still clung doubtingly on hers.
“You can’t believe it,” she said, looking at me with her arms folded across her breast. “I am bored, and you will just do to waste a couple of hours of time. Don’t look at me that way—”
She kicked me with her foot.
“You are just what I want, a human being, a thing, an animal—”
She rang. The three negresses entered.
“Tie his hands behind his back.”
I remained kneeling and unresistingly let them do this. They led me into the garden, down to the little vineyard, which forms the southern boundary. Corn had been planted between the espaliers, and here and there a few dead stalks still stood. To one side was a plough.
The negresses tied me to a post, and amused themselves sticking me with their golden hair-needles. But this did not last long, before Wanda appeared with her ermine cap on her head, and with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She had me untied, and then my hands were fastened together on my back. She finall
y had a yoke put around my neck, and harnessed me to the plough.
Then her black demons drove me out into the field. One of them held the plough, the other one led me by a line, the third applied the whip, and Venus in Furs stood to one side and looked on.
When I was serving dinner on the following day Wanda said: “Bring another cover, I want you to dine with me today,” and when I was about to sit down opposite her, she added, “No, over here, close by my side.”
She is in the best of humors, gives me soup with her spoon, feeds me with her fork, and places her head on the table like a playful kitten and flirts with me. I have the misfortune of looking at Haydee, who serves in my place, perhaps a little longer than is necessary. It is only now that I noticed her noble, almost European cast of countenance and her magnificent statuesque bust, which is as if hewn out of black marble. The black devil observes that she pleases me, and, grinning, shows her teeth. She has hardly left the room, before Wanda leaps up in a rage.
“What, you dare to look at another woman besides me! Perhaps you like her even better than you do me, she is even more demonic!”
I am frightened; I have never seen her like this before; she is suddenly pale even to the lips and her whole body trembles. Venus in Furs is jealous of her slave. She snatches the whip from its hook and strikes me in the face; then she calls her black servants, who bind me, and carry me down into the cellar, where they throw me into a dark, dank, subterranean compartment, a veritable prison cell.
Then the lock of the door clicks, the bolts are drawn, a key sings in the lock. I am a prisoner, buried.
I have been lying here for I don’t know how long, bound like a calf about to be hauled to the slaughter, on a bundle of damp straw, without any light, without food, without drink, without sleep. It would be like her to let me starve to death, if I don’t freeze to death before then. I am shaking with cold. Or is it fever? I believe I am beginning to hate this woman.
A red streak, like blood, floods across the floor; it is a light falling through the door which is now thrust open.
Wanda appears on the threshold, wrapped in her sables, holding a lighted torch.
“Are you still alive?” she asks.
“Are you coming to kill me?” I reply with a low, hoarse voice.
With two rapid strides Wanda reaches my side, she kneels down beside me, and places my head in her lap. “Are you ill? Your eyes glow so, do you love me? I want you to love me.”
She draws forth a short dagger. I start with fright when its blade gleams in front of my eyes. I actually believe that she is about to kill me. She laughs, and cuts the ropes that bind me.
Every evening after dinner she now has me called. I have to read to her, and she discusses with me all sorts of interesting problems and subjects. She seems entirely transformed; it is as if she were ashamed of the savagery which she betrayed to me and of the cruelty with which she treated me. A touching gentleness transfigures her entire being, and when at the good night she gives me her hand, a superhuman power of goodness and love lies in her eyes, of the kind which calls forth tears in us and causes us to forget all the miseries of existence and all the terrors of death.
I am reading Manon l’Escault to her. She feels the association, she doesn’t say a word, but she smiles from time to time, and finally she shuts up the little book.
“Don’t you want to go on reading?”
“Not today. We will ourselves act Manon l’Escault today. I have a rendezvous in the Cascine, and you, my dear Chevalier, will accompany me; I know you will do it, won’t you?”
“You command it.”
“I do not command it, I beg it of you,” she says with irresistible charm. She then rises, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks at me.
“Your eyes!” she exclaims. “I love you, Severin, you have no idea how I love you!”
“Yes, I have!” I replied bitterly, “so much so that you have arranged for a rendezvous with someone else.”
“I do this only to allure you the more,” she replied vivaciously. “I must have admirers, so as not to lose you. I don’t ever want to lose you, never, do you hear, for I love only you, you alone.”
She clung passionately to my lips.
“Oh, if I only could, as I would, give you all of my soul in a kiss—thus—but now come.”
She slipped into a simple black velvet coat, and put a dark bashlyk [5] on her head. Then she rapidly went through the gallery, and entered the carriage.
“Gregor will drive,” she called out to the coachman who withdrew in surprise.
I ascended the driver’s seat, and angrily whipped up the horses.
In the Cascine where the main roadway turns into a leafy path, Wanda got out. It was night, only occasional stars shone through the gray clouds that fled across the sky. By the bank of the Arno stood a man in a dark cloak, with a brigand’s hat, and looked at the yellow waves. Wanda rapidly walked through the shrubbery, and tapped him on the shoulder. I saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared behind the green wall.
An hour full of torments. Finally there was a rustling in the bushes to one side, and they returned.
The man accompanied her to the carriage. The light of the lamp fell full and glaringly upon an infinitely young, soft and dreamy face which I had never before seen, and played in his long, blond curls.
She held out her hand which he kissed with deep respect, then she signaled to me, and immediately the carriage flew along the leafy wall which follows the river like a long green screen.
The bell at the garden gate rings. It is a familiar face. The man from the Cascine.
“Whom shall I announce?” I ask him in French. He timidly shakes his head.
“Do you, perhaps, understand some German?” he asks shyly.
“Yes. Your name, please.”
“Oh! I haven’t any yet,” he replies, embarrassed—“Tell your mistress the German painter from the Cascine is here and would like—but there she is herself.”
Wanda had stepped out on the balcony, and nodded toward the stranger.
“Gregor, show the gentleman in!” she called to me.
I showed the painter the stairs.
“Thanks, I’ll find her now, thanks, thanks very much.” He ran up the steps. I remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor German.
Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.
It is a sunny winter’s day. Something that looks like gold trembles on the leaves of the clusters of trees down below in the green level of the meadow. The camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in their abundant buds. Wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing. The German painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in adoration, and looks at her. No, he rather looks at her face, and is entirely absorbed in it, enraptured.
But she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade in my hand am turning over the flower bed, solely that I may see her and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like music.
The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it. I go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda “Do you love the painter, mistress?”
She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally even smiles.
“I feel sorry for him,” she replies, “but I do not love him. I love no one. I used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as it was possible for me to love, but now I don’t love even you anymore; my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.”
“Wanda!” I exclaimed, deeply moved.
“Soon, you too will no longer love me,” she continued, “tell me when you have reached that point, and I will give back to you your freedom.”
“Then I shall remain your slave, all my life long, for I a
dore you and shall always adore you,” I cried, seized by that fanaticism of love which has repeatedly been so fatal to me.
Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. “Consider well what you do,” she said. “I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast. When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give you your liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else; perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider this well.”
“I have long since considered all that,” I replied as in a glow of fever. “I cannot exist, cannot live without you; I shall die if you set me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not drive me away.”
“Very well then, be my slave,” she replied, “but don’t forget that I no longer love you, and your love doesn’t mean any more to me than a dog’s, and dogs are kicked.”
Today I visited the Venus of Medici.
It was still early, and the little octagonal room in the Tribuna was filled with half-lights like a sanctuary; I stood with folded hands in deep adoration before the silent image of the divinity.
But I did not stand for long.
Not a human soul was in the gallery, not even an Englishman, and I fell down on my knees. I looked up at the lovely slender body, the budding breasts, the virginal and yet voluptuous face, the fragrant curls which seemed to conceal tiny horns on each side of the forehead.
My mistress’s bell.
It is noonday. She, however, is still abed with her arms intertwined behind her neck.
“I want to bathe,” she says, “and you will attend me. Lock the door!”
I obey.
“Now go downstairs and make sure the door below is also locked.”
I descended the winding stairs that lead from her bedroom to the bath; my feet gave way beneath me, and I had to support myself against the iron banister. After having ascertained that the door leading to the Loggia and the garden was locked, I returned. Wanda was now sitting on the bed with loosened hair, wrapped in her green velvet furs. When she made a rapid movement, I noticed that the furs were her only covering. It made me start terribly, I don’t know why? I was like one condemned to death, who knows he is on the way to the scaffold, and yet begins to tremble when he sees it.
Erotic Classics I Page 118
