by Ray Furness
‘I cannot deny,’ she continued softly after a brief pause, ‘that he has made an impression on me, he has done something to me that I cannot understand, which makes me suffer and tremble; he exerts an influence that I only found before in books or on the stage, and which I hitherto had only though existed in the imagination. Oh, he is a man like a lion, strong and handsome and proud, yet also gentle, not rough like the men of the North. I am sorry for you, believe me Severin, but I must possess him, or rather – what am I saying? I must give myself to him if he wishes.’
‘Think of your honour, Wanda, which you have preserved so scrupulously,’ I cried, ‘if I in fact mean nothing to you.’
‘I am thinking of it,’ she replied. ‘I shall be strong as long as I can. I want,’ and here she buried her face, ashamed, in the pillows, ‘to be his wife, if he wants me.’
‘Wanda!’ I screamed, overwhelmed once more by that deadly fear which robbed me of breath, of consciousness. ‘You want to be his wife? You wish to belong to him for ever? Ah, do not reject me! He does not love you –’
‘Who says so?’ she cried, flaring up.
‘He does not love you,’ I continued hotly ‘but I love you, I worship you, I am your slave, you can kick me, I shall carry you on me arms –’
‘Who told you that he does not love me?’ she interrupted, urgently.
‘Be mine!’ I implored, ‘be mine! I cannot exist, cannot live without you. Have pity, Wanda, pity!’
She looked at me, and this time it was with that cold, heartless gaze, that malicious smile.
‘You say he doesn’t love me,’ she said scornfully. ‘Very well, let that be a comfort to you,’ and she turned her back on me in contempt.
‘My God, are you not a woman of flesh and blood, have you no heart, as I do?’ I cried, my heart convulsed in my breast.
‘You know full well,’ she replied spitefully, ‘that I am a woman of stone. Venus in Furs, this is your ideal, kneel down and worship me!’
‘Wanda!’ I implored. ‘Have pity!’
She started to laugh. I pressed my face into the cushions and let my tears flow freely, tears that assuaged my pain.
For a long time all was still, and then Wanda rose, slowly.
‘You bore me.’
‘Wanda!’
‘I’m tired. Let me sleep.’
‘Pity!’ I begged. ‘Have pity! Do not drive me away, there is no man who loves you as I do.’
‘Leave me in peace,’ and she turned her back on me.
I leapt to my feet and, seizing the dagger that was hanging by her bed, I placed it on my heart.
‘I shall kill myself here before your very eyes,’ I murmured darkly.
‘Do as you please,’ Wanda replied in complete indifference, ‘but let me sleep.’
I stood there, petrified, for a moment, and then I began to laugh and cry aloud; I finally stuck the dagger in my belt and threw myself on my knees before her.
‘Wanda, please listen to me, just for a few minutes.’
‘I want to sleep, can’t you understand?’ she shouted angrily, leaping from the bed and kicking me from her. ‘Have you forgotten that I am your Mistress?’ And because I did not move from the spot she seized the whip and struck me. I got up, she struck me again, and this time in the face.
‘Wretch! Slave!’
I suddenly pulled myself together and rushed from her bedroom, raising a clenched fist heavenwards. She flung the whip away and burst into a gay peal of laughter. I can well imagine how ludicrous this theatrical gesture made me look.
* * * *
I was determined to tear myself away from this cruel woman who had treated me so atrociously and who now was planning to betray me for all my slavish devotion; I packed my meagre possessions into a bag and wrote the following to her:
‘Dear Madame,
I have loved you like a madman; I have devoted my life to you as no man has devoted his life to a woman before. You have abused my most sacred emotions and played an arrogant, frivolous game with me. As long, however, that you were only cruel and ruthless towards me I could still love you, but now you are on the point of becoming common. I am no longer the slave you can kick and beat. You yourself have set me free, and I am leaving a woman whom I can only hate and despise.
Severin Kusiemski.’
I gave this note to the negress and fled as fast as I could. I reached the station, breathless: and then I felt a searing pain in my heart – I stop – I begin to weep. How shameful it is … I wish to flee, yet cannot. I retraced my steps – my steps – to her, whom I detest and worship at the same time.
I pull myself together. I can’t go back. I mustn’t go back.
And how can I get away from Florence? I suddenly realise that I have no money, not a penny. Well, on foot then, and to be an honest beggar is better than to eat a courtesan’s bread.
But I can’t leave.
She has my word, my word of honour. I must go back to her. Perhaps she will let me go.
After a few, swift steps I stop again.
She has my word of honour, my oath, my pledge that I am her slave, as long as she wants me, as long as she refuses to liberate me. But I can kill myself.
I walk through the Cascine down to the Arno, down to the edge, where its yellow water monotonously washes a few scattered willows: I sit down and make my reckoning with life. I let my whole existence pass before me and find it pathetic – a few single joys, a huge amount of indifferent, worthless material, and a rich harvest of pain, sorrow, dread, disappointment, hopelessness, bitterness, grief, mourning …
I thought of my mother whom I had dearly loved and whom I saw wilt and fade in a dreadful sickness; I thought of my brother who died in the prime of youth, deprived of joy and happiness, without having put his lips to the chalice of life; I thought of my dead nurse, the playfellows of my youth, my friends who strove and learned with me, and of all those covered by the cold, dead indifferent earth; I thought of my turtledove who often, cooing, bowed before me and not his mate – all dust, returned to dust.
I laughed aloud and slide into the water, but at the same time I cling on to a willow branch which hangs across the yellow waves, and I see the woman before me, the woman who made me so miserable. She is hovering above the surface of the water, transfigured by the sun, as though she were transparent, with fiery flames about her head and neck; she turns her face towards me, and smiles at me.
* * * *
So back I come, dripping, sodden, trembling with shame and fever. The negress has already delivered my letter, so I am condemned, lost, given into the power of a heartless, scorned woman.
Let her kill me then, I can’t bring myself to do it, and yet I no longer wish to live.
As I am walking round the house she is standing in the gallery, leaning over the railings, her face in the full light of the sun, her green eyes squinting.
‘Are you still alive?’ she asks, without moving. I stand silently, my head on my chest.
‘Give me back my dagger,’ she continued, ‘it’s no use to you. You haven’t even the courage to take your own life.’
‘I haven’t got it any more,’ I replied, trembling with fever.
She mustered me with a proud, scornful look.
‘So you’ve lost it in the Arno?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Very well. And why haven’t you gone?’
I muttered something that neither she nor I could understand.
‘Oh, so you have no money!’ she cried, and threw me a purse with an unspeakably disdainful gesture. ‘Take this!’
I didn’t pick it up.
We stood silently for a long while.
‘Don’t you want to go?’
‘I can’t.’
* * * *
Wanda drives through the Cascine without me, she goes to the theatre without me, she receives visitors, the negress serves her. Nobody asks after me. I wander aimlessly in the garden like an animal which has lost its master.
Lying in the bushes, I wa
tch a pair of sparrows fighting over a seed of corn.
I hear the rustling of a woman’s dress.
Wanda approaches in a dark silk dress, buttoned modestly to the throat; the Greek is with her. They are in animated conversation but I cannot understand a word. Now he stamps his foot and kicks up the gravel; he cracks his riding-crop in the air. Wanda flinches.
Is she frightened he might strike her?
Have they got this far?
* * * *
He has left her, she calls after him, he does not hear, he does not wish to hear.
Wanda nods sadly and sits on the nearest stone bench; she sits for a long time, lost in thought. I look at her with a kind of malicious joy; I finally pull myself together and scornfully walk up to her. She starts, and her whole body trembles.
‘I come to congratulate you,’ I said, bowing. ‘I see, Madam, that you have found your cavalier.’
‘Yes, thank God!’ she cries, ‘no more new slaves, I have enough of these already. A woman needs a man, and worships him.’
‘So you worship him, Wanda!’ I screamed, ‘this crude fellow.’
‘I love him more than I have ever loved anyone before.’
‘Wanda!’ I clenched my fists, but tears were already coming to my eyes, and I was seized with the madness of passion, with a sweet madness. ‘Good, so take him then, make him your husband, he can be your lord and master, but I shall remain your slave as long as I live.’
‘You will be my slave, even then?’ she asked. ‘That would be somewhat piquant, but I’m afraid he won’t allow it.’
‘Him?’
‘Yes, he’s already jealous of you – him! Of you! she cried. ‘He wanted me to get rid of you when I told him who you were.’
‘You told him’, I repeated, dazed.
‘I told him everything,’ she said ‘our whole story and all your oddities, everything, and instead of laughing he grew very angry and stamped his foot.’
‘And threatened to beat you?’
Wanda looked down, silently.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said with a scornful bitterness: ‘You’re frightened of him, Wanda!’ I threw myself at her feet and embraced her knees. ‘I want nothing from you, nothing, only to be near you, to be your slave, your dog!’
‘Don’t you realise how you bore me?’ said Wanda apathetically.
I jumped up, boiling.
‘You’re no longer cruel, you’re common!’ I said, and each word was sharp and emphasised with bitterness.
‘That sentiment is already in your letter,’ Wanda replied, shrugging her shoulders coldly. ‘An homme d’esprit never repeats himself.’
‘What are you doing to me?’ I cried. ‘What do you call this treatment?’
‘I could chastise you,’ she said scornfully, ‘but I prefer to give you reasons instead of whiplashes. You have no right to complain about my treatment: haven’t I always acted honourably toward you? Haven’t I warned you, more than once? Didn’t I love you deeply, passionately, and did I ever conceal the fact that it is dangerous to devote yourself to me, that it is dangerous to submit to me, and that I want to be mastered? But you wanted to be my toy, my slave. You felt the greatest pleasure in feeling the foot, the whip of a proud, cruel woman. What more do you want? Dangerous tendencies were lurking within me and you were the first to arouse them. If I now find pleasure in torturing you, in ill-treating you, well, it’s your fault, you made me what I now am, and now you are cowardly enough, weak enough, pusillanimous enough to blame me.’
‘Yes, it’s my fault,’ I said, ‘but haven’t I suffered enough for it? Let’s finish this cruel game.’
‘I want to as well,’ she said with a strange, arch expression.
‘Wanda!’ I cried ‘don’t drive me to the edge, you can see how I’m becoming a man again.’
‘It’s only a passing fancy,’ she replied, ‘dry straw that crackles but is burned as soon as it flames up. You think you can intimidate me, but you’re ridiculous. If you were the man I first took you for – serious, thoughtful, strict – I could have loved you faithfully and become your wife. A woman needs a man she can look up to; someone like you, who offers his neck for her to put her foot on, she can only use as a toy, something she can throw away when she’s tired of it.’
‘Try to throw me away then,’ I cried scornfully, ‘there are some toys that are dangerous.’
‘Don’t push me too far,’ cried Wanda, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed.
‘If I can’t have you,’ I continued, my voice choking with rage, ‘then nobody else will …’
‘Where did you learn that quotation?’ she said mockingly, and seized my lapels: she was pale with rage. ‘Don’t provoke me. I’m not cruel, but I don’t know what I am capable of and whether or not I might overstep the mark.’
‘What is there worse for me than making him your lover, your husband?’ I cried vehemently.
‘I can make you into his slave,’ she replied quickly. ‘Do I not have absolute power over you? Do I not have your agreement? But, naturally, it would only please you if I tied you up and said to him: ‘Do what you want with him.’
‘Are you mad!’ I screamed.
‘I am quite rational,’ she said, calmly. ‘I give you one last warning. Don’t put up any resistance, not now, when I’ve gone so far, and can go still further. I feel hatred for you and would love to see him beat you to death; I can still control myself but …’
Scarcely able to control myself I grabbed her by the waist and forced her to the floor so that she was kneeling before me.
‘Severin!’ she screamed, her face twisted with rage and fear
‘I’ll kill you if you become his wife,’ I threatened, and my voice was hoarse and hollow. ‘You’re mine, I won’t let you go, I love you too much,’ and I was embracing her, forcing her to me, and my right hand involuntarily groped for the dagger that was still sticking in my belt.
Wanda looked at me with a strange, calm, inexplicable expression.
‘I like to see you like this,’ she said steadily, ‘now you are a man and at this moment I know that I still love you.’
‘Wanda …’ Tears started to my eyes in joy, I bent over her and covered her lovely face with kisses, and then she burst out into loud, mischievous laughter and cried: ‘Have you enough of your ideal now? Are you pleased with me?’
‘What?’ I stammered, ‘You’re not serious?’
‘I am completely serious,’ she continued, ‘I love you, only you and you, you silly little fool, didn’t notice that it was all a joke, a game, and how difficult it was for me to beat you when I would have preferred to take you by the head and kiss you. But surely enough is enough? I played my cruel part much better than you expected, and now you’ll be happy to have your good, nice little wife, who is also quite pretty, I think, back again. We will live quite sensibly now and …’
‘You, you will be my wife!’ I cried, transported in ecstasy.
‘Yes, your wife, you dear, good man!’ Wanda whispered, kissing my hands.
I drew her to my breast.
‘So, you are no longer my slave Gregor, you are my dear Severin again, my husband.’
‘And him? Don’t you love him?’ I asked, agitated.
‘How could you think that I loved that crude fellow? But, then, you were quite confused, I was worried about you.’
‘I nearly killed myself on account of you.’
‘Really?’ she cried. ‘Oh, I’m still trembling at the thought of your being in the Arno.’
‘But you saved me,’ I said tenderly, ‘you were hovering over the waters, smiling, and your smile drew me back into life.’
* * * *
It is truly a strange feeling to have her in my arms, her head on my breast; I kiss her, and she is smiling. It is as though I have woken from a feverish nightmare, or as though I was shipwrecked, fighting with the waves which threaten to engulf me, and finally I am thrown on to dry land.
‘I hate this town of Florence wher
e you were so unhappy,’ she said as I wished her goodnight, ‘I wish to leave tomorrow. Please be good enough to write a few letters for me whilst I go into town to take my leave. Do you agree?’
‘Of course, my dear, good wife.’
Early next morning she knocked on my door and asked me how I had slept. Her kindness is truly enchanting, and I would never have thought that she could be so gentle.
She’s been away now for four hours; I finished the letters a long time ago and am sitting in the gallery looking down at the street to see if I can spot her carriage in the distance. I am somewhat concerned about her, yet, God knows, I have no cause for doubts or fears. Yet I can’t shake it off and it lies heavily upon me: perhaps it is the sufferings of the last few days which cast their shadows across my soul.
But here she is, radiant with happiness and contentment.
‘Well, did all go according to plan?’ I asked, kissing her hand tenderly.
‘Yes, my love,’ she replied. ‘We are going tonight, help me pack my case.
* * * *
Towards evening she came in person to ask me to go to the post-office and send the letters. I take her carriage and am back in an hour.
‘Madame was asking after you,’ said the negress, smiling, as I climb the wide marble staircase.
‘Was anybody here?’
‘Nobody,’ she replied, and crouched low upon the steps like a black cat.
I walk slowly through the room and am standing before the door of her bedroom.
Why is my heart beating so? Am I not happy?
I open the door quietly and pull back the curtain. Wanda is lying on the ottoman and seems not to notice me. How lovely she is in her robe of silvery grey silk which clings to her splendid figure, revealing her wonderful bust, her beautiful arms. Her hair is tied and interwoven with a black velvet ribbon. A great fire is burning in the hearth and the lamp casts its reddish light: the whole room is swimming in blood.
‘Wanda!’ I exclaimed after a few moments.
‘O Severin!’ she cried joyfully, ‘I have been waiting impatiently for you.’ She jumps up and embraces me; she slips down into the deep pillows and seeks to pull me with her, yet I fall at her feet and bury my head in her lap.
