“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 to-day 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 while away 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 finally 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 to-day,” 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 Haydée, 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 to-day. We will ourselves act _Manon l’Escault_ to-day. 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 some one 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.
[Footnote 5: A kind of Russian cap.]
“Gregor will drive,” she called out to the coachman who withdrew in
surprise.