“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.
“Come, Gregor, take me on your arms.”
“You mean, mistress?”
“You are to carry me, don’t you understand?”
I lifted her up, so that she rested in my arms, while she twined hers
around my neck. Slowly, step by step, I went down the stairs with her
and her hair beat from time to time against my cheek and her foot
sought support against my knee. I trembled under the beautiful burden I
was carrying, and every moment it seemed as if I had to break down
beneath it.
The bath consisted of a wide, high rotunda, which received a soft quiet
light from a red glass cupola above. Two palms extended their broad
leaves like a roof over a couch of velvet cushions. From here steps
covered with Turkish rugs led to the white marble basin which occupied
the center.
“There is a green ribbon on my toilet-table upstairs,” said Wanda, as I
let her down on the couch, “go get it, and also bring the whip.”
I flew upstairs and back again, and kneeling put both in my mistress’s
hands. She then had me twist her heavy electric hair into a large knot
which I fastened with the green ribbon. Then I prepared the bath. I did
this very awkwardly because my hands and feet refused to obey me. Again
and again I had to look at the beautiful woman lying on the red velvet
cushions, and from time to time her wonderful body gleamed here and
there beneath the furs. Some magnetic power stronger than my will
compelled me to look. I felt that all sensuality and lustfulness lies
in that which is half-concealed or intentionally disclosed; and the
truth of this I recognized even more acutely, when the basin at last
was full, and Wanda threw off the fur-cloak with a single gesture, and
stood before me like the goddess in the Tribuna.
At that moment she seemed as sacred and chaste to me in her unveiled
beauty, as did the divinity of long ago. I sank down on my knees before
her, and devoutly pressed my lips on her foot.
My soul which had been storm-tossed only a little while earlier,
suddenly was perfectly calm, and I now felt no element of cruelty in
Wanda.
She slowly descended the stairs, and I could watch her with a calmness
in which not a single atom of torment or desire was intermingled. I
could see her plunge into and rise out of the crystalline water, and
the wavelets which she herself raised played about her like tender
lovers.
Our nihilistic aesthetician is right when he says: a real apple is more
beautiful than a painted one, and a living woman is more beautiful than
a Venus of stone.
And when she left the bath, and the silvery drops and the roseate light
rippled down her body, I was seized with silent rapture. I wrapped the
linen sheets about her, drying her glorious body. The calm bliss
remained with me, even now when one foot upon me as upon a footstool,
she rested on the cushions in her large velvet cloak. The lithe sables
nestled desirously against her cold marble-like body. Her left arm on
which she supported herself lay like a sleeping swan in the dark fur of
the sleeve, while her left hand played carelessly with the whip.
By chance my look fell on the massive mirror on the wall opposite, and
I cried out, for I saw the two of us in its golden frame as in a
picture. The picture was so marvellously beautiful, so strange, so
imaginative, that I was filled with deep sorrow at the thought that its
lines and colors would have to dissolve like mist.
“What is the matter?” asked Wanda.