“Now, you are no longer Gregor, my slave,” said she, “but Severin, the
dear man I love—”
“And he—you don’t love him?” I asked in agitation.
“How could you imagine my loving a man of his brutal type? You were
blind to everything, I was really afraid for you.”
“I almost killed myself for your sake.”
“Really?” she cried, “ah, I still tremble at the thought, that you were
already in the Arno.”
“But you saved me,” I replied, tenderly. “You hovered over the waters
and smiled, and your smile called me back to life.”
* * * * *
I have a curious feeling when I now hold her in my arms and she lies
silently against my breast and lets me kiss her and smiles. I feel like
one who has suddenly awakened out of a feverish delirium, or like a
shipwrecked man who has for many days battled with waves that
momentarily threatened to devour him and finally has found a safe
shore.
* * * * *
“I hate this Florence, where you have been so unhappy,” she declared,
as I was saying good-night to her. “I want to leave immediately,
tomorrow, you will be good enough to write a couple of letters for me,
and, while you are doing that, I will drive to the city to pay my
farewell visits. Is that satisfactory to you?”
“Of course, you dear, sweet, beautiful woman.”
* * * * *
Early in the morning she knocked at my door to ask how I had slept. Her
tenderness is positively wonderful. I should never have believed that
she could be so tender.
* * * * *
She has now been gone for over four hours. I have long since finished
the letters, and am now sitting in the gallery, looking down the street
to see whether I cannot discover her carriage in the distance. I am a
little worried about her, and yet I know there is no reason under
heaven why I should doubt or fear. However, a feeling of oppression
weighs me down, and I cannot rid myself of it. It is probably the
sufferings of the past days, which still cast their shadows into my
soul.
* * * * *
She is back, radiant with happiness and contentment.
“Well, has everything gone as you wished?” I asked tenderly, kissing
her hand.
“Yes, dear heart,” she replied, “and we shall leave to-night. Help me
pack my trunks.”
* * * * *
Toward evening she asked me to go to the post-office and mail her
letters myself. I took her carriage, and was back within an hour.
“Mistress has asked for you,” said the negress, with a grin, as I
ascended the wide marble stairs.
“Has anyone been here?”
“No one,” she replied, crouching down on the steps like a black cat.
I slowly passed through the drawing-room, and then stood before her
bedroom door.
Why does my heart beat so? Am I not perfectly happy?
Opening the door softly, I draw back the portiere. Wanda is lying on
the ottoman, and does not seem to notice me. How beautiful she looks,
in her silver-gray dress, which fits closely, and while displaying in
tell-tale fashion her splendid figure, leaves her wonderful bust and
arms bare.
Her hair is interwoven with, and held up by a black velvet ribbon. A
mighty fire is burning in the fire-place, the hanging lamp casts a
reddish glow, and the whole room is as if drowned in blood.
“Wanda,” I said at last.
“Oh Severin,” she cried out joyously. “I have been impatiently waiting
for you.” She leaped up, and folded me in her arms. She sat down again
on the rich cushions and tried to draw me down to her side, but I
softly slid down to her feet and placed my head in her lap.
“Do you know I am very much in love with you to-day?” she whispered,
brushing a few stray hairs from my forehead and kissing my eyes.
“How beautiful your eyes are, I have always loved them as the best of
you, but to-day they fairly intoxicate me. I am all—” She extended her
magnificent limbs and tenderly looked at me from beneath her red
lashes.
“And you—you are cold—you hold me like a block of wood; wait, I’ll stir
you with the fire of love,” she said, and again clung fawningly and
caressingly to my lips.
“I no longer please you; I suppose I’ll have to be cruel to you again,
evidently I have been too kind to you to-day. Do you know, you little
fool, what I shall do, I shall whip you for a while—”
“But child—”
“I want to.”
“Wanda!”
“Come, let me bind you,” she continued, and ran gaily through the room.
“I want to see you very much in love, do you understand? Here are the
ropes. I wonder if I can still do it?”
She began with fettering my feet and then she tied my hands behind my
back, pinioning my arms like those of a prisoner.
“So,” she said, with gay eagerness. “Can you still move?”
“No.”
“Fine—”
She then tied a noose in a stout rope, threw it over my head, and let
it slip down as far as the hips. She drew it tight, and bound me to a
pillar.
A curious tremor seized me at that moment.
“I have a feeling as if I were about to be executed,” I said with a low
voice.
“Well, you shall have a thorough punishment to-day,” exclaimed Wanda.
“But put on your fur-jacket, please,” I said.
“I shall gladly give you that pleasure,” she replied. She got her
_kazabaika_, and put it on. Then she stood in front of me with her arms
folded across her chest, and looked at me out of half-closed eyes.
“Do you remember the story of the ox of Dionysius?” she asked.
“I remember it only vaguely, what about it?”
“A courtier invented a new implement of torture for the Tyrant of
Syracuse. It was an iron ox in which those condemned to death were to
be shut, and then pushed into a mighty furnace.
“As soon as the iron ox began to get hot, and the condemned person
began to cry out in his torment, his wails sounded like the bellowing
of an ox.
“Dionysius nodded graciously to the inventor, and to put his invention
to an immediate test had him shut up in the iron ox.
“It is a very instructive story.
“It was you who innoculated me with selfishness, pride, and cruelty,
and _you shall be their first victim._ I now literally enjoy having a
human being that thinks and feels and desires like myself in my power;
I love to abuse a man who is stronger in intelligence and body than I,
especially a man who loves me.
“Do you still love me?”
“Even to madness,” I exclaimed.
“So much the better,” she replied, “and so much the more will you enjoy
what I am about to do with you now.”
“What is the matter with you?” I asked. “I don’t understand you, there
is a gleam of real cruelty in your eyes to-day, and you are strangely
beautiful—completely _Venus in Furs.”_
Without replying Wanda placed her arms around my neck and kissed me. I
was again seized by my fanatical passion.
“Where is the whip?” I asked.
Wanda laughed, and withdrew a couple of steps.
“You really insist upon being punished?” she exclaimed, proudly tossing
back her head.
“Yes.”
Suddenly Wanda’s face was completely transformed. It was as if
disfigured by rage; for a moment she seemed even ugly to me.
“Very well, then _you_ whip him!” she called loudly.
At the same instant the beautiful Greek stuck his head of black curls
through the curtains of her four-poster bed. At first I was speechless,
petrified. There was a horribly comic element in the situation. I would
have laughed aloud, had not my position been at the same time so
terribly cruel and humiliating.
It went beyond anything I had imagined. A cold shudder ran down my
back, when my rival stepped from the bed in his riding boots, his
tight-fitting white breeches, and his short velvet jacket, and I saw
his athletic limbs.
“You are indeed cruel,” he said, turning to Wanda.
“Only inordinately fond of pleasure,” she replied with a wild sort of
humor. “Pleasure alone lends value to existence; whoever enjoys does
not easily part from life, whoever suffers or is needy meets death like
a friend.
“But whoever wants to enjoy must take life gaily in the sense of the
ancient world; he dare not hesitate to enjoy at the expense of others;
he must never feel pity; he must be ready to harness others to his
carriage or his plough as though they were animals. He must know how to
make slaves of men who feel and would enjoy as he does, and use them
for his service and pleasure without remorse. It is not his affair
whether they like it, or whether they go to rack and ruin. He must
always remember this, that if they had him in their power, as he has
them they would act in exactly the same way, and he would have to pay
for their pleasure with his sweat and blood and soul. That was the
world of the ancients: pleasure and cruelty, liberty and slavery went
hand in hand. People who want to live like the gods of Olympus must of
necessity have slaves whom they can toss into their fish-ponds, and
gladiators who will do battle, the while they banquet, and they must
not mind if by chance a bit of blood bespatters them.”
Her words brought back my complete self-possession.
“Unloosen me!” I exclaimed angrily.
“Aren’t you my slave, my property?” replied Wanda. “Do you want me to
show you the agreement?”
“Untie me!” I threatened, “otherwise—” I tugged at the ropes.
“Can he tear himself free?” she asked. “He has threatened to kill me.”
“Be entirely at ease,” said the Greek, testing my fetters.
“I shall call for help,” I began again.
“No one will hear you,” replied Wanda, “and no one will hinder me from
abusing your most sacred emotions or playing a frivolous game with
you.” she continued, repeating with satanic mockery phrases from my
letter to her.
“Do you think I am at this moment merely cruel and merciless, or am I
also about to become cheap? What? Do you still love me, or do you
already hate and despise me? Here is the whip—” She handed it to the
Greek who quickly stepped closer.
“Don’t you dare!” I exclaimed, trembling with indignation, “I won’t
permit it—”
“Oh, because I don’t wear furs,” the Greek replied with an ironical
smile, and he took his short sable from the bed.
“You are adorable,” exclaimed Wanda, kissing him, and helping him into
his furs.
“May I really whip him?” he asked.
“Do with him what you please,” replied Wanda.
“Beast!” I exclaimed, utterly revolted.
The Greek fixed his cold tigerish look upon me and tried out the whip.
His muscles swelled when he drew back his arms, and made the whip hiss
through the air. I was bound like Marsyas while Apollo was getting
ready to flay me.
My look wandered about the room and remained fixed on the ceiling,
where Samson, lying at Delilah’s feet, was about to have his eyes put
out by the Philistines. The picture at that moment seemed to me like a
symbol, an eternal parable of passion and lust, of the love of man for
woman. “Each one of us in the end is a Samson,” I thought, “and
ultimately for better or worse is betrayed by the woman he loves,
whether he wears an ordinary coat or sables.”
“Now watch me break him in,” said the Greek. He showed his teeth, and
his face acquired the blood-thirsty expression, which startled me the
first time I saw him.
And he began to apply the lash—so mercilessly, with such frightful
force that I quivered under each blow, and began to tremble all over
with pain. Tears rolled down over my cheeks. In the meantime Wanda lay
on the ottoman in her fur-jacket, supporting herself on her arm; she
looked on with cruel curiosity, and was convulsed with laughter.
The sensation of being whipped by a successful rival before the eyes of
an adored woman cannot be described. I almost went mad with shame and
despair.
What was most humiliating was that at first I felt a certain wild,
supersensual stimulation under Apollo’s whip and the cruel laughter of
my Venus, no matter how horrible my position was. But Apollo whipped on
and on, blow after blow, until I forgot all about poetry, and finally
gritted my teeth in impotent rage, and cursed my wild dreams, woman,
and love.
All of a sudden I saw with horrible clarity whither blind passion and
lust have led man, ever since Holofernes and Agamemnon—into a blind
alley, into the net of woman’s treachery, into misery, slavery, and
death.
It was as though I were awakening from a dream.
Blood was already flowing under the whip. I wound like a worm that is
trodden on, but he whipped on without mercy, and she continued to laugh
without mercy. In the meantime she locked her packed trunk and slipped
into her travelling furs, and was still laughing, when she went
downstairs on his arm and entered the carriage.
Then everything was silent for a moment.