Venus in Furs
decide freely. “I want to put myself absolutely at your mercy for good
or evil without any condition, without any limit to your power.”
While saying this I had slipped from the ottoman, and lay at her feet
looking up at her with drunken eyes.
“How beautiful you now are,” she exclaimed, “your eyes half-broken in
ecstacy fill me with joy, carry me away. How wonderful your look would
be if you were being beaten to death, in the extreme agony. You have
the eye of a martyr.”
* * * * *
Sometimes, nevertheless, I have an uneasy feeling about placing myself
so absolutely, so unconditionally into a woman’s hands. Suppose she did
abuse my passion, her power?
Well, then I would experience what has occupied my imagination since my
childhood, what has always given me the feeling of seductive terror. A
foolish apprehension! It will be a wanton game she will play with me,
nothing more. She loves me, and she is good, a noble personality,
incapable of a breach of faith. But it lies in her hands —_if she wants
to she can._ What a temptation in this doubt, this fear!
Now I understand Manon l’Escault and the poor chevalier, who, even in
the pillory, while she was another man’s mistress, still adored her.
Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers
everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us; it
is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that make
us abandon ourselves, or that repel us.
It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to
think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and
ask not whither?
* * * * *
A Russian prince made his first appearance today on the promenade. He
aroused general interest on account of his athletic figure, magnificent
face, and splendid bearing. The women particularly gaped at him as
though he were a wild animal, but he went his way gloomily without
paying attention to any one. He was accompanied by two servants, one a
negro, completely dressed in red satin, and the other a Circassian in
his full gleaming uniform. Suddenly he saw Wanda, and fixed his cold
piercing look upon her; he even turned his head after her, and when she
had passed, he stood still and followed her with his eyes.
And she—she veritably devoured him with her radiant green eyes—and did
everything possible to meet him again.
The cunning coquetry with which she walked, moved, and looked at him,
almost stifled me. On the way home I remarked about it. She knit her
brows.
“What do you want,” she said, “the prince is a man whom I might like,
who even dazzles me, and I am free. I can do what I please—”
“Don’t you love me any longer—” I stammered, frightened.
“I love only you,” she replied, “but I shall have the prince pay court
to me.”
“Wanda!”
“Aren’t you my slave?” she said calmly. “Am I not Venus, the cruel
northern Venus in Furs?”
I was silent. I felt literally crushed by her words; her cold look
entered my heart like a dagger.
“You will find out immediately the prince’s name, residence, and
circumstances,” she continued. “Do you understand?”
“But—”
“No argument, obey!” exclaimed Wanda, more sternly than I would have
thought possible for her, “and don’t dare to enter my sight until you
can answer my questions.”
It was not till afternoon that I could obtain the desired information
for Wanda. She let me stand before her like a servant, while she leaned
back in her arm-chair and listened to me, smiling. Then she nodded; she
seemed to be satisfied.
“Bring me my footstool,” she commanded shortly.
I obeyed, and after having put it before her and having put her feet on
it, I remained kneeling.
“How will this end?” I asked sadly after a short pause.
She broke into playful laughter. “Why things haven’t even begun yet.”
“You are more heartless than I imagined,” I replied, hurt.
“Severin,” Wanda began earnestly. “I haven’t done anything yet, not the
slightest thing, and you are already calling me heartless. What will
happen when I begin to carry your dreams to their realization, when I
shall lead a gay, free life and have a circle of admirers about me,
when I shall actually fulfil your ideal, tread you underfoot and apply
the lash?”
“You take my dreams too seriously.”
“Too seriously? I can’t stop at make-believe, when once I begin,” she
replied. “You know I hate all play-acting and comedy. You have wished
it. Was it my idea or yours? Did I persuade you or did you inflame my
imagination? I am taking things seriously now.”
“Wanda,” I replied, caressingly, “listen quietly to me. We love each
other infinitely, we are very happy, will you sacrifice our entire
future to a whim?”
“It is no longer a whim,” she exclaimed.
“What is it?” I asked frightened.
“Something that was probably latent in me,” she said quietly and
thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would never have come to light, if you had
not called it to life, and made it grow. Now that it has become a
powerful impulse, fills my whole being, now that I enjoy it, now that I
cannot and do not want to do otherwise, now you want to back out—
you—are you a man?”
“Dear, sweet Wanda!” I began to caress her, kiss her.
“Don’t—you are not a man—”
“And you,” I flared up.
“I am stubborn,” she said, “you know that. I haven’t a strong
imagination, and like you I am weak in execution. But when I make up my
mind to do something, I carry it through, and the more certainly, the
more opposition I meet. Leave me alone!”
She pushed me away, and got up.
“Wanda!” I likewise rose, and stood facing her.
“Now you know what I am,” she continued. “Once more I warn you. You
still have the choice. I am not compelling you to be my slave.”
“Wanda,” I replied with emotion and tears filling my eyes, “don’t you
know how I love you?”
Her lips quivered contemptuously.
“You are mistaken, you make yourself out worse than you are; you are
good and noble by nature—”
“What do you know about my nature,” she interrupted vehemently, “you
will get to know me as I am.”
“Wanda!”
“Decide, will you submit, unconditionally?”
“And if I say no.”
“Then—”
She stepped close up to me, cold and contemptuous. As she stood before
me now, the arms folded across her breast, with an evil smile about her
lips, she was in fact the despotic woman of my dreams. Her expression
seemed hard, and nothing lay in her eyes that promised kindness or
mercy.
“Well—” she said at last.
“You are angry,” I cried, “you will punish me.”
“Oh no!” she replied, “I shall let you go. You are free. I am not
holding you.”
“Wanda—I, who love you so—”
“Yes, you, my dear sir, you who adore me,” she exclaimed
contemptuously, “but who are a coward, a liar, and a breaker of
promises. Leave me instantly—”
“Wanda I—”
“Wretch!”
My blood rose in my heart. I threw myself down at her feet and began to
cry.
“Tears, too!” She began to laugh. Oh, this laughter was frightful.
“Leave me—I don’t want to see you again.”
“Oh my God!” I cried, beside myself. “I will do whatever you command,
be your slave, a mere object with which you can do what you will—only
don’t send me away—I can’t bear it—I cannot live without you.” I
embraced her knees, and covered her hand with kisses.
“Yes, you must be a slave, and feel the lash, for you are not a man,”
she said calmly. She said this to me with perfect composure, not
angrily, not even excitedly, and it was what hurt most. “Now I know
you, your dog-like nature, that adores where it is kicked, and the
more, the more it is maltreated. Now I know you, and now you shall come
to know me.”
She walked up and down with long strides, while I remained crushed on
my knees; my head was hanging supine, tears flowed from my eyes.
“Come here,” Wanda commanded harshly, sitting down on the ottoman. I
obeyed her command, and sat down beside her. She looked at me sombrely,
and then a light suddenly seemed to illuminate the interior of her eye.
Smiling, she drew me toward her breast, and began to kiss the tears out
of my eyes.
* * * * *
The odd part of my situation is that I am like the bear in Lily’s park.
I can escape and don’t want to; I am ready to endure everything as soon
as she threatens to set me free.
* * * * *
If only she would use the whip again. There is something uncanny in the
kindness with which she treats me. I seem like a little captive mouse
with which a beautiful cat prettily plays. She is ready at any moment
to tear it to pieces, and my heart of a mouse threatens to burst.
What are her intentions? What does she purpose to do with me?
* * * * *
It seems she has completely forgotten the contract, my slavehood. Or
was it actually only stubbornness? And she gave up her whole plan as
soon as I no longer opposed her and submitted to her imperial whim?
How kind she is to me, how tender, how loving! We are spending
marvellously happy days.
To-day she had me read to her the scene between Faust and
Mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as a wandering scholar. Her
glance hung on me with strange pleasure.
“I don’t understand,” she said when I had finished, “how a man who can
read such great and beautiful thoughts with such expression, and
interpret them so clearly, concisely, and intelligently, can at the
same time be such a visionary and supersensual ninny as you are.”
“Were you pleased,” said I, and kissed her forehead.
She gently stroked my brow. “I love you, Severin,” she whispered. “I
don’t believe I could ever love any one more than you. Let us be
sensible, what do you say?”
Instead of replying I folded her in my arms; a deep inward, yet vaguely
sad happiness filled my breast, my eyes grew moist, and a tear fell
upon her hand.
“How can you cry!” she exclaimed, “you are a child!”
* * * * *
On a pleasure drive we met the Russian prince in his carriage. He
seemed to be unpleasantly surprised to see me by Wanda’s side, and
looked as if he wanted to pierce her through and through with his
electric gray eyes. She, however, did not seem to notice him. I felt at
that moment like kneeling down before her and kissing her feet. She let
her glance glide over him indifferently as though he were an inanimate
object, a tree, for instance, and turned to me with her gracious smile.
* * * * *
When I said good-night to her to-day she seemed suddenly unaccountably
distracted and moody. What was occupying her?
“I am sorry you are going,” she said when I was already standing on the
threshold.
“It is entirely in your hands to shorten the hard period of my trial,
to cease tormenting me—” I pleaded.
“Do you imagine that this compulsion isn’t a torment for me, too,”
Wanda interjected.
“Then end it,” I exclaimed, embracing her, “be my wife.”
“_Never, Severin_,” she said gently, but with great firmness.
“What do you mean?”
I was frightened in my innermost soul.
“_You are not the man for me._”
I looked at her, and slowly withdrew my arm which was still about her
waist; then I left the room, and she—she did not call me back.
* * * * *
A sleepless night; I made countless decisions, only to toss them aside
again. In the morning I wrote her a letter in which I declared our
relationship dissolved. My hand trembled when I put on the seal, and I
burned my fingers.
As I went upstairs to hand it to the maid, my knees threatened to give
way.
The door opened, and Wanda thrust forth her head full of
curling-papers.
“I haven’t had my hair dressed yet,” she said, smiling. “What have you
there?”
“A letter—”
“For me?”
I nodded.