Venus in Furs
“Ah, you want to break with me,” she exclaimed, mockingly.
“Didn’t you tell me yesterday that I wasn’t the man for you?”
_“I repeat it now!”_
“Very well, then.” My whole body was trembling, my voice failed me, and
I handed her the letter.
“Keep it,” she said, measuring me coldly. “You forget that is no longer
a question as to whether you satisfy me as a man; as a _slave_ you will
doubtless do well enough.”
“Madame!” I exclaimed, aghast.
“That is what you will call me in the future,” replied Wanda, throwing
back her head with a movement of unutterable contempt. “Put your
affairs in order within the next twenty-four hours. The day after
to-morrow I shall start for Italy, and you will accompany me as my
servant.”
“Wanda—”
“I forbid any sort of familiarity,” she said, cutting my words short,
“likewise you are not to come in unless I call or ring for you, and you
are not to speak to me until you are spoken to. From now on your name
is no longer Severin, but _Gregor_.”
I trembled with rage, and yet, unfortunately, I cannot deny it, I also
felt a strange pleasure and stimulation.
“But, madame, you know my circumstances,” I began in my confusion. “I
am dependent on my father, and I doubt whether he will give me the
large sum of money needed for this journey—”
“That means you have no money, Gregor,” said Wanda, delightedly, “so
much the better, you are then entirely dependent on me, and in fact my
slave.”
“You don’t consider,” I tried to object, “that as man of honor it is
impossible for me—”
“I have indeed considered it,” she replied almost with a tone of
command. “As a man of honor you must keep your oath and redeem your
promise to follow me as slave whithersoever I demand and to obey
whatever I command. Now leave me, Gregor!”
I turned toward the door.
“Not yet—you may first kiss my hand.” She held it out to me with a
certain proud indifference, and I the dilettante, the donkey, the
miserable slave pressed it with intense tenderness against my lips
which were dry and hot with excitement.
There was another gracious nod of the head.
Then I was dismissed.
* * * * *
Though it was late in the evening my light was still lit, and a fire
was burning in the large green stove. There were still many things
among my letters and documents to be put in order. Autumn, as is
usually the case with us, had fallen with all its power.
Suddenly she knocked at my window with the handle of her whip.
I opened and saw her standing outside in her ermine-lined jacket and in
a high round Cossack cap of ermine of the kind which the great
Catherine favored.
“Are you ready, Gregor?” she asked darkly.
“Not yet, mistress,” I replied.
“I like that word,” she said then, “you are always to call me mistress,
do you understand? We leave here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock. As
far as the district capital you will be my companion and friend, but
from the moment that we enter the railway-coach you are my slave, my
servant. Now close the window, and open the door.”
After I had done as she had demanded, and after she had entered, she
asked, contracting her brows ironically, “well, how do you like me.”
“Wanda, you—”
“Who gave you permission?” She gave me a blow with the whip.
“You are very beautiful, mistress.”
Wanda smiled and sat down in the arm-chair. “Kneel down—here beside my
chair.”
I obeyed.
“Kiss my hand.”
I seized her small cold hand and kissed it.
“And the mouth—”
In a surge of passion I threw my arms around the beautiful cruel woman,
and covered her face, arms, and breast with glowing kisses. She
returned them with equal fervor—the eyelids closed as in a dream. It
was after midnight when she left.
* * * * *
At nine o’clock sharp in the morning everything was ready for
departure, as she had ordered. We left the little Carpathian
health-resort in a comfortable light carriage. The most interesting
drama of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it
was then impossible to foretell.
So far everything went well. I sat beside Wanda, and she chatted very
graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend, concerning
Italy, Pisemski’s new novel, and Wagner’s music. She wore a sort of
Amazonesque travelling-dress of black cloth with a short jacket of the
same material, set with dark fur. It fitted closely and showed her
figure to best advantage. Over it she wore dark furs. Her hair wound
into an antique knot, lay beneath a small dark fur-hat from which a
black veil hung. Wanda was in very good humor; she fed me candies,
played with my hair, loosened my neck cloth and made a pretty cockade
of it; she covered my knees with her furs and stealthily pressed the
fingers of my hand. When our Jewish driver persistently went on nodding
to himself, she even gave me a kiss, and her cold lips had the fresh
frosty fragrance of a young autumnal rose, which blossoms alone amid
bare stalks and yellow leaves and upon whose calyx the first frost has
hung tiny diamonds of ice.
* * * * *
We are at the district capital. We get out at the railway station.
Wanda throws off her furs and places them over my arm, and goes to
secure the tickets.
When she returns she has completely changed.
“Here is your ticket, Gregor,” she says in a tone which supercilious
ladies use to their servants.
“A third-class ticket,” I reply with comic horror.
“Of course,” she continues, “but now be careful. You won’t get on until
I am settled in my compartment and don’t need you any longer. At each
station you will hurry to my car and ask for my orders. Don’t forget.
And now give me my furs.”
After I had helped her into them, humbly like a slave, she went to find
an empty first-class coupe. I followed. Supporting herself on my
shoulder, she got on and I wrapped her feet in bear-skins and placed
them on the warming bottle.
Then she nodded to me, and dismissed me. I slowly ascended a
third-class carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke
that seemed like the fogs of Acheron at the entrance to Hades. I now
had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about
its greatest riddle of all—_woman_.
* * * * *
Whenever the train stops, I jump off, run to her carriage, and with
drawn cap await her orders. She wants coffee and then a glass of water,
at another time a bowl of warm water to wash her hands, and thus it
goes on. She lets several men who have entered her compartment pay
court to her. I am dying of jealousy and have to leap about like an
antelope so as to secure what she wants quickly and not miss the train.
In this way the night passes. I haven’t had time to eat a mouthful and
I can’t sleep, I have to breathe the same oniony air with Polish
peasants, Jewish peddlers, and common soldiers.
When I mount the steps of her coupe, she is lying stretched out on
cushions in her comfortable furs, covered up with the skins of animals.
She is like an oriental despot, and the men sit like Indian deities,
straight upright against the walls and scarcely dare to breathe.
* * * * *
She stops over in Vienna for a day to go shopping, and particularly to
buy series of luxurious gowns. She continues to treat me as her
servant. I follow her at the respectful distance of ten paces. She
hands me her packages without so much as even deigning a kind look, and
laden down like a donkey I pant along behind.
Before leaving she takes all my clothes and gives them to the hotel
waiters. I am ordered to put on her livery. It is a Cracovian costume
in her colors, light-blue with red facings, and red quadrangular cap,
ornamented with peacock-feathers. The costume is rather becoming to me.
The silver buttons bear her coat of arms. I have the feeling of having
been sold or of having bonded myself to the devil. My fair demon leads
me from Vienna to Florence. Instead of linen-garbed Mazovians and
greasy-haired Jews, my companions now are curly-haired Contadini, a
magnificent sergeant of the first Italian Grenadiers, and a poor German
painter. The tobacco smoke no longer smells of onions, but of salami
and cheese.
Night has fallen again. I lie on my wooden bed as on a rack; my arms
and legs seem broken. But there nevertheless is an element of poetry in
the affair. The stars sparkle round about, the Italian sergeant has a
face like Apollo Belvedere, and the German painter sings a lovely
German song.
“Now that all the shadows gather
And endless stars grow light,
Deep yearning on me falls
And softly fills the night.”
“Through the sea of dreams
Sailing without cease,
Sailing goes my soul
In thine to find release.”
And I am thinking of the beautiful woman who is sleeping in regal
comfort among her soft furs.
* * * * *
Florence! Crowds, cries, importunate porters and cab-drivers. Wanda
chooses a carriage, and dismisses the porters.
“What have I a servant for,” she says, “Gregor—here is the ticket—get
the luggage.”
She wraps herself in her furs and sits quietly in the carriage while I
drag the heavy trunks hither, one after another. I break down for a
moment under the last one; a good-natured _carabiniere_ with an
intelligent face comes to my assistance. She laughs.
“It must be heavy,” said she, “all my furs are in it.”
I get up on the driver’s seat, wiping drops of perspiration from my
brow. She gives the name of the hotel, and the driver urges on his
horse. In a few minutes we halt at the brilliantly illuminated
entrance.
“Have you any rooms?” she asks the portier.
“Yes, madame.”
“Two for me, one for my servant, all with stoves.”
“Two first-class rooms for you, madame, both with stoves,” replied the
waiter who had hastily come up, “and one without heat for your
servant.”
She looked at them, and then abruptly said: “they are satisfactory,
have fires built at once; my servant can sleep in the unheated room.”
I merely looked at her.
“Bring up the trunks, Gregor,” she commands, paying no attention to my
looks. “In the meantime I’ll be dressing, and then will go down to the
dining-room, and you can eat something for supper.”
As she goes into the adjoining room, I drag the trunks upstairs and
help the waiter build a fire in her bed-room. He tries to question me
in bad French about my employer. With a brief glance I see the blazing
fire, the fragrant white poster-bed, and the rugs which cover the
floor. Tired and hungry I then descend the stairs, and ask for
something to eat. A good-natured waiter, who used to be in the Austrian
army and takes all sorts of pains to entertain me in German, shows me
the dining-room and waits on me. I have just had the first fresh drink
in thirty-six hours and the first bite of warm food on my fork, when
she enters.
I rise.
“What do you mean by taking me into a dining-room in which my servant
is eating,” she snaps at the waiter, flaring with anger. She turns
around and leaves.
Meanwhile I thank heaven that I am permitted to go on eating. Later I
climb the four flights upstairs to my room. My small trunk is already
there, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning. It is a narrow room
without fire-place, without a window, but with a small air-hole. If it
weren’t so beastly cold, it would remind me of one of the Venetian
_piombi_.4 Involuntarily I have to laugh out aloud, so that it
re-echoes, and I am startled by my own laughter.
[Footnote 4: These were notorious prisons under the leaden roof of the
Palace of the Doges.]
Suddenly the door is pulled open and the waiter with a theatrical
Italian gesture calls “You are to come down to madame, at once.” I pick
up my cap, stumble down the first few steps, but finally arrive in