Venus in Furs
“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.
I ascended the driver’s seat, and angrily whipped up the horses.
In the Cascine where the main roadway turns into a leafy path, Wanda
got out. It was night, only occasional stars shone through the gray
clouds that fled across the sky. By the bank of the Arno stood a man in
a dark cloak, with a brigand’s hat, and looked at the yellow waves.
Wanda rapidly walked through the shrubbery, and tapped him on the
shoulder. I saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared
behind the green wall.
An hour full of torments. Finally there was a rustling in the bushes to
one side, and they returned.
The man accompanied her to the carriage. The light of the lamp fell
full and glaringly upon an infinitely young, soft and dreamy face which
I had never before seen, and played in his long, blond curls.
She held out her hand which he kissed with deep respect, then she
signaled to me, and immediately the carriage flew along the leafy wall
which follows the river like a long green screen.
* * * * *
The bell at the garden-gate rings. It is a familiar face. The man from
the Cascine.
“Whom shall I announce?” I ask him in French. He timidly shakes his
head.
“Do you, perhaps, understand some German?” he asks shyly.
“Yes. Your name, please.”
“Oh! I haven’t any yet,” he replies, embarrassed—“Tell your mistress
the German painter from the Cascine is here and would like—but there
she is herself.”
Wanda had stepped out on the balcony, and nodded toward the stranger.
“Gregor, show the gentleman in!” she called to me.
I showed the painter the stairs.
“Thanks, I’ll find her now, thanks, thanks very much.” He ran up the
steps. I remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor
German.
Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will
paint her, and go mad.
* * * * *
It is a sunny winter’s day. Something that looks like gold trembles on
the leaves of the clusters of trees down below in the green level of
the meadow. The camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in
their abundant buds. Wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing.
The German painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in
adoration, and looks at her. No, he rather looks at her face, and is
entirely absorbed in it, enraptured.
But she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade
in my hand am turning over the flower-bed, solely that I may see her
and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like
music.
* * * * *
The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it. I
go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda “Do you love the
painter, mistress?”
She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally
even smiles.
“I feel sorry for him,” she replies, “but I do not love him. I love no
one. _I used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as it
was possible for me to love,_ but now I don’t love even you any more;
my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.”
“Wanda!” I exclaimed, deeply moved.
“Soon, you too will no longer love me,” she continued, “tell me when
you have reached that point, and I will give back to you your freedom.”
“Then I shall remain your slave, all my life long, for I adore you and
shall always adore you,” I cried, seized by that fanaticism of love
which has repeatedly been so fatal to me.
Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. “Consider well what you
do,” she said. “I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic
towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old
feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast.
When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give you your
liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even
brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in
tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me
idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else;
perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider this
well.”
“I have long since considered all that,” I replied as in a glow of
fever. “I cannot exist, cannot live without you; I shall die if you set
me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not drive me
away.”
“Very well then, be my slave,” she replied, “but don’t forget that I no
longer love you, and your love doesn’t mean any more to me than a
dog’s, and dogs are kicked.”
* * * * *
To-day I visited the Venus of Medici.
It was still early, and the little octagonal room in the Tribuna was
filled with half-lights like a sanctuary; I stood with folded hands in
deep adoration before the silent image of the divinity.
But I did not stand for long.
Not a human soul was in the gallery, not even an Englishman, and I fell
down on my knees. I looked up at the lovely slender body, the budding
breasts, the virginal and yet voluptuous face, the fragrant curls which
seemed to conceal tiny horns on each side of the forehead.
* * * * *
My mistress’s bell.
It is noonday. She, however, is still abed with her arms intertwined
behind her neck.
“I want to bathe,” she says, “and you will attend me. Lock the door!”
I obey.
“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