Venus in Furs
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.
I pointed to the mirror.
“Ah, that is really beautiful,” she exclaimed, “too bad one can’t
capture the moment and make it permanent.”
“And why not?” I asked. “Would not any artist, even the most famous, be
proud if you gave him leave to paint you and make you immortal by means
of his brush.
“The very thought that this extra-ordinary beauty is to be lost to the
world,” I continued still watching her enthusiastically, “is
horrible—all this glorious facial expression, this mysterious eye with
its green fires, this demonic hair, this magnificence of body. The idea
fills me with a horror of death, of annihilation. But the hand of an
artist shall snatch you from this. You shall not like the rest of us
disappear absolutely and forever, without leaving a trace of your
having been. Your picture must live, even when you yourself have long
fallen to dust; your beauty must triumph beyond death!”
Wanda smiled.
“Too bad, that present-day Italy hasn’t a Titian or Raphael,” she said,
“but, perhaps, love will make amends for genius, who knows; our little
German might do?” She pondered.
“Yes, he shall paint you, and I will see to it that the god of love
mixes his colors.”
* * * * *
The young painter has established his studio in her villa; he is
completely in her net. He has just begun a Madonna, a Madonna with red
hair and green eyes! Only the idealism of a German would attempt to use
this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. The
poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune
is that our Titania has discovered our ass’s ears too soon.
* * * * *
Now she laughs derisively at us, and how she laughs! I hear her
insolent melodious laughter in his studio, under the open window of
which I stand, jealously listening.
* * * * *
“Are you mad, me—ah, it is unbelievable, me as the Mother of God!” she
exclaimed and laughed again. “Wait a moment, I will show you another
picture of myself, one that I myself have painted, and you shall copy
it.”
Her head appeared in the window, luminous like a flame under the
sunlight.
“Gregor!”
I hurried up the stairs, through the gallery, into the studio.
“Lead him to the bath,” Wanda commanded, while she herself hurried
away.
A few moments passed and Wanda arrived; dressed in nothing but the
sable fur, with the whip in her hand; she descended the stairs and
stretched out on the velvet cushions as on the former occasion. I lay
at her feet and she placed one of her feet upon me; her right hand
played with the whip. “Look at me,” she said, “with your deep,
fanatical look, that’s it.”
The painter had turned terribly pale. He devoured the scene with his
beautiful dreamy blue eyes; his lips opened, but he remained dumb.
“Well, how do you like the picture?”
“Yes, that is how I want to paint you,” said the German, but it was
really not a spoken language; it was the eloquent moaning, the weeping
of a sick soul, a soul sick unto death.
* * * * *
The charcoal outline of the painting is done; the heads and flesh parts
are painted in. Her diabolical face is already becoming visible under a
few bold strokes, life flashes in her green eyes.
Wanda stands in front of the canvas with her arms crossed over her
breast.
“This picture, like many of those of the Venetian school, is
simultaneously to represent a portrait and to tell a story,” explained
the painter, who again had become pale as death.
“And what will you call it?” she asked, “but what is the matter with
you, are you ill?”
“I am afraid—” he answered with a consuming look fixed on the beautiful
woman in furs, “but let us talk of the picture.”
“Yes, let us talk about the picture.”
“I imagine the goddess of love as having descended from Mount Olympus
for the sake of some mortal man. And always cold in this modern world
of ours, she seeks to keep her sublime body warm in a large heavy fur
and her feet in the lap of her lover. I imagine the favorite of a
beautiful despot, who whips her slave, when she is tired of kissing
him, and the more she treads him underfoot, the more insanely he loves
her. And so I shall call the picture: _Venus in Furs_.”
* * * * *
The painter paints slowly, but his passion grows more and more rapidly.
I am afraid he will end up by committing suicide. She plays with him
and propounds riddles to him which he cannot solve, and he feels his
blood congealing in the process, but it amuses her.
During the sitting she nibbles at candies, and rolls the paper-wrappers
into little pellets with which she bombards him.
“I am glad you are in such good humor,” said the painter, “but your
face has lost the expression which I need for my picture.”
“The expression which you need for your picture,” she replied, smiling.
“Wait a moment.”
She rose, and dealt me a blow with the whip. The painter looked at her
with stupefaction, and a child-like surprise showed on his face,
mingled with disgust and admiration.
While whipping me, Wanda’s face acquired more and more of the cruel,
contemptuous character, which so haunts and intoxicates me.
“Is this the expression you need for your picture?” she exclaimed. The
painter lowered his look in confusion before the cold ray of her eye.
“It is the expression—” he stammered, “but I can’t paint now—”
“What?” said Wanda, scornfully, “perhaps I can help you?”
“Yes—” cried the German, as if taken with madness, “whip me too.”
“Oh! With pleasure,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders, “but if I am
to whip you I want to do it in sober earnest.”
“Whip me to death,” cried the painter.
“Will you let me tie you?” she asked, smiling.
“Yes—” he moaned—
Wanda left the room for a moment, and returned with ropes.
“Well—are you still brave enough to put yourself into the power of
Venus in Furs, the beautiful despot, for better or worse?” she began
ironically.
“Yes, tie me,” the painter replied dully. Wanda tied his hands on his
back and drew a rope through his arms and a second one around his body,
and fettered him to the cross-bars of the window. Then she rolled back
the fur, seized the whip, and stepped in front of him.
The scene had a grim attraction for me, which I cannot describe. I felt
my heart beat, when, with a smile, she drew back her arm for the first
blow, and the whip hissed through the air. He winced slightly under the
blow. Then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth
half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he
finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, blue eyes. It was
indescribable.
* * * * *
She is sitting for him now, alone. He is working on her head.
She has posted me in the adjoining room behind a heavy curtain, where I
can’t be seen, but can see everything.
What does she intend now?
Is she afraid of him? She has driven him insane enough to be sure, or
is she hatching a new torment for me? My knees tremble.
They are talking. He has lowered his voice so that I cannot understand
a word, and she replies in the same way. What is the meaning of this?
Is there an understanding between them?
I suffer frightful torments; my heart seems about to burst.
He kneels down before her, embraces her, and presses his head against
her breast, and she—in her heartlessness—laughs—and now I hear her
saying aloud:
“Ah! You need another application of the whip.”
“Woman! Goddess! Are you without a heart—can’t you love,” exclaimed the
German, “don’t you even know, what it means to love, to be consumed
with desire and passion, can’t you even imagine what I suffer? Have you
no pity for me?”
“No!” she replied proudly and mockingly, “but I have the whip.”
She drew it quickly from the pocket of her fur-coat, and struck him in
the face with the handle. He rose, and drew back a couple of paces.