Venus in Furs
“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.
I listened breathlessly.
The carriage door slammed, the horse began to pull—the rolling of the
carriage for a short time—then all was over.
* * * * *
For a moment I thought of taking vengeance, of killing him, but I was
bound by the abominable agreement. So nothing was left for me to do
except to keep my pledged word and grit my teeth.
* * * * *
My first impulse after this, the most cruel catastrophe of my life, was
to seek laborious tasks, dangers, and privations. I wanted to become a
soldier and go to Asia or Algiers, but my father was old and ill and
wanted me.
So I quietly returned home and for two years helped him bear his
burdens, and learned how to look after the estate which I had never
done before. To _labor_ and to _do my duty_ was comforting like a drink
of fresh water. Then my father died, and I inherited the estate, but it
meant no change.
I had put on my own Spanish boots and went on living just as rationally
as if the old man were standing behind me, looking over my shoulder
with his large wise eyes.
One day a box arrived, accompanied by a letter. I recognized Wanda’s
writing.
Curiously moved, I opened it, and read.
“Sir.—
Now that over three years have passed since that night in Florence, I
suppose, I may confess to you that I loved you deeply. You yourself,
however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane
passion. From the moment that you became my slave, I knew it would be
impossible for you ever to become my husband. However, I found it
interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while
I gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you.
I found the strong man for whom I felt a need, and I was as happy with
him as, I suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball
of clay.
But my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. About
a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living in
Paris, like an Aspasia—
And you?—Your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have
gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have
materialized, which at first so attracted me to you—your clarity of
intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your—_moral
seriousness_.
I hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but
radical. In memory of that time and of a woman who loved you
passionately, I am sending you the portrait by the poor German.
_Venus in Furs_.”
I had to smile, and as I fell to musing the beautiful woman suddenly
stood before me in her velvet jacket trimmed with ermine, with the whip
in her hand. And I continued to smile at the woman I had once loved so
insanely, at the fur-jacket that had once so entranced me, at the whip,
and ended by smiling at myself and saying: The cure was cruel, but
radical; but the main point is, I have been cured.
* * * * *
“And the moral of the story?” I said to Severin when I put the
manuscript down on the table.
“That I was a donkey,” he exclaimed without turning around, for he
seemed to be embarrassed. “If only I had beaten her!”
“A curious remedy,” I exclaimed, “which might answer with your
peasant-women—”
“Oh, they are used to it,” he replied eagerly, “but imagine the effect
upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies—”
“But the moral?”
“That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present
educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot,
but _never his companion._ This she can become only when she has the
same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.
“At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was
the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you
understand?
“The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped,