She slowly descended the steps, and with a silent joy that contained not an atom of torment or yearning, I could watch her dipping up and down in the crystalline liquid, watch the small waves agitated by her and amorously playing around her.
Our nihilistic aesthetician11 is right: A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.
And when she then emerged from the bath, and the silvery drops and the rosy light trickled down her body—I was overwhelmed by mute ecstasy. I wrapped her in linen cloths, drying her magnificent body; and that quiet bliss lingered with me now, when she, placing her one foot upon me as if on a footstool, rested on the cushions in the large velvet mantle. The supple fur lasciviously snuggled around her cold marble body, and her left arm, on which she propped herself like a slumbering swan, remained in the dark sable of the sleeve, while her right hand carelessly played with the whip.
I happened to glance at the massive mirror on the opposite wall and I cried out, for I saw us in its gold frame as if in a painting; and this painting was so marvelously beautiful, so singular, so fantastic, that I was grief-stricken to think that its lines, its colors would dissolve as in a fog.
“What’s wrong?” asked Wanda.
I pointed at the mirror.
“Ah! It’s really beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Too bad the moment can’t be captured forever.”
“And why can’t it be?” I asked. “Wouldn’t every artist, even the most famous, be proud to immortalize you with his brush if you allowed him to?
“The mere thought that this extraordinary beauty,” I went on, gazing at her enthusiastically, “this magnificent formation of the face, these strange eyes with their green fire, this demonic hair, this splendor of the body is appalling and afflicts me with all the horrors of death, of annihilation. But the artist’s hand should wrest you from destruction. You must not perish like the rest of us forever and always, without leaving behind some trace of your existence. Your picture must live long after you have crumbled into dust, your beauty must triumph over death!”
Wanda smiled.
“Too bad modern-day Italy has no Titian or Raphael,” she said. “But perhaps love can make up for genius—who knows? How about our little German?” She pondered. “Yes—he is to paint me. And I’ll make sure that Cupid blends the pigments.”
The young painter set up his studio in her villa—she had trapped him utterly. He began a Madonna, a Madonna with red hair and green eyes! He wanted to turn this fiery woman into the image of virginity: only the idealism of a German can do that. The poor boy was truly almost a bigger ass than I. Unfortunately our Titania had discovered our donkey ears too soon.
Now she laughed at us, and how she laughed! I could hear her rollicking, melodic laughter in his studio as I stood under the open window, jealously eavesdropping.
“Are you crazy? Me?—Ah! It’s incredible—me as the mother of God!” she cried, laughing again. “Just wait! I’ll show you a different painting of me—one that I myself painted. You are to copy it for me.”
Her face, with her hair flaming in the sunlight, appeared at the window.
“Gregor!”
I dashed up the steps, through the gallery, into the studio.
“Take him to the bathroom,” Wanda ordered, hurrying off.
Several moments later, Wanda, dressed only in the sable and clutching the whip, came downstairs and once more stretched out on the velvet cushions. I lay at her feet, and she put one foot on me while her right hand played with the whip. “Look at me,” she said, “with your deep, fanatical gaze. Yes—yes, that’s it.”
The painter had turned abominably pale. He devoured the scene with his lovely, dreamy blue eyes; his lips parted, but he remained mute.
“Well, how do you like the painting?” she asked.
“Yes—that’s how I want to paint you,” said the German. But that wasn’t really speech, that was an eloquent moaning, a weeping of a sick, mortally sick soul.
The charcoal sketch was done, the heads, the flesh tones were filled in, her diabolical face was already emerging in a few bold strokes, her green eyes were flashing with life.
Wanda, her arms crossed on her bosom, stood in front of the canvas.
“Like many paintings of the Venetian school, this should be both a portrait and a narrative,” explained the painter, deathly pale again.
“And what do you want to title it?” she asked. “Oh, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”
“I’m afraid …” he replied, his eyes devouring the beautiful woman in furs. “But let’s talk about the painting.”
“Yes, let’s talk about the painting.”
“I imagine the Goddess of Love, who has left Mount Olympus and descended to a mortal man. And since she’s always freezing on this modern earth, she tries to warm her sublime body in a huge, heavy fur and her feet in the lap of her beloved. I imagine the favorite of a beautiful female despot, who whips her slave when she is tired of kissing him, and is loved by him all the more insanely the more she kicks him. And so I will call the painting: Venus in Furs.”
The painter painted slowly. But his passion grew all the faster. I was afraid that he would ultimately take his own life. She was playing with him, providing enigmas, and he couldn’t solve them and he felt his blood tingling—but she was amused.
While sitting for him, she nibbled on bonbons, made tiny balls from the paper wrappers and pelted him with them.
“I’m delighted that you’re in such high spirits, Madam,” said the painter, “but your face has completely lost the expression I need for my painting.”
“The expression you need for your painting,” she echoed, smiling. “Please be patient for just one moment.”
She pulled herself up and lashed me with the whip. The painter gaped at her, flabbergasted, with a childlike mixture of repugnance and admiration.
As she whipped me, Wanda’s face took on more and more of that cruel, scornful character that so dreadfully delights me.
“Is this the expression you need for your painting?” she called. The confused painter lowered his eyes before the cold beam of her gaze.
“That’s the expression …” he stammered. “But now I can’t do anything….”
“What?” said Wanda mockingly. “Could I perhaps help you?”
“Yes,” cried the painter, virtually insane. “Whip me too.”
“Oh! With pleasure,” she replied, shrugging. “But if I’m to whip, I want to whip in earnest.”
“Whip me to death,” cried the painter.
“Will you let me tie you up?” she asked, smiling.
“Yes …” he moaned.
Wanda left the room for a moment and returned with ropes.
“Well—do you still have the courage to surrender unconditionally to Venus in Furs, the beautiful despot?” she began derisively.
“Tie me up,” replied the painter in a sullen voice. Wanda bound his hands behind his back, drew one rope through his arms, a second one around his body, and secured him to the crossbars of the window. Then she rolled up her fur sleeves, took hold of the whip, and stepped before him.
For me the scene had a ghastly charm that I cannot depict. I felt my heart pounding as she laughed and hauled back for the first blow, and the whip whistled through the air, and the painter winced slightly; and then, with her red lips parted, her teeth flashing between them, she tore away at him until his poignant blue eyes seemed to beg for mercy—it was indescribable.
She sat alone for him now. He was working on her head.
She posted me behind the heavy door curtain, where I was unseen but saw everything.
What was on her mind?
Was she afraid of him? She had driven him insane enough—or was it to be a new torture for me? My knees trembled.
They were talking. His voice was so soft that I couldn’t catch anything, and she answered in an equally soft voice. What did that mean? Were they conniving?
I was suff
ering dreadfully, my heart was ready to burst.
Now he knelt before her, he embraced her and pressed his head into her bosom—and she, the cruel woman, she laughed—and now I heard her loudly exclaiming:
“Ah! You need the whip again.”
“Woman! Goddess! Have you no heart? Are you unable to love?” cried the German. “Don’t you even know what it means to love, to be devoured by yearning, by passion? Can’t you even imagine what I’m suffering? Don’t you have any pity for me?”
“No!” she replied, haughty and mocking. “But I do have the whip.” She swiftly pulled it from the pocket of her fur and struck his face with the shaft. He stood up and retreated several steps.
“Can you paint again now?” she asked, indifferent. Instead of answering, he returned to the easel and picked up his brush and his palette.
The painting was marvelous; it was a portrait, an incomparable likeness, and it also seemed to depict an ideal, for the colors were so intense, so miraculous, so diabolical I might say.
The painter had simply painted all his torment, his adoration, his malediction into the painting.
Now he painted me; we spent several hours daily alone. One day he suddenly turned to me with a quivering voice: “You love this woman?”
“Yes.”
“I love her too.” His eyes were bathed in tears. He held his tongue for a while and kept painting.
“In Germany there’s a mountain where she lives,” he then murmured to himself. “She’s a devil!”
The painting was completed. She wanted to pay him for it, the way queens pay.
“Oh, you’ve already paid me!” he said, begging off with a painful smile.
Before leaving he secretly opened his portfolio to let me peer inside. I was dumbfounded. Her face stared at me, virtually alive, as if from a mirror.
“I’m taking this along,” he said. “It’s mine. She can’t snatch this, I worked hard enough for it.”
“I really do feel sorry for the poor painter,” she said to me. “It’s silly to be as virtuous as I am. Don’t you think?”
I didn’t dare answer her.
“Oh, I forgot I was talking to a slave. I have to go out, I need diversion, I want to forget. Quick! My carriage!”
A new, fantastic attire: Russian ankle-boots of violet, ermine-trimmed velvet; a gown of the same material, decorated with narrow stripes and gathered up with cockades of the identical fur; a short, close-fitting paletot similarly lined and padded with ermine; a high ermine cap à la Catherine the Great, with a small os-prey fastened with a diamond agrafe; her undone red hair flowing down her back. She climbed to the driver’s seat and drove the carriage herself; I sat behind her. How she whipped the horses! The team raced along in a frenzy.
She apparently wanted to create a sensation today and she fully succeeded. Today she was the lioness of the Cascine. People in carriages greeted her; groups formed on the footpath, talking about her. But she paid no heed to anyone, though now and then she nodded slightly to acknowledge a greeting from an elderly cavalier.
Suddenly a young man came galloping along on a wild and slender black horse. The instant he saw Wanda, he reined in and walked his mount—he was already very close, he halted, and watched her ride by. And now she spotted him—the lioness the lion. Their eyes met—and as she raced past him, she was unable to tear herself away from the magical force of his gaze, and her head turned back.
My heart stood still at this half-marveling, half-delighted gaze with which she devoured him; but he deserved it.
He was a handsome man, by God. No, more: he was a man such as I had never seen in the flesh. He stands in the Belvedere, hewn in marble, with the same slender and yet iron muscles, the same face, the same rippling curls. And what actually made him so peculiarly beautiful was that he wore no beard; and had his pelvis been less narrow, he might have been mistaken for a woman in male disguise … and that strange line around his mouth, the leonine lips that revealed a bit of the teeth and momentarily gave the face a touch of cruelty—
Apollo flaying Marsyas.
He sported high black boots, snug breeches of white leather, a short fur jacket like the kind worn by Italian cavalry officers, of black cloth with an astrakhan trimming and a rich frog; and on his black curls a red fez.
Now I understood male Eros and admired Socrates for remaining virtuous with Alcibiades.
I had never seen my lioness so excited. Her cheeks were still blazing when she sprang from the carriage at the perron outside her villa. As she hurried up the steps, she imperiously motioned me to follow.
Striding to and fro in her room, she began speaking with a haste that terrified me:
“You will find out who that man in the Cascine was—today, immediately—
“Oh, what a man! Did you see him? What do you think? Say something!”
“The man is handsome,” I answered sullenly.
“He’s so beautiful….” She paused and leaned on the back of a chair. “He took my breath away.”
“I can understand the impact he made on you,” I replied. My imagination again recklessly whirled me away. “I was beside myself, and I can picture—”
“You can picture,” she laughed, “this man as my lover, whipping you and you enjoying the whipping.
“Go now, go.”
By evening, I had tracked him down.
Wanda was still fully dressed when I returned; she lay on the ottoman, her face buried in her hands, her hair tangled like a lion’s red mane.
“What’s his name?” she asked, unbelievably calm.
“Alexis Papadopolis.”
“So he’s Greek.”
I nodded.
“Is he very young?”
“Barely older than you. They say he was educated in Paris and they call him an atheist. He fought against the Turks in Candia and supposedly distinguished himself no less through his racial hatred and his cruelty than through his bravery.”
“So all in all, a man,” she cried with sparkling eyes.
“At present he lives in Florence,” I went on. “Supposedly he’s incredibly rich—”
“I didn’t ask about that,” she cut in swiftly and sharply. “That man is dangerous. Aren’t you afraid of him? I’m afraid of him. Does he have a wife?”
“No.”
“A mistress.”
“No again.”
“Which theater does he attend?”
“Tonight he’ll be at the Teatro Nicolini, where the brilliant Virginia Marini and Salvini are performing. Salvini is Italy’s, perhaps Europe’s, premier living actor.”
“Get me a box there—quick, quick!” she ordered.
“But Mistress—”
“Do you want to taste the whip?”
“You can wait down in the lobby,” she said after I placed her opera glass and her program on the balustrade of her box and adjusted the footstool.
Now I stood there and had to lean against the wall to keep from collapsing with envy and fury—no, fury wasn’t the right word. It was mortal dread.
I could see her in her box, in her blue moiré gown, with the large ermine mantle around her bare shoulders, and him across from her. I could see them devouring one another with their eyes, I could see that for them the stage, Goldoni’s Pamela, Salvini, Marini, the audience, indeed, the world had gone under—and I: what was I at that moment?
Tonight she attended the ball at the Greek ambassador’s home. Did she know she would run into that man there?
At least she dressed as if she would. A heavy aquamarine silk gown adhered sculpturally to her divine curves, leaving her arms and her throat bare; in her hair, which formed a single flaming chignon, she wore a blossoming water lily, from which green reeds, interwoven with a few loose braids, fell down the back of her neck. No trace of her excitement, of her trembling feverishness: she was calm, so calm that my blood froze, and I felt my heart turning cold under her gaze. Slowly, with weary and indolent majesty, she ascended the marble stairs, let her costl
y wrap glide down, and nonchalantly entered the ballroom, which the smoke from a hundred candles had filled with a silvery mist.
For several moments I peered after her, forlorn; then I picked up her fur, which, without my realizing it, had slipped from my hands. It was still warm from her shoulders.
I kissed the warmth, and tears flooded my eyes.
There he was.
In his black velvet jacket, which was lavishly trimmed with dark sable: a beautiful, arrogant despot, toying with human lives and human souls. He stood in the antechamber, looked around haughtily, and fixed his eyes on me for an uncomfortably long time.
Under his icy stare I was again seized with that dreadful mortal terror, an inkling that this man could capture her, fascinate her, subjugate her; and I felt inadequate next to his savage virility, I felt envious, jealous.
How deeply I felt my identity as the feeble and eccentric man of intellect! And the most shameful thing of all: I wanted to hate him but couldn’t. And how had he managed to ferret me out in the swarm of domestics?
With an inimitable grandiose nod, he signaled me to come over, and I … I followed that signal—against my will.
“Remove my fur,” he calmly ordered.
My entire body shook with indignation, but I obeyed, as abject as a slave.
I spent the entire night in the antechamber, delirious as in a fever. Bizarre images drifted past my mind’s eye: I could see them meeting—that first long gaze. I could see her floating through the ballroom in his arms, intoxicated, her head lying on his chest with half-closed eyes. I could see him in the sanctuary of love, not as a slave but as a master, reclining on the ottoman with her at his feet; I could see myself serving him on bended knees, the tea tray wobbling in my hands, and I could see him reaching for the whip. Now the servants were talking about him.
He was a man like a woman. He knew he was beautiful and behaved accordingly; he would change his coquettish attire four or five times a day, like a vain courtesan.
In Paris he had appeared first in women’s garb, and the men had stormed him with love letters. An Italian singer, famous equally for both his art and his passion, invaded the Greek’s apartment, knelt down, and threatened to take his own life if his plea was not granted.