“I am sorry,” the Greek responded with a smile. “It would be my pleasure to fulfill your request, but you have no other choice than to carry out your death sentence, for I am—a man.”
The crowd had significantly thinned out—but she apparently had no intention whatsoever of leaving.
Morning was already seeping through the blinds.
Finally I heard the rustle of her heavy gown, which flowed behind her like a green wake: she came, step by step, conversing with him.
I now scarcely existed for her; she didn’t even bother giving me an order.
“Madame’s coat,” he commanded. Naturally he never even dreamed of attending to her himself.
While I helped her into the fur, he stood next to her with crossed arms. But when I, kneeling, put the fur shoes on her feet, she lightly leaned her hand on his shoulder and asked:
“What was that about the lioness?”
“When the lion whom she has chosen, with whom she lives, is attacked by another,” said the Greek, “the lioness calmly reclines and watches the battle. And if her mate is defeated, she does not help him—she indifferently looks on as he perishes in his own blood under his opponent’s claws, and she follows the victor, the stronger lion. Such is a woman’s nature.”
At that instant my lioness shot me a strange glance. I shuddered—I didn’t know why; and the early red light dipped me and her and him in blood.
She didn’t go to bed. She merely tossed off her ball garments and undid her hair. Then she ordered me to start a fire, and she sat by the hearth and stared into the glowing flames.
“Do you need me anymore, Mistress?” I asked, my voice faltering at that last word.
Wanda shook her head.
I left the room, walked through the gallery, and sat down on the steps leading into the garden. From the Arno a light northerly wind wafted fresh, moist coolness; the green hills, both near and distant, stood in rosy fog; golden haze floated about the city, about the cupola of the Duomo.
A few stars were still quivering in the pale blue sky.
I tore open my jacket and pressed my hot forehead against the marble. Everything that had occurred so far seemed like child’s play; but now the situation was serious, horribly serious.
I sensed catastrophe: I saw it before me, I could hold it in my hands; but I lacked the courage to face it, my strength was broken. And to be honest: it wasn’t the pains I dreaded, or the sufferings that could sweep over me, or the abuse that might lie in store for me.
What I felt was fear—a fear of losing the woman whom I loved almost fanatically; and this fear was so violent, so crushing that I suddenly burst out sobbing like a child.
All day long she remained locked in her room, waited on by the African woman. When the evening star first glowed in the blue ether, I saw her walk through the garden and, cautiously trailing her at a distance, I saw her enter the Temple of Venus. I stole after her and peered through the chink in the door.
She stood before the sublime effigy of the Goddess, her hands folded as if in prayer, and the sacred light of the star of love cast its blue rays upon her.
In my bed at night, my fear of losing her, my despair grabbed hold of me with a violence that made me a hero, a libertine. In the corridor I lit the small red oil lamp suspended under the image of a saint and, cupping the light with one hand, I stepped into her bedchamber.
The lioness, driven to exhaustion, hunted to death, had at last fallen asleep on her cushions; she lay on her back, clenching her fists and breathing heavily. She seemed to be frightened by a dream. Slowly I withdrew my hand from the lamp and let its full red light fall upon her wonderful face.
But she did not wake up.
I gently set the lamp on the floor, sank down by Wanda’s bed, and put my head on her soft, hot arm.
She stirred for an instant, but again she did not wake up. I don’t know how long I lay there, in the middle of the night, turned to stone by ghastly tortures.
Eventually I was seized with a violent spasm and I was able to weep—my tears flowed over her arm. She winced several times. Finally she sat up, startled, rubbed her eyes, and looked at me.
“Severin,” she cried, more frightened than angry.
I found no answer.
“Severin,” she went on softly. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
Her voice was so sympathetic, so kind, so loving that it seared into my chest with red-hot tongs, and I began sobbing loudly.
“Severin!” she started anew. “You poor, unhappy friend.” Her hand gently stroked my curls. “I feel sorry, very sorry for you. But I can’t help you—for the life of me I don’t know of any remedy for you.”
“Oh, Wanda! Does it have to be?” I moaned in my pain.
“What, Severin? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you love me at all anymore?” I went on. “Don’t you feel even a little pity for me? Has the handsome stranger already taken you over completely?”
“I can’t lie,” she gently countered after a brief pause. “He did have an effect on me that I can’t grasp, that makes me suffer and tremble. It’s the kind of impact that I’ve found described by poets, that I’ve seen on stage—but I’ve always regarded it as a figment of the imagination. Oh! That man is like a lion, strong and beautiful and proud, and yet soft, not brutal like our men in the north. I do feel sorry for you, believe me, Severin. But I must possess him—what am I saying? I must surrender to him if he wants me.”
“Think of your reputation, Wanda—you’ve always preserved it so immaculately,” I cried, “even if I no longer mean anything to you.”
“I am thinking of it,” she replied. “I want to be staunch for as long as I can, I want—” Ashamed, she buried her face in the cushions. “I want to be his wife—if he wants me.”
“Wanda!” I shouted, again seized with that mortal fear that robbed me each time of breath, of reason. “You want to be his wife, you want to belong to him forever! Oh, don’t push me away! He doesn’t love you—”
“Who says so?” she cried, flaring up.
“He doesn’t love you,” I continued passionately. “But I do love you, I worship you, I’m your slave. I want to be trampled by you, I want to carry you in my arms through life.”
“Who says he doesn’t love me?” she vehemently broke in.
“Oh, be mine!” I pleaded. “Be mine! I can’t exist, I can’t live without you. Have pity, Wanda, pity!”
She looked at me, and now she again had that same cold, heartless gaze, that malicious smirk.
“You say he doesn’t love me,” she said mockingly. “Well, fine, console yourself with that.” She rolled over, contemptuously showing me her back.
“My God, aren’t you a woman of flesh and blood? Don’t you have a heart as I do?” I cried, my chest heaving convulsively.
“You know what I am,” she retorted nastily. “I’m a woman of stone, Venus in Furs, your ideal—just kneel and worship me.”
“Wanda!” I pleaded. “Mercy!”
She burst out laughing. I pressed my face into her cushions and wept a stream of tears in which my pain dissolved.
There was a long silence; then Wanda slowly sat up.
“You bore me,” she began.
“Wanda!”
“I’m sleepy, let me sleep.”
“Mercy,” I pleaded. “Don’t push me away. No other man, no one else will love you as I do.”
“Let me sleep….” She turned her back to me.
I sprang up, reached for the dagger hanging next to her bed, yanked it from its sheath, and put it to my chest. “I’ll kill myself here before your very eyes,” I murmured sullenly.
“Do as you like,” replied Wanda, utterly indifferent. “But let me sleep.”
Then she yawned loudly. “I’m very sleepy.”
For an instant I stood there, turned to stone; then I began to laugh and again weep loudly. Finally I thrust the dagger in my belt and fell to my knees before her.
“
Wanda—please listen to me for just a few seconds,” I begged.
“I want to sleep! Can’t you hear?” she screamed angrily, leaping from her bed and kicking me away. “Have you forgotten that I’m your Mistress?” And when I still didn’t budge, she grabbed the whip and lashed me. I got to my feet. She hit me again—this time in the face.
“Damn it, slave!”
Holding a clenched fist aloft and suddenly resolute, I left her bedroom. She tossed the whip away and broke into loud laughter—and I can imagine I was quite comical in my theatrical posture.
I was determined to tear myself away from the heartless woman, who had treated me so cruelly and was now about to betray me faithlessly in the bargain—as a reward for my slavish worship, for everything I had endured from her. So I packed my few belongings in a kerchief and wrote her a letter:
Madam,
I loved you insanely, I surrendered to you as no man has ever surrendered to a woman. But you have abused my most sacred emotions and played an impudent, frivolous game with me. So long as you were merely cruel and pitiless, I could still love you; but now you are about to turn common. I am no longer the slave who lets you kick him and whip him. You yourself have freed me, and I am leaving a woman whom I can only hate and despise.
Severin von Kusiemski
I handed this note to the Moorish female and then hurried away as fast as I could. By the time I reached the train station, I was out of breath. I felt a violent pang in my heart—I halted … I burst into tears. Oh! It was shameful—I wanted to flee and couldn’t. I would turn back—where? To her—whom I both reviled and worshiped.
Again I changed my mind. I couldn’t go back. I mustn’t go back.
But how could I leave Florence? I realized I had no money, not a penny. Well, then on foot. Begging honestly is better than eating a courtesan’s bread.
Yet I couldn’t leave.
She had my pledge, my word of honor. I had to go back. Perhaps she would release me from my promise.
After several quick steps, I halted again.
She had my word of honor, my oath, that I was her slave so long as she wanted, so long as she herself didn’t grant me freedom. But I could kill myself after all.
I walked through the Cascine down to the Arno, all the way down, where its yellow water, splashing monotonously, washed a few forlorn willows. There I sat and settled my account with existence—my whole life passed before me, and I found it quite wretched: a few joys, an infinite number of worthless and indifferent things, interspersed with richly sown pains, sufferings, anxieties, disappointments, shattered hopes, grief, sorrow, and ruefulness.
I thought of my mother, whom I loved so much and whom I had seen dying slowly of a dreadful illness; I thought of my brother, who, with all his claims to pleasure and happiness, had died in the prime of his youth without even having set his lips to the beaker of life. I thought of my dead wet nurse, my childhood playmates; I thought of my friends, who had striven and studied with me—all those who were covered by the cold, dead, indifferent earth. I thought of my turtledove, who had not infrequently cooed and bowed to me instead of to his mate—all dust to dust returned.
I laughed loudly and slid into the water—but at that same moment I grabbed a willow branch dangling over the yellow waves. And I saw the woman who had made me miserable: she was floating above the watery surface, the sun shining through her as if she were transparent, with red flames around her head and neck. She turned her face toward me and smirked.
I was back again, soaked, dripping, burning with shame and fever. The African woman had delivered my note; so I was judged, doomed, in the hands of a heartless, offended woman.
Well, let her kill me! I—I couldn’t do it. Yet I didn’t want to go on living.
As I walked around the house, she stood in the gallery, leaning on the balustrade, her face in the full sunlight, blinking at me with her green eyes.
“Are you still alive?” she asked without stirring. I stood there stupidly bowing my head.
“Give me back my dagger,” she went on. “You have no use for it. Why, you don’t even have the courage to end your own life.”
“I don’t have the dagger,” I replied, trembling, shaken by cold.
She sized me up with a proud, contemptuous glance.
“You must have lost it in the Arno.” She shrugged. “Who cares? Well, and why haven’t you left?”
I muttered something that neither she nor I could make out.
“Oh, you have no money!” she cried. “Here!” And she tossed her purse at me with an unspeakably disdainful gesture.
I didn’t pick it up.
We both remained silent for a very long time.
“So you don’t want to leave?”
“I can’t.”
Wanda drove to the Cascine without me, she went to the theater without me; when she entertained, the African woman did the serving. No one asked about me. I wandered restlessly through the garden like an animal that’s lost its master.
Lying in the bushes, I watched a pair of sparrows fighting over a seed.
Then I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment.
Wanda was approaching in a dark silk frock that was modestly buttoned up to her throat. The Greek was with her. They were engaged in a lively conversation, but I didn’t catch a single word. Now he stamped his foot so hard that the gravel flew apart, and he lashed the air with his riding crop. Wanda recoiled.
Was she afraid he’d strike her?
Had they gone that far?
He left her, she called him, he didn’t hear, he didn’t want to hear.
She nodded sadly, then settled on the nearest stone bench; she stayed there for a long time, lost in thought. I watched her with something like gleeful joy. At last, I vehemently pulled myself together and scornfully went over to her. She was startled and she trembled from head to foot.
“I’ve come to congratulate you,” I said, bowing. “I see, dear Madam, that you have found your Master.”
“Yes, thank goodness!” she cried. “No new slave—I’ve had enough slaves. A Master. A woman needs a Master and she worships him.”
“So you worship him, Wanda!” I shouted. “That brutal man—”
“I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”
“Wanda!” I clenched my fists, but tears were already coming to my eyes, and a frenzy of passion seized me—a sweet insanity. “Fine, then choose him, marry him. Let him be your Master, but I will remain your slave for as long as I live.”
“You’d be my slave even then?” she said. “That would be piquant. But I’m afraid he won’t put up with it.”
“He?”
“Yes, he’s already jealous of you,” she cried. “He of you! He’s demanded that I dismiss you on the spot. And when I told him who you are—”
“You told him …” I repeated, frozen.
“I told him everything,” she replied. “I told him our entire story, all your strange desires, everything. And he, instead of laughing, he lost his temper and stamped his foot.”
“And threatened to hit you?”
Wanda looked down in silence.
“Yes, yes!” I said, scornfully bitter. “You’re afraid of him, Wanda!” I fell to her feet and, agitated as I was, I embraced her knees. “I want nothing from you, nothing but to remain near you forever—your slave! I want to be your dog!”
“Do you realize you’re boring me?” said Wanda apathetically.
I sprang up. Everything in me was boiling.
“Now you’re no longer cruel, now you’re common!” I said, stressing every word sharply and pungently.
“You already said so in your letter,” Wanda countered with a haughty shrug. “An intelligent man should never repeat himself.”
“The way you treat me!” I erupted. “What do you call that?”
“I could discipline you,” she retorted scornfully, “but this time I prefer to respond with explanations rather than lashes. You have no right to accuse m
e of anything. Haven’t I always been honest with you? Haven’t I warned you more than once? Didn’t I love you deeply, even passionately, and did I hide the fact that it is dangerous to surrender to me, to grovel in front of me—did I hide the fact that I want to be dominated? But you wanted to be my plaything, my slave! You found supreme joy in feeling the foot, the whip of a cruel and arrogant woman. So what do you expect now?
“Dangerous tendencies lay dormant in me, and you were the first to arouse them. If I now take pleasure in torturing you, mistreating you, then it’s all your fault. You turned me into what I am now, and you’re actually unmanly and weak and miserable enough to blame it on me.”
“Yes, it’s my fault,” I said. “But haven’t I suffered for it? Put an end to it now! Stop this cruel game!”
“I want to end it too,” she replied with a strange, devious look.
“Wanda!” I cried vehemently. “Don’t make me go to extremes. You can see that I’m a man again.”
“A flash in the pan,” she countered. “A flame that crackles for an instant and goes out just as quickly as it blazed up. You think you can intimidate me, but you’re merely ridiculous. If you had been the man I originally thought you were—earnest, pensive, rigorous—I would have loved you faithfully and become your wife. A woman desires a man she can look up to. But if a man—as you have done—voluntarily offers her his neck for her foot, then she will use him as a welcome toy and fling him away when she’s tired of him.”
“Just try to fling me away,” I said scornfully. “Some toys are dangerous.”
“Don’t challenge me,” cried Wanda, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed.
“If I can’t have you,” I went on, choking with anger, “then no one else can have you either.”
“What play are you quoting?” she mocked. Then she grabbed my chest; she was utterly pale with anger. “Don’t challenge me,” she continued. “I’m not cruel, but I myself don’t know how far I can go or whether there would be any limit.”
“What can you do to me that’s worse than making him your lover, your husband?” I replied, blazing hotter and hotter.