Venus in Furs (14 page)

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.

“Now, are you ready to paint again?” she asked indifferently. He did not reply, but again went to the easel and took up his brush and palette.

The painting is marvellously successful. It is a portrait which as far as the likeness goes couldn't be better, and at the same time it seems to have an ideal quality. The colors glow, are supernatural; almost diabolical, I would call them.

The painter has put all his sufferings, his adoration, and all his execration into the picture.

       * * * * *

Now he is painting me; we are alone together for several hours every day. To-day he suddenly turned to me with his vibrant voice and said:

“You love this woman?”

“Yes.”

“I also love her.” His eyes were bathed in tears. He remained silent for a while, and continued painting.

“We have a mountain at home in Germany within which she dwells,” he murmured to himself. “She is a demon.”

       * * * * *

The picture is finished. She insisted on paying him for it, munificently, in the manner of queens.

“Oh, you have already paid me,” he said, with a tormented smile, refusing her offer.

Before he left, he secretly opened his portfolio, and let me look inside. I was startled. Her head looked at me as if out of a mirror and seemed actually to be alive.

“I shall take it along,” he said, “it is mine; she can't take it away from me. I have earned it with my heart's blood.”

       * * * * *

“I am really rather sorry for the poor painter,” she said to me to-day, “it is absurd to be as virtuous as I am. Don't you think so too?”

I did not dare to reply to her.

“Oh, I forgot that I am talking with a slave; I need some fresh air, I want to be diverted, I want to forget.

“The carriage, quick!”

Her new dress is extravagant: Russian half-boots of violet-blue velvet trimmed with ermine, and a skirt of the same material, decorated with narrow stripes and rosettes of furs. Above it is an appropriate, close-fitting jacket, also richly trimmed and lined with ermine. The headdress is a tall cap of ermine of the style of Catherine the Second, with a small aigrette, held in place by a diamond-agraffe; her red hair falls loose down her back. She ascends on the driver's seat, and holds the reins herself; I take my seat behind. How she lashes on the horses! The carriage flies along like mad.

Apparently it is her intention to attract attention to-day, to make conquests, and she succeeds completely. She is the lioness of the Cascine. People nod to her from carriages; on the footpath people gather in groups to discuss her. She pays no attention to anyone, except now and then acknowledging the greetings of elderly gentlemen with a slight nod.

Suddenly a young man on a lithe black horse dashes up at full speed. As soon as he sees Wanda, he stops his horse and makes it walk. When he is quite close, he stops entirely and lets her pass. And she too sees him—the lioness, the lion. Their eyes meet. She madly drives past him, but she cannot tear herself free from the magic power of his look, and she turns her head after him.

My heart stops when I see the half-surprised, half-enraptured look with which she devours him, but he is worthy of it.

For he is, indeed, a magnificent specimen of man, No, rather, he is a man whose like I have never yet seen among the living. He is in the Belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. What makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. If his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. The curious expression about the mouth, the lion's lip which slightly discloses the teeth beneath, lends a flashing tinge of cruelty to the beautiful face—

Apollo flaying Marsyas.

He wears high black boots, closely fitting breeches of white leather, short fur coat of black cloth, of the kind worn by Italian cavalry officers, trimmed with astrakhan and many rich loops; on his black locks is a red fez.

I now understand the masculine Eros, and I marvel at Socrates for having remained virtuous in view of an Alcibiades like this.

       * * * * *

I have never seen my lioness so excited. Her cheeks flamed when she left from the carriage at her villa. She hurried upstairs, and with an imperious gesture ordered me to follow.

Walking up and down her room with long strides, she began to talk so rapidly, that I was frightened.

“You are to find out who the man in the Cascine was, immediately—

“Oh, what a man! Did you see him? What do you think of him? Tell me.”

“The man is beautiful,” I replied dully.

“He is so beautiful,” she paused, supporting herself on the arm of a chair, “that he has taken my breath away.”

“I can understand the impression he has made on you,” I replied, my imagination carrying me away in a mad whirl. “I am quite lost in admiration myself, and I can imagine—”

“You may imagine,” she laughed aloud, “that this man is my lover, and that he will apply the lash to you, and that you will enjoy being punished by him.

“But now go, go.”

       * * * * *

Before evening fell, I had the desired information.

Wanda was still fully dressed when I returned. She reclined on the ottoman, her face buried in her hands, her hair in a wild tangle, like the red mane of a lioness.

“What is his name?” she asked, uncanny calm.

“Alexis Papadopolis.”

“A Greek, then,”

I nodded.

“He is very young?”

“Scarcely older than you. They say he was educated in Paris, and that he is an atheist. He fought against the Turks in Candia, and is said to have distinguished himself there no less by his race-hatred and cruelty, than by his bravery.”

“All in all, then, a man,” she cried with sparkling eyes.

“At present he is living in Florence,” I continued, “he is said to be tremendously rich—”

“I didn't ask you about that,” she interrupted quickly and sharply. “The man is dangerous. Aren't you afraid of him? I am afraid of him. Has he a wife?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“No.”

“What theaters does he attend?”

“To-night he will be at the Nicolini Theater, where Virginia Marini and Salvini are acting; they are the greatest living artists in Italy, perhaps in Europe.

“See that you get a box—and be quick about it!” she commanded.

“But, mistress—”

“Do you want a taste of the whip?”

       * * * * *

“You can wait down in the lobby,” she said when I had placed the opera-glasses and the programme on the edge of her box and adjusted the footstool.

I am standing there and had to lean against the wall for support so as not to fall down with envy and rage—no, rage isn't the right word; it was a mortal fear.

I saw her in her box dressed in blue moire, with a huge ermine cloak about her bare shoulders; he sat opposite. I saw them devour each other with their eyes. For both of them the stage, Goldoni's
Pamela,
Salvini, Marini, the public, even the entire world, were non-existant to-night. And I—what was I at that moment?—

       * * * * *

To-day she is attending the ball at the Greek ambassador's. Does she know, that she will meet him there?

At any rate she dressed, as if she did. A heavy sea-green silk dress plastically encloses her divine form, leaving the bust and arms bare. In her hair, which is done into a single flaming knot, a white water-lily blossoms; from it the leaves of reeds interwoven with a few loose strands fall down toward her neck. There no longer is any trace of agitation or trembling feverishness in her being. She is calm, so calm, that I feel my blood congealing and my heart growing cold under her glance. Slowly, with a weary, indolent majesty, she ascends the marble staircase, lets her precious wrap slide off, and listlessly enters the hall, where the smoke of a hundred candles has formed a silvery mist.

For a few moments my eyes follow her in a daze, then I pick up her furs, which without my being aware, had slipped from my hands. They are still warm from her shoulders.

I kiss the spot, and my eyes fill with tears.

       * * * * *

He has arrived.

In his black velvet coat extravagantly trimmed with sable, he is a beautiful, haughty despot who plays with the lives and souls of men. He stands in the ante-room, looking around proudly, and his eyes rest on me for an uncomfortably long time.

Under his icy glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I am filled with envy, with jealousy.

I feel that I am a queer weakly creature of brains, merely! And what is most humiliating, I want to hate him, but I can't. Why is that among all the host of servants he has chosen me.

With an inimitably aristocratic nod of the head he calls me over to him, and I—I obey his call—against my own will.

“Take my furs,” he quickly commands.

My entire body trembles with resentment, but I obey, abjectly like a slave.

       * * * * *

All night long I waited in the ante-room, raving as in a fever. Strange images hovered past my inner eye. I saw their meeting—their long exchange of looks. I saw her float through the hall in his arms, drunken, lying with half-closed lids against his breast. I saw him in the holy of holies of love, lying on the ottoman, not as slave, but as master, and she at his feet. On my knees I served them, the tea-tray faltering in my hands, and I saw him reach for the whip. But now the servants are talking about him.

He is a man who is like a woman; he knows that he is beautiful, and he acts accordingly. He changes his clothes four or five times a day, like a vain courtesan.

In Paris he appeared first in woman's dress, and the men assailed him with love-letters. An Italian singer, famous equally for his art and his passionate intensity, even invaded his home, and lying on his knees before him threatened to commit suicide if he wouldn't be his.

“I am sorry,” he replied, smiling, “I should like to do you the favor, but you will have to carry out your threat, for I am a man.”

       * * * * *

The drawing-room has already thinned out to a marked degree, but she apparently has no thought of leaving.

Morning is already peering through the blinds.

At last I hear the rustling of her heavy gown which flows along behind her like green waves. She advances step by step, engaged in conversation with him.