Venus in Furs (17 page)

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, deserves to be whipped.

“The blows, as you see, have agreed with me; the roseate supersensual mist has dissolved, and no one can ever make me believe again that these 'sacred apes of Benares' [Footnote: One of Schopenhauer's designations for women.] or Plato's rooster [Footnote: Diogenes threw a plucked rooster into Plato's school and exclaimed: “Here you have Plato's human being.”] are the image of God.”