“I hate this Florence, where you have been so unhappy,” she
declared, as I was saying good-night to her. “I want to leave
immediately, tomorrow, you will be good enough to write a couple of
letters for me, and, while you are doing that, I will drive to the
city to pay my farewell visits. Is that satisfactory to you?”
“Of course, you dear, sweet, beautiful woman.”
I have a curious feeling when I now hold her in my arms and she lies
silently against my breast and lets me kiss her and smiles. I feel
like one who has suddenly awakened out of a feverish delirium, or
like a shipwrecked man who has for many days battled with waves that
momentarily threatened to devour him and finally has found a safe
shore.
Wanda drives in the Cascine without me, and goes to the theater
without me; she receives company, and the negress serves her. No one
asks after me. I stray about the garden, irresolutely, like an animal
that has lost its master.
Lying among the bushes, I watch a couple of sparrows, fighting over
a seed.
Suddenly I hear the swish of a woman’s dress.
Wanda approaches in a gown of dark silk, modestly closed up to the
neck; the Greek is with her. They are in an eager discussion, but I
cannot as yet understand a word of what they are saying. He stamps
his foot so that the gravel scatters about in all directions, and he
lashes the air with his riding whip. Wanda startles.
Is she afraid that he will strike her?
Have they gone that far?
He has left her, she calls him; he does not hear her, does not want
to hear her.
Wanda sadly lowers her head, and then sits down on the nearest stone-
bench. She sits for a long time, lost in thought. I watch her with
a sort of malevolent pleasure, finally I pull myself together by sheer
force of will, and ironically step before her. She startles, and
trembles all over.
“I come to wish you happiness,” I said, bowing, “I see, my dear
lady, too, has found a master.”
“Yes, thank God!” she exclaimed, “not a new slave, I have had enough
of them. A master! Woman needs a master, and she adores him.”
“You adore him, Wanda?” I cried, “this brutal person–”
“Yes, I love him, as I have never loved any one else.”
“Wanda!” I clenched my fists, but tears already filled my eyes, and
I was seized by the delirium of passion, as by a sweet madness. “Very
well, take him as your husband, let him be your master, but I want
to remain your slave, as long as I live.”
“You want to remain my slave, even then?” she said, “that would be
interesting, but I am afraid he wouldn’t permit it.”
“He?”
“Yes, he is already jealous of you,” she exclaimed, “he, of you! He
demanded that I dismiss you immediately, and when I told him who you
were–”
“You told him–” I repeated, thunderstruck.
“I told him everything,” she replied, “our whole story, all your
queerness, everything–and he, instead of being amused, grew angry,
and stamped his foot.”
“And threatened to strike you?”
Wanda looked to the ground, and remained silent.
“Yes, indeed,” I said with mocking bitterness, “you are afraid of
him, Wanda!” I threw myself down at her feet, and in my agitation
embraced her knees. “I don’t want anything of you, except to be your
slave, to be always near you! I will be your dog-”
“Do you know, you bore me?” said Wanda, indifferently.
I leaped up. Everything within me was seething.
“You are now no longer cruel, but cheap,” I said, clearly and
distinctly, accentuating every word.
“You have already written that in your letter,” Wanda replied, with
a proud shrug of the shoulders. “A man of brains should never repeat
himself.”
“The way you are treating me,” I broke out, “what would you call it?”
“I might punish you,” she replied ironically, “but I prefer this
time to reply with reasons instead of lashes. You have no right to
accuse me. Haven’t I always been honest with you? Haven’t I warned
you more than once? Didn’t I love you with all my heart, even
passionately, and did I conceal the fact from you, that it was
dangerous to give yourself into my power, to abase yourself before
me, and that I want to be dominated? But you wished to be my
plaything, my slave! You found the highest pleasure in feeling the
foot, the whip of an arrogant, cruel woman. What do you want now?
“Dangerous potentialities were slumbering in me, but you were the
first to awaken them. If I now take pleasure in torturing you,
abusing you, it is your fault; you have made of me what I now am, and
now you are even unmanly, weak, and miserable enough to accuse me.”
“Yes, I am guilty,” I said, “but haven’t I suffered because of it?
Let us put an end now to the cruel game.”
“That is my wish, too,” she replied with a curious deceitful look.
“Wanda!” I exclaimed violently, “don’t drive me to extremes; you see
that I am a man again.”
“A fire of straw,” she replied, “which makes a lot of stir for a
moment, and goes out as quickly as it flared up. You imagine you can
intimidate me, and you only make yourself ridiculous. Had you been
the man I first thought you were, serious, reserved, stern, I would
have loved you faithfully, and become your wife. Woman demands that
she can look up to a man, but one like you who voluntarily places his
neck under her foot, she uses as a welcome plaything, only to toss
it aside when she is tired of it.”
“Try to toss me aside,” I said, jeeringly. “Some toys are dangerous.”
“Don’t challenge me,” exclaimed Wanda. Her eyes began to flash, and
a flush entered her cheeks.
“If you won’t be mine now,” I continued, with a voice stifled with
rage, “no one else shall possess you either.”
“What play is this from?” she mocked, seizing me by the breast. She
was pale with anger at this moment. “Don’t challenge me,” she
continued, “I am not cruel, but I don’t know whether I may not become
so and whether then there will be any bounds.”
“What worse can you do, than to make your lover, your husband?” I
exclaimed, more and more enraged.
“I might make you _his_ slave,” she replied quickly, “are you not in
my power? Haven’t I the agreement? But, of course, you will merely
take pleasure in it, if I have you bound, and say to him.
“Do with him what you please.”
“Woman, are you mad!” I cried.
“I am entirely rational,” she said, calmly. “I warn you for the last
time. Don’t offer any resistance, one who has gone as far as I have
gone might easily go still further. I feel a sort of hatred for you,
and would find a real joy in seeing him beat you to death; I am still
restraining myself, but–”
Scarcely master of myself any longer, I seized her by the wrist and
forced her to the ground, so that she lay on her knees before me.
“Severin!” she cried. Rage and terror were painted on her face.
“I shall kill you if you marry him,” I threatened; the words came
hoarsely and dully from my breast. “You are mine, I won’t let you go,
I love you too much.” Then I clutched her and pressed her close to
me; my right hand involuntarily seized the dagger which I still had
in my belt.
Wanda fixed a large, calm, incomprehensible look on me.
“I like you that way,” she said, carelessly. “Now you are a man, and
at this moment I know I still love you.”
“Wanda,” I wept with rapture, and bent down over her, covering her
dear face with kisses, and she, suddenly breaking into a loud gay
laugh, said, “Have you finished with your ideal now, are you
satisfied with me?”
“You mean?” I stammered, “that you weren’t serious?”
“I am very serious,” she gaily continued. “I love you, only you, and
you–you foolish, little man, didn’t know that everything was only
make-believe and play-acting. How hard it often was for me to strike
you with the whip, when I would have rather taken your head and
covered it with kisses. But now we are through with that, aren’t we?
I have played my cruel role better than you expected, and now you
will be satisfied with my being a good, little wife who isn’t
altogether unattractive. Isn’t that so? We will live like rational
people–”
“You will marry me!” I cried, overflowing with happiness.
“Yes–marry you–you dear, darling man,” whispered Wanda, kissing my
hands.
I drew her up to my breast.
“Now, you are no longer Gregor, my slave,” said she, “but Severin,
the dear man I love–”
“And he–you don’t love him?” I asked in agitation.
“How could you imagine my loving a man of his brutal type? You were
blind to everything, I was really afraid for you.”
“I almost killed myself for your sake.”
“Really?” she cried, “ah, I still tremble at the thought, that you
were already in the Arno.”
“But you saved me,” I replied, tenderly. “You hovered over the
waters and smiled, and your smile called me back to life.”
I am back again, dripping, wet through, glowing with shame and
fever. The negress has delivered my letter; I am judged, lost, in the
power of a heartless, affronted woman.
Well, let her kill me. I am unable to do it myself, and yet I have
no wish to go on living.
As I walk around the house, she is standing in the gallery, leaning
over the railing. Her face is full in the light of the sun, and her
green eyes sparkle.
“Still alive?” she asked, without moving. I stood silent, with bowed
head.
“Give me back my poinard,” she continued. “It is of no use to you.
You haven’t even the courage to take your own life.”
“I have lost it,” I replied, trembling, shaken by chills.
She looked me over with a proud, scornful glance.
“I suppose you lost it in the Arno?” She shrugged her shoulders. “No
matter. Well, and why didn’t you leave?”
I mumbled something which neither she nor I myself could understand.
“Oh! you haven’t any money,” she cried. “Here!” With an
indescribably disdainful gesture she tossed me her purse.
I did not pick it up.
Both of us were silent for some time.
“You don’t want to leave then?”
“I can’t.”
I have determined to set myself free from this heartless woman, who
has treated me so cruelly, and is now about to break faith and betray
me, as a reward for all my slavish devotion, for everything I have
suffered from her. I packed my few belongings into a bundle, and then
wrote her as follows:
Dear Madam,–
I have loved you even to madness, I have given myself to you as no man
ever has given himself to a woman. You have abused my most sacred
emotions, and played an impudent, frivolous game with me. However, as
long as you were merely cruel and merciless, it was still possible for
me to love you. Now you are about to become _cheap_. I am no longer
the slave whom you can kick about and whip. You yourself have set me
free, and I am leaving a woman I can only hate and despise.Severin Kusiemski.
I handed these lines to the negress, and hastened away as fast as I
could go. I arrived at the railway-station all out of breath.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my heart and stopped. I began to
weep. It is humiliating that I want to flee and I can’t. I turn back–
whither?–to her, whom I abhor, and yet, at the same time, adore.
Again I pause. I cannot go back. I dare not.
But how am I to leave Florence. I remember that I haven’t any money,
not a penny. Very well then, on foot; it is better to be an honest
beggar than to eat the bread of a courtesan.
But still I can’t leave.
She has my pledge, my word of honor. I have to return. Perhaps she
will release me.
After a few rapid strides, I stop again.
She has my word of honor and my bond, that I shall remain her slave
as long as she desires, until she herself gives me my freedom. But
I might kill myself.
I go through the Cascine down to the Arno, where its yellow waters
plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I sit, and
cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pass
before me in review. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair–a
few joys, an endless number of indifferent and worthless things, and
between these an abundant harvest of pains, miseries, fears,
disappointments, shipwrecked hopes, afflictions, sorrow and grief.
I thought of my mother, whom I loved so deeply and whom I had to
watch waste away beneath a horrible disease; of my brother, who full
of the promise of joy and happiness died in the flower of youth,
without even having put his lips to the cup of life. I thought of my
dead nurse, my childhood playmates, the friends that had striven and
studied with me; of all those, covered by the cold, dead, indifferent
earth. I thought of my turtle-dove, who not infrequently made his
cooing bows to me, instead of to his mate.–All have returned, dust
unto dust.
I laughed aloud, and slid down into the water, but at the same
moment I caught hold of one of the willow-branches, hanging above the
yellow waves. As in a vision, I see the woman who has caused all my
misery. She hovers above the level of the water, luminous in the
sunlight as though she were transparent, with red flames about her
head and neck. She turns her face toward me and smiles.
On my couch at night the fear of losing her and despair took such
powerful hold of me that they made a hero and a libertine of me. I
lighted the little red oil-lamp which hung in the corridor beneath
a saint’s image, and entered her bedroom, covering the light with one
hand.
The lioness had been hunted and driven until she was exhausted. She
had fallen asleep among her pillows, lying on her back, her hands
clenched, breathing heavily. A dream seemed to oppress her. I slowly
withdrew my hand, and let the red light fall full on her wonderful
face.
But she did not awaken.
I gently set the lamp on the floor, sank down beside Wanda’s bed,
and rested my head on her soft, glowing arm.
She moved slightly, but even now did not awaken. I do not know how
long I lay thus in the middle of the night, turned as into a stone
by horrible torments.
Finally a severe trembling seized me, and I was able to cry. My
tears flowed over her arm. She quivered several times and finally sat
up; she brushed her hand across her eyes, and looked at me.
“Severin,” she exclaimed, more frightened than angry.
I was unable to reply.
“Severin,” she continued softly, “what is the matter? Are you ill?”
Her voice sounded so sympathetic, so kind, so full of love, that it
clutched my breast like red-hot tongs and I began to sob aloud.
“Severin,” she began anew. “My poor unhappy friend.” Her hand gently
stroked my hair. “I am sorry, very sorry for you; but I can’t help
you; with the best intention in the world I know of nothing that
would cure you.”
“Oh, Wanda, must it be?” I moaned in my agony.
“What, Severin? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you love me any more?” I continued. “Haven’t you even a
little bit of pity for me? Has the beautiful stranger taken complete
possession of you?”
“I cannot lie,” she replied softly after a short pause. “He has made
an impression on me which I haven’t yet been able to analyse, further
than that I suffer and tremble beneath it. It is an impression of the
sort I have met with in the works of poets or on the stage, but I
always thought it was a figment of the imagination. Oh, he is a man
like a lion, strong and beautiful and yet gentle, not brutal like the
men of our northern world. I am sorry for you, Severin, I am; but I
must possess him. What am I saying? I must give myself to him, if he
will have me.”
“Consider your reputation, Wanda, which so far has remained
spotless,” I exclaimed, “even if I no longer mean anything to you.”
“I am considering it,” she replied, “I intend to be strong, as long
as it is possible, I want–” she buried her head shyly in the pillows
–”I want to become his wife–if he will have me.”
“Wanda,” I cried, seized again by that mortal fear, which always
robs me of my breath, makes me lose possession of myself, “you want
to be his wife, belong to him for always. Oh! Do not drive me away!
He does not love you–”
“Who says that?” she exclaimed, flaring up.
“He does not love you,” I went on passionately, “but I love you, I
adore you, I am your slave, I let you tread me underfoot, I want to
carry you on my arms through life.”
“Who says that he doesn’t love me?” she interrupted vehemently.
“Oh! be mine,” I replied, “be mine! I cannot exist, cannot live
without you. Have mercy on me, Wanda, have mercy!”
She looked at me again, and her face had her cold heartless
expression, her evil smile.
“You say he doesn’t love me,” she said, scornfully. “Very well then,
get what consolation you can out of it.”
With this she turned over on the other side, and contemptuously
showed me her back.
“Good God, are you a woman without flesh or blood, haven’t you a
heart as well as I!” I cried, while my breast heaved convulsively.
“You know what I am,” she replied, coldly. “I am a woman of stone,
Venus in Furs, your ideal, kneel down, and pray to me.”
“Wanda!” I implored, “mercy!”
She began to laugh. I buried my face in her pillows. Pain had
loosened the floodgates of my tears and I let them flow.
For a long time silence reigned, then Wanda slowly raised herself.
“You bore me,” she began.
“Wanda!”
“I am tired, let me go to sleep.”
“Mercy,” I implored. “Do not drive me away. No man, no one, will
love you as I do.”
“Let me go to sleep,”–she turned her back to me again.
I leaped up, and snatched the poinard, which hung beside her bed,
from its sheath, and placed its point against my breast.
“I shall kill myself here before your eyes,” I murmured dully.
“Do what you please,” Wanda replied with complete indifference. “But
let me go to sleep.” She yawned aloud. “I am very sleepy.”
For a moment I stood as if petrified. Then I began to laugh and cry
at the same time. Finally I placed the poinard in my belt, and again
fell on my knees before her.
“Wanda, listen to me, only for a few moments,” I begged.
“I want to go to sleep! Don’t you hear!” she cried, leaping angrily
out of bed and pushing me away with her foot. “You forget that I am
your mistress?” When I didn’t budge, she seized the whip and struck
me. I rose; she struck me again–this time right in the face.
“Wretch, slave!”
With clenched fist held heavenward, I left her bedroom with a sudden
resolve. She tossed the whip aside, and broke out into clear
laughter. I can imagine that my theatrical attitude must have been
very droll.
During the day she remained locked in her room, and had the negress
attend her. When the evening star rose glowing in the blue sky, I saw
her pass through the garden, and, carefully following her at a
distance, watched her enter the shrine of Venus. I stealthily
followed and peered through the chink in the door.
She stood before the divine image of the goddess, her hands folded
as in prayer, and the sacred light of the star of love casts its blue
rays over her.
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