Venus in Furs by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch (that summer book txt) 📕

almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune is that our Titania has discovered our ass's ears too soon.

* * * * *

Now she laughs derisively at us, and how she laughs! I hear her insolent melodious laughter in his studio, under the open window of which I stand, jealously listening.

* * * * *

"Are you mad, me—ah, it is unbelievable, me as the Mother of God!" she exclaimed and laughed again. "Wait a moment, I will show you another picture of myself, one that I myself have painted, and you shall copy it."

Her head appeared in the window, luminous like a flame under the sunlight.

"Gregor!"

I hurried up the stairs, through the gallery, into the studio.

"Lead him to the bath," Wanda commanded, while she herself hurried away.

A few moments passed and Wanda arrived; dressed in nothing but the sable fur, with the whip in her hand; she descended the stairs and stretched out on the velvet cushions as on the former occasion. I lay at her feet and she placed one of her feet upon me; her right hand played with the whip. "Look at me," she said, "with your deep, fanatical look, that's it."

The painter had turned terribly pale. He devoured the scene with his beautiful dreamy blue eyes; his lips opened, but he remained dumb.

"Well, how do you like the picture?"

"Yes, that is how I want to paint you," said the German, but it was really not a spoken language; it was the eloquent moaning, the weeping of a sick soul, a soul sick unto death.

* * * * *

The charcoal outline of the painting is done; the heads and flesh parts are painted in. Her diabolical face is already becoming visible under a few bold strokes, life flashes in her green eyes.

Wanda stands in front of the canvas with her arms crossed over her breast.

"This picture, like many of those of the Venetian school, is simultaneously to represent a portrait and to tell a story," explained the painter, who again had become pale as death.

"And what will you call it?" she asked, "but what is the matter with you, are you ill?"

"I am afraid—" he answered with a consuming look fixed on the beautiful woman in furs, "but let us talk of the picture."

"Yes, let us talk about the picture."

"I imagine the goddess of love as having descended from Mount Olympus for the sake of some mortal man. And always cold in this modern world of ours, she seeks to keep her sublime body warm in a large heavy fur and her feet in the lap of her lover. I imagine the favorite of a beautiful despot, who whips her slave, when she is tired of kissing him, and the more she treads him underfoot, the more insanely he loves her. And so I shall call the picture: Venus in Furs."

* * * * *

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