The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (6 page)

The lioness had been hunted to exhaustion and was asleep in her pillows, on her back, with fists clenched; she was breathing heavily and seemed oppressed by some nightmare. I slowly raised my hand and let the full, red light fall on her wondrous countenance. But she did not wake.

I gently set the lamp on the floor and sank before Wanda’s bed, resting my head upon her soft, glowing arm. She moved a little but also did not wake. I do not know how long I lay there, in the middle of the night, petrified in fearful torment. But then I was seized by a violent shuddering and wept: the tears flowed across her arm. She twitched a few times, then started up; she moved her hand across her eyes, and looked at me.

‘Severin,’ she cried, more in fear than in anger.

I found no answer.

‘Severin,’ she repeated quietly. ‘What’s the matter? Are you ill?’

Her voice sounded so full of sympathy, so good and tender that it seemed as though my heart were gripped with glowing pincers: I burst out in a loud sobbing.

‘Severin!’ she said again. ‘You poor, unfortunate friend.’ Her hand ran gently over my locks. ‘I am sorry, very sorry for you, but I cannot help you; with all the will in the world I can find no cure for you.’

‘Oh Wanda, must it be he?’ I groaned in my pain.

‘What, Severin? What are you talking about?’

‘Do you no longer love me?’ I continued. ‘Have you no pity for me? Has that stranger, that handsome man torn you away from me?’

‘I cannot deny,’ she continued softly after a brief pause, ‘that he has made an impression on me, he has done something to me that I cannot understand, which makes me suffer and tremble; he exerts an influence that I only found before in books or on the stage, and which I hitherto had only though existed in the imagination. Oh, he is a man like a lion, strong and handsome and proud, yet also gentle, not rough like the men of the North. I am sorry for you, believe me Severin, but I must possess him, or rather – what am I saying? I must give myself to him if he wishes.’

‘Think of your honour, Wanda, which you have preserved so scrupulously,’ I cried, ‘if I in fact mean nothing to you.’

‘I am thinking of it,’ she replied. ‘I shall be strong as long as I can. I want,’ and here she buried her face, ashamed, in the pillows, ‘to be his wife, if he wants me.’

‘Wanda!’ I screamed, overwhelmed once more by that deadly fear which robbed me of breath, of consciousness. ‘You want to be his wife? You wish to belong to him for ever? Ah, do not reject me! He does not love you –’

‘Who says so?’ she cried, flaring up.

‘He does not love you,’ I continued hotly ‘but I love you, I worship you, I am your slave, you can kick me, I shall carry you on me arms –’

‘Who told you that he does not love me?’ she interrupted, urgently.

‘Be mine!’ I implored, ‘be mine! I cannot exist, cannot live without you. Have pity, Wanda, pity!’

She looked at me, and this time it was with that cold, heartless gaze, that malicious smile.

‘You say he doesn’t love me,’ she said scornfully. ‘Very well, let that be a comfort to you,’ and she turned her back on me in contempt.

‘My God, are you not a woman of flesh and blood, have you no heart, as I do?’ I cried, my heart convulsed in my breast.

‘You know full well,’ she replied spitefully, ‘that I am a woman of stone.
Venus in Furs,
this is your ideal, kneel down and worship me!’

‘Wanda!’ I implored. ‘Have pity!’

She started to laugh. I pressed my face into the cushions and let my tears flow freely, tears that assuaged my pain.

For a long time all was still, and then Wanda rose, slowly.

‘You bore me.’

‘Wanda!’

‘I’m tired. Let me sleep.’

‘Pity!’ I begged. ‘Have pity! Do not drive me away, there is no man who loves you as I do.’

‘Leave me in peace,’ and she turned her back on me.

I leapt to my feet and, seizing the dagger that was hanging by her bed, I placed it on my heart.

‘I shall kill myself here before your very eyes,’ I murmured darkly.

‘Do as you please,’ Wanda replied in complete indifference, ‘but let me sleep.’

I stood there, petrified, for a moment, and then I began to laugh and cry aloud; I finally stuck the dagger in my belt and threw myself on my knees before her.

‘Wanda, please listen to me, just for a few minutes.’

‘I want to sleep, can’t you understand?’ she shouted angrily, leaping from the bed and kicking me from her. ‘Have you forgotten that I am your Mistress?’ And because I did not move from the spot she seized the whip and struck me. I got up, she struck me again, and this time in the face.

‘Wretch! Slave!’

I suddenly pulled myself together and rushed from her bedroom, raising a clenched fist heavenwards. She flung the whip away and burst into a gay peal of laughter. I can well imagine how ludicrous this theatrical gesture made me look.

*        *        *        *

I was determined to tear myself away from this cruel woman who had treated me so atrociously and who now was planning to betray me for all my slavish devotion; I packed my meagre possessions into a bag and wrote the following to her:

‘Dear Madame,

I have loved you like a madman; I have devoted my life to you as no man has devoted his life to a woman before. You have abused my most sacred emotions and played an arrogant, frivolous game with me. As long, however, that you were only cruel and ruthless towards me I could still love you, but now you are on the point of becoming
common.
I am no longer the slave you can kick and beat. You yourself have set me free, and I am leaving a woman whom I can only hate and
despise.

Severin Kusiemski.’

I gave this note to the negress and fled as fast as I could. I reached the station, breathless: and then I felt a searing pain in my heart – I stop – I begin to weep. How shameful it is  …  I wish to flee, yet cannot. I retraced my steps – my steps – to her, whom I detest and worship at the same time.

I pull myself together. I can’t go back. I mustn’t go back.

And how can I get away from Florence? I suddenly realise that I have no money, not a penny. Well, on foot then, and to be an honest beggar is better than to eat a courtesan’s bread.

But I can’t leave.

She has my word, my word of honour. I must go back to her. Perhaps she will let me go.

After a few, swift steps I stop again.

She has my word of honour, my oath, my pledge that I am her slave, as long as she wants me, as long as she refuses to liberate me. But I can kill myself.

I walk through the Cascine down to the Arno, down to the edge, where its yellow water monotonously washes a few scattered willows: I sit down and make my reckoning with life. I let my whole existence pass before me and find it pathetic – a few single joys, a huge amount of indifferent, worthless material, and a rich harvest of pain, sorrow, dread, disappointment, hopelessness, bitterness, grief, mourning  …

I thought of my mother whom I had dearly loved and whom I saw wilt and fade in a dreadful sickness; I thought of my brother who died in the prime of youth, deprived of joy and happiness, without having put his lips to the chalice of life; I thought of my dead nurse, the playfellows of my youth, my friends who strove and learned with me, and of all those covered by the cold, dead indifferent earth; I thought of my turtledove who often, cooing, bowed before me and not his mate – all dust, returned to dust.

I laughed aloud and slide into the water, but at the same time I cling on to a willow branch which hangs across the yellow waves, and I see the woman before me, the woman who made me so miserable. She is hovering above the surface of the water, transfigured by the sun, as though she were transparent, with fiery flames about her head and neck; she turns her face towards me, and smiles at me.

*        *        *        *

So back I come, dripping, sodden, trembling with shame and fever. The negress has already delivered my letter, so I am condemned, lost, given into the power of a heartless, scorned woman.

Let her kill me then, I can’t bring myself to do it, and yet I no longer wish to live.

As I am walking round the house she is standing in the gallery, leaning over the railings, her face in the full light of the sun, her green eyes squinting.

‘Are you still alive?’ she asks, without moving. I stand silently, my head on my chest.

‘Give me back my dagger,’ she continued, ‘it’s no use to you. You haven’t even the courage to take your own life.’

‘I haven’t got it any more,’ I replied, trembling with fever.

She mustered me with a proud, scornful look.

‘So you’ve lost it in the Arno?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Very well. And why haven’t you gone?’

I muttered something that neither she nor I could understand.

‘Oh, so you have no money!’ she cried, and threw me a purse with an unspeakably disdainful gesture. ‘Take this!’

I didn’t pick it up.

We stood silently for a long while.

‘Don’t you want to go?’

‘I can’t.’

*        *        *        *

Wanda drives through the Cascine without me, she goes to the theatre without me, she receives visitors, the negress serves her. Nobody asks after me. I wander aimlessly in the garden like an animal which has lost its master.

Lying in the bushes, I watch a pair of sparrows fighting over a seed of corn.

I hear the rustling of a woman’s dress.

Wanda approaches in a dark silk dress, buttoned modestly to the throat; the Greek is with her. They are in animated conversation but I cannot understand a word. Now he stamps his foot and kicks up the gravel; he cracks his riding-crop in the air. Wanda flinches.

Is she frightened he might strike her?

Have they got this far?

*        *        *        *

He has left her, she calls after him, he does not hear, he does not wish to hear.

Wanda nods sadly and sits on the nearest stone bench; she sits for a long time, lost in thought. I look at her with a kind of malicious joy; I finally pull myself together and scornfully walk up to her. She starts, and her whole body trembles.

‘I come to congratulate you,’ I said, bowing. ‘I see, Madam, that you have found your cavalier.’

‘Yes, thank God!’ she cries, ‘no more new slaves, I have enough of these already. A woman needs a man, and worships him.’

‘So you worship him, Wanda!’ I screamed, ‘this crude fellow.’

‘I love him more than I have ever loved anyone before.’

‘Wanda!’ I clenched my fists, but tears were already coming to my eyes, and I was seized with the madness of passion, with a sweet madness. ‘Good, so take him then, make him your husband, he can be your lord and master, but I shall remain your slave as long as I live.’

‘You will be my slave, even then?’ she asked. ‘That
would
be somewhat
piquant,
but I’m afraid he won’t allow it.’

‘Him?’

‘Yes, he’s already jealous of you –
him
!
Of
you
!
she cried. ‘He wanted me to get rid of you when I told him who you were.’

‘You told him’, I repeated, dazed.

‘I told him everything,’ she said ‘our whole story and all your oddities, everything, and instead of laughing he grew very angry and stamped his foot.’

‘And threatened to beat you?’

Wanda looked down, silently.

‘Yes, yes,’ I said with a scornful bitterness: ‘You’re frightened of him, Wanda!’ I threw myself at her feet and embraced her knees. ‘I want nothing from you, nothing, only to be near you, to be your slave, your dog!’

‘Don’t you realise how you bore me?’ said Wanda apathetically.

I jumped up, boiling.

‘You’re no longer cruel, you’re common!’ I said, and each word was sharp and emphasised with bitterness.

‘That sentiment is already in your letter,’ Wanda replied, shrugging her shoulders coldly. ‘An
homme d’esprit
never repeats himself.’

‘What are you doing to me?’ I cried. ‘What do you call this treatment?’

‘I could chastise you,’ she said scornfully, ‘but I prefer to give you reasons instead of whiplashes. You have no right to complain about my treatment: haven’t I always acted honourably toward you? Haven’t I warned you, more than once? Didn’t I love you deeply, passionately, and did I ever conceal the fact that it is dangerous to devote yourself to me, that it is dangerous to submit to me, and that I want to be mastered? But you wanted to be my toy, my slave. You felt the greatest pleasure in feeling the foot, the whip of a proud, cruel woman. What more do you want? Dangerous tendencies were lurking within me and you were the first to arouse them. If I now find pleasure in torturing you, in ill-treating you, well, it’s your fault, you made me what I now am, and now you are cowardly enough, weak enough, pusillanimous enough to blame
me
.’

‘Yes, it’s my fault,’ I said, ‘but haven’t I suffered enough for it? Let’s finish this cruel game.’

‘I want to as well,’ she said with a strange, arch expression.

‘Wanda!’ I cried ‘don’t drive me to the edge, you can see how I’m becoming a man again.’

‘It’s only a passing fancy,’ she replied, ‘dry straw that crackles but is burned as soon as it flames up. You think you can intimidate me, but you’re ridiculous. If you
were
the man I first took you for – serious, thoughtful, strict – I could have loved you faithfully and become your wife. A woman needs a man she can look up to; someone like you, who offers his neck for her to put her foot on, she can only use as a toy, something she can throw away when she’s tired of it.’

‘Try to throw me away then,’ I cried scornfully, ‘there are some toys that are dangerous.’

‘Don’t push me too far,’ cried Wanda, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed.

‘If I can’t have you,’ I continued, my voice choking with rage, ‘then nobody else will  …’

‘Where did you learn that quotation?’ she said mockingly, and seized my lapels: she was pale with rage. ‘Don’t provoke me. I’m not cruel, but I don’t know what I am capable of and whether or not I might overstep the mark.’

‘What is there worse for me than making him your lover, your husband?’ I cried vehemently.