The Dedalus Book of German Decadence by Ray Furness Read Free Book Online Page B

glowing forehead against the marble. Everything that had previously happened now seemed like a game – but now it was in deadly earnest. I sensed some sort of catastrophe: I saw her standing before me, I could seize her, but lacked the courage – my courage was broken. And if I am honest with myself, it wasn’t the pain, the torment that could break over me, nor the ill-treatment that I could suffer, none of this frightened me.
    I felt only one fear, the fear that I could lose the woman whom I loved fanatically; this fear is so powerful, so crushing that I suddenly began to sob like a child.

    *        *        *        *
    She remained locked all day in her room, and only let the negress in to serve her. When the evening star was glowing in the azure aether I saw her walking in the garden; I followed her carefully and saw her enter the temple of Venus. I crept after her and spied through a crack in the door.
    She was standing before the noble image of the goddess, her hands folded as in prayer, and the holy light of the star of love cast its blue radiance over her.

    *        *        *        *
    At night in bed the terror of losing her seized me with a violence that made me into a hero, a libertine. I lit the small red oil lamp that was hanging beneath a holy icon in the corridor and entered her bedroom, shielding the lamp with my hand.
    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