Lili Read online

  “So we have a further reprieve,” he said to himself, and looked at his watch. It was nearly half past six. A taxi was in the neighbourhood. He gave the driver the name of his hotel, and spent this last night of all alone in the hotel bedroom. He felt that his body and nerves could not stand any more strain that day – yesterday’s sleepless night, the conversation which had preceded it, the noisy, strange giant city all around him.

  “I am no longer a player myself, I am only a substitute for Lili. I must therefore be sparing.”

  Tuesday morning Andreas left his hotel early. It was a bright March day; he strolled along the Friedrichstrasse, then turned into the broad highway of Unter den Linden, and found himself in the Pariser Platz, facing the smooth, austere Brandenburg Gate. This beautiful and almost classically perfect perspective was bathed in the keen, bright sunshine of March. The painter awoke in him. He went into the Tiergarten. Sunshine and budding vegetation everywhere. And the dead leaves were glistening like bronze. He strolled along a path which led to a lake, on which ducks were swimming. The branches of lofty trees were reflected on the surface of the water.

  He had never been there before. He absorbed the picture. He thought of the many morning hours of his past life as a painter, spent far from towns and people, and he blessed the fate which had made him a painter, a creature of utter simplicity who surrendered himself fully to the enjoyment of the moment. Not to lose this precious moment was the impulse which found release when he painted. He usually painted feverishly, and could scarcely wait to catch the picture while it presented itself to his gaze, this gaze which was purified by the winds of travel, which saw more than the vacant stare of others and which was brighter than that of others. Clairvoyant. How fond he had always been of this word, and how it recurred to him at this moment!

  Andreas had always been one with this intangible and restless something, this play of light and shade, of chiaroscuro, with colour and form. His attitude had been like that of a sly bird-stalker who laid in ambush and knew all the calls that would allure what he sought.

  Thus he had created his pictures, spellbound on the dead canvas with dead colours, until what he had divined with his eyes and soul suddenly began to take on a life of its own … Captured echoes, he had then usually confessed to himself. My pictures are only feeble echoes … He had been happy and very humble, like an initiate. And these hours had been the only real and genuine joys of his life. These joys had belonged to him, to him alone, he could not have shared them with, nor could he have stolen them from, any other person. They had been exclusively his wealth, his property. Could he transmit this property, this wealth? This question had never occurred to him before. Can one transmit joy? The joy of painting? For him, Andreas Sparre, these joys had gone beyond recall. And if Lili should survive him, would she feel any desire to paint? Would he be able to bequeath her as a heritage this joy, this blissful feeling of creative capacity, as a slight compensation for the life he had stolen from her, for the many youthful years he had deprived her of? His consciousness of guilt which so often weighed heavily upon him would be thereby lessened.

  He must now think of Lili, who had such different inclinations from his; but why now think of inheritance? What great thing had he ever accomplished? True, he possessed a small token which he had to share with nobody: the golden “palm”, of the Paris Academy. Oh, vanity!

  He wondered whether it was not time to return. He was standing upon an elegant, lightly-balanced bridge, where he could look over a wide canal which poured its masses of water over a sluice drawn half-way up, so that it hissed and glittered like a miniature waterfall.

  “I am just like one who is trying to sail under a waterfall,” he reflected, “and I feel the current catching hold of me, and I no longer know whither the voyage is leading. Perhaps into complete destruction … Yet … now, halfway, the boat cannot be left. The resolution is taken. I cannot go back.”

  Half an hour later he was at Dr Hardenfeld’s, waiting for the photographer.

  A lady, Hardenfeld’s assistant, then came to him in the waiting-room, and began a conversation with him. He merely listened. She was tactful, and he felt that whatever she said was not dictated by curiosity or importunity.

  “Your case is a novelty for us here. And what adds to the interest which we take in you for scientific reasons is the fact that you are an artist, an intellectual, and therefore able to analyse your own feelings, your own emotional life. You will experience the unprecedented and incredible thing: first to have lived and felt as a man, and then to live and feel as a woman. I am reminded of that Roman emperor who took his life because he could not achieve what is now your fate.”

  At length the photographer arrived. When Andreas left Dr Hardenfeld’s institution, he invited himself to a “farewell breakfast”. With great care he selected an appropriate restaurant for this purpose in the West End.

  Then he returned to his hotel, paid his bill, and proceeded to Thomasiusstrasse, to bid farewell to his friends. “You don’t look exactly like a victim,” affirmed Niels the moment he entered the room.

  “Nor do I feel like one – on the contrary,” laughed Andreas.

  While Inger wrung her hands: “But, Andreas, in a few hours you are going to be operated upon, and you come here with a cigar in your mouth almost as black as a crow.”

  Before he was aware of her action, she had snatched the cigar out of his hand.

  “Please, I have just come from the last meal before my execution, or, speaking more correctly, I have celebrated in the most literal meaning of the words the enterrement de ma vie de garçon.”

  Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre) impersonating Lili Paris, January 1930

  Inger took his hand. ‘I have not been a nurse for nothing; I know how one should behave before an operation. Certainly not as you are doing, Andreas. It is a stupid boyish trick to go and feast. It is putting on airs. And now Niels will go with you to the nursing-home.”

  And so it fell out. Without a cigar, Andreas entered the sanatorium under his friend’s supervision.

  The operation sister received the two gentlemen, conducted them to a room next to the operating theatre, the door of which stood open. A few nurses appeared to be making everything ready for a new operation. A strong odour pervaded the place.

  Professor Gebhard was, unfortunately, unable to arrive until nearly six o’clock, and the gentlemen must therefore have a little patience. They would be notified in due course.

  The time was scarcely four. Niels’ face assumed an expression of utter despair. “I can’t stand waiting here two hours,” he said almost contritely, and intimated that he would like to spend the period of waiting with the patient in the large café situated close at hand.

  When they had found seats in the café opposite the newspaper stand, Andreas detected a few yards away from them a red-haired cripple, a newspaper boy. Andreas sprang up in a trice and moved backwards towards the cripple, who observed this proceeding with astonishment. He received a shilling from Andreas, and then another shilling after Andreas had touched him lightly on his very solid hump.

  “My dear Niels,” he then said by way of answer to his friend’s astonished look, “I call that friendship! To bring me in the presence of such a splendid hump at the eleventh hour. For you know, of course, that such a fellow infallibly brings one luck. A superstition, for aught I care, but now I feel invulnerable. To touch a manly hump works wonders, but a female hump the contrary.”

  “Which we will whet with a noble drop of Rhenish wine, as a burial drink so to speak, according to the good old Nordic custom.” And already Andreas had ordered from the head waiter a bottle of the very best vintage. “But three glasses, please.”

  “Three?” enquired Niels.

  “Of course; the cripple must drink with us.” Nor did the red-haired fellow want asking twice. “The like of us is used to plenty of sorrow,” replied the hunchback, making a low bow. He seized the proffered glass, and clinked it with that of Andreas: “You
r health, my dear sir. May your good soul long survive you!”

  “The fellow speaks like a prophet,” cried Niels. But Andreas clasped the red-haired cripple in his arms, then released the astonished man and raised his glass. “So be it!” And he clinked his glass with that of the hunchback. When Andreas and Niels at length departed, the redhaired cripple gazed after them, shaking his head.

  In the room of the nursing-home which was awaiting Andreas lights were already burning brightly. A nurse ushered him in, took the patient’s personal particulars, hung a thermometer over the bed and requested Andreas to lie down immediately. The doctors would soon put in an appearance.

  “I suppose it is best that I should go at once?” inquired Niels.

  Andreas nodded. “Well, old chap, so long, and I will do all I can to fulfil the red-haired fellow’s prophecy.”

  Niels was about to say something more, but Andreas pushed him to the door. A brief handshake, and Andreas was alone.

  He paced up and down. Once, twice, thrice. Without knowing it he began to count his steps. So the room was seven paces long and six paces wide. Then he sat on the bed. He regarded the room. A room in a nursing-home like countless others. Bright walls, and bed and table and cupboard and the two chairs likewise painted a light colour.

  And then he began to undress very slowly. Suddenly it occurred to him that he, Andreas Sparre, was probably undressing for the last time … that what was now taking place was a farewell to coat and waistcoat and trousers and so on and so on. For a lifetime these coverings of coat and waistcoat and trousers had enclosed him. He contemplated the articles of clothing, one after another, as he took them off; he hung the coat over the waistcoat, and then both upon the hanger in the cupboard, as he had been accustomed to do since … yes, since when? He stretched the trousers in the trouser-press, and looked at one article after another, and stroked each in turn. “What will become of you? What will become of me? Which of us here will survive the other? I – myself? I – you? Coat, waistcoat, trousers, shoes, underclothes, socks …”

  And he picked up his hat off the table. “You too. I had almost forgotten you. Who else have I forgotten?” And he slipped his hand in the inside pocket of his coat, took out a picture, and stood it on the table against the wall. “Grete,” he said, and started to stroke the picture. A knock was heard and the door was opened. Professor Gebhard entered, accompanied by his assistant doctor. A few questions were addressed to Andreas, with the result that, to his surprise, the performance of the “first operation”, which involved no danger whatever, as the Professor explained, had to be postponed to the following morning. “ Gravol is what you call such farewell celebrations in the North,” laughed the Professor. “Your friend has already betrayed to me the Rhenish wine. Congratulations! You seem to know your way about there. But operations of this kind are best performed on an empty stomach. In a few hours’ time we will give you a sleeping-draught, so that the time between now and tomorrow morning will not seem too long to you. And now, courage.” A handshake – and Andreas was again alone.

  “So it’s always wait, wait, wait, wait,” he said to himself. “However, much patience must one have,” he said, addressing the portrait which stood on the table next to his bed.

  “Grete!” More he could not say; he leaned back on the white pillows, stared at the ceiling, and felt tired.

  He had struggled to the goal. He became sensible of the bustle of the day here in Berlin. Now he had to confess that he was at the end of his strength. And the last remnant of his masculine pride, which he had been dragging about with him in this strange million-headed city like a cuirass, fell away from him.

  “Grete, it’s a good thing you can’t see me now.” No weakness … stick it out.

  He had laid a writing-pad and fountain-pen on the table. He took a sheet of paper and wrote:

  “4th March, Tuesday evening.

  “Berlin,

  “Dearest Grete,

  “Tomorrow I shall be operated upon. The Professor says the operation in question is only a minor one, involving no danger. Consequently I have not besought you to come to me. Should it, however, turn out otherwise, I will tell you now that I shall have thought only of you every hour, every minute up to the last moment. My last wish is that your future should be happy – that you should inherit my fundamentally joyous temperament. Thousand kisses from Lili.

  “Yours, Andreas.”

  When Inger entered his room an hour later, he gave her the letter and asked her to give it to Grete, in case.

  “You great booby, I have known all along from Niels that everything will be all right. I have even gone to the café and taken a few flowers to your somewhat unusual guardian angel.” He went as red as a turkey and said: “This is the luckiest day I have had.”

  At ten o’clock the assistant doctor entered again. He gave Andreas the promised sleeping-draught. Then the nurse appeared, tidied up the room, and switched off the light.

  They let him sleep on until the middle of the morning, when the doctors were expected to arrive. He had hardly time to make a hasty toilet before Professor Arns was standing beside the bed and requesting him to sign a declaration that he, Andreas Sparre, desired to be operated upon at his own risk, and that Professor Gebhard was relieved of all responsibility in the event of an unfavourable outcome.

  “With pleasure,” he declared, and he immediately signed the document which was addressed to some high authority, and which said in effect: “In case I die, I renounce all right to make any difficulties hereafter.” “But may I not add a few words of thanks to the German doctors,” he asked suddenly, “who are going to make an attempt to save me?”

  This request was laughingly declined, and then the Professor announced: “The operation will take place in a few minutes. I am present at the desire of Professor Kreutz, so good luck.” He then withdrew.

  When Andreas was again alone, he wrote yet another letter:

  “My dear Professor Kreutz,

  “At the last moment before my operation I yield to an impulse to express to you my heartfelt thanks. Since the day when I met you in Paris I have been hopeful, and here in Berlin, where I know none of the doctors who have examined me and assisted me, an invisible power seems to have smoothed all my paths. I know that you are this invisible power, and that whatever good things have come my way have emanated from you. Whatever the result may be, I want you to know that I am enormously grateful for all you have done for me.

  “Your attached Andreas Sparre.”

  Now everything was in order.

  A moment later the assistant doctor entered the room. When Andreas woke up again, in violent pain, it was almost noon. He opened his eyes with a shriek. Gradually he realized that he was lying in his bed. It seemed to him as if he had been crying out for a long time, as if he were resisting something. Two nurses were standing beside him and speaking soothing words. When he recovered consciousness he felt the pains growing more violent. With an effort he regained control of himself and clenched his teeth. He would leave off screaming. And, in fact, he screamed no more.

  “Did I make much noise?” he inquired.

  “Well, just a little,” said one of the nurses with a smile, “and the strange thing was that your voice had completely changed. It was a shrill woman’s voice.”

  Then Professor Gebhard came in and took Andreas by the hand. “The operation went off splendidly. Moreover, I must congratulate you. You have a splendid soprano voice! Simply astounding.”

  Towards the evening he was awakened by a fit of coughing. It seemed as if his whole body were being torn apart. The coughing was terrible. He had tried to suppress it, but without success.

  At last the fit was over, and he lay exhausted. The nurses wiped the perspiration off his forehead. “You must have smoked a lot?” she asked. “Perhaps even yesterday.”

  On the table by the bed lay a cigarette-case. “Throw them out of the window, Nurse. I will never put a cigarette or cigar in my lips again.” The nu
rse smilingly removed the cigarette-case. “Don’t forget your vow!”

  “I swear it to you and to me.” And he thought of the cigar which Inger had taken from him yesterday. It was the very last cigar which Andreas had smoked.

  Fresh fits of coughing in the course of the evening deepened his sudden hatred of tobacco to such an extent that the very idea of tobacco filled him with nausea. And this fanatical aversion from the enjoyment of tobacco in every form he inherited from Lili.

  Niels was admitted to him for a few moments. “You’re going on fine, eh?” he began immediately. “Oh, yes.” More than that Andreas could not bring himself to say. Niels looked at the nurse in astonishment.

  She whispered to him: “I suppose you are surprised at the clear voice.”

  Niels nodded. “I cannot recognize it.”

  Then he sat on the one chair next to the bed. “Inger sends you her greetings. Otherwise …”

  The nurse gave a hint. Niels stole out of the sick-room. And Andreas whimpered: “Nurse, give me an injection …” It was not the only one he had during the night. It was an endless agonizing night. Not until dawn did he manage to go off into a short heavy sleep. By the time he was fully awake, about noon, he felt as weak as one who had been wandering through a desert. But the pains seemed to have become more remote.

  Only now and then the question would surge up in his mind, “Who am I? What am I? What was I? What shall I become?”

  Soon afterwards Inger came with flowers and a large bottle of eau-de-Cologne. Flowers! How their scent transformed the sick-room!

  “Drench me with eau-de-Cologne, Inger! Sprinkle it all over the room!” he cried, almost beside himself with joy.

  Then she sat on the bed next to him and began to talk in confident tones. She, who had previously always addressed him as “you” now used the more intimate “thou”. He did not realize until many days later that during these first days she never once called him by any name. Each day she came to see him with flowers and comforting words. So one day, two days, three days passed. Andreas slept most of the time. No dreams came to him in the long nights, through which he was assisted by sedatives. And every morning Inger was with him with fresh flowers.