Lili Page 12

  She bade a smiling farewell to Fräulein Karen.

  “The next time we meet I shall murder the French language,” the young actress called after her. “Till our next meeting in Paris; and don’t forget, Grete, to give Monsieur Andreas my kind regards.”

  Niels accompanied Grete and Lili to the nursing-home. “Well,” he said, when they were sitting in the car, “I should not have thought it possible. Now I can believe in miracles!”

  Lili sank back utterly exhausted. In silence she let herself be driven again through the roaring city, now twinkling with thousands and thousands of lights. When the car stopped in front of the clinic, Niels had to carry Lili to her room. He bore a sleeping burden.

  So ended Lili’s first encounter with a stranger. “And she did not recognize me,” she said sadly.

  “But, child,” answered Grete, smiling, “that ought to make you glad. Lili, my new Lili, does not know anybody in the world yet. You are starting life again.”

  It did not yet dawn on Grete that Lili’s melancholy was inspired by fear of having no friends.

  XI

  The next morning news came from Professor Kreutz in Dresden. Everything was ready for the patient’s reception. If the patient’s physical state allowed, the journey to Dresden might be undertaken immediately. But before going it was desirable to pay a visit to Doctor Karner, who had tested Andreas’ blood barely a fortnight previously, to enable him to take a test of the patient’s blood after the first operation.

  Grete read the communication to Lili very slowly, her voice trembling with excitement.

  “We will leave tomorrow morning, of course,” said Lili. “Good; but in that case we must call on Doctor Karner today.” Saying which, Grete hurried out of the room in order to telephone Dr Karner’s laboratory.

  When she returned a few minutes later with the news that Dr Karner would not be available for another hour, she found Lili standing in front of the window holding Professor Kreutz’ letter in her hand.

  “Lili, we can start at once. We could walk part of the distance. This will do you good.”

  “No, no, not walk. I cannot yet show myself in the street.” And her eyes filled with tears.

  On the way Grete mentioned quite incidentally that the Doctor’s assistant, to whom she had telephoned, had not understood her name. “It was, indeed, somewhat difficult to make it clear to her.”

  It so happened that their taxi and Dr Karner’s car arrived at the laboratory at the same time.

  “Good day, Doctor,” said Lili, immediately recognizing him and extending her hand.

  “Good day to you, madam,” answered the Doctor, momentarily surprised, as if he were trying to remember her name.

  Lili looked in front of her, then looked at Grete, and at last took courage to say: “I have come from Professor Arn’s nursing-home. I am Lili Sparre.” It was the first time that she had pronounced her name. She heard herself speaking. A feeling of shame overwhelmed her. “Don’t you recognize me, then, Doctor?”

  “But of course, madam, of course,” answered Dr Karner, although it was obvious from his tone that he had not the least suspicion of the identity of the person standing before him.

  “I understand it is a question of taking a blood test,” he continued nervously, and conducted the two ladies through the entrance hall and then into a waiting-room.

  “Yes, Doctor; but are you still unable to recognize me?”

  The Doctor only became more confused. “Sparre … Sparre … of course the name sounds familiar. Mr Sparre was here about a fortnight ago. He too was sent to me by Professor Arns. But I cannot call you to mind, madam.”

  “The gentleman and I, Doctor, are, in fact, one and the same person,” stammered Lili.

  “I beg your pardon.” Completely dumfounded, Dr Karner looked from one lady to the other – then looked at his watch, and made a quick bow. “Oh, excuse me a moment – the ladies are foreigners, of course.” And he bounded out of the waiting-room.

  Beside herself with confusion, Lili looked at Grete. “I think I shall lose my reason.”

  Grete laughed. “Your doctor is certainly of your opinion. He did not understand a single word of what you told him.”

  Suddenly Lili began to laugh. “But that is splendid. He too, then, did not recognize me.”

  A nurse came into the room and requested Lili to follow her. The Doctor was waiting for her in the laboratory, which Lili immediately recognized. He was holding a small instrument, similar in size to a morphia syringe, a transparent glass syringe. He smiled, still somewhat embarrassed. “Please, madam.”

  She heard the title ringing in her ears … madam. “Please, madam, will you sit down, and turn up your sleeve above the elbow, so that I can get at the veins. So … Much obliged, madam.”

  With a distinctness never before experienced, Lili caught every word he uttered. It seemed to her as if the words were floating in the room. Her eyes gazed steadfastly at the syringe, whose needle was boring cautiously into her arm; she saw the glass container slowly filling with her blood, and she fainted.

  When she came to herself, she looked around timidly.

  The doctor was standing by the patient’s chair with a smile on his face.

  “Have I been lying here long, Doctor?”

  “Only a few minutes. Did it hurt as much as all that?” “Hurt? Oh, no. You must not think that I am usually so bothersome.”

  “Of course. Mr Sparre was not either. Sparre; if I understood aright, madam, your husband …”

  “Mine? Yes, yes.” She was so confused that she did not know where to look.

  Lili Elbe, Dresden, May 1930, between second and third operation

  Then the Doctor laughed. “So I did understand you correctly before. The German language is a very difficult language. What you said before sounded very amusing – as if you had said that you and your husband were one and the same person. Ha, ha, ha!”

  “But, Doctor …”

  “Believe me, madam, even a German utters the most incredible stupidities when he tries to make himself understood in a foreign language. However, to go back to your husband – a stoic of a man, if you like. Now I remember, of course – although he looked ill and exhausted when he sat before me in the same chair that you are now occupying – he said not a word about his sufferings, declined even to hint at them. Instead of this we conversed in the way usual among men here, especially when one comes from abroad, that is to say, about politics, while I was tapping his blood. Of course, I know very well that this cannot be done without hurting, although your husband behaved as if it could – and really with success – while you, madam …”

  “Please, Doctor.”

  “But, madam, that is your vested privilege, as a representative of the weaker sex, while your husband is, if I may so express myself as a doctor, a prototype of the masculini generis … .”

  “My dear Doctor”– Lili now broke into a ringing laugh; she had risen and was staring at him almost insolently – “if you only knew what a lesson you had read me with those words!”

  “Lesson?” The Doctor chivalrously leaned over her. “But I have nothing but admiration for you, madam. You allowed the same blood test to be taken unbidden, in the same way as your husband – which, moreover, was very sensible. Only women can really do such things. A pain shared is a pain halved. Have I not come well out of the business?”

  “Splendidly, Doctor. And now, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye; and my kindest regards to your husband.”

  “Grete, dearest,” said Lili, when they were again in the open air together, “I have now got to the point of accepting with calm amusement the comic side of such a situation as I have just been in, without the flicker of an eyelash. If I did not do so, I should either go mad or lose myself.”

  In the evening Grete wrote in her diary:

  “Lili is still trying to find her feet. People do not make it easy for her. By people, I mean the former acquaintances of Andreas.”

  �
��Come,” said Lili, “now I will take my first walk through Berlin.”

  So they both went from Dr Karner’s laboratory through the bustle of the great city, jostling strange people. It was a fine spring day. The sky was cloudless and softly blue. The air felt like a prolonged caress. The faces of the people they met, Lili noted with great excitement, had such shining eyes. “Do I look like that, Grete?” she asked many times. And as they strolled arm-in-arm they often stopped in front of shop windows. She never grew weary of gazing at their display of silks, and she saw her reflection in every plate-glass window. “Grete, tell me, do I look all right in my furs? Do I look any different from you?” And Grete smiled on her. “Child, remember your Dr Karner – and be glad that we have progressed so far as this.”

  Lili desisted from her questions, but every now and then her eyes would dart a glance of inquiry. Questions innumerable were stirring in her breast; but she refrained from uttering them. She forced herself to show a smiling face, and whispered to herself again and again: “Nobody knows me and my fate here in the great city. Nobody mistrusts me. Nobody. I can carry my secret about with me in peace. Nobody is betraying me. And it is a bright day with plenty of sunshine.”

  Really tired, she clung to Grete’s arm. “Grete,” she said at once, “Grete, you are not ashamed of me?”

  When Grete regarded her with surprise, Lili behaved as if something had flown in her eye.

  “But what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing; we go to Dresden tomorrow, and I am glad Niels is going with us. Sometimes I feel so afraid. I don’t know why.”

  This feeling of dread became so alarming during the last night before the departure for Dresden that Grete was obliged to summon the assistance of the head nurse.

  Lili wept and wept through many despairing hours. “I cannot … I cannot … ! How can I look Professor Kreutz in the face? He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know who I am. I am afraid. I would rather die first.” When at length she could weep no more, she lay in her bed, staring in front of her.

  A thousand apprehensions assailed her. The railway journey to Dresden, all among strange people … the arrival in another great city … the way to the clinic … more strangers with curious eyes … and then the Professor. How would he receive her?

  Lili did not know herself what was going on inside her. Grete had long since packed the trunks, had found time for many cheery words, had talked about indifferent things, while Lili was lying as if in a world of her own. “And tomorrow I shall be with Professor Kreutz, and nobody can help me – nobody.” She kept saying these words in a whisper. And when Grete told her that she and

  Professor Kreutz had only a single thought, which was to help her, and that it was ungrateful to despond just now, Lili only shook her head in a tired way. “Grete, I know better. Nobody can help me. It is much too hard for a tired soul.”

  In the morning, when Grete was still sleeping – she had not dropped off until very late – Lili rose, dressed, contemplated herself, and stole softly, so as not to disturb Grete, towards the not very large mirror which Grete had brought with her and hung over the night table, converted into a dressing-table. She was not pleased with what she saw. Ugly and dumb the reflection appeared to her – a dull, tired, anaemic mask. She sat down on a trunk and buried her face in her hands.

  “Lili, Lili!” Grete’s arms were round Lili’s neck. “Now you look like a mother anxious for her child.”

  “Anxious for her child?” Lili slowly repeated the words. “Yes – for her ill-bred child, as if such a mother could ever be cheerful.”

  So the day started, and its hours crawled slowly by.

  Niels was an early arrival.

  “Our Lili looks like an officer’s miss,” he cried, enthusiastic, “haughty and so, so condescending! An incredible phenomenon.”

  In half an hour the phenomenon will be on its way to its destination, Lili reflected. The phenomenon. And she pulled herself together. Nobody should see tears in her eyes today. Nobody. She must empty her mind of all thought. Thus she was driven to the station, with eyes which looked as if they saw. But they saw nothing. In the waiting-room she let herself be persuaded to take breakfast with the others. She was obedient. “Today I will have no will of my own, Niels; today I will do what you both order me.”

  An abundant breakfast was hastily improvised. “This spread,” announced Niels solemnly, “is to celebrate Lili’s departure on her first overland journey.”

  The waiter had placed a pint tankard of Hofora in front of each. Niels raised his tankard towards Lili, and Grete, the dainty, elegant Grete, raised, not without considerable difficulty, her tankard towards Lili – and Lili was no spoil-sport.

  “Skaal, my dears,” she said, “or prosit, as we must say here!” And before Niels had clinked his tankard against Lili’s, she had taken a generous draught.

  “Bravo, bravo!” cried Niels, so loudly that many of the people in the waiting-room looked around them.

  Lili immediately put down her beaker. “Please, please don’t attract attention.” She was stretched on the rack all the time.

  Yet she wanted to be gay. Moreover, as she honestly acknowledged, the fresh aromatic beer had a glorious taste. And this refreshing breakfast with crusty Berlin rolls and liver sausage and cheese – a real German morning meal – did not in the least resemble an invalid’s diet.

  “It makes me feel quite a new being,” she confessed. “It tastes like resurrection. If only it gets to that point. Prosit! Long live life!”

  When it was time for the train to leave, Lili, clinging all the time to Niels’ arm, pushed through the crowd on the platform so quickly that Grete had difficulty in following them. A corner seat in a second-class compartment was found for Lili, while Niels and Grete secured seats opposite to her.

  With merry, wide-awake eyes, which absorbed every trifle around her like a new experience, Lili rode into her new life.

  The landscape between Berlin and Dresden is a series of endless, monotonous plains, thinly wooded, and here and there coloured red, white, and yellow by small settlements, villages, townships and towns, broken only by occasional placid brooks and streams – a picture devoid of excitement, a panorama calculated to soothe and lull. Low overhead hung a blue-grey sky, while the fresh morning wind drove golden clouds merrily before it like young lambs just released from the fold. Then a large, bright green rectangle would swim into vision – a winter crop with the ears already sprouting, between silvering willow trees, while a dark islet of cloud lowered spectral overhead. Sharply defined on the eastern horizon was a church tower. Then the sun emerged from a heavy bank of cloud, and flooded the whole world with a golden light. The telegraph wires buzzed up and down in front of the carriage window. A flock of partridges ascended from a dark patch of marshland and disappeared into a silvery birch wood. A signalman’s cottage with silver-birch trees and a few fruit trees, stunted and cropped, multi-coloured washing fluttering between them flew by. A woman pressing her hands on her hips, her eyes fixed on the train, beside her a fair child with a glaring red ball in her hand, and a brown Pomeranian dog squatting beside the child went past – shoo! The woman’s expression was plainly visible. A piece of blue-and-white washing was waving like a flag in her right hand. An unpaved country road curved towards the railway embankment. Two heavy horses drew a heavily-laden cart while the driver lashed out with the whip. The sun gilded him and the whipcord and the tin lid of his bowl-pipe, lighting up even the puddles in the deep ruts of the cart track. Behind a far-flung ridge towered factory chimneys, and white and greenish-yellow smoke-plumes wound into the blue until a breeze broke them up and they became golden clouds.

  Lili’s eyes had become the eyes of a painter, and a tremor passed through her. “Those are not my eyes. They are Andreas’ eyes. Is he not yet dead within me? Can he give me no peace, then?”

  She closed her eyes. She could not understand why she was so afraid to look at, to grasp and to love the world, as Andreas ha
d done. Was it because she feared she would never get on to her own feet, never be loosened from Andreas?

  Grete and Niels had gone into the corridor in order to smoke.

  In the compartment there remained two German gentlemen of very correct appearance. The two corner seats by the door belonged to them.

  Up till then Lili had scarcely noticed her fellow travellers. She had kept herself firmly entrenched behind newspapers.

  Suddenly one of the gentlemen laid his paper down and the other gentleman followed suit, except that he solemnly folded up his newspaper. Involuntarily she looked at him, and he returned her look very deliberately. “Hm!’ he grunted at least four times. The other gentleman flicked off some dust, and removed his light-brown, very solid gloves. A thick diamond ring came to light. He cleared his throat again. Lili drew her furs closer about her. She felt the look of the two “lords of creation” fixed upon her. She put on a very haughty expression.

  “Ahem,” said the gentleman next to her. “Do you mind, madam?” She nodded her assent.

  He offered her a heavy cigarette-case, inlaid with gold: “It is, to be sure, a non-smoker; but both the other people ahem.”

  Lili smiled: “No, thanks.”

  “Hm!” And the gentleman shut his case with a snap and deliberately put it away in his pocket.

  The gentleman opposite unfolded his newspaper. Lili looked out of the window.

  A little dainty birch wood upon a hill under the sun. Two diminutive mother-o’-pearl clouds overhead, like wings which a child angel had forgotten in play.

  Niels had returned, and was again sitting in his corner seat.

  “Early spring,” he said; “early spring, Lili.”

  And Grete, who also returned at this moment, repeated the word, “Early spring … I never heard the word Vorfrühling before. A beautiful word. Oh to be out there painting as I used to …!”

  Then she broke off, avoided Lili’s look, and closed her eyes.

  For a whole hour they sat thus silent.