Lili Read online

  The turret clock chimed again. She heard it many times that night.

  When the first streaks of dawn came stealing through the curtains, Lili was already wide awake. It was six o’clock, and at seven o’clock sister Hannah came in and prepared her for the operation. Then there was a long, tedious wait, during which she hardly dared to move. She strained her ears for every step in the corridor, every sound that penetrated thence, and every noise; but nobody stopped outside her door. Had they forgotten her? At length the Matron came into the room and conveyed to her the doleful news that she must wait yet a few days longer, as the invalid in question who had been operated upon had “yielded no suitable material” for Lili.

  Disappointment and suspense would have brought her to the verge of tears if the Matron had not informed her at the same time that she was to be allotted a new room which had a large window overlooking the garden and a sunny aspect. And when Grete arrived a few minutes later the removal to the new room was immediately begun.

  Again they strolled arm in arm through the park of the Women’s Clinic. How quickly everything here had become familiar to them, even the white-clad nurses, whose morning greetings they gratefully acknowledged! And Lili smiled happily on the young pregnant women in the crocus costumes. Now and then young doctors passed, and they too wished her: “Good morning, madam.”

  Lili was happy. Here she was walking quite naturally like a young woman among other young women. She was a creature without any past. Had she ever looked any different from now? She smiled. Then suddenly she saw Andreas in her mind’s eye, how he had regarded charming and elegantly dressed women in Paris, and had almost envied them their elegance. How dull and insipid, he had often said, was male attire! Now all this was past and over obliterated as if by a gesture of her master, her creator, her Professor. There was no longer an Andreas; he could never return. Now between him and her stood Werner Kreutz. She felt secure and salvaged.

  Here in this little state within a state men ruled with absolute power, with the Professor at their head. The Matron was the single exception. In spite of her maternal benevolence, she was a very decisive lady, whose energetic profile under the silver-grey hair might recall the Bourbons in their splendid period. Her personality compelled respect – she was the only person in the Women’s Clinic who enjoyed, to a certain extent, the confidence of Werner Kreutz.

  One morning she intercepted Lili and told her that it would certainly not last much longer. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow, the operation could be performed.

  “Tell me, Matron,” asked Lili abruptly, “why are really healthy ovaries removed from a woman?”

  “But, Miss Lili,” answered the Matron, “it would take too long to explain this to you, especially as you do not possess the necessary anatomical knowledge to understand it. But be easy in your mind, the Professor knows what he is doing. Leave everything to him. Moreover, you need not have any fear, as your operation will be quite a minor one.”

  Lili laughed.

  “I have no fear at all, Matron. In Berlin I was also told that it was only quite a minor operation which was to be performed. And subsequently I learned that I was nearly an hour and a half on the operating-table. Whether this new operation is dangerous or not does not bother me in the least. I have not come here to die. Of that I feel certain. I could have done that without the help of the Professor.”

  The Matron drew Lili close to her. “You will be very pleased to know, Miss Lili, that the new ovaries which the Professor proposes to ingraft upon you will give you new vitality and new youth. The woman who is to be operated upon is, in fact, scarcely twenty-seven years old.”

  Lili’s voice trembled with excitement. “Is it really true, Matron, that the age of a woman is determined by her ovaries? Is that really the decisive factor for a woman?”

  The Matron patted Lili. “How curious you are! But if you don’t believe me, you can ask the Professor.”

  “Yes, of course. Why have I not done so long ago? I will ask him this very evening.”

  But when the Matron asked on the following morning whether the Professor had satisfied her curiosity, Lili felt very ashamed. “No,” she said; “I forgot all about it.”

  The Matron lifted her forefinger and laughingly threatened: “Why not say quite honestly that you did not dare to do so!”

  “No, I did not dare to do so,” confessed Lili.

  “It needn’t make you blush, my dear Miss Lili. Why should you be any different from the other women in the hospital?”

  Two days later Grete filled many pages of her diary. This was the day on which the great operation was performed on Lili. And the night was far advanced when Grete wrote:

  “At nine o’clock this morning I arrived at the clinic. The Professor had told me yesterday evening that the operation was to take place today. Cautiously I peered into Lili’s room. Lili lay in a white night-dress in her white bed. She was quietly sleeping. She had been given a morphia injection. I cautiously retired to the long corridor, where nurses were waiting for the Professor. Nurse

  Margaret came out of the boardroom, wheeling a table on castors, with ether bottles, cotton-wool, and instruments under glass cases. The Matron appeared and cast a searching eye over everything. The head doctor and a number of young assistant doctors came out of the operating-theatre. Everybody spoke softly. A strange stillness reigned in the broad, white corridor. A greenish light drifted through the high window, through which could be seen the still bare trees of the park, and, lit up by the morning sun, the wing in which the Professor’s quarters were situated. A covered gangway connected the first storey with the main department of the clinic. Thence all eyes were directed.

  “‘Now we are still waiting for the Professor,’ said a little nurse to me in a whisper. I could scarcely control my agitation, and stared continuously out of the window at the Professor’s quarters.

  “Suddenly there was a movement among the nurses. Involuntarily I seized the little nurse’s hand. Everything around me was in commotion. I saw the Professor approaching with rapid steps, and the next moment I heard him greeting everybody with a polite, ‘Good morning’. He was very ceremonious and unapproachable, even towards me, although we had always been on very friendly terms. I did not venture to address him, nor even to follow him, when, in company with the head doctor and the Matron, he disappeared into Lili’s room. He resembled a general on the eve of a decisive battle.

  “Minutes passed. I stood by the open door looking upon the garden. The morning sunshine streamed in. I was no doubt very pale. The air was of spring-like warmth. A few birds were singing in the trees. A golden haze hung over them, and a soft caressing wind blew in, smelling of grass and earth and mingling with the strange, all-penetrating hospital odour. Then the door of Lili’s room was opened a little, and a hand was put out. Sister Frieda, who was standing in front of the door, hastily took a bottle of ether from the movable table, handed it in, and the door noiselessly closed again. Soon the sickly smell of ether escaped from the room and penetrated everywhere. I felt as if I were going to faint; but I pulled myself together.

  “An endless time seemed to elapse, and then the door opened again. The Professor and the Matron came out. The Professor took my hand and looked into my eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said softly and disappeared to make further visits. The ambulance was pushed out of the door, followed by two nurses. Underneath a white covering lay Lili. At first I could not recognize her face; it lay under the ether mask. Then the white procession disappeared along the white corridor into the operating-theatre. How long would it last? I kept saying to myself: Don’t think, don’t think. What are they doing now to this poor creature? In what form will Lili be returned to me? How cheerfully she had looked forward to this moment! A miracle was to be worked on her. Would it succeed?

  “Restless, I went out into the garden, and strolled along all the paths of the great park, but could find no peace. I went back to Lili’s room. All the windows were open. The spri
ng sunshine was flooding the room. But I could not stop there. Finally I sat down in an armchair in the corridor and waited. There I was able to see everything that was going on. It was so quiet. Now Lili was lying under her Master’s knife. No, I was not afraid. I believed in him, as Lili blindly believed in him, as in a higher Power. And I thought of this man, whom I had recently tried to paint.

  “And now I realized how all my powers had been bent upon an effort to retain this masculine head in a portrait. What power radiated from this strange person? Here in this Women’s Clinic was a god, whom all feared, whom all revered. In what did his power consist? And I recalled his face. Was it really handsome? No; strange, rather. No feature of his face was really handsome. Everything, even the eyes, were irregular. And yet a striking harmony characterized the whole, a force, an emanation of force. For days I had tried to capture this face, to retain it in many hasty sketches. I knew all his attitudes, all his movements. This armchair had been my daily observation-post. Opposite his office. I knew precisely the time he came and the time he went. His visiting times, and his promenades through the rooms. “I closed my eyes in order to collect my thoughts. I saw distinctly the slender back of the Professor in the long white overall. I saw him in my mind’s eye, as he would throw back his head with a sudden jerk. I saw him as he would advance towards me, his hands outstretched and a stern smile playing about his lips. Every time I had seen this smile I had felt as if I must weep. I had seen so many men – smiling, handsome men, important men, and others. This weeping, this fear, all this emotion had nothing to do with my heart. I knew that. For I had never for a moment been in love with this man. And yet how often had I cried myself to sleep, thinking of him! Yesterday, in the centre of the town, among strange people, I had a vision of this smile. And it flashed across me that I would gladly sacrifice my life for this man.

  “But why, whence came this feeling? And then I told myself that I was only one of the many who believed in this man through the mere force of belief, who believed in the helper in him through their belief in some kind of helper. As I now sat here in the armchair in the white corridor I realized that my feeling for this man was nothing less than the feeling which Lili cherished for him in the deepest recesses of her heart. With her it is certainly still slumbering, for she is as yet merely a vague being. Vorfrühling: early spring! This word suddenly sounded like music to my ears. Would Lili really see it?

  “I was still sitting with closed eyes when suddenly the door of the operating theatre was flung open and Werner Kreutz was standing in front of me … still in the india-rubber apron. His gait was tired. He held out both his hands and gave me a broad, broad, benevolent smile. I only heard his words: ‘Everything has passed off well.’ I clasped both his hands. And I could only stammer: ‘I thank you.’

  “Not until a few hours later did I learn what had happened inside. To find words in which to put it is unspeakably difficult. A whole human life which I shared with another floats before me as I write these words. A human being who was born a man, who was my husband, my friend, my comrade – has now become a woman, a complete woman. And this human being was never intended to be anything but a woman. Like a sacrificial animal he has been dragged along with me for years until this German doctor brought him help! And today this human being has laid here bleeding under the knife of his helper. His body was opened, and disclosed a state of things which the craziest imagination would hardly have considered possible. The body of this human being contained stunted and wilted ovaries which were not able to develop because an inscrutable Fate had also given him the others, the male germ glands. This secret of existing as a double being, hitherto divined by no doctor, has only been unveiled today, after Werner Kreutz had guessed at its existence in Paris, and like a wizard deciphered it.

  “I can find no other words with which to express my meaning. And now this poor creature, so heavily handicapped by Fate, has had removed from its body what had formed such an obstacle, thus enabling it now to develop as its blood had dictated for years, namely, as a woman, and it has been equipped with unimpaired female germ glands from another, a strange and quite young creature. Then this tortured body was sewn up again, and now nothing more is left, not a particle is left of my life’s comrade and fellow-wayfarer – Andreas. He is the dead brother of Lili, who now lives, of the woman who has shared flesh and blood with him for almost a lifetime.

  “But the thought which haunts me is that though Andreas may now be extinguished, and though Lili may have risen like a phoenix from the ashes, yet in the world outside Andreas is still living in the eyes of the law, and I am his wife. Who is capable of grasping this horror, this fantastic idea, this unique happening? She whom it concerns most nearly, Lili, is still lying lulled in the mists of merciful morphia.

  “What will life now bring her? Will the miracle of the doctor, the miracle of his art, be great and strong enough to be perpetuated in Lili’s life? All of us have been instruments of this fate. I not least. For it was I who many years ago enticed Lili out of Andreas, in wanton play, as a chance masquerade! And it was I who continued playing this game with Andreas, until what had been play became earnest, most mysteriously earnest. But I must not think of this now; I cannot help thinking of the one person who never really believed in Andreas, but only in Lili, Lili’s most intimate friend, Claude. What will he think when he sees her again?”

  There is very little that Lili can remember of this day, which henceforth she called the day of her proper birth. When she opened her eyes for the first time, she saw a few sunbeams stealing through a rift in the drawn window-curtains. Then her eyes closed again and she slept long and heavily. When she awoke again, it seemed as if she had been dreaming. Here, to the left of her bed, in front of the window, she had seen the silhouette of the Professor, and beside him the head doctor. The Professor had asked something. Good! “Have you a good bite?”

  She had answered with a humble: “No, Professor,” suppressing with difficulty a smile.

  And then the Professor had ordered: “Count. Either in Danish or French, just as you like.”

  She had started counting in German: “One, two, three,” when an ether mask had been slipped over her face. She found it difficult to breathe. She went on counting: “Four, five, six, seven.” The counting became harder and slower. When she came to eighteen, she felt as if she were suffocating. She heard the voice of the Professor: “Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two …”

  His voice sounded above her like the ticking of a clock, which grew louder and louder, until everything became one continuous buzz and she lost consciousness. Was it a dream? Or had she been stupefied? But why had they left her lying here so long without operating upon her? Until she had awakened with this unpleasant ether taste in her mouth? “You haven’t any bite?”

  She heard this question again. But the smile gave way to a terrible pain. With a shriek she opened her eyes. The Matron was standing beside her, smiling to her and whispering: “You have come through all right. It went off splendidly. Now everything is going on well.” But her eyes had already closed again, and she was sleeping. When she was awakened again by pains which became more and more acute, Grete was standing beside her with a bunch of red tulips. A nurse came in, gave her an injection, and she went off to sleep again. Once the Professor stood beside her, held her hand, and said something that she did not understand. But she saw his eyes, and with a drowsy feeling sank into oblivion again.

  That day and the night which followed it were passed in the mists of morphia. When she awoke, the pains were there, but a sister was also beside her with a morphia syringe. She was conscious of acute thirst. Moist cottonwool was laid upon the parched mouth. But the injections of morphia caused even thirst to be forgotten.

  Thus morning came. Everything had really passed off very well, and peaceful, natural sleep soon enfolded her again. The following days stole by softly and mistily. If she was attacked by pain, it was repelled by narcotics. If she opened her eyes, she would stare in front o
f her as if astonished at everything that had happened to her. Gradually she became accustomed even to the pain; she told herself that these pains were the price to be paid for what had been bestowed upon her, her own life, her woman’s life. The prospect was fair and hopeful. Her white room in the Women’s Clinic seemed to her like an earthly paradise. The Professor was the guardian of her paradise. Morning and evening he stopped for a few moments by her bedside. Between these visits all was expectation.

  Grete was always at hand during these days. From the door leading to the garden she painted the white birch trees and the garden paths. If she saw the Professor coming, she would hurry back to Lili.

  It was only of the nights that Lili was afraid. Then Grete was far away, and the flowers which she had brought had been removed from the room. Flowers had also come from Paris, from Elena, and from Claude. And letters – these letters were the sole companions of her long, long nights. And the turret clock striking the hours. And … the pains! They started almost regularly every night. Her bed would then become a glowing oven. She would lay there bathed in perspiration. The Professor had ordered her to sleep; but she was to have no more morphia. Other sedatives were administered to her; but they were effective only for a few hours. Then she would lay awake watching for daybreak.

  And the day became fair again, and again there was the feeling of blissful expectation. She listened for every footfall – she had long since been able to detect the footfall of her helper amidst all other footfalls. But he did not always stop at her door. Other patients had need of him. Then she would wait patiently until her turn came. Here in the clinic everybody was waiting for the Professor. Everybody had to share in him, and each woman received her share, even if it were only a tiny share. When he smiled she forgot all her pain. Sometimes he was strict, and then she felt a mystical fear of him. And she divined that he behaved quite differently towards her than towards Andreas. He never hinted at the past by so much as a word. Was she only Lili for him? Sometimes she felt a craving to ask him about it, but she never dared to do so.