Lili Read online

  “Now I feel that I am returning to life – although I am still lying with the tube inside me and my legs tightly bound.

  “I shall never forget all that sister Ellen and sister Frieda have been to me during these dark days. They were my good fairies. They have a place in my heart.

  “Little Ilse brings me fresh flowers from the garden every day. In the evening she or Sister Frieda sits with me. Then the gramophone plays. How music soothes my nerves!

  “More than once it seemed as if the tube had got out of position; but it was always pushed back. I long so much to be able to move my legs a little! Moreover, I know that I shall not go out into the garden until everything is over. When the window is open and the scent of blossoms is streaming in, I long so terribly for my seat on the lawn under my beautiful magnolia tree.

  “Thank you a thousand times for your letter.”

  3rd June.

  “Yesterday Teddybearkins was again with me. She was the purest sprite, laughing and relating stupidities. I had just had my breakfast. As I had a very poor appetite, she ate everything up in a twinkling. Then she sat on the window-seat, dangled her long, pretty legs out of the window, and smoked one cigarette after another. Suddenly we heard the folding-door outside being opened. Like a flash she was out of the window. The next moment, the good Professor, accompanied by Matron, entered the room.

  “He certainly noticed the cigarette-smoke and looked at me rather strangely. I could not, of course, utter a sound.

  “‘Look what an appetite Frau Lili has got now!’ said Matron, beaming and pointing to the empty plates. They were scarcely outside the room before I heard a ringing laugh. Smoking in the rooms is strictly forbidden. But I surmised that out of sympathy with me, Matron explained to the good Professor that I was not the sinner.

  “Early this morning Teddybearkins was here again. And then I could take my revenge. She had brought her friend, the lady doctor, with her. Mrs Teddybear then told us that she was once obliged to wait several hours for a consultation with the Professor. ‘Here one learns to wait,’ she had then said to the Professor. ‘Yes, that is the first thing I teach young ladies,’ the friend answered, quick as lightning. And then they both declared with one voice that it was really ludicrous to be afraid of the Professor, that my respect for him was too comical for words. He was the most amiable man; but a modern woman who was afraid of one man was a ridiculous creature. They had scarcely finished chaffing me before the door opened and the Professor was standing in the room. And both my modern champions of the sex withdrew blushing and almost panic-stricken. Not until long after the Professor had left did they venture to put in an appearance. Teddybearkins was then very dejected. But the learned madam of the medical faculty again rode the high horse. ‘That’s the way to subjugate slave natures. It won’t suit me.’ ‘But why did you not remain?’ I asked with curiosity. ‘I could not leave my poor little friend in the lurch!’ For the first time I laughed heartily again: It really hurt me to do so. And Teddybearkins wore a very guilty expression.

  “Shall I have a line from you tomorrow to tell me when you are coming?”

  “4th June.

  “I have got over everything now. The objectionable tube has been taken away. Early this morning. Suddenly the Professor came in – with Sister Margaret, who was carrying a tray with instruments. If I see instruments I have palpitations. But this time everything happened so quickly that I had scarcely time to think about it. In a few minutes everything was settled. I began to whimper with joy, like a foolish little girl. ‘Does it still hurt?’ asked the Professor. ‘No, no – on the contrary.’ Then he had to smile. ‘If everything functions normally, you will have an injection,’ he said shortly, and departed.

  “When he returned two hours later, I was beaming with happiness. Everything had passed off normally.

  “‘Now I am reassured,’ he said. I saw that he was satisfied with me.

  “I learned afterwards that all the nurses had worn very anxious expressions the whole day. If everything had not been in order after the removal of the tube, it would have been necessary to operate upon me again immediately, and it was doubtful whether my strength would have proved adequate.

  “What a wonderful feeling to be able to stretch one’s legs again! After lying still for so long my whole body still feels as if it were paralysed. But I am deliriously happy now, because I know that you will be with me in a few days. Perhaps by then I shall be out in the garden again. Oh, Grete, how beautiful life is! And what a stroke of good fortune that I have been able to spend this lovely summer here! And if there should be no second summer, I have had my fill of happiness. At least I shall have known what midsummer happiness is like!”

  “5th June.

  “I hasten to write you a few lines. It will be the last letter that can reach you before you leave Paris,

  “Today I was to try to get up; but my legs would not support me. Sisters Frieda and Ellen had eventually to lift me out of bed and place me in the armchair. Still, it was lovely.

  “The armchair is close to the window, and I can look out into the garden. They have promised to let me go out into the garden again in the morning.

  “I really look very tired. I tell you this only so that you shouldn’t have a fright when you see me again.

  “To be able to sit under my magnolia tree again! “There you will find me when you come here in three days’ time – in my Garden of Eden.”

  XVI

  Once more Lili was lying in her chaise-longue outside in the park. It was now summer. Bees flew humming from flower to flower, and the birds were singing in the trees. The silver birches were now clad in their richest foliage, and when the wind rustled through them it seemed to Lili as though little bells tinkled.

  Then someone called her name “Lili!” And the next moment she was in Grete’s arms.

  Then followed days full of happiness and security. Grete came each morning early and watched over every step which Lili now began to take timidly upon the summery paths of the park. And Lili grew visibly better with every day that passed. Soon she could stroll through the park again, free from all pain and all fatigue. Then, arm in arm, like two affectionate sisters, the pair went on voyages of exploration into the town.

  One evening, as she was entering the park with Grete, the Professor met her.

  “I am quite well now, Professor. But …” She hesitated. “Well?”

  “Could I not stay here a few months longer with you, in case you should want to operate upon me again?”

  He looked at her with a smile and shook his head. “No; it is high time for you to go out into the world, and try your wings.”

  The same evening Lili found a bird’s nest. It was built under the roof of the covered passage which led from the

  Professor’s private quarters to the clinic. A small family of sparrows. The father sparrow and the mother sparrow were twittering and the young sparrows were chirping. Perhaps a little family quarrel, thought Lili. Suddenly a young one fell out of the nest and remained lying helpless on the path. It fluttered its embryo wings and tried to fly, but in vain. The wings were not strong enough to bear it. And the parents came hurrying out of the nest on to the path and hovered about their young one. Their shrill twittering sounded a note of real terror. They could not get the youngster back into the nest. Then Lili stooped down, took the little bird in her hand, stroked it carefully, and felt the little heart beating against her hand. Suddenly the Matron was standing beside her.

  “But why are you weeping, Frau Lili?”

  Mutely Lili handed her the little bird. “It has fallen out of the nest and cannot yet fly. And the parents cannot help it. It makes me think of myself. I too cannot yet …”

  She gave the Matron the bird, and the Matron fetched a ladder and laid the bird again in the nest among its parents and brothers and sisters.

  The day of departure from Dresden passed off much more quietly than Grete had anticipated. When the Professor came to bid Lili farewell,
she said to him simply and calmly: “I owe you, Professor, not only my life, but also hope for the future, and all the confidence which I am now feeling. I will now try to plunge into the world outside – but if I am in need, may I come back?”

  The Professor only pressed her hand. “Write and tell me where you are, how you are getting on, and what you are doing. And regularly. Tell me everything. And if you want my help, you will always find a refuge and friends here.”

  Lili bade farewell to the Matron and the other nurses. When they left the porch and she saw her luggage piled high on the car, she thought with relief how simply and naturally everything was now arranging itself, and how unpathetic and undramatic life was when seen in daylight. The day before, and also the whole night, she had been full of apprehension at this approaching moment of farewell; full of fear and apprehension of life outside the sheltered clinic. Now, in the twinkling of an eye, she was sitting in the train with Grete on the journey to Berlin.

  And only many, many months later did she realize what a harsh transition from the peace of the Women’s Clinic to the outside world was the sojourn in Berlin. She understood subsequently why she had been sent out of her paradise on the Elbe into the noisiest of all cities that she had ever seen. For these Berlin days were intended to give her an opportunity to test herself, to prove her vitality and her capacity for living. She stayed in a hotel, quite close to the clinic in which she, as a man, had been lying a few months before. She felt no curiosity to revisit this place of transition, as she subsequently called it. Nor had she any desire to visit the friends of that time. To move, to live, to gaze and wander unknown and anonymous among the millions of the giant city, to grow accustomed to the workaday rhythm of others, so that she could one day share in this rhythm herself – such was the deepest meaning of this Berlin sojourn.

  She was not always accompanied by Grete on her strolls through the Tiergarten, through the museums and through the noisiest and most animated streets. She often wanted to be alone, thrown quite back on her own resources, in order to find her feet in the whirlpool of Berlin. For that was it – she must find her own feet, in order to demonstrate to herself that she would be able to go her own way when left to herself. Grete let her have her way. She was secretly glad at Lili’s participation in the great and little things of the day, although she certainly suspected that Lili was having the hardest possible struggle with herself during these Berlin days.

  Lili Elbe, Copenhagen, October 1930

  So it was. There were days through which Lili dragged a tortured and lacerated heart, days when she was oppressed by numerous fears. It is so easy, she would then think, to bear one’s anonymous fate here among utter strangers; but how would everything shape as soon as this anonymity ceased, as soon as she was obliged to appear in those circles whence Andreas has vanished, to which Andreas had belonged? She thought of her family in Denmark. Supposing she never returned there? Would that not be the simplest? Would it not be better for her, the new creature without a past and thus without a family, to renounce everything connected with Andreas? To renounce her old friends and relations in Denmark? To renounce even the friends in Paris, in order to start a new life right from the beginning?

  She surrendered herself to such thoughts with fanaticism, with an obstinacy that eventually suggested to her the question as to whether she ought not to part from Grete for ever, secretly, slipping away without a word? Or ought she to speak to Grete, to tell her in quiet, simple words that their ways must now part? But hardly had she addressed this question to herself than she shrank from the probe. Life and the world about her, everything would become empty and cold if she should renounce everything that once surrounded Andreas. Would it not even be cowardice, the confession of a guilty feeling, if she should break all the ties with the past – with the past of Andreas? Would not Grete become lonely if she should part from her for ever?

  These days of futile speculation were followed by nights when Lili lay sleepless and pondered upon everything that had happened to her – to Grete – to Andreas. And the more intimately, the more longingly, the more ardently she let her thoughts wander through the corridors of the past, the more terrified she became. For she perceived that her whole mental life had been really obliterated from the day when she had been newly created in the city by the Elbe.

  A horror came upon her when she saw her questions confronting her without answer, as if before a mist – a mist which became thicker and thicker and eventually extinguished everything which had formerly been. Faces which Andreas had known faded away. A desert surrounded her, an empty waste wherein not even phantoms emerged from the past.

  During such nights she felt close to madness; she dared not confide all that she went through at this time to another person, not even to Grete. Only two names grew clearer and clearer in her present anguish. And to the names were attached two faces, one of which belonged to Claude, and the other to Feruzzi, the young Italian officer, who, an age ago, as she thought now, although it was really no more than a year, had been with them together in Rome. Feruzzi, with whom Grete felt some secret tie, as if instinctively imploring the protection of a man, without being conscious of it in her own mind and without even mentioning his name during these latter weeks. And the more ardently Lili conjured up in her heart the picture of the Italian friend, the more distinctly she felt his features mingling with the picture of Andreas.

  All of a sudden it dawned upon her what a profound and strange secret was bound up with the vow which, on a far-off evening in Rome, when Andreas, Grete, and

  Feruzzi were sitting together, Andreas himself had taken: that Grete and the wonderful Feruzzi should be united because they belonged truly to each other, and that Andreas should disappear.

  One night Lili suddenly woke up, stole softly to Grete, and took her hand.

  Grete was sleeping. She awoke in a fright and saw Lili beside her.

  “Have I awakened you?” asked Lili.

  “Oh, I was having such a beautiful dream!” said Grete. “Where were you in your dreams?” asked Lili.

  Grete answered: “I think we were in Rome.”

  “And Feruzzi was with you, wasn’t he?” asked Lili. Then Grete put her arm round Lili and Lili her arm round Grete. And neither spoke another word.

  The next morning Lili wrote a short and calm note to Feruzzi:

  “Dear Friend,

  “I will only tell you that Andreas has kept his word. He is dead. I know that Grete has not yet told you anything about it. Write her and do not neglect her.”

  Underneath she signed her name, “Lili.”

  After about a week she returned to Dresden – to Lili’s home. And again they went like two sisters through the park of the Women’s Clinic, and the Professor rejoiced in them. Again they said farewell, and, at his behest, proceeded to a quiet woodland village in the Erzgebirge, stayed in a little hotel, lived in the society of other people who were strangers, and, like them, seeking a few weeks’ convalescence. One day a letter came from Italy for Grete. Grete gave the letter to Lili to read. Feruzzi wrote to say that he was at the service of both of them, wherever they were and wherever he was, and that if they called he would come, and that his heart belonged to them both. Lili felt this day for the first time in her life as a woman that she had paid off some of her debt to Grete and that she had bestowed some happiness upon two other persons. And then Grete learned what vow Andreas had sworn in Rome regarding himself and her and Feruzzi.

  On this day Lili said: “Now I have made such progress that we can both go home.”

  “Home?” asked Grete.

  “I mean … Denmark, so that you may become free of a person who is long since dead, from Andreas, and so that both of us, you and I, can begin a new life.”

  A week later they were travelling northward.

  XVII

  In the sleeping-car bound for Copenhagen – Grete was lying in slumber most peaceful and profound – Lili suddenly awoke from a terrible nightmare. She did not know w
hat she had dreamed, but it seemed to her as if she had been on the point of suffocation. Cautiously she opened the window. The ferry was in the midst of the sea. It was a grey, starless August night. And as she stared out, she saw a picture in her mind’s eye. The chief railway station of Copenhagen full of people, and all crying out, “Lili Elbe!’ and pointing at her. And a nameless horror gripped her. She could endure the sleeping-compartment no longer. She dressed, and in the semi-darkness found her fur cloak, which had been given her ages ago, in the early spring, in Berlin. She stole out of the car, and crept along the feebly illuminated gangway, up the damp steps of the ferry, and on deck. Not a person was to be seen; everybody was asleep. The only sound that could be heard was the churning up of the water by the propeller. The mast lights were burning dim. The funnels of the steamer were spurting black smoke. From the refreshment rooms of the ship came the reflection of electric light. A few passengers were sitting there. She leaned over for fear of meeting familiar faces, of being recognized by anybody here. Like one pursued she crept out of the beam of light into a dark corner. She shivered. “No, no”, she moaned. “I cannot go to Copenhagen.” And the vision she had seen in the sleeping-car below would not leave her. Her imagination painted the picture in colours ever more vivid, and eventually she kept hearing out of the rhythm of the pounding ship’s engines the cry: “There she is! There she is! There she is …!”

  Suddenly she heard footsteps. She dared not look up. She crouched closer in her corner. Like a black shadow she saw a man come striding by. His footsteps echoed right across the deck, died away, and then came closer, and then quite near. The man stopped just in front of her refuge, and struck a match in order to light a cigarette. The flare of the match cast a lurid light over the man’s face. Involuntarily Lili had peered into the flame. She pressed both her hands before her mouth so as not to cry out. As if in a fever the thought throbbed in her: This man recognized you, and you know people. She shut her eyes; she seemed to be imploring the grey heavens above: “Let me die.” And now it was this shriek of anguish which accompanied the rhythm of the engine like a perpetual cry: “Let me die! Let me die! Let me die …!”