Lili Read online

  When at last the man had vanished, and she was again standing quite alone at daybreak under the grey sky – a metallic reflection of the rising sun percolating through the dreary, leaden covering of cloud – this cry of anguish kept forming itself on her lips: “Let me die!” And, tired out, she dragged herself to the railing, so utterly tired that she could scarcely keep herself upright. She stared down at the dark sea, glittering here and there, without hope, with unseeing eyes, too weak to resort to flight – flight from home, from herself, from nameless horror.

  Quietly she crept back into the sleeping-car. Grete was sleeping soundly and had noticed nothing. Nor would she ever learn of the incident, Lili vowed. She undressed noiselessly, crept back into her bed, and shed helpless tears. When Grete awoke, Lili had exhausted herself with crying, and her face was rigid as a mask. Grete had to help her dress. The lights of Copenhagen were already twinkling. Grete caressed her companion and spoke words of consolation. Lili listened mutely and nodded, but could not get the nightmare picture out of her head: the railway station with the thousand pointing fingers: “There she is! There she is!”

  But nobody at the vast railway station called out her name. Nor was anybody there to meet her. With her coat-collar turned up, and a thick veil round her hat, Lili made her entrance into Copenhagen. Helpless as a child, she clung to Grete the short distance across the platform and the flight of steps leading to the waiting-room. She dared not look up; she trembled violently whenever she passed a group of people, like a person who had committed a crime and thought she was being followed from all sides. The waiting-room had only a few occupants, and they sat down in its extreme corner. Grete had directed a porter to put their luggage in the cloakroom. Then one of Grete’s cousins appeared. He was the only person whom Grete had advised of their arrival. At Lili’s request it had been arranged that they should meet in the waiting-room. Andreas had hardly known this cousin – Lili was afraid of the curious eyes of this semi-stranger – but the cousin greeted them very simply.

  Believing that Grete and Lili would proceed at once to Lili’s married sister, who lived in a suburb of Copenhagen, he had not booked rooms for them. Now, however, Lili suddenly refused to go to her sister. Andreas had last seen her two years before, and Lili had now neither the strength nor the courage to meet the sister who was only a year older than Andreas.

  “Very well,” declared Grete; “then I will see about an hotel,” and went to the telephone. To every inquiry the same answer was returned; we are full up – no room available! It was August and Copenhagen was crowded with summer visitors. Lili lapsed into sheer despair. Eventually, after a dozen refusals had been received, an hotel was found which offered a little room on the top floor. A quarter of an hour later Lili was sitting in this room. The whole day she did not venture to go out, but in the evening, without asking Lili, Grete notified Lili’s brother-in-law of their arrival.

  He came at once to the hotel and wanted to take Lili with him.

  “Give me just a few days longer here. I must get used to the idea of seeing my sister again. I have not the strength yet; I cannot see people – least of all Andreas’ family,” implored Lili, and all urging was in vain.

  “I am afraid,” Lili kept stammering. “I am so afraid of meeting again people who belonged to Andreas, who loved Andreas and whom he loved. It seems as if I have murdered him. I know what I am saying appears absurd. But I feel as if I were proscribed or pursued. I would rather die an outcast!”

  Grete did not stir from Lili’s bed that first night in Copenhagen. It was an endless night, full of perplexity. Nothing was left of the creature who had so confidently left the Women’s Clinic. All sangfroid and all hope had forsaken her. “I must go back to the hospital, where I belong. There is no one elsewhere who loves me and takes me for what I am. I must go back to the white sisters and to the other women in the park, for whom I am no different from themselves – women who need help and are helped.”

  But she was not yet allowed to return to Dresden. She was not allowed to stay in the little room of the hotel. The next morning she was taken to Andreas’ sister.

  XVIII

  Many weeks later Lili recalled to herself her first encounter with Andreas’ sister in the quiet villa by the Gentofter Lake. She began to keep a diary, in order to render an account of her activities and her new beginning of life. The first shocks of her week at Copenhagen were a thing of the past. She had again found peace and even a certain gaiety. She had even had strength to read through the notes which Andreas’ friend in Berlin had made rather less than six months before, at the time when Andreas related the story of his life to his friend throughout a night. Her sister’s son, a young medical student, had encouraged her to start making her own notes. “You would render a service,” he said, “to yourself and many other people if you would now record your thoughts and feelings, just at this time when you want to prepare for serious creative work.” Also the Professor, her distant helper, had advised her to try to write down a record of her life and experience.

  Grete was not living with her. She had taken up quarters with acquaintances in the town, as nobody in Copenhagen was supposed for the present to know of Lili’s presence or even to be aware of her existence. Consequently, Grete told everybody who asked after Andreas that he lay seriously ill in a German hospital. She visited her eminent lawyer who suggested that they should address a petition to the King, begging him to declare invalid, by an act of grace, the marriage once contracted by Grete and Andreas. The petition was delivered at the end of August, and by the end of September Grete and Lili were summoned to appear personally at the hearing. When Grete inquired whether Lili was strong enough to accompany her thence, she declared, beaming with joy: “If I can give you your freedom with so little sacrifice, do you believe that I would think of myself even for a moment?” And this journey to Court was the first common excursion which Grete and Lili undertook. Two ladies appeared before the judges. None but their two lawyers were present. The hearing took place in strict secrecy. The whole proceedings lasted barely half an hour. Lili shrank from describing them, even from recording them. Nor did Grete ever refer to them. And a few days later, on the 6th October, they were apprised of the King’s decree, which declared invalid the marriage concluded between Andreas and Grete.

  Shortly before this Lili had left her sister’s villa and found a retreat in a couple of attics in the house of an acquaintance.

  They were, indeed, very modest attics, in which she led her quiet life as long as she stayed in Copenhagen – as long as she stayed in Denmark, and where she found the necessary composure to put into practice the suggestion made by the son of Andreas’ sister: to begin her Copenhagen diary.

  On the 10th October she began. The first incident she recorded was her meeting with Andreas’ sister.

  “When on the second day of my stay in Copenhagen I went out to see Andreas’ sister – now I know and feel that I may also call her my sister – I entered a room which I did not know, but in which Andreas had often been before. When I opened the door no one was in the room, and when I took the first step I saw my reflection in a mirror on the wall: a big, elegant woman with smiling eyes, with rouged lips, with fresh cheeks, was staring at me. I was satisfied with my reflection. I knew that I had done everything to make myself as handsome as possible. In my own justification. Who could reproach me for resorting to all the beautifying arts to which every woman has a claim. If I should ever paint myself, I would like to retain this moment on canvas. Scarcely had I regarded my own person than I saw behind me another picture, enclosed by the same mirror. A large fjord landscape bathed in sunlight with luxuriant vegetation on both banks. My heart stopped beating. I turned round; I stared at the landscape in the heavy gilt frame on the wall. It was a picture which the young Andreas had painted of his home. I looked round the room to see if anybody was observing me. I saw on all walls of the room pictures of landscapes, towns, streams. I recognized them all as Andreas’ pictures. I saw all
his travels before me. There was the town in Southern France on the Loire, where Andreas and Grete had spent many joyous summer months. And not only Andreas! No, I, Lili, had also lived down there, like a prisoner escaped from the captivity of Andreas’ body. There was the bridge over the Seine in Paris under the threatening sky. Andreas had stood on this bridge … had peered down at the river and wrestled with thoughts of death. And pictures by Grete hung beside them. One of them showed me, Lili, enticed out of Andreas, in woman’s clothes. I approached the picture and could not help stroking it, while tears ran down my cheeks. And I sat down on a chair in front of the table. A big album was lying there. Involuntarily I opened it and turned over the pages. I found the pictures of a fair boy with large blue eyes … pictures of Andreas when he was still a child, innocently happy with his two brothers and his sister.

  “Then the door opened and a lady with dark hair and blue eyes and trembling arms entered the room: Andreas’ sister. I rose to my feet and stood in front of her. And my sister had to look up to me, for I was bigger than she. Then an absurd recollection flashed through me: Andreas and his sister had been the same size. From my sister’s eyes I saw that she was thinking the same thing, and did not know what to make of the idea. I said to her: ‘Good day … be kind to your sister Lili.’

  “Perhaps I should have said something altogether different. I might have said: ‘Be kind to me and love me as you loved Andreas.’ Perhaps I might have said nothing at all. Or perhaps I might have only smiled and said to her: ‘Do not be surprised because I am bigger than our dead brother Andreas, for I wear ever so high heels. And don’t take this amiss, because I want to be as pretty and ladylike as all other well-groomed women.’

  “Then we sat together on the sofa and in front of us lying on the table was the album with the portraits of Andreas as a child. For a long time we held hands. And my sister was kind; she sought for words. Her eyes looked at me, her lips said something. And I did not know whether it was her lips or her eyes which spoke to me: ‘Don’t be angry with me if I cannot yet properly call you by your name of Lili … if I cannot yet arrange my ideas about you … if I only seek for Andreas when I look at you, in your eyes, at your mouth, at your hands, and at your forehead. For I loved Andreas’ eyes and his forehead so much. I kissed his forehead so often. You know that, or don’t you know it? But Andreas knew it. For I am only a year older than Andreas. And when Andreas and I were quite small, he five and I six years old, I was his little mother. There was never a prettier, sweeter brother than he. He played with my dolls, he pushed my doll’s pram. And I called him “Lilleman” – little man. Once when I wrote down the name for Mother and Mother told me that I had spelt “Lilleman” with only one “n” instead of two, I said that my brudderkins Andreas was only a “Lilleman” with one “n”, for he was not a proper man at all. Mother smiled, and you too smiled when you heard it – no … not you … Andreas smiled. He did not know, perhaps, why he laughed. And I did not know why I had said that my Andreas was not a proper man at all. And do you still remember how we used to push our doll’s pram in the woods? Andreas was so fond of pushing the little pram. But he was afraid that others would see him and chaff him about it. And do you remember how I would then place my hands over Andreas’ little white hands? And do you know why I did that? Andreas never knew why, but I can tell you now. I did it only in order that if we were surprised by anybody, I alone could continue pushing the pram, while Andreas could quickly remove his hands from the handle, as if nothing had happened.’ And if my sister did not say this with her lips, she said it with her eyes. But it was no doubt her lips. I only nodded, and kept nodding. I did not weep. I took it quite calmly that for many, many days long she was seeking in me with her large, troubled, woman’s eyes only the picture of Andreas, her little brother, and, as I now believe, found it. Sometimes, in the first days, when we conversed with each other frequently with very painful feelings for many hours, she addressed me as Andreas. I felt then as if I ought to die. Nor could I conceal this from her. And then I would implore her to believe me that I was not Andreas’ murderer, that if Andreas had not died, I should have had to go under with him, and that if I was living now, I owed him every day of my life. Once I said that I really had neither parents nor brothers and sisters, as I was born not up here in the North, but down in Germany. And perhaps if mother had bore me as a girl, she would not have loved me so much as she loved Andreas. It was probably on this day that my sister said to me that everything that had happened in Dresden was an outrage against Nature; had been a gamble with Fate; questioning whether Andreas could not really have survived; or whether it would not have been far better for Andreas to have borne his heavy fate and his tortured body to the bitter end. Then she showed me all the works which she had collected of Andreas, and I perceived that her whole home was really a museum for Andreas, for all the walls of her room were crowded with Andreas’ pictures. ‘Don’t you see,’ said my sister, ‘what an artist we have lost in him – how different he was from you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that only goes to prove how right Andreas was to release me, for we were two beings, Andreas and I. I know that as a person I am far inferior to him, that I shall never be able to achieve what he achieved, that I shall never be able to paint … that I don’t even want to paint. For if I did so I could never approach his standard. But just because of this you can see that the beings who inhabited the body which Mother bore were really two beings. I have exchanged so much for this life which I must now live alone, as you yourself say that Andreas was so much stronger and more capable than I. He lived and worked during a long life, and I dare hardly show myself. And if I show myself, you all call me a joke, a deception, a masquerade. Let us, I beg you, be friends and good sisters for the sake of our dead brother Andreas.’

  “Then there was the day on which she said ‘Lili, perhaps no wrong has been done. It was certainly the will of Andreas that everything should happen as it ought to happen. He was always chivalrous. And hence he released you, and withdrew his life for yours.’

  “It was a terribly hard contest between my sister and me for my recognition as a person, as a sister. And I know how unspeakably hard she found it to believe in me as her sister Lili and to receive me, though it were only out of compassion. I did not make it easy for her, for whenever I showed myself, by my character and by the way in which I spoke, in which I moved, in which I thought, I veiled completely the character of Andreas. He was ingenious, sagacious, and interested in everything – a reflective and thoughtful man. And I was quite superficial. Deliberately so, for I had to demonstrate every day that I was a different creature from him, that I was a woman. A thoughtless, flighty, very superficially-minded woman, fond of dress and fond of enjoyment, yes, I believe even childish. And I can say it calmly now: all this was certainly not merely farcical acting. It was my real character, untroubled, carefree, illogical, capricious, female.

  “During the weeks I spent in my sister’s house I could not overcome my shyness of people and the melancholy which oppressed me so here in Copenhagen. For I noticed, when I regarded myself of an evening alone in my bedroom, I would look tired, done up, and impossible. And I felt that everybody in Copenhagen, even my family, regarded me as a phenomenon. To be sure, people gradually got used to me, were kind to me, and let me have my own way. They tried to persuade me that I need have no fear about my appearance, as I looked like every other woman.

  Nevertheless, I was assailed by a deadly fear if I left the garden with my sister’s son for a short walk. The tiniest smudge on the face intimidated me at that time so much that I would only sally forth with him heavily veiled. I felt like a pariah. Other women could be ugly, could commit every possible crime. I, however, must be beautiful, must be immaculate, else I lost every right to be a woman. Else I should have dishonoured him who had created me, Werner Kreutz. There were days on which I did not want to leave my room, when I felt pursued by everybody in Copenhagen. All the feeling of security and freedom which had been mine in
the clinic in Dresden and also in Berlin completely left me here. And it was so difficult to write to the Professor. However much I wanted to, I could not bring myself to write him, as he would only see in me a despondent, helpless, hopeless person.”

  From the day on which Lili rented her attic in the town, her courage began to rise again. Grete was free, and could begin a new life. Lili was the first to telegraph this glad news to Feruzzi, their friend in Italy. And it was Lili, too, who urged Grete to journey south to join their friend as quickly as she could. Grete smiled. She knew Lili better; she knew that Lili still needed her here. For Lili would have to mix with people and eventually overcome her timidity in the world. So very gradually Grete initiated her most intimate friends into the secret of Lili’s existence, brought Lili into contact with them, until Lili felt sufficiently tranquil to take her first walk through the streets of Copenhagen. Nobody recognized her. She even ventured with a number of friends, who immediately accepted her for what she was, as a woman, into cafés and restaurants. She went alone into shops, and eventually visited a hairdresser’s. And when her friend Inger arrived one day from Berlin, Lili seemed to have quite overcome the serious emotional crisis through which she had been obliged to pass in Copenhagen. Inger, who had not seen Lili since the first operation in Berlin, was delighted at her friend’s appearance. They spent a few carefree, joyous, undisturbed days with each other. They shopped together, visited dressmakers, went on walks and excursions, and finally Lili even ventured with her friend along the “Strög”, Copenhagen’s Oxford Street. No, she need no longer have any fear; nobody saw anything unusual in her; her anonymity in Copenhagen seemed to be secured from all dangers. When, therefore, strolling arm-in-arm with Inger along the Rathausplatz she saw two of Andreas’ studio comrades approaching, without being recognized by them, and when she heard one whispering to the other: “By Jove, what a fine pair of legs!” meaning Lili’s legs, she swallowed the remark with avidity, not only as a compliment, but as one hundred per cent recognition of her identity as a woman.