Lili Read online

  They drank the toast.

  Niels accompanied his friend to his hotel. When Andreas found himself alone in his room, his mental and bodily torments overwhelmed him, and he collapsed.

  *

  By the next morning Andreas had recovered his equilibrium, outwardly at least.

  Punctual to the minute he called on Professor Arns. “Since I saw you yesterday I have been talking to Professor Kreutz. We are both agreed that a young colleague here, a surgeon of repute, ought to treat you first. When that is over, there will no longer be any obstacle to your reception in the Professor’s clinic. That means, it is not you who will be received there.”

  “Not I?”

  “Kreutz runs a women’s clinic. Your case”– the Professor then laughed a little – “is somewhat unusual, even for us doctors. This means, therefore, that when the surgeon here dismisses you, you will be no longer Andreas Sparre, but …”

  “Lili!”

  “Just so! Hardenfeld has told me that he too regards the masculine element in you as by far the least considerable part of your being, which, in his opinion from the emotional standpoint, reveals between eighty and one hundred per cent of feminine characteristics. The examination of your blood has yielded a similar result. I will, of course, be present at the operation which we shall perform on you here in Berlin. Before this happens we will take a few photographs of you, for scientific reasons. Dr Hardenfeld is now expecting you. Tomorrow morning, then, you will go into the surgeon’s nursing-home.” Saying which, Professor Arns gave Andreas the exact address of the nursing home.

  VI

  Late that evening Andreas was again sitting with Niels and Inger.

  After the three of them had finished dinner, during which husband and wife had intentionally avoided putting questions to Andreas as to the outcome of the various medical examinations, Andreas lit a cigarette, rose to his feet, and extinguished all superfluous lights, leaving only a solitary electric candle, suspended in an alcove, to cast a feeble light.

  He sat down in a convenient armchair, and without any introduction began in a free and easy style.

  “Yesterday evening, Niels, I pondered very deeply over your words.”

  “Over my words?”

  “Yes; as you said, the most important thing at the moment is for me to be perfectly clear in my own mind – I am using your own words – how this strange, fantastic change which I have been undergoing from my childhood onwards has been taking place …”

  “And how Lili has gradually gained the upper hand over you,” said Niels, finishing the sentence.

  ‘Well, then, I did ponder over this last night; especially as it is by no means unlikely that the present night will be the last night of …”

  “Nonsense!” interrupted Inger.

  “Let it pass, Inger,” interposed Niels. “I know what Andreas means.”

  Andreas laughed. “However that may be, Inger, it is my farewell night. And in order that you may perfectly understand this, and supposing that you both have as much patience as I have, I propose relating in detail how all this has happened … I have made a few notes, so as not to lose the thread of my story. Who knows what the morrow will bring – whether I shall be still I, or whether I, obliterated to a certain extent as Andreas, the person who is now sitting in front of you, will start losing all memory of myself, in order to make room for another person.”

  Niels rose to his feet, paced up and down a few times, and then remained standing in front of Andreas. He too had now become serious.

  “I thought it would be something like that. And as you know me to be a level-headed person, who mostly takes things as he finds them – that is, without letting his feelings run away with him – incidentally I have not yet forgotten the shorthand of my student days – I should like to suggest, if I am not hurting your feelings, that you let me take down in shorthand the curriculum vitae which you are about to relate … He broke into a laugh in which Andreas joined and then Inger.

  “A perfect opportunity,” exclaimed Andreas, amused. “Your reporting will not affect me in any way whatever. On the contrary!”

  “Then fire away!” With these words Niels settled himself in an armchair, and produced a pencil and notebook. Inger reclined on the sofa and smoked her cigarette.

  “I will tell you the story of my life, like an accurate chronicler,” began Andreas, “so let it commence with my parents, whom you have both met. If I should grow tedious now and then, or too introspective …”

  “I will run my blue pencil through it afterwards, as your Tacitus.” Niels completed the sentence.

  “Father’s ancestors came from Mallorca to Jutland. From him I have my dark eyes. He was not a man of bracing character, but rather effeminate, much concerned with himself and his own comfort. Mother, on the other hand, was a hale woman, with healthy nerves, a Nordic blonde type, perhaps even somewhat hard in her temperament, an efficient housewife and a good mother. She died before Father, quite suddenly. Father was inconsolable. Their marriage had survived many storms. After Mother’s death he revered her like a saint.

  “She had four children, three sons and one daughter; I being the youngest.

  “I was a very happy child. Everybody pampered me, even my brothers and sister. I was a great epicure, and could eat nothing but my favourite dishes. From my father I never heard a harsh word in all my life. Whenever a slap was necessary, it was administered by Mother. For the rest, she vied with Father in spoiling me, as all youngsters are doubtless spoiled. Mother loved to dress me up. I was never clad finely enough for her. Sometimes I was not allowed to romp about with my playmates on account of my ‘best clothes’, and this was the greatest distress I had to endure.

  “As a little chap I had long, fair locks, snow-white Skin, and dark eyes, so that strangers often took me for a girl. In a kindergarten, where, as the only boy, I played with eleven girls, I was the cleverest of all the children in knitting and embroidery. As a five-year-old, at the annual prize-giving of our kindergarten I received my first mark of public distinction for fancy-work.

  “As an eight-year-old, my two brothers often bantered me on account of my ‘girl’s voice’. I took this very much to heart, and thereafter made great efforts to acquire a proper youthful bass.

  “Looking back on things now, it seems as if my childish voice was my first dissimulation.

  “In other respects my childhood was nothing but sunshine. With my brothers I played with tin soldiers, with my sister with dolls. No one saw anything strange in the fact that I was fond of pushing my sister’s toy perambulator, as many brothers who have sisters do this.

  “At nine years of age I went to the same grammar school as my brothers. None of us was a model pupil. My favourite subjects were French and Latin, but I was also one of the most assiduous users of the school library, which gave me a high place in our headmaster’s opinion. Nevertheless, I was usually the last but one in the class. The old man himself taught us French. He spoke the language correctly, with an excellent accent. Once during the summer holidays he went to Paris, and afterwards he told us wrathfully that he did not think much of the Parisians, as they neither understood him nor he understood them, ending his anecdote with the words: ‘And now you know, boys, that I can speak French.’ He was a droll chap.

  “Of a different stamp was my Latin teacher. He was a most enlightened man, who not only taught us Latin grammar, but took great pains to familiarize us with the intellectual atmosphere of antiquity and the art of the ancients. He it was who first opened my eyes to the flawless beauty of Greek sculpture. It was only a vague and remote comprehension. But I can remember as if it were yesterday, when bathing with boys of my own age I would often blush at seeing my own somewhat slim and delicate youthful body reflected in the water beside the sturdy and not particularly well-proportioned youthful bodies of the others. I was really built on much more delicate and flexible lines than were my comrades. Then I would think of the youthful figures of Praxiteles, about which the
Latin master had been telling us a few days before. In the artroom we had also a few plaster casts.

  “This reminds me of a little scene. At that time a number of girls were attending our school. One of them attended the same classes as I. Once – during the interval – she put her hat on my head for fun. ‘Doesn’t he look like a proper girl?’ she cried, and my comrades laughed with me. Suddenly our Latin master stood in front of us. I was too frightened to take off the girl’s hat in time, and before I knew what was happening I had received a sound thrashing. I was then in a perfect rage, and did not realize until many years later why my old teacher had then felt it his duty to punish me. We poor humans … what do we know about ourselves … how much less do we know about our neighbours?

  “For the rest I was an ordinary boy. I was in the thick of all fights. Just because I was more delicate than my companions I deliberately displayed special daring. Many bruises were the result of this ambition.

  “Incidentally I went on long walks with my sister. And when I knew that no one was likely to see me – as in the wood close to the town – I pushed her doll’s pram, which always accompanied us.

  “In adolescence my interest in art constantly increased. When I was seventeen I began to read art periodicals and to visit art exhibitions. My father, who, being an old merchant, thought little of an artist’s career for me, tried several times to divert my life into a ‘practical direction’. Thus he apprenticed me first to a merchant and then to a master painter, without achieving anything except to intensify still more my desire to follow an artistic career.

  “At the same time, like every adolescent, I had my ‘flame’; indeed, to be honest, I must even speak of ‘flames’. “When my father at length realized that it was hope-

  less to try to interest me in anything ‘practical’, I was sent at nineteen years of age to an art academy at Copenhagen. Here a number of good comrades took me under their wing and took care that I very quickly lost my provincial simplicity and embarrassment and that I also lost my innocence in a thoroughly brutal fashion. Then I met Grete.

  “It was love at first sight.

  “Grete had just come to the art academy. She too was from the provinces. We immediately became inseparable. We attended all the evening lectures together. The ordinary teaching in the academy was at that time so arranged as to divide the sexes.

  “A friend had brought us together.

  “When he learned one day that we were engaged, he became perfectly furious with jealousy, not really on account of Grete, but, and this I only learned many years later, on account of me. But even such a symptom as this is really nothing extraordinary. How many friends have not had similar experiences when a woman has come between them! A year after our first meeting, Grete and I were married. We were still very young – I barely twenty, Grete two or three years younger. What did we know of life, of people? We were indescribably happy in each other’s society.

  “I recollect one evening in the first years of our marriage – we were then living in a studio which commanded a wide view over Copenhagen – Grete was reading to me a primitive fable out of antiquity. It ran somewhat like this: ‘Hermes, the darling of the gods, had a son, and Aphrodite, the divine beauty, a daughter. The two children were perfect models of beauty. Yet they had never seen each other before when one day they confronted each other in the Wood of the Gods. The girl was immediately enamoured of the boy; but the boy fled from her. However fast she ran after him, he ran faster still. In despair the divine maiden turned to Zeus and bewailed to him her love torment. ‘I love him, father, but he has fled from me. He will have nothing to do with me. Oh, father, grant that I become one with him.’ And Zeus heard the prayer of the divine child, and he raised his arm, and the next moment the shy son of Hermes stood before the Olympian, and Aphrodite’s daughter shouted with glee and embraced the trembling youngster. Again Zeus raised his arm – whereupon both melted into each other. When Hermes and Aphrodite sought after their children, they found a blissfully smiling divine child. ‘It is my son!’ cried Hermes. ‘No, it is my daughter!’ cried Aphrodite. They were both right.

  “‘You know,’ said Grete to me, ‘I love you so much that I should like you and me to be one being.’

  “About this time Grete painted the portrait of the then popular actress in Copenhagen, Anna Larsen. One day Anna was unable to attend the appointed sitting. On the telephone she asked Grete, who was somewhat vexed: ‘Cannot Andreas pose as a model for the lower part of the picture? His legs and feet are as pretty as mine.’

  “Grete laughed. Anna Larsen was aware that once, when Grete was painting a picture of a woman, I had been obliged to come to her assistance with my legs. But it had really only been a question of drapery. ‘You really have very pretty woman’s legs,’ Grete had said to me jokingly.

  “While Grete was talking to Anna Larsen on the telephone, I had been busy cleaning my palette. I was smoking a cigarette and scarcely listened when Grete informed me of Anna Larsen’s proposal. At first I declined rather shortly. Grete chaffed me, abused me, implored me, petted me, and a few minutes later I was standing in the studio in costume and high-heeled shoes. We both laughed as though it were a great joke. And to make the disguise complete, Grete fetched out a carnival wig from the depths of a trunk, a fair, very curly wig, and drew it over my head. Then she attacked me with rouge and powder, while I submitted patiently to everything.

  “When all was ready we could scarcely believe our eyes. I turned round and stared at myself in a mirror again and again, trying to recognize myself. Was it really possible, I asked myself, that I could be so good-looking? Grete clapped her hands delightedly. ‘The most perfect ladies’ model,’ she cried again and again. ‘You look just as if you had never worn anything but women’s clothes in your life.’ “And I cannot deny, strange though it may sound, that

  I enjoyed myself in this disguise. I liked the feel of soft women’s clothing; indeed, I seemed to take them as a matter of course. I felt very much at home in them from the first moment. Grete began to paint.

  “Then a bell rang in the corridor, and a moment later Anna Larsen rustled into the studio. She had managed to find time.

  “She looked at me, but did not recognize the strange lady in front of her. She only recognized her own clothes. Then she uttered a cry of delight and embraced me violently.

  “‘I haven’t seen anything so amusing for a long time.’ she declared, and applauded my appearance. She peeped at me from every angle. I had to turn about and assume every possible position. Finally she asserted that I was very much prettier as a girl than as a man. I wore ladies’ clothes very much better than male costume. ‘Yes,’ she maintained and I have never forgotten these words, ‘you know, Andreas, you were certainly a girl in a former existence, or else Nature has made a mistake with you this time.’

  “She spoke quite slowly, quite deliberately, and it was obvious that she was strangely stirred.

  “Grete gave me a hint to take off the clothes as Anna Larsen could now pose herself.

  “I made a movement to retire; but Anna Larsen held me back. ‘No,’ she cried. ‘I simply could not endure to meet Andreas again today. We won’t even speak of him. Listen, and now I will christen you, my girlie. You shall receive a particularly lovely, musical name. For example, Lili. What do you say to Lili? Henceforth I will call you Lili. And we must celebrate this! What do you say, Grete?’ “And Grete merely nodded, looked now at Anna, now at the child about to be christened; and then the three of us kept up rejoicings until far into the night – Lili’s christening night.

  “So Lili came into existence, and the name stuck; nor was it merely a question of the name.

  “With an extravagant joke, a genuine accident of the studio, if you like, it started, and for many years we played our game with Lili.

  “A few weeks after Lili’s christening an artists’ ball was held. Grete suggested that Lili should go in order to be introduced into the larger world, and she designed a pierret
te’s costume.

  “It was a complete success. Lili was one of the most popular dancers of the evening. An officer paid her special attentions. Eventually he called her out for every dance, and towards midnight he became somewhat obtrusive. Then Lili tried to disclose her secret. It availed her nothing – the officer simply would not believe her! When she managed to escape, she fell out of the frying-pan into the fire. A fresh cavalier caught hold of her, and would not let her go. On the spot he requested permission to kiss her, at least, on the neck. When at length she escaped from his clutches, the pierrette costume bore some trace of the struggle.

  “Another remarkable fact came to Lili’s notice during this ball – the attitude of the female sex towards her. Several times she had regarded with a friendly smile such ladies as she found attractive. But most of them had returned her confident look with an icy stare. She was perplexed, and at last inquired of Grete whether she had behaved herself badly, whether she looked impossible. Grete said with a smile, ‘Our stupid Lili is very young. She does not yet know the malice and mistrust of women towards other women.’

  “It was the first time that Lili was conscious of possessing a separate personality. And out of this amusing incident came something like a presentiment. How often have my thoughts wandered back to that far-off evening! “But this evening yielded another experience, which was no less characteristic.

  “Grete and Lili were preparing to return home. In the search for her cloak Lili ran into the arms of a tall painter who belonged to the academy. He was one of my four studio comrades. For heaven’s sake, what could I do to prevent the secret from being discovered? Lili behaved as if she had not seen him. He seized her, squeezed her, and pressed half a dozen kisses on her neck. This time I came to Lili’s assistance. A few well-armed blows caught the insolent fellow right on the face … Hauwitz was the man’s name.