Lili Read online

  “I was thunderstruck at Grete’s words. It was as if she had held up a mirror in front of me.

  “‘It often happens,’ she continued excitedly, ‘that when she poses for me as a model a strange feeling comes over me that it is she whom I am creating and forming rather than the girl whom I am representing on my canvas. Sometimes it seems to me that here is something which is stronger than we are, something which makes us powerless and will thrust us aside, as if, indeed, it wanted to be revenged on us for having played with it.’

  “Grete broke off. Tears stood in her eyes. ‘We have come to a steep part of the road, and I don’t know where we shall find foothold,’ she cried. I tried to calm her; but I scarcely succeeded, at least, not at once. I spoke and she listened to me. ‘What you say is all so terribly true. And the most dangerous thing of all is that I feel it is Lili, just Lili, who forms the bond between us which has lasted all these years. I do not believe I could survive her.’

  “Grete interrupted me to say that she had very often thought exactly the same, as Lili embodied our common youth and joy in life. She sobbed: ‘Sometimes I wonder what life would be without her.’

  “We stared at each other, deeply moved by this mutual confession, which had been provoked by many, many weeks of secret brooding.

  “‘At any rate, I cannot imagine,’ Grete went on, ‘what it would be like for us without Lili. We must never lose her. If she should suddenly vanish, it would seem like a murder.’

  “‘The more so as I cannot help feeling that she is on the verge of becoming more vigorous than I am,’ I said uneasily.

  “Perhaps this conversation had the effect of plunging me into a momentary fit of despondency; but in other respects my health had been excellent during all these years. In spite of the fact that I had never looked very robust, although I was equal to every physical exertion, I had never really been ill. Just recently I had frequently felt indisposed, my chief sensation being one of utter weariness. Also, I had not stood too well the very cold rainy weather which Paris had latterly experienced year after year. I would cough from late autumn until spring almost without intermission. No doubt that is how I came to have gloomy thoughts. One cannot be young for ever, I would reflect. And then I would think of Lili. She shared her body with me. She was a woman. To remain young meant more for her than for me.

  “My outlook became more and more melancholy. By nature I had always been a happy person, especially as long as I lived in Paris. But all this was now over. There were days, weeks, and months when I felt utterly impotent. The power or desire to work went out of me. Everybody who had known me for years knew that I had been an industrious person. I could not understand myself.

  “At intervals there would be a return of more lucid periods, whenever I could live in the country far from Paris and collect fresh subjects, especially in Balgencie. But they did not last long. I grew more and more tired, more and more languid. I did not know what to do with myself. It was an unbearable condition to be in.

  “Grete began to be uneasy. She persuaded me to see a doctor, and to please her I did so. The doctor found nothing specific the matter and prescribed a nerve tonic. It did no good at all. A new doctor was consulted, with a similar result, and so on.

  “But when Lili appeared, everything went well, and life was fair once more. Every trace of ill-humour in me vanished.

  “Consequently she now came as often as possible. In the meantime she had built up her own circle of friends and acquaintances, and she had her own memories and habits, which had nothing whatever to do with me. Often she would stay for several days in succession, and then she would sit contented with Grete, or even sit quite alone by herself, sewing or embroidering, and smiling to herself, happy in this feminine occupation. Nobody understood this mystery, neither Grete nor Elena. They all regarded this enigmatic being Lili, who built up her own world around her, with head-shakings and astonishment. But they let Lili alone, and she was happy.

  “Something that happened just at this time was to inaugurate, more quickly than was anticipated, the last period of this incessant and ruthless inner struggle between Lili and myself. And for a long time it looked as if neither of us would survive this contest.

  “About two years ago my old friend Iven Persen of the Theatre Royal, Copenhagen, gave a number of performances among us in Paris. As his wife, the well-known dancer Ebba Persen, accompanied him, a ballet had, of course, to be arranged for one of the evenings. The ballet corps was not large, and it was short of one dancer. Thereupon Iven, who knew that I was not a bad dancer, asked whether I would care to take part. Without hesitation I replied in the affirmative.

  “At the ballet rehearsals, which lasted a very long time, I probably over-exerted myself. At any rate, I was then attacked for the first time by strange haemorrhages. I bled mostly at the nose, but in so unusual a way that Grete became anxious and implored me to abandon my dancer’s part; but I was very unwilling to do this, as I did not want to leave my old friend in the lurch. I saw the business through, although these haemorrhages came on after the first night and after each of the numerous repetitions. And the most amazing thing of all was that every time I was seized with a fit of utterly strange convulsive sobbing. When the attack was over, however, I felt as if liberated, just as if something torpid in me had been dissolved; as if something new, something never before felt, was stirring. My whole being seemed as if transformed, as if a dam had suddenly burst.

  “Never had music made so disturbing, so shattering an impression on me as on one particular evening. An achingly sweet and yet elevating sensation, which gripped all my senses, so the music wrought on me, moving me to tears, and the tears became convulsive sobs.

  “A complete revolution in my character began on this evening. Formerly my intercourse with people had been rather imperious and condescending. From the first rehearsal I had been tormented by a feeling of failure. I was utterly astonished at myself, I no longer recognized myself. A strong impulse to resign myself, to obey, to submit myself unconditionally to another will, had seized hold of me. This impulse seemed to dominate me. Iven, my old friend and boon companion, acted the chief rôle of the evening, apart from Ebba. Only a year before the three of us had been very merry together in Copenhagen. It had never before occurred to me to play second fiddle to him, to recognize him as the leading spirit! But on this evening, from the time of the first rehearsal, I submitted to him slavishly. Not a word of contradiction on my part did he encounter. And not only that, but I blushed like a boy when he requested me to do this or that step differently, to bow somewhat more or less at some figure or the other, and the like. And if he as much as touched me. I felt so confused that I did not know where to look.

  Lili and her friend Claude, Beaugency, France, 1928 (before the operation)

  “In all these strange psychic disturbances which I then experienced, nothing of an erotic nature played the slightest part at all. In this respect Iven and I had thoroughly sound natures. What it therefore meant I could not discover. It simply was so. And it was not I who first observed this change to humility, as Grete called it, but Grete herself, She teased me about it laughingly. But behind her smile was concealed an unbounded astonishment.

  “For the general rehearsal I wore my dancing costume for the first time, close-fitting tights, a bolero, and a wig of short curls. After the general rehearsal was over, when I was standing in a dirty, ill-lighted corridor of the theatre, which was to take the place of the non-existent dressingrooms, and while I was in the act of washing off powder and paint, a number of lasquenets, who likewise belonged to the ballet, passed behind me, clinking their weapons. One of them gave me a light slap.

  “‘It suits you admirably to play a part in trousers, mademoiselle,’ grinned the fellow.

  “When I turned round with an energetic protest, the fellow slipped away, exclaiming: ‘There is far too much bluff these days, ma petite demoiselle.’

  “A few minutes later I had to go on the stage. When Iven
perceived me, he burst out laughing, and cried: ‘No, children, this won’t do. Now we have too many ladies!’

  “For a moment I did not understand the allusion. Then I turned round perplexed, all eyes upon me and everybody grinning. Red as a turkeycock I rushed out, ran into the arms of a dresser, clutched him, and begged him, at the producer’s request, to dress me ‘rather more like a man’.

  “He endeavoured to do so with the assistance of a colleague, and indeed amid the giggles of both worthies. And I pulled myself together and behaved as if all this left me utterly unmoved.

  “The evening before the première I met in the wings an actor of striking muscular development, who had to dance in the ballet in the same costume as I was wearing.

  When he saw me, he inspected me from top to toe, and then blurted out angrily: ‘Good God, man, you look impossible like that!’

  “I was speechless and felt as if I should like to sink into the earth. Had such a thing previously been said to me by a man, I would have knocked him down.

  “When I afterwards related everything to Grete, she confessed that she too had been struck by the strange alteration in the contours of my body. In my dancing-costume I had looked like a woman impersonating a man.

  “In the time which followed, my nervous condition assumed a feverish character. Henceforth at almost regular intervals these mysterious fits of depression, accompanied by severe haemorrhages and violent pains, set in. And then, in addition, there were these disconcerting fits of sobbing. At first I thought that I had displaced some internal organ during the ballet performances, and Grete too thought this. Consequently, we went to a doctor, who was really a heart specialist and not competent to deal with my alleged illness. But he had known me for years. Of Lili, on the other hand, he knew nothing. Only our most intimate friends had been initiated, among whom the doctor was not numbered. Hence I did not broach the subject of my double life during this visit, although I myself had begun to suspect a connection between this and my physical condition.

  “As, after making a thorough examination, he found nothing which would explain the remarkable phenomena which had recently manifested themselves, he took me to a specialist, whom I had known slightly at Versailles. This doctor then examined my body with great particularity and growing astonishment, and eventually thought he was able to detect strange irregularities in my inside. For the rest, he declared that the only thing to be done was to wait, especially as my whole constitution was very healthy and unimpaired; such a body as mine could stand a good deal. “Although this doctor had not said anything definite, this conversation gave me confidence and an almost mystical hope.

  “By this time I was perfectly clear in my own mind that something of a most unusual character must be happening inside me. I had inferred this more from the doctor’s expression than from anything he had said.

  “And then, like so many sick persons who do not know what is really the matter with them, I began to procure all kinds of scientific books dealing with sexual problems. Within a short time I acquired an expert knowledge in this department, and knew many things of which the layman hardly dreams. But gradually it became clear to me that nothing which related to normal men and women could throw any light on my mysterious case.

  “So it came about that I formed an independent opinion, to the effect that I was both man and woman in one body, and that the woman in this body was in process of gaining the upper hand. Upon this assumption I explained the disturbances, both physical and psychic, from which I was suffering to an increasing extent.

  “All this I confided to Grete. And when, encouraged by her, I submitted my theory to various doctors in Paris and Versailles, they greeted it not merely with head-shakings, but even with disdain. The most polite among them treated me indulgently for every possible illness, while others regarded me as an hysterical subject, or lunatic.

  “It was a terrible time. My health was on the downgrade, and soon I was unable to get any sleep. Grete was the only person who believed with me firmly in my theory. I owed it to her that I did not lose faith that one day I should find salvation.

  “Exactly a year ago we journeyed southward once more, to Italy. Grete thought that a change of air just at this time, when Paris was having very rainy weather, would do me good. The French winter had been unusually cold. The whole of March had been spoiled by rainy weather. Beyond the Alps we found the world in blossom. “We travelled to Rome, where we had arranged to meet an Italian officer whom we had met years before in Florence. He had just returned home on furlough from the East after a long period of colonial service. He was waiting for us at the railway station and escorted us to our hotel, and then we were to dine somewhere in the town. I was utterly exhausted after the long railway journey and was suffering indescribable agony; but I did not want to spoil the day for Grete and our friend. I therefore went with them.

  “We entered Facciano’s and found a table. Through the open door the soft evening breezes streamed in from the beautiful Piazza Colonna, where we could see the shimmering white columns in front of the rusty-red façade of the Palazzo Chigi and the colonnade of Biffi, which re-echoed to the shrill cries of newspaper sellers, and thus saved one the expense of buying a journal. The orchestra played divinely. I shall never forget that evening.

  “Grete sat opposite me.

  “It suddenly flashed upon me that she was looking as if she were hardly twenty-five years old. Every trace of fatigue had been charmed away from her features. And beside her sat our friend Ridolfo Feruzzi, who was beaming on her. When we had made his acquaintance years ago, it did not seem fated to become an enduring friendship. At that time he had been a half-baked lieutenant. Il bello tenente Feruzzi, he was then called – it had been during our first Italian trip. When we parted at that time it had seemed to be for ever, until his letter from the remote colony had reached us in Paris. Most of its contents had been addressed to Grete.

  “A feeling of deep melancholy stole over me. I found myself thinking of that time and of the years between, and, to some extent, of myself. What had I become?

  “I pulled myself together. A thousand questions were asked, and as many were answered. ‘Do you remember the So and Sos? And Mrs X? Do you remember that evening at Lapi … that afternoon in the Casino … and the evening which followed in the cinema in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele?’ I saw it all as if it had been yesterday, and there was I sitting with Grete and Ridolfo Feruzzi and laughing with them, and sometimes sharing a joke with them. They looked young, just as they did then so many years ago. But I joined in the laughter, although my laugh was forced and mechanical. My old zest in life had vanished. I had become another – a despondent person.

  “There in Rome, a year ago now, I realized quite definitely that it was all up with me, that I was at the end of my tether, irrevocably at the end. I felt and knew this as something unalterable.

  “Grete and I had rented a studio with a wide balcony in the charming neighbourhood of the Piazza di Spagna. Every day I was ill, every day. And all the time the roses and the orange trees were blooming in front of our studio window.

  “Now and then Lili appeared; but she had lost all her gaiety. She wept every time. She realized how beautiful life could be.

  “Sometimes Grete would weep as well. Otherwise, she was perfectly well, even in Rome. She tried to paint; but nothing would come of her efforts. When I lay awake at night beside her, I observed that she too was lying with wide-open eyes. Our evenings we passed with Feruzzi. His character, too, underwent a gradual change. A fitful melancholy weighed upon him, even when he tried to appear cheerful. He confessed that when all was said and done his life had been a failure. He could understand men who had reached this conclusion turning to the cloister as their last refuge. Undoubtedly there were such men, even in the twentieth century. I perceived that his words were seriously meant.

  “My thoughts wandered to Grete. Had she not also missed her life’s purpose? Had she not sacrificed herself so that I should not live
alone – because she felt that I had become a sick man – because she knew that she was the only person who could understand me? I knew that no earthly power could induce her to leave me – today less than ever. She was still young now. She still had time to catch up with many of the opportunities she had missed for my sake. For me life had no longer any attraction. I know this is a shallow thing to say, for others, but for me it said and comprised everything. Why should I drag out a miserable existence any longer? No doctor could discover what was the matter with me, nobody could help me. To go on living, ill and old before my time … the idea was too horrible to contemplate. I thought all this out without any feeling of self-commiseration. And thus the idea presented itself quite naturally: better dead. Then Grete would be free. Then life would have still many rich years in store for her. That evening in Rome I took a resolution. It still holds good. Only one thing can alter it.

  “It was then May. I gave myself a year’s reprieve. If in the course of this year I should not find a doctor who could help me – who would try to save Lili – to separate her from me – I know how difficult it is for others to understand these words, to separate Lili from me – but how else shall I express the idea? Well, if I could not by the following May find this helper, then I would take a silent farewell from this existence, even if the other being who was obliged to share this existence with me in one body must also share my fate. I even appointed the day. It was to be the first of May. And I determined to carry out my design as discreetly as was possible to both of us – Lili and I – in order to spare Grete.

  “Grete … How to spare her? That was the hardest thing of all. I knew only too well how Grete would take a forcible termination of my life. But despite all my consideration and solicitude for the best and truest friend of my life, I realized that there was no other way out. It would, however, be a release for us both, and certainly the only one that was possible.