Man Into Woman - Chapter 10 by Lili Elbe Lyrics
Three days later, in the early morning, during the cleaning up of the clinic, marveled at by the scrubbing and squeaky clean housemaids and nurses, Grete arrived, all Parisienne, elegant, fur-clad, morning fresh.
The nurse on duty immediately knew who she was.
"Ah, Madame, is that right, Madame Sparre?" she greeted the early visitor. "May I guide you. You are being passionately expected. Pleasе excuse the mеss in the corridors."
Grete quickly slipped off her right glove, shook the nurse's hand, - and had to suppress a small smile when she saw how her deep red painted nails and perhaps her even stronger colored lips and most of all possibly the fragrance she brought into this environment smelling of green soap drew all eyes to her.
A few moments and she stood in the hospital room.
She had entered without making a sound. The morning sun playfully blotted the white bed in which a pale human being rose very slowly as if waking from a dream. Two deep brown, large eyes gazed at her. A mouth twitched, but the lips remained silent.
Grete stood with widely spread arms in the middle of the room, and couldn't move. She fought back tears. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to smile. She wanted to say a happy word as a greeting. But these large, brown eyes kept her fixated. Many, eternal seconds ... Then a slim ray of sunlight caressed the sick one's face, trickled into the rejoicing glance of the large, brown eyes, ignited a small, silver light within them, it was the gleam of two teardrops ... And Grete snapped out of her torpor ... and sank down in front of the sickbed, sobbing ...
What these two human children felt, lived through and confessed to each other in this hour of reunion in silent sojourn, no word may capture.
Late at night, alone with herself and the storm of confusing thoughts and feelings, Grete wrote this letter to the distant, faithful friend in Paris, Claude Lejeune:
"Claude, I can only hint at what I went through here today. I thought I would find Andreas. Andreas is dead. Because I did not find him. I found a pale, sweet being. Lili, and yet it was not Lili as we knew her from Paris. It was a different one. It was a new being. New in voice and expression of the eye, new in the pressure of her hand, an inexpressibly changed person. Or was it a being that is on the way of finding itself whole? Apparently it has to be this way. So womanly and untouched by life. No, womanly is probably not the right word. I would rather say girly. Maybe childlike, tentative, with a thousand questions in her gaze. A "Nova Vita" ... Oh, I am searching for the right words, I am deeply shaken myself and spellbound as if by a miracle. And yet I know that the anguish of this creature with the outrageous pain of Lili is a soul slowly emerging from the shell as is its destiny ... what a fate, Claude! Incredible shudders shake me, if I think about this. It is a mercy of the heavens that Lili herself is too weak to look forward or backward. She is barely able to recognize her current state of being. I talked to the doctors. The first procedure, as they call this initial, outer sex change, that is clinically only the beginning, has succeeded better than all expectations. Andreas ceased to exist, they said. His gonads, oh, this mystical word, have been removed. What has to happen now, will happen in D. with Professor Kreutz. The doctors told me about hormones; I pretended to know what they meant. Now I have a dictionary and found out that those are ‘dissociations of inner organs important for life processes.' But I haven't become any wiser. Must one acquire wisdom and knowledge in order to understand a miracle? Does one even have to understand a miracle in the first place? I take the miracle like a pious person. What I have found here in the clinic I want to call the unraveling of a beloved being, whose life and torment seemed to all of us who witnessed it throughout those many, hard years an unsolvable enigma ... Unraveling ... That is it. But the unraveling is not yet complete. I know it. Lili suspects it. She must not be allowed to see her damaged body yet. It lies bound and tied, a secret to herself and to her doctors, that only Kreutz will be allowed to uncover it. Everyone here, the doctors, the nurses, our friends Niels and Inger, all have candidly expressed to me their astonishment at the tremendous outward change of "our patient" – because they don't know yet whether to talk about this being as a man or as a woman. How does their astonishment compare to mine? They have seen the sick being every day now. But for me who has been separated from him for only two weeks, I would have barely recognized this beloved human child. And as I have had to endure this, so will you have to endure, you and Elena and Ernesto, to whom you must show these lines. Because I can't write any more today. Just this, that Lili, this mild, sweet Lili, oh, I have to say it, because it is the truth, lay in my arms like a little sister, cried many many tears and said to me, sobbing: "You are not cross with me for - - (and here she looked at me with baffled eyes) Andreas stealing your most beautiful years?" – Claude, I was so shaken I could not say a word, - and when I could have finally expressed what I was feeling, I didn't dare to. Not me, I thought, has Andreas robbed, not me, but you, Lili, my sweet, pale Lili, of your youthful girl years ... Claude, you and I and all of us have to help this deceived Lili, to make up for Andreas' betrayal ..."
Many months later Lili read this letter. Claude gave it to her.
- - - - -
The next morning, - Grete had spent the night alone in a hotel, - the head nurse suggested putting another bed into the hospital room, so that Grete could stay close to the patient until the departure for Dresden, which would take place within a few days.
"Splendid," Grete whispered, delighted, took the nurse by the hand, pulled her along into the next room which was empty now, quickly fetched a small suitcase she had left in the hallway, opened it mysteriously and whispered almost inaudibly, "dearest nurse, we must not talk about the patient any more." The nurse did not understand what Grete meant by this and just looked at her, questioning.
"Here," with a quick grip Grete took a delightful silken negligee out of the suitcase, "isn't this lovely?"
"How well that will look on you, ma'am!"
"On me? ... No, dear sister, that is a present from our Parisian friend to our - - girl patient there!" And she dabbed her brightly red painted, almond shaped fingernails imploringly on the nurse's shocked mouth. "But please, don't say anything – not before tomorrow morning!"
And when it was morning again, a young lady sat there in the most fragrant Parisian negligee, still quite pale and frail, but still boundlessly happy, on the white hospital bed. And the assistant doctor barely believed his eyes due to this transformation. "Magnificent! My compliments, gracious lady! And if you promise to be very well behaved and careful, you may get up for two hours today and show yourself to your astonished environment! But please, just here in this room! We can't risk any more than that!"
One nurse after the other rushed inside. Endless astonishment with all of them. "Miss Lili," the head nurse said and enfolded the pale, quaking creature motherly in her arms.
In this and in no other way in the Berlin clinic they accepted the miracle that had happened to this still quite tired human being, without curiosity, without long questions, and when Professor G. came around that night for his rounds, he kissed his patient's quivering hand with gallant naturalness. "Bonsoir, Mademoiselle," he said, "my congratulations. You are on the right road."
Only then did he notice Grete. "Ah, Madame, welcome."
For a moment the Professor and Grete stood there, facing each other in silence not without restrained shock.
Then Lili broke the silence. "Yes, Professor, this is Madame Grete, who ..."
The Professor found a kind smile. "...I know, who was married to Andreas Sparre who has left us in such a miraculous way. After all, men are unfaithful creatures, isn't that right, Madame?" And with that the relieving words had been found, a truly German, objective manner, as Grete would tell her friends later.
Lili took all of this in, maybe a little detached, during her first days in Berlin. There was no excitement to register here, more a kind of relaxation. She accepted being addressed as "young lady" or "Miss Lili" from the mouths of the nurses. She also avoided replying to any puzzled look by another with a word or even a gesture. This was especially noticed by Miss Inger and friend Niels.
"We have to leave her in peace," Grete said to them, secretly. She is recovering. It is all just a kind of transition. The big, liberating upswing is still only preparing within her."
And in those days, Grete began to keep a diary. Every night she recorded therein her observations, her experiences that crowded upon her in the presence of the new Lili. Simple, quiet, groping sentences, searching for the way of the friend, that hard, wonderful way upon which Lili had barely tried her first steps...
Here is a page of this newly begun diary:
"Lili is accepting the daily side effects of such a hard operation with incredible patience. Sure, she cries and laments when her pained body receives new wrappings every morning and evening, when clamps are loosened and stitches have to be cut, when still fresh scars are dabbed. "Apparently it has to be this way," she says with a patience I never witnessed in her before. She has only one wish, to go to Dresden soon, to her Professor. That's the only way she talks of him, or she calls him a miracle worker. She does not say a single word about the past. It often seems to me, as if she has not had a past yet. As if she didn't quite believe in a present yet. As if she was expecting the beginning of her life from Kreutz, her miracle worker."
Here another entry:
"I went to run some errands with Inger today, without Lili knowing of it. We have to prepare for the journey to D. In the afternoon we returned to Lili. We brought a big, colorful box along. "Guess what we brought you," I said, very happily. Lili looked at us calmly and without a smile. "I don't know." That was her only response. Then Inger opened the box. In it was a magnificent, brown fur coat. "That is for you, Lili," Inger said, spreading the furs in front of Lili, showing her the beautiful, warm silk lining. "Won't Professor Kreutz scold me for appearing like that in front of him? He won't recognize me." And her eyes became very sad. – God, her eyes ... Actually they are always sad, even when they are smiling. Andreas had completely different eyes. As did the Lili in Paris. I believe the eyes of today's Lili haven't fully woken up yet. They don't quite believe yet ... Or is she maybe just not showing that she believes?"
- - - -
It was still winter weather in Berlin when Lili was first allowed to leave the clinic for a few hours, wrapped in her new, very first fur. The doctor had "prescribed" a car ride for her. – "We have to prepare for the long journey to D. now, my dear," he explained, "get some air, walk among people, gather your strength."
Walk among people ... Those words made Lili listen up. A secret fear came over her. But she didn't let anyone notice. Niels and Inger fetched her with Grete, who did not stray from her side.
When Lili was standing in front of the clinic, leaning heavily on Niels' arm, the fear returned anew ... She looked fearful, shy, timid like a prisoner who after an eternity of imprisonment inhales the blue, good, bright air of freedom again, looked around shyly, as if she was afraid that everything going around her was just an illusion.
She hesitated to move on.
"Come on, child," Gerda said to her, quietly.
"She is haughty," laughed Niels, "she wants to go by herself."
"No, no," Lili's words came very frightened, "don't let me stand alone. Just a moment. I have to first taste the air again. This air ..."
When Lili was sitting in the car, snuggled up closely to Gerda, she closed her eyes for a long, long time. "Don't care about me. I have to get used to all of this again ... all of this ... all of this ..."
And so she drove through the roaring life of Kurfürstendamm, like a somnambulist, silent, closed up, self-absorbed ...
The ride took two hours. Then Gerda returned the tired one to her hospital bed. No sooner had she picked a little at the meal brought in, than she dozed off. The sleep lasted until the next morning.
Niels picked the two of them up again around noon. Lili had already gotten much more spirited. "So, today I don't want to bore you. Not myself either. I even have a healthy appetite – for people ..."
"Are we not?" Niels asked, amused.
"Yes, but for strange people ... yes, to see strange people once more."
"Excellent, great suggestion, my dearest," - and now Niels decided that they should "dine" at his place "to mark the occasion." Mysteriously he had the car stop in front of a phone booth, got out, - he just wanted to let Inger know. And he returned with an even more mysterious expression.
They arrived within fifteen minutes. Inger received the friends outside the door. She pressed a big bouquet of the most magnificent roses into Lili's arms. "Now, be brave Lili child, now you will find everything your heart desires." – and she was informed that a there was a young lady from Copenhagen waiting inside, who knew neither Lili nor Gerda nor – Andreas, who had been told of "a French woman just imported from Paris."
"Good heavens," Lili cried out, almost besides herself.
"Don't argue now. You have to play the "imported Parisienne" now," Inger explained, "my friend knows that you know neither German nor Danish. And she does not understand a lick of French. I told her you endured a bad illness and are in bad need of rest. Now no foolishness. You neither understand German nor Danish!" And already Niels had grabbed the reluctant one by the arm. "Come in my hearties!" he commanded, and before she had a chance to gather her senses, Lili with her bouquet of roses was sitting down on the soft, deep armchair of his study, in which Andreas Sparre had confessed to him the odd wanderings of his life just three weeks earlier ...
"Keep it up, keep it up," Grete whispered in her ear.
"Good, good, you good one," Lili replied, "I am keeping it up. And I have to for a long time..."
The door opened ... A young actress from Copenhagen who Gerda and Andreas had known for many years stood before Lili ...
Lili believes her heart will shatter now. Feverish red shoots into her pale face. No, she cries out internally, no, no...
But nobody notes even the slightest disturbance in her.
"May I introduce," Miss Inger begins, smiling, "Miss Karen W. ... Mademoiselle Julie S..." And then, turning to Grete: "But you two know each other."
"But yes," Karen W. calls out excitedly, "how is your spouse Andreas doing?" And Grete explains right away, that Andreas was doing excellently, but that due to work piling up he couldn't leave Paris ... Lili sits there, listens to the conversation in Danish completely untouched, answers every question that Miss Karen asks in Danish and which Grete or Inger quickly translate into French, in the most elegant salon French....
The maid declares dinner ready. Lili lets Niels guide her to the dining room. The conversation is playfully bubbling from one language to the next, Lili acts as the most complete Parisienne, who pretends, as if she had never in her life heard a single word of Danish before. She accepts Miss Karen's compliments on her "outrageously fashionable Paris costume" as a matter of course, - this time Niels plays the translator, and Lili forgot over this quite effusive praise that her wardrobe was not of Parisian origin, but from a Berlin woman's tailor.
She did not betray herself by one expression. She had to occasionally bite her tongue not to interject herself into the conversation being held in Danish ... This comedy went on for about two hours. There was much laughter ... in Danish. And Lili only laughed when the reason for the "Danish laughter" had been translated into French for her...
Then she was exhausted ... She was tired enough to just fall over. And she asked Gerda to accompany her to her hotel.
Smiling she bid Miss Karen farewell.
"Next time we meet, I will try to talk in badly broken French," the young Copenhagen woman yelled after her. "To a reunion in Paris ... and Miss Grete, don't forget to give Monsieur Andreas my best ..."
Niels accompanied the two of them back to the clinic.
"No," he said when they were sitting in the car, "no, I would not have thought that possible. Now even I unwaveringly believe in miracles." Lili collapsed, exhausted. She let herself be driven in silence through the roaring, giant city, sparkling with thousands and thousands of lights. On her face there was no smile. When the car stopped in front of the clinic, Niels had to carry Lili to her white lilac-scented room. He carried a sleeper. And only as she awoke again after almost twelve hours of sleep did she learn that the distant Claude Lejeune had sent her the muted purple spring greeting. –
That was how Lili's first encounter with a – strange person went.
"That she did not recognize me..." she said almost melancholically.
"But child," Grete countered smiling, "that should make you happy. Lili, I mean my new Lili doesn't know anyone out there yet. You are just starting life again ..."
Grete could not yet understand this morning, that Lili's melancholy was the fear of having no friends ...
The nurse on duty immediately knew who she was.
"Ah, Madame, is that right, Madame Sparre?" she greeted the early visitor. "May I guide you. You are being passionately expected. Pleasе excuse the mеss in the corridors."
Grete quickly slipped off her right glove, shook the nurse's hand, - and had to suppress a small smile when she saw how her deep red painted nails and perhaps her even stronger colored lips and most of all possibly the fragrance she brought into this environment smelling of green soap drew all eyes to her.
A few moments and she stood in the hospital room.
She had entered without making a sound. The morning sun playfully blotted the white bed in which a pale human being rose very slowly as if waking from a dream. Two deep brown, large eyes gazed at her. A mouth twitched, but the lips remained silent.
Grete stood with widely spread arms in the middle of the room, and couldn't move. She fought back tears. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to smile. She wanted to say a happy word as a greeting. But these large, brown eyes kept her fixated. Many, eternal seconds ... Then a slim ray of sunlight caressed the sick one's face, trickled into the rejoicing glance of the large, brown eyes, ignited a small, silver light within them, it was the gleam of two teardrops ... And Grete snapped out of her torpor ... and sank down in front of the sickbed, sobbing ...
What these two human children felt, lived through and confessed to each other in this hour of reunion in silent sojourn, no word may capture.
Late at night, alone with herself and the storm of confusing thoughts and feelings, Grete wrote this letter to the distant, faithful friend in Paris, Claude Lejeune:
"Claude, I can only hint at what I went through here today. I thought I would find Andreas. Andreas is dead. Because I did not find him. I found a pale, sweet being. Lili, and yet it was not Lili as we knew her from Paris. It was a different one. It was a new being. New in voice and expression of the eye, new in the pressure of her hand, an inexpressibly changed person. Or was it a being that is on the way of finding itself whole? Apparently it has to be this way. So womanly and untouched by life. No, womanly is probably not the right word. I would rather say girly. Maybe childlike, tentative, with a thousand questions in her gaze. A "Nova Vita" ... Oh, I am searching for the right words, I am deeply shaken myself and spellbound as if by a miracle. And yet I know that the anguish of this creature with the outrageous pain of Lili is a soul slowly emerging from the shell as is its destiny ... what a fate, Claude! Incredible shudders shake me, if I think about this. It is a mercy of the heavens that Lili herself is too weak to look forward or backward. She is barely able to recognize her current state of being. I talked to the doctors. The first procedure, as they call this initial, outer sex change, that is clinically only the beginning, has succeeded better than all expectations. Andreas ceased to exist, they said. His gonads, oh, this mystical word, have been removed. What has to happen now, will happen in D. with Professor Kreutz. The doctors told me about hormones; I pretended to know what they meant. Now I have a dictionary and found out that those are ‘dissociations of inner organs important for life processes.' But I haven't become any wiser. Must one acquire wisdom and knowledge in order to understand a miracle? Does one even have to understand a miracle in the first place? I take the miracle like a pious person. What I have found here in the clinic I want to call the unraveling of a beloved being, whose life and torment seemed to all of us who witnessed it throughout those many, hard years an unsolvable enigma ... Unraveling ... That is it. But the unraveling is not yet complete. I know it. Lili suspects it. She must not be allowed to see her damaged body yet. It lies bound and tied, a secret to herself and to her doctors, that only Kreutz will be allowed to uncover it. Everyone here, the doctors, the nurses, our friends Niels and Inger, all have candidly expressed to me their astonishment at the tremendous outward change of "our patient" – because they don't know yet whether to talk about this being as a man or as a woman. How does their astonishment compare to mine? They have seen the sick being every day now. But for me who has been separated from him for only two weeks, I would have barely recognized this beloved human child. And as I have had to endure this, so will you have to endure, you and Elena and Ernesto, to whom you must show these lines. Because I can't write any more today. Just this, that Lili, this mild, sweet Lili, oh, I have to say it, because it is the truth, lay in my arms like a little sister, cried many many tears and said to me, sobbing: "You are not cross with me for - - (and here she looked at me with baffled eyes) Andreas stealing your most beautiful years?" – Claude, I was so shaken I could not say a word, - and when I could have finally expressed what I was feeling, I didn't dare to. Not me, I thought, has Andreas robbed, not me, but you, Lili, my sweet, pale Lili, of your youthful girl years ... Claude, you and I and all of us have to help this deceived Lili, to make up for Andreas' betrayal ..."
Many months later Lili read this letter. Claude gave it to her.
- - - - -
The next morning, - Grete had spent the night alone in a hotel, - the head nurse suggested putting another bed into the hospital room, so that Grete could stay close to the patient until the departure for Dresden, which would take place within a few days.
"Splendid," Grete whispered, delighted, took the nurse by the hand, pulled her along into the next room which was empty now, quickly fetched a small suitcase she had left in the hallway, opened it mysteriously and whispered almost inaudibly, "dearest nurse, we must not talk about the patient any more." The nurse did not understand what Grete meant by this and just looked at her, questioning.
"Here," with a quick grip Grete took a delightful silken negligee out of the suitcase, "isn't this lovely?"
"How well that will look on you, ma'am!"
"On me? ... No, dear sister, that is a present from our Parisian friend to our - - girl patient there!" And she dabbed her brightly red painted, almond shaped fingernails imploringly on the nurse's shocked mouth. "But please, don't say anything – not before tomorrow morning!"
And when it was morning again, a young lady sat there in the most fragrant Parisian negligee, still quite pale and frail, but still boundlessly happy, on the white hospital bed. And the assistant doctor barely believed his eyes due to this transformation. "Magnificent! My compliments, gracious lady! And if you promise to be very well behaved and careful, you may get up for two hours today and show yourself to your astonished environment! But please, just here in this room! We can't risk any more than that!"
One nurse after the other rushed inside. Endless astonishment with all of them. "Miss Lili," the head nurse said and enfolded the pale, quaking creature motherly in her arms.
In this and in no other way in the Berlin clinic they accepted the miracle that had happened to this still quite tired human being, without curiosity, without long questions, and when Professor G. came around that night for his rounds, he kissed his patient's quivering hand with gallant naturalness. "Bonsoir, Mademoiselle," he said, "my congratulations. You are on the right road."
Only then did he notice Grete. "Ah, Madame, welcome."
For a moment the Professor and Grete stood there, facing each other in silence not without restrained shock.
Then Lili broke the silence. "Yes, Professor, this is Madame Grete, who ..."
The Professor found a kind smile. "...I know, who was married to Andreas Sparre who has left us in such a miraculous way. After all, men are unfaithful creatures, isn't that right, Madame?" And with that the relieving words had been found, a truly German, objective manner, as Grete would tell her friends later.
Lili took all of this in, maybe a little detached, during her first days in Berlin. There was no excitement to register here, more a kind of relaxation. She accepted being addressed as "young lady" or "Miss Lili" from the mouths of the nurses. She also avoided replying to any puzzled look by another with a word or even a gesture. This was especially noticed by Miss Inger and friend Niels.
"We have to leave her in peace," Grete said to them, secretly. She is recovering. It is all just a kind of transition. The big, liberating upswing is still only preparing within her."
And in those days, Grete began to keep a diary. Every night she recorded therein her observations, her experiences that crowded upon her in the presence of the new Lili. Simple, quiet, groping sentences, searching for the way of the friend, that hard, wonderful way upon which Lili had barely tried her first steps...
Here is a page of this newly begun diary:
"Lili is accepting the daily side effects of such a hard operation with incredible patience. Sure, she cries and laments when her pained body receives new wrappings every morning and evening, when clamps are loosened and stitches have to be cut, when still fresh scars are dabbed. "Apparently it has to be this way," she says with a patience I never witnessed in her before. She has only one wish, to go to Dresden soon, to her Professor. That's the only way she talks of him, or she calls him a miracle worker. She does not say a single word about the past. It often seems to me, as if she has not had a past yet. As if she didn't quite believe in a present yet. As if she was expecting the beginning of her life from Kreutz, her miracle worker."
Here another entry:
"I went to run some errands with Inger today, without Lili knowing of it. We have to prepare for the journey to D. In the afternoon we returned to Lili. We brought a big, colorful box along. "Guess what we brought you," I said, very happily. Lili looked at us calmly and without a smile. "I don't know." That was her only response. Then Inger opened the box. In it was a magnificent, brown fur coat. "That is for you, Lili," Inger said, spreading the furs in front of Lili, showing her the beautiful, warm silk lining. "Won't Professor Kreutz scold me for appearing like that in front of him? He won't recognize me." And her eyes became very sad. – God, her eyes ... Actually they are always sad, even when they are smiling. Andreas had completely different eyes. As did the Lili in Paris. I believe the eyes of today's Lili haven't fully woken up yet. They don't quite believe yet ... Or is she maybe just not showing that she believes?"
- - - -
It was still winter weather in Berlin when Lili was first allowed to leave the clinic for a few hours, wrapped in her new, very first fur. The doctor had "prescribed" a car ride for her. – "We have to prepare for the long journey to D. now, my dear," he explained, "get some air, walk among people, gather your strength."
Walk among people ... Those words made Lili listen up. A secret fear came over her. But she didn't let anyone notice. Niels and Inger fetched her with Grete, who did not stray from her side.
When Lili was standing in front of the clinic, leaning heavily on Niels' arm, the fear returned anew ... She looked fearful, shy, timid like a prisoner who after an eternity of imprisonment inhales the blue, good, bright air of freedom again, looked around shyly, as if she was afraid that everything going around her was just an illusion.
She hesitated to move on.
"Come on, child," Gerda said to her, quietly.
"She is haughty," laughed Niels, "she wants to go by herself."
"No, no," Lili's words came very frightened, "don't let me stand alone. Just a moment. I have to first taste the air again. This air ..."
When Lili was sitting in the car, snuggled up closely to Gerda, she closed her eyes for a long, long time. "Don't care about me. I have to get used to all of this again ... all of this ... all of this ..."
And so she drove through the roaring life of Kurfürstendamm, like a somnambulist, silent, closed up, self-absorbed ...
The ride took two hours. Then Gerda returned the tired one to her hospital bed. No sooner had she picked a little at the meal brought in, than she dozed off. The sleep lasted until the next morning.
Niels picked the two of them up again around noon. Lili had already gotten much more spirited. "So, today I don't want to bore you. Not myself either. I even have a healthy appetite – for people ..."
"Are we not?" Niels asked, amused.
"Yes, but for strange people ... yes, to see strange people once more."
"Excellent, great suggestion, my dearest," - and now Niels decided that they should "dine" at his place "to mark the occasion." Mysteriously he had the car stop in front of a phone booth, got out, - he just wanted to let Inger know. And he returned with an even more mysterious expression.
They arrived within fifteen minutes. Inger received the friends outside the door. She pressed a big bouquet of the most magnificent roses into Lili's arms. "Now, be brave Lili child, now you will find everything your heart desires." – and she was informed that a there was a young lady from Copenhagen waiting inside, who knew neither Lili nor Gerda nor – Andreas, who had been told of "a French woman just imported from Paris."
"Good heavens," Lili cried out, almost besides herself.
"Don't argue now. You have to play the "imported Parisienne" now," Inger explained, "my friend knows that you know neither German nor Danish. And she does not understand a lick of French. I told her you endured a bad illness and are in bad need of rest. Now no foolishness. You neither understand German nor Danish!" And already Niels had grabbed the reluctant one by the arm. "Come in my hearties!" he commanded, and before she had a chance to gather her senses, Lili with her bouquet of roses was sitting down on the soft, deep armchair of his study, in which Andreas Sparre had confessed to him the odd wanderings of his life just three weeks earlier ...
"Keep it up, keep it up," Grete whispered in her ear.
"Good, good, you good one," Lili replied, "I am keeping it up. And I have to for a long time..."
The door opened ... A young actress from Copenhagen who Gerda and Andreas had known for many years stood before Lili ...
Lili believes her heart will shatter now. Feverish red shoots into her pale face. No, she cries out internally, no, no...
But nobody notes even the slightest disturbance in her.
"May I introduce," Miss Inger begins, smiling, "Miss Karen W. ... Mademoiselle Julie S..." And then, turning to Grete: "But you two know each other."
"But yes," Karen W. calls out excitedly, "how is your spouse Andreas doing?" And Grete explains right away, that Andreas was doing excellently, but that due to work piling up he couldn't leave Paris ... Lili sits there, listens to the conversation in Danish completely untouched, answers every question that Miss Karen asks in Danish and which Grete or Inger quickly translate into French, in the most elegant salon French....
The maid declares dinner ready. Lili lets Niels guide her to the dining room. The conversation is playfully bubbling from one language to the next, Lili acts as the most complete Parisienne, who pretends, as if she had never in her life heard a single word of Danish before. She accepts Miss Karen's compliments on her "outrageously fashionable Paris costume" as a matter of course, - this time Niels plays the translator, and Lili forgot over this quite effusive praise that her wardrobe was not of Parisian origin, but from a Berlin woman's tailor.
She did not betray herself by one expression. She had to occasionally bite her tongue not to interject herself into the conversation being held in Danish ... This comedy went on for about two hours. There was much laughter ... in Danish. And Lili only laughed when the reason for the "Danish laughter" had been translated into French for her...
Then she was exhausted ... She was tired enough to just fall over. And she asked Gerda to accompany her to her hotel.
Smiling she bid Miss Karen farewell.
"Next time we meet, I will try to talk in badly broken French," the young Copenhagen woman yelled after her. "To a reunion in Paris ... and Miss Grete, don't forget to give Monsieur Andreas my best ..."
Niels accompanied the two of them back to the clinic.
"No," he said when they were sitting in the car, "no, I would not have thought that possible. Now even I unwaveringly believe in miracles." Lili collapsed, exhausted. She let herself be driven in silence through the roaring, giant city, sparkling with thousands and thousands of lights. On her face there was no smile. When the car stopped in front of the clinic, Niels had to carry Lili to her white lilac-scented room. He carried a sleeper. And only as she awoke again after almost twelve hours of sleep did she learn that the distant Claude Lejeune had sent her the muted purple spring greeting. –
That was how Lili's first encounter with a – strange person went.
"That she did not recognize me..." she said almost melancholically.
"But child," Grete countered smiling, "that should make you happy. Lili, I mean my new Lili doesn't know anyone out there yet. You are just starting life again ..."
Grete could not yet understand this morning, that Lili's melancholy was the fear of having no friends ...