Man Into Woman - Chapter 11 by Lili Elbe Lyrics
The first message from Professor Kreutz arrived from D. the next morning. Everything was ready for the patient's reception. If the physical condition of the patient allowed, the journey to D. could be undertaken immediately. Before that, a visit to Dr. K., who had analyzed Andreas Sparre's blood barely two weeks prior would be useful, so that this doctor could analyze the patient's blood now, after the procedure undertaken in Berlin ...
Grete read the news to Lili, very slowly, her voice quaking with excitement, but she pulled herself together. "Good, Lili, we will be ready then. What do you think?"
"We go tomorrow morning of course."
"Very well, then we have to go to Dr. K. today still."
And Grete hurried down the corridor to get a connection to the laboratory of the biochemist Dr. K.
When she returned a few minutes later with the message that Dr. K. would not be present for about an hour, she found Lili standing in front of the window with the letter from Professor Kreutz in her hand.
"Lili we can be on our way in a minute. We can walk part of the way. It will do you good."
"No, no, not walk." Lili exclaimed like a startled child. "I ... don't want to show myself ... on the street yet." And then the tears came.
Grete caressed the disturbed one quietly. "All right, we will drive."
On the way Grete mentioned casually that the assistant of the doctor she had spoken to on the phone had not understood her name. "It was a little difficult to clarify that to her ..." Grete did not say any more.
By chance their car arrived in front of the laboratory at the same time as the car of Dr. K.
"Doctor, good day," said Lili, recognizing him immediately and shook his hand.
"Good day, madam," the doctor replied, apparently surprised, as if he were searching his memory for her name.
Lili looked around puzzled, then looked at Grete as if looking for help, gathered her courage and stammered awkwardly: "I come from the clinic of Professor A. – at the instigation of Professor Kreutz – I am Lili Sparre ..." It was the first time that she had spoken her name aloud in Germany ... she heard herself speak. An inexplicable shame burned in her blood ... Rigidly she looked at the doctor. "Do you not recognize me, dear Doctor?"
"But of course, madam, of course," Dr. K. replied, no less confused than Lili, and it was clear from the sound of his words that he had no idea who was standing in front of him.
"This is about a blood sample, if I understand this right," he continued quite nervously, lead the two ladies through the antechamber and then into the waiting room.
"But, dear Doctor, - do you still not recognize me?" Now Lili had to smile. Grete's eyes seemed to be rejoicing. The doctor only got more confused. "Sparre ... Sparre ... Of course, the name sounds familiar to me ... about fourteen days ago a Mr. Sparre came to see me ... also sent from Professor A. ... But I do not remember you, madam ..."
"The ... gentleman .. and ... I ..., dear Doctor, ... are one and the same ... being... dear Doctor," Lili stammered.
"Excuse me?" Completely baffled Dr. K. looked from one lady to the other, - then looked absent-mindedly at his pocket watch, bowed quickly, "Oh, excuse me one moment, - the ladies are foreigners, naturally ..." And he was out of the waiting room.
Lili looked at Grete, besides herself with confusion. "I believe, I am losing my mind."
Grete laughed. "The Doctor also has that impression. He certainly did not understand a word of what you said."
Lili began to laugh brightly. "That is magnificent. He too does not recognize me ... Now I too begin to believe ..."
A young nurse had entered and asked them to come along with her. The doctor was waiting in his laboratory, which Lili recognized immediately, holding a small instrument similar to a morphine syringe, in his hand, a transparent glass syringe, smiled, still a little timid. "Please madam ..."
She heard the address ring in her ear ... madam ...
"Please, madam, please sit down here ... and push up your sleeve please ... over your elbow ... so I can get a vein free ... there, thank you very much, madam ..."
Lili caught word for word with a keenness never before known, she felt as if the words remained hanging in the room ... her eyes were fixed on the syringe, the needle of which was piercing carefully into the white skin of her arm, she saw, how the glass container slowly filled with her blood, madam, like a rushing sound she believed she heard these words from the trickle of her blood, madam ... and then she lost consciousness. –
When she came to, she looked around shyly.
The doctor stood smiling next to the operating chair.
"Have I lain here long, Doctor?"
"But no, little lady, just a few minutes ... did it hurt so much? ..." "Hurt ..." Lili looked around confusedly. "Hurt ... no, no, I am usually not that sensitive ... You should know that ..."
"Right Mr. Sparre wasn't either ... Sparre if I understood that right, madam, your husband..."
"My? .. yes ... yes ..." She didn't know where to put her eyes due to all the confusion.
Now the doctor was laughing. "So I did understand that right earlier. The German language is a difficult language. It was very funny how you expressed yourself earlier, - as if you had said you and your husband were one and the same person ... Hahaha ..."
"But, Doctor ..."
"Dear madam, believe me, even people like us say the most unbelievable stupidities once he is supposed to make himself understood in a foreign language ... You are not the only one ... no, no ... By the way, to speak of your husband, - a real steely nature, really, - now I remember of course, - as sick and haggardly he was looking recently, when he sat in the same chair you are sitting in right now, - he didn't mention suffering with even a single word, rejected any suggestions towards it ... so instead we talked, as it has become customary among men here, especially when one party comes from abroad, about politics,- while I was draining some of his blood. I know full well that something like that doesn't happen without pain, even if your husband pretended as if ... And successfully so. While you, madam ..."
"Please, doctor ..."
"But my dearest, that is your vested privilege... You as a representative of the weaker sex,- while your dear husband, if I may say so as a medical practitioner, is a prototype of the masculini generis ..."
"Dearest doctor," Lili was laughing loudly now, - she stood up and looked, almost cockily, into his eyes, "if only you knew, what a lesson you gave me with your words!"
"Lesson"?, – the doctor bowed chivalrously over her hand, "please, my dearest, I admire you outright. You agree to give a blood sample unsolicited, just like your husband, - which was by the way very reasonable. Only women are capable of something like that! Shared suffering is half the suffering ... Have I not saved face now?"
"Excellently, good doctor. And now, goodbye!"
"Farewell, and my best wishes to your dear husband!"
- - - -
"Grete, dearest," Lili said when she was again together with her, standing outside, - "I am now at a point where I will accept the absurdity of the situation I just experienced with happy serenity, without complaint or commotion. If I did not, I would either have to go mad or - - lose myself. Neither one nor the other must happen. Because I have to find me first .... find the whole of me ... All of that ... today with the doctor ... yesterday with the young woman from Copenhagen ... I experience that as if in a twilight state."
Grete put down those words into her diary later that night:
"Lili is still and for a long time coming looking for approval ... They won't make it easy for her ... They ... I mean with that the former companions of Andreas ..."
- - - - - - - - - -
"Come," Lili said, "I want to take my first stroll through Berlin now."
And so the two of them walked from the laboratory of Doctor K. through the crowds of the big city, carefree and happy between strange people. It was a young, sunny, early, fresh spring day. The sky was free of clouds and of a silken blue. The air felt like a single caress. The faces of the people they encountered had such bright, happy eyes, Lili noted with emotion. "Do I look just like that, Grete?," she asked many times. And as they were walking along, arm in arm, they often stopped in front of display windows, displays of "women's stores," as Lili said again and again, smiling.
She could not get enough of all the splendor of "silken things" and looked at her own reflection in every window. "Grete, tell me, do I – look good in my furs ... do I look different from – you?" And Grete smiled at her. She did not need to lie. "Child, just think of your Doctor K. – and be happy that we made it this far."
And Lili asked no more. Only now and then her gaze grazed passing people, as if searching for something. An incessant questioning was stirring within her. But she did not allow it to be said aloud. And she forced herself to show a happy smile and to whisper to herself again and again: "Nobody knows me and my fate here in the big city. Nobody suspects me. Nobody. I can carry my secret around with me. Nobody figures me out. And it is bright daylight now. With a lot of sunlight. And the sun will be more beautiful. Much more beautiful. I will experience it, too ... yes .. yes .. yes .."
Quite tired she hung on to Grete's arm. "Grete," she said once, "Grete, you are not ashamed of me ..."
When Grete looked at her surprised, Lili pretended that something had just flown into her eye.
"But what is it?..."
"Nothing ... nothing ... we travel to Dresden tomorrow ... and I am happy that Niels wants to come along with us. Sometimes I am overcome with fear ... I don't know why."
This feeling of fear rose so badly in the last night before their departure for D. that Grete had to call in the head nurse for help.
Lili cried and cried many tired, desperate hours long. "I can not ... I can not ... How am I supposed to face Professor Kreutz ... He does not know me ... he does not know who I am ... I am scared ... I would rather die beforehand ..."
And when she finally could cry no longer, she lay there, with rigid, empty eyes staring ahead in her bed.
A thousand fears touched her. The train journey to D. -, amongst strange people ... the arrival in a strange, big city ... the way to the new clinic ... again strange people ... with curious eyes ... and then the Professor ... how will he receive her ... her? ... her? ...
Lili herself did not know what was happening inside of her ...
Grete had long since packed the suitcases, had gathered many happy words, had talked of irrelevant things, - Lili had been lying there apathetically. "And tomorrow I am supposed to stand before Professor Kreutz ... and nobody can help me ... nobody ..." Repeatedly she spoke those words, whispering. And when Grete told her that she and Professor Kreutz had only one thought, to stand by her, and that it was ungrateful to hesitate here and now of all times, Lili only shook her head, very tiredly. "Grete, I know better ... I know better ... Nobody can help me ... it is much too hard for a tired person ..."
Early in the morning, Grete was still sleeping, - she had only fallen asleep late, - Lili got up, got dressed, looked at herself, walked quietly back and forth, as to not disturb Grete, in front of the not very tall mirror, that Grete had brought along and hung over the nightstand provisionally transformed into a dressing table. – No, no, she did not like herself ... Her mirror image seemed ugly and expressionless to her ... a dim, tired, anemic larva ...
And with empty eyes she sat down on one of the suitcases, put her confused head in her hands and had no clear thought left in her head ...
"Lili ... Lili..." Grete's arms lay around Lili's neck. "Now you look like a small, sweet mother, who is worried about her child ..."
"...who is worried for her child ..." Lili slowly repeated the words. "Yes ... for her spoiled child ... if such a mother can ever be happy again?"
Grete stood in the middle of the room, pleadingly raised her hands. "There, and today I will be very well behaved. Right? There you are happy again."
That was how the day began. And there were again many hard hours to pass. Niels arrived soon, and he helped the very delicate Lili to say her farewells to the nurses and humans of the clinic that had been Lili's first shelter on Earth.
"Lili looks like an officer's miss," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "arrogant and condescending! An incredible phenomenon ..."
- - - -
In half an hour this phenomenon will be led towards its destiny, Lili quietly said to herself ... the phenomenon ..." And she pulled herself together. Nobody should see tears on her today. Nobody. Also not to think. To think of nothing. That is how she let herself be driven to the train station ... With eyes that pretended as if they saw ... but they saw nothing ... nothing ... in the waiting room she was forced to eat breakfast with the two others. She was obedient. "Today I don't want to have a will of my own, Niels, today I want to do whatever the two of you order me to. Today you should think for me. Today I want to be off - one last time."
----
An outrightly sumptuous breakfast table was spirited into existence in a hurry. "A morning service, ladies and gentlemen," Niels mandated, solemnly, "besides this is meaningful, because we are accompanying our Lili on her first overland journey."
The waiter had put a liter stein of "Hofbräu" in front of everyone. Niels raised his stein towards Lili, and Grete, the delicate and elegant Grete, raised, even if under enormous effort, her stein towards Lili, - and Lili was no spoilsport.
"Skaal, my lovelies," she said, "or, as you should say here, prosit!" And before Niels had let his stein clink against Lili's, she had taken a big swig.
"Bravo, bravo'" Niels cheered, so loudly, that many of the waiting room guests turned around to them.
Lili put her cup down again immediately. "Please, please, don't raise attention." The fear, the fear that would not let her go...
But she wanted to be happy. And also, she admitted it honestly to herself: the fresh, fragrant beer tasted wonderful to her. And this heart-warming breakfast with crusty Berlin rolls and blood sausage and liver sausage and cheese, a real German morning meal, - and absolutely not hospital fare!
"You become a whole new being, children," she confessed, "it tastes like resurrection! If only we were that far! Prosit! Long live life!"
Niels didn't need to be told a second time. And when the departure time came, Lili on Niels' arm through the midst of the bustling crowds came out onto the platform, so that Grete had difficulty following. They found a window seat for her in a second-class compartment. Niels and Grete had gotten seats opposite of hers.
Lili rode into her new life, with happy, wideawake eyes.
The landscape between Berlin and D., endless, little varied plains with sparse forests and springish brown, empty fields, here and there red and white and yellow colored by settlements and villages, and small towns and cities, broken by slowly flowing creeks - and rivers, - a picture without excitement, a panorama that calms and lulls. A low, bluish grey sky above, with the fresh morning wind that drove white sun clouds like young lambs that just had been released from their stables. Then suddenly a big, brightly green square shape, winter sown, already escaping the soil, between willow bushes, that already showed some silver, and a dark cloud island sailed ghostly above. A steeple stands in front of the horizon to the East. The sun frees itself from a deep drifting ball of clouds and pours coppery glimmer over the whole world. The telegraph wire in front of the windows swirl up and down. A flock of partridges shoots out of a piece of dark fallow land like a dark torn ball in front of pale pine forest, - a station agent's house with silver birches and a few fruit trees, crippled and crouched, and between them colorful pieces of laundry, a woman, her hands pressed to her hips, her eyes fixated on the train, beside her a blonde child with a bright red ball in hand, and a brown Pomeranian dog sitting next to the child, - whoosh – past. The woman waving is barely visible. A blue white checkered piece of clothing waves in her right hand. – an unpaved country road bows into the railroad embankment. Two heavy draft horses in front of a high loaded carriage. The driver lunges with his whip. The sun gilds him and the whip's line and the brass top of his pipe. The puddles in the rutted wagon trails. – behind a widely swung hillside factory chimneys rise and white and yellowish-green pillars of smoke wind into the blue, until a breeze bends them and they become sunny bright clouds ...
Lili's eyes have become those of a painter. And she is startled. "Those are not my eyes ... Those are Andreas' eyes ... is he still not dead within me? ... Can he not give me peace?"
And she closes her eyes. And she does not know why she is so afraid to see the world the way Andrea's eyes did, to suck it in and love it ... Is it, because she is afraid never to come unto herself, never to be able to loosen herself from – Andreas?...
Grete and Niels have stepped out to smoke a little.
In the compartment there are still two very correct looking German gentlemen. Both corner seats next to the door are theirs.
Lili barely paid attention to them. They had taken cover behind newspapers.
Suddenly one gentleman puts down his newspaper in front of him, the other gentleman follows his example, with the only difference that he almost ceremoniously folds his newspaper, the "gentleman opposite". She watches him involuntarily, and he returns her gaze very awkwardly. He harrumphs at least four times. The other gentleman dusts himself off a little, pulls off his plain, brown, very solid, leather glove. A substantial brilliant ring appears. Hm, another harrumph rings.
Lili pulls her furs closer. She feels the gazes of the two "lords of creation" on her. – She makes a very condescending face.
Hm, the gentleman next to her says, hm and again: "Madame, allow me?"
She looks at him.
He hands a heavy, silver with gold plating cigarette case to her: "This may be nonsmoker ... Hm ... but the two other people ... hm"
Lili smiles. "No, thank you."
Hm, and the gentleman has closed his case again and laboriously deposited it in his back pant pocket. Hm...
The gentleman across folds open his newspaper again.
And Lili looks out the window again.
A small, delicate gathering of birches on a hilltop under the sun. Two very small mother of pearl colored clouds above, - like wings, forgotten at play by a child angel.
Niels has come back in, sits down at his window seat again. "Early spring," he says, "early spring, Lili ... No other language knows a similar word."
And Grete, who just came back in, repeats the word; " Early spring... Now to stand out there and paint, paint, just like ..."
She breaks off there, avoids Lili's gaze, closes her eyes.
A long hour they sat there in silence.
Grete's words kept ringing in Lili's ears: "... early spring ... paint ... just like..." and she completed the sentence ... "just like I once did with Andreas."
Was it jealousy that was stirring in her now? ...
No, no, don't think ...
And she leaned over to Grete, - nobody saw it, - not Niels either, who had dozed off like Grete, and the two gentleman strangers stood out in the corridor and smoked, - and Lili put her hand in Grete's lap very quietly, and then she stood up and sat down next to Grete, put her head against Grete's shoulder and looked out again: the landscape had changed its character. Ranges of hills rolled closer, grew into small mountains, and new ones joined them all the time, sprinkled with villas. And finally everything turned into a hodgepodge of villas and gardens and tenement houses – and between which factories stretched upwards, streetscapes opened up like canals and canals between columns of houses, and the columns of houses turned into large settlements full of whirling life. Trams, cars, people, screaming advertisements on windowless gable walls, wide, multibranched rail landscapes on both sides, trains with endless columns of cars, stations, on the right and on the left, that were raced through, an eternal shaking of the car, that was pulled through switches, punching and rumbling ...
The train stopped.
Niels woke.
"Will we arrive soon?" Lili asked.
"The next station," and then they woke Grete.
As the train started moving again, all three of them stood by the window. Now they rode across the long bridge, under which the broad, dark stream stretched like a shimmering, endless silken band, and like a wonderful mirage Lili saw the green cupolas and towers and roofs of churches and castles and palaces rise from the shimmering water surface like a previously faded away and now returned Vineta ... her Vineta ... And she slowly raised her gaze upwards and saw it was not an illusion, this big, beautiful, royal city on both sides of the Elbe river, rising from the broad valley unto green hills and a gentle blue sky.
She kneeled on the seat of her chair and stared out and drank in the image of this site of pilgrimage,eagerly awaited, from many pains born to her, with her eyes. And the eyes became too full and too heavy. She had to close them and pressed her hands to her pounding heart. They were kind, devout tears that she cried, overwhelmed by the big, big, redemptive miracle of her poor life ... Boundless happiness flooded over her entire thinking. "Now I am home ... now I will be home soon." And she cried and cried.
Niels put his hand on her shoulder. "Child, child."
"It is just for happiness, Niels."
And Grete stood next to her shaken. She could not find words. But many tears.
And none of them saw the astonished eyes of the two gentlemen strangers, who quickly grabbed their luggage and moved out with a silent farewell.
How Lili got out of the compartment, how she then made her entry into D. in a green taxicab, has forever disappeared from her memory. She only knows that she held the small silver Madonna to her lips for the entirety of the drive as in a cramp, and kept stammering to herself: "Help me ... help me ... help me ..."
It was a long car ride, the city streets were already behind them, mansion districts welcomed them, and suddenly they passed broad and tall buildings. There the car rounded a street corner, slim, white gleaming birch trees lifted their delicate twigs over a garden wall, behind which rose a grey, solemn, mighty building that was composed of many houses, with towers.
"Stop, stop!" Lili called out. "Here it is!"
The next moment the car stopped in front of a portal, that bore the inscription in bold letters:
MUNICIPAL WOMEN'S CLINIC
"How could you know that?" Grete and Niels asked as if from the same mouth, when they were helping Lili getting out of the car.
"I felt it, that it had to be here," Lili answered very faintly., "help me a little, so I can brace myself ... my legs refuse to work ... I feel like I have to faint ... Now that I am finally home ... It was such a long, difficult journey." As they stood in front of the portal and rang the bell, Lili was deathly pale. She heard the sound of the hospital bell, and it was as if she had heard the sound of her own heart.
From the window of the gatekeeper's apartment a nurse clad in white called to them. "To the private practice? – please turn right, through the garden."
It was already late in the afternoon. Rich, dimmed light from out of rain slick sky lay over the big garden, its slim birch trunks gleamed like immaculate silver above the green mats of lawn. Lili walked in the lead.
"Just look," Niels said to Grete, "she walks there as if she knew everything here. But she has never been here before."
Like a sleepwalker she stepped ahead and found the entrance to the private practice. She was finally home.
Grete read the news to Lili, very slowly, her voice quaking with excitement, but she pulled herself together. "Good, Lili, we will be ready then. What do you think?"
"We go tomorrow morning of course."
"Very well, then we have to go to Dr. K. today still."
And Grete hurried down the corridor to get a connection to the laboratory of the biochemist Dr. K.
When she returned a few minutes later with the message that Dr. K. would not be present for about an hour, she found Lili standing in front of the window with the letter from Professor Kreutz in her hand.
"Lili we can be on our way in a minute. We can walk part of the way. It will do you good."
"No, no, not walk." Lili exclaimed like a startled child. "I ... don't want to show myself ... on the street yet." And then the tears came.
Grete caressed the disturbed one quietly. "All right, we will drive."
On the way Grete mentioned casually that the assistant of the doctor she had spoken to on the phone had not understood her name. "It was a little difficult to clarify that to her ..." Grete did not say any more.
By chance their car arrived in front of the laboratory at the same time as the car of Dr. K.
"Doctor, good day," said Lili, recognizing him immediately and shook his hand.
"Good day, madam," the doctor replied, apparently surprised, as if he were searching his memory for her name.
Lili looked around puzzled, then looked at Grete as if looking for help, gathered her courage and stammered awkwardly: "I come from the clinic of Professor A. – at the instigation of Professor Kreutz – I am Lili Sparre ..." It was the first time that she had spoken her name aloud in Germany ... she heard herself speak. An inexplicable shame burned in her blood ... Rigidly she looked at the doctor. "Do you not recognize me, dear Doctor?"
"But of course, madam, of course," Dr. K. replied, no less confused than Lili, and it was clear from the sound of his words that he had no idea who was standing in front of him.
"This is about a blood sample, if I understand this right," he continued quite nervously, lead the two ladies through the antechamber and then into the waiting room.
"But, dear Doctor, - do you still not recognize me?" Now Lili had to smile. Grete's eyes seemed to be rejoicing. The doctor only got more confused. "Sparre ... Sparre ... Of course, the name sounds familiar to me ... about fourteen days ago a Mr. Sparre came to see me ... also sent from Professor A. ... But I do not remember you, madam ..."
"The ... gentleman .. and ... I ..., dear Doctor, ... are one and the same ... being... dear Doctor," Lili stammered.
"Excuse me?" Completely baffled Dr. K. looked from one lady to the other, - then looked absent-mindedly at his pocket watch, bowed quickly, "Oh, excuse me one moment, - the ladies are foreigners, naturally ..." And he was out of the waiting room.
Lili looked at Grete, besides herself with confusion. "I believe, I am losing my mind."
Grete laughed. "The Doctor also has that impression. He certainly did not understand a word of what you said."
Lili began to laugh brightly. "That is magnificent. He too does not recognize me ... Now I too begin to believe ..."
A young nurse had entered and asked them to come along with her. The doctor was waiting in his laboratory, which Lili recognized immediately, holding a small instrument similar to a morphine syringe, in his hand, a transparent glass syringe, smiled, still a little timid. "Please madam ..."
She heard the address ring in her ear ... madam ...
"Please, madam, please sit down here ... and push up your sleeve please ... over your elbow ... so I can get a vein free ... there, thank you very much, madam ..."
Lili caught word for word with a keenness never before known, she felt as if the words remained hanging in the room ... her eyes were fixed on the syringe, the needle of which was piercing carefully into the white skin of her arm, she saw, how the glass container slowly filled with her blood, madam, like a rushing sound she believed she heard these words from the trickle of her blood, madam ... and then she lost consciousness. –
When she came to, she looked around shyly.
The doctor stood smiling next to the operating chair.
"Have I lain here long, Doctor?"
"But no, little lady, just a few minutes ... did it hurt so much? ..." "Hurt ..." Lili looked around confusedly. "Hurt ... no, no, I am usually not that sensitive ... You should know that ..."
"Right Mr. Sparre wasn't either ... Sparre if I understood that right, madam, your husband..."
"My? .. yes ... yes ..." She didn't know where to put her eyes due to all the confusion.
Now the doctor was laughing. "So I did understand that right earlier. The German language is a difficult language. It was very funny how you expressed yourself earlier, - as if you had said you and your husband were one and the same person ... Hahaha ..."
"But, Doctor ..."
"Dear madam, believe me, even people like us say the most unbelievable stupidities once he is supposed to make himself understood in a foreign language ... You are not the only one ... no, no ... By the way, to speak of your husband, - a real steely nature, really, - now I remember of course, - as sick and haggardly he was looking recently, when he sat in the same chair you are sitting in right now, - he didn't mention suffering with even a single word, rejected any suggestions towards it ... so instead we talked, as it has become customary among men here, especially when one party comes from abroad, about politics,- while I was draining some of his blood. I know full well that something like that doesn't happen without pain, even if your husband pretended as if ... And successfully so. While you, madam ..."
"Please, doctor ..."
"But my dearest, that is your vested privilege... You as a representative of the weaker sex,- while your dear husband, if I may say so as a medical practitioner, is a prototype of the masculini generis ..."
"Dearest doctor," Lili was laughing loudly now, - she stood up and looked, almost cockily, into his eyes, "if only you knew, what a lesson you gave me with your words!"
"Lesson"?, – the doctor bowed chivalrously over her hand, "please, my dearest, I admire you outright. You agree to give a blood sample unsolicited, just like your husband, - which was by the way very reasonable. Only women are capable of something like that! Shared suffering is half the suffering ... Have I not saved face now?"
"Excellently, good doctor. And now, goodbye!"
"Farewell, and my best wishes to your dear husband!"
- - - -
"Grete, dearest," Lili said when she was again together with her, standing outside, - "I am now at a point where I will accept the absurdity of the situation I just experienced with happy serenity, without complaint or commotion. If I did not, I would either have to go mad or - - lose myself. Neither one nor the other must happen. Because I have to find me first .... find the whole of me ... All of that ... today with the doctor ... yesterday with the young woman from Copenhagen ... I experience that as if in a twilight state."
Grete put down those words into her diary later that night:
"Lili is still and for a long time coming looking for approval ... They won't make it easy for her ... They ... I mean with that the former companions of Andreas ..."
- - - - - - - - - -
"Come," Lili said, "I want to take my first stroll through Berlin now."
And so the two of them walked from the laboratory of Doctor K. through the crowds of the big city, carefree and happy between strange people. It was a young, sunny, early, fresh spring day. The sky was free of clouds and of a silken blue. The air felt like a single caress. The faces of the people they encountered had such bright, happy eyes, Lili noted with emotion. "Do I look just like that, Grete?," she asked many times. And as they were walking along, arm in arm, they often stopped in front of display windows, displays of "women's stores," as Lili said again and again, smiling.
She could not get enough of all the splendor of "silken things" and looked at her own reflection in every window. "Grete, tell me, do I – look good in my furs ... do I look different from – you?" And Grete smiled at her. She did not need to lie. "Child, just think of your Doctor K. – and be happy that we made it this far."
And Lili asked no more. Only now and then her gaze grazed passing people, as if searching for something. An incessant questioning was stirring within her. But she did not allow it to be said aloud. And she forced herself to show a happy smile and to whisper to herself again and again: "Nobody knows me and my fate here in the big city. Nobody suspects me. Nobody. I can carry my secret around with me. Nobody figures me out. And it is bright daylight now. With a lot of sunlight. And the sun will be more beautiful. Much more beautiful. I will experience it, too ... yes .. yes .. yes .."
Quite tired she hung on to Grete's arm. "Grete," she said once, "Grete, you are not ashamed of me ..."
When Grete looked at her surprised, Lili pretended that something had just flown into her eye.
"But what is it?..."
"Nothing ... nothing ... we travel to Dresden tomorrow ... and I am happy that Niels wants to come along with us. Sometimes I am overcome with fear ... I don't know why."
This feeling of fear rose so badly in the last night before their departure for D. that Grete had to call in the head nurse for help.
Lili cried and cried many tired, desperate hours long. "I can not ... I can not ... How am I supposed to face Professor Kreutz ... He does not know me ... he does not know who I am ... I am scared ... I would rather die beforehand ..."
And when she finally could cry no longer, she lay there, with rigid, empty eyes staring ahead in her bed.
A thousand fears touched her. The train journey to D. -, amongst strange people ... the arrival in a strange, big city ... the way to the new clinic ... again strange people ... with curious eyes ... and then the Professor ... how will he receive her ... her? ... her? ...
Lili herself did not know what was happening inside of her ...
Grete had long since packed the suitcases, had gathered many happy words, had talked of irrelevant things, - Lili had been lying there apathetically. "And tomorrow I am supposed to stand before Professor Kreutz ... and nobody can help me ... nobody ..." Repeatedly she spoke those words, whispering. And when Grete told her that she and Professor Kreutz had only one thought, to stand by her, and that it was ungrateful to hesitate here and now of all times, Lili only shook her head, very tiredly. "Grete, I know better ... I know better ... Nobody can help me ... it is much too hard for a tired person ..."
Early in the morning, Grete was still sleeping, - she had only fallen asleep late, - Lili got up, got dressed, looked at herself, walked quietly back and forth, as to not disturb Grete, in front of the not very tall mirror, that Grete had brought along and hung over the nightstand provisionally transformed into a dressing table. – No, no, she did not like herself ... Her mirror image seemed ugly and expressionless to her ... a dim, tired, anemic larva ...
And with empty eyes she sat down on one of the suitcases, put her confused head in her hands and had no clear thought left in her head ...
"Lili ... Lili..." Grete's arms lay around Lili's neck. "Now you look like a small, sweet mother, who is worried about her child ..."
"...who is worried for her child ..." Lili slowly repeated the words. "Yes ... for her spoiled child ... if such a mother can ever be happy again?"
Grete stood in the middle of the room, pleadingly raised her hands. "There, and today I will be very well behaved. Right? There you are happy again."
That was how the day began. And there were again many hard hours to pass. Niels arrived soon, and he helped the very delicate Lili to say her farewells to the nurses and humans of the clinic that had been Lili's first shelter on Earth.
"Lili looks like an officer's miss," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "arrogant and condescending! An incredible phenomenon ..."
- - - -
In half an hour this phenomenon will be led towards its destiny, Lili quietly said to herself ... the phenomenon ..." And she pulled herself together. Nobody should see tears on her today. Nobody. Also not to think. To think of nothing. That is how she let herself be driven to the train station ... With eyes that pretended as if they saw ... but they saw nothing ... nothing ... in the waiting room she was forced to eat breakfast with the two others. She was obedient. "Today I don't want to have a will of my own, Niels, today I want to do whatever the two of you order me to. Today you should think for me. Today I want to be off - one last time."
----
An outrightly sumptuous breakfast table was spirited into existence in a hurry. "A morning service, ladies and gentlemen," Niels mandated, solemnly, "besides this is meaningful, because we are accompanying our Lili on her first overland journey."
The waiter had put a liter stein of "Hofbräu" in front of everyone. Niels raised his stein towards Lili, and Grete, the delicate and elegant Grete, raised, even if under enormous effort, her stein towards Lili, - and Lili was no spoilsport.
"Skaal, my lovelies," she said, "or, as you should say here, prosit!" And before Niels had let his stein clink against Lili's, she had taken a big swig.
"Bravo, bravo'" Niels cheered, so loudly, that many of the waiting room guests turned around to them.
Lili put her cup down again immediately. "Please, please, don't raise attention." The fear, the fear that would not let her go...
But she wanted to be happy. And also, she admitted it honestly to herself: the fresh, fragrant beer tasted wonderful to her. And this heart-warming breakfast with crusty Berlin rolls and blood sausage and liver sausage and cheese, a real German morning meal, - and absolutely not hospital fare!
"You become a whole new being, children," she confessed, "it tastes like resurrection! If only we were that far! Prosit! Long live life!"
Niels didn't need to be told a second time. And when the departure time came, Lili on Niels' arm through the midst of the bustling crowds came out onto the platform, so that Grete had difficulty following. They found a window seat for her in a second-class compartment. Niels and Grete had gotten seats opposite of hers.
Lili rode into her new life, with happy, wideawake eyes.
The landscape between Berlin and D., endless, little varied plains with sparse forests and springish brown, empty fields, here and there red and white and yellow colored by settlements and villages, and small towns and cities, broken by slowly flowing creeks - and rivers, - a picture without excitement, a panorama that calms and lulls. A low, bluish grey sky above, with the fresh morning wind that drove white sun clouds like young lambs that just had been released from their stables. Then suddenly a big, brightly green square shape, winter sown, already escaping the soil, between willow bushes, that already showed some silver, and a dark cloud island sailed ghostly above. A steeple stands in front of the horizon to the East. The sun frees itself from a deep drifting ball of clouds and pours coppery glimmer over the whole world. The telegraph wire in front of the windows swirl up and down. A flock of partridges shoots out of a piece of dark fallow land like a dark torn ball in front of pale pine forest, - a station agent's house with silver birches and a few fruit trees, crippled and crouched, and between them colorful pieces of laundry, a woman, her hands pressed to her hips, her eyes fixated on the train, beside her a blonde child with a bright red ball in hand, and a brown Pomeranian dog sitting next to the child, - whoosh – past. The woman waving is barely visible. A blue white checkered piece of clothing waves in her right hand. – an unpaved country road bows into the railroad embankment. Two heavy draft horses in front of a high loaded carriage. The driver lunges with his whip. The sun gilds him and the whip's line and the brass top of his pipe. The puddles in the rutted wagon trails. – behind a widely swung hillside factory chimneys rise and white and yellowish-green pillars of smoke wind into the blue, until a breeze bends them and they become sunny bright clouds ...
Lili's eyes have become those of a painter. And she is startled. "Those are not my eyes ... Those are Andreas' eyes ... is he still not dead within me? ... Can he not give me peace?"
And she closes her eyes. And she does not know why she is so afraid to see the world the way Andrea's eyes did, to suck it in and love it ... Is it, because she is afraid never to come unto herself, never to be able to loosen herself from – Andreas?...
Grete and Niels have stepped out to smoke a little.
In the compartment there are still two very correct looking German gentlemen. Both corner seats next to the door are theirs.
Lili barely paid attention to them. They had taken cover behind newspapers.
Suddenly one gentleman puts down his newspaper in front of him, the other gentleman follows his example, with the only difference that he almost ceremoniously folds his newspaper, the "gentleman opposite". She watches him involuntarily, and he returns her gaze very awkwardly. He harrumphs at least four times. The other gentleman dusts himself off a little, pulls off his plain, brown, very solid, leather glove. A substantial brilliant ring appears. Hm, another harrumph rings.
Lili pulls her furs closer. She feels the gazes of the two "lords of creation" on her. – She makes a very condescending face.
Hm, the gentleman next to her says, hm and again: "Madame, allow me?"
She looks at him.
He hands a heavy, silver with gold plating cigarette case to her: "This may be nonsmoker ... Hm ... but the two other people ... hm"
Lili smiles. "No, thank you."
Hm, and the gentleman has closed his case again and laboriously deposited it in his back pant pocket. Hm...
The gentleman across folds open his newspaper again.
And Lili looks out the window again.
A small, delicate gathering of birches on a hilltop under the sun. Two very small mother of pearl colored clouds above, - like wings, forgotten at play by a child angel.
Niels has come back in, sits down at his window seat again. "Early spring," he says, "early spring, Lili ... No other language knows a similar word."
And Grete, who just came back in, repeats the word; " Early spring... Now to stand out there and paint, paint, just like ..."
She breaks off there, avoids Lili's gaze, closes her eyes.
A long hour they sat there in silence.
Grete's words kept ringing in Lili's ears: "... early spring ... paint ... just like..." and she completed the sentence ... "just like I once did with Andreas."
Was it jealousy that was stirring in her now? ...
No, no, don't think ...
And she leaned over to Grete, - nobody saw it, - not Niels either, who had dozed off like Grete, and the two gentleman strangers stood out in the corridor and smoked, - and Lili put her hand in Grete's lap very quietly, and then she stood up and sat down next to Grete, put her head against Grete's shoulder and looked out again: the landscape had changed its character. Ranges of hills rolled closer, grew into small mountains, and new ones joined them all the time, sprinkled with villas. And finally everything turned into a hodgepodge of villas and gardens and tenement houses – and between which factories stretched upwards, streetscapes opened up like canals and canals between columns of houses, and the columns of houses turned into large settlements full of whirling life. Trams, cars, people, screaming advertisements on windowless gable walls, wide, multibranched rail landscapes on both sides, trains with endless columns of cars, stations, on the right and on the left, that were raced through, an eternal shaking of the car, that was pulled through switches, punching and rumbling ...
The train stopped.
Niels woke.
"Will we arrive soon?" Lili asked.
"The next station," and then they woke Grete.
As the train started moving again, all three of them stood by the window. Now they rode across the long bridge, under which the broad, dark stream stretched like a shimmering, endless silken band, and like a wonderful mirage Lili saw the green cupolas and towers and roofs of churches and castles and palaces rise from the shimmering water surface like a previously faded away and now returned Vineta ... her Vineta ... And she slowly raised her gaze upwards and saw it was not an illusion, this big, beautiful, royal city on both sides of the Elbe river, rising from the broad valley unto green hills and a gentle blue sky.
She kneeled on the seat of her chair and stared out and drank in the image of this site of pilgrimage,eagerly awaited, from many pains born to her, with her eyes. And the eyes became too full and too heavy. She had to close them and pressed her hands to her pounding heart. They were kind, devout tears that she cried, overwhelmed by the big, big, redemptive miracle of her poor life ... Boundless happiness flooded over her entire thinking. "Now I am home ... now I will be home soon." And she cried and cried.
Niels put his hand on her shoulder. "Child, child."
"It is just for happiness, Niels."
And Grete stood next to her shaken. She could not find words. But many tears.
And none of them saw the astonished eyes of the two gentlemen strangers, who quickly grabbed their luggage and moved out with a silent farewell.
How Lili got out of the compartment, how she then made her entry into D. in a green taxicab, has forever disappeared from her memory. She only knows that she held the small silver Madonna to her lips for the entirety of the drive as in a cramp, and kept stammering to herself: "Help me ... help me ... help me ..."
It was a long car ride, the city streets were already behind them, mansion districts welcomed them, and suddenly they passed broad and tall buildings. There the car rounded a street corner, slim, white gleaming birch trees lifted their delicate twigs over a garden wall, behind which rose a grey, solemn, mighty building that was composed of many houses, with towers.
"Stop, stop!" Lili called out. "Here it is!"
The next moment the car stopped in front of a portal, that bore the inscription in bold letters:
MUNICIPAL WOMEN'S CLINIC
"How could you know that?" Grete and Niels asked as if from the same mouth, when they were helping Lili getting out of the car.
"I felt it, that it had to be here," Lili answered very faintly., "help me a little, so I can brace myself ... my legs refuse to work ... I feel like I have to faint ... Now that I am finally home ... It was such a long, difficult journey." As they stood in front of the portal and rang the bell, Lili was deathly pale. She heard the sound of the hospital bell, and it was as if she had heard the sound of her own heart.
From the window of the gatekeeper's apartment a nurse clad in white called to them. "To the private practice? – please turn right, through the garden."
It was already late in the afternoon. Rich, dimmed light from out of rain slick sky lay over the big garden, its slim birch trunks gleamed like immaculate silver above the green mats of lawn. Lili walked in the lead.
"Just look," Niels said to Grete, "she walks there as if she knew everything here. But she has never been here before."
Like a sleepwalker she stepped ahead and found the entrance to the private practice. She was finally home.