Man Into Woman - Chapter 18 by Lili Elbe Lyrics
Many weeks later Lili recalled to herself her first meeting with Andreas' sister out in the quiet villa on Gentofte Lake. She began keeping a diary to keep account of her activities and her new beginning of life. The first tremors of her weeks in Copenhagen were behind her. She had found calm and some happiness again. And she already had the strength to go through the records that Andreas' friend had made in Berlin barely half a year ago, back when Andreas had narrated his life to his friend all night long. The son of her sister, a young, aspiring doctor, had encouraged her to begin with her own recordings now. "You can do a lot of good with that," he had said, "for you and for other people, if you would capture your thoughts and feelings now, especially in this time in which you want to prepare yourself for serious, creative work."
Grete did not live with her. She had taken up residence with acquaintances in the city, because no one in Copenhagen was supposed to know of Lili's presence for the moment, nobody was supposed to receive news of Lili's existence for now. That was why everyone who asked about Andreas was told by Grete that he was lying in a German clinic struck by a bad illness ... Grete visited Lili only in secret now and then, and Lili did not want it any other way. No sooner than she dared leaving the garden together with her sister's son to go on walks in the surroundings under his protection, densely veiled. Until now her only occupation in Copenhagen had been to help Grete to win her freedom back. Grete's marriage to Andreas was supposed to be annulled quietly and in secret. It was a difficult undertaking, the success of which was by no means certain; no law existed, that could be consulted. Because one of the spouses, Andreas, no longer existed, so how could a marriage between a non-existent spouse and his wife be dissolved? And yet it was this "normal divorce law" which both the hired lawyers as well as the collegiate of judges, to whom the issue was assigned, thought was the only thing to refer to in handling the issue. This law demanded that for the time of one year prior to divorce a separation, meaning a separation of bed and table, must be announced, and another year has to pass, before the marriage could be lawfully dissolved. With that Grete could only be divorced after two years.
Lili could not bear the thought. She did not want to cheat Grete out of two years of her life. And since it looked as if the lawyers could find no other way out, she was determined to free Grete from the burden of a marriage that, before the law, was with a dead person. The two of them were aided by the advice of a dedicated lawyer, namely to address a petition to the King, so that through an act of mercy he might declare the marriage of Andreas and Grete invalid. That petition was submitted. That was in late August, and in late September Grete and Lili were summoned to a court date, where both had to appear in person. When Grete asked her if she would have the strength to go there with her, Lili declared, beaming with joy: "If I can give you your freedom with such a small sacrifice, do you think that I could think of myself for just one moment?"
And this trip to court was the first excursion Lili and Grete took together. Two ladies appeared in front of the judges. Only the two lawyers were present. The date was kept strictly secret from the public. The whole court proceedings took barely half an hour. Lili dreaded describing it, to even just recounting it. Grete, too, never spoke of it. And a few days later, on October 6, both were told of the King's decree, in accordance to which the marriage between Andreas and Grete Sparre was declared invalid.
Lili had moved out of her sister's villa shortly before and had found a few attic rooms in the house of an acquaintance as shelter for her alone.
They were a few humble, small rooms, in which as long as she was in Copenhagen, as long as she was in Denmark, she led her quiet life, where she finally also found her inner composure to put into action what the son of Andreas' sister had encouraged: to begin her Copenhagen diary.
- - -
She began her diary on October 10. And she wrote:
"When I went out to Andreas' sister on the second day of my stay in Copenhagen, - today I know and feel that I too may call her my sister, - there I stepped into a room that I did not know, but where Andreas had been many times before. When I opened the door, nobody was in the room, and when I had taken the first steps, I saw my image in a hand mirror. A tall, elegant lady, with smiling eyes, with red painted lips, with fresh cheeks looks back at me. I was happy with my image. I know, I had done everything to make myself as beautiful as possible. To my own justification. Who wants to accuse me of having taken the help of all the beauty products every woman has a right to? If I should ever paint, I would capture that moment in a picture. Just as I had observed my own image, I noticed another image behind me, framed by the same mirror. A big fjord landscape, flooded in summer sun with colorful, pregnant forested banks on both side. My heart stopped. I turned around. And I see the picture in a broad, heavy golden frame on the wall. It is a painting from Andreas' youth, one he painted of his home. And I look around that room, nobody was watching me. And I see on all walls of the room many pictures, paintings of landscapes, paintings of cities, paintings of rivers, and I recognize them all as Andreas' paintings. I suddenly see his entire wanderings in front of me. One painting is the town in southern France on the Loire, where Andreas and Grete had lived for many happy summer months. And not just Andreas. No, down there I, Lili, had lived myself, like an escapee from the prison of Andreas' body. And I see another painting. A bridge over the Seine in Paris, a thunderstorm hanging in the sky above. And on that bridge Andreas had stood. And he had looked down into the stream and wrestled with thoughts of death. And I see other paintings, painted by Grete. And one of them shows me, Lili, me here in women's clothes, lured out of Andreas. And I step towards the painting and have to caress it and lean my head against the painting and bright tears run down my cheeks. And I must not cry. And I sit down on a chair in front of the table. A big album is lying there. Involuntarily I open it. And I look inside. And I find pictures of a blonde boy with big brown eyes. And I know not how to go on, because these are pictures of Andreas when he was still a child and was gleefully playing with his sister and his two brothers, making his way into his hard life which he did not yet suspect."
- - -
[Lili continues in her diary:] "Then the door opens and a woman with dark hair and blue eyes and hesitant arms steps into the room: Andreas' sister. And I got up, and I stood before Andreas' sister. And the sister has to look up to me, because I am taller than she is. And there a crazy memory goes through me like hot lightning: Andreas and his sister were of the same height. And I see it in the eyes of the sister, that she has the same thought, that she too can't believe it like a crazy haunting. And then I say to her: "Good day. And now be good to your sister Lili." Maybe I said something else entirely. Maybe I said: "Bid me a good welcome, and love me just the way you loved Andreas." Maybe I did not say anything at all. Or maybe I just smiled and told her: "Don't be confused that I am taller than our dead brother Andreas, it is because I wear such high heels. And don't be cross with me, because I want to be as pretty and ladylike as all other well-groomed ladies."
And we sit down on the sofa and before us on the table lay the album with Andreas' childhood pictures. And we held one another's hands. And the sister was kind, and she was looking for words. And her eyes looked at me always and her lips also said something. And I don't know if it was only her lips or her eyes, that spoke to me: "Don't be angry that I cannot call you by your name Lili just yet. And that I can't locate you clearly in my thoughts yet. That I just look at you and search for Andreas. In your eyes, around your mouth, in your hands and on your forehead. Because I loved Andreas' eyes so and also his hands. And also his forehead. I have kissed it so often. That you know. Or you do not know it. But Andreas knows it. Because I am just a year older than Andreas. And when Andreas and I were very little, he was just five years old and I was six years old, I was his little mom. And I had no brother more beautiful, more sweet than he was. He played with my dolls, and he played with my doll stroller. And I called him "Lilleman," and that means little man. And when I wrote the name down for Mother once, and Mother told me that I had spelled Lilleman with just one N instead of two, there I told Mother that my little brother Andreas was just a Lilleman with one N, because he was not a real man. And Mother smiled then, and you smiled too when you heard it, no not you, Andreas smiled. And he did not really know why he was smiling. And I knew not quite why I had said that, that my Andreas was not a real man. And do you remember how Andreas and I took our doll stroller to the woods? Andreas loved pushing the little cart. But he was scared that others would see him and tease him for it. And do you also know that I then would put Andreas' small white hands into my own? And do you also know why I did that? You see, Andreas never knew that, but today I can say it. I just did that so that, if someone had surprised us, I could keep pushing the cart by myself, and Andreas could take both of his small hands from the cart's handle, as if nothing had happened ..." And if the sister did not say this with her lips, then she told it with her eyes, but it probably was her lips. And I just nodded. And I did not cry any tears.
And I took it quite calmly that she kept searching and searching for Andreas in me with her big, trembling woman's eyes, searching for her little brother, and as I believe today, found him again. She called me by Andreas' name now and then during those first days and hours, in which we spent many hours talking to one another quite painfully. I always felt as if I had to die then. I said it a couple of times, too. And then I pleaded with her to believe me that I was not Andreas' murderer, that, if Andreas had not died, I would have perished alongside of him, and that I am living now I have to be grateful to him for every day of my life. I once also said to her that I technically no longer had any parents or siblings, because I hadn't been born up here, but in Germany. And maybe Mother, had she given birth to me as a girl, would have not loved me as much as she did Andreas. It must have been on that day that the sister said to me that everything that had happened down in D. had been an affront to nature. It had been playing with fate. Was Andreas really not able to continue living? Or whether it would not have been better, not had been greater, if Andreas could have carried his fate and his tortured body onwards until his poor end? Then the sister pointed to all of Andreas' paintings that she had collected, and there I saw that their entire home was actually a museum for Andreas. Because all the walls of their rooms were filled with Andreas' paintings. "Don't you see," said the sister, "what kind of an artist has perished with him? How completely different he was from you?" "Yes," I said then, "that is what proves how right Andreas was when he freed me, because we were two beings, Andreas and I. And I know, that I as a human being am less significant than he. I will never be able to achieve what he achieved. That I will never be able to paint, and that I don't want to paint. Because if I did, I fear I would never be able to approach his talent. But here you see especially that it really was two beings who had been living in the body that Mother gave birth to. Have I exchanged so much for this life, that I can now finally lead by myself, where you yourself say that Andreas had been so much stronger and more capable than I? He had lived a long life and worked and I was barely allowed to show myself. And if I showed myself, then you all just called it a game and a deception and a performance. So let us be friends now and good sisters for the sake of our dead brother Andreas.
And then there was a day when the sister said: "Well, Lili, no wrong appears to have been done. Certainly it was Andreas' will that everything happened the way it had to. Because he always was so chivalrous. And that is why he gave you freedom, even if he had to pay for it with his life."
It was a terrible struggle between the two of us, between the sister and me, for my recognition as a human being, as a sister. And I know how incredibly hard it was for the sister to finally, and if only just out of compassion, to believe in me as her sister Lili and to welcome me with her. I did not make it easy for her, because of how I showed myself and how I behaved, through the way I talked, how I moved, how I thought, I concealed all in the nature of Andreas. He was witty, he was smart, was interested in everything, was an introverted person. And I was all extrovert. And I was that way deliberately. Because I had to prove every day that I was a different being from him, that I was a woman. A thoughtless, carefree living woman, focused solely on superficialities, addicted to cleaning, addicted to entertainment, yes, I also believe childish. And I can say it now: all of that was not a farce. It was really the nature of my being, careless, illogical, and moody.
The few weeks that I spent in the sister's house I could not get over my shyness before people, and the melancholia pressing down on me here in Copenhagen. Because I noticed when I looked at myself at night alone in my small room, that I looked tired and used up and impossible. And I felt that everyone here in Copenhagen was looking at me like a phenomenon, even my family. Certainly they got slowly used to me in the sister's house, they were good to me, they indulged my moods. They tried to tell me that I should not be afraid for my outward appearance, since I looked like every other woman. I was afraid for my life back then whenever I left the garden with the sister's son and went on brief walks. The smallest speck of dirt on my face intimidated me so much that I would only go out with him thickly veiled, I felt like a pariah. Other women were allowed to be ugly, were allowed not to be beautiful, were allowed to have all kinds of defects. Just I, I had to be beautiful, I had to be perfect, because otherwise I would have lost every right to be a woman. Because otherwise I would bring dishonor to the one who made me, Werner Kreutz. There were days on which I wasn't even willing to leave my room, on which I felt persecuted by every being here in Copenhagen. All the feelings of freedom and safety that I had in the "Women's Clinic" and in Berlin I had lost here completely. And it is hard for me to write to the Professor, too. I cannot write to him the way I want to write him, because he would have to see a despondent, helpless, hopeless person in me ...."
Since the day on which Lili had moved into her small attic apartment in the city, her courage was rising again. Grete was free. Grete could begin a new life now. And Lili was the first who telegraphed to the friend in Italy, to Feruzzi, about the good news. And it also was Lili who asked Grete to go southward to the friend as fast as she could. Grete smiled. She knew Lili better, she knew Lili needed her still up here. Because Lili had to go among people, she had to finally to overcome her shyness of the world. And so Grete slowly initiated her most intimate girlfriends into the secrets of Lili's existence, brought Lili together with them, and finally Lili felt calm enough to take her first walks through the streets of Copenhagen. Nobody recognized her. She even dared to go to cafés and restaurants with a few friends who immediately accepted her for who she was, as a woman. She dared to enter shops to run errands, even visited a beauty salon. And one day when Inger arrived from Berlin, Lili seemed to have overcome the severe emotional crisis she had to endure here in Copenhagen. Inger, whom Lili had not seen since the first operation in Berlin, was delighted by the looks of her friend. They spent a couple of carefree, happy, unburdened days together. They went shopping together, went to tailors, went on walks and excursions, and finally Lili even dared to walk down the "Strög" with her friend, Copenhagen's Tauentzienstrasse. No, she no longer needed to be afraid, nobody saw anything extraordinary in her, her anonymity in Copenhagen seemed to guard her from all dangers.
And then when approaching the town hall square on Inger's arm, she saw a few fellow students of Andreas without being recognized by them, and one of them whispered to the other: "Wow what elegant women's legs!" – and he had meant Lili's legs with that – Lili did not just take this as a compliment, but even as a hundred percent recognition of her identity as a woman.
But one thing kept nagging her. Unlike Grete's and Andreas' women friends from the past who long since had accepted Lili in their midst, all of Andreas' male friends kept avoiding Lili – with very few exceptions. Grete, who had expected humane help and acceptance especially from Andreas' friends for Lili and who, believing in that, had revealed Lili's existence to them, was very unhappy about this failure of Andreas' friends. Even more so since the whole secret of Andreas and Lili had, through the indiscretion of a Parisian friend, been betrayed and eventually had been exploited in the most ugly ways by an despicable rag of a newspaper. Lili learned of this by chance. All of her happiness vanished again. She did not leave her small attic room for many days. She locked herself away from everything and guessed almost like a soothsayer why none of Andreas' friends found their way to her. A small entry in her diary tells of this:
"How is it possible, that all of Andreas' friends here are betraying me? What have I done to them? That they are all avoiding me like a leper? Andreas was always helpful to them. He always was a reliable friend. And now one of them says, that especially because he valued Andreas so much, he could never acknowledge me. I would always be between him and Andreas. He would be disgusted if he had to shake my hand. That feeling would be nothing but an expression of healthy manliness. And another begged pardon for himself with other excuses. It would be impossible to cross the street with me without compromising oneself. Copenhagen was too small to show oneself undisturbed and without rousing suspicions in public with such a burdened being."
– – – –
Lili herself had never read the dirty article a pamphleteer of the lowest order had published about Andreas' and her fate. But the publication of the article was enough to make her resolve to leave Copenhagen as quickly as possible. She knew now that she would not find it possible to lead a happy life here. Now she knew she was outlawed and ostricized in Copenhagen. And she hastily left the city. She would have preferred to go straight back to Germany, but one of her brothers in her hometown in Jutland asked her to come to him, if just for a few days. He wanted to accept her as a sister and care for her, and if she wanted, she could forever find shelter and home and peace and quiet with him.
And Lili went to him. Like a somnambulist she executed that decision. "Do it," her sister and everyone who meant well with Lili had said, "go back to our small home town. Maybe there you can find harmony again. And if you want to return to your helper in Germany later, then do that too. But first find happiness and yourself again." The sister said this. And Lili believed in her sister.
A few days before Grete had traveled south - to Italy.
Grete did not live with her. She had taken up residence with acquaintances in the city, because no one in Copenhagen was supposed to know of Lili's presence for the moment, nobody was supposed to receive news of Lili's existence for now. That was why everyone who asked about Andreas was told by Grete that he was lying in a German clinic struck by a bad illness ... Grete visited Lili only in secret now and then, and Lili did not want it any other way. No sooner than she dared leaving the garden together with her sister's son to go on walks in the surroundings under his protection, densely veiled. Until now her only occupation in Copenhagen had been to help Grete to win her freedom back. Grete's marriage to Andreas was supposed to be annulled quietly and in secret. It was a difficult undertaking, the success of which was by no means certain; no law existed, that could be consulted. Because one of the spouses, Andreas, no longer existed, so how could a marriage between a non-existent spouse and his wife be dissolved? And yet it was this "normal divorce law" which both the hired lawyers as well as the collegiate of judges, to whom the issue was assigned, thought was the only thing to refer to in handling the issue. This law demanded that for the time of one year prior to divorce a separation, meaning a separation of bed and table, must be announced, and another year has to pass, before the marriage could be lawfully dissolved. With that Grete could only be divorced after two years.
Lili could not bear the thought. She did not want to cheat Grete out of two years of her life. And since it looked as if the lawyers could find no other way out, she was determined to free Grete from the burden of a marriage that, before the law, was with a dead person. The two of them were aided by the advice of a dedicated lawyer, namely to address a petition to the King, so that through an act of mercy he might declare the marriage of Andreas and Grete invalid. That petition was submitted. That was in late August, and in late September Grete and Lili were summoned to a court date, where both had to appear in person. When Grete asked her if she would have the strength to go there with her, Lili declared, beaming with joy: "If I can give you your freedom with such a small sacrifice, do you think that I could think of myself for just one moment?"
And this trip to court was the first excursion Lili and Grete took together. Two ladies appeared in front of the judges. Only the two lawyers were present. The date was kept strictly secret from the public. The whole court proceedings took barely half an hour. Lili dreaded describing it, to even just recounting it. Grete, too, never spoke of it. And a few days later, on October 6, both were told of the King's decree, in accordance to which the marriage between Andreas and Grete Sparre was declared invalid.
Lili had moved out of her sister's villa shortly before and had found a few attic rooms in the house of an acquaintance as shelter for her alone.
They were a few humble, small rooms, in which as long as she was in Copenhagen, as long as she was in Denmark, she led her quiet life, where she finally also found her inner composure to put into action what the son of Andreas' sister had encouraged: to begin her Copenhagen diary.
- - -
She began her diary on October 10. And she wrote:
"When I went out to Andreas' sister on the second day of my stay in Copenhagen, - today I know and feel that I too may call her my sister, - there I stepped into a room that I did not know, but where Andreas had been many times before. When I opened the door, nobody was in the room, and when I had taken the first steps, I saw my image in a hand mirror. A tall, elegant lady, with smiling eyes, with red painted lips, with fresh cheeks looks back at me. I was happy with my image. I know, I had done everything to make myself as beautiful as possible. To my own justification. Who wants to accuse me of having taken the help of all the beauty products every woman has a right to? If I should ever paint, I would capture that moment in a picture. Just as I had observed my own image, I noticed another image behind me, framed by the same mirror. A big fjord landscape, flooded in summer sun with colorful, pregnant forested banks on both side. My heart stopped. I turned around. And I see the picture in a broad, heavy golden frame on the wall. It is a painting from Andreas' youth, one he painted of his home. And I look around that room, nobody was watching me. And I see on all walls of the room many pictures, paintings of landscapes, paintings of cities, paintings of rivers, and I recognize them all as Andreas' paintings. I suddenly see his entire wanderings in front of me. One painting is the town in southern France on the Loire, where Andreas and Grete had lived for many happy summer months. And not just Andreas. No, down there I, Lili, had lived myself, like an escapee from the prison of Andreas' body. And I see another painting. A bridge over the Seine in Paris, a thunderstorm hanging in the sky above. And on that bridge Andreas had stood. And he had looked down into the stream and wrestled with thoughts of death. And I see other paintings, painted by Grete. And one of them shows me, Lili, me here in women's clothes, lured out of Andreas. And I step towards the painting and have to caress it and lean my head against the painting and bright tears run down my cheeks. And I must not cry. And I sit down on a chair in front of the table. A big album is lying there. Involuntarily I open it. And I look inside. And I find pictures of a blonde boy with big brown eyes. And I know not how to go on, because these are pictures of Andreas when he was still a child and was gleefully playing with his sister and his two brothers, making his way into his hard life which he did not yet suspect."
- - -
[Lili continues in her diary:] "Then the door opens and a woman with dark hair and blue eyes and hesitant arms steps into the room: Andreas' sister. And I got up, and I stood before Andreas' sister. And the sister has to look up to me, because I am taller than she is. And there a crazy memory goes through me like hot lightning: Andreas and his sister were of the same height. And I see it in the eyes of the sister, that she has the same thought, that she too can't believe it like a crazy haunting. And then I say to her: "Good day. And now be good to your sister Lili." Maybe I said something else entirely. Maybe I said: "Bid me a good welcome, and love me just the way you loved Andreas." Maybe I did not say anything at all. Or maybe I just smiled and told her: "Don't be confused that I am taller than our dead brother Andreas, it is because I wear such high heels. And don't be cross with me, because I want to be as pretty and ladylike as all other well-groomed ladies."
And we sit down on the sofa and before us on the table lay the album with Andreas' childhood pictures. And we held one another's hands. And the sister was kind, and she was looking for words. And her eyes looked at me always and her lips also said something. And I don't know if it was only her lips or her eyes, that spoke to me: "Don't be angry that I cannot call you by your name Lili just yet. And that I can't locate you clearly in my thoughts yet. That I just look at you and search for Andreas. In your eyes, around your mouth, in your hands and on your forehead. Because I loved Andreas' eyes so and also his hands. And also his forehead. I have kissed it so often. That you know. Or you do not know it. But Andreas knows it. Because I am just a year older than Andreas. And when Andreas and I were very little, he was just five years old and I was six years old, I was his little mom. And I had no brother more beautiful, more sweet than he was. He played with my dolls, and he played with my doll stroller. And I called him "Lilleman," and that means little man. And when I wrote the name down for Mother once, and Mother told me that I had spelled Lilleman with just one N instead of two, there I told Mother that my little brother Andreas was just a Lilleman with one N, because he was not a real man. And Mother smiled then, and you smiled too when you heard it, no not you, Andreas smiled. And he did not really know why he was smiling. And I knew not quite why I had said that, that my Andreas was not a real man. And do you remember how Andreas and I took our doll stroller to the woods? Andreas loved pushing the little cart. But he was scared that others would see him and tease him for it. And do you also know that I then would put Andreas' small white hands into my own? And do you also know why I did that? You see, Andreas never knew that, but today I can say it. I just did that so that, if someone had surprised us, I could keep pushing the cart by myself, and Andreas could take both of his small hands from the cart's handle, as if nothing had happened ..." And if the sister did not say this with her lips, then she told it with her eyes, but it probably was her lips. And I just nodded. And I did not cry any tears.
And I took it quite calmly that she kept searching and searching for Andreas in me with her big, trembling woman's eyes, searching for her little brother, and as I believe today, found him again. She called me by Andreas' name now and then during those first days and hours, in which we spent many hours talking to one another quite painfully. I always felt as if I had to die then. I said it a couple of times, too. And then I pleaded with her to believe me that I was not Andreas' murderer, that, if Andreas had not died, I would have perished alongside of him, and that I am living now I have to be grateful to him for every day of my life. I once also said to her that I technically no longer had any parents or siblings, because I hadn't been born up here, but in Germany. And maybe Mother, had she given birth to me as a girl, would have not loved me as much as she did Andreas. It must have been on that day that the sister said to me that everything that had happened down in D. had been an affront to nature. It had been playing with fate. Was Andreas really not able to continue living? Or whether it would not have been better, not had been greater, if Andreas could have carried his fate and his tortured body onwards until his poor end? Then the sister pointed to all of Andreas' paintings that she had collected, and there I saw that their entire home was actually a museum for Andreas. Because all the walls of their rooms were filled with Andreas' paintings. "Don't you see," said the sister, "what kind of an artist has perished with him? How completely different he was from you?" "Yes," I said then, "that is what proves how right Andreas was when he freed me, because we were two beings, Andreas and I. And I know, that I as a human being am less significant than he. I will never be able to achieve what he achieved. That I will never be able to paint, and that I don't want to paint. Because if I did, I fear I would never be able to approach his talent. But here you see especially that it really was two beings who had been living in the body that Mother gave birth to. Have I exchanged so much for this life, that I can now finally lead by myself, where you yourself say that Andreas had been so much stronger and more capable than I? He had lived a long life and worked and I was barely allowed to show myself. And if I showed myself, then you all just called it a game and a deception and a performance. So let us be friends now and good sisters for the sake of our dead brother Andreas.
And then there was a day when the sister said: "Well, Lili, no wrong appears to have been done. Certainly it was Andreas' will that everything happened the way it had to. Because he always was so chivalrous. And that is why he gave you freedom, even if he had to pay for it with his life."
It was a terrible struggle between the two of us, between the sister and me, for my recognition as a human being, as a sister. And I know how incredibly hard it was for the sister to finally, and if only just out of compassion, to believe in me as her sister Lili and to welcome me with her. I did not make it easy for her, because of how I showed myself and how I behaved, through the way I talked, how I moved, how I thought, I concealed all in the nature of Andreas. He was witty, he was smart, was interested in everything, was an introverted person. And I was all extrovert. And I was that way deliberately. Because I had to prove every day that I was a different being from him, that I was a woman. A thoughtless, carefree living woman, focused solely on superficialities, addicted to cleaning, addicted to entertainment, yes, I also believe childish. And I can say it now: all of that was not a farce. It was really the nature of my being, careless, illogical, and moody.
The few weeks that I spent in the sister's house I could not get over my shyness before people, and the melancholia pressing down on me here in Copenhagen. Because I noticed when I looked at myself at night alone in my small room, that I looked tired and used up and impossible. And I felt that everyone here in Copenhagen was looking at me like a phenomenon, even my family. Certainly they got slowly used to me in the sister's house, they were good to me, they indulged my moods. They tried to tell me that I should not be afraid for my outward appearance, since I looked like every other woman. I was afraid for my life back then whenever I left the garden with the sister's son and went on brief walks. The smallest speck of dirt on my face intimidated me so much that I would only go out with him thickly veiled, I felt like a pariah. Other women were allowed to be ugly, were allowed not to be beautiful, were allowed to have all kinds of defects. Just I, I had to be beautiful, I had to be perfect, because otherwise I would have lost every right to be a woman. Because otherwise I would bring dishonor to the one who made me, Werner Kreutz. There were days on which I wasn't even willing to leave my room, on which I felt persecuted by every being here in Copenhagen. All the feelings of freedom and safety that I had in the "Women's Clinic" and in Berlin I had lost here completely. And it is hard for me to write to the Professor, too. I cannot write to him the way I want to write him, because he would have to see a despondent, helpless, hopeless person in me ...."
Since the day on which Lili had moved into her small attic apartment in the city, her courage was rising again. Grete was free. Grete could begin a new life now. And Lili was the first who telegraphed to the friend in Italy, to Feruzzi, about the good news. And it also was Lili who asked Grete to go southward to the friend as fast as she could. Grete smiled. She knew Lili better, she knew Lili needed her still up here. Because Lili had to go among people, she had to finally to overcome her shyness of the world. And so Grete slowly initiated her most intimate girlfriends into the secrets of Lili's existence, brought Lili together with them, and finally Lili felt calm enough to take her first walks through the streets of Copenhagen. Nobody recognized her. She even dared to go to cafés and restaurants with a few friends who immediately accepted her for who she was, as a woman. She dared to enter shops to run errands, even visited a beauty salon. And one day when Inger arrived from Berlin, Lili seemed to have overcome the severe emotional crisis she had to endure here in Copenhagen. Inger, whom Lili had not seen since the first operation in Berlin, was delighted by the looks of her friend. They spent a couple of carefree, happy, unburdened days together. They went shopping together, went to tailors, went on walks and excursions, and finally Lili even dared to walk down the "Strög" with her friend, Copenhagen's Tauentzienstrasse. No, she no longer needed to be afraid, nobody saw anything extraordinary in her, her anonymity in Copenhagen seemed to guard her from all dangers.
And then when approaching the town hall square on Inger's arm, she saw a few fellow students of Andreas without being recognized by them, and one of them whispered to the other: "Wow what elegant women's legs!" – and he had meant Lili's legs with that – Lili did not just take this as a compliment, but even as a hundred percent recognition of her identity as a woman.
But one thing kept nagging her. Unlike Grete's and Andreas' women friends from the past who long since had accepted Lili in their midst, all of Andreas' male friends kept avoiding Lili – with very few exceptions. Grete, who had expected humane help and acceptance especially from Andreas' friends for Lili and who, believing in that, had revealed Lili's existence to them, was very unhappy about this failure of Andreas' friends. Even more so since the whole secret of Andreas and Lili had, through the indiscretion of a Parisian friend, been betrayed and eventually had been exploited in the most ugly ways by an despicable rag of a newspaper. Lili learned of this by chance. All of her happiness vanished again. She did not leave her small attic room for many days. She locked herself away from everything and guessed almost like a soothsayer why none of Andreas' friends found their way to her. A small entry in her diary tells of this:
"How is it possible, that all of Andreas' friends here are betraying me? What have I done to them? That they are all avoiding me like a leper? Andreas was always helpful to them. He always was a reliable friend. And now one of them says, that especially because he valued Andreas so much, he could never acknowledge me. I would always be between him and Andreas. He would be disgusted if he had to shake my hand. That feeling would be nothing but an expression of healthy manliness. And another begged pardon for himself with other excuses. It would be impossible to cross the street with me without compromising oneself. Copenhagen was too small to show oneself undisturbed and without rousing suspicions in public with such a burdened being."
– – – –
Lili herself had never read the dirty article a pamphleteer of the lowest order had published about Andreas' and her fate. But the publication of the article was enough to make her resolve to leave Copenhagen as quickly as possible. She knew now that she would not find it possible to lead a happy life here. Now she knew she was outlawed and ostricized in Copenhagen. And she hastily left the city. She would have preferred to go straight back to Germany, but one of her brothers in her hometown in Jutland asked her to come to him, if just for a few days. He wanted to accept her as a sister and care for her, and if she wanted, she could forever find shelter and home and peace and quiet with him.
And Lili went to him. Like a somnambulist she executed that decision. "Do it," her sister and everyone who meant well with Lili had said, "go back to our small home town. Maybe there you can find harmony again. And if you want to return to your helper in Germany later, then do that too. But first find happiness and yourself again." The sister said this. And Lili believed in her sister.
A few days before Grete had traveled south - to Italy.