Man Into Woman - Chapter 8 by Lili Elbe Lyrics
[Lili continues:] "And so the two us, Lili and me, kept living our double existence, lived happy and content into the day, - and none of us all, neither the "initiates" nor myself, saw in this as anything other than a pleasant kind of distraction and entertainment, a kind of artist's mood, nothing more, nothing less... And just as little did we get distraught by the apparently increasing difference that began to show between me and the mythical girl, just as nobody gave any serious thought to the quiet changes, that slowly startеd showing in the shape of my body.
But quietly somеthing had been preparing within me...
One night I suddenly said to Grete:
"I can't really imagine a life any more without Lili. If Lili were to stay away forever, I mean, when she is no longer young and pretty. Because then she has no more reason for living."
Grete looked at me surprised. Then she nodded and said in her calm, thoughtful way: "strange... You are touching on something there that I have been thinking about a lot recently."
Then she became very serious, and finally continued speaking, as if looking for the right words. She was plagued by remorse because she herself had to some extent been the cause of Lili's creation, for conjuring her up, for creating her, and thus guilty of this disharmony within me, that showed itself the most pronounced on the days when Lili does not appear...
I listened attentively to Grete's words. It was as if she showed me a mirror...
"It sometimes happens," she kept talking quietly agitated, "it sometimes happens when she is modeling for me, that it is her more than anything that I am creating and forming, - more than the girl I show on my canvas. Sometimes it seems as if there was something here, that has become stronger than us, something that makes us powerless, that wants to push us aside, as if it wanted to take revenge on us for playing with her... The ghosts we conjured up, no longer want to let us ban them..."
Grete broke off, tears stood in her eyes, she wrapped her arms around me, like a mother. "We have come upon a slippery slope and I don't know where to stop anymore..." she almost cried out. I tried to calm her. But I couldn't do it. Not immediately. But then I began to speak and she listened to me. "You see," I began, "what you are saying is right, and it is scary how right it is, and the most dangerous thing of all, is that I feel how it is Lili, especially Lili, who keeps us together, so that we stayed together for all the years... I don't believe I could survive her."
Grete interrupted me: she was thinking the same thing... so often... Because Lili embodied our youth and joy of life. And then Grete was sobbing and stammering: "I sometimes ask myself what life would be like without her."
We stared at each other, deeply shaken by this mutual confession, that had been the result of many weeks of rumination.
"Anyway, I can't see," Grete began anew, "how the two of us could carry on without Lili ...we can't lose her. Not see her anymore all of a sudden..., that would be like murder."
"Yes," I replied, "All the more since I feel that she is about to become more vital than I am."
Maybe this conversation had been prompted by a complete lack of courage in me. My health had been splendid all those years. Although I never looked quite robust, I had never really been sick, and had been otherwise able to endure all kinds of physical activity. -But in recent time I had not been well, which most of the time showed in complete fatigue. On top of that, I did not do well with the rainy and cold winters that Paris had experienced for a few years in a row. I was coughing from late fall to spring without pause. And so must have sunken into troubled thoughts. You can't stay young forever, I thought. And I thought of Lili. She shared her body with me. She is a woman. For her being young meant a lot more than for me.
My mood became gloomier and gloomier. I had been a naturally happy person until that point. Especially for as long as I was living in Paris. That was over now. I felt without energy for days, weeks and months. I lacked the energy for work. Everyone who had known me all those years, knew that I had been a workaholic up to that time. -I no longer understood myself.
In between there were recurring lighter periods. -Every time I could live in the countryside, far from Paris, to collect motifs. Especially in Balgencie. But that did not go on for much longer. I became more and more tired, more and more listless. I did not know what to do with myself. It was an unbearable condition.
Grete became anxious. She convinced me to visit a doctor. I indulged her. The doctor failed to find anything out of the ordinary, prescribed some reinvigorating medicine for the nerves. It didn't help. A new doctor was consulted. With the same results. And so on.
But when Lili appeared, she was doing fine, life was beautiful again. All gloom was gone.
Which was why she now came out as often as possible. She had acquired her own circle of friends and acquaintances, she had her own memories and habits, that had absolutely nothing to do with me anymore. Often she stuck around for several days in a row. And then she happily sat together with Grete, and often by herself too -- with crafts, sewing, crocheting, smiling to herself. She loved these womanly activities so much, that she sometimes went into a room by herself to dream away, sunken into her crafts... Nobody understood this mystery. Not Grete, not Elena. Everyone regarded this enigmatic being Lili, who was building up her own world around her, with a shake of the head and astonishment. But they let Lili be. She was happy.
One event that happened back then, would, faster than people thought, become the prelude to the last period of this incessant and merciless inner struggle between Lili and myself. And for a long time it seemed neither of us two would survive this struggle.
My friend Johannes Poulsen from the Royal Theater in Copenhagen was on tour in Paris for several days. Since his wife, the famous dancer Ulla Poulsen, accompanied him, there was also supposed to be a ballet performance. The ballet corps was not very big. One dancer was missing. So Johannes, who knew me to be a quite decent dancer, asked me if I wanted to jump in. Of course I said yes.
I had overexerted myself at ballet rehearsal, which was taking very long. In any case, I was having strange bleedings for the first time. Most of the time it was a nosebleed, but of such a strange kind, that Grete became afraid for my well being, and asked me to give up my role. I bristled against this. Under no circumstances was I to embarrass my old friend. I endured, although these bleedings recurred after the premiere and every subsequent show. And the most incomprehensible thing was, that I succumbed to nervous crying fits each time, which were completely new to me... But after such an attack, I felt liberated... as if something within me had loosened from its torpor, as if something new, something never before felt was stirring. My whole mind seemed renewed. As if a dam had broken.
Music never had left such a stirring, shaking impression with me, as it did on those evenings. A painfully sweet and yet relaxing experience, that captured all of my senses, that's how music affected me... It moved me to tears... and out of these tears came a crying fit.
A complete reversal of my being occurred during these nights. So far, I had been bossy and "looked down my nose" on other people. Before the first rehearsals I felt as if I myself was abandoning me. I was surprised. I no longer recognized myself. I was gripped by a strong urge to bow down, to submit myself to another's will, to submit myself unconditionally. I was possessed by this urge. – Johannes, my old friend and drinking buddy played, next to Ulla, the leading role that night. A year earlier the three of us had had been very merry together in Copenhagen. I would have never thought of playing a submissive role towards him, to acknowledge him as the leading man. Absolutely not.-
But now during those nights, from the first rehearsal on, I submitted myself to him slavishly. He didn't find one word of disagreement within me. And not just that. – If he asked me to do this or that differently, to bow down a bit more or less during some specific figure and so forth, I would blush like a little boy.
And when he then even touched me, I was so confused, I didn't know where to put my eyes. –
In spite of all the mental chaos that I felt at the time, there was nothing remotely erotic in it. Johannes and I were completely healthy creatures in that regard. I could not discover what it was. It just was like that. And it was not me who recognized this turn to demureness first, as Grete called it, but Grete. She teased me with that, smilingly. But behind her smile she hid boundless astonishment.
I was wearing my dancing regalia for the first time for the dress rehearsal: a tight fitting leotard, a bolero, a short jacket and a wig with short curls. After the dress rehearsal, as I was standing in the dirty, dark corridor that was substituting for the wardrobe of the theater, in the process of taking my make-up off, a group of mercenaries, who also belong to the ballet troupe, walks by, their swords rattling. One of them gave me a soft slap.
"It suits you admirably well to play a role in trousers, Mademoiselle!" the guy grinned.
As I turn around in an energetic protestation, the guys chicken out and yell at me: "There is so much bluff these days, ma petite Demoiselle..."
A few minutes later I have to go back on stage. As Johannes sees me, he screws up his face in a cozy grin and shouts with laughter: "No, children, that doesn't work this way. Now we have too many ladies!"
At first I don't understand anything, turn around baffled, all eyes are on me, grinning, I tumble out the door, my head red as a turkey's, into the arms of a costumier, hold him tight and plead with him to ‘costume me more like a man, the good director wishes it.'
He tried it with one of his colleagues' help, to the whinnying laughter of the two philistines. And I pulled myself together and pretended as if all of this left me completely untouched.
The night before the premiere I encountered a pretty muscularly built actor, who has to dance along in the ballet wearing the same costume I was wearing. As he notices me, he scrutinized me with his gaze from head to toe and then bursts out angrily: "My God, man, you look impossible..."
I am speechless, want to sink into the earth. If a man had told me something like that earlier, I would have knocked him out. But now I could not do anything but to look around with empty eyes, helplessly and baffled...
When I tell Grete everything later, she confesses that she too has noticed a curious change in the contours of my body. I looked like a woman in disguise in this dancer's costume...
In the following time my anxiety took up a pathological character. I was afflicted by these strange bouts of depression with strong bleedings in almost regular intervals. These were accompanied by intense pains. And on top of that these never before known crying spells. First I thought I had torn some inner organ when dancing. Grete too believed this. That's why we went to see a doctor with whom we were friends , who was actually a cardiologist and who technically wasn't competent for my assumed ailment. But he had known me for years. But he did not know anything of Lili. Only our "most intimates" knew of Lili... This doctor was not among them. Which is why I did not tell him of my double life..., even though I myself had begun to guess a connection between this and my physical state.
Since he did not find anything after a thorough examination that could explain the strange occurrences of the recent time, he and I went to see a young specialist, whom I actually knew in passing from Versailles. This doctor examined my form thoroughly and with growing astonishment, and finally concluded that he could observe strange irregularities in my innards. And also he explained that the only thing to do in this case was to wait and be in good spirits, since my physical constitution was healthy and unspent; with such a body one could still withstand taxing things.
Without this doctor having said anything specific or direct, this visit still gave me confidence and an almost mythical sense of hope...
I was absolutely clear about something extraordinary going on in me. This I could read in the doctor's face, without his words giving me reason for such an assumption.
And now I began, - as many sick people do who don't quite know what exactly ails them, - to procure all kinds of scientific books on sex-related problems. I had acquired specialized knowledge in this field in a short amount of time, and I knew some things now, that the laymen would never even dream of. But it became increasingly clear to me, that nothing of all of the things relating to normal men and women was applicable to my mysterious condition.
And so it happened that I came to my own opinion, namely that in my one body I was both man as well as woman, and that the woman in this body was about to gain the upper hand. From this guess I deduced the cause of the disturbances both physical and mental, which ailed me increasingly.
I confessed all of this to Grete. She understood my seeking and my search for clarity on my more and more unbelievable condition. And when, encouraged by her, I put forth my theory to the most different array of doctors in Paris and Versailles, I was not just met with shaking heads but even with some derision. The most courteous of them treated me indulgently for all kinds of ailments, the others viewed me as a hysteric or simply as a madman.
It was a terrible time. A nightmare without end. My health was going downhill, I barely could find any sleep any longer. Grete was the only one who unwaveringly believed in my theory. It was her who helped me again and again to not lose faith in one day finding salvation.
Exactly a year ago in April we went south again, to Italy. Grete believed that a change of air, especially during the wet and humid Paris spring, when it was mostly pretty rainy in Paris, would do me well. The French winter had been unusually cold. The whole of March was rainy. Beyond the Alps we found the world in bloom.
We traveled directly to Rome. There we had arranged a meeting with an Italian officer we had met in Florence years before. Since then we had been in correspondence with each other. He had just returned from the Orient after long, colonial service for a vacation back home. He was waiting for us at the train station, and brought us to our hotel, where we quickly changed clothes, to go out for dinner somewhere in the city. I was limitlessly exhausted after the long train ride and had indescribable pain, - but I did not want to ruin Grete's or our friend's day. So I came along.
We sat at "Facciano." The mild evening chill wafted in through the door... from the beautiful Piazza Colonna, where one can see the white column shimmer in the red façade of the Palazzo Chigi, and the colonnade of "Biffi," where one can hear the hoarse cries of the newspapermen, after which one no longer needs to buy an issue. And the orchestra plays its hit songs...
I will never forget that night.
Grete sat opposite of me. Beaming. With a dreamy smile now and then.
Something jolted through me... She suddenly looked as if she was barely 25 years old. All the tiredness was as if spirited away. And next to her sat our friend Ridolfo Feruzzi, beaming as Grete did. When we first got to know him years ago he seemed to be destined to only be a superficial acquaintance. Back then he was a newly made lieutenant. "Il bello tenente Feruzzi" everyone called him back then... Back then ... It was during our first trip to Italy... When we separated then, it seemed like it would be forever. Until his letters from the distant colony arrived with us in Paris... Most of them addressed to Grete.
A deep melancholy stole over me. I had to think of back then and the years that had passed. And a little about myself. What had happened to me?-
I pulled myself together. The blonde "Orvieto" had to help me. A thousand questions were asked. Just as many were answered. "Do you still remember this person and that person... Where did he end up... And Miss X... What happened to her... Do you remember the night at Lapi... that evening in the casino... And the night after in the movie theater on Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele... All the old names, the beloved well-known places and moods resurfaced... I saw everything in front of me as if it were today... And here I was sitting with Grete and Ridolfo Feruzzi and smiled as they did... And now and then their smile belonged to them alone... And they looked as they did back then... Years ago, when still young. But I smiled along. But it was a just a forced smile. My old love of life was broken. I had changed... had become someone else... had become a person without courage.
There in Rome, now a year ago, in that most magnificent city in the world, between the rust-red walls and trickling fountains, back then I finally realized that I had not just changed, but that I was finished, done. Irrevocably done. This mild and at the same time cruel Roman spring became a sort of overture for my final act... I felt that back then, I knew it, like something you can not change.
Grete and I had rented an atelier with a broad terrace full of flowers close to the Piazza di Spagna. This sunny home in the immediate vicinity of one of Rome's most beautiful squares belongs among my most unforgettable memories. I was sick every day. Every day... Meanwhile all the roses and all the many orange trees were in bloom outside our atelier window.
Now and then Lili appeared. But she too had lost her carefree nature. She cried, cried every time. She understood how good life could be. She felt that I had to die.
Now and then Grete cried too. She was so strong otherwise. Also in Rome. She tried to paint. But nothing would come of it. If I lay awake next to her at night, I noticed, how she too was lying there with her eyes wide awake.
We spent the nights with Feruzzi usually. Slowly his nature too changed. A sickly melancholia pressed on him more and more, even though he tried being upbeat. Once he could no longer hold it in. He said, he basically had failed in his life. He could understand people who, after coming to this conclusion, went into a monastery for their final refuge... Such people existed in the twentieth century, too... I noticed that he meant these words seriously ...
And then I had to think of Grete. Hadn't she too failed in her life? Had she not sacrificed herself so I wasn't alone, – because she felt that I had become a sick man, - because she knew that she was the only one who understood me? I knew her loyalty and her attachment to me. I knew no earthly force could move her to leave me, - today less than ever. – She was still young now... She still had time to catch up with many, many things she missed for my sake.
For me life no longer had any appeal. I know it is the wrong word – for the others. But for me it says and encompasses everything. Why should I keep dragging myself onward? No doctor understood what was wrong with me, nobody could help me. To live on, sick and old ahead of time.... The most horrible thought for me. I thought it all through, completely unpassionately. Without remorse for myself. Completely calm and rational. And so the thought became self-evident: better to die. Then Grete would be free. Then life can give her many rich years still.
Back then, on that night in Rome I made a decision. That is still valid today. Only one can change it.
It was May back then. I gave myself a one year period. If I couldn't find a doctor within that time who could help me, - who wants to try to save Lili, - to separate her from me, oh I know how difficult it is for others, to understand these words, separate Lili from me, - but how else am I supposed to put it into words?- ... Yes, if I don't find this helper before next May, then I myself will in all quietness say goodbye to this existence, even if the other being, that had to share my body with me, will have to share this fate with me. I even put down the date. It should be the first of May. That was when this double execution was supposed to take place... And it should happen in a discreet way, to spare Grete as much as we both could, Lili and me.
Grete... How to spare her... That was the most difficult thing of all. I knew all too well, how Grete would react to a violent end of my life. But in spite of all ruminations and misgivings about the best, most loyal friend of my life I saw there was no other way out for me, - it would still be a salvation - for us both. And certainly the only one possible.
When I had made that decision, I felt a kind of relief. At least I knew now that there would be an end to this anguish, in the near future.
My health deteriorated from day to day. And the moment came in which Grete accepted that I could not stay in Rome any longer, and that a return to Paris, where we knew some diligent doctors, was urgently necessary.
Boundlessly depressed we left Rome,- and Ridolfo Feruzzi, on a sunny spring morning, much, much earlier than planned.
In Paris, in this familiar surrounding, my condition apparently improved. Again we went to see a few specialists. But always with negative results. Finally a radiologist agreed to treat me. It almost cost me my life, - and I would have almost been relieved of the necessity to carry out the execution on that agreed upon first of May.
Since the Paris summer became too hot, we moved to Versailles again, close to the park. Our life proceeded as it did before. Neither Grete nor I loved to make much of our weal and woe, of our joys and sorrows. Work is the best doctor I told myself. And so I went out with my painter's easel and paintbox into the park, as frequently as my condition allowed. And as often as she liked to, Lili appeared and tried to divert Grete and me.
The only one who clearly recognized my condition was Claude Lejeune. He was the only consoler for us. He felt very quietly, without saying many words, what hid behind the seeming calm that Grete and I and - Lili displayed to him during his visits. When he came over on Sundays merriment ruled as it did before.
If we didn't have Claude Lejeune back then...
He, like Grete, had long since understood that the only thing that was still vital within me was Lili... Both believed this unwaveringly. And this was why both encouraged Lili to come as often as she wanted. –
Claude Lejeune often went on long walks through the park of Versailles with her... The two of them made plans for the future.
On one such night, as the setting sun set all windows of the palace and the mirror calm surfaces of the ponds ablaze, the two of them strolled across the terrace. Suddenly they heard a woman say to her company in passing: "Look, two happy people!"
This night even Claude Lejeune couldn't find his happy laugh again.
- - - -
Most of our friends and acquaintances grasped my condition more clearly than all doctors we had consulted so far. Of course their condolences were limited to words. But at the same time their words gave me a moral stability... They saw in me a burdened human being whose suffering was a true martyrdom, and not, as the French doctors explained again and again, imagination and hysteria...
This way I met an old, French painter in Trianon one day. We had known each other for years, but had not seen each other for some time. He asked sympathetically how I was doing, - I replied evasively without letting him in on anything in the slightest.
To my surprise he replied then. "I have watched you for a long time, without you noticing me. Here in the park when you were painting. There I noticed the change you went through in the past few years. Back in the day you appeared fresh, straight, like a healthy man. – Nothing compared to now, - excuse me for saying this, - you seem to me like a girl in disguise... You are sick... You are very sick indeed. There is a radical change going on inside you. A fantastical thought. But even things that never were can become fact tomorrow. We have known cases of inversion for a long time. The doctors were able to manage those. So why shouldn't you be able to find similar help. Hopefully you will find a courageous doctor with a good imagination... That is what everything depends on... Of course where is a poor painter supposed to get such a giant fee for such an expert... Let's hope that you will still find a man who will take you on for humane and scientific reasons."
These and similar expressions of understanding were like a small oasis during my trek through the desert, and they gave me courage and power to carry on my hopeless search for a savior.
In this last summer in Versailles I began to recognize that people often looked after me with bewilderment, on the street, in the park, wherever I walked or stood, - even in stores I used to frequent for years. I had noticed this in Paris, too, now and then in the past few years... But not to the extent it now happened in Versailles. By the way, Parisians are the best behaved, most indifferent, most blasé people in the world, while the people of Versailles are simply small town folk.
One morning as I wanted to use a passage through the Hotel des Reservoir, to get to the park more quickly, a couple of young waiters are standing there.
I barely pay attention to them, and have already passed. Then I hear the words spoken behind me, in original Copenhagen slang: "Would'ya look at that, a nice lass who put on pants to go paint."
By the way, the hotels of Versailles are full of Danish waiters, - I know not why. Maybe, because German and Austrian waiters were hired there before the war, because of their language skills.
Enough. I pretended not to have heard anything, and kept walking, ruminated on the meaning of this compliment, - and it began to dawn on me why I was raising as much attention as I did recently.
A few days later the wife of our concierge, who we got along with splendidly, stops me to tell me the following: "Monsieur please don't be cross me with me when I tell Monsieur that the clerk at the shop here in the district where Madame and Monsieur go shopping does not want to believe that Monsieur is a Monsieur." She stood there, eyes and lips wide open, as I replied, smiling: "Ma brave Dame, I am inclined to agree with the shopkeepers!"
This and similar incidents showed me that the situation began to become paradoxical. Lili could not be allowed to show herself on the street, since she and I shared a body, - although not a single human soul took note of her if she decided to show herself among people, except for occasional "pursuers." I however was gawked at everywhere I went, even though I was correctly dressed as a man, and going my way with wide manly paces, - and people thought me a girl in disguise...
It was impossible to bear.
In the fall, when we returned to Paris, I noticed that here too I was beginning to draw attention, even though that came to expression in more subtle ways. In the metro or on the bus or on the tram I often caught glances or words from people that were watching me. Although I wanted to ignore their remarks, I could comprehend what they were saying from just a few fragments of words, and understood enough to convince myself that they shared the opinion of the shopkeeper in Versailles. With my deep knowledge of the Parisians it quickly became doubly clear to me that I was really in the process of becoming more of an attention magnet, - and that fact made me more and more nervous, - my nerves, damaged from years of suffering were in an uproar: they could no longer bear seeing me followed by inquisitive, curious, grinning gazes. This harassment from my fellow human beings depressed me to no end.
And so I went to see our cardiologist friend anew. Grete had been seeing him a few days earlier and had tried to explain my and Lili's double life to him, - and he had promised her to lead me to another specialist in Versailles, - even though he personally saw everything as an obsession of mine and solely a "pathological imagination without any physiological basis".
"Your husband is healthy. His body is normal. I speak from a deep knowledge, from thorough analysis of his body, Madame," that was his last word on that matter...
That new visit to the new specialist in Versailles would be my last experiment, or so I had promised Grete and myself, before we were to be on our way. On arrival, I immediately had the impression that the two doctors had already arranged their plan of attack: they wanted to try to expel my "hysterical whimsies". After a superficial conversation I was told I was a completely normally built man, who had nothing wrong with him, who just should try to pull himself together to prove himself a man with good spirits and good humor, so he could keep on living the life of a regular human being, masculini generis...
I was being regarded during the dispensation of that deep verdict with barely suppressed irony: I was regarded a hysteric, simply a dissimulator, and one of the two, the "new specialist" hinted that I would basically be - homosexual. That intimation almost made me forget my self-control and my good upbringing. If Grete had not saved the situation with a bright burst of laughter and had not rejected this suggestion as patently absurd, I would have literally and figuratively gone for the throats of these reckless gentlemen.
After this hopeless consultation that was deeply depressing for me as well as for Grete, I noticed soon after how I had used up my last remaining reserves of power. And I swore to myself quietly that there would from now on not be a force in world strong enough to make me go see new doctors.
I did not want to be degraded to the mockery of those gentlemen doctors.
I told myself: since my case is completely unknown in the history of the medical arts, it simply does not exist, was not allowed to exist. My and with that Lili's death sentence was certain with that. Now all that mattered was maintaining as decent and noiseless a patience as possible, until the short term that I had given myself was up.
On the outside, nothing about our lives in the atelier changed. I was often in a carefree mood even, first and foremost when friends or acquaintances were over, but especially towards Grete, since I was afraid she could see through me. She was not doing well, I could see that through all her being. She pulled herself together, showed me a smiling expression most of the time, behind which she believed herself able to hide her fear and desolation. She had become so restless. Oftentimes whenever she believed I was not watching her, she looked at me quizzically, so that I feared that she suspected my plans...
In those weeks I only had one desire: listening to music. I no longer wanted to go to concerts. Not to see any people. This was why I bought gramophone records in a truly wasteful manner. Classical and modern music, all kinds of things. And in the evenings deep into the nights I played our gramophone. Like a man dying of thirst I devoured everything that was music. Bright and tragic, banal and ceremonious, melodic and unharmonious music, - as long as it was music. It was my solace, my only consolation, whether it moved me to tears or prompted me to sing along with one of the latest pop songs a dozen times, or even to ask Grete to dance with me. I lived off music back then. If I couldn't sleep, I ran towards it. If I didn't want to open my eyes in the morning, then Grete brought the gramophone from the atelier to my bedside.
Schubert's immortal song "To the Music" ... how often had this most moving of all hymns to life helped me to be patient a bit longer. There was nothing, nothing, that could be smilingly dismissed with the word sentimentality. There is nothing sentimental in me. I was never less sentimental than I was then. I just felt unendingly lost, subjected to a fate that transcended descended human understanding. The language of the soul itself, the language of sounds freed me from having to speak myself, from having to give form to my inconsolable ruminations. Not to think myself, not to clad thoughts in words, was my daily, nightly cry for help...
Earlier I had found distraction in reading. I had put together entire libraries in our atelier... Now I no longer opened up any books. What could the fates of strange beings tell me, since I could not find solace from any of the beings in these books, that was a being like me. No poet could have written poetry about such a being, since no poet ever thought that such a being could have ever lived. How could the philosophers of the Greeks and of the present help me, who only tell us of thinking of the male and the thinking of the female in separate bodies and brains and souls? Plato's banquet... Earlier I had found sanctuary there. Plato knew of people on the margins of both worlds of feeling, the one of the man and the one of the woman, that they are mixed beings. But here in my sickly body there lived two beings, separate from one another, not related to one another, hostile to one another, even if they had compassion for one another, since they knew that this body only had room for one of them. One of these two beings had to perish, to disappear, or both had to die.
Madness touched me in those nights, madness that had grasped that this body which I was torturing myself with, with no hope of salvation, was not mine, was not mine alone, that my part of this body shrank from day to day, since it was encapsulating a being within that for the price of my existence was demanding its own existence. I felt like a fraud, like an usurper, who ruled over a body, that long since was no longer his. I felt like one, who only owns the façade of a house. Madness to think this thought to its conclusion, since there was no end for it, if not this one end: to not be. And I no longer wanted to be.
- - -
Now and then Lili still appeared. And Grete was delighted about her appearance every time. Lili was happier than I. Both knew that. And Lili knew that she could console Grete with that. Now and then she remained for several days on Grete's pleading. Grete could bear the nights more easily together with Lili. Lili could more easily fall asleep. And once she slept, Grete could fall asleep too. Lili often cried without Grete noticing. Lili had always had her own dream world. She had always had such happy dreams. Now her dreams had disappeared. They had been back only a few nights. And every dream had been the continuation of another. It was winter. She dreamed of approaching spring, that had a lot of sun. She told Grete of these dreams. But she often felt they were just dreams. And then she became afraid. But the night after, an even more beautiful dream dispersed her fears again. Grete secretly noted her dreams down in a diary, she once told me. And she phrased it in a way as if she had just let me in on a secret.
Lili basically dreams up a novel for you, I replied to her and turned away, empty.
But this dream novel became the favorite topic of conversation for Grete and Lili during those dark days, and these conversations were the only thing that gave Grete and Lili strength and kept their hope alive, their burning hope that a wonder, a marvel could still happen.
And then it was February. Elena and Ernesto had again come to Paris. And then one morning Elena took me to a strange man from Germany, who then brought me here.
Today it is the third of March. In about two months it is the first of May. That is the irrevocable, farthest time. After that there will be no Andreas Sparre left. Whether or not Lili will survive that day and live her own life, that lies now entirely in Werner Kreutz' hands."
But quietly somеthing had been preparing within me...
One night I suddenly said to Grete:
"I can't really imagine a life any more without Lili. If Lili were to stay away forever, I mean, when she is no longer young and pretty. Because then she has no more reason for living."
Grete looked at me surprised. Then she nodded and said in her calm, thoughtful way: "strange... You are touching on something there that I have been thinking about a lot recently."
Then she became very serious, and finally continued speaking, as if looking for the right words. She was plagued by remorse because she herself had to some extent been the cause of Lili's creation, for conjuring her up, for creating her, and thus guilty of this disharmony within me, that showed itself the most pronounced on the days when Lili does not appear...
I listened attentively to Grete's words. It was as if she showed me a mirror...
"It sometimes happens," she kept talking quietly agitated, "it sometimes happens when she is modeling for me, that it is her more than anything that I am creating and forming, - more than the girl I show on my canvas. Sometimes it seems as if there was something here, that has become stronger than us, something that makes us powerless, that wants to push us aside, as if it wanted to take revenge on us for playing with her... The ghosts we conjured up, no longer want to let us ban them..."
Grete broke off, tears stood in her eyes, she wrapped her arms around me, like a mother. "We have come upon a slippery slope and I don't know where to stop anymore..." she almost cried out. I tried to calm her. But I couldn't do it. Not immediately. But then I began to speak and she listened to me. "You see," I began, "what you are saying is right, and it is scary how right it is, and the most dangerous thing of all, is that I feel how it is Lili, especially Lili, who keeps us together, so that we stayed together for all the years... I don't believe I could survive her."
Grete interrupted me: she was thinking the same thing... so often... Because Lili embodied our youth and joy of life. And then Grete was sobbing and stammering: "I sometimes ask myself what life would be like without her."
We stared at each other, deeply shaken by this mutual confession, that had been the result of many weeks of rumination.
"Anyway, I can't see," Grete began anew, "how the two of us could carry on without Lili ...we can't lose her. Not see her anymore all of a sudden..., that would be like murder."
"Yes," I replied, "All the more since I feel that she is about to become more vital than I am."
Maybe this conversation had been prompted by a complete lack of courage in me. My health had been splendid all those years. Although I never looked quite robust, I had never really been sick, and had been otherwise able to endure all kinds of physical activity. -But in recent time I had not been well, which most of the time showed in complete fatigue. On top of that, I did not do well with the rainy and cold winters that Paris had experienced for a few years in a row. I was coughing from late fall to spring without pause. And so must have sunken into troubled thoughts. You can't stay young forever, I thought. And I thought of Lili. She shared her body with me. She is a woman. For her being young meant a lot more than for me.
My mood became gloomier and gloomier. I had been a naturally happy person until that point. Especially for as long as I was living in Paris. That was over now. I felt without energy for days, weeks and months. I lacked the energy for work. Everyone who had known me all those years, knew that I had been a workaholic up to that time. -I no longer understood myself.
In between there were recurring lighter periods. -Every time I could live in the countryside, far from Paris, to collect motifs. Especially in Balgencie. But that did not go on for much longer. I became more and more tired, more and more listless. I did not know what to do with myself. It was an unbearable condition.
Grete became anxious. She convinced me to visit a doctor. I indulged her. The doctor failed to find anything out of the ordinary, prescribed some reinvigorating medicine for the nerves. It didn't help. A new doctor was consulted. With the same results. And so on.
But when Lili appeared, she was doing fine, life was beautiful again. All gloom was gone.
Which was why she now came out as often as possible. She had acquired her own circle of friends and acquaintances, she had her own memories and habits, that had absolutely nothing to do with me anymore. Often she stuck around for several days in a row. And then she happily sat together with Grete, and often by herself too -- with crafts, sewing, crocheting, smiling to herself. She loved these womanly activities so much, that she sometimes went into a room by herself to dream away, sunken into her crafts... Nobody understood this mystery. Not Grete, not Elena. Everyone regarded this enigmatic being Lili, who was building up her own world around her, with a shake of the head and astonishment. But they let Lili be. She was happy.
One event that happened back then, would, faster than people thought, become the prelude to the last period of this incessant and merciless inner struggle between Lili and myself. And for a long time it seemed neither of us two would survive this struggle.
My friend Johannes Poulsen from the Royal Theater in Copenhagen was on tour in Paris for several days. Since his wife, the famous dancer Ulla Poulsen, accompanied him, there was also supposed to be a ballet performance. The ballet corps was not very big. One dancer was missing. So Johannes, who knew me to be a quite decent dancer, asked me if I wanted to jump in. Of course I said yes.
I had overexerted myself at ballet rehearsal, which was taking very long. In any case, I was having strange bleedings for the first time. Most of the time it was a nosebleed, but of such a strange kind, that Grete became afraid for my well being, and asked me to give up my role. I bristled against this. Under no circumstances was I to embarrass my old friend. I endured, although these bleedings recurred after the premiere and every subsequent show. And the most incomprehensible thing was, that I succumbed to nervous crying fits each time, which were completely new to me... But after such an attack, I felt liberated... as if something within me had loosened from its torpor, as if something new, something never before felt was stirring. My whole mind seemed renewed. As if a dam had broken.
Music never had left such a stirring, shaking impression with me, as it did on those evenings. A painfully sweet and yet relaxing experience, that captured all of my senses, that's how music affected me... It moved me to tears... and out of these tears came a crying fit.
A complete reversal of my being occurred during these nights. So far, I had been bossy and "looked down my nose" on other people. Before the first rehearsals I felt as if I myself was abandoning me. I was surprised. I no longer recognized myself. I was gripped by a strong urge to bow down, to submit myself to another's will, to submit myself unconditionally. I was possessed by this urge. – Johannes, my old friend and drinking buddy played, next to Ulla, the leading role that night. A year earlier the three of us had had been very merry together in Copenhagen. I would have never thought of playing a submissive role towards him, to acknowledge him as the leading man. Absolutely not.-
But now during those nights, from the first rehearsal on, I submitted myself to him slavishly. He didn't find one word of disagreement within me. And not just that. – If he asked me to do this or that differently, to bow down a bit more or less during some specific figure and so forth, I would blush like a little boy.
And when he then even touched me, I was so confused, I didn't know where to put my eyes. –
In spite of all the mental chaos that I felt at the time, there was nothing remotely erotic in it. Johannes and I were completely healthy creatures in that regard. I could not discover what it was. It just was like that. And it was not me who recognized this turn to demureness first, as Grete called it, but Grete. She teased me with that, smilingly. But behind her smile she hid boundless astonishment.
I was wearing my dancing regalia for the first time for the dress rehearsal: a tight fitting leotard, a bolero, a short jacket and a wig with short curls. After the dress rehearsal, as I was standing in the dirty, dark corridor that was substituting for the wardrobe of the theater, in the process of taking my make-up off, a group of mercenaries, who also belong to the ballet troupe, walks by, their swords rattling. One of them gave me a soft slap.
"It suits you admirably well to play a role in trousers, Mademoiselle!" the guy grinned.
As I turn around in an energetic protestation, the guys chicken out and yell at me: "There is so much bluff these days, ma petite Demoiselle..."
A few minutes later I have to go back on stage. As Johannes sees me, he screws up his face in a cozy grin and shouts with laughter: "No, children, that doesn't work this way. Now we have too many ladies!"
At first I don't understand anything, turn around baffled, all eyes are on me, grinning, I tumble out the door, my head red as a turkey's, into the arms of a costumier, hold him tight and plead with him to ‘costume me more like a man, the good director wishes it.'
He tried it with one of his colleagues' help, to the whinnying laughter of the two philistines. And I pulled myself together and pretended as if all of this left me completely untouched.
The night before the premiere I encountered a pretty muscularly built actor, who has to dance along in the ballet wearing the same costume I was wearing. As he notices me, he scrutinized me with his gaze from head to toe and then bursts out angrily: "My God, man, you look impossible..."
I am speechless, want to sink into the earth. If a man had told me something like that earlier, I would have knocked him out. But now I could not do anything but to look around with empty eyes, helplessly and baffled...
When I tell Grete everything later, she confesses that she too has noticed a curious change in the contours of my body. I looked like a woman in disguise in this dancer's costume...
In the following time my anxiety took up a pathological character. I was afflicted by these strange bouts of depression with strong bleedings in almost regular intervals. These were accompanied by intense pains. And on top of that these never before known crying spells. First I thought I had torn some inner organ when dancing. Grete too believed this. That's why we went to see a doctor with whom we were friends , who was actually a cardiologist and who technically wasn't competent for my assumed ailment. But he had known me for years. But he did not know anything of Lili. Only our "most intimates" knew of Lili... This doctor was not among them. Which is why I did not tell him of my double life..., even though I myself had begun to guess a connection between this and my physical state.
Since he did not find anything after a thorough examination that could explain the strange occurrences of the recent time, he and I went to see a young specialist, whom I actually knew in passing from Versailles. This doctor examined my form thoroughly and with growing astonishment, and finally concluded that he could observe strange irregularities in my innards. And also he explained that the only thing to do in this case was to wait and be in good spirits, since my physical constitution was healthy and unspent; with such a body one could still withstand taxing things.
Without this doctor having said anything specific or direct, this visit still gave me confidence and an almost mythical sense of hope...
I was absolutely clear about something extraordinary going on in me. This I could read in the doctor's face, without his words giving me reason for such an assumption.
And now I began, - as many sick people do who don't quite know what exactly ails them, - to procure all kinds of scientific books on sex-related problems. I had acquired specialized knowledge in this field in a short amount of time, and I knew some things now, that the laymen would never even dream of. But it became increasingly clear to me, that nothing of all of the things relating to normal men and women was applicable to my mysterious condition.
And so it happened that I came to my own opinion, namely that in my one body I was both man as well as woman, and that the woman in this body was about to gain the upper hand. From this guess I deduced the cause of the disturbances both physical and mental, which ailed me increasingly.
I confessed all of this to Grete. She understood my seeking and my search for clarity on my more and more unbelievable condition. And when, encouraged by her, I put forth my theory to the most different array of doctors in Paris and Versailles, I was not just met with shaking heads but even with some derision. The most courteous of them treated me indulgently for all kinds of ailments, the others viewed me as a hysteric or simply as a madman.
It was a terrible time. A nightmare without end. My health was going downhill, I barely could find any sleep any longer. Grete was the only one who unwaveringly believed in my theory. It was her who helped me again and again to not lose faith in one day finding salvation.
Exactly a year ago in April we went south again, to Italy. Grete believed that a change of air, especially during the wet and humid Paris spring, when it was mostly pretty rainy in Paris, would do me well. The French winter had been unusually cold. The whole of March was rainy. Beyond the Alps we found the world in bloom.
We traveled directly to Rome. There we had arranged a meeting with an Italian officer we had met in Florence years before. Since then we had been in correspondence with each other. He had just returned from the Orient after long, colonial service for a vacation back home. He was waiting for us at the train station, and brought us to our hotel, where we quickly changed clothes, to go out for dinner somewhere in the city. I was limitlessly exhausted after the long train ride and had indescribable pain, - but I did not want to ruin Grete's or our friend's day. So I came along.
We sat at "Facciano." The mild evening chill wafted in through the door... from the beautiful Piazza Colonna, where one can see the white column shimmer in the red façade of the Palazzo Chigi, and the colonnade of "Biffi," where one can hear the hoarse cries of the newspapermen, after which one no longer needs to buy an issue. And the orchestra plays its hit songs...
I will never forget that night.
Grete sat opposite of me. Beaming. With a dreamy smile now and then.
Something jolted through me... She suddenly looked as if she was barely 25 years old. All the tiredness was as if spirited away. And next to her sat our friend Ridolfo Feruzzi, beaming as Grete did. When we first got to know him years ago he seemed to be destined to only be a superficial acquaintance. Back then he was a newly made lieutenant. "Il bello tenente Feruzzi" everyone called him back then... Back then ... It was during our first trip to Italy... When we separated then, it seemed like it would be forever. Until his letters from the distant colony arrived with us in Paris... Most of them addressed to Grete.
A deep melancholy stole over me. I had to think of back then and the years that had passed. And a little about myself. What had happened to me?-
I pulled myself together. The blonde "Orvieto" had to help me. A thousand questions were asked. Just as many were answered. "Do you still remember this person and that person... Where did he end up... And Miss X... What happened to her... Do you remember the night at Lapi... that evening in the casino... And the night after in the movie theater on Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele... All the old names, the beloved well-known places and moods resurfaced... I saw everything in front of me as if it were today... And here I was sitting with Grete and Ridolfo Feruzzi and smiled as they did... And now and then their smile belonged to them alone... And they looked as they did back then... Years ago, when still young. But I smiled along. But it was a just a forced smile. My old love of life was broken. I had changed... had become someone else... had become a person without courage.
There in Rome, now a year ago, in that most magnificent city in the world, between the rust-red walls and trickling fountains, back then I finally realized that I had not just changed, but that I was finished, done. Irrevocably done. This mild and at the same time cruel Roman spring became a sort of overture for my final act... I felt that back then, I knew it, like something you can not change.
Grete and I had rented an atelier with a broad terrace full of flowers close to the Piazza di Spagna. This sunny home in the immediate vicinity of one of Rome's most beautiful squares belongs among my most unforgettable memories. I was sick every day. Every day... Meanwhile all the roses and all the many orange trees were in bloom outside our atelier window.
Now and then Lili appeared. But she too had lost her carefree nature. She cried, cried every time. She understood how good life could be. She felt that I had to die.
Now and then Grete cried too. She was so strong otherwise. Also in Rome. She tried to paint. But nothing would come of it. If I lay awake next to her at night, I noticed, how she too was lying there with her eyes wide awake.
We spent the nights with Feruzzi usually. Slowly his nature too changed. A sickly melancholia pressed on him more and more, even though he tried being upbeat. Once he could no longer hold it in. He said, he basically had failed in his life. He could understand people who, after coming to this conclusion, went into a monastery for their final refuge... Such people existed in the twentieth century, too... I noticed that he meant these words seriously ...
And then I had to think of Grete. Hadn't she too failed in her life? Had she not sacrificed herself so I wasn't alone, – because she felt that I had become a sick man, - because she knew that she was the only one who understood me? I knew her loyalty and her attachment to me. I knew no earthly force could move her to leave me, - today less than ever. – She was still young now... She still had time to catch up with many, many things she missed for my sake.
For me life no longer had any appeal. I know it is the wrong word – for the others. But for me it says and encompasses everything. Why should I keep dragging myself onward? No doctor understood what was wrong with me, nobody could help me. To live on, sick and old ahead of time.... The most horrible thought for me. I thought it all through, completely unpassionately. Without remorse for myself. Completely calm and rational. And so the thought became self-evident: better to die. Then Grete would be free. Then life can give her many rich years still.
Back then, on that night in Rome I made a decision. That is still valid today. Only one can change it.
It was May back then. I gave myself a one year period. If I couldn't find a doctor within that time who could help me, - who wants to try to save Lili, - to separate her from me, oh I know how difficult it is for others, to understand these words, separate Lili from me, - but how else am I supposed to put it into words?- ... Yes, if I don't find this helper before next May, then I myself will in all quietness say goodbye to this existence, even if the other being, that had to share my body with me, will have to share this fate with me. I even put down the date. It should be the first of May. That was when this double execution was supposed to take place... And it should happen in a discreet way, to spare Grete as much as we both could, Lili and me.
Grete... How to spare her... That was the most difficult thing of all. I knew all too well, how Grete would react to a violent end of my life. But in spite of all ruminations and misgivings about the best, most loyal friend of my life I saw there was no other way out for me, - it would still be a salvation - for us both. And certainly the only one possible.
When I had made that decision, I felt a kind of relief. At least I knew now that there would be an end to this anguish, in the near future.
My health deteriorated from day to day. And the moment came in which Grete accepted that I could not stay in Rome any longer, and that a return to Paris, where we knew some diligent doctors, was urgently necessary.
Boundlessly depressed we left Rome,- and Ridolfo Feruzzi, on a sunny spring morning, much, much earlier than planned.
In Paris, in this familiar surrounding, my condition apparently improved. Again we went to see a few specialists. But always with negative results. Finally a radiologist agreed to treat me. It almost cost me my life, - and I would have almost been relieved of the necessity to carry out the execution on that agreed upon first of May.
Since the Paris summer became too hot, we moved to Versailles again, close to the park. Our life proceeded as it did before. Neither Grete nor I loved to make much of our weal and woe, of our joys and sorrows. Work is the best doctor I told myself. And so I went out with my painter's easel and paintbox into the park, as frequently as my condition allowed. And as often as she liked to, Lili appeared and tried to divert Grete and me.
The only one who clearly recognized my condition was Claude Lejeune. He was the only consoler for us. He felt very quietly, without saying many words, what hid behind the seeming calm that Grete and I and - Lili displayed to him during his visits. When he came over on Sundays merriment ruled as it did before.
If we didn't have Claude Lejeune back then...
He, like Grete, had long since understood that the only thing that was still vital within me was Lili... Both believed this unwaveringly. And this was why both encouraged Lili to come as often as she wanted. –
Claude Lejeune often went on long walks through the park of Versailles with her... The two of them made plans for the future.
On one such night, as the setting sun set all windows of the palace and the mirror calm surfaces of the ponds ablaze, the two of them strolled across the terrace. Suddenly they heard a woman say to her company in passing: "Look, two happy people!"
This night even Claude Lejeune couldn't find his happy laugh again.
- - - -
Most of our friends and acquaintances grasped my condition more clearly than all doctors we had consulted so far. Of course their condolences were limited to words. But at the same time their words gave me a moral stability... They saw in me a burdened human being whose suffering was a true martyrdom, and not, as the French doctors explained again and again, imagination and hysteria...
This way I met an old, French painter in Trianon one day. We had known each other for years, but had not seen each other for some time. He asked sympathetically how I was doing, - I replied evasively without letting him in on anything in the slightest.
To my surprise he replied then. "I have watched you for a long time, without you noticing me. Here in the park when you were painting. There I noticed the change you went through in the past few years. Back in the day you appeared fresh, straight, like a healthy man. – Nothing compared to now, - excuse me for saying this, - you seem to me like a girl in disguise... You are sick... You are very sick indeed. There is a radical change going on inside you. A fantastical thought. But even things that never were can become fact tomorrow. We have known cases of inversion for a long time. The doctors were able to manage those. So why shouldn't you be able to find similar help. Hopefully you will find a courageous doctor with a good imagination... That is what everything depends on... Of course where is a poor painter supposed to get such a giant fee for such an expert... Let's hope that you will still find a man who will take you on for humane and scientific reasons."
These and similar expressions of understanding were like a small oasis during my trek through the desert, and they gave me courage and power to carry on my hopeless search for a savior.
In this last summer in Versailles I began to recognize that people often looked after me with bewilderment, on the street, in the park, wherever I walked or stood, - even in stores I used to frequent for years. I had noticed this in Paris, too, now and then in the past few years... But not to the extent it now happened in Versailles. By the way, Parisians are the best behaved, most indifferent, most blasé people in the world, while the people of Versailles are simply small town folk.
One morning as I wanted to use a passage through the Hotel des Reservoir, to get to the park more quickly, a couple of young waiters are standing there.
I barely pay attention to them, and have already passed. Then I hear the words spoken behind me, in original Copenhagen slang: "Would'ya look at that, a nice lass who put on pants to go paint."
By the way, the hotels of Versailles are full of Danish waiters, - I know not why. Maybe, because German and Austrian waiters were hired there before the war, because of their language skills.
Enough. I pretended not to have heard anything, and kept walking, ruminated on the meaning of this compliment, - and it began to dawn on me why I was raising as much attention as I did recently.
A few days later the wife of our concierge, who we got along with splendidly, stops me to tell me the following: "Monsieur please don't be cross me with me when I tell Monsieur that the clerk at the shop here in the district where Madame and Monsieur go shopping does not want to believe that Monsieur is a Monsieur." She stood there, eyes and lips wide open, as I replied, smiling: "Ma brave Dame, I am inclined to agree with the shopkeepers!"
This and similar incidents showed me that the situation began to become paradoxical. Lili could not be allowed to show herself on the street, since she and I shared a body, - although not a single human soul took note of her if she decided to show herself among people, except for occasional "pursuers." I however was gawked at everywhere I went, even though I was correctly dressed as a man, and going my way with wide manly paces, - and people thought me a girl in disguise...
It was impossible to bear.
In the fall, when we returned to Paris, I noticed that here too I was beginning to draw attention, even though that came to expression in more subtle ways. In the metro or on the bus or on the tram I often caught glances or words from people that were watching me. Although I wanted to ignore their remarks, I could comprehend what they were saying from just a few fragments of words, and understood enough to convince myself that they shared the opinion of the shopkeeper in Versailles. With my deep knowledge of the Parisians it quickly became doubly clear to me that I was really in the process of becoming more of an attention magnet, - and that fact made me more and more nervous, - my nerves, damaged from years of suffering were in an uproar: they could no longer bear seeing me followed by inquisitive, curious, grinning gazes. This harassment from my fellow human beings depressed me to no end.
And so I went to see our cardiologist friend anew. Grete had been seeing him a few days earlier and had tried to explain my and Lili's double life to him, - and he had promised her to lead me to another specialist in Versailles, - even though he personally saw everything as an obsession of mine and solely a "pathological imagination without any physiological basis".
"Your husband is healthy. His body is normal. I speak from a deep knowledge, from thorough analysis of his body, Madame," that was his last word on that matter...
That new visit to the new specialist in Versailles would be my last experiment, or so I had promised Grete and myself, before we were to be on our way. On arrival, I immediately had the impression that the two doctors had already arranged their plan of attack: they wanted to try to expel my "hysterical whimsies". After a superficial conversation I was told I was a completely normally built man, who had nothing wrong with him, who just should try to pull himself together to prove himself a man with good spirits and good humor, so he could keep on living the life of a regular human being, masculini generis...
I was being regarded during the dispensation of that deep verdict with barely suppressed irony: I was regarded a hysteric, simply a dissimulator, and one of the two, the "new specialist" hinted that I would basically be - homosexual. That intimation almost made me forget my self-control and my good upbringing. If Grete had not saved the situation with a bright burst of laughter and had not rejected this suggestion as patently absurd, I would have literally and figuratively gone for the throats of these reckless gentlemen.
After this hopeless consultation that was deeply depressing for me as well as for Grete, I noticed soon after how I had used up my last remaining reserves of power. And I swore to myself quietly that there would from now on not be a force in world strong enough to make me go see new doctors.
I did not want to be degraded to the mockery of those gentlemen doctors.
I told myself: since my case is completely unknown in the history of the medical arts, it simply does not exist, was not allowed to exist. My and with that Lili's death sentence was certain with that. Now all that mattered was maintaining as decent and noiseless a patience as possible, until the short term that I had given myself was up.
On the outside, nothing about our lives in the atelier changed. I was often in a carefree mood even, first and foremost when friends or acquaintances were over, but especially towards Grete, since I was afraid she could see through me. She was not doing well, I could see that through all her being. She pulled herself together, showed me a smiling expression most of the time, behind which she believed herself able to hide her fear and desolation. She had become so restless. Oftentimes whenever she believed I was not watching her, she looked at me quizzically, so that I feared that she suspected my plans...
In those weeks I only had one desire: listening to music. I no longer wanted to go to concerts. Not to see any people. This was why I bought gramophone records in a truly wasteful manner. Classical and modern music, all kinds of things. And in the evenings deep into the nights I played our gramophone. Like a man dying of thirst I devoured everything that was music. Bright and tragic, banal and ceremonious, melodic and unharmonious music, - as long as it was music. It was my solace, my only consolation, whether it moved me to tears or prompted me to sing along with one of the latest pop songs a dozen times, or even to ask Grete to dance with me. I lived off music back then. If I couldn't sleep, I ran towards it. If I didn't want to open my eyes in the morning, then Grete brought the gramophone from the atelier to my bedside.
Schubert's immortal song "To the Music" ... how often had this most moving of all hymns to life helped me to be patient a bit longer. There was nothing, nothing, that could be smilingly dismissed with the word sentimentality. There is nothing sentimental in me. I was never less sentimental than I was then. I just felt unendingly lost, subjected to a fate that transcended descended human understanding. The language of the soul itself, the language of sounds freed me from having to speak myself, from having to give form to my inconsolable ruminations. Not to think myself, not to clad thoughts in words, was my daily, nightly cry for help...
Earlier I had found distraction in reading. I had put together entire libraries in our atelier... Now I no longer opened up any books. What could the fates of strange beings tell me, since I could not find solace from any of the beings in these books, that was a being like me. No poet could have written poetry about such a being, since no poet ever thought that such a being could have ever lived. How could the philosophers of the Greeks and of the present help me, who only tell us of thinking of the male and the thinking of the female in separate bodies and brains and souls? Plato's banquet... Earlier I had found sanctuary there. Plato knew of people on the margins of both worlds of feeling, the one of the man and the one of the woman, that they are mixed beings. But here in my sickly body there lived two beings, separate from one another, not related to one another, hostile to one another, even if they had compassion for one another, since they knew that this body only had room for one of them. One of these two beings had to perish, to disappear, or both had to die.
Madness touched me in those nights, madness that had grasped that this body which I was torturing myself with, with no hope of salvation, was not mine, was not mine alone, that my part of this body shrank from day to day, since it was encapsulating a being within that for the price of my existence was demanding its own existence. I felt like a fraud, like an usurper, who ruled over a body, that long since was no longer his. I felt like one, who only owns the façade of a house. Madness to think this thought to its conclusion, since there was no end for it, if not this one end: to not be. And I no longer wanted to be.
- - -
Now and then Lili still appeared. And Grete was delighted about her appearance every time. Lili was happier than I. Both knew that. And Lili knew that she could console Grete with that. Now and then she remained for several days on Grete's pleading. Grete could bear the nights more easily together with Lili. Lili could more easily fall asleep. And once she slept, Grete could fall asleep too. Lili often cried without Grete noticing. Lili had always had her own dream world. She had always had such happy dreams. Now her dreams had disappeared. They had been back only a few nights. And every dream had been the continuation of another. It was winter. She dreamed of approaching spring, that had a lot of sun. She told Grete of these dreams. But she often felt they were just dreams. And then she became afraid. But the night after, an even more beautiful dream dispersed her fears again. Grete secretly noted her dreams down in a diary, she once told me. And she phrased it in a way as if she had just let me in on a secret.
Lili basically dreams up a novel for you, I replied to her and turned away, empty.
But this dream novel became the favorite topic of conversation for Grete and Lili during those dark days, and these conversations were the only thing that gave Grete and Lili strength and kept their hope alive, their burning hope that a wonder, a marvel could still happen.
And then it was February. Elena and Ernesto had again come to Paris. And then one morning Elena took me to a strange man from Germany, who then brought me here.
Today it is the third of March. In about two months it is the first of May. That is the irrevocable, farthest time. After that there will be no Andreas Sparre left. Whether or not Lili will survive that day and live her own life, that lies now entirely in Werner Kreutz' hands."