Man Into Woman - Chapter 9 by Lili Elbe Lyrics
When Andreas stepped into his hotel, it was almost morning. An icy cold March morning.
He stood at the window of his hotel room for a long time, looking down on the almost empty plaza in front of the train station. A few automated cabs stood there. A few late-night strollers. And the shimmering glow of the glass wall of the long building of the station. A pale, tired glow. Only the morning air was awake.
Shivering he closed the window.
He was very tired. But it was a comforting tiredness, - like after a long, tiring march with a heavy burden carried on one's back.
The march was over. The burden no longer pressed on his back. In the past night he had confessed his life to his friend. This odd, mysterious double existence of Lili and him, ineffable even to himself.
He slowly disrobed. He stood in front of the mirror, naked. He had to think of the words he said that night: I am like one who only owns the façade of a house. His mirror image showed only the façade... It was the immaculate body of a man.
What was behind that façade?...
No, no more questions now.
Just sleep, for a few good, deep hours.
His journey was behind him. He was at his destination now. Beyond that, there was no more journey left for him. He was done. If there was a new beginning behind his end of the journey, it would only be a beginning for - - Lili.
He was ready.
That knowledge of himself gave him both a sense of security and calm and equanimity.
With a pure, yes, elated happiness he woke up after a few hours, took a bath, ate breakfast, punctually went to the last visits to different doctors, was in good spirits and almost carefree. "Now I am like a traveler without any baggage," he told himself, "like one who is on vacation from his true self." Standing in the middle of Leipziger Strasse, he heard a child's voice whisper: "Look there mamma, a woman in men's clothes..." He turns around, looks into two shocked, blue girl's eyes, possibly a ten-year-old with thick, blonde braids; the little one turns ruby red and clutched hold of her mother's arm, who looks at him as baffled as her daughter and hurriedly walks on with the child.
He, too, has turned ruby red, he feels. This time he did not smile. An odd, hard defiance rose within him. Like a rearing up of the man in him. Without wanting to do it himself or even knowing it, he stopped in front of a shop's window, observing his own mirror image inquisitively in the blue window pane. Annoyed he turned away. "None of my business anymore. None of my business anymore." He repeated that sentence several times, defiantly, then looked at his watch, it was half past four in the afternoon, at five he should be at the M. Sanatorium, with Professor G.
He found himself at Potsdamer Platz, went to the post office, searched in the giant telephone book for the number of Baroness Schildt, whom he had wanted to visit, previously, and had himself be connected. She was not at home. Hurriedly he bought a pneumatic tube letter, despatched a few brief lines: "Dearest Baroness, please don't be mad if you don't see me again. In a few minutes I will take a cab and will arrange my own funeral: Tomb of M. sanatorium. Whatever happens, please keep me in your heart. And if Lili should survive alone, don't leave her all alone. I know that not all my men friends will be her friends. But my women friends... I would like to leave them to her..."
He threw the letter in the sack of the postman, who was just in the process of emptying the blue postbox. He handed the good man a Reichsmark. The man looked at him baffled. Before the man could thank him, Andreas had already hopped into the next cab, gave the chauffeur the exact address of the clinic, and stepped into the sanatorium five o'clock precisely.
There he was received by a pretty "sister." Immediately he was lead to the head of the clinic, a quite young, blond, almost athletically built man, who observed him with his smart, buoyant, bright blue eyes. He also noted some curiosity in the doctor.
"I just had a long phone conversation with my dear colleague Kreutz about your case," the doctor began right away, "which means I am fully informed. Before that I had a briefing with colleague A., who was the first to examine you here in Berlin. Colleague A. will be present during the procedure I will have to perform. I would like to converse with you now, briefly, too. A personal impression is necessary."
Andreas replied very matter-of-factly: "Please, Professor, ask away." But the doctor preferred a visual examination to all questions, asked Andreas to disrobe and to lie down on a prepared examination divan of the kind that he had now gotten to know thoroughly in Berlin.
"Yes," the doctor then concluded after a careful analysis of his figure, "you are indeed absolutely what you present as in ordinary life, a correctly built man, but still your body does show a certain female form, undoubtedly. A curious phenomenon, I have to admit. I am astonished by the overall findings..." And while Andreas got dressed again, the surgeon paced back and forth, observed the patient without pause, glanced at his day book and then said: "I know you are in a hurry. Then return tomorrow morning..."
"That doesn't quite work, since tomorrow morning I am supposed to be photographed before the surgery by Dr. M. H., as requested by Professor Kreutz."
"Good," Professor G. explained, after again glancing at his journal, "four o'clock in the afternoon also works... Today is Monday... So I will operate on you tomorrow, Tuesday night..."
"Agreed, doctor," Andreas practically shouted the words with excitement. The next moment, following a hard handshake with his helper, he was back out – outside.
- - - -
"So we have a last respite," he said quietly to himself, looked at his watch, it was almost half past six... A cab stopped nearby. He told the chauffeur the name of his hotel – and spent this very last night alone with himself in his hotel room. He felt, sensed, that he could not ask any more of his nerves or of his body, - the last night he spent awake, the conversation earlier, the loud, foreign, giant city around him.
"I am no longer a player now ... I am just on duty now... for Lili... I have to save up now..." Those were his last thoughts, before he, - it wasn't even eight o'clock, - sank into a dreamless sleep on the foreign hotel bed.
- - - -
Andreas left the hotel on time on Tuesday morning, it was a clear, crisp March day, he wandered down Friedrichstrasse a short stretch, then turned onto the broad boulevard of Unter den Linden, stood on Pariser Platz, in front of the austere, simple Brandenburg Gate. The sun, a harsh, brightly golden March sun elevated this beautiful, almost classically clean streetscape, that reminded Andreas of the most well done places in Paris. "How perfect German architects are able to build... How much you can learn here." The painter within him awoke. He walked into Tiergarten. Everywhere was sun and the budding green. And the old green was shining like delicious bronze. He wandered along a narrow path that soon reaches a small lake. Ducks are swimming on it in funny formations. The branches of high trees reflect on the almost ripple-free surface of the water.
Andreas stopped. He had never been here before. This small piece of nature in the middle of the metropolis! He inhaled the image. He had to think of so many unforgettable morning hours in Italy, France and Denmark, where as a happy person he had carried the whole of his happiness in his eyes...
With his paint box, easel and canvas he had gone out, far away from cities and people, and had praised his own fate being allowed to be a painter, nothing but a painter, a very simple creature, fully immersed in the moment. To not lose those delicious moments was his urge that found release when he was painting. He painted as if in a fever, could not wait to capture the picture that presented itself to his discharging view, this discharging view that was blown inside by the winds of wanderings, that sees more than the dull gaze of other people, that was brighter than the gaze of others... prescient... How much he had always loved the word... How he loved this word again in this instance!
He had always been one with this ineffable, stirring, this play of light and shadow, bright and dark, color and form, sounds from this cacophony and mess of vines... He had always felt like a secret bird stalker, who is lying in wait and knows all the mating calls until he found what he was searching for.
That was how he had created his pictures, bound onto the dead canvas with dead colors, until these things he had harkened with his eyes began to have a life of their own... A captured echo he confessed to himself, a dim echo is what my pictures are... But still an echo... And he had been happy and very humble like an insider... And those hours had been the only true joys of his life. These joys had belonged to him, him alone, he had not had to share these joys with any other being, he had not robbed anyone else of these joys, or stolen... They had been exclusively his riches, his property... Could he bequeath this property, these riches?... He felt this question like a fear rising within... He had never before heard that question within himself... Joy, could that be bequeathed? The joy of painting...? For him, Andreas Sparre, that joy was irrevocably over.
And Lili ... If she was allowed to survive, would she feel the drive to paint? If he could give her this joy, this feeling of happiness in creation, if he could give this to her as an inheritance, to make up for the life he stole from her, for the many years of youth, his guilty conscious, that so often pressed him to the ground, would be eased...
That he had to think of Lili now... Of her who had so different inclinations than he... Completely different from his... she had always felt disgusted getting her hands dirty with paint. Smiling he now remembered that. And he himself had used his naked fingers just as much as his paintbrush... He laughed out loud. Why think of an inheritance, a legacy, now ... What was it he he had done in this life? Right, he had a small proof that he did not share with anyone else: the golden "palm" of the Paris "Academy"... Oh vanity...
Should he turn around again?... He stood upon a delicate, slightly wavy bridge over which he could look onto a broad canal, that let its waters drop through a half raised sluice into a spillway, that hissed and shimmered like a miniature waterfall.
Right, I'm like one who wants to sail down a waterfall now, he thought, and I recognize how the current is gripping me, and I no longer know where the trip is going. Maybe into complete destruction... Anyway... now, I can't easily leave the boat any longer... The decision is made... I can't go back...
- - - -
Half an hour later he is with Doctor M.S. He has to wait a long time for the photographer who is supposed to capture his and Lili's common body in a picture. What is all this for, he asks himself. His happy, confident mood is gone. He only feels limitless tiredness. He would have preferred to just sit down somewhere quietly to cry.
A woman, the doctor's assistant, joined him in the waiting room. She begins a conversation with him. He mostly just listens. She has poise and what she says he feels is without curiosity, without intrusiveness.
"Your case is a novelty for all of us here. And what increases the interest we take in you out of scientific interest, is the fact that you are an artist, an intellectual, and you are able to analyze yourself, your feelings, your emotional life, you will experience the most outrageous, most incredible thing: first to have lived and felt as a man, and then to live and feel as a woman. I have to think of the Roman emperor who took his life because he could not achieve what is now becoming your fate..."
Andreas listens quietly, like one who is receiving news about another that he has long since known himself. The cordiality and objectivity with which the woman spoke to him, he felt was a blessing. To connect objectivity and cordiality is something that is only in the nature of the German people.
When the photographer finally arrived, Andreas had found his good mood again, at least superficially. "Now please, no more relapses," that was the order he gave himself, appealing in an empathetic way to his own defiance, and as he left the institute of Doctor M. H., he invited himself to a "farewell breakfast." He selected a suitable restaurant in the west of town with the greatest care, and then very meticulously chose the menu, at the beginning of which he put a "Homard à l'amèricaine" with quietly chilled "Liebfrauenmilch" of the most select vintage.
When he was done, nearly two hours later, the polyglot head waiter said in the most perfect French: "Monsieur has certainly come to Berlin to amuse himself... Theater... Music... for that we are well recognized as a center in Berlin... And in regard to our ladies, how does Monsieur like our ladies... here on Kurfürstendamm...?"
"Charming, really elegant," Andreas hurried to respond, even though his gallows humor was about to break through. "Here in your atmospheric, sublimely ‘dolled up' establishment, which is not exceeded in comfort by any Parisian restaurant, I see a couple of superb specimens of the most refined taste, who could be at home in Paris or in Rome as well. And I would give much of my heart's calm to lay my adorations at their feet, if I didn't have to undergo quite a fateful surgery in a few hours..."
The head waiter made big eyes upon this revelation.
- - - -
He went to the hotel right after, paid his bill, took a car, drove to Thomasiusstrasse, to bid farewell to his friends. "You don't quite look like a sacrificial lamb," his friend Niels concluded immediately on his arrival.
"I don't feel like one either, - on the contrary, -" Andreas shouted back, laughing.
While Miss Inger put her hands together over her head: "But Andreas, you are supposed to be operated on in a few hours, and you come over here with an almost pitch black Importe in your mouth."
And with that she surprisingly ripped the cigar from his hand.
"Oh please, I have just come from my last meal, or rather, I have literally celebrated my ‘l'enterrement de ma vie de garçon without the slightest equivoque which in this expression is closest to your "Polterabend" ..."
Miss Inger took him by the hand. "I have not been a nurse for nothing, and I know how one has to behave prior to a surgery. Certainly not the way you do, Andreas. Those are stupid little boys' pranks, to go out and splurge. That is just making trouble. By the way, you look quite bad now. And now Niels will accompany you to the sanatorium."
And so it came to pass. Andreas entered the sanatorium without a cigar and under the auspices of his friend.
This fateful entrance by the way went on quite businesslike. The surgery nurse Marianne received the two gentlemen, lead them into a blindingly white room smelling of all kinds of disinfectants, close to the operating theater, of which the doors stood open. A few nurses seemed busy making preparations for a new operation. A strong, slightly sweet scent of anesthetic wafted in.
Unfortunately Professor G. was not able to arrive until about six o'clock, so the gentlemen would have to be patient, they were told.
The clock showed barely four. Niels made a completely desperate face. "I can't endure two hours in here," he said, almost contritely, went to nurse Marianne and explained that he would take the patient to the nearby "Romanisches Café" to pass the time. After Andreas had solemnly sworn to return on time, the two almost hurriedly left the sanatorium. Niels was in the most hurry.
After they had found a seat opposite the newspaper stand, Andreas found a red haired cripple only a few meters away from them, the "newspaper chief". Andreas had jumped up immediately, approached the cripple from behind, which he noted with a surprise, for which he received a Reichsmark from Andreas and then a second Reichsmark, after he had touched the quite humongous humpback of the "newspaper chief". After that, Andreas sat back down, happily smiling, next to Niels.
"Dear Niels," he then said as reply to the friend's surprised reaction, "this is what I call friendship! You brought me together with such a magnificent hunchback just at the eleventh hour. Of course you don't know that such a guy is good luck, infallibly. This is a southern superstition. Granted. But I do feel protected now – against everything. Really bulletproof. Such a manly hunchback, when you touch it, works miracles. A female hunchback on the other hand, does quite the opposite."
Niels shook himself with laughter. "There you can see how I care for you. Now I, too, am no longer afraid on your behalf."
"Which we should drink to with a noble drop of Rhenish wine, as if it were a funeral toast of the Nordic tradition." And with that Andreas had already ordered a bottle of the best vintage from the waiter. "But please, three glasses!"
"Three?" Niels asks.
"Of course, the red haired hunchback must drink with us." Which the redhead didn't need to hear twice, even if he didn't quite understand the occasion of the invitation. "Our kind is used to quite some sorrow," the invited man replied while bowing deeply, clasped the glass and raised it to Andreas, "to your health, dear Sir! May your kind soul long outlive you!"
"The guy talks like a prophet!" Niels cried out and made big eyes. Andreas enfolded the redhead in his arms, kissed him on both cheeks, and let the surprised man go again, held up his glass, caressed the hump of the cripple with his free hand. "If you knew what you gave to me with those beautiful words, you magnificent chap! In this sense!" And he let his glass clink against the cripple's. "Three's a charm!" And he looked at Niels. And Niels understood his friend. And standing up the three drinkers emptied the bottle. And once Andreas and Niels finally left, the redhead looked after them for a long time with earnest eyes.
- - - - -
The room of the clinic which was awaiting Andreas was already lit. A nurse accompanied him in, and recorded his personal details, hung a fever scale over his bed and asked Andreas to lie down immediately. The doctors would be in soon.
"Then it is probably better if I leave right away," Niels asked.
Andreas nodded, smiling. "So, old chap, farewell and I will put in all the effort to make the prophecy of the redhead come true." Niels wanted to say something else. But Andreas pushed him out the door. "Nice of you, Andreas, otherwise I could end up getting sentimental. So, in the meaning of the redhead." A quick shaking of hands, and Andreas was alone.-
He looked around. Mechanically, without any clear thought in his head. He paced back and forth. One, two, three times... Without realizing it, he began counting his steps. "So it's seven paces long, and six paces wide," then he sat down on the bed, he took in the room. A hospital room of which there were countless others. Bright walls. And a bed and a table and a wardrobe and both chairs, also painted brightly. –
And then he began to undress, very slowly. Because he suddenly realized that he, Andreas Sparre, was disrobing for the final time...., that what was happening here was a sort of leave taking, a farewell to coat and vest and trousers... and so on. This shell of coat, vest and trousers had encased him for a lifetime... He looked on the articles of clothing, one after the other, while taking them off, he hung the coat over the vest, and then put both on hangers in the wardrobe, the way he was used to, since... Yes, since when? He stretched the trousers on a pants-hanger... gazed and gazed on them piece by piece and caressed them piece by piece. "What will become of you?" he asked, smiling. "What will become of me?" He rubbed his forehead. "Which one of us here will survive the other? You me? Me you? .... Coat, vest, trousers... shoes, underwear, socks, I almost forgot about you..."
And so he sat there a long time, as if among companions who had to be bid farewell. "Maybe you see a traitor in me..." And now he took his hat off the table. "You too... I almost completely forgot about you... I wonder who else I have forgotten? ..."
And he reached into the inner coat pocket, took a picture out, put it on the table, leaning it against the wall. "Grete," he said, just about to caress the picture. And then there was a knock on the door, and already it was opened: Professor G. entered, accompanied by his young assistant doctor. A few questions were directed at Andreas, with the result that to his surprise the execution of the "first operation, which is completely harmless," as the doctor explained casually, had to be postponed until the next morning. "You refer to such farewell parties as 'Gravöl' up ," the Professor laughed. "Your friend already told me the brand of Rhenish wine from earlier. My compliments. You seem to be well versed in these matters. But such "procedures" are better done on an empty stomach. So that the time until tomorrow will not be too boring for you, we will give you a sleeping aid in a few hours. And now, good courage." A handshake, -and he was alone again.
"So it's always wait, wait, wait," he says to himself. "How much patience do you have to have, you...." And now he spoke to the picture that was sitting on the table next to his bed.
"Grete... Grete..." He did not say anything else, leaned back into the white pillows, stared to the ceiling, was tired... tired..."
He had arrived at the destination... worn out, and only now realized how tired he was. The haste of the days here in Berlin only now became clear to him. Now he could admit to himself that he was at the end of his strength. Nobody could see him now. Not even Grete. And the last remnant of his manly defiance that he had worn like a steel armor before his friends and doctors during this week full of anguish in the foreign metropolis Millionenstadt, that he had dragged around the foreign metropolis laboriously, fell off of him.-
"Grete.... Good thing you can't see me now..."
No, no tears.... Persevere ... Persevere ...
And only then he remembered that she had no idea of the impending surgery. She believed he would only be examined here in Berlin, put under observation. He had only received a few postcards from her. She wanted to come to Dresden in the coming days, to stay by his side... during the first operation... Should he send her a telegram still? Wasn't it wrong to keep what was about to happen to him tomorrow a secret? But no, why scare her? He himself had had no idea that his fate was about to be accomplished here in Berlin already... Accomplished.... He had to smile. "I am ready..." And there he recalled the words of the redhead... "May your soul survive me a long time..."
He had paper and a pen lying on the table. He took a sheet and wrote:
Berlin, March 4, Tuesday Night
Dearest, sweetest Grete,
I will be operated on tomorrow. The doctor says this is just a small, harmless procedure. This is why I did not ask you to join me here. – But should it go differently, I want to tell you today that I have always thought of you, every hour, every minute, every moment. You my most beloved and most faithful companion! My last wish is that your future is happy,- that you will inherit my easy-going nature. If my soul lives on, it will be with you. A thousand kisses from Lilli. Yours, only yours, Andreas.
- - - - -
When Miss Inger entered an hour later, he handed her the letter and asked her to give it to Grete, if...
"You big stupid boy, I have known all long from Niels, everything has to go well. I even went to the café and brought your unusual guardian angel some flowers. He turned red like a turkey and said: "this must be my luckiest day..."
- - - -
At ten o'clock the assistant doctor came in again. He handed Andreas the promised sleeping powder. Only then a nurse appeared, put things in the room in order, turned off the little lamp... And then everything was quiet.
And that last night of Andreas Sparre was deep and dreamless.
They let him sleep until the doctors appeared. Into the late morning hours. Soon after he had used the bathroom, Professor A. stood next to his bed, waiting for him to sign a declaration, which said that he, Andreas Sparre, wanted to undergo this surgery out of his own volition and at his own peril, and that he freed Professor G. from all liabilities, should something go wrong...
"Delighted to do so," he exclaimed, signing the document immediately, which was addressed to some government agency and said in plain German: If I die, I forgo any right to cause any difficulties after... "But can't I add a few words of gratitude to the German doctors?" he asked, all of a sudden, "those who tried to save me?" This plea was refused with a smile, upon which the doctor retreated with the words: "The operation will take place in a few minutes, I will attend upon the wish of Professor Kreutz, good luck."
As soon as Andreas was alone again, he hurried to write down the following:
Dear Professor Kreutz,
In this last moment before my operation I feel the urge to express my deeply felt gratitude towards you. Since the day I met you in Paris I have been full of hope, and here in Berlin, where I did not know any of the doctors who examined and stood by me, I felt as if an invisible force had cleared all ways. I know that you are this force, and that all the good things that happened to me came from you. No matter how this turns out, please believe in the boundless gratitude that I feel towards you. Yours most dedicated
Andreas Sparre.
- - - - -
Andreas sank back into the pillows with a feeling of limitless relief. Now everything had been put into order. In a few minutes the waiting would be over...
And in that moment, on the boundary to the unknown, he suddenly remembered a winter day in Paris: tired and miserable he randomly stood in front of an ancient church,- Saint Germain de Prés. He had never seen it before. He entered, to relax in the mild, incense fragrant, low light of the godly house, beneath the venerable arches, that had seen the hopes and sufferings of so many generations. A pillar carried an oddly beautiful gothic sculpture: a Madonna. He had stopped there. And he, who long since had forgotten how to pray, sank on his knees between a couple of old women, devoutly folded his hands and begged the Madonna:
"You who are love and compassion, help me! Free me from my useless, sick life. Let me die – or let me witness a miracle!"
And he felt as if the Madonna was smiling down on him. A few days later he met Professor Kreutz.
And now he is lying here in Berlin, waiting for the beginning of the miracle. Had the Madonna really heard his prayer? - - When he had left Paris, he found an old Spanish Madonna miniature made of silver in his coat pocket. Grete had found it in a junk shop in Seville. Gaily she had shown him the piece of jewelry. "Hey you," she had said, "I think this tiny, sweet Madonna wanted to come with us. Now she should be our talisman."- And since then, Grete had worn the Madonna on a small necklace. And without him noticing, she had put the idol in his pocket... And he quietly kissed his Madonna.
A moment later, the assistant doctor steps in. "All right. Now you will get an injection. That will put you to sleep. And when you wake back up, everything will be done."
- - - -
When Andreas woke again in intense pain it was almost noon. He opened his eyes with a scream. At first he thought, he had woken too soon, and was still on the operating table... Slowly he realized he was lying in his bed, where in the early morning the assistant doctor had sat next to him on the bedside, until everything had sunken into a fog. What happened since, he couldn't guess. He felt as if he had screamed for a long time, as if he had defended himself against something. Two nurses he only now took note of stood around the bed, and talked to him soothingly.
After he had fully regained consciousness, he felt the pain getting worse and worse. But soon he had gained back control over himself, he clenched his teeth.
He wanted to scream no more. And he stopped screaming.
"Have I raised... a ruckus," he asked the nurses somewhat meekly.
"Well... Yes, a little..." one of the nurses said, "and the strange thing was that your voice had completely changed, it was a high-pitched woman's voice, and you kept yelling ‘You must not leave me! You must not leave me. I am still so little. I can not be alone yet.'"
Then Professor G. entered, took Andreas' hand and squeezed it lightly. "It went really well. You are lucky that you are so fresh and healthy. By the way I need to compliment you. You have quite the magnificent soprano! Just ask one of the nurses. Simply astonishing! Just see to it that you don't lose that. That will bring you much joy in your future life."
Andreas wanted to speak, but the doctor had already left. "Give another injection." That was all the doctor had told the nurse while leaving.
"Give another injection." Andreas repeated the words like a child, without truly understanding them. And a few minutes later, the dark, silent fog clashed in over him. –
Toward evening he woke from a coughing spell. It felt as if his entire body was about to be torn to pieces. The cough was terrible. He tried to suppress it. To no avail. He would never have guessed that coughing could hurt so insanely much. During the final winters in Paris he had coughed a lot, Grete had always been worried by that. "Don't worry," he replied then, "let me cough. Coughing is good." – And now he wanted to cry out from the infernal torment. The nurse was already standing next to his bed. She looked at him helplessly. She was not allowed to give him anything to drink.
Finally the coughing fit was over. He lay there, exhausted. The nurse wiped the sweat from his brow. "You have certainly smoked a lot?" she asked. "Maybe even yesterday..."
On the table next to the bed there was a pack of cigarettes.
"Take them away. Throw them out the window, Nurse . I can't see the stuff anymore. Never again will a cigarette or a cigar touch my lips." Like an oath he exclaims these words. Laughing the nurse took the pack. "Don't you forget your vow!"
"I swear to you, and to myself." And he thought of the imports that Miss Inger had taken from him yesterday. It was the very last cigar Andreas had smoked...
A few more coughing spells during the night deepened his newfound animosity to anything tobacco related, so much so that the thought of tobacco smoke alone made him nauseous. – And this almost fanatical dislike of any enjoyment of tobacco he passed on to Lili...
Niels was admitted to him for a few moments.
"This is going really well with you," he began immediately.
"Well yes," Andreas couldn't say anything else.
Niels looked at the nurse, puzzled.
She whispered to him: "You probably wonder about the bright soprano voice..."
Niels nodded. "Barely recognizable..."
Then he sat down in the one chair beside the bed. "I bring greetings from Inger, she'll bring you something very pretty in the morning. Furthermore …"
Andreas interrupts him: "Niels, you probably won't hold it against me if..."
"What is it?"
"Don't talk.... I'm in such pain..."
The nurse gave him a hint. He quietly left the room. Andreas whimpered: "Nurse, give me an injection..."
And that one would not be the only injection he got that night. It was an endless, arduous night. Only when morning approached did he find a dull, short sleep. And out of that sleep the nurse heard the same pleading call again and again: "Please, please give me another injection."
When he had fully woken around noon, he felt exhausted as if after a walk through the desert. But the pain had become more remote, dim. At least as long as he did not move. "That is the only thing you may think of now," the nurse told him repeatedly, "lay still, don't move a muscle!" And it was so good to heed that warning. "Lay still, think of nothing, don't move a muscle." Like a child he kept repeating the words.
But then and again a question stirred within him: "Who am I... What am I... What was... What will be...?
Then Miss Inger entered, - carrying flowers and a large bottle of Eau de Cologne. She extended both hands towards Andreas. Flowers! How their scent transformed the hospital room! He pressed his pale face into the colors of the flowers like someone dying of thirst.
"Oh, pour cologne over me, Miss Inger! Shower the entire room!" he exclaimed beside himself with joy about her arrival and her gifts. He never knew what a gift from the heavens the scent of flowers was.
And how good Miss Inger was. Without a sound and smiling she glided across the small, unadorned room, - almost like a tiny mother, he thought, watching her, as she arranged to get a vase for the flowers from the nurse, put down a small napkin on the table, which she had secretly taken out of her purse, stopped in front of the window, and observed the sick friend. And then she sat down at his bedside, caressed the pale, twitching hands of the sick one, spoke quietly and confidently to him, and behold, he forgot pain and fears, - and her, who previously had always addressed him with the honorific "Sie," now spoke to him confidentially as Du. He only realized that many days later. And she never called him by his name during those first days...
"Now everything will turn out fine, you, everything, just be patient and faithful, you... life will be so beautiful. Believe your friend, you, believe it, I know it..."
And then she sat silently next to the bed, caressed the tired, fevered brow ... and time passed ... and she glided away like a good dream ... And he had long since fallen back asleep.
...And she returned every day to him with flowers and good words. Thus a day passed, thus two days passed, three days. Andreas slept most of the time, like a child that had not awoken yet to real, waking life. And there were no dreams came to him through the long, dim nights, through which compassionate sleeping aids helped him. And every morning anew Miss Inger was with him, with fresh flowers and new floral scent. "You are my good angel now, Inger, my dear, compassionate sister ..."
She had brought him a completely glorious spring bouquet, and he wanted to happily kiss her hands.
"This time you don't have to thank me. These floral greetings are from a from a good, distant friend, you."
"From Claude Lejeune ...?"
Inger just nodded.
And she opened the white envelope, a small letter, attached to the bouquet, and read: "Every flower of this small bouquet is a greeting to Miss Lili!"
The flowers long hid the eyes of the sick one. Miss Inger too could not see that the eyes were crying many hot tears.
"Will Claude ever find her again?"
"Who then? You?"
"His Lili."
That was what the patient asked as he gave Inger a card that had a few lines jotted down on it. Without wanting to, she had looked at the writing.
"Did you write that?" she asked as if startled.
"Yes, Inger."
"But then she is already here, Claude's Lili! ... Just look?"
And he looked at the card and didn't recognize his own handwriting.
It was a woman's handwriting ...
And Miss Inger hurried out, the assistant doctor stood in the hallway, she pointed to the card. "What do you think, doctor. This was not written by a man?"
"No," the surprised doctor replied, "no, you are right. That is truly a miracle. One thing after another is pushing out."
"One after another?" Miss Inger asked this.
Andreas clearly heard her words...
And the doctor replied: "Have you not noticed the completely changed voice? It has changed from a tenor to a clear soprano."
"You," Inger said, reluctantly, when she was back in the hospital room, "you, you ..." And then she couldn't keep on speaking from sobbing.
When Andreas was alone again, he quietly talked away to himself ... wanted to listen to his voice, wanted to listen to it. "Is it really true what they say? Is it now really true ...?" And he listened and wanted to catch the sound of the voice in his ears, and it died, swept away. He had fallen asleep again.
Suddenly his sleep was rend to pieces. Night was around him. A terrible screaming pierced the darkness of the narrow walls of the room. A screaming the likes of which he never had heard before. First he thought he himself had screamed. He did not want to scream. He bit his lips. But there it was again, the scream from the dark. No, it was not he who had screamed. The scream, like the scream of a young, tortured animal, rang and rang ... He could no longer take it. "Someone is being murdered! Help! Help!" he screamed now, looking for his bell button, he rang, he screamed, he wanted to drown out the darkness with his scream. "Help, help!" The door is flung open. The light underneath the ceiling flares up. The nurse stands breathlessly before him. "Good heavens, what is the matter with you?"
"With me?" He looks out of flabbergasted eyes. Again the scream rings. Now he grasps that it is coming from next door, this terrible cry ...
"I was so mortally afraid, Nurse. Who else is plagued this terribly? Is someone dying? Go and help."
The nurse closes the door to the hallway, pulls the felt curtain that had been pushed aside back in front of the door, and already the screaming seems to have moved into the far distance ... "No, nobody is dying. A young woman has born a child ... a small, sweet girl ... It was her first child. In a few days the young mother will be back on her feet. What do you think, how hard it is to give birth ..."
"But, but ... yes ... yes ..." He didn't know how to answer.
He felt a deep, odd shame, and then he began to cry. The nurse stood with him for a long time, she tried to calm him, finally gave him an injection, so that everything, restlessness, shame, this new, strange shame and many questions that were rising within him, disappeared into the fog.
The nurse had heard him whisper out of this restless slumber several times; - she did not understand the whispering at first. But the words returned again and again. "But ... but ..." it whispered from his lips, "but ... but ... I have to give birth to myself ..." Much later the nurse repeated these words to the one who had spoken them. But then she long since knew that the one who had whispered those words out of the slumbering darkness had transformed into a different being.
Inger returned the next morning.
"You," she merrily called out upon entering, "you, do you know who is coming the next day?"
"Grete?"
"Yes, here is her letter."
He had to fetch the letter out of a big spring bouquet, and was still reading it as Professor G. entered the room accompanied by the assistant doctor.
"Good doctor," Andreas called out, "please tell me, when can I get up?"
"But why the rush, we are doing outstandingly well here in bed beneath flowers and mild hands," and the doctor kissed Miss Inger's hand gallantly.
"But yes, Professor, it is urgent, my wife arrives in three days."
"Your wife ...?" The Professor hesitated, looked at Miss Inger and then at his assistant doctor. "Right .... right ... Well, wait and see, wait and see, - Madame will certainly find you somewhat changed." Then he hastily left the room with his companion, it was evident that he was trying hard to suppress a smile.
"Did I act ridiculously, Inger?" Andreas asked pensively. "The Professor looked at me with such funny eyes."
"Stupid Lili ..." that was all that Inger knew as a response.
He stood at the window of his hotel room for a long time, looking down on the almost empty plaza in front of the train station. A few automated cabs stood there. A few late-night strollers. And the shimmering glow of the glass wall of the long building of the station. A pale, tired glow. Only the morning air was awake.
Shivering he closed the window.
He was very tired. But it was a comforting tiredness, - like after a long, tiring march with a heavy burden carried on one's back.
The march was over. The burden no longer pressed on his back. In the past night he had confessed his life to his friend. This odd, mysterious double existence of Lili and him, ineffable even to himself.
He slowly disrobed. He stood in front of the mirror, naked. He had to think of the words he said that night: I am like one who only owns the façade of a house. His mirror image showed only the façade... It was the immaculate body of a man.
What was behind that façade?...
No, no more questions now.
Just sleep, for a few good, deep hours.
His journey was behind him. He was at his destination now. Beyond that, there was no more journey left for him. He was done. If there was a new beginning behind his end of the journey, it would only be a beginning for - - Lili.
He was ready.
That knowledge of himself gave him both a sense of security and calm and equanimity.
With a pure, yes, elated happiness he woke up after a few hours, took a bath, ate breakfast, punctually went to the last visits to different doctors, was in good spirits and almost carefree. "Now I am like a traveler without any baggage," he told himself, "like one who is on vacation from his true self." Standing in the middle of Leipziger Strasse, he heard a child's voice whisper: "Look there mamma, a woman in men's clothes..." He turns around, looks into two shocked, blue girl's eyes, possibly a ten-year-old with thick, blonde braids; the little one turns ruby red and clutched hold of her mother's arm, who looks at him as baffled as her daughter and hurriedly walks on with the child.
He, too, has turned ruby red, he feels. This time he did not smile. An odd, hard defiance rose within him. Like a rearing up of the man in him. Without wanting to do it himself or even knowing it, he stopped in front of a shop's window, observing his own mirror image inquisitively in the blue window pane. Annoyed he turned away. "None of my business anymore. None of my business anymore." He repeated that sentence several times, defiantly, then looked at his watch, it was half past four in the afternoon, at five he should be at the M. Sanatorium, with Professor G.
He found himself at Potsdamer Platz, went to the post office, searched in the giant telephone book for the number of Baroness Schildt, whom he had wanted to visit, previously, and had himself be connected. She was not at home. Hurriedly he bought a pneumatic tube letter, despatched a few brief lines: "Dearest Baroness, please don't be mad if you don't see me again. In a few minutes I will take a cab and will arrange my own funeral: Tomb of M. sanatorium. Whatever happens, please keep me in your heart. And if Lili should survive alone, don't leave her all alone. I know that not all my men friends will be her friends. But my women friends... I would like to leave them to her..."
He threw the letter in the sack of the postman, who was just in the process of emptying the blue postbox. He handed the good man a Reichsmark. The man looked at him baffled. Before the man could thank him, Andreas had already hopped into the next cab, gave the chauffeur the exact address of the clinic, and stepped into the sanatorium five o'clock precisely.
There he was received by a pretty "sister." Immediately he was lead to the head of the clinic, a quite young, blond, almost athletically built man, who observed him with his smart, buoyant, bright blue eyes. He also noted some curiosity in the doctor.
"I just had a long phone conversation with my dear colleague Kreutz about your case," the doctor began right away, "which means I am fully informed. Before that I had a briefing with colleague A., who was the first to examine you here in Berlin. Colleague A. will be present during the procedure I will have to perform. I would like to converse with you now, briefly, too. A personal impression is necessary."
Andreas replied very matter-of-factly: "Please, Professor, ask away." But the doctor preferred a visual examination to all questions, asked Andreas to disrobe and to lie down on a prepared examination divan of the kind that he had now gotten to know thoroughly in Berlin.
"Yes," the doctor then concluded after a careful analysis of his figure, "you are indeed absolutely what you present as in ordinary life, a correctly built man, but still your body does show a certain female form, undoubtedly. A curious phenomenon, I have to admit. I am astonished by the overall findings..." And while Andreas got dressed again, the surgeon paced back and forth, observed the patient without pause, glanced at his day book and then said: "I know you are in a hurry. Then return tomorrow morning..."
"That doesn't quite work, since tomorrow morning I am supposed to be photographed before the surgery by Dr. M. H., as requested by Professor Kreutz."
"Good," Professor G. explained, after again glancing at his journal, "four o'clock in the afternoon also works... Today is Monday... So I will operate on you tomorrow, Tuesday night..."
"Agreed, doctor," Andreas practically shouted the words with excitement. The next moment, following a hard handshake with his helper, he was back out – outside.
- - - -
"So we have a last respite," he said quietly to himself, looked at his watch, it was almost half past six... A cab stopped nearby. He told the chauffeur the name of his hotel – and spent this very last night alone with himself in his hotel room. He felt, sensed, that he could not ask any more of his nerves or of his body, - the last night he spent awake, the conversation earlier, the loud, foreign, giant city around him.
"I am no longer a player now ... I am just on duty now... for Lili... I have to save up now..." Those were his last thoughts, before he, - it wasn't even eight o'clock, - sank into a dreamless sleep on the foreign hotel bed.
- - - -
Andreas left the hotel on time on Tuesday morning, it was a clear, crisp March day, he wandered down Friedrichstrasse a short stretch, then turned onto the broad boulevard of Unter den Linden, stood on Pariser Platz, in front of the austere, simple Brandenburg Gate. The sun, a harsh, brightly golden March sun elevated this beautiful, almost classically clean streetscape, that reminded Andreas of the most well done places in Paris. "How perfect German architects are able to build... How much you can learn here." The painter within him awoke. He walked into Tiergarten. Everywhere was sun and the budding green. And the old green was shining like delicious bronze. He wandered along a narrow path that soon reaches a small lake. Ducks are swimming on it in funny formations. The branches of high trees reflect on the almost ripple-free surface of the water.
Andreas stopped. He had never been here before. This small piece of nature in the middle of the metropolis! He inhaled the image. He had to think of so many unforgettable morning hours in Italy, France and Denmark, where as a happy person he had carried the whole of his happiness in his eyes...
With his paint box, easel and canvas he had gone out, far away from cities and people, and had praised his own fate being allowed to be a painter, nothing but a painter, a very simple creature, fully immersed in the moment. To not lose those delicious moments was his urge that found release when he was painting. He painted as if in a fever, could not wait to capture the picture that presented itself to his discharging view, this discharging view that was blown inside by the winds of wanderings, that sees more than the dull gaze of other people, that was brighter than the gaze of others... prescient... How much he had always loved the word... How he loved this word again in this instance!
He had always been one with this ineffable, stirring, this play of light and shadow, bright and dark, color and form, sounds from this cacophony and mess of vines... He had always felt like a secret bird stalker, who is lying in wait and knows all the mating calls until he found what he was searching for.
That was how he had created his pictures, bound onto the dead canvas with dead colors, until these things he had harkened with his eyes began to have a life of their own... A captured echo he confessed to himself, a dim echo is what my pictures are... But still an echo... And he had been happy and very humble like an insider... And those hours had been the only true joys of his life. These joys had belonged to him, him alone, he had not had to share these joys with any other being, he had not robbed anyone else of these joys, or stolen... They had been exclusively his riches, his property... Could he bequeath this property, these riches?... He felt this question like a fear rising within... He had never before heard that question within himself... Joy, could that be bequeathed? The joy of painting...? For him, Andreas Sparre, that joy was irrevocably over.
And Lili ... If she was allowed to survive, would she feel the drive to paint? If he could give her this joy, this feeling of happiness in creation, if he could give this to her as an inheritance, to make up for the life he stole from her, for the many years of youth, his guilty conscious, that so often pressed him to the ground, would be eased...
That he had to think of Lili now... Of her who had so different inclinations than he... Completely different from his... she had always felt disgusted getting her hands dirty with paint. Smiling he now remembered that. And he himself had used his naked fingers just as much as his paintbrush... He laughed out loud. Why think of an inheritance, a legacy, now ... What was it he he had done in this life? Right, he had a small proof that he did not share with anyone else: the golden "palm" of the Paris "Academy"... Oh vanity...
Should he turn around again?... He stood upon a delicate, slightly wavy bridge over which he could look onto a broad canal, that let its waters drop through a half raised sluice into a spillway, that hissed and shimmered like a miniature waterfall.
Right, I'm like one who wants to sail down a waterfall now, he thought, and I recognize how the current is gripping me, and I no longer know where the trip is going. Maybe into complete destruction... Anyway... now, I can't easily leave the boat any longer... The decision is made... I can't go back...
- - - -
Half an hour later he is with Doctor M.S. He has to wait a long time for the photographer who is supposed to capture his and Lili's common body in a picture. What is all this for, he asks himself. His happy, confident mood is gone. He only feels limitless tiredness. He would have preferred to just sit down somewhere quietly to cry.
A woman, the doctor's assistant, joined him in the waiting room. She begins a conversation with him. He mostly just listens. She has poise and what she says he feels is without curiosity, without intrusiveness.
"Your case is a novelty for all of us here. And what increases the interest we take in you out of scientific interest, is the fact that you are an artist, an intellectual, and you are able to analyze yourself, your feelings, your emotional life, you will experience the most outrageous, most incredible thing: first to have lived and felt as a man, and then to live and feel as a woman. I have to think of the Roman emperor who took his life because he could not achieve what is now becoming your fate..."
Andreas listens quietly, like one who is receiving news about another that he has long since known himself. The cordiality and objectivity with which the woman spoke to him, he felt was a blessing. To connect objectivity and cordiality is something that is only in the nature of the German people.
When the photographer finally arrived, Andreas had found his good mood again, at least superficially. "Now please, no more relapses," that was the order he gave himself, appealing in an empathetic way to his own defiance, and as he left the institute of Doctor M. H., he invited himself to a "farewell breakfast." He selected a suitable restaurant in the west of town with the greatest care, and then very meticulously chose the menu, at the beginning of which he put a "Homard à l'amèricaine" with quietly chilled "Liebfrauenmilch" of the most select vintage.
When he was done, nearly two hours later, the polyglot head waiter said in the most perfect French: "Monsieur has certainly come to Berlin to amuse himself... Theater... Music... for that we are well recognized as a center in Berlin... And in regard to our ladies, how does Monsieur like our ladies... here on Kurfürstendamm...?"
"Charming, really elegant," Andreas hurried to respond, even though his gallows humor was about to break through. "Here in your atmospheric, sublimely ‘dolled up' establishment, which is not exceeded in comfort by any Parisian restaurant, I see a couple of superb specimens of the most refined taste, who could be at home in Paris or in Rome as well. And I would give much of my heart's calm to lay my adorations at their feet, if I didn't have to undergo quite a fateful surgery in a few hours..."
The head waiter made big eyes upon this revelation.
- - - -
He went to the hotel right after, paid his bill, took a car, drove to Thomasiusstrasse, to bid farewell to his friends. "You don't quite look like a sacrificial lamb," his friend Niels concluded immediately on his arrival.
"I don't feel like one either, - on the contrary, -" Andreas shouted back, laughing.
While Miss Inger put her hands together over her head: "But Andreas, you are supposed to be operated on in a few hours, and you come over here with an almost pitch black Importe in your mouth."
And with that she surprisingly ripped the cigar from his hand.
"Oh please, I have just come from my last meal, or rather, I have literally celebrated my ‘l'enterrement de ma vie de garçon without the slightest equivoque which in this expression is closest to your "Polterabend" ..."
Miss Inger took him by the hand. "I have not been a nurse for nothing, and I know how one has to behave prior to a surgery. Certainly not the way you do, Andreas. Those are stupid little boys' pranks, to go out and splurge. That is just making trouble. By the way, you look quite bad now. And now Niels will accompany you to the sanatorium."
And so it came to pass. Andreas entered the sanatorium without a cigar and under the auspices of his friend.
This fateful entrance by the way went on quite businesslike. The surgery nurse Marianne received the two gentlemen, lead them into a blindingly white room smelling of all kinds of disinfectants, close to the operating theater, of which the doors stood open. A few nurses seemed busy making preparations for a new operation. A strong, slightly sweet scent of anesthetic wafted in.
Unfortunately Professor G. was not able to arrive until about six o'clock, so the gentlemen would have to be patient, they were told.
The clock showed barely four. Niels made a completely desperate face. "I can't endure two hours in here," he said, almost contritely, went to nurse Marianne and explained that he would take the patient to the nearby "Romanisches Café" to pass the time. After Andreas had solemnly sworn to return on time, the two almost hurriedly left the sanatorium. Niels was in the most hurry.
After they had found a seat opposite the newspaper stand, Andreas found a red haired cripple only a few meters away from them, the "newspaper chief". Andreas had jumped up immediately, approached the cripple from behind, which he noted with a surprise, for which he received a Reichsmark from Andreas and then a second Reichsmark, after he had touched the quite humongous humpback of the "newspaper chief". After that, Andreas sat back down, happily smiling, next to Niels.
"Dear Niels," he then said as reply to the friend's surprised reaction, "this is what I call friendship! You brought me together with such a magnificent hunchback just at the eleventh hour. Of course you don't know that such a guy is good luck, infallibly. This is a southern superstition. Granted. But I do feel protected now – against everything. Really bulletproof. Such a manly hunchback, when you touch it, works miracles. A female hunchback on the other hand, does quite the opposite."
Niels shook himself with laughter. "There you can see how I care for you. Now I, too, am no longer afraid on your behalf."
"Which we should drink to with a noble drop of Rhenish wine, as if it were a funeral toast of the Nordic tradition." And with that Andreas had already ordered a bottle of the best vintage from the waiter. "But please, three glasses!"
"Three?" Niels asks.
"Of course, the red haired hunchback must drink with us." Which the redhead didn't need to hear twice, even if he didn't quite understand the occasion of the invitation. "Our kind is used to quite some sorrow," the invited man replied while bowing deeply, clasped the glass and raised it to Andreas, "to your health, dear Sir! May your kind soul long outlive you!"
"The guy talks like a prophet!" Niels cried out and made big eyes. Andreas enfolded the redhead in his arms, kissed him on both cheeks, and let the surprised man go again, held up his glass, caressed the hump of the cripple with his free hand. "If you knew what you gave to me with those beautiful words, you magnificent chap! In this sense!" And he let his glass clink against the cripple's. "Three's a charm!" And he looked at Niels. And Niels understood his friend. And standing up the three drinkers emptied the bottle. And once Andreas and Niels finally left, the redhead looked after them for a long time with earnest eyes.
- - - - -
The room of the clinic which was awaiting Andreas was already lit. A nurse accompanied him in, and recorded his personal details, hung a fever scale over his bed and asked Andreas to lie down immediately. The doctors would be in soon.
"Then it is probably better if I leave right away," Niels asked.
Andreas nodded, smiling. "So, old chap, farewell and I will put in all the effort to make the prophecy of the redhead come true." Niels wanted to say something else. But Andreas pushed him out the door. "Nice of you, Andreas, otherwise I could end up getting sentimental. So, in the meaning of the redhead." A quick shaking of hands, and Andreas was alone.-
He looked around. Mechanically, without any clear thought in his head. He paced back and forth. One, two, three times... Without realizing it, he began counting his steps. "So it's seven paces long, and six paces wide," then he sat down on the bed, he took in the room. A hospital room of which there were countless others. Bright walls. And a bed and a table and a wardrobe and both chairs, also painted brightly. –
And then he began to undress, very slowly. Because he suddenly realized that he, Andreas Sparre, was disrobing for the final time...., that what was happening here was a sort of leave taking, a farewell to coat and vest and trousers... and so on. This shell of coat, vest and trousers had encased him for a lifetime... He looked on the articles of clothing, one after the other, while taking them off, he hung the coat over the vest, and then put both on hangers in the wardrobe, the way he was used to, since... Yes, since when? He stretched the trousers on a pants-hanger... gazed and gazed on them piece by piece and caressed them piece by piece. "What will become of you?" he asked, smiling. "What will become of me?" He rubbed his forehead. "Which one of us here will survive the other? You me? Me you? .... Coat, vest, trousers... shoes, underwear, socks, I almost forgot about you..."
And so he sat there a long time, as if among companions who had to be bid farewell. "Maybe you see a traitor in me..." And now he took his hat off the table. "You too... I almost completely forgot about you... I wonder who else I have forgotten? ..."
And he reached into the inner coat pocket, took a picture out, put it on the table, leaning it against the wall. "Grete," he said, just about to caress the picture. And then there was a knock on the door, and already it was opened: Professor G. entered, accompanied by his young assistant doctor. A few questions were directed at Andreas, with the result that to his surprise the execution of the "first operation, which is completely harmless," as the doctor explained casually, had to be postponed until the next morning. "You refer to such farewell parties as 'Gravöl' up ," the Professor laughed. "Your friend already told me the brand of Rhenish wine from earlier. My compliments. You seem to be well versed in these matters. But such "procedures" are better done on an empty stomach. So that the time until tomorrow will not be too boring for you, we will give you a sleeping aid in a few hours. And now, good courage." A handshake, -and he was alone again.
"So it's always wait, wait, wait," he says to himself. "How much patience do you have to have, you...." And now he spoke to the picture that was sitting on the table next to his bed.
"Grete... Grete..." He did not say anything else, leaned back into the white pillows, stared to the ceiling, was tired... tired..."
He had arrived at the destination... worn out, and only now realized how tired he was. The haste of the days here in Berlin only now became clear to him. Now he could admit to himself that he was at the end of his strength. Nobody could see him now. Not even Grete. And the last remnant of his manly defiance that he had worn like a steel armor before his friends and doctors during this week full of anguish in the foreign metropolis Millionenstadt, that he had dragged around the foreign metropolis laboriously, fell off of him.-
"Grete.... Good thing you can't see me now..."
No, no tears.... Persevere ... Persevere ...
And only then he remembered that she had no idea of the impending surgery. She believed he would only be examined here in Berlin, put under observation. He had only received a few postcards from her. She wanted to come to Dresden in the coming days, to stay by his side... during the first operation... Should he send her a telegram still? Wasn't it wrong to keep what was about to happen to him tomorrow a secret? But no, why scare her? He himself had had no idea that his fate was about to be accomplished here in Berlin already... Accomplished.... He had to smile. "I am ready..." And there he recalled the words of the redhead... "May your soul survive me a long time..."
He had paper and a pen lying on the table. He took a sheet and wrote:
Berlin, March 4, Tuesday Night
Dearest, sweetest Grete,
I will be operated on tomorrow. The doctor says this is just a small, harmless procedure. This is why I did not ask you to join me here. – But should it go differently, I want to tell you today that I have always thought of you, every hour, every minute, every moment. You my most beloved and most faithful companion! My last wish is that your future is happy,- that you will inherit my easy-going nature. If my soul lives on, it will be with you. A thousand kisses from Lilli. Yours, only yours, Andreas.
- - - - -
When Miss Inger entered an hour later, he handed her the letter and asked her to give it to Grete, if...
"You big stupid boy, I have known all long from Niels, everything has to go well. I even went to the café and brought your unusual guardian angel some flowers. He turned red like a turkey and said: "this must be my luckiest day..."
- - - -
At ten o'clock the assistant doctor came in again. He handed Andreas the promised sleeping powder. Only then a nurse appeared, put things in the room in order, turned off the little lamp... And then everything was quiet.
And that last night of Andreas Sparre was deep and dreamless.
They let him sleep until the doctors appeared. Into the late morning hours. Soon after he had used the bathroom, Professor A. stood next to his bed, waiting for him to sign a declaration, which said that he, Andreas Sparre, wanted to undergo this surgery out of his own volition and at his own peril, and that he freed Professor G. from all liabilities, should something go wrong...
"Delighted to do so," he exclaimed, signing the document immediately, which was addressed to some government agency and said in plain German: If I die, I forgo any right to cause any difficulties after... "But can't I add a few words of gratitude to the German doctors?" he asked, all of a sudden, "those who tried to save me?" This plea was refused with a smile, upon which the doctor retreated with the words: "The operation will take place in a few minutes, I will attend upon the wish of Professor Kreutz, good luck."
As soon as Andreas was alone again, he hurried to write down the following:
Dear Professor Kreutz,
In this last moment before my operation I feel the urge to express my deeply felt gratitude towards you. Since the day I met you in Paris I have been full of hope, and here in Berlin, where I did not know any of the doctors who examined and stood by me, I felt as if an invisible force had cleared all ways. I know that you are this force, and that all the good things that happened to me came from you. No matter how this turns out, please believe in the boundless gratitude that I feel towards you. Yours most dedicated
Andreas Sparre.
- - - - -
Andreas sank back into the pillows with a feeling of limitless relief. Now everything had been put into order. In a few minutes the waiting would be over...
And in that moment, on the boundary to the unknown, he suddenly remembered a winter day in Paris: tired and miserable he randomly stood in front of an ancient church,- Saint Germain de Prés. He had never seen it before. He entered, to relax in the mild, incense fragrant, low light of the godly house, beneath the venerable arches, that had seen the hopes and sufferings of so many generations. A pillar carried an oddly beautiful gothic sculpture: a Madonna. He had stopped there. And he, who long since had forgotten how to pray, sank on his knees between a couple of old women, devoutly folded his hands and begged the Madonna:
"You who are love and compassion, help me! Free me from my useless, sick life. Let me die – or let me witness a miracle!"
And he felt as if the Madonna was smiling down on him. A few days later he met Professor Kreutz.
And now he is lying here in Berlin, waiting for the beginning of the miracle. Had the Madonna really heard his prayer? - - When he had left Paris, he found an old Spanish Madonna miniature made of silver in his coat pocket. Grete had found it in a junk shop in Seville. Gaily she had shown him the piece of jewelry. "Hey you," she had said, "I think this tiny, sweet Madonna wanted to come with us. Now she should be our talisman."- And since then, Grete had worn the Madonna on a small necklace. And without him noticing, she had put the idol in his pocket... And he quietly kissed his Madonna.
A moment later, the assistant doctor steps in. "All right. Now you will get an injection. That will put you to sleep. And when you wake back up, everything will be done."
- - - -
When Andreas woke again in intense pain it was almost noon. He opened his eyes with a scream. At first he thought, he had woken too soon, and was still on the operating table... Slowly he realized he was lying in his bed, where in the early morning the assistant doctor had sat next to him on the bedside, until everything had sunken into a fog. What happened since, he couldn't guess. He felt as if he had screamed for a long time, as if he had defended himself against something. Two nurses he only now took note of stood around the bed, and talked to him soothingly.
After he had fully regained consciousness, he felt the pain getting worse and worse. But soon he had gained back control over himself, he clenched his teeth.
He wanted to scream no more. And he stopped screaming.
"Have I raised... a ruckus," he asked the nurses somewhat meekly.
"Well... Yes, a little..." one of the nurses said, "and the strange thing was that your voice had completely changed, it was a high-pitched woman's voice, and you kept yelling ‘You must not leave me! You must not leave me. I am still so little. I can not be alone yet.'"
Then Professor G. entered, took Andreas' hand and squeezed it lightly. "It went really well. You are lucky that you are so fresh and healthy. By the way I need to compliment you. You have quite the magnificent soprano! Just ask one of the nurses. Simply astonishing! Just see to it that you don't lose that. That will bring you much joy in your future life."
Andreas wanted to speak, but the doctor had already left. "Give another injection." That was all the doctor had told the nurse while leaving.
"Give another injection." Andreas repeated the words like a child, without truly understanding them. And a few minutes later, the dark, silent fog clashed in over him. –
Toward evening he woke from a coughing spell. It felt as if his entire body was about to be torn to pieces. The cough was terrible. He tried to suppress it. To no avail. He would never have guessed that coughing could hurt so insanely much. During the final winters in Paris he had coughed a lot, Grete had always been worried by that. "Don't worry," he replied then, "let me cough. Coughing is good." – And now he wanted to cry out from the infernal torment. The nurse was already standing next to his bed. She looked at him helplessly. She was not allowed to give him anything to drink.
Finally the coughing fit was over. He lay there, exhausted. The nurse wiped the sweat from his brow. "You have certainly smoked a lot?" she asked. "Maybe even yesterday..."
On the table next to the bed there was a pack of cigarettes.
"Take them away. Throw them out the window, Nurse . I can't see the stuff anymore. Never again will a cigarette or a cigar touch my lips." Like an oath he exclaims these words. Laughing the nurse took the pack. "Don't you forget your vow!"
"I swear to you, and to myself." And he thought of the imports that Miss Inger had taken from him yesterday. It was the very last cigar Andreas had smoked...
A few more coughing spells during the night deepened his newfound animosity to anything tobacco related, so much so that the thought of tobacco smoke alone made him nauseous. – And this almost fanatical dislike of any enjoyment of tobacco he passed on to Lili...
Niels was admitted to him for a few moments.
"This is going really well with you," he began immediately.
"Well yes," Andreas couldn't say anything else.
Niels looked at the nurse, puzzled.
She whispered to him: "You probably wonder about the bright soprano voice..."
Niels nodded. "Barely recognizable..."
Then he sat down in the one chair beside the bed. "I bring greetings from Inger, she'll bring you something very pretty in the morning. Furthermore …"
Andreas interrupts him: "Niels, you probably won't hold it against me if..."
"What is it?"
"Don't talk.... I'm in such pain..."
The nurse gave him a hint. He quietly left the room. Andreas whimpered: "Nurse, give me an injection..."
And that one would not be the only injection he got that night. It was an endless, arduous night. Only when morning approached did he find a dull, short sleep. And out of that sleep the nurse heard the same pleading call again and again: "Please, please give me another injection."
When he had fully woken around noon, he felt exhausted as if after a walk through the desert. But the pain had become more remote, dim. At least as long as he did not move. "That is the only thing you may think of now," the nurse told him repeatedly, "lay still, don't move a muscle!" And it was so good to heed that warning. "Lay still, think of nothing, don't move a muscle." Like a child he kept repeating the words.
But then and again a question stirred within him: "Who am I... What am I... What was... What will be...?
Then Miss Inger entered, - carrying flowers and a large bottle of Eau de Cologne. She extended both hands towards Andreas. Flowers! How their scent transformed the hospital room! He pressed his pale face into the colors of the flowers like someone dying of thirst.
"Oh, pour cologne over me, Miss Inger! Shower the entire room!" he exclaimed beside himself with joy about her arrival and her gifts. He never knew what a gift from the heavens the scent of flowers was.
And how good Miss Inger was. Without a sound and smiling she glided across the small, unadorned room, - almost like a tiny mother, he thought, watching her, as she arranged to get a vase for the flowers from the nurse, put down a small napkin on the table, which she had secretly taken out of her purse, stopped in front of the window, and observed the sick friend. And then she sat down at his bedside, caressed the pale, twitching hands of the sick one, spoke quietly and confidently to him, and behold, he forgot pain and fears, - and her, who previously had always addressed him with the honorific "Sie," now spoke to him confidentially as Du. He only realized that many days later. And she never called him by his name during those first days...
"Now everything will turn out fine, you, everything, just be patient and faithful, you... life will be so beautiful. Believe your friend, you, believe it, I know it..."
And then she sat silently next to the bed, caressed the tired, fevered brow ... and time passed ... and she glided away like a good dream ... And he had long since fallen back asleep.
...And she returned every day to him with flowers and good words. Thus a day passed, thus two days passed, three days. Andreas slept most of the time, like a child that had not awoken yet to real, waking life. And there were no dreams came to him through the long, dim nights, through which compassionate sleeping aids helped him. And every morning anew Miss Inger was with him, with fresh flowers and new floral scent. "You are my good angel now, Inger, my dear, compassionate sister ..."
She had brought him a completely glorious spring bouquet, and he wanted to happily kiss her hands.
"This time you don't have to thank me. These floral greetings are from a from a good, distant friend, you."
"From Claude Lejeune ...?"
Inger just nodded.
And she opened the white envelope, a small letter, attached to the bouquet, and read: "Every flower of this small bouquet is a greeting to Miss Lili!"
The flowers long hid the eyes of the sick one. Miss Inger too could not see that the eyes were crying many hot tears.
"Will Claude ever find her again?"
"Who then? You?"
"His Lili."
That was what the patient asked as he gave Inger a card that had a few lines jotted down on it. Without wanting to, she had looked at the writing.
"Did you write that?" she asked as if startled.
"Yes, Inger."
"But then she is already here, Claude's Lili! ... Just look?"
And he looked at the card and didn't recognize his own handwriting.
It was a woman's handwriting ...
And Miss Inger hurried out, the assistant doctor stood in the hallway, she pointed to the card. "What do you think, doctor. This was not written by a man?"
"No," the surprised doctor replied, "no, you are right. That is truly a miracle. One thing after another is pushing out."
"One after another?" Miss Inger asked this.
Andreas clearly heard her words...
And the doctor replied: "Have you not noticed the completely changed voice? It has changed from a tenor to a clear soprano."
"You," Inger said, reluctantly, when she was back in the hospital room, "you, you ..." And then she couldn't keep on speaking from sobbing.
When Andreas was alone again, he quietly talked away to himself ... wanted to listen to his voice, wanted to listen to it. "Is it really true what they say? Is it now really true ...?" And he listened and wanted to catch the sound of the voice in his ears, and it died, swept away. He had fallen asleep again.
Suddenly his sleep was rend to pieces. Night was around him. A terrible screaming pierced the darkness of the narrow walls of the room. A screaming the likes of which he never had heard before. First he thought he himself had screamed. He did not want to scream. He bit his lips. But there it was again, the scream from the dark. No, it was not he who had screamed. The scream, like the scream of a young, tortured animal, rang and rang ... He could no longer take it. "Someone is being murdered! Help! Help!" he screamed now, looking for his bell button, he rang, he screamed, he wanted to drown out the darkness with his scream. "Help, help!" The door is flung open. The light underneath the ceiling flares up. The nurse stands breathlessly before him. "Good heavens, what is the matter with you?"
"With me?" He looks out of flabbergasted eyes. Again the scream rings. Now he grasps that it is coming from next door, this terrible cry ...
"I was so mortally afraid, Nurse. Who else is plagued this terribly? Is someone dying? Go and help."
The nurse closes the door to the hallway, pulls the felt curtain that had been pushed aside back in front of the door, and already the screaming seems to have moved into the far distance ... "No, nobody is dying. A young woman has born a child ... a small, sweet girl ... It was her first child. In a few days the young mother will be back on her feet. What do you think, how hard it is to give birth ..."
"But, but ... yes ... yes ..." He didn't know how to answer.
He felt a deep, odd shame, and then he began to cry. The nurse stood with him for a long time, she tried to calm him, finally gave him an injection, so that everything, restlessness, shame, this new, strange shame and many questions that were rising within him, disappeared into the fog.
The nurse had heard him whisper out of this restless slumber several times; - she did not understand the whispering at first. But the words returned again and again. "But ... but ..." it whispered from his lips, "but ... but ... I have to give birth to myself ..." Much later the nurse repeated these words to the one who had spoken them. But then she long since knew that the one who had whispered those words out of the slumbering darkness had transformed into a different being.
Inger returned the next morning.
"You," she merrily called out upon entering, "you, do you know who is coming the next day?"
"Grete?"
"Yes, here is her letter."
He had to fetch the letter out of a big spring bouquet, and was still reading it as Professor G. entered the room accompanied by the assistant doctor.
"Good doctor," Andreas called out, "please tell me, when can I get up?"
"But why the rush, we are doing outstandingly well here in bed beneath flowers and mild hands," and the doctor kissed Miss Inger's hand gallantly.
"But yes, Professor, it is urgent, my wife arrives in three days."
"Your wife ...?" The Professor hesitated, looked at Miss Inger and then at his assistant doctor. "Right .... right ... Well, wait and see, wait and see, - Madame will certainly find you somewhat changed." Then he hastily left the room with his companion, it was evident that he was trying hard to suppress a smile.
"Did I act ridiculously, Inger?" Andreas asked pensively. "The Professor looked at me with such funny eyes."
"Stupid Lili ..." that was all that Inger knew as a response.