David Ebershoff - The Danish Girl

“Are you happy for me?”

Greta said she was. Then she asked who he was, and Lili held her breath and then told Greta it was Henrik.

“Henrik,” Greta said. Lili studied Greta’s face for a reaction. She wondered if Greta would remember him; or if the fact that it was he would make it even harder on Greta. But her face held still, nothing moving except an almost imperceptible puff on her lips.

“He always loved you, didn’t he?”

Lili nodded. She almost felt ashamed. She thought of the scar on Henrik’s forehead, from the automobile accident, and she welled up with relief that very soon she would begin a life in which she could kiss that crosshatched line every night. “We’re getting married at the end of the summer.”

Greta said softly, “Married.”

“It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Greta was corking her bottles of paint. “It’s all good news,” she said. She wasn’t looking at Lili as she wiped the lip of each bottle with the hem of her smock and then pushed the cork in. She moved across the room and knelt to roll a blank canvas. “There are still times when I see you, and I think to myself, Not so long ago we were married. You and me, we were married and we lived in that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists.”

“It was you and Einar.”

“I know it was Einar. But really, it was you and me.”

Lili understood. She could remember what it felt like to fall in love with Greta. She could recall what it was like to wonder idly about when Greta would next show up at the door. She could remember the small delicate weight of a photograph of Greta in the breast pocket of Einar’s shirt.

“I’m doing my best to get used to everything,” Greta said. She was speaking so quietly that Lili could barely hear her. The horn of a motorcar blared from the street, and then there was the screech of brakes, then a silence. An accident must have been avoided, a near miss on the street outside the Widow House, two chrome bumpers shining at each other beneath the Copenhagen sun, which was rising and rising and would hold itself aloft until late in the night.

“Where will you marry?” Greta asked.

“In New York.”

“New York?” Greta was at the sink, scrubbing the paint from her fingernails with a little wire brush. She said, “I see.”

Downstairs, the sailor began calling for his wife. “I’m home!” he yelled.

“But there’s something I want to do first,” Lili said. As the morning moved on, the heat was rising in the apartment. The bun of her hair was beginning to feel heavy, the V collar of the white dress sticking to her chest. Nationaltidende had predicted record heat, and something in Lili both welcomed it and despised it at the same time.

“I want to return to Dresden,” Lili said.

“What for?”

“For the last operation.”

Now she could see it in Greta’s face: the fast flaring of the nostrils, the eyelids sealing with pique, the anger flushing her cheeks and nearly boiling over. “You know I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But I do.”

“But, Lili… Professor Bolk, he ’s… yes, he’s a good doctor, but even he can’t do that. Nobody can do that. I thought we settled this last year.”

“I’ve made up my mind,” Lili said. “Greta, can’t you understand? I want to have children with my husband.”

The sun was now reflecting off the Royal Theatre’s dome. Lili Elbe and Greta Waud, as she had begun calling herself again, alone in the apartment. Their dog, Edvard IV, asleep at the foot of the wardrobe, his body arthritic and unreliable. Recently Lili had suggested that maybe it was time to put old Edvard down, but Greta had nearly cried in protest.

“Professor Bolk knows what he’s doing,” Lili said.

“I don’t believe him.”

“But I do.”

“Nobody can make a man pregnant. That’s what he’s promising to do. It’ll never happen. Not to you or to anyone. Something like that was never meant to be.”

It stung, Greta’s protest, and Lili’s eyes became moist. “Nobody believed a man could be turned into a woman. Isn’t that right? Who would’ve believed that? No one but you and me. We believed it, and now look at me. It happened because we knew it could.” Lili was crying. More than anything else, she hated Greta for taking an opposite side.

“Will you think it over, Lili? For a little bit?”

“I already have.”

“No, take some time. Think it through.”

Lili said nothing, her face at the window. Downstairs, more boot stomping, then the screech of a phonograph.

“It worries me,” Greta said. “I’m worried about you.”

As the sunlight moved across the floorboards, and another horn from the street blared, and the sailor below shouted at his wife, Lili felt something in her shift. Greta could no longer tell her what to do.

The painting was complete, and Greta now turned it to show Lili. The eyelet hem was gauzy against her legs, and the bouquet of roses looked like something mysterious blossoming from her lap. If only I were half as beautiful as that, Lili thought to herself. And then she thought she should send the painting to Henrik as a wedding gift.

“He’s expecting me next week,” Lili said. “Professor Bolk.”

The pain was returning, and Lili looked at her watch. Had it been eight hours since she swallowed her last pill? She began to check her purse for the enamel pillbox. “He and Frau Krebs already know I’m coming. They have my room waiting,” she said, opening drawers in the kitchen, hunting for the little case. It frightened her how quickly the pain could return; from nothing to violent ache in only a few minutes. Like the return of an evil spirit, it was.

“Have you seen my pillbox?” Lili asked. “I think it was in my purse. Or maybe on the windowsill. Have you seen it, Greta?” With the heat and the pain, Lili’s breath quickened. She said, “Do you know where it is?” And then, tacked on like a gentle touch to the wrist, “I’d like you to come to Dresden with me. To help me recover. The professor said you should probably come. He said I’ll need someone there afterwards. You wouldn’t mind, Greta, would you? You’ll come with me, won’t you, Greta? This one last time?”

“You realize, don’t you,” Greta said, “that this is it?”

“What do you mean?” The pain was opening so quickly that Lili was having trouble seeing. She sat down, bending over. As soon as she found the pills the relief would come in a few minutes, less than five. But right now it felt as if a knife were cutting through her abdomen. She thought of her ovaries-alive, Professor Bolk had promised. It was as if she could feel them inside her, swollen and throbbing, still healing nearly a year after the operation. Where had she left her pill case, and what did Greta mean: This is it. She looked across the room, to where Greta was unbuttoning her smock, hanging it on the hook next to the slatted door to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Greta said. “I can’t.”

“You can’t find my pills?” Lili said, blinking back the tears. “Try the wardrobe. Maybe I put them in there.” All at once Lili felt as if she was about to pass out: the heat and the missing pills and the fiery anguish inside and Greta walking around the apartment saying I can’t, I won’t.

Then Greta’s hand sank deep into the bottom drawer of the pickled-ash wardrobe. She pulled out the little enamel box and brought it to Lili and said, her own voice shaky with tears, “I’m sorry, but I can’t take you. I don’t want you to go, and I’m not going to take you.” Her shrug turned into a shiver. “You’ll have to go to Dresden alone.”

“If Greta won’t take you,” Carlisle said, “then I will.” He had come to Copenhagen for the summer, and in the evenings, after her shift at Fon nesbech’s, Lili would sometimes visit him at the Palace Hotel. They would sit at the open window and watch the shadows creep across the bricks of Rådhuspladsen, and the young men and women in their thin summer clothes meeting up on their way to the jazz clubs in Nørrevold. “Greta always did what she wanted,” Carlisle would say. Lili would correct him and say, “Not always. She’s changed.”