David Ebershoff - The Danish Girl

“Yes, I know. Before the operation, Lili and I were out and she saw the poster. She knew you would be coming at the end of the summer. She’s had that to look forward to.”

“And her marriage.”

“You heard from Greta?” Carlisle said.

“She wrote me. She’s probably in Pasadena by now. Settled. You know about her and Hans?”

“I was supposed to be returning now myself,” Carlisle said.

Lili couldn’t hear what Anna said next. She wondered why Anna hadn’t come into the room yet. She could picture Anna bursting through the door and throwing back the yellow curtain. She’d be wearing a green silk tunic beaded in the collar, a matching turban swirling up from her head. Her lips would be as bright as blood, and Lili could imagine the mark they’d leave on her cheek. Lili thought about calling out, “Anna!” Crying, “Anna, are you going to come in and say hello?” But Lili’s throat was dry, and she felt incapable of prying her mouth open to say anything at all. It was all she could do to turn her head to look to the door.

“Is it grave?” Anna said in the hall.

“I’m afraid Bolk hasn’t really let on about what’s likely to come next.” Then they said nothing, and Lili was left to lie in her bed, motionless, except for the slow dull thump of her heart. Where had Carlisle and Anna gone?

“Is she sleeping now?” Anna finally said.

“Yes. She’s in between morphia shots in the early afternoons. Can you come by tomorrow after lunch?” Carlisle said. “But poke your head in now and have a look. So I can tell her you’ve been here.”

Lili heard the door crack open. She could feel another person enter the room-that subtle reshifting of air, the nearly imperceptible change in temperature. Anna’s perfume drifted to Lili’s bed. She recognized it from the counter at Fonnesbech’s. It came in a short little bottle with a gold-mesh tassel, but Lili couldn’t think of the name. Eau-de-Provence, or something like that. Or was it La Fille du Provence? She didn’t know, and she couldn’t open her eyes to greet Anna. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t see anything, and she couldn’t raise her hand to wave hello. And Lili then knew that Carlisle and Anna were standing at the side of her bed and there was nothing she could do to tell them that she knew they were there.

The next day, after lunch, Carlisle and Anna bundled Lili into her wicker wheelchair. “It’s too beautiful not to be outside,” he was saying as he tucked the blanket around her. Anna wrapped Lili’s head in a long magenta scarf, building a turban on her head that matched her own. Then they pushed Lili into the clinic’s back-park, settling her against a gooseberry shrub. “Do you like the sun, Lili?” Anna asked. “Do you like it out here?”

Other girls were on the lawn. It was Sunday, and some had visitors who brought them magazines and boxes of chocolate. There was a woman in a pleated polka-dot dress who gave a girl chocolates wrapped in the gold foil from the shop on Unter den Linden.

Lili could see Frau Krebs in the Wintergarten, surveying the lawn and the girls and the curve of the Elbe below. She looked small from this far, as small as a child. Then she disappeared. It was her afternoon off, and all the girls liked to gossip about what Frau Krebs did in her spare time, even though the truth was that she headed into her garden with a hoe.

“Should we go for a walk?” Carlisle said, releasing the hand brake and pushing Lili across the rocky grass. There were rabbit holes in which the wheels bounced, and although the rocking rattled her with pain, Lili couldn’t help thinking how glad she was to be outside the clinic with Carlisle and Anna. “Are we going down to the Elbe?” Lili asked when she saw that Carlisle was steering her away from the dirt path that led to the river.

“We’ll get there,” Anna said, and they pushed Lili through a curtain of willows. They were moving fast, and Lili held the chair’s arms as it hit tree roots and rocks. “I thought I’d take you out for a bit,” Carlisle said.

“But I’m not allowed,” Lili said. “It’s against the rules. What would Frau Krebs say?”

“No one will know,” Anna said. “Besides, you’re a grown woman. Why shouldn’t you leave if you want to?” Soon they were beyond the clinic’s gate and out into the street. Carlisle and Anna pushed her through the neighborhood, past the villas set back behind brick walls spiked with iron cupolas. The sun was warm but a breeze was running up the street, revealing the underside of the elm leaves. In the distance Lili heard the bell of a tram.

“Do you think they’ll miss me?” she said.

“So what if they do,” and Carlisle-the way his face was tight with focus, the way he swatted his hand through the air-again reminded Lili of Greta. It was almost as if Lili could hear the tinkle of silver jewelry. She had a memory-as if it were a story once told to her-of Greta sneaking down Kronprinsessegade with Einar in tow. Lili could remember the heat of Greta’s hand in her own, the brush of a silver bangle against her fingers.

Soon Lili and Carlisle and Anna were crossing the Augustusbrücke. In front of Lili lay all of Dresden: the Opernhaus, the Catholic Hof kirche, the Italian-styled Academy of Art, and the seemingly floating dome of the Frauenkirche. They came to Schlossplatz and the foot of the Brühlsche Terrace. A man with a cart was selling bratwurst in a bun and pouring glasses of apple wine. Business was good for him, a line of eight or ten people waiting, their faces pinking in the sun. “Doesn’t that smell good, Lili?” Carlisle said, as he pushed her to the stairs.

Forty-one steps led to the terrace, where Sunday strollers were out, leaning against the rail. The steps were adorned by the Schilling bronzes of Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. There was a fine grit on the steps, and from the base Lili watched the long yellow skirt of a woman and the disc of her straw hat climb the stairs, her arm looped through a man’s. “But how will we get up?” Lili asked.

“Not to worry,” Carlisle said, turning her chair around. He gave it a pull up the first step.

“But your leg,” Lili said.

“I’ll be all right,” Carlisle said.

“And what about your back?”

“Didn’t Greta ever tell you about our famous Western spines?”

And with that, Carlisle, who never once, as far as Lili knew, blamed Greta for his dented leg, began to lug Lili up the stairs. With each bounce came a horrible jolt of pain, and Anna gave Lili her hand to squeeze.

The terrace looked out across the Elbe to the Japanese Palace and the right bank. Traffic in the river was heavy, with the paddlewheelers and the coal freighters and the dragon-fronted gondolas and the rent-a-day rowboats. Carlisle locked the brake of Lili’s chair in the space between two benches, beneath one of the square-trimmed poplars, at the terrace’s rail. Carlisle stood next to her, Anna on her other side. Lili could sense their hands on the back of her chair. Young couples were on the terrace, holding hands, boys buying girls sacks of grape-flavored candy from a vendor with a cart. On the grassy beach on the other side of the Elbe, four little boys were flying a white rag-tail kite.

“Look how high their kite is!” Anna pointed to the boys. “Higher than the city, it seems.”

“Do you think they’ll lose it?” Lili said.

“Would you like a kite, Lili?” Anna said. “Tomorrow we’ll get you one if you like.”

“What do they call this place?” Carlisle said. “The balcony of Europe?”

They said nothing for a while, and then Carlisle said, “I think I’ll go buy a bratwurst from that little man. Are you hungry, Lili? Can I get you anything?”

She wasn’t; she no longer ate much at all, which of course Carlisle knew. Lili tried to say “No, thank you,” but couldn’t form the words.