He got off the bus and ran home. He needed to hide, to flee the people filling the streets that afternoon, sheltered from the rain, milling around by shop windows or in cinema foyers. Without exception, they all seemed stupid, hatefuclass="underline" stupid because they knew nothing of Margarete’s death; hateful because he knew that not one of them was prepared to share his misfortune.
Heinrich spent more than an hour lying facedown on his bed. Then, feeling a little calmer, he rummaged around in the drawers and collected together all the objects that spoke to him of his sister: the photographs, a little box containing a lock of her hair, the fancy notebook she had given him when they made their trip to the south of France. Lined up on the table, the objects formed a little shrine.
“How come you didn’t see the train, Margarete?” he asked, sitting down at the table. And the ceremony begun with that question lasted until dawn.
But the shrine brought him no consolation. On the contrary, it made the void he could feel inside him grow ever larger. The objects refused to speak of the good times that the Wetzels, brother and sister, had spent together; they spoke solely and vociferously of Margarete’s absence.
He was thinking of bringing the ceremony to a close when he noticed that there was something missing from the objects on the table. Something fundamental perhaps: the dress Margarete had forgotten to take with her after her last visit. He kept it in the wardrobe in his bedroom.
“I’ll put it on,” he thought.
After all, they were twins. For a long time the two of them had been almost impossible to tell apart. Then why try to make do with objects when he already carried a great part of Margarete within himself?
While he walked down the hallway it didn’t occur to him that what he was about to do would change his life completely. His intention was simply to reclaim his sister from death, but only for a moment, just until the ceremony was over. Afterward everything would return to normal.
But the transformation was made as soon as the dress touched his skin, in the same way fairy godmothers in children’s stories — with just one touch of their wand, in an instant — change an ugly house into a palace. Because right at that moment, when he looked in the mirror and saw a woman remarkably like Margarete, Heinrich finally understood. Suddenly, all the circumstances of his life made sense, both the unease that had accompanied him in his native city and the solitude he had experienced later. Even his hatred for the world of the port had an explanation now.
Heinrich felt proud, prouder than he had ever felt. He had spent years like the boy lost in the woods, his body covered in scratches, shouting and shouting without anyone ever hearing him. But there would be no more scratches, no more shouting. He had found the path that would lead him out of the woods, he could see where they ended, he could see the open, friendly landscape that awaited him.
“From now on we will be one and the same person, Margarete,” he murmured.
These were, of course, words uttered out of the depths of insomnia and exhaustion, but they were, nonetheless, a true reflection of what Heinrich was feeling. From that day forward, he would be a woman.
“I will never forget you, dear sister,” he added. And with that promise his earlier decision was sealed.
He sat down again at the table and wrote two notes. In the first, which he signed as Margarete, he informed the director of the port of the death of Heinrich Wetzel and begged him to send her any outstanding wages due to her brother. The second note was a list of all the things, beginning with lipstick, that he would have to buy the following day.
Before going to bed, he stopped by the window. The city was still sleeping, but there were already signs that day was dawning: the rays of light slicing through the clouds, the yellow reflection of the sun in the windows of the tallest buildings. It would not be long now before the alarm clocks in the bedrooms of all the houses would begin to sound. After that — everyone, men and women, young and old — would rush out into the street.
He sighed. For the first time in his life, he felt a desire to mingle with other people.
Such was the joy this change had brought to his life that not even a shadow of a doubt crossed his mind. He trusted in the future, or rather, he imagined it as radiant. He was convinced that Margarete’s spirit would act as a guide who — like a fairy godmother — would always take him to beautiful places, to welcoming houses where he would find good friends.
It seemed, moreover, that this future in which he had placed his trust was ready to go along with him, that it wanted to give him everything he had dreamed of. One day, he went for a stroll through the city streets and ended up dancing at a party held in a mansion full of magnificent rooms; on another, he went to a pub and got an invitation to spend the weekend at a country house; on yet another day, he received an affectionate letter.
His diary, until then empty, grew fuller by the day and was soon crammed with names and telephone numbers. Barely a month after the day that he had first tried on his sister’s dress, he was accepted at the Atropos, one of the best private clubs in the St. Pauli district. Sometimes he even got up on stage and sang.
One day, while he was at the Atropos, he was introduced to Walter, a forty-year-old teacher. He was tall with very dark hair and eyes and he wore a red silk neckerchief.
“Would you like to share a bottle of champagne with me?” asked Walter.
“I’d be delighted, though I don’t usually,” replied Heinrich.
“I’m so pleased I met you. I feel happier than I have for a long time. Really.”
Walter’s dark eyes smiled.
Heinrich spent two days unable to get that smile out of his mind. On the third day, Walter phoned him. On the fourth, while they were walking in a park, they decided to embark on a stable relationship.
For Heinrich it was the happiest period of his life. Walter was his first love, and, perhaps because of that, it was a love outside of time, exclusive, a love that absorbed his whole being. Nothing existed beyond those dark eyes.
“So how’s life treating you?” Walter asked him one day, after writing a dedication to him in the book he had just published through the university. They were dining at the D’Angleterre, drinking French champagne.
“Very well indeed, since I met you.”
“I know that but what else, what’s your life like?”
And Heinrich replied: “Like that of a character in a novel.”
“Good for you! Novels are much more fun than essays,” laughed Walter, pointing to his book.
But Heinrich was mistaken. His life was very far from being a long novel, composed of fifteen, twenty, or forty chapters. Instead it was but a brief story that was hurtling toward its denouement. And this was perhaps his own fault because by then, absorbed as he was in his love affair, he had utterly forgotten that only sister of his, Margarete, thus calling down on himself — according to the harsh law that fairy tales apply to people who fail to keep their promises — an exemplary punishment at the hand of fate.
The cloud, the same cloud that wrapped about him and on which he had built his life, began to evaporate one night after a play he had gone to with Walter. Walking through the silent streets, they were making their equally silent way home, when suddenly a long whistle cut across the whole city.
“The train,” commented Walter and went on walking.
But Heinrich remained rooted to the pavement and a shudder ran through his whole body. That penetrating whistle was just a signal, a message with a rather anodyne meaning; but for him it was a song, a piece of dark, powerful music.