At some point things started to change. I became the object of Dr Engel’s aesthetic ambition, a human work of art; he thought he could do what he wanted with me—and for all practical purposes, he could.
Hans was forty-one when we met. He seemed trustworthy. He was tall, and in his own way handsome. When he volunteered to be a father figure to me, of course I was more than ready to step into the daughter’s role.
When we had known each other for about six months, he came into my room one night. I was sleeping in the nude. When I woke up I saw him sitting on the edge of my bed with a little light in his hand, looking at my body.
There was nothing sexual about the situation. I wasn’t afraid or angry. I knew that I had invited him there myself by means of various subtle cues.
I didn’t say anything. The light wandered over my hips and breasts and I spread my legs for him. I knew that he was looking at me with the eyes of a plastic surgeon, and not as a man does, and I trusted him. And he had also mentioned that he’d been impotent ever since he left East Germany.
After examining me for a time, he stroked my hair and apologized for intruding. He just wanted to confirm that he had been correct in his assessment of my situation. It would have been embarrassing for us both if he had been wrong.
I said I understood.
He told me he had guessed back in Bombay what my background was—I had been going around with the hijras, after all. But he hadn’t confirmed it, and that had been worrying him. And because I reminded him of his daughters, he felt a need to help. He said he was well aware that he was a sentimental fool, but helping me made him feel closer to his daughters.
He asked me if I was content with my body.
I shook my head.
He asked how I would like it to be.
The blood started rushing in my ears and my skin tingled. I was afraid I would faint.
I thought, I want to be the kind of woman you could love, Olli.
What I said out loud was that I just wanted to be entirely a woman. An attractive woman. Like in a movie. He smiled broadly and said that if I simply trusted him and was ready to undergo some pain, a few changes could make me another Audrey Hepburn, if that was what I wanted.
44
GRETA GOES THROUGH the history of her body surgery by surgery and scar by scar.
Olli starts to feel cold. Eventually he pulls the blanket up over himself. It’s painful to listen to such detailed descriptions. He would like to ask her to stop. But he can see that compared to the telling, the listening is easy.
Greta trembles as she tells the story of her flesh, lying on her side on the bed with her fists against her chest, bare and fragile, like a suffering child. Olli can’t touch her—this isn’t the time to console her, first she has to get the words out.
For seven years Dr Engel performed dozens, perhaps hundreds of plastic surgeries on Greta. Olli can’t keep count of them, but Greta remembers every one. For the first couple of years the doctor’s treatments were skilful and professional, done with careful consideration, honouring all the rules of aesthetic surgery, consulting with Greta about every operation and making sure she knew what he was going to do.
Gradually the flow of customers to the clinic dried up when a few dissatisfied patients made a fuss about Engel’s alcohol consumption and the quality of his work. He used his increased free time to examine and tinker with Greta. Little by little the “beautiful little hermaphrodite”, as he called her a few times when he had been drinking, became his obsession.
Eventually the phone nearly stopped ringing altogether.
Dr Engel drank, and felt sorry for himself.
Greta felt sorry for him, too.
She tried not to listen to the rumours, but the truth was that many of his treatments didn’t seem to have been very successful. There was one operation that required multiple corrective surgeries. When she awoke from the anaesthesia she might find that he’d done a lot of other things besides the ones he’d told her about beforehand.
Her body was now more womanly than she had ever dared dream, for which she was grateful. But she didn’t want any more surgery.
When she asked him to stop the operations, he said that she wasn’t finished yet. He ought to do at least one more operation, perhaps two. A plastic surgeon’s eye, after all, can see the truth. Surely Greta wanted to be sure that her secret love liked what he saw? Ach Greta, mein Herzchen, men can be so terribly picky about a woman’s body…
After every surgery, and before every new one, he put on his doctor’s coat and ordered Greta to stand naked in front of him. He examined her body from various angles, like an artist examining an unfinished work. Sometimes he made her undress, sit at the piano and play. He said that when she was in that position it was easier for him to see which parts were finished and which still needed work.
Before her scars even had time to heal properly the impatient doctor would want to perform another operation. Sometimes the scars became infected and she had to have an intravenous drip. When that happened, he would care for her with fatherly tenderness.
Eventually she’d had enough.
She packed her bag, marched up to Engel, thanked him for everything, resigned her post and told him she was going back to Finland.
Dr Engel ordered her to stay right where she was. He took off her clothes as if she were a doll and pored over his seven-year project with a furrowed brow. As he did this he talked to himself with studied calm, like a man soothing a skittish animal.
He could understand, of course, that Greta was tired and sometimes wanted to give up. But she didn’t understand, in the impatience of her youth, how wondrously beautiful she could be if she would only let him finish his work. He said he would sooner bury Greta in the garden than let her walk out of there half-finished.
Greta looked into his eyes and realized that he was serious.
She understood that there was nothing she could do. The doctor knew best, and he would be the one to decide.
Engel’s eyes shone as his unfinished masterpiece acceded to his fatherly wishes.
A couple of days later Greta was sitting naked at the piano, playing.
It was early evening. Dr Engel was sipping a whisky and walking around the piano. The setting sun outside the window blazed on the piano’s polished black surface. He fiddled with the tie she’d given him for Christmas, watched the movements of her body, and wondered aloud whether the line of her neck needed augmentation or whether it would be better to concentrate on the earlobes for a while—they still had a certain roughness about them. Or perhaps he could touch up the breasts…
Greta stopped playing. She had decided to view the situation with resigned positivity. The previous Christmas Dr Engel had given her a collection of Emily Dickinson poems and pointed out one in particular that she ought to think about. It began: The hallowing of pain, Like hallowing of Heaven, Obtains at a corporeal cost. The ending was particularly apt: But He who has achieved the Top—All is the price of All.