Free The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff

sorry.”
    She was too surprised to find herself here to continue speaking with him. By now she was even warmer, and she had a sudden urge to remove her clothes and swim out to sea. She exited the hall through a portal that led to a back-park.
    Outside there was a breeze. An old oak canopied the little park, as if protecting it from someone who had climbed the Rådhuset’s spire to spy. There was a smell of roses and turned soil. The patch of lawn was silvery, the color of the wing of a flying fish. Lili took a few steps and then saw the couple from before, the girl in the strap dress and her admirer, kissing behind an oak scrub. The man was holding the woman’s thigh, her dress pushed up to her hip, the clasp of her garter bright in the night.
    Startled, Lili turned away and walked right into the man from the bench.
    “Do you know what they say about this old oak?” he said.
    “No.”
    “They say if you eat its acorns you can make a wish and become anyone you want for a day.”
    “Why would they say that?”
    “Because it’s true.” He took her hand and led her to a bench.
    He turned out to be a painter named Henrik Sandahl. Recently he’d exhibited a series of paintings of North Sea fish: square canvases of plaice, dab, turbot, the elusive, sharp-faced witch. Greta had seen the paintings. One day she returned to the apartment, immediately dropping her bag and her keys, her eyes wide. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she told Einar. “You have to go see them for yourself. Who ever thought you could fall in love with the face of a cod?”
    “Are you here with someone?” Henrik asked.
    “My cousin’s wife.”
    “Who’s that?”
    Lili told him.
    “Einar Wegener?” Henrik said. “I see.”
    “Do you know him?” Lili asked.
    “No, but he’s a good painter. Better than most people think.” He paused. “I’m sure you know, but many people these days say he ’s old-fashioned.”
    It was the first time that Einar sensed how he was turning the world on its head by dressing as Lili. He could eliminate himself by pulling the camisole with the scallop-lace hem over his head. Einar could duck out of society by lifting his elbows and clasping the triple strand of Spanish pearls around his neck. He could comb his long soft hair around his face, and then tilt his head like an eager adolescent girl.
    Then Henrik took Lili’s hand. The wiry hairs on his wrist startled her, because the only hand she had ever held was Greta’s.
    “Tell me about yourself, Lili,” Henrik said.
    “I was named for the flower.”
    “Why do girls say silly things like that?”
    “Because it’s true.”
    “I don’t believe girls when they say they’re like a flower.”
    “I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
    “Start with where you come from.”
    “Jutland. A little village called Bluetooth, on a bog.” She told Henrik about the lucerne grass fields, about the icy rain that could punch holes in the side of the farmhouse.
    “If I were to give you an acorn to eat,” Henrik said, “who would you want to be?”
    “I have no idea,” she said.
    “But make a wish.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Okay then, don’t make a wish.” And then Henrik began to tell the story of a Polish prince who freed every woman in his country from another day’s labor; that was who Henrik wanted to be.
    Before she knew it, it was late, the very middle of the night. The wind had picked up, and the oak tree, with its ear-shaped leaves, was bending as if to overhear Henrik and Lili. The moon had slipped away, and all was dark except the gold light coming through the portals of the Rådhuset. Henrik had taken Lili’s hand, kneading the fleshy base of the thumb, but it felt to Lili as if the hand and thumb belonged to someone else. It was as if someone else were coming to claim her.
    “Shouldn’t we have met sooner than tonight?” Henrik said, his fingers trembling, fidgeting with a loose thread on the cuff of his coat.
    Lili heard Einar