BALTHASAR’S EXTRACT (The Final Chapter of the Diary of Evelyn Westcott)Evi Westcott is a turn-of-the-20th Century Alpha female, impatient with the roles polite society has assigned to women — including accidental women like herself — and in a hurry to set things straight. Now twenty, Evi’s had a rough few months. Gynol, the wonder drug on which Evi and all the rest of ‘Tottie’s Girls’ depend for their happiness, harbors a deadly contaminant, to which Evi’s dear friend Dorothy has already succumbed. Compounding Evi’s misery, she has bid adieu to her true love. There’s but one ray of light through the lowering clouds — Evi’s deepening friendship with Doctor Nathan Weiss.’

If you are new to this series, perhaps you’d rather begin at the beginning (Part I, some 130,000 words ago), review the list of characters (see 'The People in Evi Westcott's Diary') or go to the end of Chapter VII for a very short synopsis of the story through Chapter VI. Copyright October 2009 - Daphne Laprov

5 December. Diary, what am I going to do! I don’t want to marry! I’m not ready for marriage. Probably I’ll never be ready. I can’t have babies and my sexual bits are odd as can be. Of course Nathan knows that; he’s my doctor. How can I marry my doctor? And if I marry anyone, what happens to my life? I’m going to be a child psychologist, to work with Maria Montessori. Is Nathan going to calmly wave me off to Italy for years at a time? Will he make room for me to have a career? Well, of all the men I know, he’s the one who might. I’ve never known anyone with more self-confidence. But he’s a Hebrew! I can manage Aunt Enid, and most of the other Christians I care about, but Nathan’s family will throw him out. Look how they’ve treated Rachel! No, this is a crazy, half-baked idea. It can’t work! No, I won’t agree.

Nathan sent two beautiful pots of poinsettia flowers this morning — addressed to my aunt, the cad!

6 December. Rachel says — I asked her point-blank — that Nathan really loves me. She thinks her uncle has loved me for a long time.

8 December. Nathan stopped at Eutaw Place this evening to ask when he might hope for the pleasure of my company. I told him that I have semester examinations next Monday and Tuesday and that after that we need to have a serious talk. “I have put you down for Thursday the 14th,” I said. “Will that suit?” He said it would have to, perforce.

10 December. I was frowning so hard at my anatomy notes that Pegeen was afraid to tell me, she said, that a gentleman wished to speak to me on the telephone. “Tell Dr. Weiss not until Thursday,” I snapped.

“No, Miss,” Pegeen replied. “It’s Mr. Halloran.”

Joy! Harry’s back. It’s been so long! Now that the Shields Travestic Troupe is world-famous, little Baltimore is hardly on their itinerary anymore. I told Harry I want him to go out with me to hear Alexandra sing, and to protect me from a handsome doctor who’s set on marrying me. “Of course,” he agreed.

O, I wonder if he’d come as Henrietta?

12 December. I’m sure I did well on the examinations. I always do, and I always give myself indigestion first. Perhaps I worry too much.

13 December. Aunt Enid, after a brief conference at my initiative, has invited Nathan to dinner tomorrow. I shall regard him very thoughtfully.

Harry Halloran hardly hesitated when I phoned to suggest that he might like to play his amusing alter ego on our outing to the Carolina Club on Saturday. “Of course,” Harry had said, “but may I also bring my boyfriend Boris? I think you know ‘him’ already as Beatrix Triscuit-Cheevers.” We shall go to the second show, after the evening’s performance by the Shields troupe. O, this is going to be yummy! I wonder how Nathan will take it?

15 December. Reasoning with Nathan when he has his mind set on something is hard work, Diary. I am exhausted this morning, but I am still not engaged to be married.

We’d had a simple dinner, only four courses and two kinds of wine. Then, suddenly victim to a convenient headache, Aunt Enid excused herself, leaving Nathan alone with me in her salon. I supposed I should sit primly. That was not what I wished, so I shed my slippers and curled up on a settee with a blanket over my legs. Nathan therefore had to decide whether to seat himself at the further end of the settee or maneuver himself onto his knees beside my recumbent form.

Wisely, he chose to sit and reason, rather than kneel and plead.

An hour later, I had conceded this: that if I were to marry, there is no man I would likely find more attractive than Dr. Nathan Weiss — and not because of his devilish good looks, but because he is about the most decent and considerate male I know.

And that, Diary, is begging the question. Until Nathan pulled the ring out of his waistcoat pocket last Sunday, marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. I am still getting used to the idea. At least it gives me something less morbid to think about.

I ventured to Nathan that he had not thought things through. Were we to marry, he might find me less charming in his bed than he supposed. He might, in time, resent that I cannot give him sons and daughters. I reminded Nathan that dozens of people know my secret, or suspect it. Suppose one day, when he’s a distinguished physician, a pillar of the medical society, the truth comes out in print? I asked Nathan if his brothers and sisters will welcome a ‘shiksa’ into their family. (Shiksa’s a word I learned from Rachel — it’s a derogatory term for a gentile woman.) I like pork and ham and I adore oysters and crabs, and don’t fancy giving them up. I want a real career; I don’t fancy giving up medical school, or study for a psychiatric certificate, or doing research into the traumas of childhood. I don’t fancy giving up an eclectic assortment of ‘different’ friends. I might even be unfaithful.

Unless Nathan is game for all that, I concluded, there’s no basis for marriage. Nor, apropos of Gynol, is it necessary. I would gladly empower him to go to Germany alone in quest of help.

Nathan did not pretend that my apprehensions are without substance. He had, he said, considered most of them already, at some length and depth. He was satisfied that he could make me content in all respects — even regarding the odd friends I choose to keep — nor would he expect me to be as faithful as he, he swore, would surely be.

We shall see. In fact, we shall put Nathan to the test on Saturday.

Still December 15. I spoke to Harry on the telephone again today. He has agreed to be outrageous tomorrow night, he and Beatrice.

December 16. I am not prone to melancholia. Usually I find something to cheer myself up, or at least distract me when I sense it bending my thoughts. This morning, however, gloom wrapped me like a cloud. I could not force my head from my pillow until at half-past nine Aunt Enid rapped upon my door.

Considerate as always, my dear aunt sat quietly on the edge of my bed wearing her ‘attentive listener’ expression until I chose to speak — or rather to moan.

“I am a fraud,” I confessed. “I don’t deserve your kindnesses. I don’t deserve my friends. Everything is falling to pieces. I’m not going to be worthy of Nathan, just like I wasn’t worthy of Father. The Gynol is killing us, one by one; I thought surely I could fix it, but I can’t. I know, I just know, I will disappoint Nathan. . . .”

Aunt Enid regarded me affectionately, and stroked my hand. She didn’t try to argue.

“I too have felt terribly inadequate at times, ” she said. “The first was after Captain Bonner ravished and abandoned me. O, I’d been so cocksure, running off with him! And the absolute worst time was when I lost my baby, little Evi, your namesake, to diptheria. And Joe Westcott gone as well — there was nothing I could do to save either, but I still felt that . . . there must have been something.

“It will pass, my dear. This too will pass. Doctor Weiss is a good man, and he is fortunate that you love him.”

“Do I?” I wonder. Do I truly? Yes, I think I do!

December 17. “So, my dear, how was it?” I asked Nathan last night. We’d taken a horse cab when we left the club; I suppose we both wanted our evening out to last a little longer.

“All in all, quite splendid, in my estimation,” he replied after a moment. “I was, however, disappointed in your friends.”

O — a bad sign! I thought.

Beatrice and Harry, still en travesti, had joined us in the dark, smoky Carolina Club directly from the Ella Shields show at the Gaiety, still in their costumes. The club was packed, a sea of jazz-loving colored folks and a handful of whites. Harry — or rather ‘Henrietta’ — was attired as a Southern belle, transported direct from some ante-bellum plantation complete with off-the-shoulder bodice, puffed sleeves and tiered hoop skirt gown — satin and lace, of course — set off by a broad brimmed bonnet and parasol, all in dusty rose, and powdered to a fare-thee-well. On top of which Harry reeked of lavender scent. Meanwhile, Beatrice, in her alter ego as ‘Boris,’ was decked out as a riverboat gambler. She wore a grey serge frock coat and trousers, a vest of rich burgundy brocade, string tie, slouch hat and patent leather boots. She’d cut her hair short since we met in London, and appeared to have grown a handsome handlebar moustache (it was glued on, of course).

Honoring Harry’s promise to a fault, the two entered the Carolina Club ostentatiously, making no effort to disguise their voices — and hence their real sex — as they were guided to our table near the stage. I am sure I flushed, believing every eye in the room must be on us, including more than a few that might not take kindly to be reminded o the days of slavery. Nathan, on the other hand, evinced not the slightest discomfort; in fact within seconds of my flustered introductions, the three of them were wrapt in animated conversation.

I was studying the menu — steamed shrimps, fried oysters, pulled-pork — what on earth could I order that wouldn’t break a Hebrew taboo? Seeing my perplexity, Nathan leaned close and whispered “I’ve always wanted to try soft-shelled crabs.”

“You’re sure?” I replied. “Absolutely,” he said. “This is America, and the 20th Century.”

Well, we made short work of a platter of sauteed jumbo crabs with baked apples, turnips and pumpkin pie, washed down with mugs of draught beer. As we ate, I told ‘Henrietta’ and ‘Boris’ about Alexandra Bishop, Balthasar Bishop’s niece.

Balthasar was Dr. Charlotte Clathrop’s lab assistant, the colored man who after Tottie’s death continued to compound Gynol in a laboratory we established in my aunt’s cellar. I recalled how Balthasar had confessed to me one day that, in addition to Tottie’s thirteen ‘girls,’ there was another. He had taken pity on his nephew, a thoroughly girlish lad, but fearing that a Negro boy would be unwelcome in the experimental program, had started him on a course of the drugs without consulting Tottie.

Like the rest of us, Alexandra had bloomed under the Gynol regimen. Her wonderful voice and my aunt’s discreet help had secured for her a musical scholarship. When her cousin Caesar’s cruel death precipitated Balthasar’s collapse, however, ‘Alex’ had left Oberlin College for the Negro teachers college here in Baltimore and, to help make ends meet at home, begun singing with the Eubie Blake trio. “I think she’s wonderful,” I finished, “and hope you will, too.”

They immediately had an opportunity to decide. On the stage, a trio of dapper young colored men launched into a scorching version of Alexander’s Rag Time Band. When the applause died down, Mr. Eubie Blake greeted the audience and introduced Alexandra, tall and slim in her signature white gown.

Transfixed as always by Alex’s singing and Eubie’s jazzy improvisations, I was wishing the set would go on forever. After half an hour, however, Alex signaled to the trio, silence fell, and she said “Good evening, everyone. I’ve heard we have some very talented visitors to the club tonight. I’d like them to come up and do a couple of numbers with us. Miss Halloran, Mr. Cheevers — please join us!”

I suppose I would have fainted with anxiety if I’d been bidden so suddenly, but Harry and Beatrice weren’t daunted in the least. They climbed up onto the stage , conferred with Mr. Blake by the piano for a moment, and then Beatrice — as a soulful Boris -- launched into a convincingly baritone rendition of I Want a Girl (just like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad). Not to be outdone, Harry, tossing his skirts outrageously — answered with a music-hall song, a wildly-applauded Now I Have to Call Him ‘Father.’ “I guess you’ll have to do another,” said Mr. Blake. “How about this one?” and pounded out the first bars of Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Of course, everybody in the room knew the words, so when Harry and Beatrice reached the chorus, we were all singing along.

“So,” I answered as the cab clip-clopped its way into Eutaw Place and I nestled in Nathan’s strong arms, “what was it that disappointed you about my friends?”

“O,” he replied, “they do those music hall songs pretty well, but they don’t know a darn thing about jazz.”

“And how,” I added, “did Alexandra know Harry and Beatrice were at the club?”

Nathan grinned. “I sent her a note. Didn’t you notice?”

December 20. I must be hooked, Diary. Except for two more chapters of Gray’s Anatomy, I haven’t thought about anyone or anything but Nathan Weiss for three whole days.

By the time the cab reached home, I knew I was going to let him kiss me goodnight. He is a good, gentle kisser. I was loath to break away though the stiffening of my little rod told me I must.

Now it is already the second day of the Hebrew holidays. Am I allowed to give him a gift? I have bought Nathan a lovely camel’s wool scarf.

And, O, Diary! I have my first semester grades. I am first in the class! In the envelope — it came in this morning’s post -- there was a note of congratulations from Dean Welch, and his permission for me to travel to Europe on the Gynol business.

Christmas Day, cold and bright, the happiest and best day of my life!

As we are in mourning, Aunt Enid and I have attended only a few ‘at homes’ and dinners this season, and I have bypassed the balls entirely. I do not mind so much — in any event, Nathan would not be there. I wonder how that will be managed should we marry? Baltimore’s Christians and Jews meet for business without the slightest inhibition, and sit together these days on ever so many boards and committees, but it is still ‘not the thing’ for the two races to meet socially. And yet, Nathan is more a gentleman and better spoken than the vast majority of Baltimore’s blue-bloods!

He called at midday today, bearing gifts, and stayed to dinner when pressed by Aunt Enid. I have confided to her that my affection for Nathan grows with every meeting or note or telephone call. She regards him fondly, quite endorsing my sentiment that he has the moral foundation and unfailing consideration that one hopes for in a life partner.

After the meal, I excused myself briefly — my toilette needed some repair. When I returned, ten minutes later, I found Nathan and my aunt in the parlor, heads almost touching, in earnest conversation. A bit agitated, she shook his hand and excused herself ‘for a nap.’

Nathan regarded me with a twinkle in his eye. “Your aunt has kindly granted my request. I have her permission to ask your hand in marriage.”

O, Diary — it was impossible to maintain even the pretense of composure. I must have flushed as red as the bow on our front door!

“Ask, then,” I bade my suitor.

As the occasion demanded, he knelt on one knee and spoke softly. “Would you then . . . do me the great honor of becoming Mrs. Nathan Weiss?”

“O, yes, darling” I whispered. “And now kiss me until I tell you to stop!”

December 28. Nathan has bought our tickets. His brothers are up in arms — he did not bother to seek their approval — and in fact, it is also awkward to marry so soon after father’s burial. Even so, we can delay no longer; if a way to purify or synthesize Gynol can be found in Europe, we must have it. And so, we will sail for L’Havre on January 4. As it would be awkward — perhaps impossible — to marry discreetly in Baltimore, we will wed in New York City before we board the France.

I have written Mother my news. O, I do hope she will come to see us married!

December 31. I am writing this entry while awaiting Nathan and our other dinner guests, old friends of my aunts. Although we’ve made no formal announcement, word that I am engaged has spread about since I confessed ‘an informal understanding’ to Sally Campbell on Boxing Day.

January 1, 1912. The worst and best of years is over, pray God 1912 will be less eventful! Nathan and I spent the hour before midnight ignoring my aunt’s friends, making our lists of what still must be done before we take the train to New York. I am traveling as lightly as I possibly can, taking only one steamer trunk. We will be in Europe for three months. I shall not resist the opportunity to shop in Paris, and to see that Nathan acquires some handsome clothes himself.

My dearest one has arranged for Dr. Rosengarten — the same young man who did so capably in October — to ‘cover’ for him at the clinic. I am sure Nathan’s thoughts will not stray far from that place. Already he is proposing to spend part of our honeymoon visiting a sanitorium in Switzerland and inspecting medical equipment!

January 4. At last we are on board, leaving New York harbor. Nathan is still on deck, admiring the sunset that silhouettes the Statue of Liberty. I have abandoned him to scribble at least a few lines before dinner, before the details slip from my mind.

Now I am Mrs. Nathan Weiss! I can scarcely believe it, Diary, it all has happened so fast. There was a time once that I imagined myself wed in a grand event, a beautiful church filled by flowers, with hundreds of friends in attendance. Then, while I was infatuated with Anna, I completely repressed any such idea — I would not marry! And now, today, such a modest ceremony, but could any bride be happier than I?

Nathan and I were joined in matrimony at ten this morning by the Presiding Judge of the Manhattan Borough Court — incidentally a one-time beau of Aunt Enid’s. Mother, Eben, Ruth and little Flora came from Perkinstown and will stay in New York through the weekend, taking in the sights of the great city. Of Nathan’s family, only Rachel Klimintz was in attendance; she, of course, was my bridesmaid. A college classmate of Nathan was his best man. Then there were Harry and Beatrice, today as their original selves, respectively quite manly and womanly indeed, a beaming Igar Ludjak and my own dear aunt. Everyone was in daytime dress, at our request. In Dorothy’s memory, I wore a scarf she gave me just before she left us — a gossamer scarf of raw silk from Annam that matched the orchids in my trailing bouquet. The flowers were much too elaborate for the occasion, but that is what Nathan ordered. With the sparest of flourishes, Judge Swink declared us man and wife and we all adjourned to a private room at Delmonico’s Restaurant for a steak and champagne luncheon. I drank too many toasts, Diary. My head is clearing only now!

January 5. It gives me a start — and makes me blush — to be addressed as Madame Weiss by the staff of the France. As though they were reading my mind, which is lasciviously flitting between delicious memories of last night and anticipation of an infinite number of nights to come. For one who claims no experience at all, my Nathan is a wonderful, tender, thoughtful lover.

January 8. I can practically smell Europe! We shall pass a week or so in Paris. Although Nathan studied for almost two years in Germany, he has never travelled in France. He is anxious to repair that omission, and then to go deep into the Swiss Alps. Nathan is set on visiting Dr. Jessen’s Waldsanitorium, which is famous for the cures they work there on consumptives. I will be happy just to see the Alps in their winter glory. Then on to Munich, Basel, Frankfurt, Cologne and Berlin — in one of those places, pray God, we shall untangle the ‘Gynol problem’ at last before we must head for England; our ship leaves Southampton early in April.

January 10. Nathan has found a dactylographiste aboard La France and we have prepared the letters — six altogether — requesting appointments to consider a licensing and development agreement for ‘Gynol, a hormonal product of animal urine proven effective in treating certain disorders of sexual development.’ There’s more, of course — enough, Nathan believes, to whet the appetites of the pharmaceutical titans without giving away our secrets.

January 12. Since last night we have been ‘stashed away’ in a handsome suite at the Hotel Majestic. We shall selfishly prefer our own company to that of the many good people, friends of friends, that we have been enjoined to ‘look up’ in Paris. Even so, we must of course visit Nathan’s cousins, the Cone sisters, and I shall save an afternoon for Etienne Downey.

January 17. Diary, we have been out every evening, to the Opera, the Folies Bergere, the Circus, Maxim’s — my Nathan is a passionate consumer of French amusements! Tonight we shall prowl the Quartier Latin.

We did our duty by the Cone sisters; they have gone to the Riviera for the winter months, so we got by by leaving our card. That Stein girl is camped in their apartment.

January 18. On the Boul’Mich today, more proof that the world is a village! Nathan and I were hunting for a restaurant someone told him we must not miss when I glimpsed a strikingly slim, tall woman emerging from the Luxembourg Metro. She proved to be none other than my erstwhile seductress from Vienna, Kat Strasser! No, she could not join us for luncheon, but shall we meet tomorrow evening? Her American friend Nathalie will be holding open house in Neuilly; we must come with her; it is a gathering to be savored, insisted Kat. And so we have agreed.

January 20. This was a morning for wry smiles as Nathan and I recalled Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon.

I doubt there is anything like it anywhere — surely not on the American continent. Mlle Nathalie Barney is a fabulously wealthy heiress from Cleveland, Ohio. She makes no secret of her affection for other women, and the customs of Lesbos reign at her salon. She greeted Kat with undisguised enthusiasm and was extremely civil to Nathan and me despite our evident heterosexuality. “It is enough that you are accomplished,” she said. “Do you write? Sing?” We confessed that we were mere medical persons.

A poetry reading was beginning. Mlle Barney wandered amiably off in search of fatter prey. Nathan and I made ourselves comfortable and surveyed the crowd. I recognized only Gertrude Stein, deep in amorous conversation with a woman in doublet and pantaloons.

Half an hour later, Kat returned, leading a waiflike girl with bobbed brunette locks and almond-shaped eyes.

“Evi, this is someone you especially should know,” said Kat. “Lili is very like you.”

Yes, very like me, insofar as one could determine without disrobing us. It was not long before I bade Nathan and Kat leave us, so the poor girl could speak without embarrassment. “I am a man,” she said. “My real name is Einar Wegener. It was five — no, six — years ago that my wife and I learned that in spirit, I am a woman. A woman, Lili Elbe. Perhaps you have seen me before.”

I drew a blank, and said so.

“The next time you are in the Metro, observe the advertisements for les Galleries Lafayette. The girl in the illustration is me.

“My wife and I, we are both painters. And I am also her model.”

Another woman joined us. “This is Gerda, my wife.”

Fair, buxom and evidently somewhat intoxicated, Gerda Wegener peered intently at me. “Kat says you have a medicine that will help Lili be fully herself.” Her statement was obviously a question.

“I, I don’t know,” I replied stupidly.

“Kat says you are partly a boy and partly a girl.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a girl with certain anatomical features common to males.”

“You see,” she said, turning to her husband with a knowing nod. “It is possible.” Then, turning to me: “Help Lili! Help my darling!”

Where was my husband when I needed him!

As if summoned telepathically, Nathan was at my elbow. “Dr. Weiss, my husband. Mrs. Wegener and, er, . . .”

“Lili Elbe,” my new friend supplied. “Or Einar Wegener, if you prefer.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Nathan answered. “Fraulein Strasser has told me a bit about you. I should very much like to conduct a medical examination — if you’ll permit me — but not here, of course. . . .”

. . . “So,” I continued over breakfast in our rooms, “do you really expect me to supply Lili Elbe with Gynol?” I was distressed, to tell the truth, not pleased that Nathan had been so accomodating. Dear Sasha Bezroukoff has a higher claim on the drug, and yet I have kept it secret from him, knowing that the supply is precarious. Europe probably has hundreds of poor souls no less deserving, but I dare help them only if we have a reliable and unconstrained manufacture of a pure strain of Gynol. I am more sure of that now (since Dorothy’s death) than a year ago when I rejected the thought of leaving Sasha a supply of the pills.

“Think of it this way,” Nathan replied. “We may be about to license experimental production of Gynol in Europe. If so, why should not both Lili and Sasha benefit? Both — if I understand you correctly — are desperately unhappy when they contemplate living as men. In that respect, they seem no different from the rest of your ‘girls.’ Not one, given the choice and with full understanding of the risk, would abandon Gynol.”

To conclude, Diary, I have accepted Nathan’s decision and have sent a note to make another rendezvous with the Wegeners.

January 21. Etienne Downey and I lunched tȇte-á -tȇte today. The boy has not been eating well. He says that his mother is horror-struck by his decision to join the Socialists and agitate for Annamese independence. He says he is now known as Comrade Tiȇn, no longer Etienne. Maman expects the Sá»reté to haul him off to prison instantement; in the meantime she has stopped his allowance, hoping that will bring him to his senses. We reminisced fondly of Dorothy, and I slipped ‘Tiȇn’ a hundred francs as we parted.

January 23, enroute Zurich. It is done. We counted our bottles and left a year’s supply of Gynol with the Wegeners. I am resolved to do the same for Sasha.

January 31, Davos-Platz. We have been buried deep in the Swiss Alps for a marvelous week, just Nathan and I. Our hotel room looks directly at a huge mountain, that is magical in its changing moods. There is an electric-wire rope railway to the summit, from which we have peered into Germany, Italy and Austria all at once. Deep snow — two meters of it! — covers the entire village, which nonetheless bustles with throngs of holiday-makers from Munich, Zurich or Vienna, even some French and British. For the most part, Nathan and I have been determinedly anti-social, rising late, refusing invitations to join climbing expeditions, occupying ourselves on bright days in snowshoeing or ice-skating together, and snowy days talking, reading, attending performances of the town’s small but well-rehearsed symphony orchestra or (frequently!) abandoning ourselves to the pleasures of the bed. How lucky I am to be married to such a gentle, manly man!

This morning Nathan has abandoned me to visit Dr. Jessen’s famous sanitarium. Nathan is determined to find more effective treatments for his consumptive patients. Many, recently arrived to Baltimore from the ghettos of Russia or Poland, have carried the germs there with them. Here in Davos, Dr. Jessen has proven that if money is no object, fresh air and high altitudes can stem even a chronic infection. But that’s for the rich! Where, Diary, can money be found to effect such cures amid the tenements of East Baltimore?

February 2. As I was taking tea in the lovely Berghof dining room this afternoon — Nathan again having deserted me for Dr. Jessen — I was startled by a sudden whoop, the sort emitted by a joyful adolescent, “Signorina Evi! Is it really, really you? O, it is!”

Imagine, Diary, who should I see bouncing happily before me but Massimo — or rather Marisa — Morabbi, my young friend from Rome. “O, my heavens! How splendid you’ve become, Marisa!” I burst out. “O, do sit down with me!”

And indeed the child was much matured — no longer the precocious chubbie who had so charmed me the previous spring, but now a young — still very young — lady, charmingly costumed in a woolen winter ensemble. Marisa’s thick cinnamon locks were tamed only by a satin bow, her cheeks were bright from the chill mountain air, her eyes sparkled with pleasure at our chance reunion. I could not help thinking that within a few years Marisa would turn many heads if . . . her male genes do not betray her.

Marisa ordered a hot chocolate at my invitation and demanded to know why I had not written. I protested that I had written indeed. Perhaps my letter was lost in Italy’s hopeless postal system. I satisfied her curiousity and promised to introduce her and her mother to Nathan. Then it was my turn to question.

“I take it, then, that you’ve chosen to live as a girl?”

“It is the only thing for me,” Marisa replied. “I think I knew that already when you and your Aunt came to Rome. And, Miss Evi, I have so much to thank you for. After you talked with my mother, everything was different, . . . much better between us. We have become great friends.”

I recalled how Beatrice Morabbi had confessed to employing petticoats to discipline her son, only to find that he took readily to her dressing him as a girl. “Mama accepts now that I am not like other boys. We no longer pretend that she is punishing me, but that this is how I am, really. Only . . . I have to be careful around Papa. He still thinks it is a game of which he ought not to approve.”

This evening at dinner, I told Nathan all about the Morabbi family, Roman cousins of the Freuds, and the extraordinary coincidence of my reunion with young Marisa.

“You seem, my darling, to have an extraordinary knack for befriending boys of ambivalent gender — your friend Sasha, young Marisa and just now Lili in Paris, not to mention all of ‘Tottie’s Girls.’ Does Marisa know that you yourself are a sort of halfling?”

I replied that I did not think so, unless Anna or my aunt had spoken thus to Beatrice Morabbi.

“Perhaps, then, it is time to tell her and Marisa more. I surmise that if you and I have determined to supply both Lili and Sasha with Gynol, it would be wrong to deny its miraculous effect to young Marisa.”

That’s exactly what I hoped Nathan would say. O Diary, he is such a wonderful man!

February 3. Our next-to-last day in Davos — Nathan and I have been in the Alps ten days already. Favorable replies have reached us from several of the chemical companies, and we are keen to bring our quest to a happy conclusion. First, however, there has been the business of the Morabbis.

A telephone call yesterday noon sufficed to set up a joint expedition to the Fliiela waterfall. This morning we shared an open sleigh drawn by a team of four, a lovely excursion. I think all of us — Nathan, me, Marisa and her still-youthful mother, Beatrice Morabbi — got drunk on the bright sunshine and crystal-clear air.

The Morabbis have come visit Beatrice’s own mother, an English lady impelled by poor health to flee damp, smoky London each winter for the invigorating climate of the high Alps. They will next continue to Salzburg, there to visit their Moritz and Bernays cousins and rendezvous with Signor Morabbi, and then reach Vienna for the last days of Fasching, the pre-lenten carnival season. Did I mention, Diary, that the Moritzes, Morabbis, Bernays and Freuds are all cousins, and that it was Berta Moritz who forwarded me Anna’s clandestine letters? Well, that is all over now, and I do my best not to think any longer of Anna Freud.

Signorina Morabbi and Marisa make a charming pair. Her arm gently encompassing her new daughter, Beatrice confirmed the pleasure that Marisa’s journey into femininity has given them both. “But,” she confessed, “we must wonder where all this will lead, indeed if it can be kept up for many years. If Marisa should become entirely habituated to the manners of women, can she ever, then, revert to the person of ‘Massimo’ should her physical development require it? Honestly, I dread the thought: a beard, a deepened voice, broad shoulders!”

Here Marisa whispered something into her mother’s ear, and she brightened considerably.

“My dear one has undertaken to eat as little as possible, that she shall not grow tall and thick. And she has reminded me that her father has already been brought half-way around.”

“How is that,” Nathan asked.

“Gustavo is convinced that Europe is on the verge of a cataclysm, a continental war that will destroy the flower of our youth and return us to barbarism. He is desperate that our children not be swept away in the coming conflagration — indeed, he talks endlessly of emigrating to Argentina or America. Failing that, he takes some solace from the idea that ‘Marisa’ would not be taken to be a soldier.”

“I beg to disagree,” Nathan offered. “General war has become unthinkable. Modern weapons are so destructive that however much they may glower at each other, none of the leading countries would stoop to such folly.”

Listening to the conversation, I thought to myself that once men have a theory to hang it on, they can reconcile to almost any course of action.

Nathan squeezed my hand beneath the sleigh blanket; it was my turn. “Beatrice, Marisa, dears” I said, “I should like very much to share with you some personal information. I hope you will regard it as good news, and the talisman of my affection for you both.”

I proceded, Diary, to relate my own history, omitting no important detail about the development of Gynol to this point. “Thus,” I concluded, “we cannot claim that it is absolutely safe. All potent drugs have some unwanted effects. In the case of Gynol, there is assuredly an elevated risk of interference with kidney function. How great is the risk? That is still to be determined. What is beyond doubt is that every one of ‘Tottie’s Girls’ and a number of other ultra-feminine boys, well aware of that risk, have chosen to rely on Gynol to keep them as they wished to be.

“We shall continue to manufacture it, and hope in addition that a European company will carry the work to perfection. If you desire, I will share my supply with you.”

As I neared the end of my story, not only Nathan’s strong hand was gripping mine. Marisa had seized my other hand and was waiting breathlessly for her mother’s verdict. They exchanged glances.

“Yes,” she answered. “Of course we accept your kind offer. We are deeply grateful.”

February 5. The Morabbis, mother and daughter, accompanied us on the cog railway as far as Landquart, where with affectionate embraces we transferred to other trains — theirs heading east for Innsbruck and Salzburg, ours bound for Zurich and west. Alone again, Nathan and I planned our campaign. We have appointments in Basel with representatives of both the LaRoche and Geigy firms, and Hoechst in Frankfurt and Bayer in Wupperthal have both consented to meet us. But it is in Chemische Fabrik that Nathan places his greatest hope. We shall not come to terms with any firm until we have journeyed all the way to Berlin to confer with the CF directors.

February 7. I called at the American Express office in Basel in confident hope of mail. There were fond letters from Aunt Enid and Mama — both still a bit giddy over my marriage, I think — and a note from Winnie in London. She writes that if Nathan and I are there by March 21, I am to help launch the fourth book of the Allison Ainsley saga. From Vienna, a reproachful note from Sasha Bezroukoff. Kat has returned home from Paris bearing news of us. The burden of Sasha’s message is that he will travel anywhere to meet us, he must see me, talk to me again. There is unmistakable agitation in his scrawl and disjointed syntax. For Nathan, letters from Dr. Rosenbaum, the caretaker of his clinic, and from Rachel. All is well there. Several dozen letters congratulating our marriage, following its announcement in the Sun.

And last and best of all, a note from Harry and Beatrice. They are to be married in England in March! Harry writes, in part:

Bea’s father, the biscuit magnate, has at last given up his fancy that Beatrice should plight her troth and join his fortune to a peer of the realm. Her feckless suitor, a Lord Toby Whyfford, has been sent packing, and Bea’s engagement to me ever so regretfully agreed by Daddy and Mum. With the proviso, of course, that I should give up vaudeville and petticoats forthwith (at least in public) and begin a proper career at Triscuit-Cheevers Cracker Company, Ltd. I suppose I can stand it; as you know well, I have already lost my girlish good looks.

Our wedding’s set for March 28th — Church of England, of course, a quaint old chapel deep in Dorsetshire. Bea and I will be devastated if you and Nathan can’t come. Write me you will!

That’s exactly a week before our ship sails from Southampton. Brilliant timing!

February 8. Our meeting this morning with representatives of LaRoche et Cie. was not a great success. They listened with some interest as Nathan and I described the action of Gynol, but offered only to evaluate samples, and then only if we were to turn over details of the process and promise LaRoche exclusive rights to it. They expressed surprise that we have not secured a patent on the process; we said we have not because if we published such details on a drug not yet perfected, others would hasten to copy and extend our work, claiming their own to be original. At length, we excused ourselves but ‘left the door open’ for further talks.

February 9. Now we have met with a director of the J.R. Geigy Company, a sleek, well-fed man who claimed to be a chemist. A few moments after we had begun to describe our proposal, however, Herr Keller confessed that ‘hormones’ and the endocrine system generally are a mystery to him. He asked for a recess so that he could summon expert help. By the time the experts arrived, two young men in lab coats, Keller was evidently persuaded that drugs that modify sexual development are of no interest to Geigy. We could hear his junior colleagues protesting as they huddled with him in an anteroom. At length, he agreed to hear us out — a trial that featured sharp questioning and, at the end, a hung jury. The young men are palpably excited by the results we have reported. Keller conceded that they will consider our proposal further, and perhaps suggest a second meeting.

February 13. After a weekend hidden away in Heidelburg, our rooms a pension above a bakery, Nathan and I entrained for Frankfurt, where we have met representatives of Hoechst Chemicals this morning. I must admit to mixed feelings about the event. Some clue caused our interlocutors to conclude that I must be one of the sample upon which Balthasar’s elixir — what we now call Gynol — was tested. This led to considerable questioning of a personal nature. Nathan sensed my growing discomfort and called a recess. In private conversation, he suggested that I absent myself briefly whilst he satisfied the legitimate curiousity of the Hoechst representatives, an offer that I tearfully accepted.

I don’t know why, Diary — I’ve thought I was dispassionate about these things, and that keeping my circumstances private was simply a courtesy to those who had greater sensitivities, such as my aunt. I had become accustomed to ‘doing for myself’ — not depending on men to think or ‘do’ for me. But now, I find myself endlessly grateful that Nathan is at hand to protect me from nastiness. I must be feeling the emotional sequelae of Dorothy’s untimely death — the event that has so greatly raised the stakes for all of us in perfecting the drug. But in a deeper sense — it is such a relief to be able to rely on him!

In the event, Nathan summoned me back to his side after half an hour and the conversation took a really promising turn. With but a little encouragement, members of the Hoechst research staff were suggesting broader uses for ‘gynol-like’ drugs — potential applications to the stablization of women’s ‘cycles’ or even to the facilitation of conception — or indeed, of its prevention.

Later. Nathan was away, seeing to our return bookings, when a telegram arrived. I gave the boy five pfennig for his trouble and — as it was addressed to both me and Nathan — extracted the message from its envelope. So, Magnus Hirschfeld has tracked us down. For emphasis, he writes in English. “You have betrayed my trust,” he begins, “and I must insist to join your negotiation to assure effective result or else.” There is more. Hirschfeld is pained, he says. Good!

February 14. Nathan has been musing over the implications for society if conception could be halted at will. I let him ramble on; he has such a lovely voice. At last, he pressed me for my own opinion. “It would foment a revolution,” I said. “For the first time in history, women would gain control of their own bodies. The tyranny of men would be overthrown.”

February 15. We have met Hoechst again. This time the managing director of its pharmaceutical branch joined us to table a proposal. They have offered us a very substantial sum for the European rights to the process, subject to verification of our description of Gynol’s action. Missing, however, is an essential element: Hoechst balks at a commitment to press ahead with production and commercial marketing of the drug. The managing director adduces ‘social considerations’ that must first be investigated thoroughly.

February 19. Nearing Cologne this morning, Nathan and I heard churchbells ringing from either side of the Rhine River. It is almost the end of a deliberately slow cruise on a romantic barge that is fitted out like a five star hotel! Every hill or cliff, every turn in the river has revealed another ‘Kastel.’ We have stopped to tour some vineyards, and to see the medieval sights of Koblenz. The Rhine and Mosel wines are delicious. Der Kapitan has a gramophone and a stack of Wagner arias. Our fellow travellers are uniformly delightful representatives of six nationalities. Alas, we disembark this afternoon, and must prepare for our call on the famous Bayer Chemical Company Tuesday morning.

Bayer is renowned for the discovery and universal marketing of aspirin, which has done more to free mankind from pain than all other nostrums combined. Though Nathan is not hopeful of a positive response, Bayer’s stature as a leader in the modern drug industry practically requires that we present our proposals to it.

February 20. At the American Express office in Cologne, a letter awaited me from Sasha. He will leave Vienna on the 22nd and will await us in Berlin from the 23rd at the Brandenbergerhof. That much is plain; the rest of Sasha’s letter is a tangled and often incomprehensible web of recrimination, despair, heartbreak and hope. It might as well be written in code; God forfend that Sasha’s spirit is as broken as his syntax. If there is a unifying thread, and indeed it is difficult to find one, it is Sasha’s apparent faith that I shall somehow serve as the fulcrum for the resolution of his pyramiding problems. I am as confused as I am concerned — evidently my gentle friend’s self-destruction is far advanced. Nathan is no better able than I to make sense of Sasha’s missive.

February 21. Though we were courteously received, the seeds we planted with Bayer will bear no fruit. So far, only Hoechst has shown interest in Gynol, but there is still Chimie Fabrik in Berlin.

February 22. After sightseeing this morning — the cathedral here is amazing! — this afternoon I am writing letters while Nathan sees about our steamer tickets home. O, and Nathan has telegraphed that odious fellow Hirschfeld, rebutting his pretensions. In nearly a year, he has yet to achieve anything through his much-touted ‘contacts.’ In fact, it appears that knowledge of his connection with us was enough to sour LaRoche, Sandoz and who knows what others. If Herschfeld insists that some consideration is due him for his efforts, he can make his case on the 26th. That will follow our discussions with Chemie-Fabrik.

February 23. Arrived in Berlin at nine, none the better for a night of swaying in a Wagons Lit car, and opted for a nap until lunchtime. Awakening, I found a note had been slipped under the door — Sasha was waiting in the lobby.

His appearance startled me — little Sasha who had been so meticulous about his dress and toilette was now unkempt, unshaven and in evident disarray. For Nathan, who knew Sasha only from my accounts, the shock may not have been so great. “This boy,” he prescribed, “is in want of a draught to calm his nerves, food and sleep, in that order, before we can expect him to talk sensibly.”

Addressing Sasha, Nathan learned that not only had he not registered at the Grand Hotel, he could not possibly have done so, having only a handful of deutschmarks in his purse.

February 24. When Nathan and I stole out to keep our rendezvous at the headquarters of Chimie Fabrik, Sasha Bezroukoff was still deep in sleep on a daybed brought into the sitting room of our suite. I left a note on the mantle for Sasha, and with the concierge, I left instructions that a hearty breakfast should be delivered to him at ten-thirty.

Nathan and I returned to our suite at the Brandenburger Hof many hours later as dusk was falling. We found Sasha much restored. He had been sitting by the window awaiting us, now properly shaven, brushed and dressed, and sipping a glass of wine. “O, my God, Evi, will you forgive me?” Sasha exclaimed as I came through the door. “What sort of impression must I have made on your husband?” He seized Nathan’s hand and pumped it. “I am so sorry, sir . . . it is just . . . my life has fallen to ruins.” At once, tears started from Sasha’s eyes, still so large and blue and still — there is no other word for it — softly feminine.

Sasha’s distress wiped from our faces the residue of a brilliant meeting, the broad smiles that Nathan and I had worn all the way back to the hotel. “We have all the time it takes for you to share what you have to tell us,” said Nathan. “Pull yourself together, Herr Bezroukoff — and meanwhile, allow me to order some champagne.”

“You have good news?” he asked. “The drug you spoke of?”

“It will be produced in Europe, and soon, I am sure,” I replied.

“O, Evi, if only it is so! But too late for me, I think.”

We sat, and bade the boy speak. When Aunt Enid and I left Vienna a year ago, Sasha was already the city’s premier exemplar of the art of masquerade, the toast of its Bohemian demi-monde. “You recall how beautiful I was, Evi — the debutantes were jealous, I turned the heads of half the men in Vienna even though everyone — everyone who was anyone, I mean — knew that I was but a boy in a gown.

“In April, I met Kurt von Tueffenback. I wrote you about him. He is dazzling, Evi, a count, a captain of hussars, a cousin of the Archduke, the most eligible bachelor in all the Empire — and he fell for little Sasha! He swooned for me. I played hard to get, and he pursued me the more. Daily there were flowers; jewels at every occasion that I consented to meet him. Ah, gladly before too long I shared his bed. In fact, I could not do so often enough to satisfy the passion Kurt had awakened in me.

“We were soon notorious in certain circles, of course. When there is a scandale, Vienna is only a village — everyone who is anyone knows — not that either Kurt or I cared. Indeed, the brighter our fire blazed, the more we were toasted, entertained and sought after.

“Then a shadow fell over us. He received a letter, signed only ‘Doktor H,’ that required a ‘charitable contribution’ to a fund established to campaign for the freedom of men to love each other. Should there be no response, the letter insinuated, Kurt’s liaison with me would be brought forcefully to the attention of his parents, the Imperial Court and — in extremis — the popular press.

“My darling Kurt was furious, defiant but also, I could see, terrified. It is one thing to have an affaire that is tolerated fondly by one’s friends and equals, and quite another thing to incur the wrath of the Empress — she is, as you know, Evi, the worst of prudes. . . .

“. . . the worst, now that Victoria of England is dead,” I interrupted with a giggle.

“. . . and, of greater consequence, it costs a very huge sum to bribe the newspapers to silence.

“ ‘H’ had provided a post office box address; Kurt responded, proposing a meeting but intending a confrontation. ‘H’ replied by requiring Kurt to meet him in Munich. With the utmost trepidation, I saw my darling off at the station. O, Evi, I wore that magnificent ensemble, do you remember it, that you helped me order at Lanvin’s? It was Kurt’s favorite among my costumes.

“Here my story grows tragic, my dears. Kurt returned with, one might say, all the courage drained from him. ‘The bastard has photographs, sworn statements, detailed accounts of our assignations,’ he said. ‘Evidently Herr ‘H’ has already blackmailed half of Vienna to peach for him. I shall have to accommodate him.’

“Already I was crying when I heard the worst: ‘and, my dear Sasha, I shall have to let you go. I cannot afford to keep you at Hirschfeld’s price.’”

Hearing Sasha utter that name, I gasped. Nathan swore.

“You know him, then?” asked Sasha.

“I wish to hell that we did not,” said Nathan. I do not blame my love for swearing. “The man is a charlatan who has tangled us in his web as well.

“Forewarned is forearmed, thanks to you, Sasha. We shall be well-prepared when we meet Hirschfeld on Saturday.”

Little Sasha — no, he is no longer so little as that — continued his story. The count his lover has cut him off, his mother grudges him his allowance, daily — no matter how he mistreats his body — his shoulders widen, his voice deepens, he gains altitude.

“Do you remember that dream of yours, Evi? The one you described, the great parade of all of us different people, the joy, the celebration, and then . . . the skies darkening, the crowd turning angry, closing in? O, that is what I sense everyday, my life that burned so brightly for an instant is no longer . . . no longer worth having. Most people, I suppose, never question who they are. Boy? Girl? They hardly consider the possibility they might have been the other.

“Yet here I am, Evi . . . If I cannot live female, and be loved for being as female as God will allow, I hardly care to live.”

No boy I know, Diary, is in essence more female than Sasha, and thus no one has so vividly confronted the treason of his body. I was nearly sick with remorse, remorse that on leaving Vienna I had not divided my dwindling stock of the Gynol pills with Sasha in time to save him from the maleness that has undone him.

Sensing my discomfiture, Nathan intervened, thank God. “Sasha, young friend,” he said in that slightly bookish German of his, “since you and Evelyn parted, events have driven us to realize that a drug we possess — we call it Gynol — is though not without dangers, the salvation of many like you . . . and Evi, I should add in case you have not yet realized.

“Your character and my wife’s character originated and developed along different paths, I am sure of that, but the end point is identical and incontestable — neither of you, nor yet a great many others we now know — could find happiness, could be fulfilled as human beings, if compelled to live as men.” Here Nathan muttered a phrase in Hebrew that I recognized. It means ‘the ways of the Almighty are inscrutable,’ which of course they are, Diary.

A day late and a dollar short, as the homespun saying goes, it is agreed that we shall endeavor to provide Sasha with a secure supply of Gynol. Nathan posits that may be enough to save him. I have my doubts, Diary.

It was then our turn to tell Sasha the essence of our meeting that day with the managers of Chimie Fabrik, including its Regiesdirektor, Herr Schering himself. Unlike the senior people at Hoechst, they were not troubled by the notion that adjusting the manifestations of sexuality might in some way trespass on the prerogatives of the Almighty. The Chimie Fabrik representatives in addition are au courant on recent scientific advances — the work of Starling and Bayliss in England, of that fellow Steinach in Austria, and most directly for our purposes, the work of Gudenacht here in Berlin, a chemist on their own staff. The experiments of Dr. Gudenacht have predisposed the Chimie Fabrik managers, I am sure of it, to believe what we told them about the action of Gynol.

Their great company is ready to work with us, to patent our process in Europe and to assist us to manufacture in America as well a purer and safer Gynol. O, dear Diary, were it not for Sasha’s distress and the shadow that that fellow Hirschfeld throws over us, I should be supremely happy now. We have followed a rocky road indeed from the time I entrusted myself first to my Aunt Enid and soon thereafter, to Dr. Charlotte Clathrop. Along the way, I have lost dear companions — Dorothy Downey in particular — yet I know Dorothy especially will be cheering us on, from wherever she may now observe us mortals. And at last I shall be able to rest my own load, trust to the good will of our friends here, and apply myself with a whole heart to the study of medicine and psychology.

February 25. What a wonderful day this has been! Well, many would not agree, perhaps, but there is for me nothing more pleasing than to converse intimately with a man who has extended the boundaries of our knowledge of the chemical bases of sexual development. Herr Dr. Gudenacht received me courteously at his laboratory in the Berlin suburb of Wedding. The laboratory is part of the Chimie Fabrik organization — I find this marvellous, that such a huge firm is persuaded that supporting fundamental research will bring it profit in the long run. Gudenacht and I spent the afternoon skewering and dissecting a number of frogs that demonstrate his thesis that sexual development is triggered by the release of certain ‘hormones.’ I returned to the Brandenburger Hof toward five to find that Nathan and our Chimie Fabrik friends — including a legal expert -- have agreed provisionally on the text of an agreement. The formal documents are being drawn up for signature on Wednesday, the 28th.

February 26. Today Nathan and I rose early to explore the German capital. Much of its sights are of a grandiosity that I do not favor, but the Tiergarten, today decorated with frost, probably has no equal anywhere. Sasha joined us for lunch at a café off the Kurfá¼rstendamm. He struck me as still considerably agitated. As for Nathan and me, but for the formality of signatures, our business in Europe is done. As soon as the papers are signed, Nathan will write Hoechst that Chimie Fabrik has offered the terms we require. And then, Diary, my love and I shall apply ourselves diligently to the completion of our honeymoon!

Nathan has promised to take me next to Plzn in Bohemia, from which his father fled in 1848. Then, before we retrieve the comfortable shores of England, I shall show Nathan my glittering Vienna. I know I should be consumed by guilt, Diary, further postponing my medical studies for the mere purpose of a magnificent honeymoon — but JHU has graciously agreed I can make up courses in the summer, and who am I to complain about that?

February 27. Nathan has arranged to meet Hirschfeld in the hotel lobby at three-thirty, an hour from now. It is our deliberate choice — he will not dare make a scene in such a public place. Sasha has implored us to have no converse at all with the man, but after due consideration, I have agreed with Nathan that we must confront him.

The point is — and it is quite unavoidable — Hirschfeld knows just enough to blight our happiness, should he choose to deploy his information in Baltimore. Over luncheon a deux — Sasha having disappeared to who knows where — we pondered the worst that might happen. Yes, we — or rather, Nathan — could be hurt if my sexuality were to become the subject of popular speculation. The Baltimore American fattens on such stories.

I put the question directly: “Nathan, dearest, if it were to be bruited about that you have married a man, how would your Hebrew compatriots receive that news?”

“For the most part, we should have to brazen it out. I have friends among the Reform rebbe of Baltimore; Rabbi Rosenau in particular would support me in any circumstance. That’s not just because he is broad-minded. He values the work I do and, I believe, my intervention did save his wife in childbirth, that she might care for him for another twenty years at least. He is obliged to give us the benefit of the doubt.

“If we are pressed, I should confide in Rosenau and others, and try to persuade them that the greater good of our people now resident in Baltimore and of mankind generally requires that they interpret the circumstances of our union liberally. I hope we might count on that.

“In any event, nothing Hirschfeld can say will move me. To give even an inch will only invite him to try for more.”

So it is resolved. We shall not submit to blackmail. Nathan is truly noble; I only hope, dear God, that he is right as well. I do so love this wonderful man, Diary, who knowing every detail of my history, privy to all my hopes and dreams, has chosen me as his partner ‘till death do us part.’

March 1, 1912. Fate has torn Evelyn Westcott Weiss, my beloved wife and companion, away from us. The event was so sudden and tragic that I still find it unbearable to contemplate. Three days later, I — Nathan Weiss — write this postscript to Evi’s own diary with the heaviest of hearts, hoping that the act of writing will help me to find some shred of meaning or, if not meaning, acceptance.

Evelyn Lutjak O’Connor