“Who knows, perhaps it was her pride that made her prefer me.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Kierkegaard understood me.”
REGINE OLSEN
A few weeks later, Regina met Fritz in front of a painting of a pink palace. “Like two magnets,” Regina whispered, “drawn together.”
Fritz smiled down at her, his brown eyes kind and inviting. “Will we attend every art opening here together—when we are married?”
“Shh,” Regina said, her eyes widening with pleasure. “We cannot speak of that until I am confirmed!”
“Why not?” Fritz asked. “I enjoy speaking of it—you look so beautiful when you’re shocked.”
“What a dreary picture,” Mrs. Schlegel said, coming up behind them with her two large daughters in tow.
Was she referring only to the painting? Regina watched Fritz’s face crease into a gentle smile as he looked at his mother. He didn’t seem to have caught her innuendo.
Nearby, Mrs. Olsen and Olga gazed at the other paintings in the gallery. Visitors swarmed through the empty spaces of the airy cupola room, the largest room of Charlottenborg Palace’s exhibition hall. The ladies wore narrow, high-waisted dresses with little capped sleeves, and the gentlemen wore long-waisted coats over breeches or even the newly fashionable trousers. Around their necks the men wore elaborate pieces of silk or muslin, some starched upward into sharp points that hit the cheeks, some folded down into complicated, twisted knots.
“Look,” Mrs. Schlegel said, pointing out of the nearby French windows. “It’s that friend of yours, Fritz. Søren Kierkegaard.”
Fritz knew Søren?
Regina followed the direction of Mrs. Schlegel’s voluminous puffed sleeve and spied a frail, sodden figure entering the courtyard from the direction of the garden. Søren carried a cane, and his legs were so thin that he reminded Regina of one of the wooden soldiers that marched, expectant but forlorn, in a dusty corner of a nursery. Why does he look so unhealthy, Regina wondered. Maybe he puts all his energy into his brain.
“Well,” Mrs. Schlegel said, her voice poised for attack. Olga forced her way into their circle. Fritz’s two sisters, as sweet and gentle as placid cows, looked at their mother. “I hear that despite his father’s death, the youngest Kierkegaard has been promenading on the streets as usual.”
“His father’s death?” Regina repeated. The old man she’d met two weeks ago was dead? Impossible. If only she’d been kinder to him, if only she’d thought better of him.
“Yes,” Mrs. Schlegel said, rounding on Regina. “Did you know him?”
“I just met him,” Regina said. “I had no idea he was so close to death.”
“It happened only two days ago. But you’d never know it from his youngest son’s behavior,” Mrs. Schlegel continued, her voiced laced with disapproval, her body tense. Olga leaned in closer, soaking up Mrs. Schlegel’s words. “Everyone’s talking of it. They say Søren went to the opera the night after his father died and then on to Mimi’s. I myself passed him yesterday, and he stopped and greeted me as if it were the happiest of mornings. When I tried to express my condolences, he cut me short, made some entirely unsuitable joke about how the only thing changed was that now he had to study to be a priest since he could no longer torment the old man by refusing, and then he changed the subject.”
He probably cries at home, Regina longed to say. She compressed her mouth into a careful straight line.
“How shocking,” Olga cried, her already small eyes narrowing still further with pleasure. Fritz’s two sisters nodded in agreement.
“Who could expect any less from a man who leads such a dissolute lifestyle?” Mrs. Schlegel asked, raising her thin eyebrows. “It’s a good thing for him his father was one of the richest merchants in Copenhagen. He needs all that money to support himself.”
“Don’t believe a word of it, Mother,” Fritz said, shaking his head. “Søren is beside himself with grief. I’m sure of it.”
Regina nodded. That had to be right. Fritz was so understanding, so compassionate.
Mrs. Schlegel looked annoyed. “Then why doesn’t he act like it?”
“Mother,” Fritz said. “You’re forgetting that Søren has had to watch almost every member of his family die off, one by one. His mother and five of his six siblings all died before Søren reached the age of twenty-one. That sort of experience must do strange things to your head. It would make anybody act in ways that other people, without the same experience, could never understand.”
“At least one woman in this party has a soft heart,” Fritz said, smiling down at Regina.
“My heart is as soft as goose feathers,” Mrs. Schlegel snapped. “But I still don’t understand why the man has to go around trying to shock people.”
He has to shock them because he’s trying to hide his pain, Regina thought. His pain must be very, very great if he goes to such lengths to conceal it.
“He can’t help himself, Mother,” Fritz said. “It’s sort of his mission in life—shocking people. He hates complacency, you see.”
“Humph,” said Mrs. Schlegel. “I like my complacency, thank you very much.”
Regina laughed, and Mrs. Schlegel gave her an approving glance with her tiny sharp eyes. Maybe Fritz’s mother wasn’t so bad.
“He sounds dreadful,” Olga said, eagerly.
“Oh, Mother,” Fritz said. “You know you like Søren. Remember how hard he made you laugh the day he introduced himself to us at the opera? Right after we’d left the Olsen’s box?”
Had Søren followed Fritz on purpose in order to talk about Regina? It seemed unlikely, and yet there was something in Søren’s smile when he passed her in the street that made Regina feel sure he liked her. A slight ribbon of vanity rippled through Regina.
“Don’t you remember?” Fritz asked. “You laughed so hard that tears came into your eyes.”
“Tears came into my eyes because the man makes me cry,” Mrs. Schlegel said. She looked at the Olsen sisters. “Do you know Søren Kierkegaard?”
Olga shook her head. “Thank goodness, no.”
“We have met,” Regina said. Fritz glanced at her.
“He sounds mad,” Mrs. Schlegel said. “I can tell you, if he ever becomes ordained and finds a placement, that is one church I will never attend.”
“Perhaps you will not be asked to, Mother,” Fritz said, his eyes twinkling.
Regina looked away to hide her smile.
“That’s enough, Fritz. Take me into the next room,” Mrs. Schlegel said. Fritz moved so quickly to take his mother’s arm that he almost knocked Regina over.
He didn’t even ask me if I’m coming, Regina thought. Of course, it’s Fritz’s duty to humor his mother, she chided herself. You shouldn’t let your pride be so easily wounded.
Mrs. Olsen and Olga followed the Schlegels, but Regina lingered in the cupola room. She didn’t want to look as if she were following Fritz around like a puppy. Especially when he was with his mother.
She wandered around the gallery alone. The paintings seemed so flat, so two-dimensional. Why hadn’t Fritz taken her with him? She stamped her foot softly, quickly. Several people wandered past. They seemed to be staring at her. As an excuse for standing all by herself, she turned to look at the nearest painting. A tiny card mounted on the wall explained that the painting showed a bridge the moment after a woman in despair over an unrequited love had thrown herself off.
Unrequited love? Who would throw herself off a bridge for that?
In the painting, a crowd of people ran along the bridge, lit by a luminous moon. Regina looked closer. The bridge seemed to lean out of the painting, drawing her in, enticing her to step onto its wooden rails. A couple peered over the side of the bridge, their faces curious, questing. What could they see? Had the rescue begun? The moon cast a pale ghostly glow over the scene.
For the first time since entering the exhibition, Regina felt interested in the art.
“Did you know that moonlight is only reflected sunlight, Miss Olsen?” The sound of Søren Kierkegaard’s voice in her ear startled her.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, focused on the picture. “I did. But I always need to be reminded.” The quietness of Søren’s voice conveyed a feeling of intimacy, as if they were the only two people in the exhibition hall, as if this picture of the moonlit bridge was the only painting in the gallery.
Should she mention his father? She glanced at him. He stood beside her in an ill-fitting black coat, his spectacles slipping down his nose and his light blue eyes gleaming. But in his eyes, behind the veneer of impishness, she saw deep pain.
“I just heard about your father,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I am more devastated than I can say.”
Ha! Regina thought. He isn’t trying to shock me the way he did Fritz’s mother. A strange, dark feeling of power coursed through her.
He smiled sadly. “I am sure it will take a long time for my grief to awaken. But when it does, I may never recover.”
“I understand exactly,” she said.
He leaned closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but I am learning to imitate my father’s voice. So I can comfort myself when I am lonely.”
She smiled at him. “Perhaps you should seek comfort elsewhere.”
Inside, she kicked herself. It sounded like she was offering herself up for the job. “Your father sheltered me from a storm two weeks ago,” Regina blurted out, trying to cover the dreadful implications of her comment. “He was …” She searched for the right word. “Kind.”
“You were in my home?” Søren asked. “You met my father?”
“Yes,” she said. A pit formed in her stomach. Had he guessed there’d been no escort? “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “No, no. It’s just such a coincidence.” He paused. “Although … there’s no such thing as a coincidence if you believe in God.”
“No,” she said, “I suppose not.” For her pastor had just explained from a passage in Acts 17 that before the foundation of the world God determined the places we would live and the people we would meet.
The people we would meet.
She leaned forward to examine the painting, knowing that Søren continued to watch her.
“Do you like it, Miss Olsen?” he asked.
Was he talking only about the painting?
“Yes,” she said. She felt a silence hovering and blurted out, “What do you think the people on the bridge are looking at?”
“Would you like to know what I think, or what other people say?”
“Are those two things so very different?” She looked at him and felt startled at the way his solemn blue eyes stared straight back at her.
“What other people think, and what I think, are almost always very different things, Miss Regine Olsen.”
Regine Olsen. Her formal name in his mouth sounded like someone she didn’t know, someone she would like to know. She smiled. “Then tell me what you think.”
“I see a painting that suggests another world, the world of the spirit. And only the people on the bridge are aware of it.”
“And they are so entranced by eternity that they’ve forgotten all about the woman who jumped off the bridge?” Pointing at the notecard, she raised her eyebrows.
“Eternity has that effect on people,” he said. “The temporal ceases to matter at all.” He smiled at her, and he looked, for a moment, so happy and free that she felt the warm, soft breath of what had to be the Holy Spirit.
Was this why You wanted me here, Lord? To save him from himself? And she felt as puffed up as Mrs. Schlegel’s sleeves.
“Look,” she said, casting about the room for something else to please him with. “It stopped raining.”
“It stopped raining some time ago. Didn’t you notice?”
“Regina?”
Regina spun round and found Olga staring at her. She quickly made the introductions.
“Did you say Mr. Søren Kierkegaard?” Olga asked, giving Regina a significant glance.
Søren bowed with a grand flourish of his thin hands. In that bow, Regina saw him slip back into mockery. She felt a secret thrill of pride that she alone had seen the real Søren Kierkegaard, the vulnerable, kind, intimate Søren Kierkegaard.
“We’ve all been looking for you, Regina,” Olga said.
“I commend you for your concern about the well-being of your sister,” Søren told Olga. “The perils of being exposed to art, unaccompanied, at an impressionable age, cannot be underestimated.”
Olga frowned at Søren. Regina was amused, knowing Olga despised irony.
“I thought your sister’s name was Miss Regine Olsen,” Søren continued.
“Her closest friends call her Regina,” Olga said with a disdainful tilt of her tiny nose.
“Ah. Then perhaps I will one day earn that privilege.”
“Perhaps,” Olga said in a voice that suggested it highly unlikely.
“Perhaps sooner than you think,” Søren said. “My friend Fritz Schlegel has asked me to accompany him to your family’s weekly open house. Unless you bolt the door on me of course,” he added mischievously. Olga looked as if she’d been contemplating that very thing.
Søren was coming to their open house? Unexpectedly, disobediently, Regina’s heart leapt. Søren glanced at her.
“Until we meet again,” he said. He made a deep bow to each sister, in order of age, and departed.
The moment he left the cupola room, Olga’s lips curved into their usual downdraft. “Regina! Wasn’t that the very man Mrs. Schlegel just warned us about? The crazy one whose father just died? How right she was. He certainly didn’t look like a man in mourning. What was he talking to you about, anyway?”
“The paintings. Olga, didn’t you just visit that cathedral?” Regina asked, pointing to a large painting of Ribe Cathedral on the wall. “Is it a good rendering?”
“No,” Olga said, turning toward it. Regina sighed with relief. “It is called artistic license, Regina,” Olga continued in her most pedantic voice. “The artist has removed the organ in order to change the play of light along the walls. Personally, I abhor artists who take such license with historical fact.”
Regina sighed and tried to look as if she were paying attention. Through the long French windows, she spotted Søren Kierkegaard walking alone through the courtyard beneath them, toward the garden in the back. He moved with a slow and measured pace, and, from where Regina stood, he looked like he was smiling. She wondered what he was thinking about. Probably me.
“Regina.” Fritz sped eagerly into the cupola room ahead of his mother. His face came within inches of Regina’s. “I missed you, my darling,” he whispered.
As Regina smiled back at him, she noticed, for the first time, that his ears were unusually large.