“My heroine was Joan of Arc, and … for a number of months I dreamed of a similar task for myself.”
REGINE OLSEN
“It is said that the dancer’s hardest task is to … stand there in the leap itself.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“The rose blooms need pruning,” Mrs. Olsen announced to her daughters at the breakfast table the next morning.
Regina’s feet felt heavy as she followed her mother and sisters out to the small garden behind the house. Bees murmured sleepily from the moss-covered brick wall around the garden. The lavender—dusky purple flowers floating on stems of dusky green—gave off a languorous scent. The wrought iron gate leading to the canal sagged on its hinges. Mrs. Olsen bent to pull weeds from between the bricks of the garden path. Regina longed to be alone, to savor her thoughts and relive the open house in peace.
The Olsen women clipped the dead roses just below the buds. The Councilor strolled into the garden and seated himself on the bench to watch.
“The roses were so beautiful this summer,” Mrs. Olsen said.
“Don’t worship their beauty, girls,” the Councilor said.
“Yes, Father.” Olga, Cornelia, and Regina called out their practiced, singsong refrain.
“Roses have thorns, like all false idols. They’ll disappoint you, and, in the end, they’ll come to enslave you.”
“She was enslaved by a rose,” Regina said in a dramatic voice.
“That’s enough, Regina,” the Councilor said. “I’m serious. I’m talking about all roses–the brown-eyed as well as the blue-eyed varieties.”
“Yes, Father,” Regina said, wishing she could stop herself from blushing, wishing she didn’t have to hear the same lecture over and over. She already knew all about false idols, for heaven’s sake.
“Fritz Schlegel is such a nice young man,” Mrs. Olsen said.
“Then why does he hang around with that dreadful Søren Kierkegaard, that’s what I want to know,” Olga said. “And why does he have to keep bringing him here?” Dead roses fell all around Olga’s large feet.
“Your father likes him, Olga,” Mrs. Olsen said. “As do I. But where was Fritz last night? I missed him.”
“He left early,” Olga said.
Regina turned away to hide her embarrassment. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back,” she said, abandoning the roses and ignoring Olga’s sarcastic, “Of course you will.”
Regina slid into the empty hall. The narrow staircase above beckoned her, calling her name in a soft seductive whisper.
I only need a moment by myself, she thought. She crept upstairs, the narrow wooden stairs creaking. She passed her parent’s bedroom, its door open, the bed empty. Jonas’s door was shut. He was probably still asleep. The sluggard. She rounded the corner, went higher, and passed the girls’ rooms. She kept rising. Finally she reached the little dormer room at the top of the house, the one beside Anna’s bedroom.
The room didn’t belong to anybody. It was where the domestic business of the house was accomplished. It was intimate and cluttered, warm and quiet. Two black irons lay warming on the potbellied stove. Laundry that needed ironing lay in a pile on a shelf. Some sewing sat on the old wooden school desk by the window. This was not the elegant embroidery engaged in by the ladies of the house; this pile contained stockings that needed darning, trousers that needed patching, and sheets that had ripped.
Regina sat at the desk, the attic ceiling sloping down at a sharp angle above her. She was extremely happy, perhaps happier than she had ever been in her life. She reached up and touched her cheek. It felt soft. She realized that she was smiling and, fearful someone might walk in and see, she told herself to stop.
Full of nervous energy, Regina wanted to do something this very minute—dance or sing, she didn’t know which. Staring at the crystal punch bowl set, carried here so that Anna could file down the chips made in the rims of several of the fitted glasses, she imagined herself and Søren at a ball. He was offering her more punch, passing the glass to her without taking his eyes from hers.
Some nagging portion of her mind tried to force Fritz into this imagined scene, but she could not fit him in. The image of Søren was so much stronger, so much more intense. And yet, with a feeling of inevitability, she resigned herself to the fact that she most likely would end up staring at Fritz Schlegel across a crystal glass of punch.
She turned away and faced the tall, narrow, leaded window. The sun streamed in, and she turned the handle to open one side of the window. Cool air rushed in. There was something glorious in the contrast between the heat of the sun and the coolness of the sea breeze, both caressing her at the same time.
She peered out the window and looked down to the street and sea below. It was a long way down and she wondered, idly, what would happen if she jumped. Not that she wanted to jump, but the mere fact of being so close to the open window, so high up, so near to danger and yet feeling so removed from it, caused her to wonder what would happen if her sense and reason and everything she had ever been taught were completely wrong. What if she were to step out of the window and instead of plummeting to her death she floated gently down, her fall broken by the wind and air itself?
The idea that she could think this disturbed her. She closed her eyes. After awhile, she felt happy again, very happy. She felt that if she could only drink up the sun, absorb it into herself, something wonderful waited for her inside of it— something entirely satisfying that she had not yet found but knew existed.
It must be God I’m hungering for, she thought. Only He can satisfy me in the way I want. I won’t think of Søren Kierkegaard again.
Regina began to sing softly and she imagined Søren Kierkegaard somewhere in this city, sitting beneath another rooftop, listening to her with his head cocked to one side, thinking what a marvelous singer she was.
The sun began to feel too hot. She shifted in her seat and leaned back. She felt dissatisfied. She imagined herself sharing these thoughts with Søren. He would surely understand her strange dialectic with the sun. She wondered—and it seemed now an innocent thought, a perfectly innocuous thought—if she could make the corners of those wild eyes crackle with laughter.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to pray, to bring her Father back into her thoughts. Lord, help me dispel this demon of longing. Erase Søren from my mind. She opened her eyes, expecting an immediate answer. But Søren’s presence seemed to linger in the air around her.
Why, Lord? she asked to the open window. Why don’t You answer my prayer?
The sun continued to pour in and the sea, dangerous and enticing, shimmered in the distance. The only solution was to avoid Søren completely.
“Regina!”
Regina jumped and raced downstairs to hear her mother’s instructions.
No, she didn’t mind accompanying Cornelia to the haberdashery. Yes, she was sorry she hadn’t returned to the rose garden. As she tied the ribbons of her bonnet under her chin, Regina caught herself wondering if she would run into Søren along the way.
Danger beckoned from every street corner.