“By then I was already recommending certain passages of books to her.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Oh, that Fritz could forgive me for being a little scoundrel.”
REGINE OLSEN
“What is this horrible skull doing here?” Cornelia asked, walking in the front door ahead of Regina and their mother the next morning. A white skull grinned from the silver tray on the hall table. The mirror on the wall above reflected the back of the skull’s head.
“It must be your father’s,” Mrs. Olsen said, shutting the front door behind them. She dabbed at her round face with her handkerchief. “Probably something to do with that self-portrait he keeps threatening to paint. But I don’t know why he has to keep it on the hall table.”
“Maybe he hopes it will inspire us to find husbands sooner,” Regina said. “It’s lucky Marie is married; it takes some of the pressure off the rest of us.”
“Regina,” Mrs. Olsen said, making the three syllables ring with gentle reproach.
“It’s not my fault I’m not married,” Regina said. “I don’t know why Father should hint so often. I’m not even confirmed yet. Not for three more days, anyway.”
“If you’d been brought up in the Lutheran church like I wanted,” Mrs. Olsen said, “you would have been confirmed years ago. I was confirmed when I was thirteen. I don’t know why the Moravians wait so long.”
“Someone needs to propose first anyway,” Regina said.
“Oh, I think Fritz Schlegel will pounce the moment you are confirmed,” Mrs. Olsen said.
Oh no, Regina thought. What if she’s right?
“Look,” Cornelia said. “Someone has been here while we were out.” She picked up a white calling card half hidden beneath the skull. “S. Kierkegaard,” Cornelia read out. “How unusual for Mr. Kierkegaard to pay a morning call.”
The air in the front hall shimmered. The engraved, scripted letters of the calling card seemed to Regina to leap off the white paper. She felt like grabbing the card and pressing it to her lips.
Olga shot round from behind the staircase. “Thank God you’re back. He’s going to return any minute, and I, for one, do not want to have to see him again.”
“Olga,” Mrs. Olsen said while Regina whirled her shawl off her shoulders.
“If you’d seen him this morning, you’d have retired to bed with a headache. You’re lucky I’m still standing. I met him on the front steps just as he was leaving. Apparently he missed all of us. He thrust this book at me.” Olga held out a green book. “He literally thrust it. He didn’t even notice that I was laden with packages, very heavy packages. And on a day when the weather seems to think it’s July, not September. He insisted that I read the book, that we all read it. He said it was imperative, that we had not a minute to spare, that it was the most important book of the year, if not the century.”
“So what did you do?” Regina asked, trying not to laugh.
“What could I do?” Olga shrugged. “He jammed the book on top of my packages. I told him I might look at it later, after I had unwrapped my heavy load. Of course he didn’t get the hint.”
“Just like your father,” Mrs. Olsen said as she wandered away down the hall.
“And then?” Regina asked.
“Well,” Olga said, “that wasn’t good enough for him. He said there was nothing I could be doing, nothing, that was as important as this book. Then he ripped off a sheet of paper from heaven knows where, grabbed the book back from me— literally grabbed it mind you—and earmarked the passage that we all had to read.”
Cornelia rolled her eyes. Olga’s whole face lit up.
Regina tried to suppress the grin lashing its way out the corners of her mouth. Søren had intended the passage for her. Of course he had. He was probably smirking to himself right now about his cleverness. Cornelia might have kept the book to herself, devouring it for weeks; Marie might have lost it; Jonas would probably have tossed it in the trash; but to give it to Olga in this intrusive way absolutely ensured that everyone in the household would hear about it.
Regina’s hands itched to grab the book out of Olga’s arms. She put her hands behind her back. “Did you read the passage?” she asked.
“How could I resist, when my very life depended on it?”
“And?”
“It was something flowery about summer and winter, blooming and withering flowers. You know the sort of thing. Of course, not a matter of life and death at all.”
Regina was tempted to point out that blooming and withering flowers were in fact a matter of life and death, but she knew that Olga did not appreciate puns. “May I?” she asked, trying desperately to conceal her eagerness.
Olga handed it over as if delighted to be rid of it. “Read it quickly,” she said, “because he warned me he couldn’t bear to let the book out of his hands for long and would be back any minute to collect it.” Olga threw her hands in the air. “I’ve never met such an exasperating man.”
Regina nodded, already halfway to the sitting room. She darted into a chair and rifled through the pages. The book was bound in dark green leather, with four soft knobs in its spine. The title read Woodland Poetry, in gilded letters. As Olga had said, the marked passage had to do with winter and summer, age and youth. She read a few lines.
But the skirt of her yellow organza gown kept wrinkling. Why wouldn’t it behave? She smoothed it out. She smoothed it out again. She felt her curls with her fingers—only a few strays. She tucked them behind her ears and read a few more words. Tick, tock, tick, boomed the grandfather clock. She looked up. No, it wasn’t the doorknocker. She tried to find her place in the book again.
Doom, doom, doom, cried the doorknocker.
Regina jumped. Why should she jump when she’d been waiting for that very sound? She stood up and then sat down again. She closed the book. She placed her hands on her lap. Then she opened the book and held it higher. Over the top of the book, she watched Anna walk across the hall to answer the door. How could anybody walk so slowly? she wondered. Anna said something in her broad, Jutland accent about Miss Regine being alone in the sitting room. Regina turned a page.
“Ah, Anna. Just the news I wanted to hear,” Fritz’s voice said.
Regina slammed the book shut. It made a noise as loud as the sound of the parishioners closing their hymnals just before the last “Amen.” She thrust Søren’s book down on her grandmother’s oak-paneled blanket chest and grabbed her sewing.
Oh. She should have removed Søren’s calling card from the tray.
No. It wasn’t her fault that Søren had called.
“Søren’s beat me to it, I see,” Fritz said, his voice muffled by the distance between them.
“Olga saw him,” Regina called back. Tick, tock, tick, insisted the clock.
“Lovely skull,” Fritz said to Regina, handing Anna his top hat and walking straight into the little blue sitting room. “A relative of yours?”
“Hello, Fritz,” Regina said, smiling. But her eyes looked past him, as if expecting Søren to be lurking in his shadow. Despite the heat, Fritz looked as healthy and fresh as an autumn breeze in his white trousers and shirt and his knee-length, blue-gray coat. Though his cheeks glowed from the brisk walk, his brown eyes held the look of an injured schoolboy.
He wants me to apologize for not siding with him at the open house, Regina thought. He wants me to reassure him, to tell him I missed him. She picked up her sewing.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited in the past week,” he said, taking her mother’s soft armchair. “I … had some arrangements to make.” He paused. “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed.” He pursed his lips and looked at her.
He looked ridiculous. She should tell him he was right, she hadn’t noticed. But what if he never called again? And what if Søren disappeared as unexpectedly as he had come?
“Of course I noticed,” she said.
Fritz’s face transformed. His eyes lit up. He looked as if he were going to start panting and bound over to her at any second.
Cornelia peered into the sitting room, but when she saw Fritz and her sister, she made some excuse and left them alone.
“Fritz,” Mrs. Olsen said, her skirts and petticoats rustling as she swept into the sitting room. The white lace of her bonnet stuck out like a fan above her large round face. “Welcome. I’ll be back with you in a minute. Look after him, Regina dear.” Then she bustled out, her stiff shoes creaking with her weight.
Fritz stretched his legs out in front of him as if he were in his own sitting room, as if he were already married to Regina, as if he had been married to her for years. A knot formed in her stomach, a hard and unyielding knot. Father wouldn’t like Fritz making himself so comfortable in Mother’s chair, she told herself.
Regina opened the lid of the mother-of-pearl and mahogany sewing chest and pulled out a new thread. How could she thread a needle in front of a gentleman without licking it? She jammed the thread at the tiny hole, but the ends had already begun to unravel. She licked it quickly, furtively, and then threaded the needle.
When she glanced up, Fritz was still leaning back, his hands locked behind his head, his eyes fixed on the white stucco ceiling. He hadn’t noticed her dilemma at all. But if Søren had been sitting there, he would not only have watched her struggle to thread the yarn and finally lick it, but he would have made some observation about the difficulty of restraining errant threads. And the lift of his eyebrows and twist of his lips would have implied some deeper meaning, transforming the banality of her everyday existence into an allegorical tale of good overcoming evil. If only Fritz had some of the qualities that drew her to Søren. It would make everything so much easier.
Fritz bent forward. His face took on an eager, significant look.
She stiffened.
“You look as fresh and innocent as a rose today, my little Regina.”
Her needle froze mid-stitch. “Thank you,” she said.
“So when are you finally going to get confirmed?”
“Soon.” She twisted the ends of another thread into a knot. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“All sorts of exciting things can happen in Copenhagen to a young lady who gets confirmed, you know. How soon?”
“Soon,” she said. Too soon, she thought. What if Fritz proposes first?
Regina dropped her sewing, leapt up, and walked over to the open window. Outside, several large ships rested by the pier, their sails furled. No breeze blew in. “I wonder where Mother went?” she said. She faced Fritz.
“Nervous, Regina?” He grinned.
“Of course not. Why would I be nervous?”
She knew that she would marry Fritz because she loved him and he loved her, but first she had to get over her obsession with Søren Kierkegaard. If only she could talk to Fritz about it. But he was the last person she could tell.
“Maybe I need to have a chat with your priest,” Fritz said. “What’s going on in that Brethren church of yours? I think you should join the Lutheran church, like the rest of us.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not confirmed at eighteen? Do they know how many young men they are holding at bay? How many are lining up, waiting for the moment of Miss Regina Olsen’s confirmation? How many young men are—”
“Perhaps I shall get married to the church,” she interrupted. “How do you know I won’t become a nun?”
She hadn’t thought of this before, but as she said the words, she pictured herself spending her days inside the stone walls of a nunnery. The image was not unpleasant. In fact, an abbey suddenly seemed a peaceful place, a place where she would not have to make choices because everything would be decided for her.
“I know you will not become a nun,” he said.
The look in his eyes made her need to change the subject. “I’m glad you’re here, Fritz,” she said. She noticed, with a feeling almost of guilt, how handsome he was looking.
“Where else would I be?” He looked content, as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
The heat pressed in upon her. He seemed to have no idea that her thoughts lingered with another.
Suddenly, the doorknocker sang out rat, rat, rat, and Regina’s heart lifted and sank at the same time. Anna answered the door, and Mrs. Olsen greeted Søren and said she would be right in. Fritz stood up with such a look of pleasure at the sound of his friend that Regina felt her heart might burst with guilt. She wished Fritz would leave. Then she wished Søren would leave.
Mostly she felt like leaving herself.