“While the party was at its liveliest, however,
Søren was taken ill, to the point of spitting up blood.
His fiancée, who had become very frightened, went to his
house several days later to hear how he was.”
HENRIETTE (“JETTA”) LUND
“I am so listless and dismal that I not only have nothing which fills my soul, but I cannot conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it—alas, not even the bliss of heaven.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
On the day after the party, Regina received no word from Søren. She didn’t go out, afraid that she might run into someone who would ask after her fiancé. It would be mortifying to admit that she had no idea.
The next morning, her mother called up the stairs. “Hurry, darling! Mr. Baerentzen is here to do your portrait.”
Regina jumped. She was sitting at her wooden vanity, fingering the few precious things she kept in a jewelry box while she stared at her face unraveling in the mirror.
“Regina! You’re not even dressed?”
Regina flinched. Her mother stood in the doorway, surprise lifting the soft lines of her face.
“Sorry,” Regina said. She turned back to the table as if trying to decide which earrings to wear. The china ballerina that stood inside her jewelry box tilted sideways. Inside lay her gold cross, three pairs of earrings, and a silver brush that had once belonged to her great-grandmother Regine. It had an R punched out in small holes in its silver back. Regina held an earring up to her face.
“For heavens sake, Regina, what’s wrong with you?” Mrs. Olsen stepped into the room. “Stop looking at yourself in the mirror. Where’s your dress?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Olsen opened the armoire, took out the engagement dress, and laid it on the bed. The emerald green of the dress made a lovely contrast to the pale yellow of the coverlet.
“It’s beautiful,” Regina said, without moving.
“What’s wrong, Regina?”
“Nothing.” As she said it, however, Regina felt something soft inside descend from her throat down into her stomach.
“Good.” Her mother’s eyes sparkled with intrigue. “Then I will go downstairs and ply the very famous Mr. Baerentzen with hot tea, and, with any luck, he’ll not even notice that his young subject has not arrived.” She turned to walk out. “Are you sure I can’t help? At least your hair is done. Can I lace you?”
Regina shook her head. “I’m already laced,” she said. It had been a long time since she’d been unlaced.
Regina held the cross up to her neck but put it down again. No necklace, she decided. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. The skin on her chest looked too pale. She pinched her cheeks to pink them. She looked so young, like a baby. She stood up, then sat down again and stared at the dress. What could she have done while wearing this dress that had so offended Søren? She could hardly stand to touch it, let alone put it on.
Regina felt as if she had two selves—one made of skin stretched tight across bone and muscle, the other, inside, as ephemeral as silk. She could imagine the bone and flesh self putting on this dress, marching downstairs, and posing as the intended of Søren Kierkegaard. But even as she pictured this, she could feel the other self crumple inside of her and fall with a soft floating motion down to her toes.
The muscle-bone self put on the dress, greeted Mr. Baerentzen, smiled graciously, apologized for detaining him, sat on a chair, and kept a smile hovering about her lips for an hour while the soft, silken self remained lying upstairs on her bedroom floor.
“I like to see a woman well draped,” Mr. Baerentzen said, nodding at the black, satin-lined velvet stole draped around Regina’s shoulders.
“Regina,” her mother cried, clapping her soft hands together. “Where’s your new green cape?”
“Søren prefers black,” she said.
“Yes, yes!” Mr. Baerentzen proclaimed, holding up one hand, the white sleeve of his painter’s smock billowing and his blue eyes blazing. “Not green on green. Boring, boring. Like a late summer forest. Black over green is superb, like joy at a funeral.”
Regina’s mother raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Regina coughed into her hand.
The moment Mr. Baerentzen left, Regina lifted her new tilting casquet high over her head. It was a black velvet hat built along the lines of a classic helmet—appropriate, Regina thought, for doing battle with a difficult man. She fastened the buttons of her pelisse, marched out the front door, and set out alone for Søren’s apartment on Norregade. The waves across the street slapped at the wharf. Green slime coated the base of the boats. The tang of salt water sharpened the frown on her face. She walked quickly, head down against the wind, head down against her doubts. But the soles of her black boots tapped out the rebukes on the cobbled streets: you shouldn’t go there alone, it isn’t right, everyone is watching.
Regina sped up. It was so cold, she felt as if the wind had wound its way inside her bones. Falling leaves swirled from the trees lining the streets. The trees rocked in the wind with dignity, their limbs elegant and stately despite their reduced palette of brown, rust, and burnt sienna. Carriages rolled past, and gentlemen walked toward her. She stopped on the street outside Søren’s apartment and gazed up at the second floor. There were so many windows.
Regina guessed that there were about four rooms in the front and as many in the back. Lamps shone from behind a few of the curtained windows, but the others looked dark. Was anyone standing behind the curtains, looking down at her? She clutched her arms around her and shivered. She felt exposed standing outside Søren’s windows wondering what lay concealed behind the glass.
The wind picked up, and the wizened leaves swirled in an updance, like migrating birds. “You should go home,” the leaves seemed to rustle.
She lunged forward and throttled the doorbell. It gave a high-pitched, ratchety wail and then died out.
No answer. Regina hesitated, her hand hovering over the bell’s lever. Should she ring again?
The silence taunted her. He doesn’t love you. He never loved you. He couldn’t treat you like this if he did.
She jammed her finger on the lever a second time. It made another tinny, ratchety noise. After several seconds, she swung round. She would go home where she belonged.
The door creaked open. She turned back. “Sør—”
It was his houseman, Anders. Anders’s creased face creased further. He looked around.
“Is Mr. Kierkegaard at home?” Regina asked.
Anders frowned and looked past her again.
Regina stepped forward.
Anders didn’t move. She was so close to him, she could have pushed him over.
“I am here to inquire if my fiancé is all right,” she said in her stateliest voice.
“Mr. Kierkegaard is recovering well,” Anders said, not budging.
“I’d like to see that for myself.”
Anders moved aside just enough to let her pass, but not enough to make her feel welcome. She marched into the darkness. He walked past her and led the way up one warped, wooden flight of stairs. The stairs cracked and groaned as if they might give way at any second.
Anders opened a door onto a hall lit by a single candle on the wall. Except for the grandfather clock ticking nearby, the house was quiet. The stillness contrasted markedly with the busy street noises she had left outside.
Anders looked at the wall.
“Is there a room where I might wait?” she asked.
He straightened his back like a soldier coming to attention, and seized upon her words. “A room to wait in,” he repeated. He shuffled through the gloomy hall and pushed open a heavy door to the right. An unearthly glow beckoned from the open door.
She entered the room alone, passing Anders with a smile as if to reassure him that it was all right, that he had put her in the right place. He closed the door behind her.
She stared around the room. It seemed to be a sort of library. The thick, velvet curtains were drawn shut, yet she counted ten oil lamps lit. It was an extraordinary number for such a small room. They hung in the enforced darkness like multiple moons, flooding the room with an overbright glow. The air was heavy with the pungent scent of burning oil and something that smelled vaguely of eau de cologne.
She remained standing in the center of the room, her confidence fading away as she realized she was indeed alone. Leather-bound books filled the dark walnut shelves. A leather wing-backed chair, a large rosewood desk, and a thick, walnut desk chair with round brass studs sat in a nook. On the desk lay a room thermometer. She checked it; it read 60 degrees.
She shivered. The curtains bulged in the middle and a freezing cold draft blasted in. Were all the windows open? And why were the curtains shut in the middle of the morning? Just wait until this was her house. The curtains would be opened, the windows closed, the stove lit, the open surfaces covered with fresh flowers.
As Regina tried to reassure herself, she sensed something intruding upon her. Something large and worrisome bore down on her. She turned to face it. It was a huge mahogany stand to the right of the desk—the sort of stand a conductor uses to hold sheet music. It stood alone, erect as a fir tree. An inkstand lay open beside it, and a pen lay on the base of the stand, as if Søren had stopped writing mid-sentence. The stand was covered with quarto sheets of paper, each square filled to the margins with Søren’s scrawled black handwriting. Papers littered the floor as if Søren had stood there for days writing so fast that the pages had poured off the stand as quickly as the words from his pen. The papers looked so forlorn they reminded her of tear drops fallen to the floor, now abandoned.
She averted her eyes from the stand. Søren would not like for her to be here; he would not like for her to see this testimony to his mania.
She planted herself on the edge of a small love seat. If Søren was going to walk in on her, he should find her as far as possible from that music stand. She ran her hand along the scratchy surface of the beige and maroon sofa. It was the ugliest she’d ever seen. Who on earth had purchased it?
It must have been Søren’s mother. After all, she’d been a servant in the household while Mr. Kierkegaard’s first wife lay dying. Søren’s mother, with her peasant background, probably wouldn’t have had the good taste exhibited by the other furnishings in this room.
Regina gave a mental snap of her fingers. No, Søren had once told her that his father had taken care of all purchases himself, right down to the Christmas goose. The poor mother hadn’t been allowed to buy anything. What accounted for this tasteless piece, this aberration in an otherwise attractive room?
In contrast to the sofa, a leather, maroon chair in the corner looked invitingly shiny and smooth. She exhaled, imagining Søren spending his days perusing a book, sprawled in this sedate chair, one ankle crossed over the other knee. She didn’t like to think of him standing at that music stand, frenetic activity forced from aching fingers.
She jiggled up and down on the sofa and clutched her black stole around her shoulders. She wished she weren’t here. It was Anders’s fault for choosing this room. It was her mother’s fault for making her do that ridiculous portrait.
It was her own fault.
She rose to go, and it was then that her feet wandered over to the music stand. Her eyes took in the words before she could admit to herself that she was spying.
“Once in his early youth a man allowed himself to be so far carried away in an overwrought irresponsible state as to visit a prostitute. It is all forgotten. Now he wants to get married. Then anxiety stirs. He is tortured day and night with the thought that he might possibly be a father,
that somewhere in the world there could be a created being
who owes his life to him.”
The entry broke off there.
Regina’s hand flew to her mouth. She stumbled backward, away from the music stand. A prostitute? Søren?
Was that what Mrs. Rordam and Mrs. Schlegel had meant when they referred to Søren’s profligate ways? Regina’s stomach twisted. She pictured the rouged, red-shoed woman she had seen walking out of that brothel so long ago. She pictured the woman’s complacent smile. She imagined Søren’s pale hands reaching, his expressive lips …
No! She held out one hand. It wasn’t possible. This was just fiction. Søren liked to imagine things. He wasn’t writing about himself—just making up a story. Perhaps it was to be a novel. Yes, it had to be that. It was her fault—this trembling in her stomach, this aching in her chest—for spying. She felt as if the weight of her body were dragging her groundward.
But reason intruded on her fantasy. It would be exactly like Søren to think that visiting a prostitute created an impediment to marriage. He was the sort of person who would consider himself virtually married to this prostitute. It was ridiculous, pitiable. And yet … It all had to do with forgiveness, with not feeling forgiven, with …
Regina’s frenzied thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Søren walked in, looking paler than she’d ever seen him. “What are you doing here?” His voice was cold.
She took a step backward. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have come. But I had to know how you are.” She fought to control her limbs, to prevent him from seeing how violently she was trembling. She took a few steps closer to the ugly sofa.
Søren’s eyes darted from her to the music stand. He strode into the room and stopped in the middle, blocking her path to it. “Are you spying on me?”
“I’m—I—Anders—” She broke off and regathered herself. “What do you mean, am I spying on you? You leave our party, coughing up blood, then you send no word? What am I to think? Everyone has asked after you. I had no answer. I was mortified. And of course worried about you. I’m worried sick.” She stopped and stared at him, defiant, panting.
Could he guess she’d read about the prostitute?
“You shouldn’t have come here without a chaperone,” he said.
She cringed. Of course she knew that. Did he think her a fool?
“Fine,” she said. “I’m leaving.” She swung round so sharply that the bottom of her corset dug into the soft part of her stomach.
“Good,” he said. “Anders will see you out.”
She glared at him, but he’d already turned away from her and was heading over to the stand. Just as she walked out the door, she heard herself speak, as if from a distance. “I will write to you.”
Anders waited in the hall. Was that a triumphant look in his narrow eyes? She whirled away from him.
From the study came Søren’s voice. “See Miss Olsen out, Anders. And when you come back, adjust this room. It is two degrees too warm.”
Back in the street, Regina came to herself again. There’s no way I’m writing to him. But then the image loomed in front of her of the alarm on Søren’s face when he had begun to spit up blood. And she remembered the awful redness of his blood in contrast to the paleness of his face. And that redness blended with the redness of the prostitute’s shoes, of her cheeks, of her petticoat.
I’m writing to him the moment I get home.
She walked slowly past the Church of Our Lady, trying to calm down. She had to walk herself into a reasonable explanation for the prostitute story, but the slower she walked, the lower her imagination dove. It took every muscle in her body to prevent herself from turning back, confessing her spying, and confronting him.
Regina crossed the bridge and headed to the Six Sisters. The wind, swarming over the open water beside her, seemed even colder than before. Her feet felt the coldest. She wondered what frostbite felt like. Then she remembered that frostbite set in after the numbness, after one ceased to feel anything.
She sped down Borsgade, wishing she didn’t have to expose herself to the cold, and pushed open her front door. A letter and bulky package lay on the claw-footed silver tray. She knew it was from Søren even before she raced over to read her name on the envelope.
He must have written the letter the moment she’d left. He probably ordered poor Anders to run. Why, if his heart had been so full, couldn’t he have told her what he had to say in person? She ripped open the package, letting the brown paper fall around her onto the black and white floor.
It was a leather-bound copy of the New Testament. Why was Søren sending her the New Testament? The hypocrite. He was the one who needed it—him and his prostitute.
She tore open the letter:
“My Regina!
Whom most they love they most chastise:
’Tis folly in the whole world’s eyes.
Both walk as one to death and grave:
The world thinks ‘madly’ they behave.
When I have spoken with you as I did today, not coldly and severely (I would never be able to do that) but seriously albeit mildly and tenderly, I should not like you to think for a moment that I feel myself superior at such times; and to show you that I chastise myself in the same way, I send you as a remembrance of this morning a copy of the New Testament and thank God that I became the person charged with providing you with that which we all need. You know that the angels in heaven rejoice in your every victory, but surely their joy is not diminished by the presence of one person on earth, an insignificant being to be sure, who humbly shares their joy.
Your S.K.”
She scowled. The letter was so patronizing. She grew angrier the more she read. She wanted to heave her chest, to huff and puff, but her corset was too tight. She could only exhale quick, short, angry breaths. Did he think he was her spiritual mentor?
Lord, she prayed, take away my anger. Let me not resent someone giving me the Bible.
She waited, but her anger refused to subside. “What is it, Regina?” Cornelia, her voice gentle, stood an arm’s length away. “What did he give you?” “A book,” Regina said, flipping over the cover. “Just a book.”
* * *
Søren visited the next day. She waited in the sitting room. She did not look up when he entered. This time she was determined to maintain her air of wounded pride.
He took his usual seat across from her and said all of the things he hadn’t said in the letter. He was touched by her concern. He thanked her for it. He told her that the coughing attack was probably connected to back pains from which he often suffered as a result of a fall from a tree when he was a boy. He spoke in a low, alluring voice. She looked up, once, and saw that some color had returned to his cheeks.
“It was wrong of me,” she said, “to visit you without a chaperone. But it was worse for you not to have sent me any word after you were ill.”
“True,” he said.
“At least you admit it,” she said. She felt herself beginning to soften again, and she spurred herself on. “I was humiliated when you sent me a copy of the New Testament.”
“Humility is the goal of the New Testament,” he said, raising one eyebrow.
“Something you know little of.”
“I thought we were discussing you, Regina.”
“If the shoe fits,” she said, “wear it.” The red shoe.
“Is there something else bothering you, Regina? Because you look very agitated.”
“Something besides your rudeness?”
A still, small voice told her not to lie. It whispered to her of another way—a way of truth, of confessing your faults, of asking the man you wanted to marry about a pair of red shoes that lay sprawled on the floor between you, sprawled and poised to trip whoever tried to walk that way.
“No,” she said, allowing the darkness to overtake the truth the way a darkened doorway might swallow up a lady of the night.
“Good, because I’ve come to tell you I’ve changed my mind. You won’t be a country pastor’s wife.”
“No? Out with the geese, cows, and ducks? In with the cathedrals and palaces?”
“No, no. I don’t mean I’ll be a city pastor. I mean, I won’t be a pastor at all. Not for awhile, anyway.”
“Oh, what will you be?”
“What will I become? I don’t know. There is so much glory, beauty, love overflowing in my soul. I feel I must empty myself of it first—a sort of poetic emptying.”
“Yes. You might scare your parishioners to death if you talk like that.”
“Ha! Ha! But do you mind … will you mind?”
“Watching you empty yourself poetically? Not if some of the poems are for me.”
“Everything I write will be for you. Always. No matter what.” He rose to go.
Already? She jammed her lips together. Don’t beg. Don’t ask him to stay.
The moment the front door closed behind him, Regina darted over to the window and hid behind the curtains. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her spying on him.
Out on the street, Søren turned and looked right up at her as if he’d known she would be there. Furious with herself, she wanted to turn away. But she couldn’t help smiling at him instead.