“I had never really thought of being married.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“That I one day should marry Søren was actually quite foreign to my thoughts.”
REGINE OLSEN
“You look thin, Regina.” Her grandmother reached across the coach with a concerned expression in her lovely eyes.
“It’s the shock of being engaged to me for an entire winter,” Søren said.
The Councilor laughed. Regina tried to smile to hide her distress from her parents. But it seemed as if Søren had been in an irritable mood for months, and she didn’t know how to fix it. She was seated between her father and Søren in a tall Holstein coach with wicker sides and wide seats. Her grandparents sat with her mother on the opposite seat. To Regina’s dismay, Jonas and Peter Christian sat together up on the driver’s seat. Peter Christian had dismissed the driver and insisted on driving them all himself. His hooked nose, heavy jowls, and the severely straight, thin hair hanging beneath his hat seemed to announce his disapproval of his younger brother.
Regina hoped that the day would be peaceful, and that Søren would behave himself. It seemed ominous, however, that two of his favorite targets were sitting together. She feared the challenge would spur Søren on to new heights of sarcasm.
She hugged her green cape around her high-waisted yellow brocade dress. She looked around at the scenery in order to calm herself. The willow trees dipped their branches to the edge of the water, leaning close as if to whisper in each other’s ears. Daffodils and red tulips grew in profusion, lending to the idyllic pastoral feeling of this entrance to the Deer Park. Maybe the scenery would cast a spell over Søren, lulling him into contentment.
“The birds are so loud,” Søren said. “Squawking like women at the dressmakers.”
Regina laughed. “They’re so happy it’s spring.”
She was happy it was spring. It had been a long winter. On many an evening, Søren had sat beside her reading Mynster’s sermons, weeping. She knew how strongly the light affected depressive people. Sixteen blizzards that season hadn’t exactly helped Søren’s spirits.
Thank You, Lord, she whispered, for sending the sunshine, for sending the spring. Everything will be all right now.
“How damp it smells,” Søren said.
Regina breathed in. He was right. Why hadn’t she noticed the murky smell of the lake before?
“It always smells damp in the Deer Park,” the Councilor agreed. Peter Christian turned around and glanced at Søren.
“The movement of the carriage wheels gives me the illusion I can feel the earth moving,” Søren said. “Do you think a person would go insane if he were constantly aware the earth was going around?”
“Definitely,” Regina said, putting one hand on his knee to steady him.
Further along down the forest road past the lake, the sun played among the new leaves of the beech trees. Beneath the trees, a carpet of grass lay interspersed with patches of white and yellow flowers. Male deer rubbed their newly sprouting antlers against the bases of the trees, gnawing at the bark and stripping the trees bare.
The wheels of the carriage creaked as they turned. They passed a group of white deer who eyed the carriage without moving. The musky deer odor became stronger even than the smell of the horses.
“We’re lucky it’s not yet mating season,” Regina’s grandfather said. “I was once in an open coach that passed between the two wives of a male deer. The young buck charged straight at me.” Her grandfather goggled his large eyes as if in alarm, and all the women in the carriage laughed at his self-deprecating, good-natured manner. He had a way of making everyone feel better about themselves. Like Fritz, Regina thought.
“We had cut that young buck off from the wife he preferred,” Regina’s grandmother added, “and I can tell you he did not like it.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t even his favorite,” Søren said. “Perhaps he just didn’t like the idea of being separated from any of his possessions.”
“Yes,” Regina’s father replied, reaching across the open space in the center of the carriage to pat his wife’s knee. “We animals are possessive of our possessions.”
Søren and Regina’s father guffawed together at the implied parallels between the animal kingdom and humans. Regina cringed at their suggested bawdiness, especially in relation to her mother. As they drew close to the older bucks, Regina could see the muscles of their necks straining in order to hold up their huge antlers. It seemed unfair to her, even ridiculous, that they should be so burdened by their masculinity.
Jonas turned in the driver’s seat to look down at Søren. “Regina says you’ve almost finished writing your thesis.”
Søren nodded.
“What’s it about, anyway?” Jonas asked.
Regina looked up at Jonas to see if he was mocking. But the sculpted lines of Jonas’s face looked handsome and relaxed. Regina felt flattered that her brother was making an effort with her fiancé.
“Irony,” Søren said. He began whistling an aria from Don Giovanni.
“Ironing?” Jonas cupped one hand to his ear.
Søren stopped whistling.
“Irony,” Regina said quickly.
“Have you read it, Regina?” Mrs. Olsen asked.
“I tried,” she said, “but I fell asleep. Its irony was too absolute for me.”
Søren did not laugh.
“Oh, Søren,” Regina said. “Don’t you get it? It’s funny! In the middle of reading about how irony leads you to nothing, it led me into a deep dreamless nothing.”
“I see,” Søren said. He turned away and picked a small feather out of his cape.
“Irony is all Søren can write about,” Peter Christian said without turning around.
Søren stiffened.
“What do you mean?” the Councilor called up. Regina gave a warning frown to her father, but he ignored her.
“I mean, now that Søren has given up seminary, he has nothing left but irony,” Peter Christian said.
Søren’s lips curled.
The Councilor laughed. Regina tried to shush him again, but her father just grinned. “I take it you disapprove?” the Councilor said.
“My brother has been so busy searching for himself,” Peter Christian said, “that he’s got nothing else left.”
“Except me,” Regina said, gripping Søren’s arm and feeling the tension coursing through his still limbs. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. Slowly, he lit a cigar. Tiny muscles rippled in his face.
He was trying to think of a clever retort.
“My brother is right,” Søren said. Slowly, he exhaled. Thick black smoke hit Regina’s eyes, making them sting. “My search for a profession has ended nowhere. I considered being a detective, then a doctor. But I barely read or think about an illness before I have it. The anxiety of studying all those maladies would completely undo me.”
Even Peter Christian laughed at this.
“Then I landed on being a country priest. But, unlike my brother, I realized that my whole life devoted to the service of God would scarcely be enough to atone for the dissipation of my youth.”
Regina looked out at the pools of water collecting in low-lying indentations in the ground. Moss coated the base of the trees that grew out of these pools. A duck with a translucent green head rested beside the rainwater. The red tulips seemed to transform before her eyes into a field of red shoes.
Why can’t he learn about forgiveness, Lord?
“Then I realized that none of these choices are significant,” Søren said in a loud voice. “They are aesthetic, irrelevant.”
“True,” Peter Christian said. “Your consolation is the next world, not this one.”
“No,” Regina said so sharply that everyone stared at her. “I mean … God promises joy in this world, too.”
“Not for the Kierkegaards, I think,” the Councilor said.
“Holy Scripture teaches that those whom God has loved are always unhappy,” Søren said.
“That’s wrong,” Regina said.
“Regina,” her grandmother said, putting a restraining hand on Regina’s knee from across the seat.
“God is love,” Regina said. “He can’t have put us here just to suffer.”
“Your daughter,” Søren said to the Councilor, “is in the thrall of mediocrity.” Søren sighed and shook his head. “Like the rest of her country, she doesn’t understand that to be a Christian is to suffer.”
The Councilor laughed. “I’ve been telling her her whole life that Christianity is renunciation. She just refuses to believe me.”
“I’ve never heard such piffle,” Regina’s grandmother said.
Regina laughed, thrilled that her grandmother had switched sides. “You two just want to make everyone else as depressed as you are,” Regina said.
“The problem with women,” Søren said to the Councilor, “is that they have all those tears and sighs to defend themselves against suffering. Only we men have the strength to accept and bear suffering straight up.”
“Is he always like this?” Regina’s grandmother asked her.
Regina nodded.
“Good heavens,” her grandmother said. “I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Of course, I don’t blame poor Regina,” Søren went on. “Everyone wants to get hold of the truth without suffering. Unfortunately, God has arranged this existence such that it is impossible to be related in truth to truth without suffering. But it takes an originality—”
“A genius, really,” the Councilor added.
“To understand,” Søren finished.
“Why do I need to suffer?” Regina raised her eyebrows. “I can just watch you two truth seekers enjoy it.”
“Cannibal,” Søren said.
“I thought we came here to enjoy the balmy spring weather,” Regina’s grandfather complained.
“Pardon me,” Søren said, a glint in his eyes.
“Finish your story of your search for a profession, Søren,” the Councilor said. “We’ll talk of existence later.”
“So,” Søren continued, his eyes still gleaming, “on a recent Sunday afternoon, I sat smoking my cigar as usual in the café in Frederiksberg Gardens, and I got the notion to try my hand at being an author. In other words, I decided to be nothing at all, as my brother says.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Peter Christian said.
“I don’t want to. Everyone else stays so busy pursuing the moment. They don’t have time to consider life. They need me to sit around doing nothing so I can point out their weaknesses.”
“Don’t!” Regina said. “No one will ask us to any parties at all. Why do you have to point out everyone else’s faults?”
“It’s my only talent,” Søren said.
“That’s true,” Peter Christian said.
“Look!” cried Regina’s mother. “There’s the King’s Tree.”
Now that she was an adult, Regina recognized her mother’s tactics. However, there was something so compelling in her mother’s voice that she, along with everyone else, turned to stare at the huge oak tree that stood by itself in a small, grassy clearing. It looked like such a peaceful spot, Regina found it hard to believe that the king who had built the nearby hunting lodge had sat down to die beneath that tree after being attacked by a stag he had wounded.
“How tragic,” her grandmother remarked, “that the king should have died so soon after finishing his lodge.”
“Perhaps,” Søren said, “he would have done better not to have hunted a wily hunter like a stag if enjoying a ripe old age had been his goal.”
“Yes, yes,” Regina’s father laughed. “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.”
Regina admired the stateliness of the grand tree. “It doesn’t look like a place of danger,” she said. “Especially on such a warm, clear day.”
“This whole park is a bog,” Søren said in a loud voice. “Its beauty is a temptation enticing the mind to dream and wander and imagine that all is well, while beneath us lies a quaking bog. Do you see the billowing grass on the open plain beyond us? It is really a bog, quaking and quaking, and beneath it lies eternity. Indeed, I find it hard to believe my brother would want to be coachman on such treacherous ground.”
Jonas looked all around with alarm.
Regina suppressed a smile. Jonas was probably imagining their carriage wheels sinking into thick, wet mud.
Peter Christian swung round, holding on to the reins with one hand. “Søren, there is something other than the green of springtime that should cover over your anxiety about eternity.”
“Your excellent driving?” Søren opened his eyes wide as the carriage swerved to the left.
Regina could tell that Søren had successfully annoyed his brother by the way Peter Christian immediately returned both hands to the reins. “No, no. The Word of God.”
Søren touched his forehead. “Of course,” he said. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Yes, how could you?” Peter Christian said.
“Oh, look,” Regina cried. “What are those three grassy mounds over there?”
“They’re ancient burial grounds,” Peter Christian said, “for pagans who don’t believe the Word of God.” He gave Søren a significant look.
Søren patted Regina’s knee. He said in an undertone, “I see your mother is not the only one adept at changing the subject.” He left his hand on her knee for a moment longer than was necessary. Regina smiled and looked down.
A flock of small black birds landed in the carriage’s path. Seconds later, the birds flew off in disarray. Regina wondered why they hadn’t noticed the horses before, why they’d wasted all the energy it had taken to land in front of the horses, only to have to scatter moments later.
After picnicking by the Hermitage on sandwiches, champagne, and a marzipan cake covered with pink and green flowers, the party left the Deer Park in order to visit the amusement fair at Dyrehavsbakken. As they strolled into the fair, Regina found herself again between Søren and her father. She took one arm of each. They both wore long blue coats, gray trousers, black shoes and tall black hats. Jonas slipped away to catch up with a young lady. Peter Christian walked ahead with Regina’s mother and grandparents.
“I find these amusement parks anything but amusing,” Regina heard Peter Christian say as they walked past a dwarf doing battle with a one-armed man.
“My brother finds it difficult to take off his ecclesiastical hat,” Søren said.
“He seems annoyed that you took off yours,” Regina said.
“Of course. We geniuses are always misunderstood— especially by our closest relatives.”
The Councilor laughed, and Regina rolled her eyes on cue.
They walked slowly through the park, passing the elephant tent, a clown, a ventriloquist, and a small puppet theater.
The air was rank with the smell of animals. Children ran in and out amid the crowd. Søren stared at the children, and Regina’s heart lurched.
Is he looking for his daughter?
“Let us see what attracts the bare-necks,” Søren said, tearing his eyes from the children and pointing at a large, tight crowd in which the men had no cravats wrapped around their necks. “We are sure not to like it, but it is inestimably interesting to have one’s knowledge of human nature enriched.”
They found a gap in the ring. An organ grinder played a squeaky, slow rendering of an old folk tune. In a dirt clearing danced a ballerina with a muscled body and the ugliest face that Regina had ever seen. The woman’s teeth stuck out of her mouth almost at right angles. Her eyes were round rather than oval. Her blonde hair was wet with sweat and matted to her forehead.
“Well, Søren,” the Councilor remarked. “I think that is one woman who would like to hear you say that the exterior is irrelevant.”
Søren and her father laughed together.
Regina stepped forward and dumped every rixdollar she had into the woman’s upturned hat. “She’s a beautiful dancer,” Regina said. The ballerina lifted one leg behind her ear and then lowered into a second position plié. “So flexible.”
“Leave it to Regina to point out the good in everything,” her father said.
“Thank God for that,” Søren said. “How else could she stand being with me?”
Regina couldn’t resist being amused by Søren’s uncustomary modesty. She turned away to avoid watching the woman being subjected to their scrutiny. A couple walked past her, arm in arm. They were walking slowly, barely six feet away from her. The man was tall and thin, with long sideburns and brown hair curling beneath his gray hat. The woman had white-blonde hair, a turquoise bonnet, and wore a matching turquoise gown. The young woman gazed up at the man with adoration, and when he smiled back, Regina realized that she was watching Fritz Schlegel walk arm in arm with Thrine Dahl.
Regina’s cheeks burned hot. She felt an aching, wrenching feeling in her stomach. Had Fritz been courting Thrine for a long time? Was she the last to know? Look away, she told herself. Don’t torture yourself. But she couldn’t.
Fritz nodded his head at Thrine in a sweet way that made Regina’s stomach lurch. Then he saw Regina. He stared at Regina for a moment over Thrine’s head. Regina saw the color rise in his cheeks. She felt the color rise in her own.
When Thrine turned her head, Regina was mortified. She told herself to pretend that she was looking at something else. Instead, she smiled at Thrine. She hated herself for smiling. She wished she could have been as aloof as Thrine was. Thrine did not smile back. She looked in the other direction.
Then they walked away. From behind, it looked to Regina like Thrine tightened her grasp on Fritz’s arm. But Regina knew that Thrine could have nothing to fear.
Regina watched Fritz’s retreating back. It looked so foreign, like something she’d never seen before. He bent to Thrine’s ear, probably telling her that Regina meant nothing to him. Thrine laughed, and the sound cut at Regina’s heart.
Regina turned back to the performance in time to see the ballerina toss four flaming torches into the air. She bit her lip. Had Søren noticed her watching Fritz? He was gazing at something in the distance. Regina twisted her engagement ring round and round her finger. The April sunlight reflected the cut surfaces of the diamonds.
“Søren,” her father said, “would you like to move on to that monkey over there?” He pointed at a mangy monkey perched on a man’s shoulder, scratching itself.
Søren grimaced. “There’s something unseemly about monkeys.”
“What is that?” Regina’s father asked.
“They remind me too much of myself,” Søren said. “Like God is holding a mirror up to me.”
Regina laughed. Søren’s humor released something inside of her. She took his arm and squeezed it. She needed his humor because when she had seen Fritz holding Thrine’s arm, she’d been consumed with something that felt very much like regret.