“Mondays and Thursdays from 4 to 5 p.m., her music lessons.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
The next day, Søren arrived at the Olsens’ early. “Come,” he cried, pulling Regina outside into her mother’s garden. “It is spring. Sit with me. Talk to me. Tell me everything. I’m going to spend the entire day with you—every minute. I’m going to drown myself in you.”
She laughed. Tulips were blooming all over the garden— pink and red, yellow and orange. “You can’t,” she said, sitting on the bench and swinging her legs beneath the long narrow skirt of her gown. “Not all day. I have my music lesson in the afternoon.”
“What could be more important than me?”
“Nothing—but I must go to my music lesson.”
A small twist of anger creased his face. “But I’m only happy when I’m with you.”
“You’re with me now,” she said, “and you don’t seem very happy.”
He laughed, and she felt a surge of pride.
“How is it that you are able to agree and disagree with everything I say, without upsetting me in the least?”
“There are certain people to whom you have to communicate the truth indirectly.”
“How ironic. I have already learned that—it has become my guiding principle. And yet you think I am one of those people?”
She nodded.
He grinned. “You may be right.”
At quarter to four, Regina stomped out of the house. She hated her stupid lesson. She hated anything that took her away from being with Søren, or writing to him, or at the very least thinking about him.
Mrs. Regina Kierkegaard. Mrs. Regine Kierkegaard. She kept rehearsing the name in her head. She walked in a constant state of expectation that might find Søren around every street corner.
“Breathe,” Miss Wad told her during the singing part of the lesson. “You must never forget to breathe.”
But the word breathe brought Regina back to the garden that morning. She saw Søren at her side, heard the sound of the water rushing in the canal, and felt again how even the sensation of breathing could change when she was in love.
She sat down at the piano and began to play. Miss Wad tilted one shoulder higher than the other. “You are not paying attention, Miss Olsen.”
Miss Wad’s lips were too thick, her forehead too broad. Would all people now seem unattractive to Regina unless they looked like Søren Kierkegaard?
Regina’s fingernails clicked against the keys. The music room smelled of oranges—the smell of spring, of blossoms. Of love. Where was Søren right now?
Regina smiled back at her, innocently, and tried to focus on her playing. It was difficult because Miss Wad was humming along with her now, out of tune.
“Miss Olsen,” Miss Wad said, “you have not been practicing.” She wagged a stubby finger as she spoke.
It was true. Regina had not been practicing. She grew frustrated with her own playing. There was a glorious new song in her heart, but she couldn’t find the music to express it. She became more and more annoyed with herself. It was useless.
“No, no,” Miss Wad exclaimed, disgust etched in the thick creases of her aging face. She looked at Regina as if she had just stolen a purse. “Not fortissimo, Miss Olsen. Piano. Piano.”
Regina tried piano. But fortissimo kept creeping in as she banged her anger at herself out on the keys.
When the hour was up, Regina scrambled to her feet. She whipped over to her shawl and bonnet, and began to lace the thick green satin ribbons under her chin.
“Miss Olsen,” Miss Wad said. “I will not be able to continue teaching you unless you practice.”
“What a shame,” Regina said. “But I don’t have time for these lessons anyway. Now that I’m engaged.”
Miss Wad, a gaunt spinster, sniffed, and Regina instantly repented. “But thank you so much for all your help. You’ve been the kindest teacher,” she lied.
Miss Wad did not respond.
Regina closed the door behind her, feeling deflated. At last, she told herself, you are free to dream only of Søren. She skittered down the stairs and threw open the door onto the narrow street.
In the window of the small, run-down coffee shop across the street, something caught her eye. It was a man staring at her—Søren sitting at the front table.
Delight skimmed a trail through her heart. A smile sprang to her lips. She ran across the street, cast her fingers up against the glass, and pressed her nose against the pane. Her breath coated the window with an ephemeral white cloud. Søren beckoned to her, and she shot in.
“Imagine finding you here,” she said as she slid into the chair next to him. “And alone. What luck.”
“Not luck,” Søren said, watching her carefully. “I wait here almost every Monday and Thursday afternoon from four to five o’clock. I have waited here for years.”
Regina felt a strange sort of dread curl inside her stomach, as if a cat had just pricked its claws into her before turning around to sleep. She had taken a music lesson on this street every Monday and Thursday afternoon from four to five o’clock for as long as she could remember. He must be teasing her again.
“No, really,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“As I said, I am waiting to see you walk to and fro, as I have done for years. My friends are mystified as to why I come to such a second-rate coffee shop.” Søren scraped his chair along the floorboards, leaning closer, lowering his voice. Regina expanded and recoiled simultaneously. “I tell them how extraordinary the coffee is here, and they join me, but only once. Then they leave me alone in disgust, marveling at my poor taste. They don’t know that being alone is the very thing I crave, because I want to be able to enjoy in privacy the pleasure of seeing you walk past me not once but twice. And in the hour of waiting, I used to imagine you hard at work, perfecting your craft. I imagined beautiful music pouring from your delicate fingers, your youthful passion—inflamed by me—transformed into melodious ballads.”
An image flashed in her mind of Søren lurking in darkened doorways, obscuring his face in a cloak. What had he seen?
What she had done? She felt violated. Disgust ruffled her mouth. Objections crowded her thoughts. How dare he? I would never spy on anyone like that.
“You must be joking,” she said.
“I’m serious,” Søren said, watching her the way a scientist watches a chemical reaction in a beaker. “You can ask my good friend Peder.”
Søren called out to a short, surly looking man who came out from a curtain behind the counter. The man had such an unpleasant expression that Regina’s insides twisted. She wished Søren hadn’t disturbed him. The smell of alcohol wafted over from his direction. The man didn’t look as if he’d washed himself or his clothes in a long time. The corners of his mouth drooped and quivered.
Regina’s eyes roved to the wooden door. Part of her longed to bolt out of the coffee shop and run along the ramparts. The other part of her, the stronger, weaker, captivated self, felt frozen in the chair, locked in by her desires.
“My dear Peder,” Søren called out without taking his eyes off Regina. “How long have I been coming to your fine establishment?”
A generous title for this filthy dump.
“A long time,” the man replied in a way that suggested it had been too long. “Years.”
“When,” Søren persisted. “What days?”
“Mondays and Thursdays. From four to five.”
The man stumbled away. He did not seem pleased to have had Søren as a customer for all those years, nor did he ask Regina if she wanted anything.
“The service,” Søren whispered, “is not as good as the view. I think they make the coffee with acorns.”
“Why do you come then?” she managed to ask, struggling to keep her voice level.
“How vain young girls are these days, fishing for compliments. Tsk. Tsk. Do you really want me to tell you again? How I’ve been lovesick, pining for you, following you everywhere since the day I met you at the Rordams?”
To Regina’s disgust, a smile forced itself upon her mouth, a smile so vain and foolish she was ashamed of herself.
Something shifted on Søren’s face. He picked up the chipped china cup on the greasy table in front of him. His fingers gripped the handle of the cup as if it were something he cherished. He inhaled the scent of the coffee. When he tipped the cup to his lips, a look of satisfaction creased the corners of his eyes.
“It doesn’t look like you are drinking a second-rate cup of coffee,” she said. He hadn’t even ordered a cup for her.
“The cultivation of the mood is everything,” he said, swirling the cup and sniffing as if testing a fine wine.
“Your mood may be good,” she said, “but mine is not.”
“No?” he said mildly. “I didn’t think it would be.”
“Why tell me then?”
Søren’s blue eyes clouded over. He looked past her out the grimy window, a dreamy expression on his lips. “It didn’t work today.”
“What didn’t?”
“Thinking about you. It just wasn’t the same. So I moved to the front table so you would see me.”
“I don’t understand. Why did you want me to see you today?”
“I’m afraid,” he said, twisting and turning his wrist, twisting and turning the cup, sloshing and spilling the coffee, “that I may have confused the ideal with the reality.”
“What?” Shameful tremors of fear hammered at her stomach, her chest, her heart. Why should she care so much? Now, after he’d confessed this violation?
He released the cup onto the saucer. Its murky, gray contents trembled and quivered for a few moments before stilling. One drip traced a slow course down the concave edges. He smiled at her. “Oh, my own dear little Regina. You know I’m joking. Don’t pay me any attention. I like to put people on a wild horse and then scare the horse. You know that.”
“It’s working,” she said. “I’m scared. Did you mean it?”
“Of course not.” He placed his hand on hers. One thick blue vein protruded from the back of his thin hand.
“Are you saying you only love some imagined me?”
“No. No. No. Of. Course. Not.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” She stared at him. “Now that you have a real person to deal with, you can’t stand it.” She shot to her feet, knocking over the chair. “I’m leaving.”
The twist of anger she’d occasionally seen lurking behind Søren’s eyes sprang forward. He leapt to his feet and grabbed her around the waist. “No,” he said. “You can’t!” His face quivered. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s just that I love you so much. I need you so badly. I didn’t know how happy a human being could be until I met you.”
She let him pull her to him even though the thought of Peder’s leering eyes made her stiffen with loathing. Søren’s head fell on her neck. Was he crying?
She softened immediately, cradling him tenderly. So long as she could still penetrate his hateful mocking, perhaps everything would be all right.
The next day, during breakfast, a note came. Regina grabbed the envelope from Anna’s hand and sought the solitude of the sitting room. Trembling, she dropped into her mother’s soft armchair. The room lay in darkness, shrouded by the drawn velvet curtains. Last night’s chess game lay toppled in victory and defeat. She thrust her finger into the envelope and pulled out a letter with elaborate expressions of love and a stick-figure cartoon of Søren standing on Knippelsbro bridge holding a large telescope aimed at her house. She smiled and read the note over and over again.
It was his way of apologizing for spying on her. Definitely.
She twitched again as her corset cut into her armpits. She felt faint.
“Regina! Come and finish your breakfast,” her mother called.
“No, thanks,” she called back. “I’m not hungry.” She mounted the stairs, pausing at the entrance to the hall on the second floor. As she did so, she remembered a little girl who’d paused in the very same place a long time ago.