“In those days, the step of breaking of an engagement was much more unusual than it became later on, and it was more likely to cause bitterness than a divorce between married people nowadays. It was an insulting break, which not only called forth curiosity and gossip but also absolutely required that every decent person take the side of the injured party.”
TROELS FREDERIK TROELS-LUND (SØREN KIERKEGAARD’S NEPHEW)
“She did not have the strength to survive the breakup.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Two weeks later, Søren left for Berlin. He didn’t even tell Regina he was leaving. The finality of it, the coldness, flattened her. She became ill. Part of her was relieved. It gave her an excuse to stay at home, wallow in her pain, and lie in bed like Peter Christian’s first wife had done, like Peter Christian’s second wife now did. It almost made her feel like Søren Kierkegaard’s wife.
Her illness began with strange aches—stings in her joints, especially her knees and elbows. They were such transient pains that she wondered if she was imagining them, if perhaps they were symptoms of her bereavement the way a man who has lost an arm feels the sensation of pain in his missing limb.
But soon the fleeting pains were accompanied by an overwhelming fatigue, a faintness in her limbs. She would try to rise from her bed, but after half an hour at the breakfast table, it was all too much and she would creep back upstairs. There was no end to the pain she felt. Life was hopeless. Everything was hopeless.
Then one bitter January morning three months after the final break with Søren, Olga came into her bedroom and told her that Thrine Dahl was engaged to a Frenchman.
Regina lay completely still for a long time. Fritz. His name didn’t even move her.
“Regina? Are you all right?”
Regina propped herself up on one elbow. Hope stirred. “Isn’t there an exhibition opening today, Olga?”
“Oh, Regina. You’re not ready. Leave the poor man alone.”
Regina could barely hear her. All she could hear as she slid into a dark green damask gown with a heavily pleated skirt was the urging in her head: Fritz is free. Fritz will set you free.
A few hours later, Regina strolled through the gallery. The memory of Søren strolled beside her.
All around her she could see only couples. She clenched her fingers. Being alone felt so uncomfortable. She felt out of place being here all by herself. She longed to shed the barren feeling inside her.
A woman in black bore down on her. It was Mrs. Rordam, her sharp eyes assessing Regina. Bolette hovered beside her mother, a pitying smile on her beautiful, married lips. “Regina,” Mrs. Rordam said. “Darling. You poor dear. Of course, I shouldn’t mention it. But …” Mrs. Rordam leaned closer. “It was dreadful what that man did to you. Dreadful. If he returns from Berlin, I shan’t invite him to my ball.”
“Mrs. Rordam. He hardly deserves so harsh, so capital a punishment.”
I even sound like him now. She wished there were someone to tell Søren this.
Bolette smiled.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Rordam said, patting Regina on the hand. “We women must put these villains in their places.” She swept out of the gallery.
Villains. Regina felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. It was true. Søren was a villain. He was evil, totally evil. He’d only pretended to love her. He wanted to see what it felt like. He probably just wanted to write about love.
“He’s very good at falling in love, isn’t he?” Bolette’s voice was kind. Then she followed her mother.
Regina stared at Bolette’s back. No, she thought, that can’t be right. Regina walked through a doorway into the outer room. If Søren hadn’t been in love with her, if he hadn’t meant what his eyes said when he had looked at her, then the whole world as she knew it was an illusion. But if he loved me, then why did he break up?
Her shoulders felt crooked. Her right elbow jutted out. Irrationality was infecting her mind, heaving on the corner of her consciousness, urging her to buy a ticket on a steamship and appear on Søren’s doorstep in Berlin in the middle of the night. She imagined screaming at him, explaining all the reasons he couldn’t break up with her. But she couldn’t quite force her imagination to envision him taking her back into his arms.
And yet, she thought. And yet, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t be able to change a thing. Her shame made her want to sob.
She strode back through the doorway and planted herself on a bench in the cupola room. Soft, warm, winter sunlight flooded the room. She looked out the French windows. What drew her gaze was not the courtyard below, but the red tiled roof of the palace and the hopeful, bright blue sky above.
What is wrong with you? I thought you came here to look at the art. You haven’t looked at a single painting.
She looked at the paintings. In the closest, children skated on a small pond, heads bent low against the onslaught of wind and snow. In a second painting, two tiny figures of men walked along a wide dirt road beneath overpowering, tall trees. In a third, white-crested waves rolled onto a deserted beach. All the paintings were so bleak and sterile. Like her life. Like her heart. Like her faith.
She rose to go, and it was then that Fritz Schlegel walked in. She sank back down onto the bench. Fritz froze, averted his eyes, then kept walking toward her.
Regina felt a small sweet pinging in her stomach, like the rocking of a child inside her. She smiled at him—at his earnest face, his tidy coat, his neatly folded cravat, and his vulnerable, brown eyes.
He sucked in his lower lip. He reached her, hovered over her, then sat down beside her.
They surveyed the art in silence. After a long while, he shook his head ever so slightly.
She cast her eyes upward, outward.
The corners of his mouth stretched wider, higher.
Her lips felt fuller, warmer.
He tilted his head to the side, and he smiled. He smiled. And she smiled back.
The tips of Regina’s fingers began to feel light and graceful. She longed to spin in a circle, to leap, to dive. She reached for him and squeezed his hand. His face softened. Perhaps he, too, felt as if the tips of his fingers had evaporated and instead of being flesh and blood were now something far more expressive, far more alive.
Regina looked away. She suddenly noticed that a soft pastoral light infused the paintings. The skaters’ cheeks glowed rosy red. Sunlight poured through the trees in the forest, illuminating the path where the two men walked. Sandpipers hopped on the beach that had looked deserted just moments ago. How had she not noticed that she was in a room filled with warmth? The pastoral scenes, the soft sunlight, and the blue sky all whispered that Regina could live in this world of warmth and beauty, that she could love again, that she could bask in its light and be part of its hope. She was free. Fritz had set her free.
Only a vague uneasiness lingered near where the painting of a moonlit bridge once had hung.
Saint Croix, 1856
“Life out here is very monotonous, but thank God we both tolerate the climate very well. Schlegel has a great deal to do and I have nothing whatever.”
REGINE OLSEN
“If she found out for certain from me how I did love her and do love her, she would repent of her marriage.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Regina searched for her husband all over the Government House on the Danish island of Saint Croix. It was New Year’s Day, and already she’d broken her only resolution about a hundred times.
The Government House was a grand, honey-yellow building in the middle of town, filled with the noise and bustle of the streets surrounding it. Covered walkways and steps strung together its eighty-five rooms. Its beauty was marred, however, by a large courtyard that lay like a gash in the middle of the palace. For Regina’s new home was really two mansions, joined together, with a large cavity at its heart.
Regina stopped in the east walkway and peered down into the courtyard. She saw servants and soldiers attending to the horses and carriages, but no sign of Fritz. She sighed. The courtyard was so ugly. It needed a garden, trees, plantings—a woman’s touch. If only it weren’t always so hot here. She could do so much more if she could just get used to the heat. Instead, she felt dizzy all the time, useless.
She began walking again. Sweat dripped between the oxhorn busks of her silk corset. She envied the servant girls their loose cotton dresses and colored turbans. Her own red and green tarlatan dress fit tightly around the sleeves and bodice, then belled out in frills from her waist down, around reams of wide, stiff petticoats. How women’s fashions had changed in the past fifteen years. The sleeves had tightened, the waists had dropped, and the skirts had ballooned. Sometimes Regina felt that she could no longer carry the load.
Lord, she moaned silently, why can’t I stop thinking about Søren Kierkegaard?
Of course, she understood why Søren had haunted her thoughts in Copenhagen. Her sin had fueled it, her dreadful sin. She and Søren had engaged in an elaborate, painful dance, passing each other at ten o’clock on the same street, day after day, year after year. Always looking. Never speaking.
Thinking about it now brought the same sharp wrench in her gut. And yet in Copenhagen she hadn’t been able to stop her feet from walking, her eyes from looking. It was as addictive as a drug. Each day, just before the unspoken but appointed hour, she would grow agitated, restless, unable to concentrate. And before she knew it, she would drop whatever she was doing, manufacture some excuse, and dart along the streets toward Langelinie in order to pass Søren. And after she had passed him, after their eyes had met, she had always felt a fluttering sweetness and a sharp loss. He cared enough to look for her. Not enough to speak.
But why was she still thinking of him here on Saint Croix?
She and Fritz had been here for nine months now. They had no plans to go back. She might never see Søren again.
She stopped walking and shuddered. Of course she would see him again. She had to. She wasn’t complete without him.
Stop that, she told herself. Lord, she moaned quietly, her lips moving, please help me love my husband. Make me love him more than I ever loved Søren Kierkegaard.
She forced herself to keep walking, nodding to Danish officials who worked on this floor of the palace. She kept her chin up, her eyes straight ahead.
Why was she still enslaved by Søren? Why? She’d done everything she could think of. She’d repented. She’d prayed. She’d read every passage in the Bible she could find about fidelity and promises and marriage. Yet she couldn’t stop betraying Fritz.
She didn’t even need to close her eyes. All she had to do was picture Søren’s sorrowful eyes staring at her, and she was fifteen again, back in the Rordams’ front hall being introduced to Søren Kierkegaard for the first time.
The memory had seared itself into all of her senses. The shuttered doors of the Saint Croix hallway disappeared, and instead she could see her long ivory dress and her dark hair piled high, reflected in the mirror. She could smell the beeswax rising from the Rordams’ gleaming floor. She could taste the aroma of the bitter coffee drying out the inside of her mouth. She could hear the laughter bubbling forth from the girls beside her. And she could almost feel the softness of Søren’s face just below the place where the crow’s-feet were beginning to creep out from the corners of his eyes.
She tried to thrust the memory away because it seemed more vivid than that of any other experience she’d ever had. The realization of this filled her with guilt.
Regina continued her march around the Government House. She needed to see Fritz smile at her. She sped along the long, stone-tiled gallery. Out of habit, she kept her eyes averted from the great hall. What overwhelmed her about her ballroom was not so much its size, nor the gilt mirrors that lined its walls, nor the multiple doorways that gave it a gracious, cooling feel, but the floor. The floor was made of thick planks of polished mahogany. Hand rubbed with coconut oil, it glowed more warmly than the most beautiful dining room table. The governor and his lady were to walk on a material that Europeans reserved for their finest furniture.
The ballroom floor made Regina feel unworthy. The whole mansion made her feel unworthy. She didn’t deserve such luxury, especially since the only reason she was living here was because of Fritz’s dedication, Fritz’s talent, Fritz’s skill. For Fritz had worked his way up the ranks in the colonial office to become the governor of the Danish West Indies.
Had Søren picked up on the irony? When they’d broken up, she had pathetically whined that she would become a governess. Now she had fulfilled her own prophecy.
Stop thinking about him. Who cares if he notices the irony?
She was sure he had.
Regina passed the thirteenth door of the ballroom, her eyes still averted. Governor von Scholton, the man who had ruled here until eight years ago, had made all these fancy renovations. Maybe the same grandiosity that had led von Scholton to invite free coloreds to his ball and his table, and that had eventually inspired him to proclaim all the slaves on the three Danish islands free before he’d even procured the authority of his king, had also fueled his extravagant redecorations. Maybe he’d been just like Søren. After all, one’s greatest strength was always one’s greatest weakness. And the same zeal that had enabled Søren to renounce the world and devote himself to writing masterpieces about Christianity for the past fifteen
years had made him able to renounce her.
If only she could find Fritz.
The cabinet room beyond the hall was empty. Fritz’s personal guards, standing in the reception room, told her that the governor was upstairs. Her heart pounding, she mounted the staircase, heading for their private apartments on the third floor.
Regina walked through the reception room and her sitting room and ducked her head into the master bedroom. The carved mahogany, four-poster bed lay vacant, draped beneath mosquito netting. A planter’s chair sat empty in the corner, beside a blanket chest. A mahogany stand held a dry ceramic ewer and washbasin. A large armoire stood fastened shut. And the memory of how she’d given birth in this room just four months earlier made her knees buckle.
* * *
The contractions were soaring on top of each other, the pain splitting her insides. She imagined herself as a wishbone, being torn in two. She moaned and thrashed her limbs around on the bed struggling to find a position free of pain, but there was none. The thrashing only made her more desperate. There was no way she could escape this pain, no place she could hide from it.
The black-suited doctor, his face bathed in sweat, ordered her to lie still. She couldn’t do it. She tried to throw her body off the bed. “Stop it,” the doctor yelled as he grabbed her arm, but Regina shook free of his grasp. The floor, Regina thought, it won’t hurt on the floor. But she landed with a sharp thud, and it hurt just as much. Moaning, she fought against the hands that lifted her body back onto the bed. Then, just as she thought that she could not bear it any longer, that there was no reason for pain like this to exist on the earth, she heard the doctor yell at her to start pushing, and she pushed as hard as she could. It hurt just as much as before, but at least she could do something about it, at least now she was close to the end. Then the doctor told her to stop pushing, and moments later, he told her to push again.
“Breathe now,” the midwife said.
“Now?” Regina asked in desperation. “Now?”
“Yes,” the midwife shouted, and Regina breathed. They told her to stop and then to push again. There was a terrible aching pain in her back that would not go away. And then she heard the midwife cry in delight, “It’s coming. I can see the crown of the head.” As she spoke, Regina felt it, she felt an object emerge from inside of her, she felt the head come out.
She struggled to comprehend it. Her body told her that a baby, a real baby, her own baby, was actually emerging from inside of her, but her brain told her that such a thing was not possible, that a head could not emerge from inside another person’s body.
“Push again,” the doctor ordered, and Regina forgot her shock and tried to push again. “Push hard.” Then Regina heard alarm in the midwife’s voice, and she heard the doctor say something about the cord, the umbilical cord wrapped around the neck, and panic struck Regina and she pushed harder, harder than she had ever pushed in her life, and she fought more than she had ever fought, and she strained until she knew her own insides were forcing their way out of her body in order to bring the rest of the baby along with them. Then the baby slithered out in one long, quick, wet slide, and Regina didn’t wait for the pain to subside but shot her head up to look at the doctor and midwife and knew immediately from their faces that the baby was dead. It had died, it had died, it had died, and she screamed like an animal.
* * *
Regina shut her bedroom door tight and walked further down the hall into the room Fritz used as a study. There he was at last, seated at the grand mahogany desk commissioned by von Scholton. The stiff collar of his red military coat stuck into his cheeks as he bent over a letter, his mouth open, his eyes half shut.
“Fritz,” she cried, her voice louder than she intended.
He held up one hand to halt her. His face hardened. He turned his back further away from her and continued to read his letter.
Regina turned to go, feeling a heaviness in her limbs as if her feet were nailed to the floorboards. She picked up her feet. She’d been wrong to interrupt him. She’d been wrong to speak so loudly. It was probably a very important letter, maybe even from the king.
A back turning away from her.
Stop being upset, she told herself. That’s what marriage is all about. Watching your husband turn his back on you, then picking up your feet, picking up your head, finding something else to do, telling yourself you should expect it because no human could give you all his attention all the time, telling yourself you were expecting too much.
What are you, Regina, a fool? The question slotted into her head like a letter dropped by an unseen hand.
She walked down the hall, through the dining room, and into her sitting room. She shut the door and sat in her rocking chair. She rocked and rocked. No breeze came from the adjoining porch. She stared at the serpentine back of the sofa beside her. She picked up the Marie Antoinette shawl she was beading for her sick mother. She let it fall to her lap.
Where was he? Why didn’t he come and apologize?
Regina looked out the windows at the beautiful blue waters in the harbor of Christiansted, but it brought her no peace. The Lutheran church next door tolled the hour. The bells tolled and tolled, louder and louder, as if they pealed inside her.
A man walked into the room. His blue eyes were animated and adoring. “My darling,” Søren said. He seemed to be taller than before, more handsome. “I’ve come to take you home to Copenhagen. I love you, Regina. I’ve always loved you. I was wrong to break up with you. What a terrible mistake.”
“I know, Søren,” she said, standing to meet him. “I’ve always known. I knew you’d come back for me.”
He wrapped his hands around her waist. “I can still almost encircle you, my love. How do you do it? You are still so beautiful. You are more beautiful at thirty-three than you were at eighteen.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You always know what I want.”
“This,” he said. “You want this.” And he leaned in and kissed her.
“Regina!” Fritz strode into the room.
Regina leapt backward, away from Søren’s embrace.
“I’m so sorry,” Fritz said. “I’m sorry I was so rude.” He wrapped her in his arms. She stiffened, for the imaginary Søren hung in the air between them, as he always had. She returned to Fritz like a person clambering out of a misty lake of half-wanted dreams.
I shall take her with me into history. There I walk by her side. As a master of ceremonies I introduce her in triumph and say, “Please be so kind as to make a little room for her, for our own dear little Regina.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
I certainly expected some explanation from Søren Kierkegaard, although I must admit that I did not expect it in quite the form in which I received it.
REGINE OLSEN
“I’m furious,” Fritz said, releasing her. “The mail packet arrived today, but our letters seem to have been scattered all over the island. I was reading a letter from Mother when you came in; it was stinking of rum from the cretin who misdelivered it.”
“Maybe the rum was your mother’s,” Regina said. “Maybe she misses you too much.”
Fritz eyed her.
Regina grinned. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. You were saying?”
“I was saying I’m sorry.” Fritz looked out the balcony. “The truth is, Regina, I’m frustrated. I’m having trouble— criticism from all sides. I think it’s because everyone here still idolizes von Scholton. And I could never live up to a man like that, even though he’s been gone for so many years.”
She looked at Fritz’s worried face—the stray locks of brown hair that hung low over his cheekbones, his thin, pointed eyebrows, his stiff, red coat. He looked so scared. Why don’t I have more sympathy for him?
“These things take time,” she said. “We’ve only been here nine months. Besides, not everyone liked von Scholton. I think you’re reading too much into things.”
“You’re right,” he said, coming closer. She stiffened.
Why can’t you be nicer to him?
“Will you forgive me for my rudeness, Regina?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“You are a darling. What did you want to tell me?”
She shrugged. “Only that the Fieldings will be here any minute.”
He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Today?”
“Fritz, we asked them weeks ago. I’ve been looking forward to it all morning.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know how you adore Eleanor. Come. Shall we wait for them on the terrace? Is the table ready?”
She nodded and followed him back through the reception room onto the shaded terrace. The teak, West Indian table lay buried under a starched, white linen tablecloth, lace napkins, monogrammed silver, and Regina’s best Danish china. Past the table, she could see down King Street to the Scale House, the busy wharf, the sprawling fort, and the old Lutheran Church. Ladies paraded with parasols, workers rolled barrels to the water, and uniformed soldiers moved easily about, chatting with each other. Women sold fruit, meat, and vegetables from trays balanced on their heads. The songs of sailors, sung in languages from all over the world, drifted upward.
She walked to the edge of the portico roof. Not a breath of wind. The blue and white Danish flag above her draped around its pole like a lady’s cloak. She wiped her brow with her lace handkerchief. She could almost see the heat prowling along the periphery of the porch. Even the pink hibiscus that climbed up the delicate handwrought, ironwork railing looked wilted. Regina looked at where the shade ended, barely a foot away from her, and she found it hard to believe that if she were to take one step, just one small step, she would be in complete agony.
The portly doctor rode past, holding a bright red umbrella above him while a half-naked boy ran behind him carrying his medical kit. Regina turned away.
“No sign of these famous Christmas winds,” she said.
Fritz rang a silver handbell and gave orders for coffee, fruit, and pastries to be brought out. No sooner had three servants delivered the food on silver trays and lit the flame under the silver samovar, than Ophelia stepped onto the veranda to announce the arrival of the Fieldings. Ophelia’s voice was lilting, charming. Her dark skin glowed with health and youth despite the oppressive heat.
How does she do it? Regina thought.
“My darlings,” Eleanor Fielding cried in perfect Danish, with only a trace of her English accent. “Have you seen this?” She strode onto the veranda, holding out a copy of the Saint Croix Avis in front of her like a sword. Regina grinned at the sight of her. Eleanor’s hair was steel gray and wrinkles hooded her small eyes, making them appear even smaller. Her large nose was hooked and regal. She carried her weight well. Her dutiful husband, Alistair, followed. He was thin and graying and always reminded Regina of her family’s old greyhound.
“Bad news?” Regina asked, in her heavily accented English.
“The opposite,” Eleanor said, switching over to English for Alistair’s sake. Smiling, she peered at the newspaper and read aloud:
“We have among us a new governor, of pleasing report, in the person of His Excellency, Johan Frederick Schlegel, who, we are glad to find, takes a lively interest in the welfare of the Colony, and who, we rejoice to say, is already gaining the affection of the community, and promises to be exceedingly popular for his courtesy, activity, and zeal.”
She looked up. “Fritz! Isn’t it marvelous?”
“The writer’s on my payroll,” Fritz said in English.
Regina laughed. She looked at Fritz, and pride swelled inside of her like the fanning of a peacock tail.
“You dreadful man,” Eleanor said, swatting the air in front of Fritz with her newspaper as if the governor-general of the Danish West Indies were a naughty puppy. “How does your wife stand for it? Regina, darling, you look pale. Where’s the coffee? This heat’s putting me to sleep.” Looking anything but tired, Eleanor headed straight for the table. Her husband darted to pull out her chair.
Fritz pulled out a chair for Regina with a flourish and sat between the two women, grinning. Alistair slid into the chair beside his wife. His huge, wiry eyebrows stuck out at such sharp angles that Regina longed to brush them flat. She busied her hands with passing the food and filling the empty coffee cups from the silver spigot of the samovar.
Ophelia stepped back onto the veranda, apologizing with her mouth while her body stood upright and proud. “Another stray letter from the mail packet, your Excellency.”
“I asked Ophelia to bring any letters up immediately,” Fritz explained. “Something’s gone seriously wrong with the mail today.”
A yellow bird landed on the railing and eyed their sugar bowl.
Ophelia placed a thin, white envelope on the table in front of Fritz.
Fritz thanked Ophelia, glanced at the letter, and frowned. His eyes seemed to cloud. He turned, and his eyes followed Ophelia as she pranced off the veranda. His shoulder blocked Regina’s view of the letter. She leaned forward to see.
“Ophelia was born free,” Eleanor Fielding said the moment Ophelia closed the door behind her. “You can see it in the way she holds herself.”
Regina straightened her back.
“It can take a lifetime to heal from the effects of slavery,” Fritz said. “That’s one of my challenges here.”
He glanced at Regina.
“Who’s the letter from?” she asked with her eyes.
“Later,” his eyes replied. He gave his head a tiny, almost imperceptible shake.
“Why was Ophelia born free?” Fritz asked Eleanor. “It sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Ah ha!” Eleanor said. “Ah ha! You’re certainly asking the right people. Ophelia’s black grandmother was the, shall we say, friend of the man who used to own the plantation beside ours. Poor woman. She was lovely. It’s such a shame your Danish law won’t allow marriages between the races.” She gave Fritz a significant you’d-better-do-something-aboutthat-law look.
“Our neighbor gave his mistress her freedom in his will,” Alistair added hastily.
“Why didn’t he give her her freedom during his lifetime?” Regina asked.
“Probably afraid she’d abandon him if she weren’t his slave,” Eleanor said. “Since he couldn’t lock her in with marriage.”
Regina laughed, and Eleanor’s tiny eyes gleamed with pleasure.
Fritz picked up the letter and began to tap it against the table.
Regina studied his profile. He looked so irritated. Who was it from? She leaned forward again, but the back of the letter was facing her. All she could see was a black wax seal. Fritz loosened his cravat. Sweat formed lines of beads across his brow. Regina longed to take her thick, white napkin and wipe the sweat from his brow and smooth the angry lines from his mouth.
Fritz flipped the letter over, and Regina read the return address.
The name Kierkegaard shimmered in the air. A strange feeling of hope sprang into Regina’s throat. Then the rest of the name came in focus. Peter Christian? Why was he writing? Did it have a secret message from Søren?
Regina squashed down her hope. Impossible. Peter Christian would never write to them about Søren. He was far too proper for that.
Still, Regina’s heart fluttered. Second after second ticked by. When would Fritz open the letter? She couldn’t stand waiting a second longer. Her hand itched to pluck the envelope off the table and rip it open. Instead, she skewered a piece of mango and glared at the Fieldings. Who had asked them here, anyway?
“So what are you going to do about the worker situation?” Alistair asked. “The colonial council wants to know.”
Who cares? What’s in that letter?
“There is so much unrest among the workers,” Fritz said. He frowned. “Even after eight years, they seem unable to get used to the idea of having money deducted from their wages for food and beds.”
“Who can blame them?” Eleanor said. “Those in the lowest bracket get paid five cents a day, but they have to pay five cents a day for room and board. Only now they also have to pay for things like doctors’ visits.”
Alistair shook his head. “My wife is very popular among the other plantation owners with these views, as you can imagine.”
Eleanor grinned with pride. She fingered the huge gold cross around her neck.
“Yesterday,” Regina said, nodding toward Eleanor’s cross, “I saw a colored woman by the water wearing a large blue cross woven into the fabric of her white dress. It was so poignant. I couldn’t help wondering if she realized she was wearing the Danish flag. It was as if she were proclaiming, ‘I’m still the property of Denmark,’ as if her slavery is a cross she’s worn for so long, she no longer notices it.”
“That’s very eloquent, Regina,” Fritz said.
“Thank you,” Regina said. He smiled at her.
Eleanor’s tiny eyes darted around the table. Every few seconds, she glanced at the letter. Was she scooting her chair closer to Fritz?
Regina wanted to snatch the letter away from Eleanor’s inquisitive eyes.
Fritz lifted both hands off the table and flexed his fingers.
Eleanor leaned closer. “So what will you do,” Eleanor asked, “to change things?”
“Education,” Fritz said. “Education is the key. As my first step, I’ve embarked on a tour of the schoolhouses for the workers’ children.”
“Fritz was once a teacher,” Regina said.
“Regina’s teacher,” Fritz said.
“A long time ago,” Regina said.
He suddenly looked so happy. Regina wished he could always look that happy.
“Take my advice, Fritz,” Alistair said. “Don’t listen to a word my wife says. Forget the workers. Your only mission out here is to keep up the steady exports of wood, rum, cotton, and cane.”
Fritz laughed. “That’s where you come in, Alistair. Although I know you don’t mean a word of it, you’re as softhearted as your wife, at heart.”
“Don’t tell anyone. You’d ruin my reputation,” Alistair said.
Eleanor yawned and leaned over her gilded red coffee cup. Her shrewd eyes landed on the letter and then lit up. She read the return address out loud. “‘The Reverend Parish Priest, Dr.
P. C. Kierkegaard.’ What a coincidence! By any chance, are
you acquainted with his brother, Søren Kierkegaard?”
Fritz’s lips twitched.
Regina tilted her head to one side as if fascinated by the
sapphire blue ocean.
“Perhaps her whole marriage is a mask and she is more passionately attached to me than before.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Fritz harbored no petty distrust of my old memories.”
REGINE OLSEN
“Yes, we are acquainted with Søren Kierkegaard,” Fritz said.
“Do you know him well?” Eleanor asked, watching Fritz closely.
“Eleanor,” Alistair said, “stop prying.”
“I’m interested,” Eleanor said. “I’ve read everything Søren Kierkegaard has ever written—and I can tell you, that’s no small accomplishment. Especially for an uneducated old woman like me. What is it—fifteen or so books, not counting the sermons? What a genius he is! Such an original thinker!” She raised one eyebrow, clearly wanting the Schlegels to be impressed.
“I didn’t realize Søren’s work was so well-known outside of Denmark,” Fritz said. He glanced at Regina. His eyes looked worried.
“Eleanor reads Kierkegaard the way some people read the Saint Croix Avis,” Alistair said. “Her Danish cousins send her his books from Copenhagen. Personally, I can’t make heads or tails of the man. Whenever Eleanor translates bits for me, my brain feels like someone has put it through a sieve. I find listening to him harder than trying to swim through a seawall.”
“I read Søren Kierkegaard,” Eleanor said, pursing her lips, “when I feel depressed about being stuck out here in this dreadful heat. I’ve never met a man who understood doom and gloom so perfectly.”
“That’s Søren Kierkegaard all right,” Fritz said. He looked at Regina. “Doom and gloom.”
Eleanor threw up her fleshy arms. “Just as I’ve decided he must be the most narcissistic, vacillating, self-centered man who ever walked the planet, just then—almost as if he knows he’s gone too far—he says something so profound and beautiful that I feel sympathy for him and keep going. Do you know what I mean?”
“Well—er—yes,” Fritz said. He cast another worried glance at Regina.
“Fritz, why do you keep looking at Regina as if she’s going to break in two?” Eleanor asked.
“Eleanor!” Alistair clamped his veined hand on Eleanor’s large one.
“It’s all right, Alistair,” Fritz said. “I suppose it’s no secret. My darling wife was engaged to Søren Kierkegaard once.” Fritz gave a strange laugh.
“Really?” Eleanor’s mouth fell open.
“Don’t look at me like that, Eleanor,” Regina said, trying to smile.
“But my dear,” Eleanor said, “then it’s you. You’re the one.”
“The one Magister Kierkegaard’s been writing about his entire life. The woman he talks about spying on. The woman in the green cape he followed around. The one he snatched out from under her earnest fiancé’s nose! Ha, ha! It’s you— you’re the mystery woman, the Unnamed Person he’s been dedicating his books to. How does it go? ‘To an Unnamed Person who shall one day be named.’ How fascinating. I always wondered if she was a real person.”
“Oh, no—I hardly think. There was a Bolette—,” Regina said, running her hand along the tablecloth.
“Yes,” Fritz said. “It’s Regina. It has to be. The man became a virtual recluse after they broke up. There’s been no one else in his life.”
“A recluse?” Eleanor said. “Why?”
Fritz’s voice hardened. “He chose to live alone. He had all these grand aspirations, and I suppose he knew he couldn’t live up to them if he had to engage with other human beings. Nothing shipwrecks good intentions quite so spectacularly as being in a relationship. Just ask my wife.” He reached over and caressed Regina’s hand. “But it’s worth it. Well worth it.”
“No wonder he was so tortured, poor fellow,” Eleanor said.
Regina felt the edges of her face harden slightly.
“There’s more to it than that,” Fritz said. His voice grew intimate, as if he were relishing sharing the news of Søren’s defeat. “Five years ago he crossed pens with a journalist who retaliated by publishing cartoons of him—caricatures. He depicted him as a skinny, bent over man wearing one trouser leg shorter than the other, things like that. For the last five years, I’m told, Søren has been taunted by youths everywhere he goes.”
Regina exhaled. Thank God Fritz hadn’t mentioned the cartoon showing a tiny Søren with a whip, riding the back of a large woman with hoop skirts—the cartoon of Søren training Regina into submission, drawn after Søren had published that dreadful piece called The Seducer’s Diary.
“The poor man,” Eleanor said.
It serves Søren right, Regina thought. Where did that thought come from? Regina drained her coffee cup.
“So,” Eleanor leaned closer, “if he’s kept on writing about you like this, Regina, you must have broken his heart.”
“Well. That’s ironic. Not exactly.” Regina looked at Fritz. Fritz raised his eyebrows.
“Nonsense,” Eleanor said. “No one stays obsessed with someone if they did the breaking up. We only obsess over the people who leave us by the wayside.”
Regina felt a blush rise to her cheeks. “No, no. I’m sure you’re wrong.”
“You’re just being modest,” Eleanor said. “But how awkward for you to have had an unrequited love around. Copenhagen is a small city. You must have run into him all the time, Regina.”
“Oh, no,” Regina said. She smiled. The muscle memory of her deception was perfect.
Fritz glanced at her.
“Hardly at all,” she added.
“But didn’t you speak to him? Tell him to stop writing about you?” Eleanor said.
“I haven’t spoken to Søren Kierkegaard in fifteen years,” Regina said. A quick clasp of guilt consumed her. If only she could tell Fritz. But the truth would kill him.
“So you had no contact?” Eleanor said. Regina glanced at her. Eleanor’s jaws and neck were clenched like a pit bull clamped around a stick.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Fritz said. He leaned forward. His voice was conspiratorial, confiding. “He wrote to me once, after Regina’s father died.”
“Good heavens,” Eleanor said. “How inappropriate.” She leaned forward, too. “Why?”
“He wanted me to pass a letter on to Regina,” Fritz said.
“No,” Eleanor said with a thrill in her voice. “What did the letter say?”
“We’ll never know,” Fritz said. He leaned back. A self-satisfied smile played on his lips. “I returned the letter, unopened, with an indignant reply.”
“Good for you,” Alistair said.
“Weren’t you dreadfully curious, Regina?” Eleanor reached her head behind Fritz’s so that she could read Regina’s face.
“Oh, no,” Regina said, looking down. “No. I’m quite impervious. I was very young when we were engaged. Very impressionable. I’m so much stronger now. God can work such miracles—no?”
Eleanor eyed her.
“But what about his books?” Eleanor asked. “What did you think of them?”
Regina shot a quick look at Fritz and said, “Those? We enjoyed some of them. We used to read Søren’s sermons together in the evenings.”
“Really? Even The Seducer’s Diary?” Eleanor said to Alistair, “The Seducer’s Diary is part of a larger work where Magister Kierkegaard wrote about a man who follows a young girl in a green cape all over Copenhagen, seduces her, and then ditches her.”
“It was fiction,” Regina said. “Pure fiction.”
Keep your face still, Regina ordered herself. Don’t let her guess that you promised to do anything, anything, if you could keep him.
“But hang on a minute,” Eleanor said. She knit her brows together. “If Regina was engaged to Peter Christian’s brother, then why in heaven’s name is he writing to Fritz? Here, in Saint Croix?”
Fritz and Regina exchanged glances.
“How fascinating,” Eleanor said. “A mystery! Unveiling before me! Do let me know. Of course, I’m dying for you to open the letter this very second. But don’t let me bully you. You know I’m a dreadful bore that way. Alistair can vouch for that.”
“Thank God I’m not in politics like you are, Fritz,” Alistair said, raising his pointed gray eyebrows. “I’d never survive a minute with a wife like this.”
“Yes,” Fritz said, “I’m lucky to have Regina as my wife.”
Regina’s mouth twitched into a painful, guilty smile.
Eleanor grinned. “All right, all right! I can take a hint. I’m leaving. Until this weekend—when we expect you to visit us on our plantation. You work far too hard, young governor. You do know that.”
Fritz escorted the Fieldings off the porch. Then he returned to Regina. For a moment they sat side by side at the lavish table.
The letter lay between them.
“Fritz did not pass judgment on Søren and bore no rival’s hatred toward him.”
REGINE OLSEN
“Should we open it?” Regina asked.
“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “Do we?”
Regina shook her head. She was glad they were here when they read the letter—on the openness of the porch with the sweep of emerald ocean beyond them, not shut up in a small room, its walls closing in on her.
One quick slice of his knife, and they’d be in.
If only it weren’t so hot.
Fritz picked up the knife and slid it under the black seal. His movements were cautious. He slid out three single sheets of paper and shook them open. His eyes ran over the first sheet. Regina could see only a few splotches of sepia ink through the back of the thin paper.
Fritz compressed his lips, and Regina frowned. Fritz compressing his lips was the same as another man slamming his fist through a wall.
She felt her hand reaching for the letter. She dug her nails into her palm. The questions tried to force themselves from her throat. She clenched her mouth shut.
Fritz jerked the first sheet out of the way and scanned the second. His eyes raced over the words. He ripped the second sheet away and read the third.
She could hold back the rising tide of questions no longer. “What! What is it, Fritz? Tell me! Why is he writing to us?”
Fritz let his hand fall on the table. He looked at her. His warm, brown eyes held some strange emotion. Was it compassion? Pain? Anger?
“There are some letters that you wish you hadn’t opened,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse.
She clamped her mouth shut again. Don’t beg him for the news. Don’t let him know how desperate you are.
“Regina, I hate to tell you this—”
Fear clutched at her stomach. She bit her lip.
“Søren Kierkegaard died six weeks ago.”
“What? Oh, no,” she said. “No.” Her lips trembled. “How did he die? Did he—” She broke off. She couldn’t voice her deepest fear.
Fritz touched her hand. “He fell ill on the street. He was in the hospital for about six weeks. He died in the hospital. Alone.”
Don’t cry, Regina. Whatever you do. Don’t cry.
“Sweet darling,” Fritz said, clutching her over her chair. “Don’t hold it in. It’s all right.”
She could control this. She was stronger than her weaker self. She could fight back the trembling in her mouth. She lifted her coffee cup, watching her hand. It shook so much. She stared at it angrily. Stop trembling. It was giving her away. She tried to place the cup back on its saucer without spilling any coffee, but the cup trembled. One thin trail of liquid leaked over the rim. Regina watched the slow drip of the murky coffee.
She had control now. She had complete and total control. “I-I’m fine,” she said. She steadied her voice. “It’s just the heat—the—you know—being so far away from home. Mother being sick. The—you know. The—” She couldn’t say the word. The baby. Our dead baby. “Everything’s getting to me here. And I just feel sorry for him. For Søren.”
Fritz sucked in his lower lip. He looked angry.
“What? What is it?”
He looked down and she clutched his hand. “Don’t be angry with me, Fritz.” I didn’t mean to shake so violently. Really, I didn’t. I did my best.
He shook his head. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
She stared at him.
“There’s a reason Peter Christian wrote to us.” The muscles of Fritz’s face hardened. “He had to write to us in his capacity as executor of Søren’s will.”
“Søren’s will? Why? Does he want to return my letters?”
“There’s more to it than that, Regina.”
Her hands clawed the sides of the chair.
“You see, Søren Kierkegaard left everything he had to you.”
“What?”
Fritz gave a bitter, ironic laugh. “Well, you’d better read it for yourself.” He held out the third sheet.
Regina plucked the paper out of Fritz’s hand. The will, copied out in an unknown hand, was brief:
“To: Reverend Dr. Kierkegaard
To be opened after my death.
Dear Brother:
It is of course my will that my former fiancée, Mrs. Regina Schlegel, should inherit unconditionally what little
I leave behind. If she herself refuses to accept it, it is to be offered to her on the condition that she acts as trustee for its distribution to the poor.
What I wish to express is that for me an engagement was and is just as binding as a marriage, and that therefore my estate is to revert to her in exactly the same manner as if I had been married to her.
Your brother,
S. KIERKEGAARD”
“If I had had faith, I would have stayed with Regine.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Fritz’s chivalry, his rare sensitivity, and his sensible conversation were always my sole help.”
REGINE OLSEN
Regina’s eyes grew wide. She drew her eyelids down, slamming shut the window to her screeching, painful joy. Søren thought our engagement was as binding as marriage? He left me everything? Then he must have loved me. “Impossible,” she said. “Søren was mad.” Her hand crumpled to the table.
Fritz watched it fall. His lips seemed to slacken slightly.
A sharp knock fell on the veranda door. Ophelia stepped out again and announced that lunch was ready.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be alone?” Fritz asked Regina.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Let’s discuss this after we eat,” he said. “Shall we?”
She nodded. He held her arm to steady her as they walked down the hallway. She excused herself to freshen up. “I won’t be a minute,” she said.
She shut the door to their bedroom. For a moment, she fell against the door. Then she righted herself. From a white jug she poured water that lapped against the sides of the washbasin. A moan rose from her throat, catching on the raveled edges of her sobs. In the mirror above the washbasin stand, Regina saw red angry blotches filling in the white spaces on her cheeks, her forehead, and around her eyes. She splashed water on her face.
She found herself on the floor. The mahogany floorboards felt cool and smooth against her cheek. Her red and green skirts ballooned up above her. Get up. Don’t let Fritz find you lying here like this. But she couldn’t move.
After what seemed a long time, but not long enough, she hoisted herself upright and wandered down the hallway into their private dining room. Joshua, her husband’s most indispensable servant, stood waiting, a look of resignation on his ancient face. Fritz sat alone at their polished dining room table. His eyes moved to her, then away. He didn’t mention the red blotches, didn’t mention how long she had taken.
The heat seemed to be rising. No breezes blew in from the open balcony overlooking King Street. The turtle stew made Regina’s stomach turn. She looked away as Fritz slurped large gulps of the stew from the base of his silver spoon.
Joshua cleared away Regina’s untouched stew without a word. He served the second course, a clean white grouper. It tasted like sawdust in her mouth. She could barely swallow. She looked at the watercolor on the wall beside her, a picture of slaves holing a cane piece.
“How’s the fish?” Fritz asked.
“Good,” she said.
“Then why aren’t you eating it?”
She unclenched her lips. She severed one tiny bite of grouper and placed it in her mouth.
“I’m sorry it’s not everything you hoped for,” he said. His face looked so vulnerable that she took another bite, and another.
“It’s better now,” she said. Her face felt lumpy and disfigured as the swelling cooled and began to subside.
Fritz let his silver fork fall with a clatter against the rim of his china plate. “How dare he! So desperate to redeem himself, he does this! No matter what it means for us, for your reputation.”
“I know, I know.” Her voice was soothing.
Fritz’s voice rose, as if to mimic a deathbed scene. He held out one shaking hand and made his face quiver. “Regina—I loved you—we are still engaged—remember me always— ignore that tiny detail of me breaking our engagement.”
“Fritz!” A tiny smile stole onto Regina’s face, then disappeared.
“You know I’m right. The coward.”
“I thought we were going to discuss this after we ate,” she said.
“Sorry.” They resumed eating in silence. Finally, when Joshua retreated behind his screen to the place where he hung the silver above and the linens below, she pushed her plate away.
Fritz lifted his crystal punch glass to her. Was his hand shaking? “This was always my dream, you know.” His voice punctured the air. “To have you here, beside me. The governor part is irrelevant.”
Something tugged at Regina’s heart. She looked down.
“We cannot accept Søren’s bequest,” Fritz said. His voice was gentle. “You know that.”
“Maybe we should accept it and give everything to the poor,” Regina said. She opened her eyes wide. “Just as Søren said. Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?”
“Regina! We’re miles away. Think of the logistics! It would be an administrative nightmare.” Two muscles twitched, simultaneously, at the hinges of his jaws. She stared at the places on his skin where she had seen the twitches. Why was he so angry at her?
Fritz sprang out of his caned chair. He paced around the table. He turned his back to her and stared deep into the empty marble fireplace.
“What is it, Fritz?”
“I’m hurt you even suggested it, Regina.”
“It’s not my fault! I didn’t ask for this. I’m as shocked as you are.”
He spun around and stared at her. He didn’t speak, but his look accused her.
“Why are you acting like it’s my fault?” she said.
“You know what it would mean, don’t you? If we accepted it?” His face was tight with rage. She shrank back against the sharp spines of her chair. “It would be like saying that we agree with Søren that the engagement still stands.”
“Of course I didn’t—of course it doesn’t—I never imagined for a moment—” She broke off and looked down at the ravaged remains of the fish, the delicate, life-threatening fish bones. “You’re right,” she said. “Of course you’re right. How thoughtless of me.”
But that was exactly what she wanted—to prove to everyone, and to herself, that Søren had loved her. Now no one will know. The thought kept hovering, welling. Don’t cry. Whatever you do, don’t cry. She twisted her cloth napkin into a tight ball on her lap.
Fritz sat beside her and pulled his chair close to hers. He was so comforting and stable—so real. Why wasn’t he enough?
“Regina,” he said, “Peter Christian doesn’t think Søren had any money left. He spent it all on publishing books that hardly anyone bought. It’s just the principle of the thing. You do see that. I know you do.”
“Of course I do. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s all such a shock. We must refuse it. You’re right. The implications are entirely unacceptable.”
He stood, looking relieved.
“But,” she said, smoothing her face into an unbroken whole, “I’d like my letters back—the letters I wrote to him. And maybe a few other things that I gave him. My brooches. A ring—”
“Write Henrik Lund yourself,” Fritz interrupted. He turned his face to the shuttered window. “Dr. Lund has all Søren’s papers and personal effects.”
Regina pressed her mouth shut and nodded. Why was Fritz acting like it was her fault again? What had she done wrong?
Fritz walked to the door. “I will write to Peter Christian immediately. I think we should put this whole thing to bed. The sooner we forget about it, the better.”
Regina nodded. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.”
That was the way. Just forget.
“In the stillness, when the soul is all alone, the eternal power itself appears and the I chooses itself.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Since his death things have come to me from another point of view.”
REGINE OLSEN
Two days later, Regina awoke late in the bedroom of their plantation estate outside town. An emptiness lay beside her on the mattress. She heard the crack of a whip and the creaking of wheels. She threw off the sheets, parted the mosquito netting, and ran to the window. Outside, she caught a glimpse of Fritz’s carriage rolling away between the grand gates and turning into the road that skirted the sea and wound like a ribbon through forests cut through with fields of waving sugarcane. She watched the carriage disappear. Peacocks strutted in the empty wake of his carriage.
On her mahogany bedside table lay a note explaining that he had been called away on business, that there were rocks that needed blasting in the harbor, that he hoped she had a relaxing day. He also said he hoped she approved of his letter to Peter Christian. Beneath his note, lay the letter:
“The Reverend Mr. Parish Priest, Dr. Kierkegaard,
On New Year’s Day I received Your Reverence’s honored letter of November 23 of last year, and I am using the first departing steamship in order to send you my reply.
First and foremost, on behalf of my wife and myself, I wish to thank you and your honorable relatives for the discretion you have observed in a matter that, for many reasons, we do not wish to become an object of public discussion.
Next, with respect to the surprising information contained in your letter, I have the following to say to Your Reverence:
In the beginning my wife had some doubt as to whether, for her part, she had an obligation to fulfill with respect to the sort of thing implied in the second portion of the declaration of the deceased’s will, which you have brought to our notice. She has given up this doubt, however, in part because of the great difficulties occasioned by our absence from home, and in part because of a consideration that both of us view as decisive: namely, that she absolutely does not dare to consider herself justified in accepting an offer that, according to what has been said, is motivated by views she finds totally unacceptable. This has been made even clearer in the private note you included for me, a note with which I acquainted her because I believed that I ought to leave the decision in this matter entirely in my wife’s own hands. She therefore has asked me to request that you and your co-heirs proceed entirely as if the above-mentioned will did not exist; the only wish she has expressed is that she retain some letters and several small items found among the property of the deceased, which she assumes formerly belonged to her, concerning which she has written to Dr. Henrik Lund. I have directly informed attorney Maag of my wife’s decision.
With the greatest of esteem, I remain Your Reverence’s
Most respectful,
F. SCHLEGEL”
It was a good letter. Of course it was. Kind, thoughtful, elegant. Extraordinary, really. She read the letter as if someone else were reading it.
She got out of bed and stood still. She stared at her old cape, left out by mistake by one of the maids. The cape, now threadbare, its emerald green faded to the sage of sea grass, hung over a chair. The back of the chair suspended the cape in its middle, like a woman held aloft over a man’s shoulder. She knew she should throw the cape away, burn it. It was only when draped over chairs that the cape took on dangerous, suggestive shapes.
She picked it up. The worn silk almost slipped through her fingers.
Put it in the armoire, she told herself. Now.
Instead, she wrapped herself up in the cape and wandered down the arched hall. The high ceiling, designed to catch the prevailing winds, reminded her of a church. The church where she and Søren were being married. Søren lifted the cape off of her shoulders and twirled it around the length of the hall. “I’m so happy,” he cried. “I’ve never been happier.”
The wide mahogany stairs creaked, and Regina jumped. It was the housekeeper, Louise, a dignified elderly black woman, asking her where she wanted to have her morning coffee.
“On the veranda, thank you,” Regina told her. She fingered her unkempt hair. “Lovely morning,” Regina added with a bright smile.
The housekeeper stared at the tattered cape dangling over Regina’s flowing white nightgown. “I’ll send Susanne to help you dress,” she said.
“What a lovely idea,” Regina said. She scurried back to her room and thrust the cape into the bottom of the armoire. It lay in a crumpled heap, wrinkles forming on wrinkles, just as it deserved. A sound in the doorway startled her. Regina whirled around.
But it was only Susanne, standing outside the open door. She was a young girl of fifteen, her coffee colored skin so smooth it was hard to believe she would ever age.
I used to look like that, Regina thought. When he first met me.
Regina sat at her dressing table and Susanne began to brush the tangles out of her long brown hair. Susanne gathered her hair into a knot of curls high up at the back of her head and arranged a side curl in front of each ear. Regina crinkled up her face and stared at herself in the mirror. Were those really wrinkles? Perhaps mosquito bites. She leaned closer. No, they were definitely wrinkles. She frowned.
On the chair beside her, she saw a beautiful brown eye staring at her, and then she realized it was her own eye. It was her engagement portrait, recently sent by her mother, lying half buried under a shawl. She detached Susanne’s fingers from her hair and unburied the portrait. She looked so young in the portrait. Innocent. Wrinkle free.
Was it possible for a woman to be more beautiful at thirty-three than at eighteen?
“For you, yes,” Søren told her.
“The green dress today, your Ladyship?” Susanne asked.
“No!”
Susanne cringed. “I’m sorry,” Regina said. “I didn’t mean to speak so sharply—I was thinking of another green dress.” She tried to smile into Susanne’s reflection in the mirror. “The green dress would be lovely.”
Susanne’s image disappeared from the mirror as she walked to the armoire.
“Oh, look,” Susanne said, her voice muffled now. “This must have slipped off a hanger. I’m so sorry. Shall I iron it for you?”
Regina sighed. She didn’t need to turn around to see what Susanne was talking about. It was inevitable that she couldn’t lose the cape. There was no escaping it.
“Thank you,” she said. “Yes.”
A half hour later, Regina drank her coffee sitting on a rocking chair on the veranda overlooking the sweeping lawn, the rose gardens, and the cliffs leading down to the ocean. The ocean wore its waves like a lady’s cloak. Today, small, choppy white breaks on top of sun-filled turquoise made the water look thicker than velvet, deeper than satin.
She looked out and tried to picture Fritz dutifully blasting rocks. But the betrayal had already begun. She leapt out of her chair and strolled through the gardens. Blue doves cooed from the tamarind trees. A parrot streaked by in a flash of green. Lizards lazed on the brick pathways. Hibiscus sent streaks of yellow, coral, and red shooting around her. A huge, silk cotton tree stood in the middle of the lawn, its roots sprawling above the ground and twisting around its trunk.
Regina turned around and surveyed their estate house. It was a lovely, two-story, cut-stone house with a red roof. Simple but elegant, just as she and Fritz liked. It perched on a promontory overlooking steep bluffs. Tree-covered mountain ridges rose behind it. The house seemed to nestle in a place of danger—of vertical drops, jagged rocks, crashing waves.
To her right stood a separate building for the kitchen and cookhouse. Beyond that lay the old mill, now fallen into disrepair, where slaves once walked in a circle pushing two poles attached to a roller that pressed the sugar out of the cane. Windmills dotted the tops of the adjoining hills, and in clearings among the trees, fields of cane bowed in the wind.
Still, Fritz did not return. A servant arrived with a message saying that he had been detained, that there were more rocks in the harbor, that she should go visit the Fieldings.
He was right; of course he was right.
She stayed put.
That night she slept fitfully. A sharp breeze banged open the shutters, startling her. African drums beat from the bushes, the sound of discontent, of unrest. A conch shell blasted. Were the former slaves mounting another rebellion? She was too tired to investigate. Regina shifted upon the white sheets and realized she had been dreaming about Søren. She rolled back toward the window, trying to find the same place in her bed, the exact indentation on her pillow where she had been lying, as if the dream waited there for her to slip into like a skin. But he was gone.
She parted the mosquito netting and pushed open the French windows that led to a porch. The depth of the heat outside shocked her. The scent of cinnamon and vanilla drifted upward from the night-blooming flowers. Tree frogs sizzled from their lairs. A swath of ghostly white moonlight coated the dark rippling water beneath the cliffs. Regina looked down the trail of moonlight and let herself silently cry out to Søren as if he could hear her: “I love you.”
And she wondered if somewhere, sometime before he died, Søren Kierkegaard had been consumed with thoughts of her and had whispered the same thing to a moonlit sky.
Something inside her exploded. She swung round and strode back inside, slamming the French windows behind her.
It was pathetic. She was dreaming about a dead man. A man who’d never loved anyone but himself, who’d been as tormented and sick as she now felt. What was wrong with her?
Her heart condemned her with loud, finger-pointing thrusts. She was sick. Sin sick. Hers was a sickness unto death, just as Søren had once written in one of his books.
She crept back onto her bed. She felt so lethargic. Her nightclothes felt heavy; even her sheets felt thick with humidity. The wet air clung to her skin and her hair. It seemed to penetrate her muscles, weighing her down, and pressing upon her chest. She fell into the hollowed out place, the impression of her body on the down mattress. She knew she should get back out of bed, leave the mattress filled with the feathers of twenty-four Danish geese, do something—anything. Anything but give in to despair.
But it was hopeless. She was a failure. Her life had been nothing but a string of failures: a broken engagement, a dead father, a sick mother, a dead baby, a dead marriage. And now a dead fiancé—the only one who’d ever really loved her, the only one with whom she’d ever felt completely alive.
She should leave Fritz. She should return to her dear, sweet, sick mother. She pictured herself going home on the same steamboat that had brought her. She pictured Olga greeting her with a sarcastic, “I knew you couldn’t stand that heat.” She pictured Fritz, moping, Fritz, his head bent over his mahogany desk, Fritz alone. With the beautiful Ophelia.
She sat straight upright on the bed. No, on second thought, perhaps leaving was not the solution. She fell back again against the mattress. There was nothing she could do to fix this by herself. Nothing.
The moon cast a white cloak upon the dark floor, carving out a cross of windowpane. Her curtains billowed, sending a shadow through the moonlight, which then withdrew as if a prince had bent over her and embellished her moonlight colored skin with the colors of the moon.
The air shifted. Stillness. And truth stole into her heart so quietly that she was hardly even aware of it. There was only one person into whose arms she could leap. She’d tried everything else. There was only one leap left. The leap of faith.
“Lord,” she said out loud. “I give up.”
Tears filled her eyes, her eyelids. Pain coursed through her cheeks, like tears on the inside.
“I give up. Whatever You want me to do, I will do.”
And in that moment of casting herself down, she felt a sweetness, a hope lift her up. She felt comforted by something, someone she could not see. Someone who loved her. Someone whose presence filled the room with more majesty, more love, and more intimacy than she had ever felt. Someone who longed to wipe the tears from her eyes, to heal her, to make her laugh with joy the way Regina Olsen Schlegel had tried to make others laugh all the days of her life.
And as she recognized herself as nothing, she became something. As she emptied herself, she became full. She became the beautiful, marred, perfect, flawed, sinful, beloved daughter of the Most High Lord. She became, for the very first time, her one true self.
It was subjective. It was objective. It was truth.
She was Regina.
And as rain fell on the hipped roof, she slept like the baby she never had.
“If I had had faith, I would have remained with Regina.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“Dear Henrik … God tempts no one, so if it were not his
will that I should have come to know what I now know,
it would not have happened.”
REGINE OLSEN
Late the next morning, Regina walked onto the porch of their plantation house to find Joshua waiting for her. Beside him lay a small, battered trunk. “His Excellency asked me to hand deliver this trunk to you. He promises to be here by lunch.” He handed her a letter.
“Why all these messages from my husband, but not the man himself, Joshua?”
Joshua’s dark-chocolate eyes met hers. “You know what men are like when you put a stick of dynamite in their hands, don’t you, your Ladyship?”
“Yes,” she said. She smiled. “I have a brother.”
As Joshua turned to go, she averted her eyes from the trunk. She stared at the flickering flames of the torches on either side of the door to the house. She considered having them blown out. But something made her stay her breath.
Joshua walked so slowly that it was agony to watch. She wandered onto the edge of the porch, lifting her pink muslin skirts and picking her way around the urns waiting to collect the rainwater. She waved to the five gardeners who bent over the rose gardens at the end of the lawn. A thrush called from the thorns of an inkberry tree. Butterflies darted among the long trails of the red and purple bougainvillea. Enticing scents rose from the herb garden edging the porch. An egret, slender and white, landed and then took flight.
She glanced over her shoulder. Joshua was still shuffling through the torches. Far off, a rooster crowed.
The moment she could no longer see Joshua’s back, Regina flew to the chair at the round table and examined the trunk. It was curved at the top, with leather straps, like the sort of trunk that contains pirate treasure in children’s books. She tore open the wax seal of Fritz’s letter.
My darling Regina. This trunk arrived just after Peter Christian’s letter. I knew it was coming because Peter Christian mentioned it. But I withheld it from you for two days because I thought it best. I was wrong. Forgive me. Your Fritz. P.s. You should know that I read only the first two pages of the trunk’s content.
Behind Fritz’s letter lay another letter, in a different hand.
The rustling of linen skirts behind her made Regina jump. Susanne stood shyly between the lit torches, her hair caught up in a brightly colored kerchief. She curtsied. “Louise sent me to see if you wanted breakfast, your Ladyship.”
“No, thank you,” Regina said. “I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
The moment Susanne left, Regina shook open the second letter. It was from Henrik Lund, Søren’s nephew. Regina’s heart began to pound. Her eyes took in the words before she understood what she was reading.
Dear Regina.
Søren left a rather extensive journal. It was all inside of a small rosewood cabinet. It will take me years to cull through and catalogue it, but here are some of the pages that relate most obviously to you. Many of them were in a white envelope marked “About Her.” As you are now the owner of all of it, I wanted to send these to you as early as possible, away from prying eyes. I leave to your discretion what you would like to do with these pages from his journal. I think you will quickly see why I thought it best to send these to you.
Your friend,
Henrik Lund.
Søren’s journal? His soul? His secrets? Within her grasp?
The trunk compelled her, twisted her, scared her. She snapped open the straps and lifted the lid. Inside lay piles of quarto sheets covered in spidery ink handwriting. They were just like the ones she’d seen on Søren’s music stand. Regina began to smile. It was here, all here. The truth at last. She dipped her hands into the trunk and let the sheets ripple around them like gold coins.
She lifted the first sheet. Søren was writing about the irony that Regina, who had complained during their break-up that she’d have to become a governess, was now truly a Governess.
I thought the same thing. Pride swept through her, followed by sorrow. If only he had known how attuned we were, he would never have broken up with me.
She turned to another sheet. A line jumped out at her. “If possible, she shall be my wife.”
When had he written these words? When? She scanned the paper, her hand shaking. The entry was dated after their breakup but before her engagement to Fritz. So Søren had wanted to reconcile.
If only she hadn’t accepted Fritz. No, she thought. No. Søren broke it off. You couldn’t wait forever. But why, Søren? she said to the cloudless sky. Why break my heart if you didn’t have to?
She realized that Fritz must have read this. No wonder he’d wanted to keep the trunk hidden.
She flipped to another page. “The Seducer’s Diary was written for her sake, to repulse.”
What was he talking about? Why would he want to repulse her? She read further. “To extricate myself from the relationship as a scoundrel, if possible an arch-scoundrel, was the only thing to do to buoy her up and give her momentum for a marriage, but it was also studied gallantry.”
Søren had only been acting the part of a scoundrel? She let the sheet fall to her lap. He had loved her all along. No, it couldn’t be. Jonas would have made such fun of this.
But what if it was true? The cold words Søren had spoken to her that last terrible day in October came back to her like so many rose petals. He loves me. He loves me not.
She plunged her hand back into the trunk and found the sealed document entitled “About Her.” She ripped it open, reading faster and faster, her heart beats matching her pace. Søren explained that the “Unnamed Person,” the one to whom he had dedicated the latter half of his books, was both his father and her.
So she was the Unnamed Person. Of course she was. And how typical of Søren that she had to share the honor. Only in Søren’s kind of brain could one person be two.
The trade winds picked up, blowing the ends of Regina’s hair up around her white matron’s cap. She lifted her eyes to the lines of blue, aquamarine, and violet stretching out into the reaches of the ocean. And she let herself think the thoughts that crowded in on her.
Søren loved me. He was obsessed with me, obsessed with his guilt, obsessed with whether, because he had given up the one thing he loved, God would restore it to him. She had always suspected this, ever since Søren had examined the Abraham and Isaac story in his book Fear and Trembling. But until now, she had never dared believe.
She picked up another sheet. The journal was more addictive than love.
“When I lived in the second-floor apartment at Norregade I had a tall palisander cupboard made. It is my own design, prompted by something my beloved said in her agony. She said that she would thank me her whole life if she might live in a little cupboard and stay with me. Because of that, it is made without shelves. In it everything is carefully kept, everything reminiscent of her and that will remind her of me.”
“No!” Regina cried out loud. Not her cabinet request. Shame rose red hot in her face. She dropped her hands to her lap and looked wildly around. She stamped her foot and threw the page on the table in front of her. The trade winds picked it up and sent it billowing down the lawn. Regina watched the sheet fly and did not run to retrieve it. Let it blow off the face of the planet, she thought.
She thrust her hand into the trunk and leafed through some more pages, cringing. Søren had recorded in detail how Regina had mocked Fritz during their engagement. “Anyone who knows how she talked about Schlegel in the past, that is, how disparagingly … will always have misgivings.”
Her mouth quivered with fury. It was cruel. Søren was punishing her. He had to know that Fritz might one day see it. If Søren had written this, he was capable of anything.
She flipped to another sheet. She screwed her face up into a tight, fearful ball. In a paragraph called “About Her,” Søren wrote how, during the years of her marriage to another man, he’d encountered Regina every day at the same time and the same place. “It happened each morning at ten o’clock when I went home along Langelinie.”
Regina’s breath came in short quick bursts. Her eyes scanned the rest of the page. Søren wrote about how he’d encountered her in narrow passageways when leaving church. Every look, every raised eyebrow, was recorded.
She would have to tell Fritz. There was no other way. She’d have to confess.
But wait. Fritz hadn’t read this yet. And hadn’t Henrik said that the journal was hers, to do with what she wanted? Wouldn’t it be better to destroy it? All of it?
The thick orange flames of the torches on either side of the door seemed to deepen. Black angry curls of smoke surged out of them, marring the white paint behind.
She could burn it all, right now. No one would ever know. The idea filled her with quick, cold excitement. The page revealing the truth about the cabinet fluttered further down the lawn. It caught on a hedge and rolled upward, flattening itself against the manicured edge. She leapt out of her chair and ran down the lawn holding one hand over her cap. She plucked the sheet off the hedge and returned to the table. Her heart pounded inside her corset.
She picked up the quarto sheet that described how she had met Søren on the street every day. Her hand shook. She drew closer and closer to the torches. She stole a glance all around the wide veranda, the white pillars, the sweep of lawn, the flower garden.
No one was here. No one at all. Even the gardeners seemed to have disappeared.
It was as if she were all alone in the entire world. Alone with a single piece of paper. And two flaming torches.
She held the paper closer to the torch. Closer. A corner caught on fire. Orange flames drew upward. The paper crackled. The flames devoured the thin sheet until there was more flame, less paper.
And a sword pierced her heart. “No,” she cried out loud. She blew on the flame. It rose higher, then quenched.
Shaking, Regina fell back in her chair and stared at the charred remains of the page. The printed words accused her. Every day. At ten. She had not burned the incriminating details.
She put her back to the torches, slammed the lid of the trunk shut, and slammed her eyelids shut.
Lord, she prayed. I promised to submit to You.
Only because you had no other option, she thought.
Silencing herself, she returned to her prayer. Lord, why is this so hard?
Knowing filled her. It’s so hard because your ways are not God’s ways. And God’s ways are so much better.
She opened her eyes and laughed out loud. She was still on the same porch, looking out over the same stretch of lawn and rose garden and ocean, but everything felt better. Almost.
All right, Lord. I obeyed. I won’t burn it. But what do I do next?
“Do I smell smoke?” a husky female voice asked.
Regina leapt out of her chair.
“I’m terribly sorry, Regina,” Eleanor said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Eleanor’s tiny eyes gleamed from beneath a huge, foam-green turban. She wore a matching foam-green dress with tight gauze sleeves and a wide skirt.
Oh, Lord. I wanted You, not Eleanor Fielding.
“Eleanor,” Regina said. She smiled.
Where did that smile come from? She must have mustered it from memory alone. She hoped it looked authentic. Wasn’t that how smiles were supposed to feel?
“Welcome,” she added.
Eleanor’s eyes swept over Regina’s face, the trunk, and the blackened sheet in Regina’s hand. “Burning something? The letter from your former fiancé’s brother, perchance?” Eleanor’s eyes sparked with intrigue.
Regina blushed. “Oh—I—it’s—” She sat down in her caned chair. “Please, join me,” she said. She rang a small silver bell. Susanne returned, and Regina requested two breakfasts. While Eleanor prattled on about how Alistair had caught their chief overseer sliding down one of the gutters meant for the sugar water, Susanne set two places, laid out the strawberry jam, passed a tray of pastries and fruit, and then withdrew.
Regina poured the coffee.
“Well?” Eleanor scooted her chair closer to Regina’s and lowered her voice. “I’m simply bursting with curiosity. You must tell me what the letter said. I do hope you admire my restraint in waiting this long? Although, truth to tell, it was only because I thought you were still in town, and Alistair refused to drive me back.”
Regina couldn’t help grinning.
“I see you do have news,” Eleanor said. “Tell me all. Please. Of course, you don’t have to. But if I die suddenly in my sleep tonight, it’ll be on your conscience.”
Regina eyed Eleanor. “I thought the English were supposed to be reserved.”
“Why do you think I left England?”
Regina laughed. It felt like smoke clearing from her brain.
“Besides,” Eleanor said. “I’m half Danish.”
After all, it could hardly be a coincidence that probably the only other person in the Danish West Indies who’d read all of Søren’s books had shown up on her porch that morning. And so she told Eleanor everything. She told her about the will, the journal, and her dilemma.
“My goodness,” Eleanor said when Regina was done, her eyes popping open. “My goodness. You poor dear. What a lot of forgiving you have to do.”
“Oh, as for that …” Regina made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “I already forgave Søren. Long ago. Of course.”
A small smile played on Eleanor’s lips. A small smile that seemed to say, “I am so much more mature than you.”
“What,” Regina said. “What?”
“You poor dear child,” Eleanor said, taking Regina’s slender hand in her own large, soft, wrinkled one. “Forgiving doesn’t work like that. You don’t just forgive once and it’s done. You have to forgive over and over again, every time a memory pops into your head. Now that I know about forgiving, it feels to me as if the Holy Spirit puts memories in my head, just so I can forgive and have the chance to heal from past hurts. And this wretched Søren Kierkegaard has just tormented you from beyond the grave—God rest his soul—and so you have to start all over again on the forgiving.”
“Oh, well. I’m sure poor Søren didn’t mean to torment—”
Eleanor shut her eyes and held up her hand like Regina had just said something painful.
Regina broke off and waited. She waited, holding her breath. Because in saying it, in saying that Søren hadn’t meant to torment her, she had felt the lies wrapping themselves around her words, dragging them down, and dragging her down into the dark place she was sick of inhabiting.
“My dear Regina,” Eleanor said, looking heavenward. “Søren Kierkegaard was one of the cleverest, most self involved, selfish men who ever lived. You can’t read a single one of his books without understanding that. And if you want to forgive God’s way, you have to admit that. You have to stare the truth in the face. It’s hard—oh, yes—it’s hard. You have to admit that someone who loved you actually chose to hurt you—deliberately. You have to open yourself up to the pain. To suffering. It’s the only way forward. The way of the cross. You have to throw yourself on God’s mercy, and say, ‘Lord help me to forgive. Help me to give up my desire for revenge. Help me to release this person into Your justice system, not try him according to mine.’”
Regina stared at Eleanor’s face—at her wrinkles, the gray, wiry strands of hair, her sharp nose, thin lips, and tiny eyes. She realized that Eleanor had just given her something beautiful and precious and warm, like a present wrapped in homespun cloth, but shining with a golden glowing light inside.
“Eleanor. I think you’re an angel!”
“Actually,” Eleanor said, her eyes gleaming, “I feel more like a sea witch in this foam-green number, but my seamstress insisted.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll be on my way,” she said. “Believe it or not, I do know when I’m not wanted.”
Regina opened her mouth to say, “Oh, no, please stay.” But she shut it again. “Thank you, Eleanor,” she said. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I do need to be alone.”
And Regina felt herself grow and expand as she spoke the truth.
“Dear Henrik … Who knows but whether these many serious thoughts, which I have recently had in my head, are destined to save me from becoming lost in the petty things that are part of small-town life.”
REGINE OLSEN
Regina walked Eleanor to her two-seated phaeton and then raced upstairs to her sitting room. When she reached her room, her ladies’ writing desk beckoned to her in a soft, seductive voice. “Write a letter to Henrik,” it called to her. “You can write about Søren to your heart’s content. You can indulge in daydreams.” The faded rose chintz curtains waved softly.
Regina held up one hand. No. She had work to do. This minute. She eased down onto her knees in the middle of the room. The mahogany floorboards were so hard. Her poor knees. Why not slip up into her rocking chair? She could pray just as well from there, for heaven’s sake.
Regina Olsen Schlegel, she told herself. This prayer is so overdue, you ought to be face down. You stay put.
Her needlework rested nearby displaying more unfinished white canvas than threads. The Marie Antoinette shawl she was beading for her sick mother beckoned.
She slammed her eyes shut. Why was this so hard?
She prayed. She felt as if each prayer were being dragged out of her. And yet, once forced out, the prayers seemed to soar above her in a shimmering, almost visible stream, like the heat that rises from a sugarcane field on the hottest of days.
An image rose in her head of Søren lurking in darkened doorways, trailing behind her, running into her on the streets, following her when she’d been only fifteen years old. The image was clear, vivid, true. What Søren had done was manipulative. It was wrong.
Pain flooded her. Lord, help me to forgive.
Another image of Søren came to her. This time he was in the parsonage at Lyngby, talking about being a pastor, waving his hand dismissively at the idea of taking care of his flock’s physical needs. He’d been wrong, dead wrong. He was selfish and afraid. She felt a stab of pain in her stomach. How could I have let him deceive me?
Lord, help me to forgive him.
She saw Søren at her parents’ house, felt him touching her back.
Lord, help me to forgive.
She saw him proposing, then walking away from her, ignoring her at the riding ring. He’d mistreated her.
Lord, help me to forgive.
Where were these memories coming from? They were shown to her so sweetly, so gently, she felt sure the Holy Spirit had to be guiding her to give her an opportunity to heal, just as Eleanor had said.
She couldn’t bear anymore. She was through. But as she lifted herself up, another image rose in her head. It was an image of herself at the door of her parents’ house, lying to Fritz. “Stay for dinner,” she had said. “Stay because I love you,” she had implied.
Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me.
She saw herself nodding to her father, opening her eyes wide. “Of course Søren is a Christian. Of course.” The truth was, she hadn’t cared. And now, finally, she was sorry. Why had it taken her so long to feel sorry? Was her heart really that hard?
Another image came into her head, this one of herself on the ramparts. “Søren, I will do anything you want,” she had said. “Anything. Because you, Søren, are more important to me than anything else. Even God.”
Shame spun thick heavy ropes around Regina’s heart. The shame felt so dark, so desperate, she wanted to drown in it. But drowning wasn’t God’s way.
Lord, I am so sorry. I am so very sorry. And she wept. She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
God could never forgive all that I’ve done. Never.
She lifted herself up to her rocking chair and rocked, and rocked. She put her hand on a book on the side table to steady herself. It was the New Testament, the Bible Søren had given her. All this time, she had treasured it because Søren had given it. She hadn’t even told Fritz why she kept it with her. Maybe it could help her now. Even if she’d kept God’s Word for the wrong reason, it was still God’s Word.
She flipped it open. Where was the passage she needed, where? It was something to do with forgiveness, something she had marked because Søren needed it. Not her of course, not her. She swam through the pages, through the turned back corners, until she found the verse that sang to her a new song. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.”
She tilted her head back over the top of the rocking chair. She just didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it.
She had only one option. She had to give back to God the very words He had given her: Lord, You are faithful and just. You promise to forgive my sins if I confess them. I confess them. So I must believe I am forgiven. Not because I say so. Because You say so.
She sprang to her feet and paced around the little sitting room. Light danced on the ocean outside, light danced on the hand she put on the white windowsill, light danced on the heart she opened up to the living Lord.
And she was free.
Outside, she heard the creak of carriage wheels, and she rushed to the window. Fritz eased his lean, strong body out of the carriage, holding onto the brim of his black hat with one hand. He dipped forward and looked absently around. Her heart sank. Lord, why don’t I love him the way I loved Søren? Why?
Prayers surged out of her—old prayers. Give me. I want. Get for me.
She silenced herself. Lord, help me seek Your face. Your glory. Only You. And don’t listen to me if I ask for anything else.
“The few scattered days I have been, humanly speaking,
really happy, I always have longed indescribably for her, her whom
I have loved so dearly and who also with her pleading moved me
so deeply. But my melancholy and spiritual suffering have made
me, humanly speaking, continually unhappy—and thus I have
no joy to share with her.”
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
“I would be very ungrateful if I did not call myself happy— yes, indeed, happy as very few are happy.”
REGINE OLSEN
Fritz was waiting for her beneath the silk-cotton tree, his white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. The tree’s leaves and branches cast a deep shade over him that seemed to penetrate his skin, transfiguring him into an image of mellow warmth, in contrast to the glare inhabiting the rest of the garden. He looked so relaxed. She couldn’t tell him now. It wouldn’t be fair to ruin his good mood. Her green slippers seemed glued to the ballast floor of the veranda.
Slowly, Regina stepped out of the shade of the veranda to join him. The sun bore down through the pale green silk of her parasol as if the parasol were a magnifying glass. Fritz watched her fumbling progress down the lawn, the heels of her green slippers sinking into the soft earth. She joined him beneath the tree and lowered the parasol.
“You were gone a long time,” she said.
“I was angry.”
“Are there any rocks left in the harbor at all?”
“Very few.” He gave a sheepish grin. His smile faded and he stared at her, his face serious, questioning.
“Did you read it?” he said.
She nodded.
“And?”
“I learned a lot of things,” she said.
He waited. A kind, encouraging voice inside her urged her on. Tell him. Tell him the truth.
No, she told the voice. I can’t do it. She spun her parasol, round and round. He watched her carefully.
“Are you mad at me, Regina?” he said. “For keeping the journal away? Do you forgive me?”
“Of cour—”she stopped.
In the distance, a peacock wailed like the cry of a child in pain. “No-oh! No-oh! No-oh!”
A memory slipped into her brain. It was a memory of Fritz turning away from her after their dead baby was born, of him telling her that it was better to forget, that she was wrong to feel so desperately miserable.
“Will you excuse me?” she asked.
She left her parasol leaning against the tree and walked away from him. She walked past the rose garden, past the sundial, past the edge of the lawn, through the brush, to a clearing on the cliff. A line of coconut trees fringed her view. Jagged rocks led down a thirty-foot incline. A bare patch of earth, purple like a bruise, lay on the opposite hill of the bay.
Waves crashed beneath, and shimmering swatches of emerald, aquamarine, and violet led directly to the horizon.
For a moment, Regina imagined Søren’s arms sliding around her, his cheek brushing against hers, his mouth whispering into her ear. But a verse rose in her mind—a verse about false gods and eyes that couldn’t see, mouths that couldn’t speak, ears that couldn’t hear. The image of Søren cracked and faded, leaving only pain etching harsh, deep lines into the crevices of her face, into the cavities of her chest.
The pain was so great she summoned back the image of Søren. But she didn’t want that. She shut her eyes. Lord, forgive me for my sin. Help me be free of this. She imagined hoisting Søren’s image onto an altar. He rolled off and stepped closer to her. She opened her eyes. She knew what she had to do.
Help me forgive Fritz, Lord, she whispered. Help me forgive him for leaving me alone after my baby died, for telling me to forget, for not being the husband I want. Help me forgive not because he deserves it, but because it’s the better way.
Seagulls circled and cawed. The wind picked up, flooding her with air, with salt, and with light.
“May I join you?” Fritz asked. He lifted the green silk parasol over her head.
She looked up and smiled at him. She took the parasol in her own hand and twisted her lips. In that way of holding her lips she felt a maturity she could not have had when she was eighteen, a maturity born of suffering and pain, of loss and joy.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you may join me. And yes, I forgive you.”
He smiled back, his eyes softening so that they seemed to grow warmer. His eyes gleamed. And his ears, why, they were the most perfect ears she had ever seen. Joy filled her, the joy of knowing that this was the right place for her to be, the right
man for her to love.
“I am lucky to have you as a husband,” she said.
Fritz shifted his weight from one dusty boot to the other. His eyes lit up. He tried to look away. “And I am lucky you made me suffer so much,” he said.
“What?”
“How else do you think I became a Christian? After you broke off with me not even Thrine Dahl was enough.”
She smiled. The sea sparkled and glimmered below her. “You never told me about the timing of that.”
“I had to retain some modicum of dignity,” he said. “I was desperate. I’d never been rejected before. Not like that. And it was just as Søren said, although I shudder to admit it. I threw myself at Christ’s feet for the first time in my life. You know, the picking up was so sweet, I’d go through the despair all over again.”
“I know what you mean,” she said quietly.
“Søren was right about a lot of things,” Fritz said. “But he wasn’t right about everything.” Fritz’s serious, earnest eyes examined her. “He was right to say you find your identity standing alone before God and that you don’t stand alone before God until you’ve reached rock bottom, until you’ve heard the howling of wolves. But he got stuck there—standing alone before God.” Fritz leaned closer. “You have to take risks in life, Regina. If you want love.”
She twisted her eyes upward. Lord, You answered my prayer. I do love this man. But it’s too late.
She had to confess. And it would ruin everything. She would love Fritz, and he would hate her. It was easier when she despised him. A flock of pelicans swept past. She wished she could go with them.
Lord, can’t You just swallow me up in the earth so I don’t have to say this?
She looked down. No crack opened up. She sighed. She looked away, down the rocky pathway at the wan roses that wilted in the thorny underbrush—the only kind of roses that can grow in sandy soil.
“Fritz,” she said, “I have something to tell you.”
He looked ashen, terrified. He probably thinks I’m going to leave him, to return to Copenhagen like so many Danish wives do. But for once I have to let him wallow in his misery, until I can explain.
“Fritz, I used to run into Søren in the streets of Copenhagen. All the time. Even after you and I were married.” She felt her body growing smaller, flatter. He would hate her now. She knew he would.
“Of course you did,” he said. His voice took on a forced heartiness. “You couldn’t help it. It’s a small city.”
“No, it’s more than that. I met him deliberately. As he did me—” She broke off and gripped Fritz’s wrist with her hand because his face was horror-struck and she realized what he was thinking. “No, it’s not like that,” she explained quickly. “We met on the streets. On Langelinie. At ten o’clock. We never spoke, only looked. And in church our eyes often met.”
“Well then,” Fritz said. “Well then. Thank you for telling me.” His face smoothed back into a mask.
There. She had done it. She was finished.
But a small, gentle voice urged her on. She looked away.
“Until the day we left Copenhagen. And I looked for him all over the city. On purpose. And I wished him well.”
“You mean the day we were all packed?” he asked. His voice sounded strained. He was trembling. “The morning Mother was visiting, and you ran out the door mumbling something about your gloves?”
She nodded.
Fritz’s face narrowed. Pain appeared behind his eyes.
Regina cringed. She let her hand fall from his wrist. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You must hate me.”
His arms went around her, and she let the point of the parasol fall into the soft earth. “I don’t hate you, my darling,” he said. “I couldn’t.” His voice cracked.
“And Fritz,” she began again, her cheek pressed against the warm cloth of his coat. She forced her mouth open, forced the muscles to comply even though she wanted only to remain silent. “I have one last thing to tell you, and it’s the worst part. But I think I have to say it, even though it’s going to hurt you, because I want to be free of it, and I don’t know how else to do it.”
She felt Fritz’s torso stiffen. She wanted to sink into the earth, to be swallowed up by a bottomless sofa, to never have to speak again.
But there was a more excellent way. A way of pain.
“Fritz. I still think about Søren. All the time. I don’t know why. I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.” Tears leaked out of her eyes. Pain in her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth, her stomach. “I’m so sorry.”
His arms dropped. He turned away from her. She watched his back. It was straight and unyielding. He was silent. Above him, the fronds of the coconut trees began to rock in the Christmas winds beginning to stir above the sea.
She steeled herself. He was going to walk away from her. She lifted her chin and began to talk herself out of the tired, tearing-down feeling of regret. Oh well, not this time. But there will be another time, another day. He’ll forgive me eventually. Isn’t that what marriage is all about?
She didn’t even see it coming. His hand engulfed hers. The angles and sinews and veins of his hand poked into her like nails protruding from the palms of his hands. And yet his skin against hers felt supple and graceful. She gripped his hand in return, tightly, and she could hardly breathe. All she could think was, He’s holding my hand! Oh, dear God! He’s holding my hand. Oh, dear God, yes!
Her heart was so full, she could not speak at all.
In researching this novel, both in New York City and also in Copenhagen and the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), I was blessed by the fact that so very many books on the subject have been translated.
As Søren Kierkegaard and his fabled love affair with Regine Olsen have garnered something of a cult following, I will confess the following two inaccuracies: (1) from an obscure footnote buried deep in a volume of Søren’s journals, I learned that the Olsen family lived in only half of a town house at Borsgade 66. By the time I learned this, however, it was too late; I’d already imagined scenes taking place in every room in the house (now destroyed). (2) The second inaccuracy was deliberate. While Regina had access to Søren’s journals, and while she did correspond with Henrik Lund after receiving Peter Christian’s letter, I sped up the sequence of events in the interest of pace. The journal entries in chapter 36 are authentic, therefore, but the two letters in that chapter are not; they are the only fictional letters in the novel. Those are the inaccuracies of which I am aware. There could be more, for which I apologize in advance.
Regine Olsen’s entire version of the story can be found in Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, collected, edited, and annotated by Bruce
H. Kirmmse; and translated by Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). This is a wonderful book to which I am entirely indebted. All of Regine Olsen’s epigraphs, Henriette Lund’s epigraphs, Troels Frederik Troels-Lund’s epigraph, the will, and Fritz Schlegel’s reply thereto are taken from this book.
Søren Kierkegaard’s affair with Regine Olsen figured prominently in roughly the first half of his works, also known as his “aesthetic” writings. She also occupies much space in his journals, as he remained obsessed with her throughout his life. Søren Kierkegaard’s epigraphs, his letters, and some of his dialogue are taken from the following of his works:
The Last Years: Journals, 1853–55. Ronald Gregor Smith, ed. and trans. New York, N. Y.: Harper, 1965. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 5 and 6. Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans., and assisted by Gregor Malantschuk. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1978.
The Concept of Anxiety. Reidar Thomte, ed. and trans., in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Fear and Trembling. Alastair Hannay, trans. New York, N. Y.: Penguin Books, 1985.
Philosophical Fragments/ Johannes Climacus. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Stages on Life’s Way. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. The Concept of Irony. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. The Sickness Unto Death. Alastair Hannay, trans. New York,
N. Y.: Penguin Books, 1989. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, vol. 1.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans.
Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Either/Or. Alastair Hannay, abridged and trans. New York,
N. Y.: Penguin Books, 1992.
The Point of View, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Other sources I found helpful include:
Cain, David. An Evocation of Kierkegaard. Kobenhavn: C.A.
Reitzel, 1997. Lowrie, Walter. A Short Life of Kierkegaard. Princeton,
N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1942. Palmer, Donald D. Kierkegaard for Beginners. New York,
N. Y.: Writers and Readers Publishings, Inc., 1996.
Kierkegaard lived during the Golden Age of Danish painting. In addition to the beautiful paintings hanging in Copenhagen’s museums, the illustrations in the following book provided a wealth of social detail: The Golden Age of Danish Painting, catalogue by Kasper Monrad (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993).
The St. Croix Avis, available on microfiche in the public library at St. Thomas, supplies a plethora of intimate detail on life in the Danish West Indies. Governor Schlegel, as well as his wife, are mentioned several times. One of the epigraphs and the quotation about Fritz Schlegel in chapter 31 are taken from this paper.
The details on the Danish West Indies were also enriched by the following works:
St. Croix St. Thomas St. John: Henry Morton: Danish West Indian Sketchbook and Diary 1843-44. Copenhagen, Denmark:
Dansk Vestindisk Selskab & St. Croix Landmark Society, 1975.
Haagensen, Reimert. Arnold R. Highfield, trans. Description of the Island of St. Croix in America in the West Indies. St. Croix,
U.S. Virgin Islands: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1995. Lawaetz, Erik J. St. Croix: 500 Years: Pre-Columbus to 1990.
Denmark: Poul Kristensen, 1991. Watkins, Priscilla G. Government House St. Croix. Greensboro,
N. C.: Friendly Desktop Publishing, 1996.
York, Nina, trans. Islands of Beauty and Bounty. St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, 1986.
My profound gratitude and thanks go to:
Barbara Bellows for saying, “Caroline, why don’t you write about that?”
Mally Cox-Chapman, Jennifer Bancroft Kelter, Michele Wijegoonaratna, Jennifer Ash Rudick, and Regina McBride for reading my early drafts, for brainstorming with me, and for all your encouragement and kindness.
Bob Svenson for saying, “God help you if you don’t write.”
Alice Ross, Tory Walsh, Boo Van Ingen, Liete Eichorn, Liz Cooke, Tory Baker, Christie Maasbach, Katie Norton, Meredyth Smith, Chris Diefendorf, Lieta Urry, and Joan Kaye for your weekly prayers.
Melanie Riggs, Mary McNeil, and Barbara Ernst Prey for being such enthusiastic cheerleaders when I needed it most.
Jan Coleman for writing the pitch that sold this book. We must be related somehow.
Betsy Pierce for your expert legal advice.
Beth Moore for all your Bible studies, but especially Breaking Free, which underlies Regina’s spiritual growth. I am especially indebted to you for the Jesus-as-Prince-Charming theme.
Tim Keller for your inspired preaching at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, especially your many sermons on identity. You truly have a gift from God.
Laura Dail for believing in me before anyone else did. Your enthusiasm means more than I can say.
Ramsey Walker, Tony Schulte, Eddie Auchincloss, Greg Gilhooly, Megan Jessiman, Patricia Haas, and Abby O’Neill for trying to help me on the twisting, turning road to publication.
Steve Laube for handling the business side of things.
Gary Terashita, my editor, for giving me the Phone Call At Home From An Editor and making my dream come true.
My brothers, Struan, Alex, and David Coleman, for wrestling with Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy with me—or at least Dad’s version of it—throughout our childhood.
My parents for lavishing such attention on us, and for teaching us about the love of Jesus Christ, not only by your words, but so much more by your actions.
Peter for supporting and encouraging me and never, once, asking why I didn’t get a real job.
Luke and Sheila for making me laugh every single day that I have had the supreme pleasure of being your mother.
And finally to my Lord and Savior, without whom, truly, this book would never have happened. Thank You for not letting me be published until I learned to put You first of all.
* * *
All of the author’s after tax royalties are going to
Hope for New York, a conglomeration of approximately
thirty faith-based charities in New York City.
www.hfny.com