Therapy

he said eventually. “Do you think so?” I said. She had dark brown eyes and hair to match, so I suppose he meant she had big tits. Actually, to be fair, there was something about the mouth and chin that was not unlike me. She also looked as if she was quite fun — there was a suspicion of a smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eye. Which was more than you could say for Kierkegaard, to judge from the drawing of him that was in the same case: a skinny, crooked, long-nosed old fogey in a stovepipe hat and carrying a furled umbrella like a gun under his arm. Tubby said it was a caricature done for a newspaper when Kierkegaard was in his forties, and pointed out another drawing done by a friend when he was a young man where he looked quite handsome, but somehow you didn’t believe in it as much as in the caricature. The crooked back was because he suffered from curvature of the spine. He used to prefer to write standing up at a high desk, which was one of the pieces of furniture in the room. Tubby stood at it himself for a moment, making some notes in a reporter’s notebook he’d brought with him, and a little German girl who had come into the room with her parents stared at him as he was writing and said to her father, “Ist das Herr Kierkegaard?” I laughed, because anyone who looked less like Kierkegaard would be hard to imagine. Tubby heard me laugh and looked round. “What is it?” he asked. When I explained, he blushed with pleasure. He’s absolutely obsessed with Kierkegaard, especially his relationship with this girl Regine. There was another piece of furniture in the room, at the opposite end to the desk, a sort of cupboard about five feet high. Tubby found out from the museum brochure that Kierkegaard had it made especially to keep his mementos of Regine in. Apparently she pleaded with him not to break off their engagement, and said she would be glad to be allowed to spend the rest of her life with him even if she had to live in a little cupboard, the silly cow. “That’s why it hasn’t got any shelves inside,” Tubby said. “So she would just fit inside.” I swear his eyes filled with tears as he read it out of the brochure.
    We had dinner that evening in the hotel restaurant: plain cuisine but excellent ingredients, mostly fish, beautifully cooked. I had baked turbot. Am I boring you, darling? Oh, good, I just thought I saw your eyes close for a moment. Well all through the meal I kept trying to turn the conversation on to the topic of The People Next Door and he kept dragging it back to Kierkegaard and Regine. I really began to get thoroughly sick of the subject. I was also hankering to see a bit of Copenhagen nightlife after dinner. I mean it has the reputation of being a very liberated city, with lots of sex shops and video parlours and live sex shows and suchlike. I hadn’t seen a trace of anything like that so far, but I presumed they must be somewhere. I wanted to do a little research of my own, for my Westenders project. But when I threw out some hints to this effect, Tubby seemed strangely slow on the uptake, almost as if he didn’t want to understand me. I thought perhaps he had plans for a private live sex show with just the two of us, but no. At about ten-fifteen he yawned and said it had been a long day and perhaps it was time to turn in. Well I was astonished — and, I have to admit, a little piqued. I mean it wasn’t that I positively fancied him, but I expected him to show a little more evidence of fancying me. I couldn’t believe that he had brought me all the way to Copenhagen just to talk about Kierkegaard.
    The next morning was Sunday, and Tubby insisted we went to church, because that was what Kierkegaard would have done. He was very religious apparently, in an eccentric sort of way. So we went to this incredibly dreary Lutheran service, all in Danish of course, which made it even more boring than chapel at school, if you can believe that. And after lunch we went to see Kierkegaard’s tomb. He’s buried in a cemetery about two miles from the city centre. His name actually means “churchyard” in Danish, so as Tubby observed we were visiting Kierkegaard in the kierkegaard, which was about the only joke of the afternoon. It was quite a nice place, with flower beds and trees planted to make avenues, and according to the guidebook the Copenhagen people use it like a park in fine weather and have picnics there and everything, but the afternoon we were there it was