get a glimpse of their situation by inspecting the surviving records of their
participation in Holy Communion .The sexton of each church was sup-
posed to record the names of every communicant in these registers, thereby
leaving specific records of the piety—or lack of same—of the lives of per-
sons long since deceased .“Merchant Kirkkegaard with wife, daughter, and
3 sons of whom Søren Aabye (conf.),” the sexton at the Church of Our
Lady had thus written years earlier, on Friday, April 25, 1828, when Søren
Aabye, who had been confirmed the previous Sunday, took communion
for the first time .That was as it was supposed to be .Like his father, he
chose Fridays as his communion day, and between 1828 and 1836 the two
men took communion together on a total of eighteen occasions .Taking
communion together strengthens a mutual connection, but it also presup-
poses a mutual toleration that the two sons at times found difficult to sum-
mon forth .Thus on occasion Peter Christian’s name was added to the com-
munion register underthe line that would normally indicate the total
number of communicants; he had added his name to the list of prospective
communicants at the last minute, after an exhausting spiritual struggle:
“Nevertheless, praise God, on the 16th I did take communion with my
father, after I had tried to make my peace with Søren, with whom I have
recently got along reasonably well, inasmuch as we have each kept to our-
selves .I have also got along reasonably well with Father, who often enough
must endure my depressed and irritable humor, which this month has been
intensified by illness.” That day, January 16, 1835, Søren Aabye and Peter
Christian took communion together for the last time ever.
Søren Aabye had in fact finally had enough of it all .Enough of that
housebound, depressive old man, who coughed and hawked and had to
leave the room at regular intervals in order to vomit when the emetics
(which had been prescribed by the physician as a remedy for his increasing
colic) noisily took effect .And he had had enough of his father’s endless
prowling around the empty rooms, listening, eavesdropping, and hatching
little intrigues with Peter Christian, Goody-goody Peter, Pusillanimous
Peter, that conscientious and self-sacrificing person, who, however, was
fundamentally a complete neurotic and unfit for life, and who since Maria’s
death actually had something to be self-pitying about .And he had had
enough of the questions no one really dared to ask, nor perhaps could an-
swer .What did Maria die of? Why didn’t Peter Christian want to kiss her?
And why couldn’t Peter Christian pull himself together and have a memo-
rial tablet placed on Maria’s grave out at the cemetery? Was it because he
thought that he himself would soon be out there, too? Had God pro-
nounced a curse upon the house of Kierkegaard? Or were the countless
romina
(Romina)
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