by Peter Høeg
“The management, of course, is fiscally accountable to the board of directors, and ultimately to the stockholders. The finance director was the ‘executive chairman of the board.’ That may seem a very practical division of power. But it demands the utmost trust. Ottesen was always at the quarry. The sales director was always away. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that for many years the finance director made all decisions of importance for the corporation. Naturally, there was no reason to doubt his integrity. An absolutely trustworthy decision-maker. Both an attorney and an accountant. Former city council member. Representing the Social Democratic Party. He has been and still is on several boards of directors. Housing associations and savings banks.”
She hands me the bowl. Danes express their strongest feelings in conjunction with food. That became clear to me the first time I was out visiting friends with Moritz. When I took a third helping of cookies, he looked straight at me.
“Keep on taking until you’re ashamed of yourself,” he said.
I wasn’t confident about my Danish, but I understood what he meant. I helped myself three more times. Without taking my eyes off him. The room disappeared, the people we were visiting disappeared, I didn’t taste the cookies. Only Moritz existed.
“I’m still not ashamed,” I said.
I helped myself three more times. Then he grabbed the platter and put it out of my reach. I had won. The first of a long series of small, important victories over him and Danish manners.
Elsa Lübing’s cookies are of a different kind. They are supposed to make me both her confidante and her accomplice.
“The auditors are chosen at the stockholders’ meeting. But the corporation’s shares—aside from those owned by the finance director himself and the government—are divided among many hands. They are held by all the heirs of the eight partners who acquired the first mineral rights in the last century. It has never been possible to gather them all for a general stockholders’ meeting. That means that the director has had an inordinately large influence. It’s worth noting that all decisions dealing with the most economically significant part of Greenland’s mineral rights have been made by one individual, don’t you think?”
“How touching.”
“There is also a business aspect. The corporation was a very big customer. Any auditor who took a stand against the director had to be prepared to lose this customer. Finally, there was the fact that the same people played various roles in the corporation. The corporation’s auditor through the sixties later became one of the director’s colleagues when he started his law practice. On January 7, 1967, I balanced the semiannual accounts. There was one entry that was not itemized. For 115,000 kroner. A large amount in those days. Perhaps it wouldn’t have surprised an outsider. The board probably wouldn’t have caught it. Not in a sales volume of 50 million kroner. But for me, who dealt with the daily accounts, it was unacceptable. So I looked for the pertinent file card. It wasn’t there. They were all numbered. It should have been there. But it was missing. Then I went up to the director’s office. I had worked under his leadership for twenty years. He listened to me, looked down at his papers, and then said, ‘Miss Lübing, I authorized that entry. For technical bookkeeping reasons, it was too difficult to itemize. Our auditor feels that the present listing is acceptable accounting practice. Anything beyond that lies outside your sphere of expertise.’”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I went back and entered the figures. As I had been instructed to do. And with that I made myself an accomplice. To something which I didn’t understand, which I have never understood. I did not administer the ‘talents’ entrusted to my care. I showed myself to be unworthy of trust.”
I empathize with her. The problem was not that they called her competence into question by withholding information from her. Or that they gave her an impudent answer. The problem was that they had tampered with her ideals of honesty.
“I will tell you where this amount appears in the books.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “It appears in the accounts for the corporation’s geological expedition to the Barren Glacier on Gela Alta off the west coast of Greenland in the summer of ’66.”
She looks at me with narrowed eyes.
“In the report from ’91 there were references to an earlier expedition,” I explain. “It’s as simple as that.”
“There was an accident that time, too,” she says. “An accident with explosives. Two of the eight participants died.”
I have an idea why she has summoned me. She sees me as a kind of auditor. Someone who might be able to help her and Our Lord by auditing an unsettled account from January 7, 1967.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
What should I tell her? My thoughts are chaotic.
“I’m thinking that the Barren Glacier seems to be an unhealthy place to visit,” I say.
We’ve been sitting in silence for a while; we’ve finished our tea and eaten our cookies and looked at the world lying at our feet, snow-covered and mundane.
And there’s even a swath of sunshine cutting across Solsorte Road and the soccer field at the school on Due Road. But the whole time I am positive that she has more to tell.
“Councilor Ebel died in 1964,” she says. “Everyone says that an epoch in Danish financial life died with him. In his will he demanded that his Rolls-Royce be sunk in the North Atlantic, while the Swedish actor Gösta Ekman recited Hamlet’s soliloquy on the deck of the ship.”
I can just picture the scene. This funeral could be considered a symbol of a political death and resurrection. The old, blatantly colonial policy in Greenland was abandoned at this time. Making room for the policies of the sixties—the educating of Northern Danes to equal rights.
“The corporation was reorganized. We noticed it because there was a new office manager and two new women in bookkeeping. But otherwise the greatest changes were in the research department. That’s because the cryolite was almost exhausted. They were constantly having to develop new methods of sorting and extraction because the quality of the ore was getting poorer and poorer. But we all knew what was going on. Occasionally, during lunch in the cafeteria, rumors would circulate about a new find. It was like a temporary fever. After a few days the rumors were always disavowed. Originally there were only five people on the laboratory staff. It was expanded. At one time there were twenty. Earlier, additional geologists had been hired for brief periods. They often came from Finland. But now a permanent research group was created. Then, in 1967, they formed the Advisory Scientific Commission. This made the daily work more secretive. We were told very little. But it was created to find new deposits. It was made up of representatives from some of the big companies and institutions that the corporation worked with. The Swedish Diamond Drilling Company, Denmark’s Underground, Inc., the Geologic Institute, Greenland’s Geologic Survey. That complicated the bookkeeping. Things were more difficult because of the many new fees, the numerous expedition expenses. And all along I thought about the unresolved matter of the 115,000 kroner.”
I ponder what it must have been like to be her, with her inordinate sense for numbers and her belief in honesty, having to work on a daily basis with someone she suspected of covering up an irregularity.
She gives me her own answer. “‘For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.’ Mark 4:22.”
Faith in divine justice has given her patience.
“In 1977 we were computerized. I never managed to understand it. At my request we continued to keep manual accounts. In 1992 I retired. Three weeks before my last workday we balanced the books. The finance director suggested that I leave this balance sheet to the office manager. I insisted on doing it myself. On January 7—exactly twenty-five years after the event I mentioned—I sat there with the books for the expedition to Gela Alta from the previous summer. It was like an omen. I took out the old accounts. I compare
d the two, item by item. This was difficult, of course. The expedition of ‘91 was financed through the Scientific Commission, which had become common practice. And yet it was possible to compare them. The biggest entry in ’91 was for 450,000 kroner. I called the commission and requested an itemization.”
She pauses, mastering her indignation.
“Later I received a letter which stated, briefly summarized, that I should not have gone over the heads of my immediate superiors with that type of request. But by then it was too late. Because on the telephone that day they had given me the answer. The 450,000 kroner had been used to charter a ship.”
She sees that I don’t understand a thing.
“A ship,” she says, “a coaster, to transport eight men to the west coast of Greenland to pick up a few kilos of sample gemstones. It doesn’t make sense. We often chartered the Disko from the Greenland Trading Company. To transport the cryolite. But a ship for a small expedition, that was unthinkable. Do you ever remember your dreams, Miss Smilla?”
“Sometimes.”
“Recently I’ve dreamed several times that you were sent by Providence.”
“You should hear what the police say about me.”
Like many elderly people, she has developed a selective sense of hearing. She ignores me and continues on her own track. “Perhaps you think I’m old. Perhaps you’re wondering whether I’m senile. But remember, ‘Your old men shall dream dreams.’”
She looks straight through me, straight through the wall. Straight into the past.
“I think that the 115,000 kroner in 1966 must have been used to charter a ship. I think that someone, under the guise of the Cryolite Corporation, has sent two expeditions to the west coast.”
I hold my breath. With her honesty and her breach of a lifelong loyalty, this is a delicate moment.
“There can only be one explanation for this. At any rate, after forty-five years with the corporation, I cannot think of any other reason. They wanted to transport something back to Denmark, something so heavy that it required a ship.”
I put on my cape. The black one with the hood that makes me look like a nun and that I thought would be suitable for the occasion.
“The Carlsberg Foundation financed part of the expedition in ’91. In their accounts there is a fee for a Benedicte Clahn,” I say.
She gazes, dreamy-eyed, straight ahead, as she pages through her complete, error-free internal account books.
“In 1966, too,” she says slowly. “A translator’s fee of 267 kroner. That was also one of the entries I did not find an explanation for. But I remember her. She was one of the director’s acquaintances. She had been living in Germany. I had the impression that they knew each other from Berlin in 1946. Immediately after the end of the war the Allies negotiated in Berlin regarding the division of aluminum supplies. A lot of people from the corporation were often down there during those years.”
“Such as?”
“Ottesen was there. The director of sales. And Councilor Ebel.”
“Any others?”
She’s groggy from talking so much and from pouring out her heart into what might turn out to be the gutter. She wearily considers my question.
“I can’t remember hearing about any others. Is it important?”
I shrug my shoulders. She takes hold of me. She can practically lift me off the floor. “The little boy’s death. What are you planning to do?”
Denmark is a hierarchical society. She finds a mistake, and she complains to her boss. She is rejected. She complains to the board. She is rejected. But above the board sits Our Lord. She has turned to Him in prayer. Now she wants me to show that I am one of His assistants dispatched to help.
“That coaster. Did it sail off with what it went to get?”
She shakes her head. “That’s hard to say. After the accident the survivors and their equipment were flown to Godthåb and then home. I am positive about that because the accounting department paid for the freight and their plane tickets.”
She follows me all the way out to the elevator. I feel a sudden tenderness for her. A motherly feeling, even though she is twice my age and three times as strong.
The elevator arrives.
“Now don’t let your honesty give you bad dreams,” I say.
“I’m too old to regret anything.”
Then I ride down. On my way out the front door, I suddenly think of something. When I call her up on the silver-plated conch shell, she answers as if she had been standing there waiting for my call.
“Miss Lübing.”
I would never dream of using her first name.
“The director of finance. Who is he?”
“He’s going to retire next year. He runs his own law office. His name is David Ving. The firm is Hammer & Ving. It’s located somewhere on Øster Street.”
I thank her.
“God be with you,” she says.
No one has ever said that to me before, outside of church. Maybe I’ve never had such a need for it before, either.
“I had a c-colleague who worked on the cleaning staff at the phone company’s switching station on Nørre Street.”
We’re sitting in the mechanic’s living room.
“He told me that they just call in and say that now they have a court order. Then some clips are put on a relay and via the telephone network they can sit at police headquarters and tap all incoming and outgoing calls on a certain number.”
“I’ve never liked telephones.”
He has a big roll of wide red insulation tape and a little pair of scissors on the table. He cuts a long strip and attaches it to the telephone receiver.
“Do the same thing in your apartment. From now on, every time you make a call and every time someone calls you, you’ll have to remove the t-tape first. That will make you remember that there might be an audience listening somewhere in the city. People always forget that telephones might not be private. The tape will remind you to be careful. If, for instance, you happen to make a declaration of love.”
If I were going to declare my love to someone, I certainly wouldn’t do it over the phone. But I don’t say anything.
I know nothing about him. Over the last ten days I’ve seen little drops of his past. They don’t jibe. Like now, this knowledge of the procedure for tapping phones.
The tea he makes for us is another one of those little drops that surprise me but that I don’t want to ask about.
He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups. There’s something euphorically invigorating and yet filling about it. It tastes the way I imagine the Far East must taste.
I tell him about my visit to Elsa Lübing. He now knows everything that I know. Except for a few details, such as Isaiah’s cigar box and its contents, including a tape on which a man is laughing.
“Who, other than the Carlsberg Foundation, financed the expedition in ’91? Did she know? Who arranged for the ship?”
I kick myself for not asking that precise question. I reach for the telephone. The receiver is taped on.
“That’s why the t-tape is there,” he says. “After five minutes you’d forget all about it otherwise.”
Together we walk over to the phone booth on the square. His stride is one and a half times as long as mine. And yet it still feels comfortable walking next to each other. He walks just as slowly as I do.
When my mother didn’t come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left.
You can demand something like this of yourself as an unattainable ideal. After that, you have to remind yourself about it every time you’re sloppy about something. For me that means 250 times a day.
She picks up the phone at once. It strikes me how self-confident her voice is.
“Yes?”
I don’t give my name. “The 450,000 kroner. Who paid it?”
She doesn’t ask me about anything. Maybe it has also been revealed to her that someone might be on the line. She thinks for a moment in silence.
“Geoinform,” she says then. “That was the name of the company. They had two representatives on the Scientific Commission. They owned a block of shares. Five percent, as far as I can recall. Enough so that it had to be registered with the Trade Commission. The company is owned by a woman.”
The mechanic has stepped into the booth with me. It makes me think of three things. The first is that he fills it up. If he stood up straight he could push the bottom out of it, and walk away with me and the booth.
The second thing is that his hands against the glass in front of me are smooth and clean. Used to hard work but smooth and clean. Occasionally he gets a job at a garage on Toftegård Square. How, I ask myself, can he mess around all day long with grease and socket wrenches and keep his fingers so smooth?
The third thing is that I’m honest enough to admit that there’s a certain pleasure in standing next to him this way. I have to stop myself from prolonging the conversation solely for that reason.
“I’ve been thinking about something you asked me. About Berlin after the war. There was one other colleague. At that time he was not employed by us. But he was later on. Not at the quarry, but here in Copenhagen. As a medical consultant. Dr. Loyen. Johannes Loyen. He did some work for the Americans. I think he was a forensics expert.”
“How does someone become a professor, Smilla?”
On a piece of paper we’ve made a list of names. There is attorney and CPA David Ving. Someone who knows something about ships. How to cover up the expenses of chartering one, for example, and send them as a Christmas present to little children in Greenland.
There is Benedicte Clahn. The mechanic found her in the phone book. If it’s the same one, that is. It turns out that she lives two hundred yards from where we are now sitting. In one of the renovated warehouses on Strand Street. Which contain Denmark’s most expensive condominiums. Three million kroner for nine hundred square feet. But then there’s also a brick wall five feet thick to beat your head against when you figure out the price per square foot. And beams of Pomeranian pine to hang yourself from if the wall doesn’t do the trick. He has written down her phone number next to her name.