Smilla's Sense of Snow

by Peter Høeg

“The sheds in Brønshøj,” he says. “I remember them. They were behind the movie theater.”

  He broke off ties with me. At some point I heard that they had gone to Greenland. She had taken a job as a teacher. Provided for the family while Jonathan composed for the polar bears. After they came back I visited them only once. The son was there, too. Handsome as a god. Some sort of scientist. Cold. We talked about music. He asked about money the whole time. Permanently scarred. Like you are, Moritz. You haven’t visited me for ten years. I hope your fortune suffocates you. There was a certain stubbornness about the boy, too. Like Schönberg. Twelve-tone music. Pure stubbornness. But Schönberg wasn’t cold. The boy was ice. I’m tired. I’ve started peeing in my bed. Can you stand to hear that, Moritz? It’ll happen to you someday, too.

  He hadn’t signed it.

  The clipping in the other envelope is a single paragraph: “On October 7, 1991, the police in Singapore arrested Tørk Hviid, a Danish citizen. The Consulate, on behalf of the Foreign Ministry, has lodged a protest.” It doesn’t mean anything to me. But it reminds me that Loyen was once in Singapore, too. To photograph mummies.

  We drive out to the North Harbor. Outside the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark he slows down, and we look at each other.

  We leave the car near the Svanemølle power plant and stroll toward the harbor, along Sundkrogs Street.

  There is a dry wind with barely visible, blowing ice crystals that sting your face.

  Now and then we hold hands. Now and then we stop to kiss with cold lips and warm mouths, now and then we walk on separately. We’re wearing boots. Snowdrifts have piled up on the sidewalk. And yet we feel like two dancers, gliding in and out of an embrace, a swoop into a lift. He doesn’t hold me back. He doesn’t weigh me down to the ground, he doesn’t urge me forward. One moment he’s at my side, the next he’s a little behind me.

  There’s something honest about an industrial harbor. There are no royal yacht clubs here, no promenades, no energy wasted on façades. There are silos for raw materials, warehouses, container cranes.

  Inside an open doorway there is a steel hull. We go up a wooden ladder and reach the deck. We sit on the bridge and look out across the white deck. I lay my head on his shoulder. We’re sailing. It’s summer. We’re sailing north. Maybe north along the coast of Norway. Not very far from shore, because I’m afraid of the open sea. Past the mouths of the great fjords. The sun is shining. The sea is blue and clear and deep, as if we had a huge mass of fluid crystal beneath the keel. There’s a midnight sun, a reddish, almost leaping disk of light. A faint song of the wind in the guy wires.

  We walk out to the marina. Men in smocks ride past on bicycles, turning around to stare at us, and we laugh at them, knowing that we are radiant.

  We wander along the quiet docks until we’re frozen stiff. We eat in a little café that’s built onto a smokehouse. Outside, the clouds bow for a brief moment to an extraordinary red sunset that makes the colors on the hulls of the fishing vessels shift from blue-white to rose to purple.

  He tells me about his parents. About his father, who never says anything, who is a carpenter and one of the last people in Denmark who knows how to make a winding staircase that twists up toward the sky in a perfect wooden spiral. About his mother, who test bakes cakes for the food pages of women’s magazines, cakes that she can’t even taste because she’s diabetic.

  When I ask him how he came to know Birgo Lander, he shakes his head and falls silent. Across the table I caress the side of his jaw, marveling at the way life can suddenly allow us to experience happiness and ecstasy with someone who is a complete stranger.

  Outside, night has fallen.

  Even in the dark, even in the winter, the wealthy suburb of Hellerup belongs to another dimension than Copenhagen. We’ve parked the car on a quiet, hushed road. The snow gleams white along the curb and along the high walls surrounding the villas. In the gardens evergreen trees and shrubs form dense black surfaces, like the edge of a forest or the side of a mountain, above a white carpet of snow.

  There are no streetlights. And yet we can see the house. A tall white villa standing where the road on which we’ve parked dwindles down to a lane.

  There is no hedge or fence around the house. From the sidewalk you can step directly onto the lawn. Upstairs, on the third floor, there’s a light in a window. Everything seems well kept, newly painted, expensive, and discreet.

  A few steps from the sidewalk there’s a sign on the lawn lit by a lamp. The sign says GEOINFORM.

  We were just going to drive by to look at the building. We’ve been here for an hour now.

  It has nothing to do with the house. We could have parked anywhere. And for any length of time.

  A police car stops alongside us. It has passed us twice before. Now they’ve gotten curious.

  The officer addresses the mechanic across me.

  “What’s going on here, buddy?”

  I stick my head out the window toward the patrol car.

  “We live in a one-room apartment, Mr. Commissioner. A basement apartment on Jægersborg Street. We have three children and a dog. Sometimes we just need a little private life. And it can’t cost anything. So we drive out here.”

  “All right, ma’am,” he says. “But drive somewhere else for your private life. This is the embassy district.”

  They’re gone. The mechanic starts the car and puts it into gear.

  Then the light goes out in the house in front of us. He slows down. We creep down toward the lane with our headlights off. Three figures come out onto the stairway. Two of them are merely dark spots in the night. But the third instinctively seeks out the light. A fur coat and a white face catch the light. It’s the woman I saw talking to Andreas Licht at Isaiah’s funeral. She tosses her head, and the dark hair flows into the night. Now that I see this gesture repeated, I realize that it’s an expression not of vanity but of self-confidence. A garage door goes up. The car comes out in a flood of light. Its headlights sweep over us and then it’s gone. Behind it the door slowly closes.

  We’re following the car. Not close, because the lane is deserted, but not far behind either.

  If you drive through Copenhagen in the dark and allow the surroundings to slip out of focus and blur, a new pattern appears that is not visible to the focused eye. The city as a moving field of light, as a spiderweb of red and white pulled over your retina.

  The mechanic is relaxed when he drives, almost introspective, as if he were about to fall asleep. He makes no sudden movements, and there is no sudden braking, no real acceleration; we simply float through the streets and the traffic. And the whole time, somewhere ahead, like a wide, low silhouette, is the car that is leading us.

  The traffic grows more sporadic and finally vanishes altogether. We’re on our way out toward Kalvebod Wharf.

  We drive out to the wharf very slowly, our headlights off. Several hundred yards ahead, on the dock itself, a pair of red taillights wink off. The mechanic parks along a dark wooden fence.

  The relative warmth of the sea has created a mist that swallows up the light. Visibility is about a hundred yards. The opposite side of the harbor has vanished in the darkness. The waves are languidly slapping against the wharf.

  And something is moving. No sound, but a black crystallization of a point in the night. A field of blackness systematically moving between the parked cars. Twenty-five yards away from us the movement stops. A person is standing next to a light-colored refrigerated trailer. Above the figure there is a lighter spot, as if from a white hat or a halo. He doesn’t move for a long time. The mist grows a little thicker. When it disperses, the figure is gone.

  “He was feeling the c-car hoods. To see if they were warm.”

  He’s whispering, as if his voice could be heard in the night.

  “A c-cautious man.”

  We sit quietly, letting time pass through us. In spite of this place, in spite of the unknown we’re waiting for, it feels like a flood of happiness to me.
>
  By his watch about half an hour passes.

  We don’t hear the car. It appears out of the fog, its headlights turned off, and passes us with an engine sound that is merely a whistle. Its windows are dark.

  We get out of the car and walk along the dock. The two dark contours that we could barely make out are ships. The closest one is a sailing ship. The gangway has been removed, and the ship is dark. A white plaque on the superstructure says, in German, that it’s a Polish training ship.

  The next one is a tall black hull. An aluminum stairway leads upward amidships, but it all seems empty and deserted. The ship’s name is Kronos. It’s about four hundred feet long.

  We walk back to the car.

  “Maybe we should go on board,” he says.

  I’m the one who has to make the decision. For a moment I’m tempted. Then comes the fear and the memory of the burning profile of the Northern Light against Iceland Wharf. I shake my head. Right now, at this moment, life seems too precious to me.

  We call Lander from a phone booth. He’s still at work.

  “What if the name of the ship was Kronos?” I say.

  He goes away and then returns. A few minutes pass as he turns the pages.

  “Lloyd’s Register of Ships lists five: a chemical tanker based in Frederiksstad, a sand dredger in Odense, a tugboat in Gdansk, and two ‘general cargo’ ships, one in Piraeus and one in Panama.”

  “The last two.”

  “The Greek one is a 1,200-ton ship, the other 4,000 tons.” I hand the ballpoint pen to the mechanic. He shakes his head.

  “I’m no good at numbers, either.”

  “Any picture?”

  “Not in Lloyd’s. But quite a few statistics. Four hundred and fifteen feet long, built in Hamburg in ’57. Reinforced for ice.”

  “The owners?”

  He goes away from the telephone again. I look at the mechanic. His face is in darkness; now and then car headlights make it appear, white, anxious, sensual. And under the sensuality, something intractable.

  “Lloyd’s Maritime Directory lists the shipowner as Plejada, registered in Panama. But the name looks Danish. A Katja Claussen. Never heard of her.”

  “I have,” I say. “Kronos is our ship, Lander.”

  3

  We’re sitting on his bed with our backs against the wall. In this light, against his naked whiteness, the scars around his wrists and ankles are as black as iron bands.

  “Do you think that people determine their own lives, Smilla?”

  “The details,” I say, “but the big things happen on their own.”

  The telephone rings.

  He removes the tape and listens to a brief message. Then he hangs up.

  “You might want to take out your high-heeled shoes. Birgo wants to meet us tonight.”

  “Where?”

  He laughs secretively.

  “A shady dive, Smilla. But put on your good clothes.”

  He carries me up the stairs. I kick in his arms, and we laugh quietly so as not to attract attention. In Qaanaaq, when I was little, the bridegroom would drag the bride out to the sled on their wedding night, and they would drive off followed by hooting guests. Sometimes they still do that. The hour I’m going to spend alone getting dressed already seems long. I’d rather ask him to stay so I could keep on looking at him. He’s still not completely anchored in reality for me. His raw sweetness, his massive bulk and awkward politeness are still like a vivid dream. But only a dream. I reach out, grab hold of the door frame, and resist being set down. I let my fingers slide along the top hinge. The two pieces of tape have been broken, the ragged edges prick my fingertips.

  I take his hands and move them up to the tape. His face grows somber. He puts his mouth against my ear. “We’ll sneak off …”

  I shake my head. My apartment is sacrosanct. You can take anything away from me, but I must have a corner somewhere to myself.

  I try the door. It’s not locked. I step inside. He has to follow me. But he’s not happy about it.

  The apartment is cold. That’s because I always turn down the heat when I leave. I’m stingy about energy. I seal windows. I shut doors. It comes from living in Thule. From firsthand experience of how precious and scarce petroleum is.

  That’s why I naturally turn off all the lights behind me, too. And turn on only what’s absolutely necessary. Now a light that I did not turn on is shining from the living room out into the hallway.

  The swivel desk chair is pulled over to the window. A coat with wide shoulders is hanging over the back. A hat is floating on the shoulders. A pair of shiny black shoes is resting on the windowsill.

  I don’t think we’ve made any noise. But the shoes come down all the same, and the chair slowly turns around to face us.

  “Good evening, Miss Smilla,” he says. “And Mr. Føjl.”

  It’s Ravn.

  His face is ashen with weariness, and there’s a shadow of a beard on his cheeks, which I don’t think the district attorney for special financial crimes would approve of. His voice sounds groggy, like someone who hasn’t had any sleep for a long time.

  “Do you know what the first requirement is for establishing a career in the Ministry of Justice?”

  I take a look around. But he seems to be alone.

  “The first requirement is loyalty. You also have to have a high score on your exams. And a desire to achieve which is far beyond the ordinary. But in the long run, the important thing is whether you are loyal. Common sense is not a prerequisite, on the other hand. Might even be a drawback.”

  I sit down on a chair. The mechanic leans against the desk.

  “At some point we had to choose. Some became deputy judges and, eventually, judges. They often had a natural faith in justice, in the system. Faith in the possibility of healing and rebuilding. The rest of us became assistant detectives, investigators, and later assistants to the district attorney. With time, maybe assistant prosecutors. We were the suspicious ones. We believed that a statement, a confession, an incident was seldom what it purported to be. This suspiciousness was an excellent tool for us. As long as it wasn’t directed at our work or at the Ministry itself. A bureaucrat in the prosecutor’s office must never doubt that he is right. Any impertinent question from the press must be referred to higher-ups. Any article you publish with even a hint of criticism—well, virtually any article at all—will be interpreted as disloyalty toward the Ministry. In some ways you no longer exist as an individual in the Ministry of Justice. Most comply with this demand. I can tell you that most people secretly find it a relief to have the state divest them of the trouble of being an independent person. The few who can’t comply are separated out at an early stage.”

  I’ve seen it on long journeys. When someone is burned out, he suddenly discovers within himself a landscape of cheerful cynicism.

  “And yet once in a while a slippery character happens to stay in the system. Someone who can hide his true nature until it’s too late. Until he’s made himself relatively indispensable, so it would be difficult for the Ministry to do without him. This type of person will never reach the top. But he can get partway up. Maybe even as far as the position of investigator for the district attorney. By that time he would be too old—and maybe even too expert in his field—to be dispensable. But he has made too much trouble to be promoted upward. This kind of person would be a pebble in the Ministry’s shoe. It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s annoying. With time, they would try to put this kind of person into a niche. Where they could draw on his stubbornness and memory, but where they could keep him out of the public eye. Maybe he would end up taking on special assignments. Like intelligence work, where staying out of the spotlight is part of the job. A complaint about the investigation of a little boy’s death might even end up in his lap. If it turned out that there was already a report on file about the case.”

  He doesn’t look at either of us.

  “It so happens that word comes from higher up that the person who filed the
complaint must be reassured. ‘Pacified,’ as they say at the Ministry at Slotsholm. They have a good deal of experience in this. But this time the case is more difficult. A child’s death. Photographs of his footprints on the roof. It could easily turn into an embarrassment. So I voice the idea that there’s some irregularity in the boy’s death. But I don’t get any backup, from either the police or the Ministry.”

  He gets up from the chair with difficulty.

  “Then that deplorable fire occurs. Unfortunately, it too has something to do with Greenland. And the name of the gentleman who perishes is listed in the aforementioned report. Yesterday morning I was taken off the case. ‘Due to its complex nature,’ etc.”

  He straightens his hat and walks over to the desk. He taps lightly on the red tape on the phone.

  “Very clever,” he says. “There’s no end to the trouble these apparatuses cause innocent citizens. But it would have been even better not to answer the phone at all, or not to give out your number. The ship was almost totally destroyed by the fire, but the telephone must have been made of a non-flammable material. And it was lying on the floor, too. It had a built-in memory that stored the last number called. The last number was yours. My guess is that you will soon be invited in for a little talk.”

  “Wasn’t it risky for you to come here?” I ask.

  He has a key in his hand. “We borrowed a key from the custodian during the initial investigation. I took the liberty of making a copy. So I went through the basement rooms. I’m planning to go back out the same way.”

  For a fleeting moment something happens to him. A light goes on in his face, as if a pinch of humor and humanity flares up behind the lava. The fossilized memory of the pumice stone, of the time when everything was hot and flowing. It’s this light that makes me ask the question.

  “Who is Tørk Hviid?”

  The light goes out, his face becomes expressionless, as if his soul had left his body.