Smilla's Sense of Snow

by Peter Høeg

  “Now we’re going to go up to the bridge and tell Lukas all about this,” I say.

  “No can do, man.”

  There are red patches on his face. I wait. But he can hardly speak.

  “Does Verlaine know that you’re a little needle freak?”

  He reacts with that baroque cockiness you sometimes encounter in people who have almost hit bottom.

  “I’m the one controlling the drug; the drug doesn’t control me!”

  “But Verlaine has seen through you. He’s going to put the finger on you. Why would that be so bad?”

  He meticulously studies his tennis shoes.

  “Why do you have a pass key, Jakkelsen?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I’ve already been up on the bridge,” I say. “With Verlaine. We agreed that the alarm went off by itself. That I fell down the stairs out of sheer astonishment.”

  “Lukas won’t buy that.”

  “He doesn’t believe us. But there’s nothing he can do. You weren’t mentioned at all.”

  He’s relieved. Then a thought occurs to him. “Why didn’t you tell him what happened?”

  I have to win his help. It’s like trying to build something on sand. “I’m not interested in Verlaine. I’m interested in Tørk.”

  The panic is back in his eyes. “That’s much worse, man. I know a creep when I see one, and he’s bad news.”

  “I want to know what we’re on our way to get.”

  “I’ve told you, man. We’re on our way to get some dope.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not dope. Narcotics come from the tropics. From Colombia. From Burma. From Pakistan. And it goes to Europe. Or the U.S.A. It doesn’t come to Greenland. Not in quantities that require a 4,000-ton ship. That forward cargo hold is specially built. I’ve never seen anything like it. It can be sterilized with steam. The air composition, temperature, and humidity can be regulated. You’ve seen all of this and thought about it. What did you come up with?”

  His hands take on their own helplessly fluttering life on top of my pillows, like baby birds that have fallen out of the nest. His mouth opens and shuts.

  “Something alive, man. Otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. They’re going to transport something that’s alive.”

  9

  Sonne unlocks the sick bay for me. It’s nine o’clock at night. I find a gauze bandage. He bolsters his uncertainty by standing at attention. Because I’m a woman. Because he doesn’t understand me. Because there’s something he wants to say.

  “On the between decks, when we showed up with the fire-extinguishing equipment, you were sitting there with a couple of fire blankets.”

  At the spot where the skin is broken I dab on a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide. No Mercurochrome for me. I have to feel it sting before I believe it’s going to do any good.

  “I went back, but they were gone,” he says.

  “Someone must have taken them away,” I say. “It’s good to keep things tidy.”

  “But they forgot to take this away.”

  Behind his back he’s been holding a wet, folded gunny sack. Maurice’s blood has left big purplish patches on it.

  I put the bandage on the wound. The gauze has some kind of adhesive on it that makes it stay on by itself.

  I take along a big elastic bandage. He follows me out the door. He’s a nice young Dane. He ought to be on board an East Asiatic Company tanker right now. He could have been on the bridge of one of the Lauritzen ships. He could have been sitting at home under the cuckoo clock with his mother and father in Ærøskøbing, eating meatballs and gravy, praising Mama’s cooking, and basking in Papa’s humble pride. Instead, he wound up here. In worse company than he could ever imagine. I feel sorry for him. He’s a little piece of what’s good about Denmark. Honesty, integrity, enterprise, obedience, crew cuts, and financial order.

  “Sonne,” I say, “are you from Ærøskøbing?”

  “No, Svaneke.” He looks disconcerted.

  “Does your mother make meatballs?”

  He nods.

  “Good meatballs? Crusty on the outside?”

  He blushes. He wants to protest. Wants to be taken seriously. Wants to exert his authority. The way Denmark does. With blue eyes, pink cheeks, and honorable intentions. But all around him are powerful forces: money, development, abuse, the collision of the new world with the old. And he doesn’t understand what’s going on. That he will only be tolerated as long as he cooperates. And that’s all the imagination he has, anyway. Only enough to cooperate.

  To say stop requires quite different talents. Something much more vulgar, much more clear-sighted. Much more embittered.

  I reach up and pat his cheek. I can’t resist. The blush rises up from his throat, like a rose beneath his skin.

  “Sonne,” I say, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but just keep on doing it.”

  I lock my door, place the chair under the door handle, and sit down on my bed.

  Those who have traveled enough in places where it’s very cold will sooner or later find themselves in a situation where survival means staying awake. Death is built into sleep. The person who freezes to death passes through a brief state of sleep. The person who bleeds to death goes to sleep, and the one who is buried under an avalanche of compact, wet snow falls asleep before suffocating to death.

  I need to sleep. But I can’t, not yet. In this situation there’s a certain respite in the hazy region between sleep and full consciousness.

  During the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference we discovered that all peoples around the Arctic Sea shared the story of the raven, the Arctic creation myth:

  Even the raven started out in human form, and he fumbled blindly, and his actions were haphazard until it was revealed to him who he was and what his purpose was.

  To find out what your purpose is. Maybe that’s what Isaiah has given me. The way every child can. A sense of meaning. Of a wheel turning through me, and through him, too—a vast and frail and yet necessary movement.

  That is what has been violated. Isaiah’s body in the snow is a violation. While he was alive, he brought purpose and meaning. And, as always, I didn’t appreciate how important he was until he was gone.

  Now my purpose is to understand why he died. To penetrate and illuminate the infinitesimal yet all-encompassing fact of his death.

  I wrap the elastic bandage around my foot and try to get my blood circulation going. Then I let myself out and quietly knock on Jakkelsen’s door.

  He’s still full of chemical energy. But the effects are beginning to wear off.

  “I want to go up on the boat deck,” I say. “Tonight. You’re going to help me.”

  He’s on his feet and on his way out the door. I don’t try to stop him. Someone like that doesn’t have any real freedom of choice.

  “You must be crazy, man. That’s a restricted area. Jump overboard, man. Why don’t you jump overboard instead.”

  “You have to help me,” I say. “Or I’ll be forced to go up on the bridge and tell them to come and get you. And in the presence of witnesses you’ll have to roll up your sleeves so they can admit you to the sick bay, strap you to the bunk, and lock the door with a guard outside.”

  “You’d never do that, man.”

  “My heart would bleed at having to report a hero of the high seas. But I’d be forced to do it.”

  He struggles with his suspicions.

  “I’d also let drop a few words to Verlaine about what you’ve seen.”

  That pushes him over the edge. He’s shaking uncontrollably.

  “He’d cut me up in little pieces,” he says. “How could you do that, after I rescued you?”

  Maybe I could make him understand. But it would require an explanation that I can’t give him.

  “I want to know,” I say, “I have to know what we’re going to pick up. What that tank is designed to hold.”

  “Why, Smilla?”

  It all began with a person falling off a roo
f. But before that’s resolved, there is a series of connections that may never be untangled. And what Jakkelsen needs is to be reassured. Europeans need easy explanations; they will always choose a simple lie over a contradictory truth.

  “Because I owe it to somebody,” I say. “I owe it to someone I love.”

  It’s not a mistake to use the present tense. It’s only in a narrow, physical sense that Isaiah has ceased to exist.

  Jakkelsen stares at me, disillusioned and gloomy. “You don’t love anyone. You don’t even like yourself. You’re not a real woman. When I dragged you up the stairs, I saw that little point sticking out of the bag. A screwdriver. Like a little dick. You stabbed him, man.”

  His face is full of amazement. “I can’t figure you out, man. You’re the good fairy in the monkey cage. But you’re cold, too, man. You’re like a fucking banshee.”

  As we reach the covered area on the upper deck, the clock on the bridge strikes four bells; it’s two in the morning, halfway through the middle watch.

  The wind has died down, the temperature has dropped, and pujuq, the fog, has raised its four white walls around the Kronos.

  Next to me, Jakkelsen has already started shivering. He has no resistance to the cold.

  Something has happened to the contours of the ship, to the sea rail, the masts, the spotlights, and the radio antenna, which at a height of a hundred feet stretches from the mast farthest forward to the one in the stern. I rub my eyes. But it’s not my eyesight.

  Jakkelsen puts his finger on the railing and lifts it again. It leaves behind a black spot where it has melted through the fine, milky layer of ice.

  “There are two kinds of ice on a ship, you know. The ugly kind, that comes from the waves slamming over the side and freezing solid. More and more, faster and faster, after the rigging and everything else upright starts to get thick with it. And then the truly bad kind of ice. The type that comes from the sea fog. It doesn’t need any waves, it simply covers everything. It’s just something that’s there.”

  He gestures out toward the whiteness. “This is the start of the truly bad kind. Four more hours and we’ll have to get out the ice axes.”

  His movements seem feeble but his eyes are shining. He would hate having to hammer off ice. But somewhere inside him even this aspect of the sea ignites a wild joy in him.

  I walk thirty feet forward, to a spot where I won’t be visible from the bridge, but where I can survey several of the windows on the boat deck. They’re all dark. All the windows in the superstructure are dark, except for a faint light from the officers’ mess. The Kronos is asleep.

  “They’re sleeping,” I say.

  He’s been over to the quarterdeck to look at the windows facing astern. “We should fucking well all be asleep.”

  We go up the three levels to the boat deck. He continues on to the next landing. From there he’ll be able to see whether anyone leaves the bridge. And whether anyone happens to leave the boat deck. Inside a sack, for instance.

  I’m wearing my black serving uniform. It’s almost worthless as an excuse for anything at two o’clock in the morning, but I couldn’t come up with anything else. I’m taking actions without stopping to think about them. Because forward is the only way to go, and it’s impossible to stop. I put Jakkelsen’s key in the lock. It slides in effortlessly. But it won’t turn. The combination has been changed.

  “It’s a sign, man. We should drop this idea.”

  He comes back down and stands right behind me. I take hold of his lower lip. The blood blister hasn’t gone down yet. He would have protested if I hadn’t put my hand over his mouth.

  “If it’s a sign, then it means that behind that door there’s something they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to keep us from seeing.”

  I whisper this in his ear. Then I let him go. He can think of a lot of things to say, but he restrains himself. He follows me with his head bowed. When the opportunity arises, he’ll take his revenge and stomp on me, or sell me to whoever comes along, or give me the final kick from behind. But right now he feels cowed.

  Rooms designed for some form of socializing always seem unreal when they’re empty. Theater stages, churches, dining rooms. The mess is dark and lifeless, but still populated with the memory of life and mealtimes.

  In the galley there’s a strong odor of sourdough, yeast, and alcohol. Urs told me that his bread rises for six hours, from ten o’clock at night until four in the morning. We have an hour and a half, two at the most.

  When I open the two sliding doors, Jakkelsen realizes what I’m up to.

  “I knew you were crazy, man. But I didn’t know you were that far gone …”

  The dumbwaiter has been cleaned, and inside there is a tray laden with cups and saucers, breakfast plates, silverware, and napkins. Urs’s token preparations for the next day.

  I remove the tray and the china.

  “I get claustrophobic,” says Jakkelsen.

  “You’re not the one who’s going up in it.”

  “I get claustrophobic for other people, too.”

  The box is rectangular. I get up on the counter and crawl in sideways. First I test whether it’s even possible to put my head down far enough between my knees. Then I shove my upper body partway inside.

  “You press the button for the boat deck. When I get out, leave the dumbwaiter there. So it doesn’t make any unnecessary noise. Then go up to the stairs and wait. If anyone tries to send you away, refuse to leave. If they insist, go back to your cabin. Give me an hour. If I’m not back by then, wake up Lukas.”

  He wrings his hands. “I can’t, man. I can’t.”

  I have to stretch my legs, but I also have to watch that I don’t put my hands down on the sourdough rising on the counter.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s my brother, man. That’s why I’m on board. That’s why I have a key. He thinks I’m clean.”

  I take one last lungful of air, exhale, and squeeze myself into the little box.

  “If I’m not back in an hour, wake up Lukas. It’s your only chance. If you don’t come to get me, I’ll tell Tørk everything. He’ll get Verlaine to take care of you. Verlaine is his man.”

  We haven’t turned on the light. The galley is dark except for the faint glow from the sea and the reflection of the fog. But I can still tell that I’ve hit home. I’m glad I can’t see his face.

  I put my head between my knees. He pushes the doors closed. There’s the soft hum of an electric motor beneath me in the dark as I move upward.

  The movement lasts for about fifteen seconds. My only thought is one of helplessness. The fear that someone will be waiting for me up there.

  I get out my screwdriver. So I’ll have something to offer when they slam open the doors and pull me out.

  But nothing happens. The dumbwaiter stops abruptly in its shaft of darkness, and I sit there with nothing but the pain in the back of my thighs, the movement of the ship on the sea, and the distant sound of the engine, which is now barely audible.

  I stick the screwdriver in between the two sliding doors and force them apart. Then I slip out feet first onto a countertop.

  There’s a faint light coming into the room. It’s from the stern running lights shining into this level from a skylight overhead. The room is a kitchenette with a refrigerator, a sideboard, and a couple of hot plates.

  The door leads to a narrow corridor. I crouch down in the corridor and wait.

  People perish during transitional phases. In Scoresbysund they would shoot each other in the head with shotguns when the winter started to kill off summer. It’s not difficult to coast along when things are going well, when a balance has been established. What’s difficult is the new. The new ice. The new light. The new feelings.

  I sit down. It’s my only chance. It’s everybody’s only chance. To give yourself the necessary time to get acclimated.

  The bulkhead in front of me is quivering from the distant engine beneath us. The smokestack must be just on the othe
r side. This level of the ship has been built around the big, rectangular shape of the funnel.

  To my left I can see a faint light at floor level. It’s the night-light on the stairs. That door is my escape route.

  To my right there is silence at first. Then, in the stillness, I can hear someone breathing. It’s much softer than the other sounds of the ship. But after six days on board, the daily noises have become a discreet background against which all deviations are evident. Even the light snoring of a sleeping woman.

  This means that there is one cabin, or possibly two, here on the port side, and there will be one or two opposite. So the salon and mess face the foredeck.

  I stay seated. After a while a pipe gurgles distantly. The Kronos has high-pressure flushable toilets. Somewhere either above or below us, a toilet was flushed. The movement in the pipes reveals that the bath and toilets on this deck are in front of the smokestack, and built adjacent to it.

  I’ve taken along my alarm clock in my apron pocket. What else could I do? I look at it, and then I make my move.

  The lock on the exit is a latch. I unhook it. So that I’ll be able to get out fast. But mainly so that someone else will be able to get in.

  I feel my way to a door between the short corridor to the exit and what must be the salon. I put my ear against it and wait. The only thing I hear is the distant ship’s clock that sounds the bells. The door opens into darkness more intense than the dimness behind me. Here, too, I wait. Then I turn on the light switch. It doesn’t produce an ordinary light. It illuminates hundreds of aquarium lamps over hundreds of very small, sealed aquariums, set in rubber frames and attached to stands that cover all three walls. There are fish in the aquariums. More different kinds and greater numbers than in any tropical fish shop.

  Along one wall is a black-stained table with two large, flat porcelain sinks with an elbow-operated mixing apparatus. On the table there are two gas jets and two Bunsen burners, all with permanent copper pipe connections to a gas cock. An autoclave is mounted on a side table. A Mettler scale. A pH meter. A large bellows camera mounted on a tripod. A bifocal microscope.