Smilla's Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

by Peter Høeg

  I no longer make an effort to keep Europe or Denmark at a distance. Neither do I plead with them to stay. In some way they are part of my destiny. They come and go in my life. I have given up doing anything about it.

  It's night. The last few days have been so long that I've been looking forward to my bed, and to a sleep as all-consuming as in my childhood. In a moment, after merely moistening my lips with the wine, I will get up and leave.

  He opens the bottle almost soundlessly. He pours, slowly and carefully, until the glasses are a little more than half full. They are instantly frosted with a matte mist. From invisible irregularities on the inner, curved sides, small beaded rows of bubbles rise to the surface.

  He puts his elbows on his knees and gazes into the bubbles. His face is remote, absorbed by the sight and, at that moment, as innocent as a child's. The same way I so often saw Isaiah view the world.

  I leave my glass untouched and sit down in front of him on the low table. Our faces are now at the same level. "Peter," I say, "you know the old excuse that she was drunk so she didn't know what she was doing."

  He nods.

  "That's why I'm doing this before I drink anything." Then I kiss him. I don't know how much time passes. But while it lasts, my whole body is in my mouth.

  Then I leave. I could stay, but I don't. It's not because of him or me. It's out of respect for what has taken hold of me, for what hasn't been there for years, for what I don't think I recognize anymore, for what is foreign to me.

  It takes me a long time to fall asleep. But that's mostly because I don't have the heart to abandon the night and the silence, and the alert, hypersensitive consciousness that he is lying downstairs, somewhere below me.

  When sleep finally comes, I dream that I'm in Siorapaluk. There are several of us children lying on the bed. We've been telling stories, and now the others have fallen asleep. Only my voice is left. I hear it from outside myself, it's trying to keep on going. But at last it staggers, wobbles, falls to its knees, spreads out its arms, and allows itself to be gathered up in a net of dreams.

  5

  The address of the Trade Commission is Kampmanns Street 1, and it appears well maintained, newly painted, efficient, reliable, helpful, and exclusive without being pretentious.

  The man who helps me is a mere boy. He is twenty-three at most, with a double-breasted, custom made suit of thin Harris tweed, a white silk tie, white teeth, and a broad smile.

  "Where have I seen you before?" he asks.

  The papers have been put in a spiral notebook, the pile is as thick as an illustrated Bible and stamped Annual Report of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark for Fiscal 1991.

  "How can you tell who controls the corporation?" His hands brush mine as he turns the pages.

  "It doesn't say directly. But according to corporate law, all shareholdings above 5 percent must be listed on the first page. Was it at a party at the Business School?"

  The list is fourteen lines long, with individual and company names mixed together. Ving is there. And the National Bank. And Geoinform.

  "Geoinform. Could you show me their annual report?" He sits down at the computer. While we wait for the PC he smiles at me.

  "I'll remember where it was," he says. "You didn't study law, did you?"

  He has been reading a French newspaper. He follows my gaze.

  "I've applied to the foreign service," he says: "So it's important to keep up on things. We don't have anything on Geoinform. It's probably not a public corporation."

  "Is it possible to find out who's on the board of directors?"

  He gets out a volume as big as two telephone books called Green's Danish Foundations. He looks it up for me. There are three people on Geoinform's board. I write down their names.

  "Can I take you to lunch?"

  "I have to go for a walk in the Deer Park," I say.

  "I could go, too."

  I point at his loafers. "There's two feet of snow."

  "I could buy a pair of galoshes on the way."

  "You're working," I say. "On your way into the diplomatic service."

  He nods dejectedly.

  "Maybe when the snow melts," he says. "In the spring."

  "If we live that long," I say.

  I go out to the Deer Park. It snowed in the night. I've taken my kamiks along. Well past the entrance, I put them on. The soles of kamiks cannot stand much wear. When we were kids we were never allowed to dance with them on if there was sand on the floor. You could wear them out in a single night. But on the snow and ice, where the friction is different, their durability is astounding. The new snow is light and cold. I walk as far away from the paths as possible. For an entire day I wade slowly and heavily among black branches glittering with snow. I follow the lurching tracks of a deer until I know its rhythm. The animal's sudden hopscotching every hundred yards, its habit of scattering urine in small portions, a little to the right of its tracks. The regularity with which it scratches an open, heart-shaped area down to the dark earth to find leaves.

  After three hours I run into it. A buck. White, wary, interested.

  I find an out-of-the-way table at Peter Liep's Restaurant and order hot chocolate. Then I lay out the paper with the three names in front of me:

  Katja Claussen

  Ralf Seidenfaden

  Tørk Hviid

  I take out Moritz's envelope with the copies of the newspaper clippings. I'm looking for a specific one.

  The room fills up with a group of children and adults. They've parked their skis and sleds outside. Their voices are loud and full of glee. Full of the snow's mysterious warmth.

  The clipping is from an English-language newspaper. Maybe that's why I've latched on to it. It was cut out crooked, so part of the headline is missing. It was added back on by hand, with a green ballpoint. The date is March 19, 1992. "First Copenhagen Seminar on Neocatastrophism. Professor Johannes Loyen, M.D., member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, presenting the opening lecture."

  Loyen is standing on the stage, apparently without a script or podium. It's a large hall. Behind him sit three men at a table that curves like an arc of a circle.

  "Behind him Ruben Giddens, Ove Nathan, and Tork Hviid, the…"

  The text has been cut off, the rest of the sentence is gone. Their typesetting machines didn't have an ø for his name. That's why it had caught my eye. That's why I remembered it.

  The setting sun is glowing as I set off for home. My heart is pounding.

  The minute I step through the door, the telephone rings.

  It takes forever to get the red tape off. I think it must be the mechanic. He must have tried calling dozens of times.

  "This is Andreas Licht." The voice is weak, as if he has a cold. "I suggest that you come at once."

  I feel a surge of annoyance. Some of us never learn to take orders.

  "You mean today?"

  There's a strangled sound, as if he's suppressing a laugh. "You're interested, aren't you?…"

  He hangs up.

  I'm standing there with all my outdoor clothes on. In the dark, because I didn't have time to turn on the light. Where did he get my phone number?

  I detest being rushed. I had other plans for the day.

  I put down the kamiks and go back out into the Copenhagen evening.

  On my way down the stairs, I stop outside the mechanic's door. I feel tempted to take him along. But I recognize the feeling as a form of weakness.

  I have a felt-tip pen in my pocket but no paper. On a 50-krone note I write: "South Harbor, Svajer Wharf, Berth 126. Back later. Smilla."

  This message is a compromise between my need for protection and my belief that the plans you keep secret are the ones most likely to succeed.

  I take a cab to the South Harbor power plant. Maybe it's the mechanic's paranoia about phones that has infected me, but I don't want to leave a clear trail.

  It's a fifteen-minute walk from the plant.

  Even the machines are asleep now. The
city seems far away. But there is still a shimmer of light in the deserted streets I pass through. Now and then scattered fireworks etch trails of light across the blue-black sky and explode. The distant boom takes a moment to reach me. It's New Year's Eve.

  There are no streetlights. The cranes are silent silhouettes against the lighter sky. Everything is closed, ciimmed, resigned.

  Svajer Wharf is a white surface in the dark. The new snow on the ice gathers the scant light in the air and gleams dully. Only a solitary car has been here before me, and I walk in its tracks.

  The sign on the post is still covered with plastic. With the little rip I left behind. The dock, the gangway, and part of the deck have been cleared of snow. A few crates have been moved to make room for a pallet of red barrels. Aside from the snow and the barrels and the darkness, everything is the same as yesterday.

  There is no light on board.

  On my way up the gangway I start thinking about the car tracks. In snow, tire tread makes a slight backward slide inside the track itself. The track I had followed went down to the harbor. There was no return track. There are no other roads to or from Svajer Wharf than the one I came along. But the car is nowhere to be seen.

  The lacquered door is shut but not locked. Inside, there is a faint light.

  I know that the fiberglass Inuit will be there. The light is coming from somewhere behind the screen.

  A little reading lamp is on the desk. Behind the desk sits professor and museum curator Andreas Licht with his head cocked, smiling at me broadly.

  When I walk around the desk, the smile does not leave his face.

  He is gripping the seat of his chair with both hands. As if to hold himself upright.

  Close up I can see that his lips are pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. And he isn't gripping the chair. His hands are bound with thin cords of copper wire. I touch him. He's warm. I put my fingers on his neck. There's no pulse. He has no heartbeat, either. At least none that I can feel.

  He has cotton in the ear facing me. Like a small child with an inner-ear infection. I walk around him. He has cotton in the other one, too.

  I am no longer curious. Now I want to go home.

  At that moment the hatch door over the stairs is shut. There is no warning, no sound of footsteps. It is simply closed, quietly and calmly. Then it is locked from the outside.

  Then the light goes out.

  Only now do I realize why there was so little light in the room. Blind people have no need for light. It's absurd to think about that now, but that's my first thought in the dark.

  I get down on my knees and crawl under the desk. That may not be a good idea. That may be the ostrich's strategy. But I have no desire to stand there towering in the darkness. Down on the floor I can feel the curator's ankles. They are warm, too. And they are also bound to the chair with wire.

  There's a movement on the deck above my head. Something being dragged. I fumble around in the dark and get hold of a telephone cord. I follow it and suddenly wind up with the end in my hands. It has been ripped out of the jack.

  Then the ship's engine starts up, a big diesel engine's slow awakening. It remains idling.

  I run out into the darkness. Twenty-four hours ago I oriented myself to the room. So I know where there's a door. I reach the bulkhead right next to it. It's not locked. As I step through, the engine noise grows louder.

  The room has small portholes high up and facing the dock. A faint light shines through them. This room explains how the curator solved his commuting problem: He lived on board. It was furnished as a bedroom for him. A bed, a nightstand, a built-in wardrobe.

  The engine room must be behind the far wall. It's insulated, but there is still a distinct thudding. When I try to look out the porthole, the noise becomes a roar. The ship slowly swings away from the dock. The engine has been put into gear. There's not a soul in sight. Only the black contour of the disappearing wharf.

  There's a spark on the dock. Only a glint of light, like someone lighting a cigarette. The glow rises and floats in an arc toward me. Trailing a dripping tail of embers after it. It's a firecracker.

  It explodes not far above my head with a muted bang. The next instant I am blind. A vicious white flash flings itself at me from the wharf and the water. At the same moment the fire sucks all the oxygen out of the air, and I throw myself to the floor. It feels as if I have sand in my eyes, as if I'm breathing in a plastic bag that someone is blowing on with a hair dryer. It's the barrels of gasoline, of course. They poured gasoline over the ship.

  I crawl over and open the door to the room I came from. Now there is all the light you could ask for. The covering over the skylights has burned away, and the room is illuminated by what seems like a gigantic sun lamp.

  On the deck there is a series of muffled explosions, and the light outside flickers blue and then yellow. Then the air is filled with burning epoxy paint.

  I creep back to the bedroom. It's as hot as a sauna. Against the whiteness of the portholes I can see the smoke that has started to seep inside. The fire vanishes from one of the panes for a moment. The silo of the soybean factory lights up as if it's sunset, the windows along Iceland Wharf glow like molten glass. It's the reflection from the fire all around me.

  Then a web of cracks spreads across the glass and the view vanishes.

  I wonder whether diesel oil burns. I seem to remember that it depends on the temperature. At that instant the diesel tank blows up.

  There isn't any explosion, it's more like a whistle that turns into a roar, that grows and turns into the shrillest sound that ever existed on earth. I press my head against the floor. When I look up, the bed is gone. The wall to the engine room is gone, and I'm looking into a world of fire. In the middle of this world the engine is a black rectangle with a tooled network of pipes. Then it starts to sink. It breaks away from the ship. When it reaches the sea, it causes explosive boiling. Then it vanishes. Over the water tongues of burning diesel fuel weave a tapestry of flames.

  The stern of the boat now forms an open gateway facing Iceland Wharf. As I stand there looking out, the whole ship slowly turns, away from the burning oil.

  The wreck starts to list. The water has made its way into the hull and is pulling it backward. I'm standing in water up to my knees.

  The door behind me bangs open, and the professor comes in. The careening of the ship has made his office chair roll. He slams into the bulkhead next to me. Then he rides through what once was his bedroom and plunges into the water.

  I take off my clothes. The suede coat, sweater, shoes, pants, shirt, panties, and finally my socks. I put my fingers to my hat. I have only a circle of fur on my head. The spurt of flames from the diesel engine must have burned it away. I feel blood on my hands. The top of my skull has been singed bald.

  It's maybe two hundred yards to the dock at Svajer Wharf. I have no choice. On the other side is the fire. I jump.

  The shock of the cold forces me to open my eyes while I'm still underwater. Everything is gleaming green and red, lit up by the fire. I don't look back. In water less than 42°F you can survive only for a few minutes. The number of minutes depends on your condition. Swimmers of the English Channel were in good shape. They could last a long time. I'm in very poor shape.

  I swim almost vertically, so that only my lips are above water. The problem is with the weight of the part of your body that's above water. After a few seconds the shaking starts. While your body temperature drops from 98.6° to 95°F you shake. Then the shaking stops. That's when your temperature falls to 86°F. This temperature is critical. That's when apathy sets in. That's when you freeze to death.

  After a hundred yards I can't straighten out my arms anymore. I think about my past. That doesn't help. I think about Isaiah. That doesn't help. I suddenly feel as if I'm not swimming anymore but standing on a slope and leaning into a stiff wind, and that I might just as well give up.

  Around me the water is a mosaic of bits of gold. I remember that someone has
tried to kill me. And that they're now standing somewhere and congratulating themselves. We got her. Smilla. The fake Greenlander.

  That thought carries me over the last stretch. I decide to take ten more strokes. At the eighth one I bang my head against a tractor tire hung as a bumper on the berth of the Northern Light.

  I know that I have only a few seconds of consciousness left. Next to the tire is a platform right over the water. I try to scream myself up onto it. Not a sound comes out. But I manage to pull myself up.

  If you fall into the water in Greenland, you run when you get out, to keep from freezing. But there the air is cold. Here it's wonderfully mild, like in the summer. At first I don't understand why. Then I realize it's because of the fire. I lie there on the platform. The Northern Light is now in the middle of the harbor entrance, a coal-black skeleton of wood in a white ball of fire.

  I crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees. The dock is deserted. There's not a soul around.

  I'm about to collapse, basking in the warmth of the burning ship. I can see my own naked skin glowing. The little hairs, singed black and curling. Then I start walking. I have hallucinations, fragmentary, incoherent. From when I was little. A flower I found, knotweed, with buds. A convulsive fretting about whether Eberlein has more brocade like the kind my hat was made of. The feeling of being sick and wetting my bed.

  There are headlights, and I don't care. The car stops, and it doesn't make any difference. Something is wrapped around me. Nothing could interest me less. I lie down. I recognize the holes in the roof. It's the little Morris. It's the back of the mechanic's neck. He's driving the car. "Smilla," he says. "Smilla, damn it…"

  "Shut up," I say.

  In his apartment he wraps me up in wool blankets and massages me until it hurts too much. Then he makes me drink one cup of milk tea after another. The cold won't go away. It feels as if it has penetrated my whole skeleton. At some point I also accept a glass of liquor.

  I cry a lot. Partly out of self-pity. I tell him about Isaiah's hiding place. About the cassette tape. About the professor. About the phone call. About the fire. I feel as if my mouth is going while I stand somewhere else looking on.