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Authors: Peter Høeg

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BOOK: Smilla's Sense of Snow
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As we gaze at each other, the alarm stops and the water pressure tapers off in the sprinkler system and finally halts altogether. Amid the trickling of drops along the walls and the murmuring of streams on the ceiling and floor, the distant sound of waves breaking against the bow of the
Kronos
seeps into the room.
Falling in love has been greatly overrated. Falling in love consists of 45 percent fear of not being accepted and 45 percent manic hope that
this time
the fear will be put to shame, and a modest 10 percent frail awareness of the possibility of love.
I don't fall in love anymore. Just like I don't get the mumps.
But of course anyone can be overpowered by love. The last few weeks I've allowed myself to think about him for a few minutes each night. I give my mind permission and then watch how my body yearns and how I still remember him from the time before I really noticed him. I see his solicitude, remember his stutter, his embraces, and the awareness of the enormous core of his personality. When these images start to radiate too much longing, I cut them off. At least I try to.
I haven't fallen in love. I see things too clearly for that. Falling in love is a form of madness. Closely related to hatred, coldness, resentment, intoxication, and suicide.
Occasionally—not often, but occasionally—I'm reminded of the times in my life when I've fallen in love. That's what's happening now.
The man they call Tørk is sitting across from me at the table in
the officers' mess. If this encounter had taken place ten years ago, I might have fallen in love with him.
Sometimes a person's charisma is such that it slips right through our façades, our essential prejudices and inhibitions, and goes straight to our guts. Five minutes ago a clamp locked around my heart, and now it's getting tighter. This sensation is linked to a rising fever which is my body's response to the stress it's been under, and it brings on a piercing headache.
Ten years ago this headache might have led to a strong desire to press my mouth on his and watch him lose his self-control.
Today I can observe what is happening to me, full of respect for the phenomenon, but completely aware that it's nothing more than a short-lived, lethal illusion.
The photographs had captured his charm but made it lifeless, like a statue. They couldn't reproduce his personal presence, which has two sides to it. Both an emanation out into the room and an attraction toward him.
Even when he's seated, he's quite tall. His hair is almost metallic white, pulled back into a ponytail.
He looks at me, and the heavy pounding in my foot and my back and the base of my skull grows louder. A number of the boys and men in my life who have affected me in this way pass hazily through my mind like the patches of ice formations we were expected to recognize during exams at the university.
Then I take hold of reality and pull myself back on shore. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, telling me that, no matter who else he might be, he's the one who stood three feet away from me in the cold night while we both waited in front of the White Palace. The halo around his head was his extraordinary white hair.
He gazes at me attentively.
“Why on the foredeck?” says Lukas, who is sitting at the head of the table. He's talking to Verlaine, sitting diagonally across from me, slouching and amenable.
“To get warm. Before I had to go back to working on the runners.”
Now I remember.
Kista Dan
and
Maggi Dan
, the Lauritzen Line ships used for trips to the Arctic—the ships of my childhood. Before the American base, before the flights from South Greenland. For extreme conditions, such as a hard freeze, they were equipped with special aluminum lifeboats that had runners screwed on underneath so they could be pulled across the ice like sleds. That's the kind of runners Verlaine had been attaching.
“Jaspersen.”
Lukas glances down at the paper in front of him. “You left the laundry room half an hour before your shift was over, at 1530 hours, to take a walk. You went down to the engine room, saw a door, opened it, and followed the tunnel to the stairway. What in hell were you doing there?”
“Wanted to find out what was down below.”
“And?”
“There was a door. With two handles. I touched one of them, and the alarm went off. I thought at first that I was the one who did it.”
He looks from Verlaine to me. Anger clouds his voice. “But you can barely stay on your feet.”
I look straight at Verlaine. “I fell. When the alarm went off, I took a step back and fell down the stairs. I must have hit my head on the steps.”
Lukas nods, slowly and bitterly. “Any questions, Tørk?”
He doesn't shift his position. He simply cocks his head slightly. He might be in his mid-thirties or his mid-forties.
“Do you smoke, Jaspersen?”
I remember his voice clearly. I shake my head.
“The sprinkler system is turned on by section. Did you smell smoke anywhere?”
“No, I didn't.”
“Verlaine. Where were your people?”
“I'm looking into that.”
Tørk gets up. He stands there leaning on the table, looking at me thoughtfully.
“According to the clock on the bridge, the alarm went off at 1557 hours. It stopped three minutes and forty-five seconds later.
During that time you were in the activated section. Why aren't you soaking wet?”
My previous feelings have vanished. The only thing I notice through the fever is that one more person with power is persecuting me. I look him straight in the eye.
“Practically everything rolls right off me.”
Hot water is soothing. I, who grew up with milky-white baths in glacial meltwater, have grown addicted to hot water. One of the few dependencies I acknowledge. Like my occasional need to drink coffee, or to see the sun shining on the ice.
The water in the faucets on board the
Kronos
is boiling hot. I mix it with cold to just about scalding, and then I let the shower wash over me. It makes the flames burst out from my back, at the base of my skull, the bruises on my pelvis, and especially my foot, which is still swollen and sprained. The fever and shaking grow worse; I stand there until it all goes away, leaving me listless.
I get a thermos of tea from the galley and take it back to my cabin. In the dark, I put it down, lock the door, take a deep breath, and then turn on the light.
Jakkelsen is sitting on my bunk, wearing a white jogging suit. His pupils seem to have receded into his brain, giving him a quartzlike gaze of artificial self-confidence.
“You realize that I saved your life, don't you?” he says.
I wait for the terror to let go of my limbs so that I can sit down.
“Life at sea is too brutal for Smilla, I tell myself. So I go down to the engine room and wait. If somebody wants to find you, he just has to go below. Sooner or later you'll come past on your
way to the bottom. And right behind you come Verlaine and Hansen and Maurice. But I stay where I am. I'd locked the doors up to the deck, you know. You would all have to come back the same way.”
I stir my tea. The spoon clatters against the cup.
“When they come back with you in the bag, I'm still sitting there. I'm familiar with their problem. Dumping garbage from the mess and tossing people you don't like overboard is a thing of the past. There are always two on watch on the bridge, and the deck is lit up. Anyone who drops something bigger than a toothpick over the railing will face trouble and a marine inquiry. We'd have to put in at GodthÃ¥b and have little bowlegged Greenlanders in police uniforms running around like ants.”
It occurs to him that I'm one of those little bowlegged ants he's talking about.
“Sorry,” he says.
Somewhere a clock strikes four bells, the measure of time at sea, a time that doesn't distinguish between night and day but only the monotone changeover of four-hour watches. These bells reinforce the feeling that we're at a standstill, that we've never left port but have remained stationary in time and space, merely twisting ourselves farther down into meaninglessness.
“Hansen stays next to the hatch in the engine room. So I saunter up on deck and over to the port stairway. When Verlaine comes up, I see what's going on. Verlaine keeping watch on deck. Hansen at the hatchway. And Maurice alone with you down below. What does that mean?”
“Maybe Maurice wants a quick fuck,” I say.
He nods thoughtfully. “That's possible. But he prefers young girls. An interest in mature women comes later, with experience. I'm positive that they're going to drop you into the cargo hold. What a great plan, man! It's forty feet down. It'll look like you fell. All they have to do is take off the sack afterward. That's why they were carrying you so carefully. So there wouldn't be any marks.”
He beams at me. Pleased that he figured out their plan.
“I go down to the between decks and over to the stairs. Through
the steps I can see Maurice lugging you through the door. He's not even breathing hard. But he goes to the weight room every day. Four hundred pounds on the bench press and fifteen miles on the exercycle. I have to make a decision. You've never done anything for me, have you? In fact, you've given me trouble. And besides, there's something about you that's so … so damned …”
“Old-maidish?”
“Exactly. On the other hand, I never could stand Maurice.”
He pauses dramatically.
“I'm a fan of the ladies. So I light the cigar. I can't see you anymore. You're out on the platform. But I put my mouth on the smoke detector and blow, and it goes off.”
He gives me a searching look.
“Maurice comes toward the stairs, covered with blood. The sprinklers wash it down the steps. A small flood. It makes me want to throw up. Why are they going to so much trouble? What have you done to them, Smilla?”
I need his help. “They've put up with me until now. Things started going wrong as soon as I got too close to the stern.”
He nods. “That's always been Verlaine's territory.”
“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.”
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 roof. 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.
BOOK: Smilla's Sense of Snow
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