by Peter Høeg
Suddenly I'm floating.
He has picked me up and carried me over to the scafIoIding. I think it's a joke and am about to say something. Then I see what he sensed and keep quiet. The stairwell is dark on all floors. But a door is opening. It floods yellow light out into the darkness. And two figures Juliane and a man. He's talking to her. She staggers. Whatever he's saying falls like blows. She drops to her knees. Then the door shuts. The man takes the outdoor stairway.
Juliane's friends don't leave at seven in the morning. At that hour they haven't even come home yet. And if they do leave, they don't walk with the nimble ease of this man. They crawl.
We're standing in the shadow of the scaffolding. He can't see us. He's wearing a long Burberry raincoat and a hat.
At the end of the building facing Christianshavn the mechanic gives my arm a squeeze, and I continue on alone. The hat in front of me gets into a car. When he pulls away from the curb, the little Morris stops right next to me. The seats are cold and so low that I have to stretch to see out the windshield. It's iced over, so we drive peeking through a strip, barely able to see from the hood ornament to the red taillights in front of us.
We drive across the bridge. Turn right before Holmens Church, past the National Bank, across the King's New Square. Maybe there's other traffic, maybe we're the only ones. It's impossible to tell through the windshield.
He parks the car at Krinsen Park. We drive past and stop across from the French Embassy. He doesn't look back.
He walks past the Hotel d'Angleterre and turns down Stroget, the walking street. We're twenty-five yards behind him. Now there are other people around us. He walks up to a doorway and lets himself in with a key.
If I had been alone, I would have stopped here. I don't need to go over to the door to know what it says on the nameplate. I know who the man is that we've been following, as surely as if he had shown me his credentials. If I had been alone, I would have strolled home and thought things over along the way.
But today there are two of us. For the first time in a long time we are two.
One moment he's standing at my side, and the next he's over by the door, sticking his hand in before it closes. I follow him. When you're playing ball or some other game, sometimes there is a moment like this of spontaneous, wordless, mutual understanding.
We enter an archway with a vaulted ceiling of white and gold bronze, marble panels, soft yellow light, and a door with glass panes and a brass handle. The archway leads into a garden courtyard with evergreen shrubbery, little Japanese ginkgo trees, and a fountain. Everything is covered with the snow of the last two weeks, which once started to melt but now has a thin, frozen crust on the surface. From somewhere up above, the first light of day drifts downward, like dust.
An electric cord is lying inside the stairwell. It goes around a corner. From there comes the sound of a vacuum cleaner. In front of us is a janitor's cart, with two buckets, mops, scrub brushes, and a couple of roller contraptions for wringing out wet rags. The mechanic grabs the cart.
There are footsteps above us. Light steps, muted by the blue runner held down by brass rods the width of the stairs. There's a pleasant scent surrounding us. A scent I recognize but can't identify.
We reach the third floor the moment the door shuts behind him. The mechanic carries the cart under his arm as if it were nothing.
The gilding and the cream-colored inlay from the doorway are repeated in the stairwell and on the doors. There are engraved brass nameplates. The plate in front of us is placed above an extra-wide mail slot. So that even the largest checks can get through. LAW OFFICE, it says. Of course. Law Office of Hammer & Ving. The door isn't locked, so we go in. The cart comes along.
We enter a large foyer. One door is open, leading to a series of offices that are extensions of one another, like the reception rooms in the photographs of Amalienborg Palace. And there are photographs of the Queen and the Prince, and shiny parquet floors, and paintings in gilt frames, and the most elegant office furniture I've ever seen. There is the same scent as in the stairwell, and now I recognize it. It's the scent of money.
Not a soul is around. I pick up a rag and wring it out, and the mechanic picks up a big mop.
At the end of the offices there is a closed double door. I knock on it. He must have a control panel near him, because when the door opens, he's sitting at the opposite end of the room, in an office with a window facing the courtyard.
He's sitting behind a black mahogany desk which stands on four lion's feet and is so big that you can't help wondering how they managed to get it up here. On the wall behind him hang three gloomy paintings of the Marble Bridge in heavy frames.
It's difficult to judge his age. From Elsa Lübing I know that he must be over seventy. But he looks healthy and athletic, as if every morning he walks barefoot across his beachfront and down to the sea, where he saws a hole in the ice and takes a refreshing dip, then runs back and eats a little bowl of gladiator muesli with skim milk.
It has kept his skin smooth and ruddy. But it hasn't been beneficial for hair growth. He's as bald as a peeled egg.
He's wearing glasses with gold frames that give off so many reflections that you never really get to see his eyes. "Good morning," I say. "Quality control. We're checking on the morning cleaning."
He doesn't say anything, merely looks at us. As clearly as if he had spoken, I remember his voice-dry and proper-from a telephone conversation a long time ago.
The mechanic withdraws to a corner and starts mopping. I take the windowsill closest to the desk.
He looks down at his papers. I wipe the sill with the rag. It leaves striped traces of dirty water.
Soon he'll start to wonder.
"There's nothing like having a proper cleaning done," I say.
He frowns, now mildly annoyed.
Next to the window hangs a picture of a sailing ship. I take it down and wipe the back of it with the rag.
"What a nice picture this is," I say. "I'm rather interrested in ships myself. When I get home after a long work day among rubber gloves and disinfectants, I put my feet up and leaf through a good book about ships."
Now he's wondering whether I'm deranged.
"We all have our favorites, of course. Mine are the ships that sailed to Greenland. And, as chance will have it, when I saw your name on the fancy nameplate, I said to myself, My God, Smilla, I said. Ving! That nice man who once gave one of your friends a model ship for Christmas. The good ship Johannes Thomsen. To a little Greenlandic boy."
I hang up the picture again. The water wasn't good for it. All cleaning has its price. I think about Juliane, on her knees before him, in the doorway.
"The other thing I never get tired of reading about is ships chartered for expeditions to Greenland."
He's sitting perfectly still now. Only in the reflections of his glasses is there a faint movement.
"For example, the two ships that were chartered in '66 and '91. For the expeditions to Gela Alta."
I go over to the cart and wring out the rag.
"I hope you'll be satisfied now," I say. "We have to move on. Duty calls."
On our way out we can look back through the long series of rooms all the way into his office. He's sitting behind the desk. He hasn't moved.
A middle-aged woman in a white smock is standing at the bottom of the stairs. She's standing there patting her vacuum cleaner, her expression sorrowful. As if she's been discussing how the two of them are going to manage in the big world without that janitor's cart.
The mechanic puts it down in front of her. He's not very happy about taking someone else's equipment. He wants to say a few words. From one working person to another. But he can't think of anything to say.
"We're from the firm," I say. "We've been checking your work. We are very, very satisfied."
I find one of Moritz's spanking new 100-krone bills in my pocket and balance it on the edge of the bucket. "Please accept this bonus. On such a fine morning. To buy a piece of
pastry for your coffee."
She looks at me with melancholy eyes.
"I'm the proprietor," she says. "There's only me and four employees."
We stand there a moment, staring at each other, all three of us.
"So what?" I say. "Even proprietors eat pastry with their coffee."
We get into the car and sit there for a while, gazing out across the King's New Square. It's too late for us to eat breakfast together. We agree to meet later. Now that the tension is past, we talk to each other like strangers. After I get out, he rolls down the window.
"Smilla, was that wise?"
"It was an impulse," I say. "And besides, have you ever done any hunting?"
"A little."
"If you're hunting shy animals, like reindeer, you let them catch sight of you a few times on purpose. You stand up and wave the butt of your rifle. In all living creatures, fear and curiosity are closely related in the brain. The deer comes closer. It knows that it's dangerous. But it has to come and see what's moving like that."
"What did you do when it came close?"
"Nothing," I said. "I've never been able to make myself shoot. But maybe you're lucky enough to have someone nearby who knows what has to be done."
I walk home across Knippels Bridge. It's eight o'clock, the day has hardly begun. I feel as if I've accomplished just as much as if I had a paper route.
A letter is waiting for me, a rectangular envelope of heavy stationery. It's from my father. It's a lined envelope from the United Paper Companies with his initials embossed on it. His handwriting looks as if he has taken a course in bragging about himself calligraphically. Which he. has. That was while I was living with him. After two evening classes he had forgotten his old handwriting. And still hadn't learned a new one. After three months he wrote like a child. I had to forge his signature on the bills he sent out. He was afraid his patients would have a relapse when they saw the great medicine man's wobbly signature.
Later it became more controlled. The world admires it. To me it simply seems snobbish.
But the letter is friendly enough. It consists of one line on a piece of paper with a watermark, which I know costs five kroner per sheet. And a bunch of photocopies of newspaper clippings, held together with a paper clip.
"Dear Smilla," it says. "Here's what Berlingske Tidende's archives had on Loyen and Greenland." There is one more sheet.
"A complete list of his scientific publications," it says in Moritz's handwriting. The list is typed.
Underneath it says that the information is from something called Index Medicus, acquired from a database in Stockholm. There are articles in four languages, including Russian. Most of them are in English. I can't even understand the titles of half of them. But Moritz has added a brief explanation in the margin. There are articles on crash injuries. On toxicology. A co-authored article on the difficulties in assimilation of vitamin B12 by the stomach as a complication of gunshot wounds. They're from the forties and fifties. In the sixties the articles start dealirig with Arctic medicine. Trichinosis, frostbite. A book about influenza epidemics around the Barents Sea. There is a long list of shorter articles on parasites. Many on the use of X-rays. His work has been multifaceted.
It looks as if he has done historical research on several occasions. There's an article on the examination of the Iron Age bog people. And there are three articles I put a check mark next to. They deal with the examination of mummies by X-ray. One of them was carried out in Berlin in the seventies, at the Pergamon Museum, on mummies from Tutankhamen's tomb. The second one deals with pre-Buddhist embalming methods in Malaysia and Thailand, published by a museum in Singapore. The third is a treatise on the Greenlandic Qilakitsoq mummies.
At the bottom of the list I write: "With thanks, Smilla," put it in an envelope, and address it to my father. Then I go through the clippings.
There are eighteen of them, and they're in chronological order. I start with the most recent. There's an article from October, announcing that preparations are now nearly complete for the establishment of a forensic medical office for Greenland under the leadership of Professor Johannes Loyen, M.D. The next one is from a year earlier. There's a photo with a brief caption: "The ethics council at the conference in Godthåb." Wearing kamiks and fur hats. Loyen is second from the left. He towers as high as those standing behind him a couple of steps up. The next one is from his seventieth birthday the year before. The text says that due to his work with an autopsy center for Greenland, they have made an exception and extended his tenure. The articles continue this way, backward in time.
"Congratulations on your sixtieth, Professor Loyen."
"Professor Loyen lectures at Greenland's newly opened university."
"Representatives from the board of health in Greenland, Copenhagen's chief medical officer to the left, and chief of staff J. Loyen, head of the newly established Institute for Arctic Medicine."
And so on, backward through the seventies and sixties. The expeditions of '91 and '66 are not mentioned.
The next-to-last clipping is from 1949. It's a little piece of verbal prostitution. An enthusiastic description of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark's new dumpsters, which have eased the transport of ore from the deeper sections of the quarry up to the earth's surface: A heartfelt tribute to Councilor Ebel and his wife, who are pictured in front. Behind stand chief engineer Dr. Wilhelm Ottesen and the corporation's medical consultant, Dr. Johannes Loyen. The photo was taken at the quarry in Saqqaq, at the moment when the new machines brought the first load to the surface.
After this picture there's a gap of ten years. The last clipping is from May 1939.
It's a photo with a caption. The picture was taken in a harbor. A dark ship is in the background. About a dozen pwople are standing in the foreground. Gentlemen in lightweight suits, women in long skirts and thin wraps. The setting makes it seem staged. The caption is quite brief: "The courageous and enthusiastic company from Freia Film upon departure for Greenland." Then follows a list of the courageous and enthusiastic company. It consists of actors and a director, the film company's doctor and his assistant. The doctor's name is Rovsing. The assistant is unnamed. Assistants didn't have names in the conservative press in the thirties. But his later career has preserved this photo as well in an archive, and prompted someone to add his name with a ballpoint pen. He's visible in the photograph. Taller than everyone else. And in spite of his youth, his subordinate position, and his spot behind eccentrics pandering to the camera, his arrogance slaines through even then. It's Loyen. I fold up the clipping.
After breakfast I put on a long suede coat and the Jane Eberlein fur hat. The coat has deep inside pockets. Into them I put the last, folded clipping, a bundle of krone notes, Isaiah's tape, and the letter to my father. Then I leave. The day has begun.
At Pronto Print on Torve Street I have a copy of the tape made. I also borrow their phone book. The Institute for Eskimology is located on Fiol Lane. I call them from the phone booth on the square. I'm transferred to an instructor who sounds as if he is of Greenlandic extraction. I explain that I have a tape in East Greenlandic that I can't understand. He asks me why I don't go over to the Greenlanders' House.
"I want an expert. It's not just a matter of understanding what is said. I want to try to identify who is speaking. I'm looking for someone who can listen to the voice and tell me that the speaker has henna-dyed hair and was spanked as a five-year-old when he was sitting on the potty, and from his vowels it sounds as if this happened in Akunnaaq in 1947."
He starts chuckling to himself. "Do you have money, madam?"
"Do you? And it's not madam. It's miss."
"Svajer Wharf. It's on the South Harbor. Berth number 126. Ask for the curator."
He's still chuckling as he hangs up.
I take the train to Enghave Station. From there I walk. I've had a look at Krak's Map of Copenhagen at the library on Torve Street. In my mind I have an image of a labyrinth of winding streets.
The st
ation is cold. A man is standing on the opposite platform. He's staring longingly toward the train that will take him away, into the city, into the crowds. He's the last person I see.
Right now the inner city is like an anthill. Now people are crowding into the department stores. They're getting ready for theater premieres. They're standing in line in front of Hviid's Wine Cellar.
The South Harbor is a ghost town. The sky is low and gray. The inhaled air tastes of coal smoke and chemicals. Anyone who is afraid that machines will soon take over should not take a stroll in the South Harbor. The snow hasn't been cleared away. The sidewalks are impassable. Now and then enormous double semis with dark windows devoid of any humans move along the narrow, plowed roads. A blanket of green smoke hovers over a soap factory. A cafeteria advertises hash browns and sausages. Behind the windows red and yellow lights shine on lonely deep-fat fryers in an empty kitchen. A above a snowy pile of coal a crane moves aimlessly and restlessly back and forth on its rails. There are bluish glimmers through the cracks in closed garage doors, and the crackling of arc welders, and the jingling of the illegal money being earned, but no human voices.
Then the road opens onto a picture postcard: a large harbor basin surrounded by low yellow warehouses. The water is iced over, and while I'm still taking stock of the view, the sun appears, low, white-gold, surprising, and lights up the ice like an underground bulb behind frosted glass. There are small fishing boats at the wharf with blue hulls the color of the sea where it meets the horizon. On the outer edge of the basin, out in the harbor itself, there is a big three-masted sailing ship. That's Svajer Wharf.
Berth 126 is the sailing ship. I don't meet a soul on the way. All the machine sounds have disappeared behind me. Everything is quiet.
A post is sticking up from the wharf with a white, mailbox on it. Above is a large sign, still wrapped in white plastic.
On the stern it says in gilded letters that the ship's name is Northern Light. It has a figurehead carved like a rnan holding a torch; it has a shiny black hull at least a hundred feet long, masts that tower up to the sky and give the impression that you're standing in front of a church, and a smell of tar and sawdust. Someone has recently spent a fortune renovating it.
