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

by Peter Høeg

No one can grow, up in Qaanaaq without going to sea. No one can live as I have, as a professional student and expedition outfitter and guide in North Greenland, without being forced to go to sea. I've been on more ships and for much longer periods of time than I care to remember. If I'm not actually standing on a deck, I've usually managed to repress it.

  The process of disintegration started the moment I came on board several hours ago. There's a boiling in my ears, a strange, internal displacement of fluids. I can no longer discern the points of the compass with certainty. Aajumaaq sits on my desk waiting to catch me off guard.

  He waits right inside the doorway leading to sleep, and every time I hear my own breath grow deeper and know that now I'm asleep, I don't slip into that peaceful obliteration of reality that I need. Instead, I fall into a dangerous new clarity beside that guiding spirit, the floating dog with three claws on each paw, amplified by my mother's imagination; ever since I was a child, he has been grafted into my nightmares.

  It's been about an hour since the engines started up, and from a great distance I sensed rather than heard the play of the anchor and the clattering of the chain, and I'm too tired to stay awake and too tense to sleep, and in the end I just wish for some kind of diversion.

  It comes with the opening of my door. There's no knock, no warning footsteps. He tiptoes up to the door, jerks it open, and sticks his head inside.

  "The captain wants to see you on the bridge."

  He stands in the doorway, trying to make it difficult for me to get out of bed and put on my clothes, trying to make me expose myself. With the quilt around my shoulders I slide down to the foot of the bunk and give the door a kick so that he just manages to pull back his head in time.

  Jakkelsen. His name is Jakkelsen. He might have a first name, too, but on the Kronos only surnames are used.

  I stand there in the rain until the rubber boat with Lander's silhouette disappears. Since there's no one in sight, I try to lift my box by myself, but have to forget about getting it up the ladder. I leave it behind and climb into the darkness beyond the single light.

  The steps end at an open cargo door. Inside, a dim bulb illuminates a green corridor on a level with the second deck. Sheltered from the rain, with his feet up on a cable end box, a boy sits smoking a cigarette.

  He's wearing black steel-toed shoes, blue work pants, and a blue wool sweater, and he's too young and much too gaunt to be a sailor.

  "I've been waiting for you. Jakkelsen. We use last names here. Captain's orders."

  He scrutinizes me. "Stick with me, because I can do things for you, know what I mean?"

  He has a dusting of freckles across his nose, his hair is red and curly. Above the cigarette his eyes are half-closed, lazy, inquisitive, insolent. He could be seventeen.

  "You can start by getting my baggage."

  He gets up reluctantly, letting his cigarette fall to the deck, where it continues to glow.

  He barely manages to get up the ladder with the box. He puts it down on the deck. "I have a bad back, know what I mean?"

  He walks on ahead, sauntering, with his hands behind his back. I follow with the box. A deep, continuous vibration of giant engines passes through the hull, like a reminder that departure is imminent.

  A stairway brings us to the level of the upper decks. Here the smell of diesel fuel dissipates, the air tastes of rain and cold. One corridor has a white wall on the right, a long row of doors on the left. One of them is mine.

  Jakkelsen opens it, steps aside so I can enter, follows me in, closes the door, and stands in front of it.

  I shove the box aside and sit down on the bed. "Jaspersen. According to the crew list, your name is Jaspersen."

  I open the closet.

  "How about a quick fuck?"

  I wonder whether I've heard right. "Women are crazy about me."

  A certain eagerness and excitement has come over him. I stand up. It's important to avoid being caught by surprise.

  "That's a good idea," I say. "But let's wait until your birthday. Your fiftieth birthday."

  He looks disappointed. "By then you'll be ninety. So I won't be interested."

  He gives me a wink and goes out the door. "I know the sea, remember. Stick with me, Jaspersen."

  Then he shuts the door.

  I unpack. The bathroom is down the corridor. The water from the hot-water tap is scalding. I stand under the shower for a long time. Then I rub my skin with almond oil and put on a jogging suit. I lock the door and lie down under the quilt. The world can come and get me if it needs me. I close my eyes and sink down. Through the gateway. On the desk, Aajumaaq slowly appears. In my dreams I know that it's a dream. It's possible to reach a certain age and a point in your life when even your nightmares start to have a halfway soothing and familiar sense to them. That's about the stage that I've reached.

  The engine noise grows louder and they weigh anchor. Then the Kronos sets off. And Jakkelsen opens my door.

  I'm positive that I locked it. I make a note that he must have a key. It's a small thing that's worth remembering. "Your uniform," he says outside the door. "We wear uniforms here."

  In the closet there are blue pants that are too big, blue T-shirts that are too big, a blue smock that's too big and as shapeless- as a flour sack, and a blue wool sweater. On the floor there's `a pair of short rubber boots with plenty of room to grow into. About five or six sizes, if they're really going to fit.

  Jakkelsen is waiting for me outside. He inspects me over his cigarette but doesn't say a word. His fingers drum against the bulkhead; there's a new restlessness about him. He walks on ahead.

  At the end of the corridor he turns left to the stairs leading to the upper levels. But I take a right, out onto the deck, and he has to follow me.

  I stand by the railing. The air is dripping with ice-cold moisture, the wind is strong and gusty. But you can see lights straight ahead.

  "Helsingor-Halsingborg, the strait between Denmark and Sweden. The world's busiest channel, you know. Swedish car ferries, Danish train ferries, a giant marina, container traffic. Every three minutes a ship crosses. There's no other place like it. The Strait of Messina, for instance, I've been there lots of times, it's nothing. This is really something. And in this kind of weather there are disturbances on the radar, it's like taking a submarine through buttermilk soup."

  His fingers are drumming nervously on the railing, but his eyes are staring out into the night with what looks like enthusiasm.

  "We came through here when I was in the merchant marine school. On board a fullrigger. Sunshine, Kronborg Castle on the port side, and the little girls in the marina got all excited when they saw us."

  I go first. We climb up three levels to reach the navigation bridge. To the right of the stairs is the chart room behind two big glass windows. It's dark, but faint red light bulbs glow above laid-out sea charts. We step inside the wheelhouse.

  The room is dark. But below us, in the light of a single deck lamp, 250 feet forward in the night, lies the deck of the Kronos. Two 60-foot masts with heavy cargo booms. At each mast four cargo winches; at the entrance to the short, elevated foredeck, a control box for the winches. Between the masts, on the deck, is a rectangular shape under a tarp where several small blue figures are working to secure long, criss-crossed rubber straps. Maybe it's the LMC, the navy's surplus landing vessel. On the foredeck, a huge anchor winch and a hatch in four sections over a cargo hold. Every three feet along the sea rail there's an upright white floodlight. In addition, fire hydrants, foam fire extinguishers and rescue equipment. Nothing else. The deck is clear and shipshape.

  And now empty as well. While I've been surveying the deck, the blue figures have disappeared. Now the light is turned off and the deck vanishes. Far forward, where the bow chops through the waves, white protuberances of displaced water suddenly appear. On both sides of the ship, surprisingly close, the lights of the shores can be seen. The little passenger ferries cross behind and in front of us. In the rain the yel
low floodlights make Kronborg Castle look like a drab modern prison.

  Two slowly rotating green radar images glow from the darkness of the room. A red dot of dull light in a big liquid compass. In front of the window, with one hand on the manual tiller, stands a man, his back partly turned toward us. It's Captain Sigmund Lukas. Behind him a straight-backed, motionless figure. Next to me Jakkelsen is rocking restlessly on the balls of his feet.

  "You can go." Lukas speaks softly, without turning around. The figure behind him slips out the door. Jakkelseri follows him. For a moment his movements show no reluctance.

  My eyes slowly grow used to the dark, and out of nothingness appear the instruments; some I recognize, some I don't, but I've always kept my distance from all of them because they belong to the open sea. And because, for me, they symbolize a culture that has inserted a layer of lifeless instruments between itself and its attempt to determine its location.

  The liquid crystals on the SATNAV computer, the shortwave radio, consoles for LORAN C, a radio location system that I've never understood. The red numbers on the sounding device. The console of the navigational sonar. The inclinometer. A sextant on a tripod. Instrument panels. The phone to the engine room. Visibility dials. A radio locator. The automatic pilot. Two panels full of volt meters and control lights. And above all of it Lukas's alert, expressionless face.

  The VHF emits a continuous crackle. Without shifting his gaze, the captain reaches over and turns it off. There is silence.

  "You're on board because we needed a cabin attendant. A stewardess, as it's now called. Not for any other reason. That conversation we had was an employment interview, nothing else."

  In my floppy sea boots and much too large sweater I feel like a little girl being disciplined in school. Not once does he look at me.

  "We haven't been able to find out where we're going. We'll be told later. Until then we're following our noses due north."

  There's something different about him. It's his cigarettes. They're gone. Maybe he doesn't smoke at sea. Maybe he sails to get away from the gambling tables and the cigarettes.

  "First Mate Sonne will show you around and point out your work areas. Your duties include light cleaning, and you're responsible for the ship's laundry. You will also occasionally wait on the officers."

  The question is why he's taken me along at all.

  When I reach the door he calls after me, his voice bitter and low. "You heard what I said, didn't you? You understand that we're sailing without knowing our destination?"

  Sonne is waiting for me outside the door. Young, polite, his hair close-cropped. We go down one level to the boat deck. He turns toward me, lowers his voice, and looks at me gravely.

  "We have representatives from the shipping company with us on this trip. They live in the forecastle on the boat deck. There's no admittance whatsoever. Unless you're called on to serve a meal. Otherwise no. No cleaning, no little errands."

  We continue down. The laundry, the drying room, and the linen supply area are located on the promenade deck. On the upper deck, along with my cabin, there are living quarters, offices for the engineer and electricians, the galley and the crew's mess. On the second deck are the cold storage rooms and freezer for foodstuffs, storerooms, two workshops, the COZ room. All of this is located in and below the superstructure; just in front of it and farther forward are the engine room, tanks, tunnels, and the cargo holds.

  I follow him up to the upper deck. Along the corridor past my own cabin. Farthest back on the port side is the mess. He pushes open the door and we step inside.

  I take my time and count eleven people in that little room. Five Danes, six Asians. Two of the latter are women. Three of the men look like little boys.

  "Smilla Jaspersen, the new stewardess."

  It's always been this way. I stand alone in the doorway, the others in front of me. Sometimes it's a school, sometimes a university, sometimes it's some other kind of gathering. They may not have anything in particular against me, they might be more or less indifferent, but aImost every time they look as if they'd rather not be bothered.

  "Verlaine, our bosun. Hansen and Maurice. The three of them are in charge of the deck. Maria and Fernanda, ship's assistants."

  In the doorway to the galley stands a tall, heavyset man with a full reddish-brown beard, wearing a white cook's outfit.

  "Urs. Our cook."

  The hostility is stronger in the eyes of the women than of the men. But there is also a raw directness which has managed to thwart the rule dictating the use of surnames.

  There's something subdued and disciplined about all of them. With the exception of Jakkelsen. He's leaning against the wall, under the NO SMOKING sign, with a cigarette in his mouth. He has one eye closed against the smoke while the other regards me quizzically.

  "That's Bernard Jakkelsen," says the first mate. He hesitates for a moment. "He also works on deck." Jakkelsen ignores him.

  "Jaspersen is supposed to keep our cabins clean," he says. "There'll be plenty of work mucking out for eleven men and four officers. I seem to have a tendency to just drop things all over the floor, if you know what I mean."

  My socks have slipped down around my heels because my rubber boots are too big. You can't live like a human being when your socks are drooping. Not when you're tired and scared besides. And now they're laughing, not a hearty laughter. But a feeling of dominance emanates from the gaunt figure of Jakkelsen, affecting everyone in the room.

  I lose my temper. I grab hold of Jakkelsen's lower lip and pinch it hard. I pull it away from his teeth. When he takes hold of my wrist, I grab his little finger with my left hand and bend back the top joint. He drops to his knees with a whimper like a woman. I increase the pressure.

  "Do you know how I'm going to clean your cabin?" I say. "I'll open the porthole. And then I'll pretend that I've opened a big closet. And then I'll put all your things inside. And then I'll wash it down with salt water."

  I let him go and step aside. But he doesn't try to grab me. He stands up slowly and goes over to a framed photograph of the Kyonos in front of a flat-topped iceberg in the Antarctic. He mournfully examines his face in the glass.

  "I'll get a blood blister, damn it, a blood blister." No one in the room has moved.

  I straighten up and look around at them. People don't like saying "I'm sorry" in Greenlandic. I've never bothered to learn the phrase in Danish.

  In my cabin I pull the desk over to the door and wedge Bugge's Greenlandic dictionary under the door handle. Then I go to bed. I have every reason to believe that tonight the dog will leave me in peace.

  2

  It's six-thirty in the morning, but they've already eaten and the mess is empty except for Verlaine. I drink a glass of juice and follow him to the storage room for work clothes. He looks me over and then hands me a pile of clothes.

  Maybe it's the work clothes, maybe it's the surroundings, maybe it's the color of his skin. But for a moment I feel the urge for some contact.

  "What's your native language?"

  "You mean, what's your native language, sir?" he corrects me gently, using the formal form of address.

  His Danish has a faint lilt to each word, the way it's spoken on the island of Fyn.

  We look each other in the eyes. He has a plastic bag in his breast pocket. He takes a clump of rice out of it. He stuffs it in his mouth, chews it slowly and thoroughly, swallows, and rubs his palms together.

  "Bosun," he adds. Then he turns around and leaves. There's nothing under the sun as grotesque as cold European courtesy manifested in the third and fourth worlds.

  I change into work clothes in my cabin. He has given me the correct size. As much as work clothes can ever be the right size. I try putting a belt around the smock. Now I no longer look like a mailbag. Now I look like an hourglass five feet two inches tall. I put a silk scarf over my hair. I have to clean, and I don't want to get dust in the fine down that is starting to cover my bald spot. I take out a vacuum cleaner. I put it
down in the corridor, and then I quietly drift into the mess. Not to resume my breakfast -I couldn't get a bite down. During the night the sea outside my porthole seeped down into my stomach and joined forces with the smell of diesel fuel and with the awareness of being on the open sea, and coated my insides with tepid nausea. There are those who claim that you can fight seasickness by standing on deck in the fresh air. That may work if the boat is docked or on its way through the Falsterbo Canal, where you can go up and look at the solid land that you will soon have under your feet. When Sonne wakes me up this morning by knocking on my door to give me a key, and I get dressed and stand on deck wearing a down jacket and ski cap, and gaze out into the pitch dark of winter, and realize that now I will have to continue because I'm on the open sea and there's no way back, that's when I first feel truly sick.

  In the mess the two tables have been cleared and wiped off. I stand in the doorway to the galley.

  Urs is stirring a pot of boiling milk. I estimate him to be about 250 pounds. But solidly built. All Danes are pale in the winter, but his face borders on green-tinged. Covered with a light mask of sweat in the heat of the galley.

  His movements are forceful and impatient. But he possesses a warmth and charisma in his role as keeper of the larder. They don't call him by his last name either.

  "A superb breakfast."

  I didn't touch it. But you have to start a conversation somewhere.

  He gives me a smile and turns back to the milk as he shrugs his shoulders. "I am a Schweizer."

  I've had the privilege of learning foreign languages. Instead of merely speaking a watered-down form of my mother tongue, like most people, I'm also helpless in two or three other languages.

  "Fruhstuck," I say in German. "Impressive. Like a first-class restaurant."

  "I had such a restaurant. In Geneva. On the lake," he continues in German.

  He has prepared a tray with coffee, steamed milk, juice, butter, and croissants.

  "Can I take it to the bridge?"

  "Nein. Breakfast isn't served. It's sent up in the dumbwaiter. But if you come back at 11:15, Fraulein, there's the officers' lunch."