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

by Peter Høeg

  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.

  Under the table there is a metal rack with small, deep drawers. I open a few of them. In cardboard boxes from Struer's Chemical Laboratory there are pipettes, rubber hoses, plugs, glass slides, and litmus paper. Chemicals in little glass flasks. Powdered magnesium, potassium permanganate, iron filings, powdered sulfur, copper sulfate crystals. Against the wall, in wooden crates lined with straw and corrugated cardboard, are little carboys of acid. Hydrofluoric acid, hydrochloric acid, and acetic acid in various concentrations.

  On the opposite table there are permanently attached plastic trays, developing baths, and an enlarging apparatus. I don't understand a thing. The room is furnished like a mixture of Denmark's National Aquarium and a chemical laboratory.

  The salon has double doors with paneling. A reminder that the Kronos was built for the long-vanished elegance of the fifties, old-fashioned even then. The room lies right below the navigation bridge and is exactly the same size-like a low-ceilinged Danish living room. There are six large windows facing the foredeck. All of them are iced over, and a faint bluish-gray light seeps through the ice.

  On the port side unmarked wooden and cardboard boxes are stacked up, held in place by a flag rope stretched between two heaters.

  A table is bolted down in the middle of the room, and several thermoses are standing in the indentations of the tabletop. Long worktables with Luxo lamps have been put up along two of the walls. A small copy machine has been screwed onto the bulkhead. Next to it is a fax machine. A cupboard overhead is filled with books.

  On my way over to the bookshelf I notice the sea chart.

  It has been placed beneath a sheet of non-reflecting Plexiglas; that's why I didn't notice it before. I turn on the lamp.

  The text in the margin has been cut off, so it takes a few minutes for me to identify it. On sea charts, land is a detail, a mere line, a contour drowning in a swarm of numbers indicating depths. Then I recognize the promontory across from Sisimiut. Under the glass plate, at the edge of the map, there are several smaller photocopies of specialized maps: "Mean time lag from moon's transit (upper or lower) at Greenwich until onset of high tide in West Greenland"; "Overview of surface currents west of Greenland"; "Index map of sector divisions in Holsteinsborg region."

  At the top, up against the bulkhead, lie three photographs. Two of them are black-and-white aerial shots. The third looks like a fractal detail of the Mandelbrot set, produced by a color printer. All three photos have the same shape in the center. A shape approximating a circle, curving around an opening. Like a five-week-old fetus which, fishlike, curls around the gills.

  I try the file cabinets, but they're locked. I'm about to look at the books when a door opens somewhere on the deck. I turn off the light and stand perfectly still. A second door is opened and shut, and then there is silence. But the deck doesn't seem asleep anymore. Somewhere someone is awake. I don't need to look at my clock. There's still time, but my nerves can't take it.

  I have my hand on the exit. door when someone comes up the stairs. I retreat backward into the corridor. A key is put in the lock. There is a pause of surprise that the door isn't locked. I push open the door to the galley, step in, and close it behind me. Footsteps approach down the corridor. Maybe there's something cautious, hesitant about them, maybe someone is wondering why the door wasn't locked, maybe they're going to search the deck. Maybe I'm hearing things. I shove myself up onto the counter and into the dumbwaiter. I pull the doors shut, but they don't close properly from the inside.

  The door to the hallway opens and a light is turned on. In the middle of the room, right in front of the slit I haven't been able to close, stands Seidenfaden, wearing his outdoor clothes, still windblown from his walk on deck. He goes over to the refrigerator and disappears out of my field of vision. There's a hiss of carbon dioxide, and he comes back into view. He's standing there drinking beer out of a can.

  At that moment, while his face has an expression of introspective pleasure and he seems about to cough, he's looking straight at me, but he doesn't see me. Suddenly the dumbwaiter starts to rumble with a loud clatter.

  There's no room for me to react. All I can do is pull the cork off the screwdriver and get ready to be discovered in about two seconds.

  Then the dumbwaiter descends.

  Above me in the dark the doors are shoved aside. But I'm already gone; I'm on my way down.

  I pray that it's Jakkelsen who has disobeyed my orders; maybe he noticed some movement in the shaft and pushed the button to bring me down. I hope that it'll be dark when the doors open. And that Jakkelsen's trembling hands will be there to help me when I crawl out.

  I stop, the door is cautiously pulled open. Outside, it's dark.

  Something cold and wet is pressed against my thigh. Something is put in my lap. Something is shoved under my knees. Then the door is closed, the dumbwaiter hums, a motor starts up, and I ascend once more.

  I shift the screwdriver into my left hand and find the flashlight with my right. For a moment I'm blinded, then I can see.

  Leaning against me, two inches from my eyes, looms an upright, cold magnum bottle beaded with moisture: Moet & Chandon 1986 Brut Imperial Rose. Pink champagne. In my lap there's a champagne glass. Under my knees I can feel the concave bottom of another bottle.

  I take it for granted that when the doors open I will find myself bathed in light, face to face with Seidenfaden. It doesn't turn out that way. I count two bumps and know that I've passed the boat deck. I'm on my way up to the bridge, to the officers' mess.

  The dumbwaiter comes to a halt, and then there is silence; nothing happens. I try to open the doors. It's almost impossible because of the bottles.

  Somewhere a door is opened and shut. Then a match is struck. I wriggle the doors open a crack. There's a candle in a candlestick on the big dining-room table where I served dinner a few days ago. Now someone picks up the candle and moves toward me.

  The doors slide back. I have a hand against the wall behind me in order to put as much force as I can into the blow. I'm expecting Tørk or Verlaine. I'm thinking of aiming for their eyes.

  The light blinds me because it's so close. I can't make out anything except a dark outline, which removes one bottle and then the other. When the glass is removed, a hand fumbles over my hip for a moment.

  There is a muffled sound of surprise.

  Kützow's face is lowered toward me. We gaze into each other's eyes. Tonight his are bulging, as if he had been afflicted with acute Basedow's disease. But he isn't sick in the ordinary sense. He is enormously drunk.

  "Jaspersen!" he says.

  Then we both catch sight of the screwdriver. It's pointed at a spot between his eyes.

  "Jaspersen," he repeats.

  "A minor repair," I say.

  It's difficult to talk because my scrunched-up position makes it hard to breathe.

  "I'm the one in charge of repairs on board."

  His voice is authoritative but slurred. I poke my head out the door. "I see you're also in charge of the winecellar. Urs and the captain will be interested to hear that."

  He blushes, a slow but pervasive change to a color bordering on purple. "I can explain."

  In ten seconds he'll start wondering. I get an arm out. "I don't have time," I say. "I have to get on with my work."

  At that instant the dumbwaiter starts down. At the last second I pull my upper body inside. I manage to feel a burst of fury that there isn't some kind of safety device preventing it from operating when the doors are open.

  In my mind I go through the entire discovery, confrontation, and catastrophic ending. By the time I reach the galley, my imagination has been u
sed up.

  The dumbwaiter doesn't stop there. It continues its descent.

  Then it stops. Those final seconds have drained my last reserves. Now I have only the element of surprise on my side. I wrench open the doors and push them back. They slam into place with a bang. A sack marked Vildmose Potatoes. DANISH SHIPPING PROVISIONS sways toward me. I swing both legs out, put them against it, and push. The sack stops swaying, pitches backward, and flies toward the farthest corner. It lands among the boxes labeled WIUFF'S LAMMEFJORD CARROTS.

  I regain my balance on the floor. My legs feel like rubber. But I have the screwdriver out in front of me.

  Urs comes out from behind the sack.

  I can't think of anything to say. When I stagger out the door, he's still on his knees.

  "Bitte, Fraulein Smilla, bitte…"

  Subconsciously I must have been expecting some kind of alarm. Armed men in wait for me. But the Kronos is wrapped in darkness. I walk up through three decks without meeting anyone.

  The stairway from the bridge is empty. Jakkelsen is nowhere to be seen. I brazenly enter the bridge deck, go through the door marked OFFICERS' ACCOMMODATIONS, arid open the door to the men's bathroom.

  He's standing at the sink. He had been combing his hair. His forehead is pressed against the mirror, as if he wanted to make sure that the result would be especially nice. He was in the process of combing back the hair over his ears. But he's asleep. Unconsciously and pliantly his body follows the rolling of the ship, holding itself upright. But he's snoring. His mouth is open and his tongue is hanging out slightly.

  I stick my hand into the breast pocket of his work shirt. I take out a rubber tube. He slipped into the bathroom and had a little fix to keep up his courage. Then he tried to spruce himself up. But he got tired.

  I kick his legs out from under him. He falls heavily to the floor. I try to pull him up, but my back hurts. I only manage to lift up his head.

  "You overlooked Kützow," I say.

  A sensuous little smile appears on his face. "Smilla. I knew you'd come back."

  I get him to his feet. Then I push his head into the sink and turn on the cold water. When he can stay on his feet, I pull him over toward the stairs.

  We're five steps down when Kützow comes out the door behind us.

  There's no doubt that he thinks he's sneaking around on cat's paws. In reality he manages to stay upright only by hanging on to whatever is at hand. When he catches sight of us, he stops abruptly, puts his hand on the board with the barometer, and stares at me.

  I have Jakkelsen's weak-kneed body pressed up against the railing. I'm having difficulty walking myself.

  Shock slowly penetrates his drunkenness, which now must be further enhanced by one or two sparkling magnum bottles.

  "Jaspersen," he croaks. "Jaspersen…"

  I'm so tired of men and their excesses. It's been this way ever since I came to Denmark. You always have to watch out not to trip over people who have poisoned themselves but think they're carrying it off with dignity. "Piss off, Mr. Engineer," I say.

  He stares at me blankly.

  We don't meet anyone else on our way down. I shove Jakkelsen into his cabin. He falls onto his bed like a rag doll. I turn him on his side. Infants, alcoholics, and drug addicts all risk suffocating on their own vomit. Then I lock his door from the outside with his own key.

  I lock and barricade my door. It's 4:15 a.m. I'm going to sleep for three hours and then report sick and sleep twelve more. Everything else will have to wait.

  I manage to sleep for forty-five minutes. First an electronic buzzer penetrates through the first nightmares, on the edge of sleep, followed by Lukas's commanding voice.

  I'm working less than six feet away from Verlaine. He's using a hard rubber club as long as a lumberman's ax.

  I can tell from my chapped lips that it's just under 14°F. He's working in his shirtsleeves. With one hand he hangs on to the sea rail or the fencing around the radar scanners. With the other he raises the club in a graceful, gentle arc behind his back and then brings it down on the deckhouse roof with an explosion like a car windshield being smashed. His face is covered with sweat, but his movements are easy and tireless. Each blow breaks off a plate of ice about three feet square.

  There's no wind but a choppy sea in which the Kronos is pitching heavily. And there is fog, like big moist planes of whiteness in the dark.

  Every time we emerge from one of the fog banks, which hang so low that they give the impression of floating on the water, the layer of ice visibly increases. I'm scraping the ice off the scanners with the handle of an ice pick. When I'm done with one of them I might as well go back to the one I just did. In less than two minutes a thin layer of hard gray ice has covered it again.

  The deck and the superstructure are alive. Not with the small, dark figures hammering at the ice, but with the ice itself. All the deck lights are on. Together, the ice and the light have created a mythological landscape. The riggings and mast stays are coated with a foot of ice festoons drooping from the masts to the deck like watchful faces. An anchor lantern on its mount shines through its shroud of ice, like the glowing brain inside the head of some fantastical animal. The deck is a gray, solidified sea. Everything upright looms in the air with inquisitive faces and cold gray limbs.

  Verlaine is on the starboard side. Behind me is the sea rail, and beyond that a free fall of almost sixty-five feet to the deck below. In front of me, behind the radar pedestals and the low mast with the antennas, siren, and a mobile spotlight for harbor maneuvers, Sonne is shoveling ice. The sheets of ice that Verlaine chops loose he tosses over the rail, where they fall onto the boatdeck next to the lifeboat. From there Hansen, wearing a yellow hard hat, sends them on over the side of the ship.

  On the port side Jakkelsen is chopping the ice free from the radar pedestals with a hammer. He's working his way toward me. At one point the scanners hide us from the rest of the roof.

  He sticks the hammer in his jacket pocket. Then he leans back against the radar. He takes out a cigarette. "As you predicted," I say. "The bad ice."

  His face is white with exhaustion.

  "No," he says. "It doesn't start until 5-6 Beaufort, at just about the freezing point. He's called us out on deck too soon."

  He looks around. There's no one anywhere near. "When I started sailing, you know, it was the captain who sailed the ship, and time was measured by the calendar. If you were on your way into an icy situation, you decreased your speed. Or you changed your route. Or turned and sailed with the wind. But in the last few years things have changed: Now it's the shipping companies that decide, now it's the offices in the big cities that are sailing the ships. And this is what you measure time by." He points at his wristwatch. "But we're obviously supposed to get somewhere by a certain time. So they've given him orders to keep going. And that's what he's doing. He's losing his touch. Since we had to go through this, anyway, there was no reason to call us on deck right now. A smaller ship can withstand ice up to 10 percent of its displacement. We could sail with five hundred tons of ice and it wouldn't make much difference. He could have sent a couple of the boys up to chop the antennas free."

  I scrape ice away from the directional antenna. When I'm working, I'm awake. As soon as I stop, I have brief lapses of sleep.

  "He's afraid we won't be able to maintain cruising speed. Afraid we're going to blow something. Or that it'll suddenly get worse. It's his nerves. They're almost shot."

  He drops his cigarette, half smoked, onto the ice. A new fog bank envelops us. The moisture seems to stick to the ice that has already formed. For a moment Jakkelsen is almost hidden.

  I work my way around the radar. I make sure that I stay in both Jakkelsen's and Sonne's fields of vision at all times.

  Verlaine is right next to me. His blows fall so close to me that the pressure shoves frozen air toward my face. They land at the foot of the metal pedestal with the precision of a surgical incision, tearing away a transparent plate of ice.
He kicks it over to Sonne.

  His face is next to mine. "Why?" he asks.

  I hold the ice pick slightly behind me. A short distance away, out of earshot, Sonne clears off the base of the mast with the handle of his shovel.

  "I know why," he says. "Because Lukas wouldn't have believed it, anyway."

  "I could have pointed out Maurice's wound," I say. "A work accident. The angle grinder started going while he was changing the wheel. The chuck key struck him in the shoulder. It's been reported and explained."

  "An accident. Just like the boy on the roof," I say. His face is close to mine. Its only expression is one of incomprehension. He has no idea what I'm talking about. "But with Andreas Licht," I say, "the old man on the ship, that's where things got a little more clumsy." When his body locks up, it gives the illusion that he's frozen, like the ship around us.

  "I saw you on the dock," I lie. "When I swam in." While he ponders the consequences of what I've said, he gives himself away. For one second a sick animal scares at me from somewhere inside his body: Like his teeth, there is a thin veneer over the cruelty that turned him sadistic.

  "There will be an investigation in Nuuk," I say. "Police and naval authorities. Attempted murder alone could get you two years. Now they'll look into Licht's death, too." He grins at me, a big white-toothed smile.

  "We're not putting in at Godthåb. We're going to the tankers' floating dock. It's twenty sea miles from land. You can't even see the coast."

  He gives me a quizzical look.

  "You put up a good fight," he says. "It's almost too bad that you're so alone."

  Part Two

  The Sea

  1

  "I'm thinking about the little captain on the bridge up there," says Lukas. "He no longer sails a ship. He no longer exercises any authority. He's just a link in the coupling that transmits impulses to a complex mechanism."