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

by Peter Høeg

  I step back into the bathroom again, back into the shower stall. The light goes on. They come inside. He goes over to the sink. He waits for his erection to subside. Then he stands on his toes and urinates into the sink. It's Seidenfaden. The author of the report about transporting massive weights across sea ice that I was just looking at. The report in which he refers to an article that I wrote. And now we're this close to each other. We live in a world of compressed juxtapositions.

  The woman is standing behind him. She has an intent expression on her face. For a moment I think that she has seen me in the mirror. Then she lifts her hands above her head. She's holding a belt with the buckle down. When she strikes, she does it with such precision that only the buckle hits him, leaving a long white stripe across one buttock. The stripe changes from white to flaming red. He takes hold of the sink, bends over, and presses his backside toward her. She strikes again; the buckle hits his other buttock. Romeo and Juliet come to mind. Europe has a long tradition of elegant rendezvous. Then the light goes out. The door closes, and they're gone.

  I step out into the corridor. My knees are shaking. I don't know what to do about the papers. I take two steps toward Tørk's cabin. Can't make up my mind. Take one step back. Decide to leave them in the salon. There's nothing else to do. I feel as if I'm imprisoned in a switching yard.

  A door opens in the dark. This time there's no warning, the light isn't turned on, and it's only because I've become familiar with my surroundings that I manage to step into the bathroom and hide in the shower stall in time.

  This time the light doesn't go on. But the door is opened and then closed and locked. I take out my screwdriver. They've come to get me. I'm holding the papers behind my back. I'm going to throw them as I jab with the screwdriver. Once from below, up toward the abdomen. And then I'll run.

  The curtain is pushed aside. I get ready to push off from the wall.

  The water is turned on. The cold water. Then the hot. The temperature is adjusted. The shower has been directed toward the wall. Within three seconds I'm soaking wet.

  The spray is diverted away from the wall. He gets in under the water. I'm four inches away. Except for the splashing of the water, there's not a sound. And there's no light. But at this distance I don't need it to recognize the mechanic.

  In the White Palace he never turned on the light on his way up the stairs. He always waited until the last minute to flip the switch in the basement. He likes peace and solitude in the dark.

  His hand brushes mine when he fumbles for the soapdish. He finds it, steps back a little from the water, and soaps up. Puts the soap back and massages his skin. Searches for the soap again. His fingers brush mine and move on. Then they slowly come back. Touch my hand.

  He ought to gasp at least. A scream wouldn't be out of place. But he doesn't utter a sound. His fingers register the screwdriver, carefully take it out of my hand, and move up my arm to my elbow.

  The water is turned off. The curtain is shoved aside; he steps out into the room. After a moment the light goes on. He's put a big orange towel around his waist. His face is expressionless. All of his movements have been calm, deliberate, subdued.

  He looks at me. And then he recognizes me.

  His handle on the present dissolves. He doesn't move, his face hardly changes expression. But he's paralyzed. I now know that he didn't realize I was on board.

  He looks at my wet hair, the clinging dress, the soaked papers that I'm holding in front of me. My sloshing rubber boots and the screwdriver that he's holding. He doesn't understand a thing.

  Then he hands me his towel, with an awkward and perplexed gesture. Without thinking that he is exposing himself. I take it and hand him the papers. He holds them in front of his genitals while I dry my hair. His eyes never leave my face.

  We're sitting on the bunk in his cabin. Close together, with a chasm between us. We're whispering, even though it's not necessary.

  "Do you know what's going on?" I ask.

  "M-most of it."

  "Can you tell me?" He shakes his head.

  We've ended up just about where we started. In a morass of secrets. I feel a wild urge to throw myself at him and beg him to anesthetize me and wake me up only after it's all over.

  I've never gotten to know him. Up until a few hours ago I thought that we had shared certain moments of silent solidarity. When I saw him walking across the landing platform of the Greenland Star, I realized that we've always been strangers. When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

  "I want to show you something."

  I put the papers in a pile on his desk. He hands me a T-shirt, underpants, thermal pants, wool socks, and a sweater. We get dressed with our backs turned, like two strangers. I have to roll his pants up above the knees and the sleeves of his sweater to the elbow. I ask him for a wool cap as well, and he gives it to me. From a drawer he takes out a flat, dark bottle and stuffs it into an inside pocket. I take the wool blanket off his bed and fold it up. Then we leave.

  He opens the case. Jakkelsen stares at us disconsolately. His nose is blue-tinged and sharp, as if it were frozen. "Who's this?"

  "Bernard Jakkelsen. Lukas's little brother."

  I go over to him and unbutton his shirt and pull it away from the triangular steel. The mechanic doesn't move. I turn off the light. We stand quietly in the darkness. Then we go upstairs. I lock the door behind us. When we reach the deck, the mechanic stops.

  "Who did it?"

  "Verlaine," I say. "The bosun."

  There are steps welded onto the external bulkhead. I crawl up first. He follows me slowly. We reach a small half-deck clothed in darkness. A motorboat is perched on two wooden trestles, and behind it there's a large rubber raft. We sit down between the two. From here we have a view of the quarterdeck but we're shielded from the light.

  "It happened on the Greenland Star. Just as you arrived."

  He doesn't believe me.

  "Verlaine could have heaved him over the side. But he was afraid the body would float up near the platform the next day. Or be sucked up into a propeller."

  I think about my mother. Whatever is thrown into the Arctic Ocean never comes up again. But Verlaine wouldn't know that.

  The mechanic still doesn't say a word.

  "Jakkelsen followed Verlaine onto the docks. He got caught. The best solution was to make room in the cases and put him inside one of them. Load him on board and wait until we were free of the platform. And then let him slip overboard."

  I try to keep my sense of desperation out of my voice. He has to believe me.

  "We're far out at sea now. Every second he's on board is a risk for them. They'll come in a few minutes. They'll have to bring him up on deck. There's no other way than over the side. That's why we're sitting here. I thought you should see for yourself."

  There's a soft sigh in the dark. It's the cork coming out of the bottle, which he hands to me. I take a swallow. It's dark, sweet, strong rum.

  I put the woolen blanket over us. It's about 14°F, but I'm burning hot inside. Alcohol makes your capillaries expand and the surface of your skin ache slightly. It's this pain that you have to avoid at all costs if you don't want to freeze to death. I take off the woolen cap to feel the cold against my forehead.

  "Tørk would n-never have permitted it."

  I hand him the letter. He glances up toward the dark windows of the bridge, leans behind the hull of the motorboat, and reads the letter in the beam of my flashlight. "It was with Tørk's papers," I say.

  We take another drink. The moonlight is so bright that it's possible to distinguish different colors. The green deck, my blue thermal pants, the gold and red of the label on the bottle. It's like sunlight, falling with a tactile warmth across the deck. I kiss him. The temperature is no longer important. At some point I straddle him. We are no longer two bodies, just patches of heat in the night.

  Later we sit leaning against each other. H
e's the one who pulls the blanket over us. I'm not cold. We drink from the bottle. It tastes strong and fiery.

  "Are you from the police, Smilla?"

  "No."

  "Are you from some other corporation?"

  "No."

  "Have you known all along?"

  "No."

  "Do you know now?"

  "I have an idea."

  We take another drink and he puts his arms around me. The deck must be cold under the blanket, but we don't notice it.

  No one comes past us. The Kronos seems lifeless. As if the ship had wrenched itself off its course and were now carrying us away, just the two of us.

  At some point the bottle is empty. Then I stand up, because I realize that something is wrong. "Aren't there any other openings in the hull?" I ask. "Some other way to get rid of him?"

  "Why are you talking about death?" What should I say?

  "How is the anchor dropped?" he asks me.

  We climb down to the between decks. The case is now full of life vests. Jakkelsen is gone. We go down the stairs, through the tunnel, the engine room, another tunnel, up the spiral stairs. He throws two bolts and opens a door that's three feet square. The chain of the anchor is stretched taut in the middle of the room. Up near the ceiling it passes through a pipe; on either side the moonlight and the silhouette of the anchor windlass are visible. Then the chain disappears downward through a hawser hole the size of a sewer cover. The anchor is pulled up just below the hawser hole. That doesn't leave much room. He stares at the opening.

  "A grown man wouldn't fit through there."

  I touch the steel. We both know that this is where Jakkelsen was shoved out during the night.

  "He was fashionably slim," I say.

  Captain Lukas is unshaven, he hasn't combed his hair, and he looks as if he has slept in his clothes.

  "What do you know about electrical currents, Jaspersen?"

  We're alone on the bridge. It's 6:30 in the morning, an hour and a half before his watch begins. His face is sallow and covered with a thin film of sweat.

  "I can change a light bulb," I say. "But I usually burn my fingers."

  "Yesterday, when we were docked, we lost power on the Kronos. And a section of the harbor area did, too." He has a piece of paper in his hand. His hand is making the paper shake.

  "On ships all the wiring goes through circuit breakers. As a result, all power outlets are directly connected to a fuse. Do you know what that means? It means that it's damned hard to create electrical havoc on a ship. Unless you're too smart for your own good and go straight for the main feeder. That's what someone did yesterday. During the brief periods when Kutzow is sober, he has his clever moments. He tracked down the source of the accident. It was a darning needle. Yesterday someone stuck a darning needle into the supply cable. Presumably with an insulated pair of pliers. And then broke off the needle afterward-an especially clever touch. The insulation would contract over the needle, making it impossible to pinpoint the problem unless you know a few tricks like Kutzow does, with a magnet and a voltage sensor. And if you have some idea what you're looking for."

  I think about Jakkelsen's excitement and the tone of his voice. "I'll take care of this for us, Smilla," he said. "Tomorrow everything will be different." I feel a new respect for his resourcefulness.

  "During the blackout one of the sailors-Bernard Jakkelsen-apparently disobeyed orders not to go ashore and left the Kronos. This morning we received this telegram from him. It's his resignation."

  He hands me the paper. It's a telex sent from the Greenland Star. It's quite brief, even for a resignation.

  To Captain Sigmund Lukas:

  Effective immediately, I hereby resign my post on the Kronos due to personal reasons. Go to hell.

  B. Jakkelsen.

  I look up at Lukas.

  "I have a strong suspicion," he says, "that you were also on shore during the blackout."

  His demeanor cracks. Gone is the officer, gone is the sarcasm. The only thing left is anxiety bordering on desperation.

  "Tell me whether you know anything about him." Everything that Jakkelsen didn't tell me is now apparent. Lukas's panicked concern, his desire to protect and rescue his brother and keep him sailing, out of jail and away from bad influences in the cities. No matter what the cost. Even if it meant taking him along on a voyage like this one.

  For a moment I'm tempted to tell him everything. For a moment I see a reflection of myself in his torment. Our irrational, blind, and vain attempts to protect other people from something that we don't understand but that keeps reappearing no matter what we do.

  Then I let my momentary weakness fade away and die out. There's nothing I can do for Lukas now. No one can do anything for Jakkelsen anymore.

  "I stood on the dock. That's all."

  He lights a new cigarette. The ashtray is already full. "I called the telex office. But the whole situation is impossible. It's strictly forbidden to put a man ashore in this way. And their internal system makes things even more difficult. You write a telegram and hand it in at a window. From there it's taken over to the mail room. A third person takes it over to the teletype office. I talked to a fourth person. They don't even know whether it was delivered in person or called in. It's impossible to find out anything."

  He takes hold of my arm. "Do you have the faintest idea why he would go ashore?"

  I shake my head.

  He waves the telegram. "This is so typical of him." He has tears in his eyes.

  It's exactly like something Jakkelsen would write. Brief, arrogant, secretive, and yet with an enthusiasm for the cliches of formal speech. But it wasn't Jakkelsen who wrote it. It's the same text that was on the piece of paper I took from Tørk's cabin last night.

  Lukas gazes out across the water without seeing anything, absorbed in the first of many painful speculations that will start building from this moment on. He has forgotten that I'm there.

  At that moment the fire alarm goes off.

  There are sixteen of us gathered in the galley. Everyone on board except Sonne and Maria, who are up on the bridge.

  By the clock it's daytime, but outside it's dark. The wind has picked up and the temperature has risen, a combination that makes the rain sweep across the windows like the boughs of a tree. The waves strike the sides of the ship like the irregular blows of a heavy mallet.

  The mechanic is leaning against the bulkhead next to Urs. Verlaine sits a little apart; Hansen and Maurice are with the rest of the crew. In the company of others, they always seem so inconspicuous. An air of discretion that is part of Verlaine's meticulousness.

  Lukas is sitting at the head of the table. It's been an hour since I saw him on the bridge. He's practically unrecognizable. He's wearing a newly ironed shirt and shiny black leather shoes. He's clean-shaven, and his hair has been slicked down with water. He's alert and gets right to the point.

  Just inside the door stands Tork. In front of him sit Seidenfaden and Katja Claussen. It takes a while before I can bring myself to look at them. They pay no attention to me.

  Lukas introduces the mechanic. Then he reports that the fire alarm system is still malfunctioning. It was a false alarm this morning.

  He briefly tells us that Jakkelsen has deserted. He says everything in English.

  I glance over at Verlaine. He's leaning against the wall. His eyes bore into mine, attentive and searching. I can't lower my gaze. Someone else-a demon-is staring out of my eyes, promising Verlaine revenge.

  Lukas reports that we're approaching the final destination of our voyage. He doesn't say any more than that. In a day or two we'll be there. No one will be allowed ashore.

  His lack of more precise details is absurd. In the age of SATNAV, you can determine the exact time of sighting land with a margin of error of only a few minutes.

  No one reacts. They all know that there's something wrong with this trip. Besides, they're used to the conditions on board the big tankers. Most of them have been at sea for up to
seven months without putting in to port.

  Lukas looks at Tørk. This meeting was arranged for Tørk's benefit. At his request. Maybe so that he could see all of us in one place. To gauge our reactions. While Lukas talked, Tørk's eyes wandered from face to face, resting on each for a moment. Now he turns around and leaves. Seidenfaden and Claussen follow him.

  Lukas adjourns the meeting. Verlaine exits. The mechanic pauses for a moment to talk to Urs, who is explaining in broken English about the croissants we just ate. I catch something about the importance of moisture. Both in the rising stage and in the oven.

  Fernanda makes her departure, avoiding my eyes. The mechanic leaves. He hasn't looked at me once. I'm going to see him this afternoon. But until then we have to pretend we don't exist for each other.

  I think about what I have to work on in the meantime. Not some kind of glorious planning for the future, merely a dull, bare-bones strategy for survival.

  I drift down the corridor. I have to talk to Lukas.

  I have one foot up on the stairs as Hansen comes down toward me. I withdraw to the open deck area below the upper level.

  This is where I first realize how bad the weather is. The rain is close to freezing, heavy and torrential. The gusts of wind whip up the rain as it falls. There are white stripes across the sea where the wind is chopping at the tops of the swells, pulling them along as spindrift.

  The door opens behind me. I don't turn around; I walk over toward the exit to the quarterdeck. It opens and Verlaine comes out.

  This narrow, covered section of open deck now seems different than before. My attention is usually diverted by the permanently lit emergency lights and the two doors, and by the windows of the crew cabins facing the deck. Now I realize that this is one of the most isolated spots on board. It can't be seen from above, and there are only two entrances. The windows behind me belong to Jakkelsen's cabin and my own. In front of me is the sea rail. Beyond that, it's forty feet down to the sea.

  Hansen approaches while Verlaine stays where he is. I weigh 110 pounds. With a quick lift I'll be in the water. What was it Lagermann said? You hold your breath until you think your lungs are going to burst. That's when you feel pain. Then you exhale and take a deep breath. After that there's only peace.