by Peter Høeg
He opens a knife blade and slices open the bag. With a little sigh it takes in air. Then a lumpy dark powder pours into his hand; it has the consistency of melted butter mixed with the kind of sand used in an hourglass.
He chooses a few more boxes at random, opens them, looks inside, and then carefully returns them to their place.
He screws the back covering on and shoves the refrigerator back. I don't help him; I can't touch him anymore. He puts up the plywood and presses the wall into position. He gets a hammer and meticulously pounds it into place. His movements are absentminded and robotlike. Not until then do we look at each other.
"Mayam," I say. "A stage between raw opium and heroin. With a high oil content; that's why it has to be refrigerated. Tørk developed it. Ravn told me about it. It's part of the agreement between Tørk and Verlaine. It's Verlaine's piece of the pie. We're supposed to pull into some port on our way back. Maybe Holsteinsborg, maybe Nuuk. Maybe he has connections on the Greenland Star. Only ten years ago they were smuggling liquor and cigarettes up here. That's already a thing of the past. That's already the good old days. Now there's lots of cocaine in Nuuk. There's a Greenland upper class that lives like Europeans. There's a big market up here."
His eyes are dreamy, remote. I have to reach him. "Jakkelsen must have discovered it. He must have found out about it. And then he gave himself away. He must have been high and he overestimated his own abilities. He put pressure on them. That forced them to act. Tørk took care of the telegram for them: He had to do it. But he and Verlaine hate each other. They come from two different worlds. They only work together because they can use each other."
He leans down toward me and takes my hands. "Smilla," he whispers, "when I was a kid I had a windup tank with caterpillar treads. If you put it down in front of something, it would climb straight over it because it had such low gears. If the object was perpendicular the tank would turn around and crawl along the edge until it found some other way over. You couldn't stop it. You're like that tank, Smilla. You were supposed to be kept out of all this, but you kept on getting involved. You were supposed to be left behind in Copenhagen, but suddenly you wound up on board. They lock you up-that was my idea, it was the safest thing for you. They lock the door; that's the end of Smilla. And then suddenly you're out again. You keep popping up. You're like that tank, Smilla."
Irreconcilable emotions are battling in his voice. "When I was a kid," I say, "my father gave me a teddy bear. Until then we'd only had dolls that we'd made ourselves. The bear lasted a week. First it got dirty, then the fur fell out. It got holes in it and the stuffing came out; otherwise it was hollow inside. You're like that teddy bear, Føjl."
We're sitting next to each other on the bunk in his cabin. On the desk is one of those flat flasks, but he's the only one drinking.
He's huddled up with his hands between his thighs. "It's a meteorite," he says. "Some sort of stone. Tørk says that it's ancient. It's wedged into a kind of saddle in the cliff beneath the ice. We're going to pick it up."
I think about the photographs among Tørk's papers. I should have guessed then. The ones that looked like X-rays. The Widmannstatten structure. It's in every textbook. The manifestation of the relationship between nickel and iron in meteorites.
"Why this one?" I ask.
"Whoever finds something of interest in Greenland has to report it to the National Museum in Nuuk. From there they'll c-call the Mineralogical Museum and the Institute for Metallurgy in Copenhagen. The find will be registered as something of national interest and will be confiscated."
He leans forward.
"Tørk says it weighs fifty tons. It's the biggest meteorite ever found. They took along oxygen and acetylene in '91. They cut off several fragments. Tørk says there are diamonds in it. Substances not found on earth."
If it hadn't been for the perverse situation, I might have almost thought there was something touching and boyish about him. A child's enthusiasm at the thought of the mysterious substances, the diamonds, the gold at the end of the rainbow.
"What about Isaiah?"
"He went along in '91. He was with his f-father." Of course that's the way it happened.
"He ran away from the ship in Nuuk. They had to leave him behind. Loyen found him and sent him home."
"And you, Føjl? What did you want with him?" When he understands what I'm asking, his expression becomes stony and hard. Now, when it's all too late, anyway, I manage to reach into the far corners of his soul.
"I never touched him, of course. Up there on the roof. I loved him, in a way I've n-never…"
His stuttering strangles his sentence. He waits for the tension to subside.
"Tørk knew that Isaiah had taken something. A c-cassette tape. The glacier had moved. They searched for two weeks without finding it. Finally Tørk chartered a helicopter and flew to Thule. To find the Inuits who had been on the expedition in '66. He found them, all right. But they d-didn't want to come back. So he got a description of the route from them. That's the tape the Baron took. That's what you found."
"So how did you happen to move into the White Palace?"
I know the answer.
"Ving," I say. "It was Ving. He put you there to keep an eye on Isaiah and Juliane."
He shakes his head.
"Then it was the other way around, of course," I say. "You were there first. Ving moved Isaiah and Juliane in to have them near you. Maybe to find out how much they knew or remembered. That's why Juliane's request to move to a lower floor wasn't approved. They were supposed to be near you."
"Seidenfaden hired me. I had never heard of the other two. Not until you uncovered them. I had been a diver for Seidenfaden. He's a transport engineer. At that time he was dealing in antiques. I dived for idols for him, in Liai Lake in Burma, before the state of emergency."
I think about the tea he made for me, how it tasted of the tropics.
"Later I ran into him in Copenhagen. I was unemployed. Had no p-place to live. He suggested that I might keep an eye on the Baron."
There's not a single human being who doesn't find it a relief to be forced to tell the truth. The mechanic is not a natural liar.
"And Tørk?"
His gaze becomes remote. "Someone who carries through with whatever he sets out to do."
"What does he know about us?" I ask. "Does he know we're sitting here right now?"
He shakes his head.
"And you, Føjl? Who are you?"
His eyes are empty. It's the one question he has never found an answer for. "Someone who wants to make a little money."
"I hope it's a lot of money," I say. "Enough to compensate for the death of two children."
His mouth tightens.
"Give me a swallow," I say.
The flask is empty. He takes another one out of the drawer. I catch a glimpse of a round blue plastic container and a yellow cloth wrapped around something rectangular.
The liquor has a real kick to it. "Loyen, Ving, Andreas Licht?"
"They were excluded from the start. They're t-too old. This was supposed to be our expedition."
I can hear Tørk's voice behind his cliches. There's something charming about naivete. Until it's seduced. Then it's simply depressing.
"So when I started making trouble, all of you agreed that you should be the one to follow me?"
He shakes his head. "I never heard about any of this, or about Tørk and Katja. That came later. Everything you and I found out together was new to me."
Now I see him for what he is. It's not a disappointing sight. It's just a more complex picture than I originally had. Infatuation always simplifies things. Like mathematics. Seeing him clearly means becoming objective, dropping the illusion of a hero and coming back to reality.
Or maybe I'm already drunk after a few sips. That's what comes from drinking so seldom. You get drunk as soon as the first molecules are absorbed by the mucous membranes inside your mouth.
The mechanic stands up and goes over to the
porthole. I lean forward. With one hand I pick up the bottle. With the other I pull out the drawer and touch the cloth inside. It's wrapped around a rounded, ridged metal object.
I look at him. I see his weight, his slowness, his vigor, his greed, and his simplicity. His need for a leader, the danger he represents. I also see his solicitude, his warmth, his patience, his passion. And I see that he is still my only chance.
Then I close my eyes and wipe my internal slate clean. Gone is our mutual lying, the unanswered questions, the justifiable and the morbid suspicions. The past is a luxury we can no longer afford.
"Føjl," I say, "are you going to dive near that stone?"
He nodded at my question. I didn't hear whether he said anything or not. But he nodded. For a moment this affirmation blocks out everything else.
"Why?" I hear myself ask him.
"It's lying in a lake of meltwater. It's almost covered. It's supposed to be close to the surface of the ice. Seidenfaden doesn't think it will be difficult to get to it. Either through a meltwater tunnel or through the cracks in a crevasse right next to the saddle. The problem is getting it out. Seidenfaden thinks we should enlarge the tunnel that drains the lake and bring the stone out that way. It will have to be enlarged with explosives. It will all be underwater work."
I sit down next to him.
"Water," I say, "freezes at 32°F. What reason did Tørk give you to explain why there's water surrounding the stone?"
"Isn't there something about the pressure in the ice?"
"Yes. There's something about the pressure. The farther down you go in a glacier, the warmer it gets. Because of the weight of the ice masses above. The ice cap is -10°F at a depth of 1,600 feet. Sixteen hundred feet farther down it's 14°F. Since the melting point depends on the amount of pressure, water actually exists at temperatures below freezing. Maybe even at 29°F. There are temperate glaciers in the Alps and the Rocky Mountains in which meltwater exists at a depth of a hundred feet and below."
He nods. "That's what Tørk explained to me."
"But Gela Alta isn't in the Alps. It's a so-called cold glacier. And it's quite small. At the present time its surface temperature must be 14°F. The temperature at its base is about the same. The melting point under that pressure is around 32°F. Not a drop of liquid water can form in that glacier."
He looks at me as he takes a drink. What I've said doesn't bother him. Maybe he didn't understand it. Maybe Tørk provokes a sense of trust in people that locks out the rest of the world. Maybe it's just the usual problem: ice is incomprehensible to those who were not born to it. I try another approach.
"Did they tell you how they found it?"
"The Greenlanders found it. In prehistoric times. It was in their legends. That's why they got Andreas Fine Licht involved. In those days it might have still been on top of the ice."
"When a meteor enters the atmosphere," I say, "the first thing that happens, at about ninety miles out, is that a blast wave goes through it, as if it had rammed into a concrete wall. The outer layer melts off. I've seen black stripes like that strewn on the ice cap. But this decreases the speed of the meteor and the heat. If it reaches the earth without breaking up, it typically has the earth's median temperature of 41°F. So it doesn't melt down. But it doesn't just sit there either. The force of gravity calmly and quietly presses it down. No meteorites of any size have ever been found on top of the ice. And none ever will be. Gravity presses them down. They become encapsulated and with time are carried out to sea. If they get caught in a crevice underground, they'll be pulverized. There's nothing delicate about a glacier. It's a combination of a stone crusher and a gigantic carpenter's plane. It doesn't create enchanted caves around objects of geological interest. It files them down, mashes them to powder, and empties the powder into the Atlantic Ocean."
"Then there must be warm springs around it," the mechanic says.
"There's no volcanic activity on Gela Alta."
"I've seen the photographs. It's lying in a lake."
"Yes, I've seen those photographs, too. If the whole thing's not a hoax, it's sitting in water. I sincerely hope that it's a hoax."
"Why?"
I wonder whether he'll be able to grasp it. But there's no other alternative than to tell him the truth. Or what I suspect is the truth.
"I don't know for sure, but it looks as if the heat might be coming from the stone. It's emitting some kind of energy. Maybe in the form of radioactivity. But there's also another possibility."
"What's that?"
I can tell by looking at him that these are not new ideas for him, either. He, too, knew that something was wrong. But he pushed the problem aside. He's a Dane. Always choose the comfort of suppressed information rather than the burdensome truth.
"The forward tank of the Kronos has been rebuilt. It can be sterilized. It's equipped with supplies of oxygen and compressed air. It's constructed as if they were going to transport a large animal. It has occurred to me that Tørk may believe that the stone you are going to pick up is alive."
The bottle is empty.
"That was a good idea with the fire alarm," I say.
He smiles wearily. "It was the only way to put the papers back and at the same t-time explain why they were wet."
We're sitting at opposite ends of the bed. The Kronos is moving more and more slowly. A gloomy and lively battle is raging inside my body between two kinds of poison: the crystal-clear unreality of the amphetamines and the fuzzy pleasure of the alcohol.
"It was when Juliane told you that Loyen had regularly examined Isaiah that I decided it might have something to do with a disease. But when I saw the X-rays, I was convinced. X-rays from the expedition in '66. Lagermann got them from Queen Ingrid's Hospital in Nuuk. They didn't die from the explosion. They were attacked by some kind of parasite. Maybe some sort of worm. But bigger than any I've ever seen. And faster. They died within a few days. Maybe in a few hours. Loyen wanted to find out whether Isaiah had been infected."
The mechanic shakes his head. He doesn't want to believe me. He's on a treasure hunt. On his way to find diamonds.
"That's why Loyen has been involved right from the start. He's a scientist. Money is secondary. He was after the Nobel Prize. He's been anticipating a scientific sensation from the moment he found out about it back in the forties."
"Why didn't they tell me all this?" he asks.
We all live our lives blindly believing in the people who make the decisions. Believing in science. Because the world is inscrutable and all information is hazy. We accept the existence of a round globe, of an atom's nucleus that sticks together like drops, of a shrinking universeand the necessity of interfering with genetic material. Not because we know these things are true, but because we believe the people who tell us so. We are all proselytes of science. And, in contrast to the followers of other religions, we can no longer bridge the gap between ourselves and the priests. Problems arise when we stumble on an outright lie. And it affects our own lives. The mechanic's panic is that of a child who for the first time catches his parents in a lie he had always suspected.
"Isaiah's father was diving," I say. "Presumably the others were, too. Most parasites go through a stage in water. You're going to dive, and you'll get others to dive. You're the last person they're going to tell."
Emotion drives him to his feet.
"You have to help me make a phone call," I say.
As I stand up, my hand closes around a piece of metal wrapped in a cloth in the drawer, and around a flat, round container.
The radio room is located behind the bridge, across from the officers' mess. We manage to make it there without being seen. Outside the door I hesitate. He shakes his head.
"It's empty. The IMO requires it to be manned twice an hour, but we have no radio technician on board. Instead, they set the HF at 2182 kHz, the international emergency frequency, and then they connect it to an alarm which sounds when someone sends a distress signal.
Jakkelsen's key w
on't open the door. I feel an urge to scream.
"I have to get inside," I say. The mechanic shrugs.
"You owe it to both of us," I say.
He still wavers for a moment. Then he carefully places his hands on the door handle and pushes the door in. There's no splintering of wood, only a scraping sound as the latch forces the steel frame inward.
The room is quite small and crammed with equipment. There's a little VHF, a double longwave transmitter the size of a refrigerator, some kind of box that I've never seen before, with a Morse sender mounted on top. A desk, chairs, telex machine, fax, and a coffee machine with sugar and plastic cups. On the wall there's a clock with paper triangles of different colors taped to its face, a mobile telephone, a calendar, equipment certificates in thin steel frames, and a license certifying Sonne as a radio operator. On the desk there's a tape recorder that has been screwed down, manuals, and an open radio log.
I write the number on a piece of paper. "This is Ravn's number," I say.
He freezes. I take him by the arm, thinking that this is the last time in my life I'll ever touch him.
He sits down in the chair and is transformed into a different person. His movements become quick, precise, and authoritative, just like in his kitchen. He taps on the face of the clock.
"The triangles indicate the internationally established times when the channels have to be kept free and open for distress signals. If we go into that time the alarm will go off. For the HF this means within three minutes past the half hour and the hour. We have ten minutes."
He hands me a telephone receiver, taking the main receiver himself. I sit down next to him.
"It's hopeless in this weather and this far from the coast," he says.
At first I can follow what he's doing, even though I couldn't have done it myself.
He selects the maximum output of 200 watts. At that level the transmitter risks drowning out its own signal, but the bad weather and distance from shore make it necessary.
There's the crackling of empty space, and then a voice comes through.
