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

by Peter Høeg

  "This is Sisimiut. What can we do for you?"

  He decides to transmit on the carrier wave. The transmitter has analog readouts and automatic settings. Now it will continue to adjust according to the carrier wave while the conversation is transmitted over a side band. It's the most efficient method, and probably the only one on a night like this.

  Right before he sets the dials, the receiver, picks up a Canadian station sending classical music over the shortwave net. For a moment the room disappears, as I'm overwhelmed by childhood memories. It's Victor Halkenhvad singing Gurrelieder. Then Sisimiut is back.

  The mechanic doesn't ask for Lyngby Radio. He asks for Reykjavik. When the station responds, he asks for Torshavn.

  "What's happening?" I ask.

  He covers the microphone. "All the larger stations have an automatic directional finder that is switched on when they receive a call. They compute the costs for a conversation under the name of the ship you give. In case a false name is used, they take a bearing on the ship's position, so that a conversation can always be charged back to a set of coordinates. I'm creating a smokescreen. With every new station it'll be harder to trace the call. By the fourth linkup it'll be impossible."

  He gets Lyngby Radio, tells them he's calling from the good ship Candy 2, and gives them Ravn's number. He gives me a long look. We both know that if I demand a different procedure, a direct call that would make it possible for Ravn to track the position of the Kronos, the mechanic will break off the connection. I don't say a word. I've already pressed him too hard. And we're not done yet.

  He requests a security line. Far away, in a different part of the world, a telephone rings. The signal is faint and intermittent.

  "What's it like outside, Smilla?"

  I try to remember the night and the weather. "Clouds with ice crystals."

  "That's the worst. The HF beams arc along the atmosphere. When it's overcast or snowing, they can get caught in a reflection trap."

  The telephone rings, monotone and lifeless. I give up. Hopelessness is a numbness that emanates from your gut. Then someone picks up the phone.

  "Yes?"

  The voice is close, crystal-clear, but groggy with sleep. It must be about five in the morning in Denmark.

  I envision her the way she looked in the photos in Ravn's wallet. White-haired, wearing a wool suit. "May I speak to Ravn?"

  As she puts down the receiver, a child starts crying nearby. It must be sleeping in their bedroom. Maybe between them in the bed.

  "Ravn here."

  "It's me," I say.

  "You'll have to call some other time."

  Because his voice comes through so clearly, the rejection is quite clear, as well. I don't know what has happened. But now I've gone too far to wonder about it.

  "It's too late," I say. "I want to talk about what happened on the roofs. In Singapore and in Christianshavn." He doesn't reply. But he's still listening.

  It's impossible to visualize him as a private citizen. What does he wear to bed? How does he look right now, in bed next to his grandchild?

  "Let's imagine that it's late afternoon," I say. "The boy is walking home alone from kindergarten. He's the only child who isn't picked up every day. He's walking along the way children do, wandering and skipping, with his eyes on the ground. Only aware of his immediate surroundings. The same way your grandchildren walk, Ravn."

  I can hear him breathing as clearly as if he were in the room with us.

  The mechanic has pulled the headset away from one ear so that he can follow the conversation and also listen for sounds in the corridor.

  "That's why he doesn't see the man until he's right next to him. He was waiting in the car. The buildings have no windows facing the parking lot. It's almost dark. It's the middle of December. The man grabs him. Not by the arm, but by his clothes. By the bib of his rain overalls, which won't tear, and where he won't leave any marks. But he miscalculates. The boy recognizes him at once. They've spent weeks together. But that's not why he remembers him. He remembers him from one of the last days. The day when he saw his father die. Maybe he saw the man force the divers back into the water after one had died. At a time when they didn't know what was wrong. Or maybe it was the experience of death itself which the boy has come to associate with the man. At any rate, he doesn't see a human being in front of him. He sees a threat. The way only children can experience threats. It's overwhelming. At first he freezes up. All children freeze up."

  "You're guessing," says Ravn.

  The signal is getting worse. For a moment I almost lose my train of thought.

  "The child beside you would freeze up, too," I say. "That's where the man miscalculates. The boy looks so small. He bends down toward him. He's like a doll. The man is going to lift him onto the seat. For a moment he lets go. And that's his mistake. He hadn't anticipated the boy's vitality. Suddenly the boy takes off. The ground is covered with packed snow. That's why the man doesn't catch him. He doesn't have the boy's training in running on snow."

  Now they're paying attention, the man next to me and the man an infinite distance away. It's not so much me they're listening to. It's fear that binds us, the child's fear we all carry within us.

  "The boy runs along the building. The man runs out into the street and blocks his way. The boy reaches the warehouses. The man comes after him, slipping and stumbling. But calmer now. There's no escape. The boy turns toward him. The man relaxes. The boy looks around. He has stopped thinking. But inside him an engine is spinning that will keep on going until all his strength is used up. It's this engine that the man hasn't counted on. Suddenly the boy is on his way up the scaffolding. The man follows. The boy knows what's behind him. It's terror personified. He knows that he's going to die. This feeling is stronger than his fear of heights. He continues up to the roof. And then he runs forward. The man stops. Maybe he wanted this to happen from the very beginning, maybe the idea first occurs to him now, maybe up here he first becomes aware of his own intentions. The possibility of eliminating a threat. To avoid having the boy ever tell anyone what he saw in a cave on a glacier somewhere in Davis Strait."

  "You're guessing." Ravn's voice is a whisper.

  "The man moves toward the boy. Watches him running along the edge, looking for a way down. Children can't grasp the whole picture, the boy probably doesn't even know where he is; he only sees what's a few yards ahead. At the edge of the snow the man stops. He doesn't want to leave any tracks. He's hoping it won't be necessary."

  The signal disappears. The mechanic twists the dials. It comes back.

  "The man waits. There seems to be an enormous amount of self-confidence in this waiting. As if he knows that his presence is enough. His silhouette against the sky. Like in Singapore. Was it enough there, Ravn? Or did he push her because she was older and more rational than the boy? Because he could come right up to her? Because there wasn't any snow to leave tracks in?"

  The sound is so clear that I think it's coming from the mechanic, but he is silent.

  It's there again, tormented. It's coming from Ravn.

  I speak softly to him. "Look at the child, Ravn, the child next to you. That's the child on the roof. Tørk is behind him, a silhouette. He could stop the boy, but he doesn't, he drives him onward, like he did to the woman. Who was she? What did he do?"

  He disappears and then returns, far away. "I have to know! Her name was Ravn!"

  The mechanic puts a hand over my mouth. His palm is cold as ice. I must have screamed.

  "… was…" Ravn's voice fades out.

  I grab the apparatus and shake it. The mechanic pulls me away. At that moment Ravn's voice comes back, clear, distinct, stripped of all emotion.

  "My daughter. He pushed her. Are you satisfied, Miss Smilla?"

  "The photo," I say, "did she take that photo of Tørk? Was she with the police?"

  He says something. At the same time his voice is carried away through a tunnel of noise and vanishes. The connection is broken.

/>   The mechanic turns off the light in the ceiling. In the glow from the instrument panels his face looks pale and tense. Slowly he takes off the headset and hangs it back in place. I'm sweating as if I'd been running.

  "Testimony from a child wouldn't be valid in court, would it?"

  "It would have weighed heavily with the jurors," I say. He doesn't continue this line of thought; he doesn't have to. We're both thinking the same thing. There was something about Isaiah's eyes, a wisdom beyond his years, beyond anyone's yea"rs, a deep insight into the adult world. Tørk was familiar with that look. There are other kinds of accusations than the ones presented in court.

  "What about the door?" I say.

  He puts his hand on the steel frame and carefully bends it back into place.

  He accompanies me along the external stairway. At the sick bay he pauses for a moment in the doorway.

  I turn away. The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

  He spreads out his fingers and looks down at his hands. "After we're done," he says, "I'm going to kill him."

  Nothing could induce me to spend the night on an examination table-even such a short and bleak night as the one ahead of me. I pull off the sheets, remove the cushions from the chairs, and lie down right in front of the door. If anyone tries to come in, they'll have to push me aside first.

  No one tries to get in. I have a few hours of deep sleep; then the hull scrapes against something and the deck is full of footsteps. I think I hear the rattling of the anchor, too; maybe the Kronos has put in at the edge of the ice. I'm too tired to get up. Somewhere close by, out in the darkness, lies Gela Alta.

  2

  Certain types of sleep are worse than no sleep at all. After the last two hours I wake up more tense, more physically depleted than if I had kept myself awake. It's dark outside.

  I make a list in my mind. I ask myself who I could recruit to my side. It's not an expression of hope. It's just that the mind won't quit. As long as you're alive, it will never stop looking for ways to survive. As if there were someone else inside you, someone more naive but also more tenacious.

  I give up on the list. The crew of the Kronos can be divided into those who are already against me and those who will be, when it comes, right down to it. I don't include the mechanic. I'm trying not to think about him at all.

  When they bring my breakfast I'm lying on the table. Someone fumbles for the light switch, and I ask him not to turn on the light. He puts the tray inside the door and leaves. It was Maurice. He couldn't have seen the broken cupboard door in the dark.

  I force myself to eat something. Someone is sitting outside the room. Now and then I can hear a chair scraping against the door. At some point the auxiliary engine and the big generators start up. Ten minutes later they start unloading from the quarterdeck. I can't see what it is. The infirmary windows face aft.

  The day is starting. The dawn doesn't seem to bring light with it; it's more like a physical substance itself, like wisps of smoke drifting past the windows.

  The island isn't visible from this angle. But I can feel the ice. The Kronos is tied up astern. The edge of the ice is about seventy-five yards away. I can see one of the ropes passing through an anchor of packed ice, attached to a beacon of churned-up, solid ice floes.

  The motorboat goes ashore and is emptied. There's not enough light to identify the people or determine their baggage. Later it looks as if the boat has been abandoned, tied up at the edge of the ice.

  I feel as if I've gone as far as I can. You can't demand that anyone" go any farther than that.

  Jakkelsen's key is lying inside the cushion that I'm using as a pillow. There is also a blue plastic container. And a cloth wrapped around a piece of metal. I expected the mechanic to discover that they were missing right away, but he hasn't come back.

  It's a revolver. Ballester Molina Inunangitsoq. Manufactured in Nuuk under an Argentine license. There's a disparity between its purpose and its design. Surprising that evil can assume so simple a form.

  Rifles can be excused by the fact that they're used for hunting. In certain types of snow a long-barreled, large caliber revolver may be necessary for self-defense. Because both musk oxen and polar bears can slip around the hunter and attack from behind. So swiftly that there's no time to swing a rifle around.

  But there's no excuse for this snub-nosed weapon. The bullets have a flat-tipped jacket of lead. The box is full. I load the cylinder. It holds six. I snap the cylinder into place.

  I stick a finger down my throat, producing a rattling cough. I kick at the remaining shards of glass in the cupboard door. They fall to the floor with a crash. The door swings open and Maurice comes in. I lean against the table, holding the revolver with both hands.

  "Get down on your knees," I say.

  He starts toward me. I aim the barrel downward at his legs and press the trigger. Nothing happens. I've forgotten to take off the safety catch. He makes a forward, upward jab with his good left arm. The blow catches me in the chest and throws me up against the cupboard. Pieces of glass from the broken window dig into my back with that typically cold pain of extremely sharp edges. I drop to my knees. He kicks me in the face. His foot breaks my nose and momentarily robs me of consciousness. When I come to, one of his feet is next to my head; he must be standing right over me. I take the scalpels wrapped in Band-Aids out of the tool pouch in my work pants. I move forward a little and cut him across his ankle. There's a tiny snap as his Achilles' tendon is severed. When I take the knife away there's a yellowish glimpse of bone at the bottom of the incision. I roll away from him. He tries to come after me, but he falls on his face. It's not until I stand up that I realize I'm still holding the revolver. He's down on one knee. Without haste he reaches inside his windbreaker. I step over to him and hit him in the mouth with the barrel of the gun. He falls backward against the cupboard. I don't dare approach him again. I go out the door. His key is still sitting in the lock. I lock the door behind me.

  The corridor is empty. But there's movement behind the door to the mess. I open it a crack. Urs is setting the table. I slip inside the door. He puts down a basket of bread. He doesn't notice me at first; then he does.

  I unscrew the top of a thermos. Pour myself a cup, put in some sugar, stir it, and take a sip. The coffee is almost scalding, the burned taste of the beans is nauseating combined with the sugar.

  "How long are we going to be here, Urs?"

  He's staring at my face. I can't feel my nose, can only sense a diffuse heat.

  "You're under arrest, Fraulein Smilla."

  "I have permission to stroll around."

  He doesn't believe me. He's hoping that I'll leave. Nobody likes a guaranteed loser.

  "Drei Tage. Three days. Tomorrow the provisions will be taken ashore. Then we'll all work im Schnee, in the snow."

  They're going to help pull the stone down the chute made from railroad ties. That means that it must be very close to the coast.

  "Who has gone ashore?"

  "Tørk, Verlaine, der neue Passagier. With bottles." At first I don't understand him. He sketches them with his hands in the air: oxygen tanks.

  I'm on my way out the door when he comes after me. The situation is a repeat; we've stood this way before. "Fraulein Smilla…"

  Urs, the man who has never dared come too close, takes hold of my arm, insistent.

  "You must sleep. You need medical treatment," he says.

  I pull my arm away. I haven't succeeded in frightening him. Instead, I've appealed to his sense of sympathy.

  At sea, as a matter of principle, you lock a door only upon exiting a room, to make the work easier during a rescue operation if there's a fire. Lukas sleeps with his door unlocked. He's sound asleep. I close the door behind me and sit down at the foot of his bunk. He opens his eyes. At first they're dull with sleep, then glassy with shock.

  "I've temporarily discharged myself."

  He tries to grab me. He's quicker than you mi
ght expect, considering that he's lying on his back and has just been sound asleep. I show him the revolver. He keeps coming. I bring the barrel up to his face and snap off the safety.

  "I've got nothing to lose," I say.

  He relaxes. "Go back. Being under arrest is your security."

  "Oh, sure," I say, "having Maurice outside is so comforting. Put on your coat. We're going out on deck." He hesitates. Then he reaches for his outdoor clothes. "Tørk is right. You're sick."

  Maybe he's right. In any case, a layer of numbness has come between me and the rest of the world. A crust in which the nerves are dead. I rinse off my nose at the sink. It's awkward because I have to hold the gun in my other hand and keep an eye on Lukas at the same time. There's not as much blood as I thought. Facial wounds always feel worse than they are.

  He goes first. As we pass the stairs to the upper decks, Sonne comes down. I step close to Lukas. Sonne stops. Lukas waves him on. He hesitates; then his training, years in the navy, and all his inner discipline take over. He steps aside. We continue on across the deck. Over to the railing. I stand a few yards away. This means we have to speak loudly to hear each other. But it makes it more difficult for him to grab me.

  I have spent so many days on the open sea that the island seems to me to have a dark, painful beauty about it.

  It's so narrow and high that it looms up from the frozen sea like a tower. The rock is visible only in a few places; by and large it's covered with ice. Like a cold Arctic cornucopia, the ice spills over the edge of the bowlshaped top and down the steep sides. A spit is protruding through the sea toward the Kronos: the Barren Glacier. If we could see the other sides, we'd see sheer rock faces, ravaged by crevasses and avalanches.

  The wind is blowing off the island, a north wind, avangnaq. This crystallizes into another word, and at first there is only the internal sound, as if it were spoken by someone else, someone inside me. Pirhirhuq, snowstorm weather. I shake my head. We're not in Thule; the weather is different here. My exhausted system is creating phantoms.

  "Where will you go afterward?" He gestures around the deck and at the open water. At the motorboat over at the edge of the ice.