Smilla's Sense of Snow (16 page)

Authors: Peter Høeg

BOOK: Smilla's Sense of Snow

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We stand there a moment, staring at each other, all three of us.

“So what?” I say. “Even proprietors eat pastry with their coffee.”

We get into the car and sit there for a while, gazing out across the King's New Square. It's too late for us to eat breakfast together. We agree to meet later. Now that the tension is past, we talk to each other like strangers. After I get out, he rolls down the window.

“Smilla, was that wise?”

“It was an impulse,” I say. “And besides, have you ever done any hunting?”

“A little.”

“If you're hunting shy animals, like reindeer, you let them catch sight of you a few times on purpose. You stand up and wave the butt of your rifle. In all living creatures, fear and curiosity are
closely related in the brain. The deer comes closer. It knows that it's dangerous. But it has to come and see what's moving like that.”

“What did you do when it came close?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I've never been able to make myself shoot. But maybe you're lucky enough to have someone nearby who
knows
what has to be done.”

I walk home across Knippels Bridge. It's eight o'clock, the day has hardly begun. I feel as if I've accomplished just as much as if I had a paper route.

A letter is waiting for me, a rectangular envelope of heavy stationery. It's from my father. It's a lined envelope from the United Paper Companies with his initials embossed on it. His handwriting looks as if he has taken a course in bragging about himself calligraphically. Which he has. That was while I was living with him. After two evening classes he had forgotten his old handwriting. And still hadn't learned a new one. After three months he wrote like a child. I had to forge his signature on the bills he sent out. He was afraid his patients would have a relapse when they saw the great medicine man's wobbly signature.

Later it became more controlled. The world admires it. To me it simply seems snobbish.

But the letter is friendly enough. It consists of one line on a piece of paper with a watermark, which I know costs five kroner per sheet. And a bunch of photocopies of newspaper clippings, held together with a paper clip.

“Dear Smilla,” it says. “Here's what
Berlingske Tidende's
archives had on Loyen and Greenland.”

There is one more sheet.

“A complete list of his scientific publications,” it says in Moritz's handwriting. The list is typed.

Underneath it says that the information is from something called
Index Medicus,
acquired from a database in Stockholm. There are articles in four languages, including Russian. Most of them are in English. I can't even understand the titles of half of them. But Moritz has added a brief explanation in the margin. There are articles on crash injuries. On toxicology. A co-authored article on
the difficulties in assimilation of vitamin B
₁₂by the stomach as a complication of gunshot wounds. They're from the forties and fifties. In the sixties the articles start dealing with Arctic medicine. Trichinosis, frostbite. A book about influenza epidemics around the Barents Sea. There is a long list of shorter articles on parasites. Many on the use of X-rays. His work has been multifaceted.

It looks as if he has done historical research on several occasions. There's an article on the examination of the Iron Age bog people. And there are three articles I put a check mark next to. They deal with the examination of mummies by X-ray. One of them was carried out in Berlin in the seventies, at the Pergamon Museum, on mummies from Tutankhamen's tomb. The second one deals with pre-Buddhist embalming methods in Malaysia and Thailand, published by a museum in Singapore. The third is a treatise on the Greenlandic Qilakitsoq mummies.

At the bottom of the list I write: “With thanksâSmilla,” put it in an envelope, and address it to my father. Then I go through the clippings.

There are eighteen of them, and they're in chronological order. I start with the most recent. There's an article from October, announcing that preparations are now nearly complete for the establishment of a forensic medical office for Greenland under the leadership of Professor Johannes Loyen, M.D. The next one is from a year earlier. There's a photo with a brief caption: “The ethics council at the conference in GodthÃ¥b.” Wearing
kamiks
and fur hats. Loyen is second from the left. He towers as high as those standing behind him a couple of steps up. The next one is from his seventieth birthday the year before. The text says that due to his work with an autopsy center for Greenland, they have made an exception and extended his tenure. The articles continue this way, backward in time. “Congratulations on your sixtieth, Professor Loyen.” “Professor Loyen lectures at Greenland's newly opened university.” “Representatives from the board of health in Greenland, Copenhagen's chief medical officer to the left, and chief of staff J. Loyen, head of the newly established Institute for Arctic Medicine.” And so on, backward through the seventies and sixties. The expeditions of '91 and '66 are not mentioned.

The next-to-last clipping is from 1949. It's a little piece of verbal prostitution. An enthusiastic description of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark's new dumpsters, which have eased the transport of ore from the deeper sections of the quarry up to the earth's surface. A heartfelt tribute to Councilor Ebel and his wife, who are pictured in front. Behind stand chief engineer Dr. Wilhelm Ottesen and the corporation's medical consultant, Dr. Johannes Loyen. The photo was taken at the quarry in Saqqaq, at the moment when the new machines brought the first load to the surface.

After this picture there's a gap of ten years. The last clipping is from May 1939.

It's a photo with a caption. The picture was taken in a harbor. A dark ship is in the background. About a dozen people are standing in the foreground. Gentlemen in lightweight suits, women in long skirts and thin wraps. The setting makes it seem staged. The caption is quite brief: “The courageous and enthusiastic company from Freia Film upon departure for Greenland.” Then follows a list of the courageous and enthusiastic company. It consists of actors and a director, the film company's doctor and his assistant. The doctor's name is Rovsing. The assistant is unnamed. Assistants didn't have names in the conservative press in the thirties. But his later career has preserved this photo as well in an archive, and prompted someone to add his name with a ballpoint pen. He's visible in the photograph. Taller than everyone else. And in spite of his youth, his subordinate position, and his spot behind eccentrics pandering to the camera, his arrogance shines through even then. It's Loyen. I fold up the clipping.

After breakfast I put on a long suede coat and the Jane Eberlein fur hat. The coat has deep inside pockets. Into them I put the last, folded clipping, a bundle of krone notes, Isaiah's tape, and the letter to my father. Then I leave. The day has begun.

At Pronto Print on Torve Street I have a copy of the tape made. I also borrow their phone book. The Institute for Eskimology is located on Fiol Lane. I call them from the phone booth on the square. I'm transferred to an instructor who sounds as if he is of Greenlandic extraction. I explain that I have a tape in East Greenlandic
that I can't understand. He asks me why I don't go over to the Greenlanders' House.

“I want an expert. It's not just a matter of understanding what is said. I want to try to identify who is speaking. I'm looking for someone who can listen to the voice and tell me that the speaker has henna-dyed hair and was spanked as a five-year-old when he was sitting on the potty, and from his vowels it sounds as if this happened in Akunnaaq in 1947.”

He starts chuckling to himself.

“Do you have money, madam?”

“Do you? And it's not madam. It's miss.”

“Svajer Wharf. It's on the South Harbor. Berth number 126. Ask for the curator.”

He's still chuckling as he hangs up.

I take the train to Enghave Station. From there I walk. I've had a look at Krak's Map of Copenhagen at the library on Torve Street. In my mind I have an image of a labyrinth of winding streets.

The station is cold. A man is standing on the opposite platform. He's staring longingly toward the train that will take him away, into the city, into the crowds. He's the last person I see.

Right now the inner city is like an anthill. Now people are crowding into the department stores. They're getting ready for theater premieres. They're standing in line in front of Hviid's Wine Cellar.

The South Harbor is a ghost town. The sky is low and gray. The inhaled air tastes of coal smoke and chemicals.

Anyone who is afraid that machines will soon take over should not take a stroll in the South Harbor. The snow hasn't been cleared away. The sidewalks are impassable. Now and then enormous double semis with dark windows devoid of any humans move along the narrow, plowed roads. A blanket of green smoke hovers over a soap factory. A cafeteria advertises hash browns and sausages. Behind the windows red and yellow lights shine on lonely deep-fat fryers in an empty kitchen. Above a snowy pile of coal a crane moves aimlessly and restlessly back and forth on its rails. There are bluish glimmers through the cracks in closed garage
doors, and the crackling of arc welders, and the jingling of the illegal money being earned, but no human voices.

Then the road opens onto a picture postcard: a large harbor basin surrounded by low yellow warehouses. The water is iced over, and while I'm still taking stock of the view, the sun appears, low, white-gold, surprising, and lights up the ice like an underground bulb behind frosted glass. There are small fishing boats at the wharf with blue hulls the color of the sea where it meets the horizon. On the outer edge of the basin, out in the harbor itself, there is a big three-masted sailing ship. That's Svajer Wharf.

Berth 126 is the sailing ship. I don't meet a soul on the way. All the machine sounds have disappeared behind me. Everything is quiet.

A post is sticking up from the wharf with a white mailbox on it. Above is a large sign, still wrapped in white plastic.

On the stern it says in gilded letters that the ship's name is
Northern Light.
It has a figurehead carved like a man holding a torch; it has a shiny black hull at least a hundred feet long, masts that tower up to the sky and give the impression that you're standing in front of a church, and a smell of tar and sawdust. Someone has recently spent a fortune renovating it.

I go on board via a gangway with a thick coir mat and railings with polished bronze knobs. The entire deck is filled with big wooden crates marked FRAGILE and stacks of planks and paint cans. All the ropes are meticulously coiled up, all the wood has the deep, dark brown sheen of a dozen layers of expensive ship's lacquer. The white enamel shines like glass. The air shimmers with polish, two-component epoxy, and joint paste. Aside from this shimmering, the ship is apparently deserted.

A narrow ladder between the crates leads to a lacquered double door that isn't locked. Beyond the door a companionway descends into the darkness.

A man is standing at the bottom of the steps. He's leaning on a spear, and he doesn't move. Not even when I'm quite close to him.

The room must have several skylights that are still covered. But along the edges of the covers, thin stripes of white light filter in.
Enough so that I can see it's a big hall. All the dividing walls have been torn out to create an area that is about eighty feet long and just as wide as the ship.

Now there is enough light for me to see that the man in front of me is an Inuit. What he's leaning on is a long harpoon. In his left hand he's holding a dart thrower. He is only partially dressed, in high
kamiks
and an inner coat of bird skin. He isn't much taller than me. I pat him on the cheek. He is cast from hollow fiberglass and then cleverly painted. His face is alert.

“Lifelike, isn't it?”

The voice comes from somewhere behind a screen. On my way over to it I have to go around a kayak that is still partially wrapped and a glass counter lying there like an empty 800-gallon aquarium. The screen is a hide stretched between two whalebones. Behind it is a desk. Behind the desk sits a man. He stands up and I shake his proffered hand. He looks exactly like the mannikin. But he's thirty years older. His hair is thick and cut pageboy-style, but gray. His background is like mine. Greenlandic in some way.

“You're the curator?”

“Yes, I am.”

His Danish is without accent. He gestures with his hand.

“We're in the process of setting up the collection. It cost a fortune.”

I place the tape in front of him. He touches it cautiously.

“I'm trying to identify the man speaking. I found my way over here by calling the Institute for Eskimology.”

He smiles with satisfaction. “Word of mouth is the best advertisement. And by far the cheapest. Do you know what it costs to advertise?”

“Only personal ads.”

“Is that expensive?”