Smilla's Sense of Snow (43 page)

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Authors: Peter Høeg

BOOK: Smilla's Sense of Snow
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The gangway of the
Kronos
is down. Big signs on the dock say: ACCESS TO PIER STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.
At the bottom of the gangway I'll have to walk across six or seven hundred yards of pontoon dock bathed in light. There probably isn't any guard. The lights are out in the control towers, from which they direct the pumping of the oil. But it's likely that they have the area under surveillance and that they'll see me and pick me up.
That's what I'm counting on. They may be obligated to return me to the ship, but first they'll take me somewhere to an officer and a desk and a chair. Then I'll tell them about the
Kronos
. Nothing bordering on the truth that I know. They wouldn't believe me. But something else. Something about Jakkelsen's drugs, and that I feel threatened by the rest of the crew and want to leave the ship.
They'll have to listen to me. Technically and legally, desertion no longer exists. A sailor and a cabin stewardess can go ashore anytime they like.
I go down to the second deck. From there the gangway is visible. There's an alcove where it adjoins the deck. That's where Jakkelsen once waited for me.
Now someone else is waiting. Hansen has propped his rubber boots up on the low steel box.
I could reach the end of the gangway before he was even out of his chair. I'd be the certain winner in a 150-yard sprint down the dock. But then I would run out of steam and collapse.
I retreat to the deck to reconsider my options. I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any, when suddenly the lights go out.
I had just closed my eyes, trying to find an answer in the sounds.
The rolling of the waves along the dock, the hollow sound of the water slapping against the fender beams. The gulls screeching in the darkness, the wind howling low against the control towers. The sigh of the links of the pontoons rubbing against each other. A distant, faint hiss from great turbine generators. And more disheartening than all these sounds put together: the feeling that all noise is being sucked out into the emptiness above the vast Atlantic Ocean. That the entire complex, along with the docked ships, is a vulnerable miscalculation that will be swept away at any moment.
These sounds have no advice to give me. In a place like this, the only way to leave a ship is by means of the gangway. I'm a captive on the
Kronos
.
That's when the lights go out. When I open my eyes, they seem blinded by the darkness at first. Then a series of red lights appear, approximately a hundred yards apart, on the dock. Emergency lights.
The lights have been turned off on the pier where the
Kronos
is moored and on the ship itself. The night is so dark that even things close at hand seem to vanish. The distant part of the platform looks like a yellowish-white island in the night.
I can see the dock. I can also see a figure down there. Heading away from the
Kronos.
A mixture of fear and hope and old habit stops me from hitting my head on the mast or a capstan. At the bottom of the stairs I pause for a moment. There's no one around. But even if there was, I wouldn't be able to see him. Then I take off running.
Out of the ship and down the gangway. I don't see anyone, and no one calls after me. I turn and run along the pier. The pontoons seem alive and unsteady beneath my feet. Down here the emergency lights seem painfully bright. I keep to the side away from the lamps and increase my speed every time I approach a patch of light, catching my breath when I'm back in the dark. Only six days have passed since I watched Lander sail off into the fog, on his way back to Skovshoved, and in every sense of the word, I'm still at sea. But I share some of the joy a sailor must feel when he sets foot on land again after a long voyage.
A figure appears in front of me, moving with the faltering, swaying gait of a drunkard.
It has started to rain. The dock is marked off for traffic, like a street, which is lined with the windowless sides of ships, rising up like skyscrapers 150 feet high. In the distance the aluminum of the barracks glistens. Everything vibrates dully from big, invisible engines. The
Greenland Star
is a deserted town on the edge of the empty heavens.
The only living thing is the wobbly figure in front of me. It's Jakkelsen. The silhouette against the lamp is indisputably Jakkelsen. Far ahead of him there's someone else heading off somewhere. That's why Jakkelsen is wavering. Like me, he's trying to avoid the light. He's trying to make himself invisible to the person he's following.
There doesn't seem to be anyone following me, so I fall back, not wanting to gain on the two in front of me, but still moving forward.
I make a turn at the last tower. Before me lies a vast open area. A square in the middle of the ocean. In the dimness, the only light comes from a single fluorescent lamp way up high.
In the center of the square, inside a series of concentric circles, slouches the outline of a large dead animal. A Sikorsky helicopter with four slightly bowed, drooping blades. Near one of the barracks someone has left a little pump wagon for extinguishing fires and an electric bus. Jakkelsen has vanished. It's the most desolate place I've ever seen.
As a child I sometimes dreamed that everybody was dead and
had left me behind with the euphoric freedom of choice in an abandoned adult world. I've always thought of it as a pleasant dream. At this moment, on this square, I realize that it has always been a nightmare.
I walk forward toward the helicopter, and then on past it, into the faint light tinted dark green by the non-skid surface of the pontoons. The whole place is so deserted that I have absolutely no fear of being discovered.
At the point where the platform seems to meet the water there are three barracks and an open shed. Jakkelsen is sitting in the shadow, just outside the light. For a moment I feel uneasy. Just minutes ago he was moving as quick as a rabbit; now he's all hunched up. But when I put my hand on his forehead, I feel the heat and sweat from his run. When I try to shake some life into him, there's the clink of metal. I fish around in his breast pocket and pull out his syringe. I remember the expression on his face when he assured me that he could take care of himself. I try to pull him to his feet, but he's too limp. What he needs is two strong orderlies and a hospital gurney. I take off my jacket and put it over him, pulling it up over his forehead so that it won't rain on his face. I slip the syringe back in his pocket. You have to be younger or at least more idealistic than I am to try to fix people who are determined to kill themselves.
As I straighten up, a shadow glides away from the open shed and takes on a life of its own. It's not heading toward me; it's on its way across the square.
It's a person carrying a small suitcase and wearing a flapping overcoat. But the suitcase isn't really small. The person is big. From this distance I can't see very well, but I don't need to, either. It doesn't take much for me to recognize him. It's the mechanic.
Maybe I knew it all along. Knew that he was the fourth passenger.
When I recognize him, I realize that I'll have to return to the
Kronos
.
Not because it suddenly doesn't matter whether I live or die, but because the problem has been taken out of my hands. It no longer has to do with Isaiah alone. Or with me. Or with the
mechanic. Or even with what there is between us. It's something much bigger. Maybe it's love.
When I walk back along the dock, the lights have come on again. There's no use trying to hide.
The tower in front of the
Kronos
is manned. The figure behind the glass looks like an insect. Close up you realize this is because of his hard hat with two short antennas attached.
Two hoses have been connected up. The
Kronos
is taking on fuel.
Hansen is sitting at the top of the gangway. He freezes when he sees me. He had been sitting there because of me. But he was expecting me to come from the other direction. He's not prepared for this situation. He slowly shifts gears; he's no good at improvising. He starts to block my way, trying to evaluate the risk of attempting something aggressive. I fumble for the screwdriver and put my hand into my plastic bag. On the stairway behind him Lukas comes into view. I stretch out my clenched fist toward Hansen.
“From Verlaine,” I say.
His hand closes around what I give him. With the automatic obedience prompted by the bosun's name. Then Lukas is standing right behind him. He surveys the situation with a single glance. His eyes narrow.
“You're wet, Jaspersen.”
He blocks my way up the stairs.
“I had to run an errand. For Hansen.”
Hansen tries to find words to protest. He opens his hand, looking for a possible answer there. On his broad palm there's a crumpled ball. It unfolds as we watch. It's a pair of panties—tiny, pure white, with lace.
“They didn't have a bigger size,” I say. “But I'm sure you can get them on, Hansen. They'll probably stretch.”
I walk past Lukas. He doesn't try to stop me. All of his attention is directed at Hansen. His face is full of amazement. Lukas is having a hard time. Nothing but unanswered questions all around him.
As I head up the stairs I hear him give up on this puzzle, too.
“First the baggage,” he says. “Then the sternmost capstan. We sail in fifteen minutes.”
His voice sounds hoarse, astonished, annoyed, and harried.
I take off my wet work clothes and sit down on my bunk. I think about Jakkelsen.
Through the hull I can tell that the oil pumps have stopped. The hoses have been removed, the hawsers taken in. The deck is being made ready for sailing.
Jakkelsen is sitting somewhere outside in the dark, about half a mile from here. I'm the only one who knows that he's left the ship. The question is whether I should report his absence.
The gangway is lifted. On the deck the posts at the mooring lines are manned.
I stay on my bunk. Because maybe Jakkelsen was on to something. I keep going back to something about his voice on the deck, something about his self-confidence and conviction. If it's true that he's discovered something, there must be a reason why he wanted to go ashore. He must have thought that whatever had to be done had to be done from there. Maybe he can still help me. Even though I have no idea how or why. Or by what means.
There is no blast of the horn. The
Kronos
leaves the
Greenland Star
as anonymously as it arrived. I didn't even notice the engine revving up. It's a change in the movements of the hull that tells me we are sailing.
Our cruising speed is 18 knots. Between 400 and 450 sea miles every twenty-four hours. This means that it will take about twelve hours for us to reach our destination. If I'm right. If we're on our way to the Barren Glacier on Gela Alta.
Something heavy is being dragged down the corridor. When the door to the quarterdeck closes, I go out in the hallway. Through the window in the door I can see Verlaine and Hansen moving the mechanic's baggage aft. Black cases, the kind that musicians keep their instruments in, placed on dollies. He must have had excess baggage on the flight over. It must have been expensive. I wonder who paid for it.
If you reach the age of thirty-seven in a country like Denmark, and have regular intervals free of pharmaceuticals, haven't committed suicide, and haven't completely sold out the tender ideals of your childhood, then you've learned a little about facing adversity in life.
In Thule in the seventies we sent equipment up in meteorological balloons to measure supercooled drops of water. They survive for a short time in very high clouds. The area surrounding them is cold but completely still. In a pocket of motionlessness their temperature will drop to —40°F. They ought to freeze, but they don't; they remain stationary and stable and fluid.
That's the way I try to face adversity.
The
Kronos
hasn't yet settled down. There's a sense of invisible life and movement. But I can't wait any longer.
I could have gone through the engine room and across the between decks, if those places hadn't been associated with so many claustrophobic memories for me. At least I want to be able to see them when they appear.
The quarterdeck is bathed in light. I take a deep breath and walk across the stage. Out of the corner of my eye I see the warping lines go by, and the railing around the base of the mast. Then I
reach the aft superstructure and unlock the door. Inside, I stand at the window and look out at the deck.
This is Verlaine's domain. Even now, when there's not a soul in sight, his presence is palpable.
I lock the door behind me. My weapons have always been the small details that no one knows about. My identity, my intentions, Jakkelsen's passkey. They can't possibly know that I have it. They must think it was an accident, an oversight on their part, that I got into the quarterdeck last time. They were afraid that I was on to something. But they couldn't know anything about the key.
In the first room I let the beam of my flashlight play over tightly packed and battened-down cans of red lead, primer paint, ship's lacquer, joint filler, special thinner, crates of face masks, epoxy tar, paintbrushes, and rollers. Everything is stacked up and clean and orderly. Verlaine's meticulousness.
The second door is the back entrance to a toilet—the one opposite the double shower room. The next leads to the metal shop, where Hansen polishes his knives with Viennese chalk.
The last room is the electrical shop. You could hide a small elephant in the labyrinth of cupboards, shelves, and crates, and it would take me an hour to find it. I don't have an hour. So I close the door and head below.
The door to the between decks is locked now. And bolted shut. Someone wanted to make sure that no one could get in this way. I turn on my light for only brief moments. I'm probably being overly cautious, since I'm in a windowless darkness, but my nerves can't take much more.
I stand still and listen. I have to force myself not to panic. I've never liked the dark. I've never understood the Danish penchant for wandering around at night. Taking a stroll in pitch darkness. Nightingale walks in the woods. Insisting on gazing at the stars. Nighttime orienteering.
You have to respect the dark. Night is the time when space simmers with evil and peril. You can call it superstition. You can call it fear of the dark. But it's ridiculous to pretend that the night is just like the day, simply without light. Night is the time to huddle together indoors. If you don't happen to be alone and have other obligations, that is.
Sounds are more tangible than objects in the dark. The sound of water around the propeller somewhere beneath my feet. The muted trilling of the ship's wake. The engine noise. The ventilation system. The rotation of the propeller shaft on its bearings. A little electric compressor, its location almost impossible to pinpoint. Like trying to figure out which neighbor has the noisy refrigerator in your apartment building.
There's a refrigerator here, too. I don't find it by the sound. I find it because the darkness makes me visualize my own sketch. I pace off the corridor. But I already know the results. Sheer nervousness prevented me from noticing it earlier. The corridor is six feet too short. According to Jakkelsen, somewhere behind the wall at the end of the room is the hydraulic rudder system. But that doesn't explain the missing six feet.
I shine my light on the wall. It has the same veneer as the other walls. That's why I didn't see it before. But it's been recently applied. The veneer has been nailed down. It's a rather makeshift hiding place, hastily rigged up. But I wouldn't be able to open it on my own. Even if I had the proper tools.
I open the nearest door.
The black cases are standing against the wall. They're labeled GRIMLOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENT FLIGHT CASES. I open the first one. It's rectangular and looks as if it might hold a medium-sized tweeter.
The manufacturer's guarantee under the two shiny blue tanks of enameled steel says: “Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.” They're covered with a rubberized net to protect the paint from impacts.
I open another, smaller case. It contains what look like valves to screw onto the tanks. Bright and shiny. Nestled in custom-shaped foam. An oxygen gauge. But a type I've never seen before, which is supposed to be attached to the tanks instead of sitting directly on the mouthpiece.
In the next case there are pressure gauges and wrist compasses. A large suitcase with a handle contains goggles, three pairs of flippers, stainless-steel daggers in rubber sheaths, and two inflatable float collars to attach to the tanks.
In a duffel bag there are two hooded rubber suits with zippers
at the wrists and ankles. Wetsuits made of neoprene. At least half an inch thick. Underneath are two Poseidon dry suits. And under them are gloves, socks, two thermal suits, safety lines, and six different kinds of battery-powered lamps, two of which are attached to a helmet.
There's a case that looks as if it might contain an electric bass, but it's somewhat longer and deeper. It's leaning against the bulkhead. Inside it is Jakkelsen.
It wasn't quite big enough for him, so they had to press his head down against his right shoulder and bend his legs up behind his thighs so that he's kneeling. His eyes are open. He still has my jacket over him.
I touch his face. He's still moist and warm. The body temperature of a large animal drops a few degrees per hour after it's been shot, if it's lying outdoors in the summer. The numbers are probably about the same for human beings. Jakkelsen is approaching room temperature.
I put my hand in his breast pocket. The syringe is gone. But there's something else in the pocket. I should have wondered about that before. Metal doesn't clink all by itself. It clinks against another piece of metal. Very cautiously, with my hand inside his pocket, I grab hold of a little triangle. It's growing out of his chest.
Rigor mortis spreads from the jaw muscles downward. The same way nervous tension does. He's stiff all the way to his navel. I can't turn him over, so I run my hand down along the inside of the case and up behind his back, inside his jacket. Sticking out between his shoulder blades there's a piece of metal, less than an inch long, flat and no thicker than a nail file. Or the blade of a cold chisel.
The blade was driven in between two ribs and then straight up. It looks as if it went through his heart. Then the handle was removed, but the blade was left in. To prevent bleeding.
On any other person the blade would not have exited through the chest. But Jakkelsen is fashionably slim.
It must have happened right before I reached him. Maybe even while I was on my way across the square.
In Greenland I never had any cavities; now I have twelve fillings. Every year I need another one. I refuse to have novocaine. I've
developed a strategy for handling the pain. I breathe deeply from my abdomen, and right before the drill pierces the enamel into the dentine of the tooth, I think to myself that now something is happening to me that I have to accept. That's how I become an involved but not overwhelmed spectator to the pain.
I was present in the parliament, the Landsting, when the Siumut Party proposed that the planned withdrawal of American and Danish forces from Greenland should be preceded by the establishment of a Greenlandic military. But of course that's not what they called it. A decentralized coast guard, they said, initially manned by those Greenlanders who had served as constables in the navy during the past three years. And led by A-level officers who would be trained in Denmark.
I thought it was impossible; they'd never agree to it.
It was voted down. “We are surprised by the results of the vote,” said Julius Høeg, Siumut's foreign-policy spokesman, “considering that this parliament's committee on national security has recommended a coast guard and established a preliminary work group made up of representatives from the Danish Navy, the Greenland police, the Sirius Patrol, the Ice Service, and other professionals.”
Other professionals. The most important information always comes at the end. As if in passing. In a side letter. In the margin.
The security personnel on the
Greenland Star
were Greenlanders. Only now that it's behind us do I remember this fact. We no longer notice things that have become commonplace. It has become common to see armed Greenlanders in uniform. Common for us to wage war.
For me, too. The only other thing I have left is my ability to distance myself.
This is happening to me; the pain is mine, but it doesn't completely absorb me. Part of me remains a spectator.
I crawl into the dumbwaiter. It hasn't gotten any easier since yesterday. I'm not getting any younger, after all.
Now I'm glad that there's no safety device. This dangerous system allows me to press the Up button myself.
The rush of fear during the ascent up the shaft is still the same. As is the silence at the top. And the empty kitchen.
The moon is shining through the skylight. On my way to the door I have a vision of myself as I must look from outside. Clad in black, but as pale as a white-faced clown.
There are the same sounds in the corridor. The engines, the toilets, a woman's breathing. It's as if time has stopped.
The moonlight streaming into the salon is blue and palpably cold, like a liquid against my skin. The rolling of the ship on the waves makes the silhouettes of the window ledges stretch out like living shadows across the walls.
I head for the books first.
The Greenlandic Pilot
, the Geodetic Institute's mapbook of Greenland, the admiralty's sea charts of Davis Strait, reduced 4:1 and collected in a single volume. Colbeck's
Dynamics of Snow and Ice Masses
, on the movements of ice. Buchwald's
Meteorites
in three volumes. Issues of
Naturens Verden and Varv. The Review of Medical Microbiology
by Jawetz and Melnick. Rintek Madsen's
Parasitology
—
A Handbook
. Dion R. Bell's
Lecture Notes on Tropical Medicine.
I put the latter two volumes on the floor and leaf through them with my right hand, holding my flashlight in my left. Under the heading
Dracunculus
so many passages are highlighted in yellow that it looks as if the paper has changed color. I put the books back in place.
Out in the hallway I listen intently at each door. By sheer accident I locate Tørk's cabin on the first try. I open the door a crack. Moonlight is shining through the porthole and across the bunk. It's cold in the room, but he has pushed the comforter aside. His torso looks like blue-tinged marble. He's sleeping heavily. I step inside and close the door behind me. What complicates life is having to make choices. The person who is pushed forward lives simply.
Everything takes care of itself. He had been working at the desk. The writing implements were put away, since on a ship everything that might roll around has to be stowed. But his papers are still lying there. A stack of them, but not too big for me to carry.
I stand there for a moment, looking at him. Like so many times before, ever since my childhood, I marvel at the chaste vulnerability
of human beings in sleep. I could bend over him. I could kiss him. I could feel his heartbeat. I could slit his throat.
I suddenly realize that in my life I am often awake while other people sleep. I've been through many late nights and many early mornings. I didn't plan it that way. But that's how it turned out.
I take the stack of papers out to the salon. There won't be time to take them along when I leave.
I sit there for a moment without turning on the light. A sense of solemnity has come over the room. As if the moonlight had encapsulated everything in bluish-gray glass.
Everyone dreams of finding the key to oneself and one's future. The religious classes at Sunday school in Qaanaaq were taught by a catechist from the Moravian mission, an introverted and brutal Belgian mathematician who didn't know one word of the Thule dialect. The lessons were given in a grotesque hodgepodge of English, West Greenlandic, and Danish. He scared us but also fascinated us. We were brought up to respect the profundity that is sometimes found in madness. Sunday after Sunday he would dwell on two things: the newly discovered Nag Hammadi canon's commandment to know thyself and the idea that our days are numbered, that there is a divine arithmetic in the universe. We were all between five and nine years old. We didn't understand a word. Yet I still remembered various things later on. I especially thought that I'd like to see the cosmic calculation for my own life.

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