Peter Høeg - Smilla's Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

"He could leap like a flea," says the mechanic, daydreaming. "He was sly. He'd turn halfway around in the air and land on one foot. He'd walk back in his own footprints."

He looks at me, shaking his head. "But you guessed right every time."

"How long were they gone?"

The jackhammers on Knippels Bridge. The traffic starting up. The seagulls. The distant bass sound, actually more like a deep vibration, of the first hydrofoil to Sweden. The short toots on the horn of the Bornholm ferry as it turns in front of Amalienborg Palace. It's almost morning.

"Maybe several hours. But a different car brought him home. A cab. He always came back alone in a cab."

He makes us an omelet while I stand in the doorway telling him about the Institute of Forensic Medicine. About Professor Loyen. About Lagermann. About the trace of something that might be a muscle biopsy, taken from a child. After he fell.

He slices onions and tomatoes, sautes them in butter, whips the egg whites until they're stiff, blends in the egg yolks, and cooks the whole thing on both sides. He takes the pan over to the table. We drink milk and eat slices of a moist black rye bread that smells of tar.

We eat in silence. Whenever I eat with strangers-like now-or if I'm very hungry-like now-I am reminded of the ritual significance of meals. In my childhood I remember associating the solemnity of companionship with great gustatory experiences. The pink, slightly frothy whale blubber eaten from a communal platter. The feeling that practically everything in life is meant to be shared.

I get up.

He's standing in the door as if to block my way.

I think about the inadequacy of what he has told me today.

He steps aside. I walk past. With my boots and my fur coat in my hand.

"I'll leave part of the report. It'll be good practice for your dyslexia."

There's a look of mischief in his eyes. "Smilla. Why is it that such an elegant and petite girl like you has such a rough voice?"

"I'm sorry," I say, "if I give you the impression that it's only my mouth that's rough. I do my best to be rough all over."

Then I close the door.

I slept all morning and got up a little late, so I only have an hour and a half to take a shower, get dressed, and put on my funeral makeup, which is far too little time, as anyone who has tried to make herself look good will confirm. That's why I'm feeling flustered when we arrive at the chapel, and after the service I still feel that way. As I'm walking along beside the mechanic, I feel as if someone had screwed off my lid and plunged a, big bottle washer up and down inside.

Something warm falls over my shoulders. He has taken off his coat and put it around me. It reaches all the way down to my feet.

We stop and look back toward the grave and our own footprints. His are big, run over at the heels. Apparently he's slightly bow-legged, though it's hardly visible. Tiny perforations from my high heels. They look rather like deer tracks. A slanted, downward-sloping movement, and in the bottom of the track black marks where the hooves have pierced through the layer of snow to the ground.

The women walk past us. I see only their boots and shoes. Three of them are holding up Juliane; the tips of her shoes drag across the snow. Next to the pastor's robes there is a pair of black boots made of embroidered leather. Above the gate out to the road there is a streetlight. When I look up, the woman lifts her head and tosses it so that her long hair flies to one side in the darkness and her face catches the light, a white face with big eyes, like dark water amid the pallor. She's holding the pastor by the arm and talking to him earnestly. Something about those two figures next to each other freezes the image and makes it stick in my mind.

"Miss Jaspersen."

It's Ravn. With friends. Two men wearing coats as big as his, but who can fill them out. Underneath they're wearing blue suits and white shirts and ties, and sunglasses so that the winter dusk at four o'clock in the afternoon won't hurt their eyes.

"I'd like to have a word with you."

"At the office of the fraud division? About my investments?"

He listens without reacting. He has a face which, over the years, has seen so much that nothing really leaves a mark on it anymore. He motions toward his car.

"I'm not sure I feel like it right now."

He doesn't budge an inch. But his two lodge brothers ooze imperceptibly closer.

"Smilla, if you don't f-feel like it, I don't think you should go."

It's the mechanic. He's blocking the men's path. When animals-and almost all normal people-face a physical threat, their bodies go rigid. From a physiological standpoint it's not efficient, but it's the general rule. Polar bears are the exception. They can lie in wait, perfectly relaxed, for two hours without once releasing the heightened readiness of their muscles. Now I realize that the mechanic is also an exception. His posture is almost loose. But there is a physical ferocity in his focus on the men in front of him which reminds me once again how little I know about him.

It has no detectable effect on Ravn. But it makes the two men in blue suits take a step back, as they unbutton their jackets. It could be that they're too hot. It could be that they share a nervous tic. It could also be that they both have a blackjack with a lead core.

"Will I be driven home?"

"Right to your door."

In the car I sit in the back with Ravn. At one point I lean forward and take off the driver's sunglasses.

"I'm silent as the grave, you little shit," I say. "My lips are sealed with seven seals. Ravn won't hear from me that you were sleeping on the job. At six-thirty in the morning on Kabbeleje Road."

At the Police Headquarters we drive in between the red brick buildings where the Division of Motor Vehicles has its offices. We're heading for a low red barracks facing the harbor.

There's no sign on the building. We meet no one. There's no tapping of typewriters. There are no nameplates on the doors. There is simply peace and quiet. Like in a reading room. Or in the morgue beneath the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The two blue choirboys have vanished. We enter a dark office. There are venetian blinds on the windows. Through the blinds you can see the electric lights, the docks, the water, the Iceland Wharf.

It's a room that must get a lot of light in the daytime. There's nothing much else in it. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the tables. Nothing on the windowsills.

Ravn turns on the light. In the corner a man is sitting on a chair. He has been sitting and waiting in the dark. Sinewy, with close-cropped, almost plush black hair, distant blue eyes, and a harsh mouth. He is meticulously dressed.

Ravn sits down behind the desk.

"Smilla Jaspersen," he introduces me. "Captain Telling."

I am facing the two men with my back to the windows.

There are no cigarettes, no coffee in plastic cups, no tape recorder, and no bare light bulb, no mood of interrogation. There is only an atmosphere of waiting.

In this atmosphere I withdraw into myself.

Into the silence steps a woman carrying a tray with tea, sugar, milk, and lemon slices, all on white porcelain. Afterward the abandoned building swallows her up and she is gone. Ravn pours the tea.

He takes a folder out of a drawer. It's pink. He reads it slowly. As if he wants to try-again-to experience it for the first time.

"Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen. Born June 16, 1956, in Qaanaaq. Parents: Ane Qaavigaaq, hunter, and Dr. Jorgen Moritz Jaspersen, physician. Attended grade school in Greenland and Copenhagen. Graduated from Birkerod High School, 1976. Courses at the H. C. S6rsted Institute and the Geographical Institute in Copenhagen. Glacial morphology, statistics, and fundamental problems of mathematics. Trips to West Greenland and Thule in 75, '76, and '77. Planned the outfitting of Danish and French expeditions to North Greenland in '78, '79, and '80. In 1982 employed by the Geodetic Institute. From '82 to '85 scientific participant in expeditions to the ice cap, the. Arctic Ocean, and Arctic North America. Various references are attached. One from Major Guldbrandsen, who led the Sirius Patrol. It dates back to '79. He complains that you won't drive a dog team. Are you afraid of dogs?"