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

When we disbanded the Young Greenlanders' Council to form IA, and had to position ourselves in relation to the social democrats in SIUMUT and the reactionary Greenlandic upper class in ATASSUT, we read Karl Marx's Das Kapital. It was a book I grew quite fond of. For its trembling, feminine empathy and its potent indignation. I know of no other book with such a strong belief in how much you can accomplish if you simply have the will to change.

Unfortunately, I'm not that confident myself. I've been given a great deal, and I've wanted a lot. And I've ended up not really having anything and not really knowing what I want. I've acquiied the basics of an education. I've traveled. Occasionally I've felt that I've done what I wated to do. And yet I've been directed. Some invisible hand has had me by the scruff of the neck, and every time I thought that now I was taking an important step up toward the light, it has pushed me farther into a network of sewer pipes running beneath a landscape I cannot see. As if it had been determined that I would have to swallow a specific amount of wastewater before I would be allowed a breathing hole.

As a rule I swim against the current. But on certain mornings, like today, I have enough surplus energy to surrender. Now, as I'm walking along beside the mechanic, I am strangely, inexplicably happy.

It dawns on me that we could eat breakfast together. I can't remember how long it's been since I ate breakfast with someone. It has been my own choice. I'm sensitive in the morning. I need time to throw cold water on my face and put on my eyeliner and drink a glass of juice before I'm feeling sociable. But this morning has taken care of itself. We met, and now we're walking along side by side. I'm just about to suggest it.

Suddenly I'm floating.

He has picked me up and carried me over to the scafIoIding. I think it's a joke and am about to say something. Then I see what he sensed and keep quiet. The stairwell is dark on all floors. But a door is opening. It floods yellow light out into the darkness. And two figures Juliane and a man. He's talking to her. She staggers. Whatever he's saying falls like blows. She drops to her knees. Then the door shuts. The man takes the outdoor stairway.

Juliane's friends don't leave at seven in the morning. At that hour they haven't even come home yet. And if they do leave, they don't walk with the nimble ease of this man. They crawl.

We're standing in the shadow of the scaffolding. He can't see us. He's wearing a long Burberry raincoat and a hat.

At the end of the building facing Christianshavn the mechanic gives my arm a squeeze, and I continue on alone. The hat in front of me gets into a car. When he pulls away from the curb, the little Morris stops right next to me. The seats are cold and so low that I have to stretch to see out the windshield. It's iced over, so we drive peeking through a strip, barely able to see from the hood ornament to the red taillights in front of us.

We drive across the bridge. Turn right before Holmens Church, past the National Bank, across the King's New Square. Maybe there's other traffic, maybe we're the only ones. It's impossible to tell through the windshield.

He parks the car at Krinsen Park. We drive past and stop across from the French Embassy. He doesn't look back.

He walks past the Hotel d'Angleterre and turns down Stroget, the walking street. We're twenty-five yards behind him. Now there are other people around us. He walks up to a doorway and lets himself in with a key.

If I had been alone, I would have stopped here. I don't need to go over to the door to know what it says on the nameplate. I know who the man is that we've been following, as surely as if he had shown me his credentials. If I had been alone, I would have strolled home and thought things over along the way.

But today there are two of us. For the first time in a long time we are two.

One moment he's standing at my side, and the next he's over by the door, sticking his hand in before it closes. I follow him. When you're playing ball or some other game, sometimes there is a moment like this of spontaneous, wordless, mutual understanding.

We enter an archway with a vaulted ceiling of white and gold bronze, marble panels, soft yellow light, and a door with glass panes and a brass handle. The archway leads into a garden courtyard with evergreen shrubbery, little Japanese ginkgo trees, and a fountain. Everything is covered with the snow of the last two weeks, which once started to melt but now has a thin, frozen crust on the surface. From somewhere up above, the first light of day drifts downward, like dust.

An electric cord is lying inside the stairwell. It goes around a corner. From there comes the sound of a vacuum cleaner. In front of us is a janitor's cart, with two buckets, mops, scrub brushes, and a couple of roller contraptions for wringing out wet rags. The mechanic grabs the cart.

There are footsteps above us. Light steps, muted by the blue runner held down by brass rods the width of the stairs. There's a pleasant scent surrounding us. A scent I recognize but can't identify.

We reach the third floor the moment the door shuts behind him. The mechanic carries the cart under his arm as if it were nothing.

The gilding and the cream-colored inlay from the doorway are repeated in the stairwell and on the doors. There are engraved brass nameplates. The plate in front of us is placed above an extra-wide mail slot. So that even the largest checks can get through. LAW OFFICE, it says. Of course. Law Office of Hammer & Ving. The door isn't locked, so we go in. The cart comes along.

We enter a large foyer. One door is open, leading to a series of offices that are extensions of one another, like the reception rooms in the photographs of Amalienborg Palace. And there are photographs of the Queen and the Prince, and shiny parquet floors, and paintings in gilt frames, and the most elegant office furniture I've ever seen. There is the same scent as in the stairwell, and now I recognize it. It's the scent of money.

Not a soul is around. I pick up a rag and wring it out, and the mechanic picks up a big mop.

At the end of the offices there is a closed double door. I knock on it. He must have a control panel near him, because when the door opens, he's sitting at the opposite end of the room, in an office with a window facing the courtyard.

He's sitting behind a black mahogany desk which stands on four lion's feet and is so big that you can't help wondering how they managed to get it up here. On the wall behind him hang three gloomy paintings of the Marble Bridge in heavy frames.

It's difficult to judge his age. From Elsa Lübing I know that he must be over seventy. But he looks healthy and athletic, as if every morning he walks barefoot across his beachfront and down to the sea, where he saws a hole in the ice and takes a refreshing dip, then runs back and eats a little bowl of gladiator muesli with skim milk.

It has kept his skin smooth and ruddy. But it hasn't been beneficial for hair growth. He's as bald as a peeled egg.

He's wearing glasses with gold frames that give off so many reflections that you never really get to see his eyes. "Good morning," I say. "Quality control. We're checking on the morning cleaning."

He doesn't say anything, merely looks at us. As clearly as if he had spoken, I remember his voice-dry and proper-from a telephone conversation a long time ago.

The mechanic withdraws to a corner and starts mopping. I take the windowsill closest to the desk.

He looks down at his papers. I wipe the sill with the rag. It leaves striped traces of dirty water.

Soon he'll start to wonder.

"There's nothing like having a proper cleaning done," I say.

He frowns, now mildly annoyed.

Next to the window hangs a picture of a sailing ship. I take it down and wipe the back of it with the rag.