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

"Can I get a receipt?"

"Then I'll have to add sales tax."

"Go ahead," I say. "Go right ahead."

I really can't use the receipt for anything. But I'm going to hang it up on the wall at home. As a reminder of what can happen to the famous Greenlandic generosity and indifference to money.

He types it up, on a sheet of typing paper.

"I'll need at least a week. Do you want to call me five or six days after New Year's?"

I take five crisp new 1,000-krone notes from the bundle. He closes his eyes and listens as I count them out. He has at least one passion more burning than modal jazz. It's the sensual crackle of money changing hands, with him on the receiving end.

After I stand up I think of one other thing I have to ask him.

"How did you learn to get so much from what you hear?"

He beams like a sun. "I was originally a theologian. An occupation that presents excellent opportunities for listening to people."

It's because the pastoral robes are such a total mask that it has taken me so long to recognize him. Even though it's less than ten days since I saw him bury Isaiah.

"Occasionally I still step into the role. Assist Pastor Chemnitz when he's busy. But in the last forty years it's been mostly languages. My teacher at the university was Louis Hjelmslev. He was a professor of comparative linguistics. He had a solid knowledge of forty or fifty languages. And he had learned and forgotten just as many. I was young then and as surprised as you are. When I asked him how he had learned so many languages, he replied"-and now he imitates a man with a severe overbite-" `The first thirteen or fourteen take a long time. After that, it goes a lot faster.' "

He roars with laughter. He's in a great mood. He has demonstrated his brilliance and earned money for it. It strikes me that he is the first Greenlander I've ever met who used the formal De with me and expected me to do the same.

"There's one more thing," he says. "Since I was twelve years old, I've been totally blind."'

He enjoys my sudden stiffness.

"I make my eyes follow your voice. But I can't see a thing. Under certain circumstances, blindness sharpens the sense of hearing."

I shake the hand he offers me. I ought to keep my mouth shut. There's really something perverse about harassing a blind man. And a fellow countryman at that. But for me there's always been something mysterious and provocative about genuine, sincere greed.

"Mr. Curator," I whisper, "you should be careful. At your age. With all the money you have on you. Surrounded by these treasures. On a ship that's screaming like an open bank vault. South Harbor is crawling with crooks. You know the world is full of people unscrupulously striving to obtain the possessions of their fellow human beings."

He swallows hard.

"Goodbye," I say. "If I were you, I would barricade the door after I leave."

The last golden rays of sunshine have settled on the flat stone of the dock. In a few minutes they'll be gone, leaving behind a raw, damp cold.

There's not a soul in sight. I use a key to slit the white plastic on the sign. Just a rip, just enough to see inside. It was painted by a sign painter. Black letters on a white background. "Copenhagen University, the Polar Center, and the Cultural Ministry hereby establish the ARCTIC MUSEUM." Then a list of the foundations paying for the fun. I don't bother to read it. I start walking along the dock.

The Arctic Museum. That's where Isaiah's ship was bought. I pull the curator's receipt out of a deep pocket.

It's impeccably composed, and yet another miracle, considering that he's blind. He signed it. His signature is illegible. But he has also stamped it. I can read the stamp.

It says "Andreas Fine Licht, Ph.D. Professor of Eskimo Languages and Cultures."

I stand still until the shock subsides. Then I consider going back.

I decide to keep going. The tape is a copy. And when you're hunting, it's sometimes beneficial to make yourself visible, to stop and wave the butt of your rifle.

I arrive just about on time. The little blue Morris is parked on H. C. Andersens Boulevard, in front of Tivoli.

The mechanic looks like a man who's been waiting, and thinking too many gloomy thoughts.

I get in beside him. The car is cold. He doesn't look at me. His face reveals his pain like an open book. Together we stare straight ahead in silence. I'm not on the police force. I have no reason to press him for a confession.

"The Baron," he says finally, "he remembered. He never forgot."

I've had the same thought myself.

"S-sometimes three weeks would pass without him coming to the basement. When I was a kid and went away to camp for three weeks, I had practically forgotten my parents by the time I came home. But the Baron did little things. If I'm on my way home and he's at the playground playing, he stops. And then runs up to me. And then walks along with me for a while. As if to show me that we know each other. Just up to the door. There he stops. And nods to me. To show that he hasn't forgotten me. Other children forget. They like anyone who comes along, and then they forget about them."

He bites his lip. I have nothing to add. There's relatively little that words can do for grief. Words can do relatively little about anything. But what else do we have?

"We're going to have tea," I say.

On our way through the city I tell him nothing about my visit to Berth 126. But I do tell him about my phone call afterward, from a phone booth, to Benedicte Clahn.

La Brioche d'Or is on Stroget, near Amager Square, on the second floor, a couple of buildings past the Royal Porcelain store.

Even in the doorway there are photographs of the cornucopia, three feet in diameter, that the pastry shop delivered to the royal court with a crane. On our way up the stairs there is a display of particularly memorable cream cakes that look as if they've been given a coat of hairspray and will remain there for all eternity. The entrance is guarded by a life-sized model of the boxer Ayub Kalule – that was made out of dark chocolate when he became European Champion, and inside there is a long table covered with cakes that look capable of practically anything except flying.

The ceiling is decorated with plaster curlicues like whipped cream, and there are chandeliers, and on the floor is a carpet as thick and spongy and the same color as an angel-food cake soaked in sherry. Elegant ladies are sitting at small tables with white tablecloths, washing down a second piece of Sacher torte with pint cups of hot cocoa. To ameliorate the expected shock of the bill and the encounter with the bathroom scale, a pianist wearing a toupee is sitting on a platform absentmindedly playing a Mozart potpourri, which turns downright sloppy when he attempts to wink at the mechanic at the same time.

In one corner, sitting alone, is Benedicte Clahn. Certain people don't seem to match their voices. I can still remember my own surprise when, for the first time, I stood face to face with Ulloriannguaq Christiansen, who had delivered the news for twenty years on Greenland Radio. His voice had created expectations of a god. He turned out to be merely a human being, only slightly taller than I am.

The voices of other people mirror their appearance so precisely that once you've heard them speak, you're bound to recognize them when you see them. I spoke to Benedicte Clahn on the phone for one minute, and I'm sure that's her. She's wearing a blue suit, she has kept her hat on indoors, she's drinking mineral water, and she's as beautiful and skittish and unpredictable as a racehorse.

She's in her mid-sixties, with long reddish-brown hair partially pinned up under her hat. She is straight-backed, pale, with an aggressive chin and flaring nostrils. She's a complex person if I've ever seen one.