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

"All right, ma'am," he says. "But drive somewhere else for your private life. This is the embassy district." They're gone. The mechanic starts the car and puts it into gear.

Then the light goes out in the house in front of us. He slows down. We creep down toward the lane with our headlights off. Three figures come out onto the stairway. Two of them are merely dark spots in the night. But the third instinctively seeks out the light. A fur coat and a white face catch the light. It's the woman I saw talking to Andreas Licht at Isaiah's funeral. She tosses her head, and the dark hair flows into the night. Now that I see this gesture repeated, I realize that it's an expression not of vanity but of self-confidence. A garage door goes up. The car comes out in a flood of light. Its headlights sweep over us and then it's gone. Behind it the door slowly closes.

We're following the car. Not close, because the lane is deserted, but not far behind either.

If you drive through Copenhagen in the dark and allow the surroundings to slip out of focus and blur, a new pattern appears that is not visible to the focused eye. The city as a moving field of light, as a spiderweb of red and white pulled over your retina.

The mechanic is relaxed when he drives, almost introspective, as if he were about to fall asleep. He makes no sudden movements, and there is no sudden braking, no real acceleration; we simply float through the streets and the traffic. And the whole time, somewhere ahead, like a wide, low silhouette, is the car that is leading us.

The traffic grows more sporadic and finally vanishes altogether. We're on our way out toward Kalvebod Wharf.

We drive out to the wharf very slowly, our headlights off. Several hundred yards ahead, on the dock itself, a pair of red taillights wink off. The mechanic parks along a dark wooden fence.

The relative warmth of the sea has created a mist that swallows up the light. Visibility is about a hundred yards. The opposite side of the harbor has vanished in the darkness. The waves are languidly slapping against the wharf.

And something is moving. No sound, but a black crystallization of a point in the night. A field of blackness systematically moving between the parked cars. Twenty-five yards away from us the movement stops. A person is standing next to a light-colored refrigerated trailer. Above the figure there is a lighter spot, as if from a white hat or a halo. He doesn't move for a long time. The mist grows a little thicker. When it disperses, the figure is gone.

"He was feeling the c-car hoods. To see if they were warm."

He's whispering, as if his voice could be heard in the night.

"A c-cautious man."

We sit quietly, letting time pass through us. In spite of this place, in spite of the unknown we're waiting for, it feels like a flood of happiness to me.

By his watch about half an hour passes.

We don't hear the car. It appears out of the fog, its headlights turned off, and passes us with an engine sound that is merely a whistle. Its windows are dark.

We get out of the car and walk along the dock. The two dark contours that we could barely make out are ships. The closest one is a sailing ship. The gangway has been removed, and the ship is dark. A white plaque on the superstructure says; in German, that it's a Polish training ship.

The next one is a tall black hull. An aluminum stairway leads upward amidships, but it all seems empty and deserted. The ship's name is Kronos. It's about four hundred feet long.

We walk back to the car.

"Maybe we should go on board," he says.

I'm the one who has to make the decision. For a moment I'm tempted. Then comes the fear and the memory of the burning profile of the Northern Light against Iceland Wharf. I shake my head. Right now, at this moment, life seems too precious to me.

We call Lander from a phone booth. He's still at work. "What if the name of the ship was Kronos?" I say. He goes away and then returns. A few minutes pass as he turns the pages.

"Lloyd's Register of Ships lists five: a chemical tanker based in Frederiksstad, a sand dredger in Odense, a tugboat in Gdansk, and two `general cargo' ships, one in Piraeus and one in Panama."

"The last two."

"The Greek one is a 1,200-ton ship, the other 4,000 tons." I hand the ballpoint pen to the mechanic. He shakes his head.

"I'm no good at numbers, either."

"Any picture?"

"Not in Lloyd's. But quite a few statistics. Four hundred and fifteen feet long, built in Hamburg in '57. Reinforced for ice."

"The owners?"

He goes away from the telephone again. I look at the mechanic. His face is in darkness; now and then car headlights make it appear, white, anxious, sensual. And under the sensuality, something intractable.

"Lloyd's Maritime Directory lists the shipowner as Plejada, registered in Panama. But the name looks Danish. A Katja Claussen. Never heard of her."

"I have," I say. "Kronos is our ship, Lander."

We're sitting on his bed with our backs against the wall. In this light, against his naked whiteness, the scars around his wrists and ankles are as black as iron bands.

"Do you think that people determine their own lives, Smilla?"

"The details," I say, "but the big things happen on their own."

The telephone rings.

He removes the tape and listens to a brief message. Then he hangs up.

"You might want to take out your high-heeled shoes. Birgo wants to meet us tonight."

"Where?"

He laughs secretively.

"A shady dive, Smilla. But put on your good clothes."

He carries me up the stairs. I kick in his arms, and we laugh quietly so as not to attract attention. In Qaanaaq, when I was little, the bridegroom would drag the bride out to the sled on their wedding night, and they would drive off followed by hooting guests. Sometimes they still do that. The hour I'm going to spend alone getting dressed already seems long. I'd rather ask him to stay so I could keep on looking at him. He's still not completely anchored in reality for me. His raw sweetness, his massive bulk and awkward politeness are still like a vivid dream. But only a dream. I reach out, grab hold of the door frame, and resist being set down. I let my fingers slide along the top hinge. The two pieces of tape have been broken, the ragged edges prick my fingertips.

I take his hands and move them up to the tape. His face grows somber. He puts his mouth against my ear. "We'll sneak off…"

I shake my head: My apartment is sacrosanct. You can take anything away from me, but I must have a corner somewhere to myself.

I try the door. It's not locked. I step inside. He has to follow me. But he's not happy about it.

The apartment is cold. That's because I always turn down the heat when I leave. I'm stingy about energy. I seal windows. I shut doors. It comes from living in Thule. From firsthand experience of how precious and scarce petroleum is.

That's why I naturally turn off all the lights behind me, too. And turn on only what's absolutely necessary. Now a light that I did not turn on is shining from the living room out into the hallway.

The swivel desk chair is pulled over to the window. A coat with wide shoulders is hanging over the back. A hat is floating on the shoulders. A pair of shiny black shoes is resting on the windowsill.

I don't think we've made any noise. But the shoes come down all the same, and the chair slowly turns around to face us.

"Good evening, Miss Smilla," he says. "And Mr. Føjl." It's Ravn.

His face is ashen with weariness, and there's a shadow of a beard on his cheeks, which I don't think the district attorney for special financial crimes would approve of. His voice sounds groggy, like someone who hasn't had any sleep for a long time.

"Do you know what the first requirement is for establishing a career in the Ministry of Justice?"