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

"On the between decks, when we showed up with the fire-extinguishing equipment, you were sitting there with a couple of fire blankets."

At the spot where the skin is broken I dab on a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide. No Mercurochrome for me. I have to feel it sting before I believe it's going to do any good.

"I went back, but they were gone," he says. "Someone must have taken them away,"

I say. "It's good to keep things tidy."

"But they forgot to take this away."

Behind his back he's been holding a wet, folded gunny sack. Maurice's blood has left big purplish patches on it. I put the bandage on the wound. The gauze has some kind of adhesive on it that makes it stay on by itself.

I take along a big elastic bandage. He follows me out the door. He's a nice young Dane. He ought to be on board an East Asiatic Company tanker right now. He could have been on the bridge of one of the Lauritzen ships. He could have been sitting at home under the cuckoo clock with his mother and father in Ærøskøbing, eating meatballs and gravy, praising Mama's cooking, and basking in Papa's humble pride. Instead, he wound up here. In worse company than he could ever imagine. I feel sorry for him. He's a little piece of what's good about Denmark. Honesty, integrity, enterprise, obedience, crew cuts, and financial order.

"Sonne," I say, "are you from Ærøskøbing?"

"No, Svaneke." He looks disconcerted.

"Does your mother make meatballs?"

He nods.

"Good meatballs? Crusty on the outside?"

He blushes. He wants to protest. Wants to be taken seriously. Wants to exert his authority. The way Denmark does. With blue eyes, pink cheeks, and honorable intentions. But all around him are powerful forces: money, development, abuse, the collision of the new world with the old. And he doesn't understand what's going on. That he will only be tolerated as long as he cooperates. And that's all the imagination he has, anyway. Only enough to cooperate.

To say stop requires quite different talents. Something much more vulgar, much more clear-sighted. Much more embittered.

I reach up and pat his cheek. I can't resist. The blush rises up from his throat, like a rose beneath his skin. "Sonne," I say, "I don't know what you're up to, but just keep on doing it."

I lock my door, place the chair under the door handle, and sit down on my bed.

Those who have traveled enough in places where it's very cold will sooner or later find themselves in a situation where survival means staying awake. Death is built into sleep. The person who freezes to death passes through a brief state of sleep. The person who bleeds to death goes to sleep, and the one who is buried under an avalanche of compact, wet snow falls asleep before suffocating to death.

I need to sleep. But I can't, not yet. In this situation there's a certain respite in the hazy region between sleep and full consciousness.

During the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference we discovered that all peoples around the Arctic Sea shared the story of the raven, the Arctic creation myth.

Even the raven started out in human form, and he fumbled blindly, and his actions were haphazard until it was revealed to him who he was and what his purpose was.

To find out what your purpose is. Maybe that's what lsaiah has given me. The way every child can. A sense of meaning. Of a wheel turning through me, and through him, too-a vast and frail and yet necessary movement.

That is what has been violated. Isaiah's body in the snow is a violation. While he was alive, he brought purpose and meaning. And, as always, I didn't appreciate how important he was until he was gone.

Now my purpose is to understand why he died. To penetrate and illuminate the infinitesimal yet all-encompassing fact of his death.

I wrap the elastic bandage around my foot and try to get my blood circulation going. Then I let myself out and quietly knock on Jakkelsen's door.

He's still full of chemical energy. But the effects are beginning to wear off.

"I want to go up on the boat deck," I say. "Tonight. You're going to help me."

He's on his feet and on his way out the door. I don't try to stop him. Someone like that doesn't have any real freedom of choice.

"You must be crazy, man. That's a restricted area. Jump overboard, man. Why don't you jump overboard instead."

"You have to help me," I say. "Or I'll be forced to go up on the bridge and tell them to come and get you. And in the presence of witnesses you'll have to roll up your sleeves so they can admit you to the sick bay, strap you to the bunk; and lock the door with a guard outside."

"You'd never do that, man."

"My heart would bleed at having to report a hero of the high seas. But I'd be forced to do it."

He struggles with his suspicions.

"I'd also let drop a few words to Verlaine about what you've seen."

That pushes him over the edge. He's shaking uncontrollably.

"He'd cut me up in little pieces," he says. "How could you do that, after I rescued you?"

Maybe I could make him understand. But it would require an explanation that I can't give him.

"I want to know," I say, "I have to know what we're going to pick up. What that tank is designed to hold."

"Why, Smilla?"

It all began with a person falling off a roof. But before that's resolved, there is a series of connections that may never be untangled. And what Jakkelsen needs is to be reassured. Europeans need easy explanations; they will always choose a simple lie over a contradictory truth.

"Because I owe it to somebody," I say. "I owe it to someone I love."

It's not a mistake to use the present tense. It's only in a narrow, physical sense that Isaiah has ceased to exist. Jakkelsen stares at me, disillusioned and gloomy. "You don't love anyone. You don't even like yourself. You're not a real woman. When I dragged you up the stairs, I saw that little point sticking out of the bag. A screwdriver. Like a little dick. You stabbed him, man."

His face is full of amazement. "I can't figure you out, man. You're the good fairy in the monkey cage. But you're cold, too, man. You're like a fucking banshee."

As we reach the covered area on the upper deck, the clock on the bridge strikes four bells; it's two in the morning, halfway through the middle watch.

The wind has died down, the temperature has dropped, and pujuq, the fog, has raised its four white walls around the Kronos.

Next to me, Jakkelsen has already started shivering. He has no resistance to the cold.

Something has happened to the contours of the ship, to the sea rail, the masts, the spotlights, and the radio antenna, which at a height of a hundred feet stretches from the mast farthest forward to the one in the stern. I rub my eyes. But it's not my eyesight.

Jakkelsen puts his finger on the railing and lifts it again. It leaves behind a black spot where it has melted through the fine, milky layer of ice.

"There are two kinds of ice on a ship, you know. The ugly kind, that comes from the waves slamming over the side and freezing solid. More and more, faster and faster, after the rigging and everything else upright starts to get thick with it. And then the truly bad kind of ice. The type that comes from the sea fog. It doesn't need any waves, it simply covers everything. It's just something that's there."

He gestures out toward the whiteness. "This is the start of the truly bad kind. Four more hours and we'll have to get out the ice axes."

His movements seem feeble but his eyes are shining. He would hate having to hammer off ice. But somewhere inside him even this aspect of the sea ignites a wild joy in him.

I walk thirty feet forward, to a spot where I won't be visible from the bridge, but where I can survey several of the windows on the boat deck. They're all dark. All the windows in the superstructure are dark, except for a faint light from the officers' mess. The Kronos is asleep. "They're sleeping," I say.