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

He's been over to the quarterdeck to look at the windows facing astern. "We should fucking well all be asleep."

We go up the three levels to the boat deck. He continues on to the next landing. From there he'll be able to see whether anyone leaves the bridge. And whether anyone happens to leave the boat deck. Inside a sack, for instance.

I'm wearing my black serving uniform. It's almost worthless as an excuse for anything at two o'clock in the morning, but I couldn't come up with anything else. I'm taking actions without stopping to think about them. Because forward is the only way to go, and it's impossible to stop. I put Jakkelsen's key in the lock. It slides in effortlessly. But it won't turn. The combination has been changed.

"It's a sign, man. We should drop this idea."

He comes back down and stands right behind me. I take hold of his lower lip. The blood blister hasn't gone down yet. He would have protested if I hadn't put my hand over his mouth.

"If it's a sign, then it means that behind that door there's something they've gone to a lot of trouble to keep us from seeing."

I whisper this in his ear. Then I let him go. He can think of a lot of things to say, but he restrains himself. He follows me with his head bowed. When the opportunity arises, he'll take his revenge and stomp on me, or sell me to whoever comes along, or give me the final kick from behind. But right now he feels cowed.

Rooms designed for some form of socializing always seem unreal when they're empty. Theater stages, churches, dining rooms. The mess is dark and lifeless, but still populated with the memory of life and mealtimes.

In the galley there's a strong odor of sourdough, yeast, and alcohol. Urs told me that his bread rises for six hours, from ten o'clock at night until four in the morning. We have an hour and a half, two at the most.

When I open the two sliding doors, Jakkelsen realizes what I'm up to.

"I knew you were crazy, man. But I didn't know you were that far gone…"

The dumbwaiter has been cleaned, and inside there is a tray laden with cups and saucers, breakfast plates, silverware, and napkins. Urs's token preparations for the next day.

I remove the tray and the china.

"I get claustrophobic," says Jakkelsen.

"You're not the one who's going up in it."

"I get claustrophobic for other people, too."

The box is rectangular. I get up on the counter and crawl in sideways. First I test whether it's even possible to put my head down far enough between my knees. Then I shove my upper body partway inside.

"You press the button for the boat deck. When I get out, leave the dumbwaiter there. So it doesn't make any unnecessary noise. Then go up to the stairs and wait. If anyone tries to send you away, refuse to leave. If they insist, go back to your cabin. Give me an hour. If I'm not back by then, wake up Lukas."

He wrings his hands. "I can't, man. I can't."

I have to stretch my legs, but I also have to watch that I don't put my hands down on the sourdough rising on the counter.

"Why not?"

"He's my brother, man. That's why I'm on board. That's why I have a key. He thinks I'm clean."

I take one last lungfuI of air, exhale, and squeeze myself into the little box.

"If I'm not back in an hour, wake up Lukas. It's your only chance. If you don't come to get me, I'll tell Tørk everything. He'll get Verlaine to take care of you. Verlaine is his man."

We haven't turned on the light. The galley is dark except for the faint glow from the sea and the reflection of the fog. But I can still tell that I've hit home. I'm glad I can't see his face.

I put my head between my knees. He pushes the doors closed. There's the soft hum of an electric motor beneath me in the dark as I move upward.

The movement lasts for about fifteen seconds. My only thought is one of helplessness. The fear that'someone will be waiting for me up there.

I get out my screwdriver. So I'll have something to offer when they slam open the doors and pull me out.

But nothing happens. The dumbwaiter stops abruptly in its shaft of darkness, and I sit there with nothing but the pain in the back of my thighs, the movement of the ship on the sea, and the distant sound of the engine, which is now barely audible.

I stick the screwdriver in between the two sliding doors and force them apart. Then I slip out feet first onto a countertop.

There's a faint light coming into the room. It's from the stern running lights shining into this level from a skylight overhead. The room is a kitchenette with a refrigerator, a sideboard, and a couple of hot plates.

The door leads to a narrow corridor. I crouch down in the corridor and wait.

People perish during transitional phases. In Scoresbysund they would shoot each other in the head with shotguns when the winter started to kill off summer. It's not difficult to coast along when things are going well, when a balance has been established. What's difficult is the new. The new ice. The new light. The new feelings.

I sit down. It's my only chance. It's everybody's only chance. To give yourself the necessary time to get acclimated.

The bulkhead in front of me is quivering from the distant engine beneath us. The smokestack must be just on the other side. This level of the ship has been built around the big, rectangular shape of the funnel.

To my left I can see a faint light at floor level. It's the night-light on the stairs. That door is my escape route. To my right there is silence at first. Then, in the stillness, I can hear someone breathing. It's much softer than the other sounds of the ship. But after six days on board, the daily noises have become a discreet background against which all deviations are evident. Even the light snoring of a sleeping woman.

This means that there is one cabin, or possibly two, here on the port side, and there will be one or two opposite. So the salon and mess face the foredeck.

I stay seated. After a while a pipe gurgles distantly. The Kronos has high-pressure flushable toilets. Somewhere either above or below us, a toilet was flushed. The movement in the pipes reveals that the bath and toilets on this deck are in front of the smokestack, and built adjacent to it.

I've taken along my alarm clock in my apron pocket. What else could I do? I look at it, and then I make my move.

The lock on the exit is a latch. I unhook it. So that I'll he able to get out fast. But mainly so that someone else will be able to get in.

I feel my way to a door between the short corridor to the exit and what must be the salon. I put my ear against it and wait. The only thing I hear is the distant ship's clock that sounds the bells. The door opens into darkness more intense than the dimness behind me. Here, too, I wait. Then I turn on the light switch. It doesn't produce an ordinary light. It illuminates hundreds of aquarium lamps over hundreds of very small, sealed aquariums, set in rubber frames and attached to stands that cover all three walls. There are fish in the aquariums. More different kinds and greater numbers than in any tropical fish shop.

Along one wall is a black-stained table with two large, flat porcelain sinks with an elbow-operated mixing apparatus. On the table there are two gas jets and two Bunsen burners, all with permanent copper pipe connections to a gas cock. An autoclave is mounted on a side table. A Mettler scale. A PH meter. A large bellows camera mounted on a tripod. A bifocal microscope.

Under the table there is a metal rack with small, deep drawers. I open a few of them. In cardboard boxes from Struer's Chemical Laboratory there are pipettes, rubber hoses, plugs, glass slides, and litmus paper. Chemicals in little glass flasks. Powdered magnesium, potassium permanganate, iron filings, powdered sulfur, copper sulfate crystals. Against the wall, in wooden crates lined with straw and corrugated cardboard, are little carboys of acid. Hydrofluoric acid, hydrochloric acid, and acetic acid in various concentrations.