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

When they bring my breakfast I'm lying on the table. Someone fumbles for the light switch, and I ask him not to turn on the light. He puts the tray inside the door and leaves. It was Maurice. He couldn't have seen the broken cupboard door in the dark.

I force myself to eat something. Someone is sitting outside the room. Now and then I can hear a chair scraping against the door. At some point the auxiliary engine and the big generators start up. Ten minutes later they start unloading from the quarterdeck. I can't see what it is. The infirmary windows face aft.

The day is starting. The dawn doesn't seem to bring light with it; it's more like a physical substance itself, like wisps of smoke drifting past the windows.

The island isn't visible from this angle. But I can feel the ice. The Kronos is tied up astern. The edge of the ice is about seventy-five yards away. I can see one of the ropes passing through an anchor of packed ice, attached to a beacon of churned-up, solid ice floes.

The motorboat goes ashore and is emptied. There's not enough light to identify the people or determine their baggage. Later it looks as if the boat has been abandoned, tied up at the edge of the ice.

I feel as if I've gone as far as I can. You can't demand that anyone" go any farther than that.

Jakkelsen's key is lying inside the cushion that I'm using as a pillow. There is also a blue plastic container. And a cloth wrapped around a piece of metal. I expected the mechanic to discover that they were missing right away, but he hasn't come back.

It's a revolver. Ballester Molina Inunangitsoq. Manufactured in Nuuk under an Argentine license. There's a disparity between its purpose and its design. Surprising that evil can assume so simple a form.

Rifles can be excused by the fact that they're used for hunting. In certain types of snow a long-barreled, large caliber revolver may be necessary for self-defense. Because both musk oxen and polar bears can slip around the hunter and attack from behind. So swiftly that there's no time to swing a rifle around.

But there's no excuse for this snub-nosed weapon. The bullets have a flat-tipped jacket of lead. The box is full. I load the cylinder. It holds six. I snap the cylinder into place.

I stick a finger down my throat, producing a rattling cough. I kick at the remaining shards of glass in the cupboard door. They fall to the floor with a crash. The door swings open and Maurice comes in. I lean against the table, holding the revolver with both hands.

"Get down on your knees," I say.

He starts toward me. I aim the barrel downward at his legs and press the trigger. Nothing happens. I've forgotten to take off the safety catch. He makes a forward, upward jab with his good left arm. The blow catches me in the chest and throws me up against the cupboard. Pieces of glass from the broken window dig into my back with that typically cold pain of extremely sharp edges. I drop to my knees. He kicks me in the face. His foot breaks my nose and momentarily robs me of consciousness. When I come to, one of his feet is next to my head; he must be standing right over me. I take the scalpels wrapped in Band-Aids out of the tool pouch in my work pants. I move forward a little and cut him across his ankle. There's a tiny snap as his Achilles' tendon is severed. When I take the knife away there's a yellowish glimpse of bone at the bottom of the incision. I roll away from him. He tries to come after me, but he falls on his face. It's not until I stand up that I realize I'm still holding the revolver. He's down on one knee. Without haste he reaches inside his windbreaker. I step over to him and hit him in the mouth with the barrel of the gun. He falls backward against the cupboard. I don't dare approach him again. I go out the door. His key is still sitting in the lock. I lock the door behind me.

The corridor is empty. But there's movement behind the door to the mess. I open it a crack. Urs is setting the table. I slip inside the door. He puts down a basket of bread. He doesn't notice me at first; then he does.

I unscrew the top of a thermos. Pour myself a cup, put in some sugar, stir it, and take a sip. The coffee is almost scalding, the burned taste of the beans is nauseating combined with the sugar.

"How long are we going to be here, Urs?"

He's staring at my face. I can't feel my nose, can only sense a diffuse heat.

"You're under arrest, Fraulein Smilla."

"I have permission to stroll around."

He doesn't believe me. He's hoping that I'll leave. Nobody likes a guaranteed loser.

"Drei Tage. Three days. Tomorrow the provisions will be taken ashore. Then we'll all work im Schnee, in the snow."

They're going to help pull the stone down the chute made from railroad ties. That means that it must be very close to the coast.

"Who has gone ashore?"

"Tørk, Verlaine, der neue Passagier. With bottles." At first I don't understand him. He sketches them with his hands in the air: oxygen tanks.

I'm on my way out the door when he comes after me. The situation is a repeat; we've stood this way before. "Fraulein Smilla…"

Urs, the man who has never dared come too close, takes hold of my arm, insistent.

"You must sleep. You need medical treatment," he says.

I pull my arm away. I haven't succeeded in frightening him. Instead, I've appealed to his sense of sympathy.

At sea, as a matter of principle, you lock a door only upon exiting a room, to make the work easier during a rescue operation if there's a fire. Lukas sleeps with his door unlocked. He's sound asleep. I close the door behind me and sit down at the foot of his bunk. He opens his eyes. At first they're dull with sleep, then glassy with shock.

"I've temporarily discharged myself."

He tries to grab me. He's quicker than you might expect, considering that he's lying on his back and has just been sound asleep. I show him the revolver. He keeps coming. I bring the barrel up to his face and snap off the safety.

"I've got nothing to lose," I say.

He relaxes. "Go back. Being under arrest is your security."

"Oh, sure," I say, "having Maurice outside is so comforting. Put on your coat. We're going out on deck." He hesitates. Then he reaches for his outdoor clothes. "Tørk is right. You're sick."

Maybe he's right. In any case, a layer of numbness has come between me and the rest of the world. A crust in which the nerves are dead. I rinse off my nose at the sink. It's awkward because I have to hold the gun in my other hand and keep an eye on Lukas at the same time. There's not as much blood as I thought. Facial wounds always feel worse than they are.

He goes first. As we pass the stairs to the upper decks, Sonne comes down. I step close to Lukas. Sonne stops. Lukas waves him on. He hesitates; then his training, years in the navy, and all his inner discipline take over. He steps aside. We continue on across the deck. Over to the railing. I stand a few yards away. This means we have to speak loudly to hear each other. But it makes it more difficult for him to grab me.

I have spent so many days on the open sea that the island seems to me to have a dark, painful beauty about it.

It's so narrow and high that it looms up from the frozen sea like a tower. The rock is visible only in a few places; by and large it's covered with ice. Like a cold Arctic cornucopia, the ice spills over the edge of the bowlshaped top and down the steep sides. A spit is protruding through the sea toward the Kronos: the Barren Glacier. If we could see the other sides, we'd see sheer rock faces, ravaged by crevasses and avalanches.

The wind is blowing off the island, a north wind, avangnaq. This crystallizes into another word, and at first there is only the internal sound, as if it were spoken by someone else, someone inside me. Pirhirhuq, snowstorm weather. I shake my head. We're not in Thule; the weather is different here. My exhausted system is creating phantoms.