Smilla's Sense of Snow

“To drink yourself to death. Have you ever thought about how much money you save by not being an alcoholic?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Five thousand kroner,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That will be five thousand kroner for the session. Ten thousand if you want a notarized transcription of the contents.”

  There’s not a trace of a smile on his face. He’s dead serious.

  “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.

  4

  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 Strøget, 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 unpredict
able 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.

  I have only the time it takes to cross the floor to make a few crucial decisions.

  Several hours earlier I called her from a phone booth at Enghave Station. Her voice is deep, hoarse, almost lazy. But underneath the calm I think I can sense a volcano. Or maybe I’m hearing a mirage. After spending an hour at Berth 126, I don’t trust my ears anymore.

  When I tell her that I’m interested in her work in Berlin in 1946, she refuses to discuss it.

  “It’s absolutely out of the question. Completely impossible. It’s a matter of military secrets, you know. And, by the way, it was Hamburg.”

  She is quite determined. But at the same time there is a glimmer of curiosity strictly reined in.

  “I’m calling from Svanemølle Army Base,” I say. “We’re putting together a publication commemorating Danish participation in the Second World War.”

  She does an about-face.

  “Are you really? So you’re calling from the base. Are you from the Women’s Corps, perhaps?”

  “I have a master’s in history. I’m editing this commemorative publication for the army’s historical archives.”

  “Are you really? A woman! I’m pleased to hear that. I think I’d better speak to my father first. Do you know my father?”

  I haven’t had the pleasure. And if I’m going to meet him, I’d better hurry. According to my calculations, he must be about ninety. But I don’t say this out loud.

  “General August Clahn,” she says.

  “We would like the publication to be a surprise.”

  She understands perfectly.

  “When would you be free to talk to me?”

  “That will be difficult,” she says. “I’ll have to look at my calendar.”

  I wait. I can see my reflection in the steel wall of the phone booth. It shows a big fur hat. Dark hair underneath. Beneath the hair a smirking smile.

  “I might just be able to find time this afternoon.”

  That’s what I remember on my way through the café. As I look at her. A general’s daughter. A friend of the military. But also a hoarse voice. The way she looks at the mechanic. An explosive person. I reach a decision.

  “Smilla Jaspersen,” I say. “And this is Captain Peter Føjl, Ph.D.”

  The mechanic freezes.

  Benedicte Clahn laughs radiantly at him. “How exciting. Are you a historian, too?”

  “One of the best military historians in Northern Europe,” I say.

  His right eye starts to twitch. I order coffee and raspberry tarts for him and myself. Benedicte Clahn orders another mineral water. She doesn’t want any cake. She wants Dr. Peter Føjl’s undivided attention.

  “There’s so much. I don’t know what you’re interested in.”

  I take the plunge. “Your collaboration with Johannes Loyen.”

  She nods. “You’ve spoken to him?”

  “He and Captain Føjl are close friends.”

  She nods archly. That’s natural. That one sheik would know the other.

  “It’s so long ago, you know.”

  The coffee arrives in a bistro coffeepot. It’s hot and aromatic. Meeting the mechanic is what has lured me into the dangerous practice of drinking this damaging intoxicant.

  He leaves his cup untouched. He hasn’t yet grown accustomed to his academic distinction. He’s sitting there looking down at his hands.

  “It was in March of 1946. The Royal Air Force had taken over Dagmar House on Town Hall Square from the Germans in Copenhagen. I found out that they were looking for young Danish men and women who could speak German and English. My mother was Swiss. I had gone to school in Grindelwald. I’m bilingual. I was too young to join the Resistance. But I saw this as an opportunity to do something for Denmark.”

  She’s talking to me. But everything is directed at the mechanic. A large part of her life has probably been directed toward men.

  She laughs hoarsely. “To be quite honest, I had a boyfriend, a second lieutenant who had gone down there six months earlier. I wanted to be wherever he was. Women had to turn twenty-one within the first three months they were there. I was eighteen. And I wanted to leave at once. So I lied that I was three years older.”

  Maybe, I think to myself, this was also your chance to escape from Daddy General in a legal way.

  “I was interviewed by a colonel in the blue-gray uniform of the RAF. There was also a test in English and German. And in reading Gothic German handwriting. They said they wanted to check my conduct during the war. They must not have done that, or they would have found out about my age.”

  The raspberry tart has a bottom layer of almond custard. It tastes of fruit, burnt almonds, and heavy cream. Combined with the surroundings, it is for me the quintessence of the middle and upper classes in Western civilization. The union of exquisitely sophisticated crowning achievements and a nervous, senselessly extravagant consumption.

  “We took a special train to Hamburg. Of course, Germany was divided among the Allied powers. Hamburg was British. We worked and were housed in a large Hitler Jugend barracks. Count Goltz Barracks in Rahlstedt.”

  Being the untalented listeners that they are, most Danes cheat themselves out of experiencing a fascinating law of nature. The one now taking effect in Benedicte Clahn, the transformation of the speaker the minute she becomes absorbed in her story.

  “We were housed in double rooms with two beds across from the buildings where we worked. It was a large hall. We sat twelve at each table. We wore uniforms, khaki-colored battle dress with skirts, shoes, stockings, and a cape. We had the rank of sergeant in the British Army. At every table there was a Tischsortierer, a table monitor. At our table this was a female British captain.”

  She pauses for a moment. The pianist is working his way into Frank Sinatra. She isn’t listening.

  “Purple Bols,” she says. “I got drunk for the first time in my life. We could buy things at the PX on the base. For a carton of Capstan cigarettes we could get as much on the black market as a German family lived on for a month. The man in charge was Colonel Ottini. An Englishman in spite of his name. About thirty-five. Charming, with a face like a good-natured bulldog. We read all mail going out and coming into the country. Letters and envelopes looked the way they do today. But the paper was worse. We would cut open the envelope, read the letter, stamp it CENSORED, and then tape it closed. All photographs and drawings were to be removed and destroyed. All letters with gossip about Nazis who had positions in the reconstruction of Germany were to be reported. If, for example, it said, ‘Just imagine, once he was a Sturmbannführer in the SS and now he’s a manager.’ It was quite common. But mostly they were looking for the Nazi underground organization called Edelweiss. You see, the Germans had burned a large part of their own archives during the retreat. The Allies were in desperate need of information. That must be why they hired us. There were six hundred of us Danes. And that was just in Hamburg. If a letter mentioned the word ‘Edelweiss,’ if it contained a pressed flower, if letters were underlined that might form the word ‘Edelweiss,’ then we were supposed to stamp it—we each had our own rubber stamp—and send it on to der Tischsortierer.”

  As if by telepathy the pianist is now playing “Lili Marlene.” With a march tempo, the way Marlene Dietrich sang one of the verses. Benedicte Clahn closes her eyes. Her voice has changed.

  “That song,” she says.

  We wait until it comes to the end. It slips over into “Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin.”

  “The worst thing was the hunger,” she says. “The hunger and the destruction. It was twenty minutes by a kind of subway from Rahlstedt to the center of Hamburg. We were off every Saturday afternoon and Sunday. And with our sergeants’ uniforms, we had access to the officers’ mess halls. Could get
champagne, caviar, Chateaubriand, ice cream. Fifteen minutes from the center of town, near Wandsbek, the piles of rubble started. You can’t possibly imagine it. Rubble as far as the eye could see. All the way to the horizon. A plain of ruins. And the Germans. They were starving. They walked past on the street, pale, hollow-cheeked, famished. I was there for six months. Never, not once, did I ever see a German hurry.”

  She has tears in her voice. She has forgotten where she is. She grips my arm hard.

  “War is horrible!”

  She looks at us, realizes that we are representatives of the armed forces, and for a brief moment a number of planes of consciousness collide for her. Then she returns to the present, cheerful and sensual. She smiles at the mechanic.

  “My second lieutenant went home. I was ready to follow him. But one day I’m called into Ottini’s office. He makes me an offer. The next day I’m transferred to Blankenese. On the Elbe River. There the British had taken over all the big mansions. We worked in one of them. There were forty of us in the house. Mostly British and Americans. The twenty who worked on the top floor listened in on the telephone network. Downstairs there were several different groups. Of course we were never told what the others were doing. In Rahlstedt we had also been sworn to secrecy. But there we talked to each other all the same. We showed each other funny letters. In Blankenese it was completely different. That’s where I met Johannes Loyen. At first it was just myself and two others. An English mathematician and a Belgian teacher of choreographic notation systems. We worked with coded letters and telephone conversations. Mostly letters.”

  She laughs.

  “I think they were testing us in the beginning. Gave us things that weren’t important. We often cracked two letters a day. They were usually love letters. I arrived in July. In August something happened. The letters changed character. Many of them were written by the same people. A new censor was also attached to our group, a German who had worked for von Gehlen. I never understood it. That the Americans and the British took over parts of the German intelligence apparatus. But he was a kind and gentle man. You can never really tell about people, can you?—they say that Himmler played the violin. His name was Holtzer. He somehow had a special knowledge of the case we were working on. That’s what I gradually came to understand. That it was a case. The other three knew about it. They never said anything. But they kept on asking me about specific phrases. Gradually a picture began to emerge.”