Smilla's Sense of Snow

  “The Pleiades. In my language they’re called qiluttuusat.”

  He pronounces it slowly and carefully. The way he cooks. His breath is aromatic and tangy. From nuts roasted in a toaster oven.

  Standing in the middle of the bedroom, we take off each other’s clothes.

  He has a light, fumbling brutality, which several times makes me think that this time it’ll cost me my sanity. In our dawning, mutual intimacy, I induce him to open the little slit in the head of his penis so I can put my clitoris inside and fuck him.

  2

  First we enter the salon. The portholes are brass, the walls and ceiling mahogany. The chairs have light-colored leather cushions and are bolted to the floor with brass rivets and furnished with bronze holders mounted on gimbals for whiskey glasses, and they are so deep that even during an Arctic typhoon you could sit and enjoy the clinking of the ice cubes in your triple Laphroig.

  The next room is a promenade of eighty feet along the keel through more mahogany and past more polished portholes, and past ship’s clocks and opulent desks bolted to the floor where a dozen people are working as if everything has to be finished in the next thirty seconds. The women are typing on word processing keyboards, the men are talking on three telephones at once, and the ceiling has disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke and frenzy.

  Then comes a reception area. A middle-aged woman is sitting there, wearing makeup and a lace blouse and tailored jacket. She has the forearms of someone who had signed on as a blacksmith. She would have scared me if I hadn’t had the mechanic along.

  He knows her. They shake hands and it looks as if they’re going to arm wrestle, and we continue on into the captain’s cabin. Along the way we pass glass cabinets with models of the kind of tanker so long that the crew has to set up camp three times on a trip from one end to the other.

  Inside, the portholes are as large as well covers, placed lower down on the wall so you can see the shrubs of the little park in the middle of Sankt Annæ Square. You are reminded that this entire maritime mirage is located on the third floor of a mansion with its back to Amalienborg Palace. It is the worst interior architectonic extravaganza I have ever seen.

  Behind the desk, which has a rim around the edge so the gold ballpoint pens won’t roll onto the floor during an imaginary sea voyage, sits a boy who looks fourteen at most, newly confirmed, his sandy-colored hair plastered down, and freckles on his nose.

  When he speaks, it’s in a thin, light alto, full of dignity. “I know what you want to say, honey. You want to say: ‘Where’s your father, little boy, because he’s the one we’ve come to talk to.’ But you’re mistaken. I’ll be thirty-three next month. If a child molester accidentally happened to kill me, there would be 25 million kroner for my wife and my three kids after the business was sold.”

  Then he gives me a wink.

  His name is Birgo Lander. He’s the mechanic’s friend. He is the owner and director of this shipping firm. He spent his youth in practically all the Danish reform schools; he’s an orphan, rich, totally without scruples, even more dyslexic than the mechanic, addicted to gambling, and a drunkard; with his face he could ride the bus on a child’s ticket, but that’s not necessary since he owns a custom-made Jaguar.

  Part of this I know, along with everyone in Denmark, from newspapers and magazines. The mechanic told me the rest on the way over here.

  He takes the mechanic’s hand in both of his. He doesn’t say anything, but he looks at him as if he has been reunited with a long-absent big brother. Then we sit down. The mechanic pushes his chair back a little and withdraws from the conversation. I’m the one who’s going to explain.

  “If I wish to rent a ship of about 4,000 tons to transport a cargo that I have no intention of discussing, to a place that I am not going to reveal either, how would I go about it? And if I were already in the process of looking for the right ship, could anyone trace my efforts?”

  He stands up. He’s wearing high-heeled cowboy boots. They don’t really do much for his height. From a cupboard on the wall he takes out a double bottle of clear fruit brandy. The mechanic and I decline. He pours himself one in a tall, cylindrical tumbler.

  The whole room smells of fresh pears. Lander sips at his drink. Seven times in a row. Then he looks at me to see whether I’m shocked.

  “I’m drunk from ten in the morning on,” he says. “And I can afford it”

  His eyes are swimming, but his voice is clear. “If you tried to find a ship, you could be traced. But only by someone who was friends with a ship broker. And you’re friends with one now, honey.”

  Somehow I already like him. A throwaway child, someone who has always had a hard time dealing with the world and hasn’t actually wanted to learn how.

  He takes a 1,000-krone bill out of a drawer and puts it on the desk.

  “Everything has a front and a back. Normally, they are of equal size.”

  He tenderly turns over the bill. “But in the shipping industry, things are arranged so cunningly that the back is much bigger than the front.”

  He throws out his hand. “The front is this location on this expensive square. It’s all the cigar-box wood and the suites you walked through to reach this office.”

  He taps his thin hair. “The back is inside here. But you don’t ‘rent’ a ship, honey. You ‘charter’ it. From a shipowner. It’s handled by contract. A contract has a front side which—if worst comes to worst—can be presented in maritime court. On the front it says where the ship is sailing and what it’s sailing with.”

  He takes a sip of the brandy. “But you are reticent with information about the destination and cargo. So you request a contract in which the destination is listed as ‘the entire world,’ and the freight as ‘unspecified.’ That would make any shipowner unhappy. His ships are his children. He wants to know where they’re going to be playing. Preferably avoid bad company. But no trouble is so great that you can’t buy your way out of it. So you suggest that a so-called side letter, or side contract, be prepared. The Danish shipping business is full of side contracts. During the past fifteen years practically every Danish shipping company has transported coal from South Africa and ammunition to the Middle East, even though this is against the law. It takes side contracts many yards long. And they’re not for the maritime court. They’re just as sensitive to light as undeveloped film. That’s what you would ask for. It says that you will pay the shipping company a kind of bonus in order to continue to be a discreet and secretive young lady. Let’s play a game. Let’s say that I’m the shipowner that you want to charter a ship from. Ninety-eight percent of all deals in this business are made in private. So you confide to Uncle Birgo, in confidence, where your little boat is really going.”

  “To the west coast of Greenland.”

  “That will make it more difficult for the person who wants to do the chartering, and easier for the one who wants to trace the transaction. A ship has to be classified ‘ice class’ to sail to Greenland. The Maritime Inspection Board of Denmark requires all ships to be classified every fourth year in terms of the hull, once a year for safety equipment and engines. If a ship is not approved, it cannot put to sea at all. Since last year, ships sailing to Greenland must have a double hull.”

  “The crew?”

  “Normally a ship is chartered with crew. Or you go to one of the international companies that deal exclusively with supplying full crews. But in this particular situation, you would probably prefer a ‘bare boat charter.’ Which means that you hire a ship and nothing else. Then you find a captain. He has to be a special kind of person, the kind you can take aside and, over a full glass, tell him that in this case his wages will be a little out of the ordinary. On the other hand, you need all his tact and sensitivity. Along with him, you find the rest of the crew. For a ship of 4,000 tons, you need eleven to twelve men.”

  Now I have to ask him something. Requests are always difficult.

  “If a customer had put out a feeler for that sort of s
hip and that sort of captain, would you be able to find out about it, Uncle Lander?”

  He looks at me sadly. “The headline at the top of the page for everything in this business says: ‘Any negotiations whatsoever to be kept strictly private and confidential.’ The shipping industry is one of the most discreet in the world.”

  He solemnly wraps his hands around his glass. Then he gives me a wink. “But for you, my little sweetie pie, I would go to great lengths.”

  He looks at the mechanic and then back at me. “If I may call you that?”

  “You may call me whatever comes into your little shrunken head,” I say.

  He blinks once. He’s so unused to opposition that he has forgotten what it feels like.

  He hides his face in his hands for a moment to collect his thoughts. “This business may not look very good on the front side. But on the back it is full of what they call ethics. And the two most important rules are: You don’t cheat a customer. And you never cheat a fellow shipowner.”

  He takes a drink. We are face to face with his philosophy of life.

  “You screw the state and the authorities if an opportunity presents itself. With a big smile you break Minister Espersen’s currency legislation, and travel to Capetown with a briefcase with a million in cash to bribe a Bushman who’s the harbor master, who’s holding a 500,000-ton tanker at the shipyard under the pretense of a quarantine. You buy five companies a year in Panama for $1,000 apiece to avoid sailing under a Danish flag and regulations. You reroute a cargo that’s allergic to customs officials to a Spanish port where you’ve paid the local customs officers to reinvoice your crates. But you don’t cheat a customer. Because you need customers to come back. And above all, you never cheat a broker. We shipping folks stick together. The way it works is, I have a customer who has a ship and you have a customer who has a cargo, and we bring them together. Next time it’s the other way around. A ship broker lives off other ship brokers, who live off other ship brokers …”

  He’s filled with emotion. “It’s one big brotherhood, honey.”

  He takes a drink and waits until he has regained control of his voice.

  “That means that we have a network. We know other brokers from Guadeloupe to Tierra del Fuego, from Rangoon to the Outer Hebrides. And we talk to each other. Little conversations, and when you’ve been talking for several years, and if you have a flair for it, you end up making 100,000 kroner every time you pick up the phone and open your mouth. In every large port Lloyd’s and the other big companies have an observer on staff who reports all arrivals and departures. And after a while you get to know the observers. If anyone has tried to hire a 4,000-ton ice class to carry a secret cargo to a secret destination, and if you’re interested in who and how, then you’ve come to the right man, honey. Because Uncle Birgo is going to find out for you.”

  We stand up. He shakes hands across the desk.

  “It was nice to meet you, honey.”

  He really means it.

  We go out past the lace blouse. In the next office I turn around.

  “I forgot something.”

  He’s sitting at his desk. He’s still laughing. I go up to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

  “What would Føjl say?” he asks.

  I give him a wink. “Any negotiations whatsoever are to be kept strictly private and confidential.”

  Every other day Moritz picks up Benja after her afternoon rehearsals and they eat together at Savarin in Nyhavn.

  Moritz goes there because of the food, and because the prices stimulate his ego, and because he likes having a good view of people on the street through the plate-glass windows that stretch the entire height of the building façade. Benja goes because she knows that through those same windows people on the street have a good view of her.

  They have their own table next to the window and their own waiter and they always eat the same thing. Moritz has lamb kidneys and Benja a bowl of the kind of fodder you give rabbits. Today there’s a family sitting near them that has sneaked a little child into this otherwise child-free area. Moritz looks at the child.

  “You’ve never given me any grandchildren,” he tells me.

  “Little children smell of pee,” says Benja.

  Moritz looks at her with astonishment.

  “Lamb kidneys do, too,” he says.

  I think about the mechanic waiting outside in the car.

  “Won’t you sit down, Smilla?”

  “Someone is waiting for me.”

  Through the windows Benja can see the Morris, but not who’s sitting inside.

  “It looks like someone your own age,” she says. “Somewhere in his forties. Judging from his fancy car.”

  If I reply, I’ll end up hurting Moritz. So I let it pass uncontested.

  I lean over the edge of the table. It has always been like this. Benja and Moritz sit comfortably, leaning back. They belong here. I stand with my overcoat on, feeling as if I’ve come in from the street to peddle something.

  Moritz is holding two envelopes in his hands. One is gray and spotted with what looks like red wine. In the silence between us he tries to use them to force me into a chair. He doesn’t succeed.

  “This makes me uncomfortable,” he says.

  I don’t know what he means.

  “Hviid is not an ordinary name. There was a composer, Jonathan Hviid. I called Victor Halkenhvad.”

  Benja lifts her head. Even she has heard of that name.

  “I didn’t know he was still alive.”

  “I’m not sure he is, either.”

  He hands me the envelope. I hold it up to my nose. The spots are red wine. Moritz sticks a finger inside his turtleneck collar and moves it around.

  “It wasn’t pleasant. He’s not the man he used to be. At one point he slammed down the receiver. While I was in the middle of a sentence. But he did write, after all.”

  It’s a rare experience to see Moritz uncomfortable. Not until I’m out in the car do I understand why.

  He catches up with me at the door. “You forgot this.”

  It’s the second envelope.

  “A single clipping about Tørk Hviid. From the Danish Press Service.”

  A clipping service he subscribes to. They collect any mention in the press about him.

  He wants to touch me. He doesn’t dare. He wants to say something. He doesn’t manage it.

  In the car I read the letter out loud. The handwriting is almost illegible.

  Dear Jørgen, you cheap little barber’s assistant.

  The mechanic looks disoriented.

  “My father’s first name is Jørgen,” I say. “And Victor has always been temperamental.”

  It must be fifteen years since I saw him last. The opera had given him an honorary residence on Store Kannike Lane. He was sitting in an armchair positioned next to the piano. He was wearing a dressing gown; I had never seen him in anything else. His legs were naked and swollen. I don’t know whether he could stand up anymore. He must have weighed over 300 pounds. Everything sagged on him. He was looking at me, not Moritz. Those weren’t bags under his eyes, they were hammocks.

  “I don’t like women,” he said. “Move farther away.”

  I moved away.

  “You were cute when you were little,” he said. “That time is past.”

  He signed an album cover and handed it to Moritz.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking now that old idiot has recorded another album.”

  It was Gurrelieder. I still have the record. It’s still an unforgettable recording. I’ve sometimes thought that the body, our very physical existence, puts a limit on how much pain a mind can bear. And that Victor Halkenhvad, on that record, reaches that limit. So that afterward the rest of us can listen and make that journey without going there ourselves.

  Even if, like me, you know nothing about European cultural history, you can still hear a world collapsing in that music, on that record. The question is whether anything
has taken its place. Victor didn’t think so.

  I’ve looked it up in my journal. That’s all I have left of my memory. It’s ten years ago that you last visited me. Let me tell you that I have Alzheimer’s. Even a money doctor like you must know what that means. Every new day a piece of my brain peels away. Soon, thank God, I won’t even be able to remember all of you who betrayed me and yourselves.

  It was his indifference that did it. At the same time as he sang, trembling, ready to burst, unbearably full of romanticism and its feelings, there was a sense of distance, a place inside him that didn’t give a damn.

  Jonathan Hviid and I went to the Conservatory together. We started in 1933. The year that Schönberg converted to Judaism. The same year as the Reichstag fire. Jonathan was just like that. The most awful timing. He composed a piece for eight flutes and called it “Silver Polyps.” In the midst of the flatulent postwar Danish narrow-mindedness which even regarded Carl Nielsen as too controversial. He wrote a brilliant concerto for piano and orchestra. The piano was supposed to have old-fashioned iron hot plates placed on top of the strings because they produced a very special sound. He never got it performed. Never, not once. He married a woman about whom even I have a difficult time finding anything negative to say. She was in her early twenties when they had the boy. They lived in Brønshøj, in a neighborhood that doesn’t exist anymore. Garden sheds with tin roofs. I visited them there. Jonathan wasn’t making a dime. The boy was totally neglected. Holes in his clothes, red-eyed, never had a bicycle, was beaten at the local proletarian school because he was too weak from hunger to defend himself. Because Jonathan was supposed to be a great artist. You’ve all betrayed your children. And it takes an old queen like me to tell you.

  The mechanic has pulled over in order to listen.