Smilla's Sense of Snow (8 page)

"The morning after the boy was brought in, we were busy. Drunk drivers and Christmas parties. Every afternoon at four o'clock the fucking police are standing there waiting for a report. So at eight o'clock I start on the boy. You're not squeamish, are you? We have a certain routine. First an external examination. We look for cell tissue under the fingernails, for sperm in the rectum, and then we open them up and look at the internal organs."

"Are the police present?"

"Only under unusual circumstances, for instance if there is strong suspicion of murder. Not on this occasion. This was routine. He was wearing rain pants. I hold them up, thinking to myself that they're not what you would wear for doing the long jump. I have a little trick. The kind of thing you invent in any profession. I hold a light bulb inside the pant legs. Helly Hansen. Sturdy stuff. I wear them myself when I work in the garden. But near the thigh there's a perforation. I examine the boy. Purely routine. There I find a hole. I should have noticed it when I was doing the surface examination, I tell you that quite frankly, but what the hell, we're all human. Then I start to frown. Because there wasn't any bleeding, and the tissue hasn't contracted. Do you know what that means?"

"No," I say.

"It means that whatever happened at that spot occurred after his heart stopped beating. Now I take a closer look at his rain gear. There's a little indentation around the hole, and the whole thing rings a bell. So I get out a biopsy needle. A kind of syringe, quite big, attached to a handle. You plunge it into the tissue to get a sample. The way geologists take core samples. Used a lot by sports physiologists over at the August Krogh Institute. And damn if it doesn't fit! The circle on the rain gear could have been caused by someone who was in a hurry, who shoved it in with a good whack."

He leans toward me. "I'll eat my old hat if someone hasn't taken a muscle biopsy from him."

"The ambulance medic?"

"I thought of that, too. It doesn't make any sense, but who the hell else could it be? So I call them up and ask them. I talk to the driver. And the medic. And to our orderlies who received the body. They all swear on a stack of Bibles that they did nothing of the kind."

"Why didn't Loyen tell me this?"

For an instant he seems about to explain. Then the intimacy between us is broken.

"Must be a fucking coincidence," he mutters to himself.

He turns off the grow lights. We have been sitting surrounded by night on all sides. Now it's becoming noticeable that, in spite of everything, there will be some sort of daylight, after all. The house is quiet. It's sitting there gasping soundlessly, trying to catch its breath before the next Armageddon.

I take a short walk along the narrow pathways. There's something obstinate about cactuses. The sun tries to hold them down, the desert wind wants to hold them down, and the drought, and the night frost. Yet they thrive. They bristle, they retreat behind a thick shell. And they don't budge an inch. I regard them with sympathy.

Lagermann reminds me of his plants. Maybe that's why he collects cactus. Without knowing his background, I can tell that he must have had several cubic yards of concrete to break through to reach the light.

We are standing next to a bed with green sea urchins that look as if they've been out in a storm of cotton. "Pilocereus senilis," he says.

Nearby there is a row of pots with smaller green and violet plants.

"Mescaline. Even the big places-the Botanical Gardens in Mexico City, say, or Cesar Mandriques's cactus museum on Lanzarote-have no more than I do. One little sliver and you're way out there. Or so I've heard. I'm a sensible man. A rationalist. We examine the brain. Slice off a piece. Afterward the assistant puts the skull back in place and pulls up the scalp. Can't tell the difference. I've seen thousands of brains. There's nothing mysterious about it. It's chemistry-the whole works. As long as you have enough information. Why do you think he ran up onto that roof?"

For the first time I feel like giving an honest answer. "I think someone was after him."

He shakes his head. "It's not like kids to run that far. Mine sit down and start howling. Or freeze."

The mechanic once rebuilt a bicycle for Isaiah. He hadn't learned to ride a bike in Greenland. When it was ready he took off. The mechanic found him six miles away on the Old Køge Highway, with training wheels and a lunchbox on the baggage rack. On his way to Greenland. He was headed in that direction because Juliane had been in Hvidovre Hospital once for the DTs.

From the age of seven, when I came to Denmark for the first time, until I was thirteen and gave up, I ran away more times than I can remember. Twice I made it to Greenland, and one of those times as far as Thule. It's just a matter of attaching yourself to a family and pretending your mother is sitting five seats ahead in the plane or standing a little farther back in the line. The world is full of adventure stories about lost parrots and Persian cats and French bulldogs that miraculously find their way home to Mother and Father on Frydenholms Avenue. That's nothing compared to the countless miles children have put behind them in search of a decent life.

This is all something I might try to explain to Lagermann. But I don't.

We're standing in the front hallway, among the boots, the skateblade protectors, remains of provisions, and miscellaneous items left behind by the troops.

"What now?"

"I'm looking for the logical explanation," I say, "that you were talking about before. Until I find it, I'm not going to feel much in the Christmas spirit."

"Don't you have a job you have to go to?"

I don't answer. Suddenly he lays down all his thorns. When he speaks, he has stopped swearing.

"I've seen hundreds of relatives who have been overwhelmed by grief. Hundreds of talented private citizens who thought they could do it better than we and the police could. I've looked at their ideas and their tenacity, and I said to myself, I give them five minutes. But with you I'm not so sure . . ."

I attempt a smile that's supposed to reciprocate his optimism. But it's too early in the morning even for me. Instead, I suddenly discover that I've turned toward him and blown him a kiss. From one desert plant to another.

I'm no expert on types of cars. As far as I'm concerned, you could send all the cars in the world through a compacter and shoot them out through the stratosphere and put them in orbit around Mars. Except, of course, the taxis that have to be at my disposal when I need them.

But I do have some idea what a Volvo 840 looks like. For the past few years Volvo has sponsored the Europe Tour golf tournament, and they used my father in a series of ads about men and women who had made it on the international scene. In one photo he was in the midst of teeing off in front of the terrace at Sollerod Golf Club, and in another he was wearing a white lab coat, sitting in front of a tray of instruments with an expression in his eyes as if to say, 'If you need a block inserted, bam, into the pituitary, I'm the one to do it'. In both ads he had persuaded them to take the photo from the angle that makes him look like Picasso with a toupee, and the caption was something about "those who never miss." For three months, in buses and subway stations, that ad made me think of what I might have added to the caption. And it stamped in my mind forever the angular, somewhat shrunken shape of a Volvo 840.

If the temperature goes up right before sunrise, the way it did today, the frost will retreat last from a car's roof and above the windshield wipers. A banal fact that only the fewest people are aware of. The car on Kabbeleje Road that has no frost on it, either because it was wiped off or because it has been recently driven, is a blue Volvo 840.

There are probably plenty of reasons why someone might have parked here at twenty after six in the morning. But just at the moment I can't think of any. So I walk to the car, bend over the hood, and peer in through the tinted front window. In the driver's seat sits a man, sleeping. I stand there for a few moments, but he doesn't move. Finally I saunter off toward Brønshøj Square.

It's important to sleep. I would have liked a couple of more hours myself that morning. But I wouldn't have chosen to sit in a Volvo on Kabbeleje Road.

"My name is Smilla Jaspersen."

"Groceries from the store?"

"No, Smilla Jaspersen."

It's not entirely true that phone conversations are the worst communication imaginable. Security intercoms, after all, are much worse. To fit in with the rest of the building, which is tall, silvery gray, and imposing, the intercom is made of anodized aluminum and shaped like a conch shell. Unfortunately, it has also absorbed the roar of the great oceans, which now drown out the conversation.

"The cleaning lady?"

"No," I say, "and not the pedicurist, either. I have some questions about the Cryolite Corporation."

Elsa Lübing takes a break. You have that prerogative when you're standing at the proper end of the intercom. Where it's warm, and where the buzzer to open the door is.

"This is really most inconvenient. You will have to write or come back some other time."

She hangs up.

I take a step back and look up. The building stands alone, in the Fugle section of Frederiksberg, at the end of Hejre Road. It's unusually tall for Copenhagen. Elsa Lübing lives on the seventh floor. On the balcony beneath hers the ornate wrought iron is covered with planters. From the directory it's apparent that these flower lovers are Mr. and Mrs. Schou. I give the doorbell a short and authoritative ring.

"Yes?" The voice is at least eighty years old. "Delivery from the florist shop. I have a bouquet for Elsa Lübing upstairs, but she's not home. Would you please let me in?"

"I'm sorry, we have strict instructions not to open the door for the other apartments."

I am enchanted by people in their eighties who still obey strict instructions.

"Mrs. Schou," I say, "they are orchids. Straight off the plane from Madeira. They're languishing down here in the cold."

"That's terrible!"

"Awful," I say. "But a tiny little push on that little buzzer will bring them into the warmth where they belong."

She buzzes me in.

The elevator is the kind that makes you want to ride up and down seven or eight times just to enjoy the little built-in plush sofa, the polished Brazilian rosewood, the gold grating, and the sandblasted cupids on the panes of glass, through which you can see the cable and the counterbalance sink into the depths you've left behind.

Lübing's door is shut. Downstairs Mrs. Schou has opened hers to hear whether the orchid story is a cover for a quick Christmas rape.

I have a piece of paper in my pocket, among the loose money and reminders from the science department of the university library. I drop the paper through the mail slot. Then Mrs. Schou and I wait.

The door has a brass mail slot, hand-painted nameplate, and panels of gray and white.

It swings inward. In the doorway stands Elsa Lübing. She takes her time looking me over.

"Well," she says finally, "you are certainly persistent." She steps aside. I walk past her into the apartment.

She and the building share the same coloring, polished silver and fresh cream. She is quite tall, almost six feet; and she is wearing a long, simple, off-white dress. She has put up her hair, but several loose locks fall like a cascade of shiny metal over her cheeks. No makeup, no perfume, and no jewelry other than a silver cross at her throat. An angel. The kind you can trust to guard something with a flaming sword.

She looks at the letter I stuck through the door. It's Juliane's pension award.

"I remember this letter quite well," she says.

There's a painting on the wall. From the heavens, down toward the earth, flows a stream of long-bearded patriarchs, fat little children, fruit, cornucopias, hearts, anchors, royal crowns, cannons, and a text you can read if you know Latin. This picture is the only sign of luxury. Other than that, the room has bare white walls, a parquet floor with wool carpets, an oak desk, a low, round table, a pair of high-backed chairs, a sofa, a tall bookcase, and a crucifix.

Nothing else is needed. Because there is something else here. A view that only a pilot would normally see, tolerable only if you don't suffer from vertigo. The apartment seems to consist mainly of one very large, bright room. Over by the balcony, along the entire width of the room, there is a wall of glass. From there you can see all of Frederiksberg, Bellahøj, and, in the distance, Høje Gladsaxe. The light of the winter morning comes in through the window, as white as if we were outside. On the other side there is another large window. From there you can see the spires of Copenhagen, across an endless expanse of rooftops. High above the city, Elsa Lübing and I stand as if in a bell jar, trying to size each other up.

She offers me a hanger for my coat. Spontaneously I slip off my shoes. Something about the room demands it. We sit down in two high-backed chairs.

"This time of day," she says, "I am normally in prayer."

She says this as naturally as if she were usually in the middle of the heart association's exercise program at this time of day.

"So-unbeknownst to you-you have chosen an inconvenient time," she says.

"I saw your name on the letter and looked you up in the phone book."

She looks at the paper again. Then she takes off her thick-lensed reading glasses.

"A tragic accident. Especially for the child. A child needs both parents. That is one of the practical reasons why marriage is sacred."

"Mr. Lübing would be pleased to hear that."

If her husband is dead, I'm not insulting anyone. If he's alive, it's a tasteful compliment.

"There is no Mr. Lübing," she says. "I am the bride of Jesus."

She says this in a manner both serious and coquettish, as if they had been married a few years ago and the relationship is still happy and looks as if it will last.

"But that does not mean that I do not regard love between men and women as holy. It is, however, only a stage along the way. A stage that I have permitted myself to skip, so to speak."