Smilla's Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

7

Falling in love has been greatly overrated. Falling in love consists of 45 percent fear of not being accepted and 45 percent manic hope that this time the fear will be put to shame, and a modest 10 percent frail awareness of the possibility of love.

I don't fall in love anymore. Just like I don't get the mumps.

But of course anyone can be overpowered by love. The last few weeks I've allowed myself to think about him for a few minutes each night. I give my mind permission and then watch how my body yearns and how I still remember him from the time before I really noticed him. I see his solicitude, remember his stutter, his embraces, and the awareness of the enormous core of his personality. When these images start to radiate too much longing, I cut them off. At least I try to.

I haven't fallen in love. I see things too clearly for that. Falling in love is a form of madness. Closely related to hatred, coldness, resentment, intoxication, and suicide.

Occasionally-not often, but occasionally-I'm reminded of the times in my life when I've fallen in love. That's what's happening now.

The man they call Tørk is sitting across from me at the table in the officers' mess. If this encounter had taken place ten years ago, I might have fallen in love with him. Sometimes a person's charisma is such that it slips right through our façades, our essential prejudices and inhibitions, and goes straight to our guts. Five minutes ago a clamp locked around my heart, and now it's getting tighter. This sensation is linked to a rising fever which is my body's response to the stress it's been under, and it brings on a piercing headache.

Ten years ago this headache might have led to a strong desire to press my mouth on his and watch him lose his self-control.

Today I can observe what is happening to me, full of respect for the phenomenon, but completely aware that it's nothing more than a short-lived, lethal illusion.

The photographs had captured his charm but made it lifeless, like a statue. They couldn't reproduce his personal presence, which has two sides to it. Both an emanation out into the room and an attraction toward him.

Even when he's seated, he's quite tall. His hair is almost metallic white, pulled back into a ponytail.

He looks at me, and the heavy pounding in my foot and my back and the base of my skull grows louder. A number of the boys and men in my life who have affected me in this way pass hazily through my mind like the patches of ice formations we were expected to recognize during exams at the university.

Then I take hold of reality and pull myself back on shore. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, telling me that, no matter who else he might be, he's the one who stood three feet away from me in the cold night while we both waited in front of the White Palace. The halo around his head was his extraordinary white hair.

He gazes at me attentively.

"Why on the foredeck?" says Lukas, who is sitting at the head of the table. He's talking to Verlaine, sitting diagonally across from me, slouching and amenable.

"To get warm. Before I had to go back to working on the runners."

Now I remember. Kista Dan and Maggi Dan, the Lauritzen Line ships used for trips to the Arctic-the ships of my childhood. Before the American base, before the flights from South Greenland. For extreme conditions, such as a hard freeze, they were equipped with special aluminum lifeboats that had runners screwed on underneath so they could be pulled across the ice like sleds. That's the kind of runners Verlaine had been attaching. "Jaspersen."

Lukas glances down at the paper in front of him. "You left the laundry room half an hour before your shift was over, at 1530 hours, to take a walk. You went down to the engine room, saw a door, opened it, and followed the runnel to the stairway. What in hell were you doing there?"

"Wanted to find out what was down below."

"And?"

"There was a door. With two handles. I touched one of them, and the alarm went off. I thought at first that I was the one who did it."

He looks from Verlaine to me. Anger clouds his voice. "But you can barely stay on your feet."

I look straight at Verlaine. "I fell. When the alarm went off, I took a step back and fell down the stairs. I must have hit my head on the steps."

Lukas nods, slowly and bitterly. "Any questions, Tørk?"

He doesn't shift his position. He simply cocks his head slightly. He might be in his mid-thirties or his mid-forties. "Do you smoke, Jaspersen?"

I remember his voice clearly. I shake my head.

"The sprinkler system is turned on by section. Did you smell smoke anywhere?"

"No, I didn't."

"Verlaine. Where were your people?"

"I'm looking into that."

Tork gets up. He stands there leaning on the table, looking at me thoughtfully.

"According to the clock on the bridge, the alarm went off at 1557 hours. It stopped three minutes and forty-five seconds later. During that time you were in the activated section. Why aren't you soaking wet?"

My previous feelings have vanished. The only thing I notice through the fever is that one more person with power is persecuting me. I look him straight in the eye. "Practically everything rolls right off me."