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

5

Juliane Christiansen, Isaiah's mother, is a strong endorsement for the curative powers of alcohol. When she's sober, she is stiff, silent, and inhibited. When she's drunk, she is lively and happy as a clam.

Because she took the disulfiram this morning and has been drinking on top of the pills, so to speak, since she returned from the hospital this beautiful transformation naturally appears through a veil of the overall poisoning of the organism. And yet she is feeling markedly better. "Smilla," she says, "I love you."

They say that people drink a lot in Greenland. That is a totally absurd understatement. People drink a colossal amount. That's why my relationship to alcohol is the way it is. Whenever I feel the urge for something stronger than herbal tea, I always remember what went on before the voluntary liquor rationing in Thule.

I've been in Juliane's apartment before, but we always sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. You have to respect people's privacy. Especially when their lives are otherwise exposed like an open wound. But now I feel driven by an urgent sense of responsibility; someone has overlooked something.

So I rummage around, and Juliane lets me do as I please. Partly because she bought some apple wine at the supermarket, partly because she's been on welfare and under the electron microscope of the authorities for so long that she has stopped imagining that anything could be kept private.

The apartment is full of that domestic coziness that comes from walking too often across polished hardwood floors with wooden-soled boots, and from forgetting burning cigarettes on the tabletop, and from sleeping off plenty of hangovers on the sofa; the only thing that's new and works properly is the TV, which is big and black, like a grand piano.

There is one more room than in my apartment: Isaiah's room. A bed, a low table, and a wardrobe. On the floor a cardboard box. On the table two sticks, a hopscotch marker, a kind of suction cup, a model car. Colorless as beach pebbles in a drawer.

In the wardrobe a raincoat, rubber boots, clogs, sweaters, undershirts, socks, all stuffed in every which way. I run my fingers through the piles of clothes and over the top of the wardrobe. There is nothing but the dust that fell last year.

On the bed are his things from the hospital in a clear plastic bag. Rain pants, sneakers, sweatshirt, underwear, and socks. From his pocket a soft white stone that he used for chalk.

Juliane is standing in the doorway, crying. "The diapers were the only thing I threw out."

Once a month, when his fear of heights grew worse, Isaiah would wear diapers for a couple of days. One time I bought them for him myself.

"Where's his knife?" She doesn't know.

On the windowsill there is a model ship, like an expensive shout into the soft-spokenness of the room. On the pedestal it says: "S.S. Johannes Thomsen of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark."

I have never before attempted to pry into how she keeps her head above water.

I put my arm around her shoulders.

"Juliane," I say, "would you please show me your papers?"

The rest of us have a drawer, a notebook, a file folder. Juliane has seven greasy envelopes for the safekeeping of the printed testimony of her existence. For many Greenlanders, the most difficult thing about Denmark is the paperwork. The state bureaucracy's front line of paper: application forms, documents, and official correspondence with the proper public authorities. There is a certain elegant and delicate irony in the fact that even a practically illiterate life like Juliane's has sloughed off this mountain of paper.

The little appointment slips from the alcoholism clinic on Sundholm, her birth certificate, fifty coupons from the bakery on Christianshavns Square (when they add up to 500 kroner you get a free pastry). Old tax deduction cards, statements from Bikuben Savings & Loan, and a card from Rudolph Bergh, a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. A photograph of Juliane in the King's Garden in the sunshine. Public Health insurance certificates, a passport, receipts from the electric company. Letters from Riber Credit Bureau. A bundle of thin slips of paper, like check stubs, from which it's apparent that Juliane receives a pension of 9,400 kroner a month. At the bottom of the stack there is a bunch of letters. I have never been able to read people's letters, so I skip the private ones. The ones at the bottom are official, typewritten. I'm about to put them all away when I see it.

A peculiar letter. "We hereby wish to inform you that the directors of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark, at their most recent meeting, have decided to grant you a widow's pension following the death of Norsaq Christiansen. The monthly pension awarded to you is in the amount of 9,000 kroner, to be adjusted according to the current cost-of-living index." The letter is signed, on behalf of the board of directors, by "E. Lübing, Chief Accountant."

There's nothing very odd about that. But after the letter was typed up, someone turned it 90 degrees. And with a fountain pen that person wrote diagonally in the margin: "I am so sorry. Elsa Lübing."

You can learn something about your fellow human beings from what they write in the margin. People have speculated a great deal about Fermat's vanished proof. In a book concerning the never-proven postulate that whereas it is frequently possible to divide the square of a number into the sum of two other squares, this is not possible with powers higher than two, Fermat wrote in the margin: "I've discovered a truly wonderful proof for this argument. Unfortunately, this margin is too narrow to contain it."

Two years ago some woman sat in the office of the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark and dictated this utterly proper letter. It adheres to all formalities, it has no typing mistakes, it is as it should be. Then she received it for approval and read it over and signed it. She sat there for a moment. And then she turned the paper around and wrote, "I am so sorry."

"What did he die of?"

"Norsaq? He was on an expedition to the west coast of Greenland. There was an accident."

"What kind of accident?"

"He ate something that made him sick. I think."

She gazes at me helplessly. People die. You won't get anywhere by wondering how or why.

"We consider the case closed."

I have the Toenail on the phone. I've left Juliane to her own thoughts, which are now moving like plankton in a sea of sweet wine. Maybe I should have stayed with her. But I'm no angel of mercy. I can hardly take care of my own soul. And besides, I have my own hangups. That's what made me call police headquarters. They connect me with Division A, and they tell me that the detective is still in his office. Judging by his voice, he's been there far too long.

"The death certificate. was signed today at four o'clock."

"What about the footprints?" I ask.

"If you'd seen what I've seen, or if you had children of your own, you'd know how completely irresponsible and unpredictable they are."

His voice shifts into a growl at the thought of all the grief his own brats have caused him.

"Of course, it's only a matter of a shitty Greenlander," I say.

There's silence in the receiver. He is a man who, even after a long workday, has reserves for adjusting his thermostat to quick frost.

"Now I'm damned well going to tell you one thing. We do not discriminate. Whether it's a pygmy that fell, or a serial killer and sex offender, we go all the way. All the way. Do you understand? I picked up the forensics report myself. There is no indication that this was anything but an accident. It's tragic, but we have 175 of them a year."

"I'm thinking of filing a complaint."

"By all means, file a complaint."

Then we hang up. In reality, I hadn't thought about complaining. But I've had a hard day, too.

I realize the police have a lot to do. I understand him quite well. I understood everything he said.

Except for one thing. When I gave my statement the day before yesterday, I answered a lot of questions. But some of them I didn't answer. One of them had to do with "marital status."

"That's none of your business," I told the officer. "Unless you're interested in a date."

Why would the police know anything about my private life? I ask myself: How did the Toenail know that I don't have any children? I can't answer that question.

It's just a little question. But the world is always so busy wondering why a single, defenseless woman, if she's in my age group, doesn't have a husband and a couple of charming little toddlers. Over time you develop an allergic reaction to the question.

I get out a few sheets of unlined paper and an envelope and sit down at the kitchen table. At the top I write: "Copenhagen, December 19, 1993. To the Attorney General. My name is Smilla Jaspersen, and with this letter I would like to file a complaint."