Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg Page A

girls who were named Ane after my mother. I’ve visited them many times and sat and talked with them, in order to find, through the woman before me, a glimpse of the one who left me.
    They’re pulling the ropes out of the eyelets on the side of the coffin. For a brief moment my yearning feels like madness. If only they would open the coffin for a moment and let me lie down beside his cold little body that someone has stuck a needle into, that they have opened up and photographed and cut slices out of and closed up again; if only I could just once feel his erection against my thigh, a gesture of intimated, boundless eroticism, the beating of a moth’s wing against my skin, the dark insects of happiness.
    It’s so cold that they will have to wait to fill the grave, so when we leave, it lies open behind us. The mechanic and I walk side by side.
    His name is Peter. It’s less than thirteen hours since I said his name for the first time.
    Sixteen hours ago it was midnight. On Kalkbrænderi Road. I’ve bought twelve big black plastic bags, four rolls of duct tape, four tubes of super glue, and a Maglite flashlight. I have slit open the bags, doubled them up, and glued them together. Then stuffed them into my Louis Vuitton handbag.

    I’m wearing a pair of high boots, a red turtleneck sweater, a sealskin coat from Groenlandia, and a skirt from Scottish Corner. I’ve learned that it’s always easier to explain things if you’re nicely dressed.
    What happens next lacks a certain degree of elegance.
    The entire factory area is surrounded by a fence twelve feet high, which has a single strand of barbed wire along the top. In my mind I imagine a door in the back, facing Kalkbrænderi Road and the train tracks. I’ve seen it before.
    What I didn’t see was the sign saying that Danish Watchdogs are on guard here. That might not mean anything. So many signs are put up for no other reason than to maintain the proper atmosphere. So I give a trial kick at the door. Within five seconds a dog is standing at the gate. He might be a German shepherd. He looks like something that was lying in front of the door for people to wipe their feet on. That might explain the foul mood that he’s in.
    There are people in Greenland who have a way with dogs. My mother did. Before nylon ropes became common in the seventies, we used harnesses made of sealskin as towlines. The other dog teams chewed through their harnesses. Our dogs didn’t touch theirs. My mother had forbidden it.
    Then there are those born with a fear of dogs who never overcome it. I’m one of those people. So I walk back along Strand Boulevard and take a cab home.
    I don’t go up to my apartment. I go to Juliane’s. I take a pound of cod liver out of her refrigerator. Her friend at the fish market gives her free liver if it’s split. In her bathroom I pour half a bottle of Halcion pills into my pocket. Her doctor prescribed them for her recently. She sells them. Halcion is marketable among junkies. She uses the money to buy her own medicine, the kind that customs officers charge duty on.
    In Rink’s collection there is a story from West Greenland about a bogeyman who can’t fall asleep but must keep watch for all eternity. But that’s because he hasn’t tried Halcion. When you take it for the first time, half a tablet can put you into a deep coma.

    Juliane lets me forage. She has given up on almost everything, including asking me questions.
    â€œYou’ve forgotten me!” she shouts after me.
    I take a taxi back to Kalkbrænderi Road. The cab starts to smell like fish.
    Standing beneath the streetlight under the viaduct facing the Free Harbor, I crush the pills into the liver. Now I smell like fish, too.
    This time I don’t have to call the dog. He’s standing there waiting, hoping that I would come back. I toss the liver over the fence. You hear so much about dogs’ keen sense of