No one who falls into the water in Greenland comes up again. The sea is less than 39°F, and at that temperature all the processes of decomposition stop. That's why fermentation of the stomach contents does not occur here; in Denmark, however, it gives suicides renewed buoyancy and brings them to the surface, to wash up on shore.

But they found the remains of her kayak, which led them to conclude that it must have been a walrus. Walruses are unpredictable. They can be hypersensitive and shy. But if they come a little farther south, and if it's autumn, when there are few fish, they can be transformed into some of the swiftest and most meticulous killers in the great ocean. With their two tusks they can stave in the side of a ship made of ferrocement. I once saw hunters holding a cod up to a walrus that they had captured alive. The walrus puckered up his lips as for a kiss and then sucked the meat right off the bones of the fish.

"It would be nice if you came out here for Christmas, Smilla."

"Christmas doesn't mean anything to me."

"Are you planning to let your father sit here all alone?" This is one of the annoying tendencies that Moritz has developed with age-this mixture of perfidy and sentimentality.

"Couldn't you try the Old Men's Home?"

I have stood up, and now he comes over to me. "You're damned heartless, Smilla. And that's why you've never been able to hold on to a man."

He's as close to tears as he can get. "Father," I say, "write me a prescription."

He switches immediately, fast as lightning, from complaint to concern, just as he did with my mother.

"Are you ill, Smilla?"

"Very. But with this piece of paper you can save my life and keep your Hippocratic oath. It has to be five figures." He winces; it's a matter of his life's blood. We're talking about his vital organs: his wallet and his checkbook. I put on my fur. Benja does not come out to say goodbye. At the door he hands me the check. He knows that this pipeline is his only connection to my life. Even this he is afraid of losing.

"Don't you want Fernando to drive you home?" Then something dawns on him. "Smilla," he shouts, "you're not going away, are you?"

There is a snow-covered lawn between us. It might just as well have been the ice cap.

"There's something weighing on my conscience," I say. "It'll take money to do something about it."

"In that case," he says, half to himself, "I'm afraid that check isn't nearly enough."

In this way he has the last word. You can't win every time.

7

Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's not a coincidence, that he arrives when the workers are at lunch, so that the roof is deserted.

There is bright sunshine with a hint of warmth, blue sky, white seagulls, a view of the shipyard at Limhamn in Sweden across the Sound, and not a trace of the snow that was the reason for us standing here: me and Mr. Ravn, the investigator for the district attorney.

He's short, no taller than I am, but he's wearing a very large gray coat with so much padding in the shoulders that he looks like a ten-year-old boy acting in a musical about Prohibition. His face is dark and burned-out like lava, and so gaunt that his skin is stretched across his skull like a mummy. But his eyes are alert and observant. "I thought I'd just stop by," he says.

"You're much too kind. Do you always stop by regarding complaints?"

"Only rarely. Normally the case goes to the local board. Let's just say it's because of the nature of this case and because of your thought-provoking letter of complaint."

I say nothing. I let the silence work on the investigator a little. It has no visible effect. His sand-colored eyes rest on me without flinching and without embarrassment. He will stand here as long as it takes. This alone makes him an unusual man.

"I spoke to Professor Loyen. He told me that you came in to see him. That you thought the boy was afraid of heights."

His position in the world makes it impossible for me to have any real trust in him. But I feel an urge to reveal part of what is bothering me.

"There were the tracks in the snow."

Very few people know how to listen. Their haste pulls them out of the conversation, or they try internally to improve the situation, or they're preparing what their entrance will be when you shut up and it's their turn to step on stage.

It's different with the man standing in front of me. When I talk, he listens without distraction to what I say, and only to what I say.

"I read the report and looked at the pictures…"

"There was something else, something more."

Now we're on our way into something that has to be said but can't be explained.

"They were acceleration tracks. When you take off from snow or ice, a pronation occurs in the ankle joint. Like when you walk barefoot in the sand."

I try to demonstrate the slight outward rotation with my wrist.

"If the movement is too fast, not firm enough, there will be a little slip backward."

"As with every child who is playing…"

"When you're used to playing in snow, you don't leave that kind of track because that movement is not efficient, like faulty distribution of your weight going uphill on cross-country skis."

Even I can hear how unconvincing it must sound. I wait for a scornful remark. But it doesn't come.

He looks out across the roof. He has no nervous tics, no habit of touching his hat or lighting his pipe or shifting his weight from one foot to another. He has no notebook that he pulls out. He is simply a very small man who listens and thinks things over carefully.

"Interesting," he says at last. "But also rather… insubstantial. It would be difficult to present this to a layman. Difficult to base anything on it."

He was right. Reading snow is like listening to music. To describe what you've read is like explaining music in writing.

When it happens for the first time, it's like discovering that you're awake while everyone else is sleeping. Equal parts loneliness and omnipotence. We're on our way from Qinnissut to the mouth of Inglefield Bay. It's winter, the wind is blowing, and it's terrifyingly cold. When the women need to pee, they have to light a Primus stove under a blanket in order to pull down their pants without getting frostbite instantly.

For some time we've noticed that fog is on the way, but when it comes, it comes suddenly, like a collective blindness. Even the dogs huddle together. But for me there really isn't any fog. There is a wild, bright feeling of elation, because I know with absolute certainty which way we should go.

My mother listens to me, and the others listen to her. I am placed on the front sled and I can remember feeling that we were driving along a string of silver, stretched between me and the house in Qaanaaq. The instant before the corner appears out of the night, I know that it's there.

Maybe it wasn't the first time. But that's how I remember it. Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they are always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

There is another image of fog, possibly from that same summer. I have never sailed much. I'm not familiar with the landscape underwater. It's unclear why they've taken me along. But I always know where we are in relation to landmarks on shore.

From then on they start taking me along almost every time.

At the American military Coldwater Laboratory on Pylot Island they had people on staff to research the "sense of orientation" phenomenon. There I saw thick books and long lists of articles about the fact that directionally constant winds blow along the ground, giving ice crystals a particular angle, so that even in bad visibility you should be able to determine the points of the compass. That another, barely noticeable breeze a little higher up causes a definite cooling of one side of the face in fog. That the subconscious subliminally registers even the light not normally noticed. There is a theory that in the Arctic regions the human brain is able to register the powerful electromagnetic turbulence from the magnetic North Pole in the vicinity of Bucha Felix.