Smilla's Sense of Snow

By Peter Høeg

He makes us dinner.
     On principle, when people feel comfortable in a home, they end up in the kitchen. In Qaanaaq we lived in the kitchen. Here I settle for standing in the doorway. The kitchen is spacious enough, but he fills it up all by himself.
     There are some woman who can make souffles. Who just happen to have a recipe for mocha parfait stuffed into rheir sports bra. Who can stack up their own wedding cakes with one hand and produce a pepper steak Nossi Be with the other.
     That ought to make all of us happy. As long as it doesn´t mean that the rest of us have to have a guilty conscience because we´re still not on first-name basis with our toasters.
     He has a mountain of fish and a mountain of vegetables. Salmon, mackerel, cod, various types of flounder. Tails, heads, fins. Two big crabs. And corrots, onions, leeks, parsnips, fennel, and Jerusalem artichokes.
     He rinses and boils the vegetables.
     I tell him about Ravn and Captain Telling.
     He puts on some rice. With cardamom and star aniseed.
     I tell him about the threats. That they can arrets me whenever they like.
     He takes out the pieces of fish gradually. I remember this from Greenland. From the days when we took time to cook our food. Different kinds of fish have different cooking times. Cod is done right away. Mackere a little later, and salmon even later.
     "I´m afraid of being locked up," I say.
     He puts the crabs in last. He lets them boil for no more than five minutes.
     In a way, I´m relieved that he doesn´t say anything, doesn´t yell at me. He´s the only other person who knows how much we know. How much we will now have to forget.
     It seems necessary to explain my claustrophobia to him.
     "Do you know what the foundation of mathematics is?" I ask. "The foundation af mathematics is numbers. If anyone asked me whar makes me truly happy, I would say: numbers. Snow and ice and numbers. And do you know why?"
     He splits the claws with a nutcracker and pulls out the meat with curved tweezers.
     "Because the number system is like human life. First you have the naturel numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. The numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers a sense of longing, and do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing?"
     He adds cream and several drops of orange juice to the soup.
     "The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. And human consciousness expands and grows even more, and the child discovers the in between spaces. Between stones, between pieces of moss on the stones, between people. And between numbers. And do you know what that leads to? It leads to fractions. Whole numbers plus fractions produce rational numbers. And human conciousness doesn´t stop there. It wants to og beyond reason. It adds an operation as absurd as the extraction of roots. And produces the irrational numbers."
     He warms French bread in the oven and fills the pepper mill.
     "It´s a form of madness. Because the irrational numbers are infinite. They can´t be written down. They force human conciousness out beyond the limits. And by adding irrational numbers to rational numbers, you get real numbers."
     I´ve stepped into the middle of the room to have more space. It´s rare that you have a chance to explain yourself to a fellow human being. Usually you have to fight for the floor. And this is important to me.
     "It doesn´t stop. It never stops. Because now, on the spot, we expand the real numbers with imaginary square roots of negative numbers. These are numbers we can´t picture, numbers that normal human conciousness cannot comprehend. And when we add the imaginary numbers to the real numbers, we have the complex number system. The first number system in which it´s possible to explain satisfactorily the crystal formation of ice. It´s like a vast, open landscape. The horizons. You head towards them and they keep receding. That is Greenland, and that´s what I can´t be without! That´s why I don´t want to be locked up."
     I wind up standing in front of him.
     "Smilla," he says, "can I kiss you?"
     We probably all have an image of ourselves. I´ve always thought of myself as Ms Fierce with the big mouth. Now i don´t know what to say. I feel as if he has betrayed me. Not listened the way he should have. That he has deceived me. On the other hand, he´s not doing anything. He´s not bothering me. He´s standing in front of the steaming pots and looking at me.
     I can´t think of anything to say. I just stand there, not knowing what to do with myself, and them, fortunately, the moment has passed.


Peter Høeg: Miss Smilla´s Feeling for Snow
Harvill Press 1993
pp. 107-109

Translated by Tiina Nunnally