Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg

climb down, and it’s also a descent into the depression waiting for me down there.
    â€œI’m parked at the corner,” he says.
    And then he makes his big mistake.
    â€œI would suggest that while we review the case, you withdraw your complaint. So that we can work undisturbed. And for the same reason, if the newspapers should contact you, I think you ought to refuse to comment on the case. And don’t mention what you’ve told me, either. Refer them to the police; tell them we’re still working on the case.”
    I can feel myself blushing. But it’s not from embarrassment. It’s from anger.
    I’m not perfect. I think more highly of snow and ice than love. It’s easier for me to be interested in mathematics than to have affection for my fellow human beings. But I am anchored to something in life that is constant. You can call it a sense of orientation; you can call it woman’s intuition; you can call it whatever you like. I’m standing on a foundation and have no farther to fall. It could be that I haven’t managed to organize my life very well. But I always have a grip—with at least one finger at a time—on Absolute Space.
    That’s why there’s a limit to how far the world can twist out of joint, and to how badly things can go before I find out. I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that something is wrong.
    I don’t have a driver’s license. If I’m dressed up, there are too many parameters to keep in check if I have to steer a bicycle, survey the traffic, maintain my dignity, and hold on to a little hunter’s hat I bought at Vagn’s on ∅ster Street. So I usually either walk or take a bus.
    Today I decide to walk. It’s Tuesday, December 21, and it’s cold and clear. First I stroll to the library of the Geological Institute on ∅ster Vold Street.
    One sentence that I’m quite fond of is Dedekind’s postulate about linear compression. It says—more or less—that anywhere in a series of numbers, within any infinitesimally small interval, you can find infinity. When I look for the Cryolite Corporation of
Denmark in the library’s computer, I find enough material for a year’s worth of reading.
    I select White Gold . It turns out to be a book with sparkles. The workers at the cryolite quarry have a sparkle in their eyes, the industrial tycoons that earn the dough have a sparkle in their eyes, the Greenlandic clean-up staff have a sparkle in their eyes, and the blue fjords of Greenland are full of reflections and flashes of sunshine.
    Then I stroll past ∅sterport station and down along Strand Boulevard. To number 72B, where the Cryolite Corporation of Denmark—next to its competitor, the ∅resund Cryolite Corporation —had 500 employees and two laboratory buildings and a raw cryolite hall and a sorting hall and a canteen and workshops. Now all that’s left is railroad tracks, the demolished plant, some sheds and shacks, and a single red brick building. From my reading I know that the two big cryolite deposits at Saqqaq in Greenland were finally depleted in the sixties and that during the seventies the company switched over to other activities.
    Now there is only a barricaded area, a driveway, and a group of workmen wearing white coveralls enjoying a quiet Christmas beer, getting ready for the approaching holiday.
    A bold and enterprising girl would go right up to them and salute like a Girl Scout and talk their lingo and pump them for information about who Mrs. Lübing was and what happened to her.
    I don’t have that kind of directness. I don’t like talking to strangers. I don’t like Danish workmen in groups. Actually, I don’t like any men at all in groups.
    While I’ve been thinking, I’ve walked all the way around the block, and the workmen have caught sight of me and wave me closer, and they turn out to be courteous gentlemen who have been