Smilla's Sense of Snow Read Free Page B

appointment.
    ***
    It says "State Autopsy Center for Greenland" on the glass door I come to after I walk back along Frederik V's Street, past the Teilum building and the institute of Forensic Medicine over to the new annex of the University Hospital; I take the elevator up past floors marked on the button panel as the Greenland Medical Association, the Arctic Center, and the Institute for Arctic Medicine, on up to the sixth floor, which is a penthouse suite.
    That morning I had called police headquarters and they transferred me to Division A, who put the Toenail on the line.
    "You can see him in the morgue," he says. "I also want to talk to the doctor." "Loyen," he says. "You can talk to Loyen."
    Beyond the glass door there is a short passageway leading to a sign on which it says PROFESSOR and, in smaller letters, J. LOYEN. Below the sign there is a doorway, and beyond the door a cloakroom, and beyond that a chilly office with two secretaries sitting under photostats of icebergs on blue water in brilliant sunlight, and beyond that the real office begins.
    They haven't put in a tennis court here. But not for lack of space. It's probably because Loyen has a couple of them in his back yard in Hellerup, and two more at his summer home on Dune Road in Skagen. And because tennis courts would have ruined the weighty solemnity of the room.
    There's a thick carpet on the floor, two walls covered with books, picture windows looking out over the city and Fælled Park, a safe built into the wall, paintings in gold frames, a microscope on a light table, a glass case with a gilded mask that appears to be from an Egyptian sarcophagus, two sofa groups, two monitors on pedestals that have been turned off, and there's still enough floor space to go for a jog should you get tired of sitting behind a desk.
    The desk is a vast mahogany ellipse from which he rises and comes forward to greet me. He is six foot seven and about seventy years old, straight-backed, and tan as a desert sheik in his white lab coat. He has a kind expression on his face, like someone who sits up on a camel benevolently gazing down on the rest of the world crawling past in the sand.
    "Loyen."
    Even though he omits his title, it's still understood. Along with the fact that we must not forget that the rest of the world's population is at least a head shorter than him, and here, under his feet, he has legions of other doctors who have not succeeded in becoming professors, and above him is only the white ceiling, the blue sky, and Our Lord-and maybe not even that.
    "Please sit down, my dear."
    He radiates courtesy and dominance, and I ought to be happy. Other women before me have been happy, and there will be many more. What could be better at life's difficult moments than having six feet seven inches of polished medical self-confidence to lean on? And in such reassuring surroundings as these?
    On his desk are framed photographs of the doctor's wife and the Airedale and Daddy's three big boys, who are bound to study medicine and get top grades in all their exams, including clinical sexology.
    I've never claimed that I was perfect. Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.
    But I don't show it. I sit down on the very edge of the chair, and I place my dark gloves and the hat with the dark veil on the very edge of the mahogany surface. Facing Professor Loyen, like so many times before, there is a black-clad, grieving, inquiring, uncertain woman.
    "You're a Greenlander?"
    It's because of his professional experience that he can see it.
    "My mother was from Thule. You were the one who. . . examined Isaiah?"
    He gestures affirmatively.
    "What I'd like to know is: what did he die of?" The question catches him a little off guard. "From the fall."
    "But what does that mean, physiologically?"
    He thinks it over for a moment, not used to having to explain the obvious.
    "He fell from a height of seven stories. The