Smilla's Sense of Snow Read Online Free PDF Page B

system controls the tone of the arteries. He has a theory that by using this blockade, he can help the poor circulation in the legs of overweight wealthy people.
    While he’s giving an injection he is as focused as any human being could be. He thinks of nothing else, not even the bill for ten thousand kroner that his secretary is typing up, and which will fall due before the first of January. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year—next, please.
    During the past twenty-five years he has been among the two hundred golf players fighting for the last fifty Eurocards. He lives with a ballet dancer who is thirteen years younger than me and who walks around looking at him as if the only thing she lives for is the hope that he will strip the tulle tutu and toe shoes off her.
    So my father is a man who possesses everything he can get his hands on. And that’s what he thinks he’s showing me here on the golf course. That he has everything his heart could desire. Even the beta-blockers, which he’s been taking for the past ten years to steady his hands, are largely without side effects.
    We walk around the house, along the raked gravel paths; in the summer Sørensen, the gardener, takes a pair of shears to the edges, so you could cut your feet on them if you don’t watch out. I’m wearing a sealskin coat over a jumpsuit of embroidered wool with a zipper. Seen from a distance, we are a father and daughter with a plethora of wealth and vitality. On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.
    The living room has a floor of bog oak and borders of stainless steel around a wall of glass facing the birdbath and rosebushes and
the drop in social status toward Strand Drive. Benja is standing at the fireplace wearing a leotard and woolen socks, stretching the muscles in her feet and ignoring me. She looks pale and lovely and naughty, like an elf maiden turned stripper.
    â€œBrentan,” I say.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    She enunciates every syllable, the way she learned at the Royal Theater school.
    â€œFor bad feet, dear. Brentan for fungus between your toes. You can get it without a prescription now.”
    â€œIt’s not fungus,” she says coldly. “I don’t think people get that until they reach your age.”
    â€œJuveniles do too, dear. Especially people who work out a lot. And it spreads to the crotch quite easily.”
    Snarling, Benja retreats backward into the adjoining chambers. She has an abundance of raw energy, but she had a protected childhood and a skyrocketing career. She hasn’t yet experienced the adversity necessary to develop a psyche that can keep fighting back.
    Señora Gonzales arranges the tea things on the coffee table, which is a three-inch-thick glass plate on top of a polished marble block.
    â€œIt’s been a long time, Smilla.”
    He talks about his new paintings for a while, about the memoirs he’s writing, and about what he’s practicing on the piano. He’s stalling. Preparing himself for the impact from the blow that will come when I state my business, which has nothing to do with him. He’s grateful that I let him talk. But in reality neither of us has any illusions.
    â€œTell me about Johannes Loyen,” I say.
    My father was in his early thirties when he came to Greenland and met my mother.
    The Inuit Aisivak told Knud Rasmussen that in the beginning the world was inhabited only by two men, who were both great sorcerers. Since they wanted to multiply, one of them transformed his body in such a way that he could give birth; and then the two of them created many children.

    In the 1860s the Greenland catechist Hanseeraq recorded in the diary of the Brethren Congregation, Diarium Friedrichstal, many examples of women who hunted as men did. There are examples in Rink’s collection of legends, and in Reports from Greenland . It has certainly never been commonplace, but it has happened.