She laughs at the thought that silk stockings had once made her happy. "I've noticed that you're interested in clothes, too. That disappears with age. For the last thirty years I've worn only white. If you limit earthly things, you set your thoughts free for the spiritual."

I don't say a word, but I make a mental note of the remark-for the next time I have pants made by tailor Tvilling on Heine Street. He collects sparkling gems like that.

"It was an apparatus 65 inches by 3 feet by 45 inches. It operated with two different levers. One for Continental types of decimal coinage and one for British pound sterling and pence. The relevant information was punched in a type of hole code on data entry cards that were put into the machine. This meant that the information was less accessible. When numbers are compressed onto punch cards and transformed into code, it's more difficult to understand them. That's centralization. That's what the director said. Centralization always has certain associated costs."

In some ways it has become easier to orient ourselves in the modern world. Every phenomenon has become international. The Greenland Trading Company-as part of centralization-closed its business on Maxwell Island in 1979. My brother had been a hunter there for ten years, the king of the island, as unchallengeable as a male baboon. The closing of the store drove him south to Upernavik. When I was posted at the meteorological station, he was sweeping the docks in the harbor. The following year he hanged himself. That was the year when the suicide rate in Greenland became the highest in the world. The Greenland Ministry wrote in Atuagagdliutit that it looked as if it was going to be difficult to combine the necessary centralization with the hunting trade. They didn't write that there were bound to be quite a few more suicides along the way. But that was understood.

"Try the cookies," she says. "Spekulaas. I baked them myself. It has taken me an entire lifetime to figure out how to take them out of the mold without ruining the pattern."

The cookies are flat, dark brown, with slivers of burnt almonds pressed into the bottom. She looks at them intently. People who have lived alone all their lives can allow themselves to refine highly specialized interests. Such as how to take the cookies out of the mold.

"I cheat a little," she says. "For example, this one here. The mold is a man and his wife. It's quite difficult to get the eyes right. That's the trouble with very dry pastry dough. So I use a knitting needle once they're out of the mold and lying on the table. So it's not the original design, but close to it. Something similar takes place in a company. Then it's called 'good accounting practice.' It's a flexible term that covers what the auditors will accept. Do you know how responsibility is shared in companies listed on the stock exchange?"

I shake my head. The cookies combine butter and spices in such a way that you could eat a hundred of them and only realize how sick you are after it's too late.

"The management; of course, is fiscally accountable to the board of directors, and ultimately to the stockholders. The finance director was the 'executive chairman of the board.' That may seem a very practical division of power. But it demands the utmost trust. Ottesen was always at the quarry. The sales director was always away. I don't think it's an exaggeration *to say that for many years the finance director made all decisions of importance for the corporation. Naturally, there was no reason to doubt his integrity. An absolutely trustworthy decision-maker. Both an attorney and an accountant. Former city council member. Representing the Social Democratic Party. He has been and still is on several boards of directors. Housing associations and savings banks."

She hands me the bowl. Danes express their strongest feelings in conjunction with food. That became clear to me the first time I was out visiting friends with Moritz. When I took a third helping of cookies, he looked straight at me.

"Keep on taking until you're ashamed of yourself," he said.

I wasn't confident about my Danish, but I understood what he meant. I helped myself three more times. Without taking my eyes off him. The room disappeared, the people we were visiting disappeared, I didn't taste the cookies. Only Moritz existed.

"I'm still not ashamed," I said.

I helped myself three more times. Then he grabbed the platter and put it out of my reach. I had won. The first of a long series of small, important victories over him and Danish manners.

Elsa Lübing's cookies are of a different kind. They are supposed to make me both her confidante and her accomplice.

"The auditors are chosen at the stockholders' meeting. But the corporation's shares-aside from those owned by the finance director himself and the government-are divided among many hands. They are held by all the heirs of the eight partners who acquired the first mineral rights in the last century. It has never been possible to gather them all for a general stockholders' meeting. That means that the director has had an inordinately large influence. It's worth noting that all decisions dealing with the most economically significant part of Greenland's mineral rights have been made by one individual, don't you think?"

"How touching."

"There is also a business aspect. The corporation was a very big customer. Any auditor who took a stand against the director had to be prepared to lose this customer. Finally, there was the fact that the same people played various roles in the corporation. The corporation's auditor through the sixties later became one of the director's colleagues when he started his law practice. On January 7, 1967, I balanced the semiannual accounts. There was one entry that was not itemized. For 115,000 kroner: A large amount in those days. Perhaps it wouldn't have surprised an outsider. The board probably wouldn't have caught it. Not in a sales volume of 50 million kroner: But for me, who dealt with the daily accounts, it was unacceptable. So I looked for the pertinent file card. It wasn't there. They were all numbered. It should have been there. But it was missing. Then I went up to the director's office. I had worked under his leadership for twenty years. He listened to me, looked down at his papers, and then said, `Miss Liibing, I authorized that entry. For technical bookkeeping reasons, it was too difficult to itemize. Our auditor feels that the present listing is acceptable accounting practice. Anything beyond that lies outside your sphere of expertise.' "

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I went back and entered the figures. As I had been instructed to do. And with that I made myself an accomplice. To something which I didn't understand, which I have never understood. I did not administer the 'talents' entrusted to my care. I showed myself to be unworthy of trust."

I empathize with her. The problem was not that they called her competence into question by withholding information from her. Or that they gave her an impudent answer. The problem was that they had tampered with her ideals of honesty.

"I will tell you where this amount appears in the books."

"Let me guess," I say. "It appears in the accounts for the corporation's geological expedition to the Barren Glacier on Gela Alta off the west coast of Greenland in the summer of '66."

She looks at me with narrowed eyes.

"In the report from '91 there were references to an earlier expedition," I explain. "It's as simple as that."

"There was an accident that time, too," she says. "An accident with explosives. Two of the eight participants died."

I have an idea why she has summoned me. She sees me as a kind of auditor. Someone who might be able to help her and Our Lord by auditing an unsettled account from January 7, 1967.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks.