Suction cup

The Suction cup is a small household tool that becomes indispensable to Smilla’s search through Isaiah’s room. Recognized first as a device glaziers use to carry large sheets of glass, it proves to be the one object capable of retrieving what Isaiah concealed behind a nearly flush brick. Its ordinary function—creating a grip on a smooth surface—turns into an instrument for uncovering a secret.

Identification and Function

Smilla has kept the cup in her pocket for several days, anticipating a meeting. When she shows it, she identifies it as a cup used by glaziers to carry large pieces of glass. She later takes it from the collection of Isaiah’s belongings, where it is one item among carved wooden objects, a repaired Walkman, glasses, and cassette tapes.

The cup’s importance lies in its simple mechanism. Smilla cannot push the loosened brick inward without making it fall into the wall cavity, and there is no edge she can grasp to pull it out. Pressing the black rubber disk against the brick and using the small handle to create suction gives her the necessary hold.

The Hidden Compartment

After searching the room without finding anything, Smilla recalls that workers had opened part of the wall during an inspection for dry rot six months earlier. Beneath the workbench, a six-by-six-inch rectangle of exposed brick marks the repair. She infers that Isaiah had used the period while the mortar was still damp to shift one brick gradually, returning to move it at fifteen-minute intervals until it could be pressed back into place without an obvious gap.

The cup completes the concealed arrangement. With considerable resistance, it pulls the brick toward Smilla. Behind it, she finds a nail, nylon cord, and a cigar box suspended inside the wall; a hardened drop of epoxy secures the cord to the nail. The cup does not itself reveal what Isaiah hid, but it makes the hidden mechanism accessible and brings his ingenious construction into view.

Narrative Significance

The Suction cup links an everyday tool to the painstaking care of Isaiah’s secret. What had been a portable object with a straightforward use acquires a second function in the room: it lets Smilla cross the narrow physical barrier between an apparently ordinary wall and Isaiah’s concealed cache. Its effectiveness depends on the very material property that defines it—its ability to adhere to a flat surface—and turns that property into a means of recovering evidence.