Peter Høeg - Smilla's Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

"They need a ship," he says thoughtfully. "I have a friend who knows something about ships."

I feel like asking him questions, to find out a small part of all that I don't know about him. But I stop myself. "I was at the Trade Commission. Geoinform has three people on its board."

I mention the three names. He shakes his head. Outside the window the Pleiades are barely visible. I point to them.

"The Pleiades. In my language, they're called qilut-tuusat."

He pronounces it slowly and carefully. The way he cooks. His breath is aromatic and tangy. From nuts roasted in a toaster oven.

Standing in the middle of the bedroom, we take off each other's clothes.

He has a light, fumbling brutality, which several times makes me think that this time it'll cost me my sanity. In our dawning, mutual intimacy, I induce him to open the little slit in the head of his penis so I can put my clitoris inside and fuck him.

First we enter the salon. The portholes are brass, the walls and ceiling mahogany. The chairs have light-colored leather cushions and are bolted to the floor with brass rivets and furnished with bronze holders mounted on gimbals for whiskey glasses, and they are so deep that even during an Arctic typhoon you could sit and enjoy the clinking of the ice cubes in your triple Laphroig.

The next room is a promenade of eighty feet along the keel through more mahogany and past more polished portholes, and past ship's clocks and opulent desks bolted to the floor where a dozen people are working as if everything has to be finished in the next thirty seconds. The women are typing on word processing keyboards, the men are talking on three telephones at once, and the ceiling has disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke and frenzy.

Then comes a reception area. A middle-aged woman is sitting there, wearing makeup and a lace blouse and tailored jacket. She has the forearms of someone who had signed on as a blacksmith. She would have scared me if I hadn't had the mechanic along.

He knows her. They shake hands and it looks as if they're going to arm wrestle, and we continue on into the captain's cabin. Along the way we pass glass cabinets with models of the kind of tanker so long that the crew has to set up camp three times on a trip from one end to the other.

Inside, the portholes are as large as well covers, placed lower down on the wall so you can see the shrubs of the little park in the middle of Sankt Anna Square. You are reminded that this entire maritime mirage is located on the third floor of a mansion with its back to Amalienborg Palace. It is the worst interior architectonic extravaganza I have ever seen.

Behind the desk, which has a rim around the edge so the gold ballpoint pens won't roll onto the floor during an imaginary sea voyage, sits a boy who looks fourteen at most, newly confirmed, his sandy-colored hair plastered down, and freckles on his nose.

When he speaks, it's in a thin, light alto, full of dignity. "I know what you want to say, honey. You want to say: 'Where's your father, little boy, because he's the one we've come to talk to.' But you're mistaken. I'll be thirty-three next month. If a child molester accidentally happened to kill me, there would be 25 million kroner for my wife and my three kids after the business was sold."

Then he gives me a wink.

His name is Birgo Lander. He's the mechanic's friend. He is the owner and director of this shipping firm. He spent his youth in practically all the Danish reform schools; he's an orphan, rich, totally without scruples, even more dyslexic than the mechanic, addicted to gambling, and a drunkard; with his face he could ride the bus on a child's ticket, but that's not necessary since he owns a custom-made Jaguar.

Part of this I know, along with everyone in Denmark, from newspapers and magazines. The mechanic told me the rest on the way over here.

He takes the mechanic's hand in both of his. He doesn't say anything, but he looks at him as if he has been reunited with a long-absent big brother. Then we sit down. The mechanic pushes his chair back a little and withdraws from the conversation. I'm the one who's going to explain.

"If I wish to rent a ship of about 4,000 tons to transport a cargo that I have no intention of discussing, to a place that I am not going to reveal either, how would I go about it? And if I were already in the process of looking for the right ship, could anyone trace my efforts?"

He stands up. He's wearing high-heeled cowboy boots. They don't really do much for his height. From a cupboard on the wall he takes out a double bottle of clear fruit brandy. The mechanic and I decline. He pours himself one in a tall, cylindrical tumbler.

The whole room smells of fresh pears. Lander sips at his drink. Seven times in a row. Then he looks at me to see whether I'm shocked.

"I'm drunk from ten in the morning on," he says. "And I can afford it."

His eyes are swimming, but his voice is clear. "If you tried to find a ship, you could be traced. But only by someone who was friends with a ship broker. And you're friends with one now, honey."

Somehow I already like him. A throwaway child, someone who has always had a hard time dealing with the world and hasn't actually wanted to learn how.

He takes a 1,000-krone bill out of a drawer and puts it on the desk.

"Everything has a front and a back. Normally, they are of equal size."

He tenderly turns over the bill. "But in the shipping industry, things are arranged so cunningly that the back is much bigger than the front."

He throws out his hand. "The front is this location on this expensive square. It's all the cigar-box wood and the suites you walked through to reach this office."

He taps his thin hair. "The back is inside here. But you don't 'rent' a ship, honey. You 'charter' it. From a shipowner. It's handled by, contract. A contract has a front side which-if worst comes to worst-can be presented in maritime court. On the front it says where the ship is sailing and what it's sailing with."

He takes a sip of the brandy. "But you are reticent with information about the destination and cargo. So you request a contract in which the destination is listed as `the entire world,' and the freight as `unspecified.' That would make any shipowner unhappy. His ships are his children. He wants to know where they're going to be playing. Preferably avoid bad company. But no trouble is so great that you can't buy your way out of it. So you suggest that a so-called side letter, or side contract, be prepared. The Danish shipping business is full of side contracts. During the past fifteen years practically every Danish shipping company has transported coal from South Africa and ammunition to the Middle East, even though this is against the law. It takes side contracts many yards long. And they're not for the maritime court. They're just as sensitive to light as undeveloped film. That's what you would ask for. It says that you will pay the shipping company a kind of bonus in order to continue to be a discreet and secretive young lady. Let's play a game. Let's say that I'm the shipowner that you want to charter a ship from. Ninety-eight percent of all deals in this business are made in private. So you confide to Uncle Birgo, in confidence, where your little boat is really going."

"To the west coast of Greenland."

"That will make it more difficult for the person who wants to do the chartering, and easier for the one who wants to trace the transaction. A ship has to be classified `ice class' to sail to Greenland. The Maritime Inspection Board of Denmark requires all ships to be classified every fourth year in terms of the hull, once a year for safety equipment and engines. If a ship is not approved, it cannot put to sea at all. Since last year, ships sailing to Greenland must have a double hull."