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

"The crew?"

"Normally a ship is chartered with crew. Or you go to one of the international companies that deal exclusively with supplying full crews. But in this particular situation, you would probably prefer a `bare boat charter.' Which means that you hire a ship and nothing else. Then you find a captain. He has to be a special kind of person, the kind you can take aside and, over a full glass, tell him that in this case his wages will be a little out of the ordinary. ()n the other hand, you need all his tact and sensitivity. Along with him, you find the rest of the crew. For a ship of 4,000 tons, you need eleven to twelve men."

Now I have to ask him something. Requests are always difficult.

"If a customer had put out a feeler for that sort of ship and that sort of captain, would you be able to find out about it, Uncle Lander?"

He looks at me sadly. "The headline at the top of the page for everything in this business says: `Any negotiations whatsoever to be kept strictly private and confidential.' The shipping industry is one of the most discreet in the world."

He solemnly wraps his hands around his glass. Then he gives me a wink. "But for you, my little sweetie pie, I would go to great lengths."

He looks at the mechanic and then back at me. "If I may call you that?"

"You may call me whatever comes into your little shrunken head," I say.

He blinks once. He's so unused to opposition that he has forgotten what it feels like.

He hides his face in his hands for a moment to collect his thoughts. "This business may not look very good on the front side. But on the back it is full of what they call ethics. And the two most important rules are: You don't cheat a customer. And you never cheat a fellow shipowner."

He takes a drink. We are face to face with his philosophy of life.

"You screw the state and the authorities if an opportunity presents itself. With a big smile you break Minister Espersen's currency legislation, and travel to Capetown with a briefcase with a million in cash to bribe a Bushman who's the harbor master, who's holding a 500,000-ton tanker at the shipyard under the pretense of a quarantine. You buy five companies a year in Panama for $1,000 apiece to avoid sailing under a Danish flag and regulations. You reroute a cargo that's allergic to customs officials to a Spanish port where you've paid the local customs officers to reinvoice your crates. But you don't cheat a customer. Because you need customers to come back. And above all, you never cheat a broker. We shipping folks stick together. The way it works is, I have a customer who has a ship and you have a customer who has a cargo, and we bring them together. Next time it's the other way around. A ship broker lives off other ship brokers, who live off other ship brokers…"

He's filled with emotion. "It's one big brotherhood, honey."

He takes a drink and waits until he has regained control of his voice.

"That means that we have a network. We know other brokers from Guadeloupe to Tierra del Fuego, from Rangoon to the Outer Hebrides. And we talk to each other. Little conversations, and when you've been talking for several years, and if you have a flair for it, you end up making 100,000 kroner every time you pick up the phone and open your mouth. In every large port Lloyd's and the other big companies have an observer on staff who reports all arrivals and departures. And after a while you get to know the observers. If anyone has tried to hire a 4,000-ton ice class to carry a secret cargo to a secret destination, and if you're interested in who and how, then.you've come to the right man, honey. Because Uncle Birgo is going to find out for you."

We stand up. He shakes hands across the desk. "It was nice to meet you, honey."

He really means it.

We go out past the lace blouse. In the next office I turn around.

"I forgot something."

He's sitting at his desk. He's still laughing. I go up to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

"What would Føjl say?" he asks.

I give him a wink. "Any negotiations whatsoever are to be kept strictly private and confidential."

Every other day Moritz picks up Benja after her afternoon rehearsals and they eat together at Savarin in Nyhavn.

Moritz goes there because of the food, and because the prices stimulate his ego, and because he likes having a good view of people on the street through the plate-glass windows that stretch the entire height of the building Façade. Benja goes because she knows that through those same windows people on the street have a good view of her.

They have their own table next to the window and their own waiter and they always eat the same thing. Moritz has lamb kidneys and Benja a bowl of the kind of fodder you give rabbits. Today there's a family sitting near them that has sneaked a little child into this otherwise child-free area. Moritz looks at the child.

"You've never given me any grandchildren," he tells me.

"Little children smell of pee," says Benja.

Moritz looks at her with astonishment. "Lamb kidneys do, too," he says.

I think about the mechanic waiting outside in the car. "Won't you sit down, Smilla?"

"Someone is waiting for me."

Through the windows Benja can see the Morris, but not who's sitting inside.

"It looks like someone your own age," she says. "Somewhere in his forties. Judging from his fancy car."

If I reply, I'll end up hurting Moritz. So I let it pass uncontested.

I lean over the edge of the table. It has always been like this. Benja and Moritz sit comfortably, leaning back. They belong here. I stand with my overcoat on, feeling as if I've come in from the street to peddle something.

Moritz is holding two envelopes in his hands. One is gray and spotted with what looks like red wine. In the silence between us he tries to use them to force me into a chair. He doesn't succeed.

"This makes me uncomfortable," he says. I don't know what he means.

"Hviid is not an ordinary name. There was a composer, Jonathan Hviid. I called Victor Halkenhvad." Benja lifts her head. Even she has heard of that name. "I didn't know he was still alive."

"I'm not sure he is, either."

He hands me the envelope. I hold it up to my nose. The spots are red wine. Moritz sticks a finger inside his turtleneck collar and moves it around.

"It wasn't pleasant. He's not the man he used to be. At one point he slammed down the receiver. While I was in the middle of a sentence. But he did write, after all."

It's a rare experience to see Moritz uncomfortable. Not until I'm out in the car do I understand why.

He catches up with me at the door. "You forgot this." It's the second envelope.

"A single clipping about Tork Hviid. From the Danish Press Service."

A clipping service he subscribes to. They collect any mention in the press about him.

He wants to touch me. He doesn't dare. He wants to say something. He doesn't manage it.

In the car I read the letter out loud. The handwriting is almost illegible.

Dear Jørgen, you cheap little barber's assistant.

The mechanic looks disoriented.

"My father's first name is Jørgen," I say. "And Victor has always been temperamental."

It must be fifteen years since I saw him last. The opera had given him an honorary residence on Store Kannike Lane. He was sitting in an armchair positioned next to the piano. He was wearing a dressing gown; I had never seen him in anything else. His legs were naked and swollen. I don't know whether he could stand up anymore. He must have weighed over 300 pounds. Everything sagged on him. He was looking at me, not Moritz. Those weren't bags under his eyes, they were hammocks.

"I don't like women," he said. "Move farther away." I moved away.

"You were cute when you were little," he said. "That time is past."