Doing my part . . . No—I can’t say that, can’t say it like that.

I’ll be keeping an eye on you . . .

Good Lord.

They will look up from the ice, the two of them, from the red wine. They will look at each other, their eyes meeting above their glasses. They will exchange telling gazes: What has she done now? Then Magnus will turn toward me with a mild, puzzled smile. “Signe, what are you doing,” he will say.

And then they will clean up after me, put the plastic containers in the two-car garage, pour another glass of expensive red wine, and talk about how happy they are that they have each other. They will talk about the wonderful life they have lived, the harmony they feel, all the lovely, small experiences they are accumulating. About how nice it is to be able to approach old age with such peace of mind, such a house, such a garden, such a spouse, such joy—so good to be able to approach old age knowing that one has made the right choices.

And I . . . I will go back to Blue, sit down in the saloon—it is empty now, the containers are gone. I will miss them, because it was all I had, my rage in these containers.

I’m doing my part.

Or I can turn around, go back, navigate through all the sluices I have forced my way through, put up the mast, get rid of the tires, refuel, head out to sea, to the west, disappear in the Atlantic Ocean, and dump the containers out there somewhere—not just the ice but the containers too. There’s so much plastic in the ocean, such an endless amount of plastic—eight million tons are dumped in the ocean every single year, nobody notices the difference. These containers can float around out there, along with all the rest of the plastic; in a way they belong there. And the ice, the water, will disappear in the ocean, become salt, undrinkable, useless, become a part of the salty desert our oceans are, a desert that is constantly growing.

“No,” I say loudly and suddenly, the sound of my voice strident as it breaks the silence. Because you’ve traveled all the way here, come all this way, you have covered so much territory, you are here, you, this boat . . . This is a choice you have already made, and strictly speaking, Signe, strictly speaking, you have very little to lose.

The boat glides through the water, closer and closer to his house. I have plotted the address on the GPS. The landscape is as flat as a pancake: there is only a single wooded hill a short distance away on which to focus the gaze. Maybe they call that a mountain, the people who live here, but it’s actually only a misplaced bulge.