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‘What would the gentlemen like to dr-dr-drink?’

‘A beer for me, captain,’ said André.

‘Yes, we’ll have a beer, too,’ I said, pointing to David. We didn’t feel at ease. Madame Olga opened a fridge.

‘You may be thinking: what a funny b-boat this is,’ said Captain Willem, to break the silence. ‘Well, the g-g-girls will be here tomorrow.’

Peter smiled. He was roughly the same age as us.

‘We’ll be moored here for a week or so,’ he said. ‘That’s for publicity. Usually we’re in the paper after about three days. Then everyone knows we’re here, and we move to a spot approved by the council. And then the men come.’

‘The men?’ asked David. ‘Your father said: the women.’

‘Yes. To the brothel.’ Peter’s father stood nodding in assent. ‘Peter has the gift of the g-g-gab. I don’t kn-kn-know who he gets it from. Not from m-me, in any case.’

‘So it’s not a sauna,’ I concluded. André looked at me reproachfully.

‘A kind of sauna,’ said Peter. ‘We’ve got a kind of sweatbox and a Turkish bath.’

‘It’s a sauna for fucking.’ André said it as if that was a generally recognized kind of sauna. Peter’s mother looked angrily at him and put three bottles of beer and glasses on the bar. She now said something for the first time, in a language we couldn’t understand.