Bernard Jackson's heroin addiction

Bernard Jakkelsen’s heroin dependence is a physical condition and a force in the shipboard conflict: it leaves him incapacitated, organizes the hidden contents of his cabin, and later appears to sharpen his confidence when he takes more of the drug. Smilla’s observations make the addiction concrete, while her reflections on its costs distinguish the possibility of living with dependence from the risks that surround it.

Physical Condition and Concealment

When Smilla enters Jakkelsen’s cabin, she initially finds him asleep and unresponsive. His breathing is faint and labored; he appears profoundly unwell, and his body seems diminished. The neatness of the cabin offers no immediate explanation. The ashtray is empty, the table clear, and the signs of drug use are not laid out in view.

The evidence is hidden in a bed-linen drawer. Smilla finds foil, matches, an old-fashioned glass hypodermic, a syringe, fast-drying glue, an open pocketknife, a plastic container for sewing-machine needles, and a piece of black rubber packing cord. Together, these objects establish that the apparent order of the room conceals the practical materials of his dependence. The contrast between a tidy cabin and the drawer’s contents makes concealment part of the scene rather than a separate accusation.

When she rolls up his pajama sleeve, Smilla sees dozens of small injection marks along the inside of his arm, concentrated around swollen veins. The marks provide visible evidence of repeated use; the account does not treat the addiction as an abstract label but connects it to a pattern of drug-taking and to his immediate condition. Jakkelsen does not speak when she tries to rouse him, and Smilla concludes that he will remain asleep for some time.

Dependence and Predictability

Jakkelsen’s condition does not make his actions wholly unpredictable in Smilla’s view. After waiting for two hours, she expects him to come, reasoning that drugs make people predictable rather than erratic. She waits in the dark, but misjudges how he will approach: Jakkelsen has been listening at her door and enters when she makes a movement. His addiction is therefore situated within a pattern Smilla believes she can anticipate, even as the encounter exposes the limits of that confidence.

When he confronts her, Jakkelsen is nervous but determined. His demand for the drug and the episode’s surrounding events link dependence to threat and leverage: he has come to obtain it, and Smilla is drawn into the immediate struggle over access. The narrative does not reduce his conduct to the addiction alone; it shows a person making deliberate choices while dependent, including waiting, entering her cabin, and directing her to retrieve what he wants.

Later, in Smilla’s cabin, Jakkelsen takes a short line of powder from her pocket mirror. Smilla observes an abrupt change: he becomes a brilliant, self-confident guide, though his speech is affected by a broken front tooth. The moment connects drug use not only to incapacity but also to a temporary, consequential shift in how he presents himself. He proceeds to show Smilla parts of the ship’s concealed passages, while she follows with difficulty because her right foot is swollen and keeps a small screwdriver hidden in her waistband.

Moritz’s Account and Smilla’s Judgment

Smilla recalls Moritz saying that a person could live a long, healthy life on heroin if able to afford it. In his account, the drug itself could have a preservative effect; the greater dangers were the conditions surrounding dependence: cold stairways, liver infections, contaminated additives, AIDS, and the exhausting need to obtain money. His explanation turns on a distinction between the drug and the circumstances that commonly accompany addiction.

Smilla had regarded Moritz’s view as professional exaggeration, shaped by his cynicism and distance. She rejects its implication that dependence could be made benign by money. To her, heroin remains a form of suicide, even when death is prolonged over twenty-five years. Her judgment makes the duration of survival no proof of well-being: what Moritz describes as a possible long life, she understands as an extended contempt for one’s own life.

The contrast does not settle Jakkelsen’s personal history or establish which dangers he has experienced. Instead, it frames the evidence Smilla sees aboard the Kronos: his repeated injections, his state of collapse, and the temporary confidence following another dose. Through those details, the narrative presents dependence as a sustained condition with visible bodily traces and practical paraphernalia, while leaving its broader course and eventual outcome unspecified.