Decompression (13 page)

I talked nonstop during the drive to Famara. My mouth and the speech center in my brain carried out a program I’d given no orders for. For some reason, I expatiated on technical diving, on the enormous expense in equipment and planning required to go down a paltry hundred meters into the sea—a distance you could cover on land in a minute without even noticing it. I explained the tremendous difference between descent and ascent, using the shipwreck expedition I was planning as an example. It would be a matter of a few minutes to dive down to the wreck, and after that I’d have only twenty minutes to inspect it. On the other hand, I’d need more than two hours to go back up, stopping along the way, if I didn’t want to endanger my life. The last decompression stop would require me to remain a full hour at a depth of six meters, with light, air, and the dive ship’s hull directly above my head. I’d have to hover there, constrained by water pressure and the accumulation of nitrogen in my body.

No-decompression dives were surely the only kind Jola would go on in her life, and therefore in all likelihood she’d never really understand what no-decompression time was. She looked out the window. She was wearing an olive-green miniskirt. It cost me an effort not to think about the shaved pubes under it. Bernie came toward us in his minibus and waved as he passed. I lifted my hand, and Jola imitated me. As if we’d traveled down that stretch of road together a thousand times and greeted Bernie together a thousand times. I knew he’d ask me about her the next chance he got.

We parked on a narrow side street. Two old fishermen interrupted
their chess game. A Spanish woman stepped out of her house and poured a bucket of dirty water at our feet. A German shepherd was dozing in the yard under a jacked-up rowboat. In our black diving suits and with our tanks on our backs, we waddled like extraterrestrials through the dead streets. Although it was still early in the morning, the heat was accumulating between the old facades. Jola’s face reddened with effort. Before we entered the water, she tried to take my hand. I shook her off. I didn’t know what I thought was worse: that things had gone so far the previous day, or that nevertheless I hadn’t actually had her. It was probably the combination of both.

Visibility was atrocious and the water as warm as urine. We bobbed around in the murky swill at a maximum depth of nine meters. Not even the Mediterranean moray was at home. It astonished me to think I had entertained, if only for a few supremely lascivious moments, the idea that I’d met the love of my life in Jola Pahlen. I wasn’t interested in trouble. For the past fourteen years, my existence had been predicated on the wise decision to stay out of other people’s affairs. “Germany” was the name of a system whose entire focus was on what belonged to whom and who was to blame for what. Jola was Germany. She’d come from there, and there she would return. She and Theo had brought a part of the war zone with them to the island. And instead of keeping the greatest possible distance, I’d come
that
close to plunging in with both feet. There was no undoing what had happened. But a man could swerve and still get back on a steady course.

Today I’d add a caveat: provided he knows how to drive. Slamming on the brakes and jerking the steering wheel around is never the right tactic.

“Fantastic dive!” Jola cried, stumbled over her fins, and fell back into the shallow water.

I wondered aloud how many more times I was going to have to explain that you must walk backward when wearing fins. Moreover, I added, it was about time for her to learn how to adjust her buoyancy instead of continuing to lurch and zigzag through the water. It wasn’t a matter of lack of talent, no one could be reproached for that. It was a matter of engaging with the fundamental principles of the sport. Or was that too much to ask?

Jola said nothing. I reduced our surface break to a necessary minimum and insisted on executing the day’s second dive in the same spot. Because, I said, calm, shallow water was best suited for unsure divers.

We’d set out from Lahora shortly after eight o’clock; it wasn’t yet noon when we completed the second dive. While I loaded the van, Jola stood behind me wearing a white terry-cloth robe, which she’d brought for the first time, and a towel around her head. She looked like a model in a catalog of luxury bath accessories. It would have been fabulous to feel her breasts through that thick terry cloth.

“Shall we go somewhere else?”

“I don’t have enough cylinders for a third dive.”

“Where we were yesterday? Just to go there?”

I turned to her. “To finish what we started?”

She smiled and held out her hand. “Maybe it’s only the beginning.”

I evaded the hand. The effort not to scream made my voice sound choked when I said, “Maybe you could try not to behave like a tramp for a change?”

She sat down on the curb and started to cry. Softly, without a show. She pressed her face into the collar of her bathrobe.

Fuck the old fishermen. Fuck the woman with the dirty water, who was standing in the doorway of her house again. Hardly any of the indigenous islanders knew me, especially not in Famara. The German shepherd under the rowboat stood up, as if he wanted to see what Jola’s problem was. I sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

I said I was sorry.

She asked what I meant.

I said that I’d behaved unprofessionally the previous day and that it would never happen again.

“Sven.” She raised her face. Her nostrils were red and seemed to be vibrating slightly. “I’m in love with you.”

“Nonsense.” I moved a little away from her. “It’s the diving. Diving’s a liminal experience, and I’m your guide over the threshold. That awakens feelings.”

She stretched out her arm and touched my shoulder with one finger.

“Please stop.” I held her finger tight. “You have Theo. I have—a girlfriend.”

She acknowledged my tiny hesitation with a tiny smile. “Is that so?”

Our conversation needed a new direction. I said, “You’re flying back to Germany in ten days.”

“I can stay here. I’ll take over Antje’s job.”

I had an instant vision of Jola seated at the computer in our home office, her legs elegantly folded to one side, applying herself to our bookkeeping. I saw her standing at the stove. I saw my
hands slip under her dress while she stirred a pot. She turned halfway toward me—and suddenly it was Antje’s face, sitting on Jola’s neck under Jola’s hair and looking at me sadly. I sprang to my feet.

“What exactly are we talking about here?”

“About love, I assume.”

“Theo loves you, Jola.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me so.”

She looked up at me thoughtfully. “Really?”

The relief I felt encouraged me. “When we went to dinner,” I explained. “He said that he couldn’t live without you. He said that you’re everything to him.” I didn’t remember his exact words, but that was their general sense.

“And that you can screw me if you want?”

“Of course he didn’t say that.” I tried to sound indignant.

“That he’s got no problem with you wanting me? Because more or less everybody wants me and he’s used to it?”

I said nothing. Jola laughed and then stood up as well. “You’re really sweet, Sven,” she said. She put her hands in the pockets of her bathrobe. The fishermen were openly staring at us. I had to assume they didn’t understand German.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jola went on. “We have time. We can simply wait and see how things develop.”

She started to take off her wet bikini under her robe. Apparently the conversation was over. Even though I didn’t know what conclusion we’d come to, I felt better. It was as if we’d assured each other that we wanted to remain friends.

A little later, she was sitting in the passenger seat. She’d tied her hair in a ponytail, and she appeared to be in an extremely
good mood. “Let’s have lunch in Teguise,” she said. “After that I’d really like to visit the cactus gardens.”

I took my place at the steering wheel. “I’d rather go back to Lahora, if you don’t mind.”

She laughed as though I’d made a good joke. “Have you by any chance forgotten what I’m paying you for?” The laughing stopped. “Full service. Twenty-four seven. Drive on.”

It was eight in the evening. Antje was sitting in front of the television and I was at the computer when the doorbell rang. As a general rule, nobody rang our doorbell. You don’t arrive by chance at the ends of the earth. If the doorbell did ring, it was one of Antje’s Spanish girlfriends, picking her up to go shopping or dropping off a skinned rabbit. A ringing doorbell was no sign stimulus as far as I was concerned. Ordinarily I didn’t even raise my head. This time, it was pure instinct that made me say, “Stay there, I’ll get it,” and go to the door.

Theo was standing outside in the darkness, and he didn’t look as though he’d come over to borrow a cup of flour. He was wearing suit pants, no shoes, and a misbuttoned shirt. His eyes and nose were red. He smelled of alcohol. I stepped out of the house and closed the door behind me.

“Congratulations!” He sounded stuffed up. “My heartiest congratulations.”

“Theo,” I said. “Are you feeling better?”

“Who’d have thought it would happen so fast, huh?” He laughed.

“Who’s there?” Antje called from inside.

“It’s just Theo!” I called back through the closed door.

“May I step in again?” He pointed at the house. It was hard to tell how well he could be heard inside. His vocal pitch fluctuated between whispering and bawling. “And pay my respects to your little Antje, I mean.”

Theo began to stumble. I stepped aside. He bared his teeth. “You’re scared shitless of me,” he said.

Underwater I found it easy to remain calm in stressful situations. You could even say that the more critical things got, the steadier my nerves became. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case on land. I felt a savage desire to slug Theo. As wobbly on his legs as he was, any child could have taken him. But he was my client.

“Shitless
is the key word.” He pressed one nostril closed and blew out the other. The snot landed right next to the doormat. “Maybe you thought I wouldn’t keep my word, was that it? I told you you could have her. I’m only here to get something straight.” He pointed an index finger at me. “You’re a big dick attached to a coward. That’s what you are.” As he repeated this assessment, he nodded slowly.

“Look,” I said. “How about continuing this conversation tomorrow?”

“You see!” He was getting louder. “Scared shitless, like I said. Scared your Antje will hear me. You’re a coward, Sven. I came over here especially to point that out to you.”

“Now you have. That’s enough.”

“That’s enough, just like that? If you have the right to fuck my woman, I have the right to give you a piece of my mind.”

“I didn’t fuck your woman.”

“Ah!” It started out as a scream but after a few seconds turned into laughter. “That’s so lame, Sven! You’re such a chickenshit! At least stick to your guns!”

Suddenly his face was illuminated. His eyes, his shirt, his entire form radiated light. It took me a while to realize that the door behind me had opened.

“Is everything all right?” Antje asked.

I hated the feeling of losing control. Control was the objective of all human striving. Loss of control meant death. I felt my forehead grow cold.

“Voilà Madame!”
Theo cried out joyously. “Good evening!”

Antje gave me a questioning look. As always, she was trying to establish an immediate understanding between us. My body did me the favor of shrugging my shoulders and contorting my mouth into a helpless grimace.

Theo turned to Antje. “Not much longer,” he said. Then he pointed his finger at me again: “You don’t dive because you think fish are fantastic. You dive because you feel safe down there.”

His tongue seemed to be loosening; he sounded less drunk. I wondered whether he was putting on an act.

“You think you’re a first-class individualist. A real man who had the balls to drop out. You weren’t going to be stupid and weak like everybody else, you weren’t going to play the game anymore. But you’re no special case. You didn’t even drop out, not really. You weren’t up to the challenge. You’re the overchallenged prototype of the overchallenged twenty-first century. A whole era of unmet challenges! Do you remember how things looked at the end of the last century? The big chance. The big freedom. Everybody wanted to make something out of it. And then, suddenly,
everything was too much. Too much world, too much information, too many possibilities. Everyone’s gone into exile, my dear Monstercock. Some escape into bourgeois convention, others choose the countryside or a hobby or nostalgia or even this island. It’s an all-encompassing rearguard action, and you’re right in the middle of it.”

He wiped away some sweat. He’d worn himself out talking. His drunkenness had decreased, and so had his hatred. For a while he stared upward, squinting, at the night sky, as though considering whether concluding his speech would be worth the trouble. “Okay,” he declared in the end, “what I want to say is this: your turn’s coming. Dream about your personal plans, dream about complete independence. One day your turn will come, just as it comes to everybody else. When it does, you’ll think about my words. Good night.”