Decompression (24 page)

“But, Bernie, why won’t—”

The conversation was interrupted, because Bernie had hung up. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t answer. I went up the last steps to the deck, stood next to the mast, and stared into space. In front of this space was a section of the ship’s rail. Jola was leaning against it, looking at me. She too had a telephone in her hand, and
she held out the illuminated screen so I could see it. For a moment I imagined Bernie had also called her to cancel the expedition.

“Text message from my father,” Jola said. “Bittmann’s right. Stadler got the part.”

So much for that
, I thought. Weeks of preparation, all for nothing. I had no chance of finding people to replace Dave and Bernie on such short notice. And December would bring the winter currents, which would make it impossible to reach the wreck. At a stroke, my whole project was dead. Deferred until some future date that, try though I might, I couldn’t imagine would ever come. I didn’t even know what the following days would bring. The following week. I felt my life disintegrating into its component parts. For months I’d envisioned celebrating my fortieth birthday, my personal farewell to the first half of my existence, at a depth of one hundred meters. Having to abandon that plan undermined everything else. I didn’t have the slightest idea why Bernie had canceled at the last minute like that. All I knew was I couldn’t rely on anything anymore.

Jola put her cell phone away. Side by side, we leaned on the rail and looked out at the massive breakwater formed by the lower edge of the night sky. A cold wind snatched at us from all sides. I wanted to put my jacket around Jola’s shoulders and discovered I wasn’t wearing one; at some point in the course of the evening, I must have taken the coat off and hung it on the back of my chair. Everything struck me as unreal. The
Dorset
wasn’t a normal ship; she was a seafaring piece of Germany. And that was the way I felt: German. Overburdened, disoriented, disgusted by the world.

“Is something wrong?” Jola asked.

I told her about Bernie’s call, and she laughed sardonically.
“So we’ve both had the ground under our feet yanked away. Me a little more than you, maybe. But I’m not so sure about that.”

There weren’t many people who could recognize another’s misery alongside their own. For a while we were silent, gazing out to sea. Then the five minutes began, the five minutes I’ve gone over in my mind again and again during the past several weeks. Never before have I regretted such a short span of time for so long. Jola seized my arm, looked me in the face, and said, “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

I didn’t grasp what she meant at first, though I felt the effect of her smile. It crossed my mind that I’d come up on the deck to comfort her. To help her gather up the shards of her life and build a new life out of them. I took her in my arms. From that moment on, my body made all the decisions itself. Instead of patting her consolingly, I pressed her against me and kissed her throat. She shoved me away so that she could keep looking at me. “You’re diving down to your wreck,” she said. “Theo and I will sail the
Aberdeen
.”

My arms took hold of her again. Now my body was asserting its claim. My fingers slid over the sheer fabric of her nearly nonexistent dress. Her scent was a spinning whirlpool, drawing me downward. I wondered fleetingly whether I’d ever mentioned to her that Dave’s cutter was called the
Aberdeen
.

“Such a load of shit.” Jola turned but didn’t pull away. “With the old man as master of ceremonies. The devil.” She gave a cooing laugh. “A devil. That’s what he is. Nothing more and nothing less.”

I’d lost the thread and no longer knew what she was talking about. Which didn’t bother me. While those seconds were passing,
there were a great many things I had no interest in. Things that no longer existed for me. The night. The boat. The wind. Past and future. As though they’d all been obliterated. I had Jola’s dress hiked up around her hips, and she, half shoving, half carrying me, maneuvered us onto the foredeck, where two large chests stood.

“What time does it start?”

I paused. She’d stiffened her back. Obviously, she was waiting for an answer to her question. I said, “What?”

“The expedition.”

“Fuck the expedition,” I said.

“No!” Jola shook her head so hard that a strand of her artfully braided hair came loose. “The expedition is still on! Lotte Hass is all over for me, nothing can be done about that. But your diving expedition, that’s really going to happen. Now more than ever. Do you understand?” She was getting louder. “I’m … we’re not giving up!”

Very slowly, it was becoming clear to me that she was serious. “I don’t have a crew for tomorrow,” I said.

“Theo and I will be your crew.”

I lowered my hands. “That won’t work, Jola. You need experience for such a thing.”

“I was steering ships before I could walk. Do you really think a cockleshell like that’s going to be a problem for me?”

“The wreck’s several kilometers offshore. In that kind of expedition, I’m putting my life in the hands of my crew.”

“And you’d rather trust the asshole who just left you high and dry? Rather than me?”

Jola twisted her fingers into my hair. Despite the wind, her
hands were surprisingly warm. Her face came nearer. Eyes, nose, lips, all in close-up. Like a flash, I had the feeling I’d gone through that scene once already.

“The crew has to watch the surface of the water every second,” I said. “They have to read the wind. Interpret the current.”

Her skirt still up around her waist, Jola sat down on the lid of one of the chests. She leaned back a little; her knees shot out and clamped my hips right and left. Her panties had a silvery sheen. I slipped two fingers under them and watched myself lift up the fabric.

“Child’s play,” Jola said.

She was dry. I thought nothing of it at the time. I pulled the silvery material completely to one side, went down on one knee, and separated the folds of skin with my tongue. She laid her hands on my ears. Now it would happen. It had to happen. It was why Antje had left me. It was why the whole island looked at me funny. It was something that fate had long since made a supposition, so attributing it retroactively to fate seemed imperative. Everyone has a right to logic. Jola’s hands pressed against my head as though she intended to crush my skull.

“Will you take us with you, Sven?”

I stood up and kissed her. I wanted her to taste herself.

“Sven! The expedition!”

She wasn’t wearing a bra. My lips effortlessly found her nipples under the fabric of her dress. I braced her tailbone with one hand and with the other unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans.

“We’ll get it done tomorrow, the three of us together?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Seriously, Sven!”

“Yes, dammit.”

“Do you promise? Do you swear?”

“Yes.”

There was nothing behind her for me to lean her against. I would have to hold her good and tight to keep from knocking her off the chest. By the time I’d concluded that train of thought, she was already standing two meters away. Her dress hung smoothly, right down to her ankles. She looked perfect. Except for the loosened strand of hair and the two wet spots on her breast.

“Come here,” I said fatuously.

She observed my cock, which was poking out of my open pants. “We should get some rest,” she said.

“Please.”

“Look at your watch.”

I was so confused, I obeyed her. Ten after twelve.

“Happy birthday, Sven.”

She stepped close to me again and kissed me. I briefly felt her fingers on my stomach.

“Believe me; tomorrow’s going to be a great day. First your diving adventure, and then the rest.”

The heels of her shoes resounded sharply on the gangway planks. When she was on land, she turned around. “We leave at eight, as usual?”

“At six,” I said. “We need the tide.”

“Good night.”

“Wait,” I called out. “Let me give you a ride home.”

She kissed her hand to me and walked quickly along the quay. A taxi was waiting a few meters farther on. There’s no possibility that it was parked at that spot by chance. Somebody must have
called it. I stood watching the red taillights for a good while, until the cab reached the end of the rows of shops, turned left, and accelerated up the mountain. The inside of my head contained not even the echo of a thought. I put my clothes in order and went belowdecks to collect my jacket and Theo.

JOLA’S DIARY, TWELFTH DAY

Wednesday, November 23. One
A.M
.

Small injuries are painful. Banging your toes against the annoying angle between the bathroom and the bedroom, a defect overlooked by some drunken architect when the premises were inspected. Whacking your shin against the coffee table in exactly the same spot where there’s a dent in the bone from your last collision. Tearing off half a fingernail on the upholstery of your car seat. That sort of thing hurts abominably. Your whole body reverberates like an orchestra without a conductor. Bright spots dance before your eyes. And then comes the hate. You want to blow up your car. Smash the coffee table to smithereens. Set your house on fire, annoying angle and all. You’re prepared to kill. For revenge
.

It’s completely different when you’re shot. Your body presents no resistance to the first bullet. Then come the second and the third. Bam, bam, bam. The metal bits burrow effortlessly into your flesh until they lodge somewhere. There’s no pain. You look down at yourself, mildly surprised. The bloodstain spreads; your stomach feels warm. Not unpleasant at all. Dying can be easy. Maybe you make a last effort to register the expression on your murderer’s face. Overjoyed by his accuracy, he squeezes off another shot and then another, even though they’re not really necessary. He looks around to make sure everyone has seen that you’re dying. For a moment, you think he’s going to take a bow. He’s chosen his audience carefully. The kind of people who are delighted to be on hand when somebody croaks. To hide their enjoyment of your agony, they stare embarrassed into their fish terrine. They fold their hands piously so as not to applaud. With whatever strength you have left, you turn and run. Just to deny them the pleasure of witnessing your definitive collapse. The murderer laughs. You can hear his voice in your head. Well, how do you like this, it says. And you thought you had me by the balls. I win in the end. Take note of that. You little slut
.

So then I was standing on the deck of a sailing yacht in the middle of the night and waiting for the pains to start. But I waited in vain. No hate, no anger, no longing for revenge. Even Lotte, who’s kept me alive for so long, suddenly lost all importance. I only felt the wind cooling my fever and wondered what was going to happen now. Was I supposed to board an airplane on Saturday, bury myself in my Berlin apartment, and rot away, nice and slow? A gradual process of decay, carefully overseen by the old man? The thought was absurd. Yet at the same time, I had no idea how I could begin a new life. I wasn’t at the end anymore; I’d moved beyond it
.

When I heard steps on the stairs, I thought it was Theo, coming to apologize. Or in other words, to examine at close range the damage he’d caused. But it was Sven. My first impulse was to send him away. The last thing I needed was somebody making clumsy attempts to comfort me. But Sven was already blathering before he reached the deck. He came up to me, stared at my forehead, and talked. Laid his hands on my shoulders, shook me, and talked. At some point I realized he wasn’t trying to comfort me. Not even a little bit. It wasn’t about me at all; it was about his diving expedition. The fabulous shipwreck exploration. His private birthday celebration one hundred meters underwater. It couldn’t happen, he said, because Bernie and Dave, for some reason he didn’t understand, had pulled out. The worst-case scenario. He asked whether I’d be able to assist him. He wanted us to be his substitute crew, me and the old man. Of all people!

Out of sheer amazement, I gave him sensible answers. I said I thought it wasn’t a good idea. Neither Theo nor I had the necessary experience, I said; it would be better to postpone the expedition
.

But a postponement was out of the question. The winter, the currents, the wind. All that planning. And his birthday. He’d been working weeks and months to prepare for this one day. He’d invested untold amounts of money. And I’d been steering ships since before I could walk, right? I told him what he knew better than anyone, namely that the wreck lay several kilometers off the coast, and that he’d be putting his life in the hands of his crew. But he didn’t give up. He said he trusted me more than he did the two Scottish assholes who had just double-crossed him. Was I going to leave him in the lurch too? And then once more, from the beginning: the planning, the currents, his birthday. Tomorrow morning or never. I had to help him. Absolutely had to. He begged me: Please, please, please. Like a little boy. Shining eyes, red cheeks
.

While he talked like a waterfall, I wondered whether he understood what had just taken place at the table. Or whether it simply didn’t interest him. Could a man actually be so egocentric that he’d consider a canceled dive more important than the total emotional destruction of the woman he supposedly loves? I didn’t say anything else, I just listened. Such steadfast pigheadedness astounded me. It was like some elemental force
.

Until what he was doing dawned on me. And it was so clever, so sensitive, so thoughtful and right, it almost brought tears to my eyes. He didn’t want the expedition for himself. He wanted it for me. He’d realized at once it wouldn’t be any use to talk about Lotte or Theo. Or about the fact that my shitty life lay in shitty ruins. He wanted to redirect my attention and give me a chance to concentrate on real things: water, wind, boat. Things he understands, things he knows will be good for me. He wanted me to f
i
ght, to be the person he needs, the one who must help him. Sven himself canceled Bernie. He sent him a text message and let him know he needed only the
Aberdeen,
without any crew. Because he wants to sail with me. It’s his way of reminding me of something I can do very well, though I do it far too seldom: I know how to keep a boat on course
.