Decompression (27 page)

The interval between the moment when the body hit the water and the moment when I unhooked my mooring rope couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I swam away from the cable on a course to intercept the sinking body, but I made sure not to ascend as I did so. Our paths intersected at a depth of six meters, a short distance off the port side of the
Aberdeen
’s bow. I thrust out both hands, grabbed cloth, and got pulled down a little way. I struck out hard with my fins until at last I could free one hand and use it to inflate my buoyancy compensator and thus make up for the additional weight. Swimming on my back, I towed my unconscious companion to the anchor cable. My unconscious
male
companion. With one arm around his chest, I used my other hand and the mooring rope to attach myself as tightly as possible to the cable again. Technical diving, my instructor always said, is the art of doing everything with one hand. Without looking.

Time changed tempo and direction. Up until then, events had gone past as though in slow motion, but now they rushed at me with the speed of light. In retrospect, I see a vortex, at whose center I’m struggling to save a life. Before me is a face with closed eyes and half-open mouth. An underwater face. A face that seems to belong to a corpse. Theo’s face. Not Jola’s.

From 1992 to 1995, I spent a large part of my semester breaks as a rescue diver. I knew how drowning worked. In the first phase, the victim made uncoordinated movements, gasped frantically for air, and therefore swallowed water. In phase two, a reflex closed off his larynx. That was what gave Theo a chance. As far as I’d seen, he’d been already unconscious when he fell into the water and had therefore skipped phase one. It was possible that this was a case of dry drowning, and that no water had reached his
lungs. Even on land, freeing the breathing passages from water was a difficult undertaking. I’d never yet heard of anyone who rescued a drowning man while remaining submerged. But maybe Theo had entered the suffocation phase, which would be followed by spasms and apnea, but not before two or three minutes had elapsed. If that was the case, I could reactivate his breathing reflex by giving him oxygen, and I wouldn’t have to resort to resuscitation measures.

That wasn’t something I thought. It was something I knew. There was no time for thinking. I’d long since switched to trimix, and in one hand I was holding the diving regulator with pure oxygen, ready to put it in Theo’s mouth. The greatest danger for both of us was the possibility that he’d come to and panic. It’s by no means unusual that drowning people kill their would-be rescuers. But I couldn’t think about self-defense, not as long as Theo and I were hanging on an anchor cable six meters underwater. It wasn’t possible to put any distance between me and the drowning man. The only reason he wasn’t still sinking was that I was still holding on to him. If he started thrashing around, he could easily rip out my own air tube. He could cling to me in a panic, damage my equipment, immobilize me. Drowning men possess superhuman strength. They’re more dangerous than any hammerhead shark.

And that was the moment when it happened. A tiny moment that showed me who I’d become in the last fourteen years.

I hesitated.

I asked myself for whom or what I was about to put my life on the line. For a man who terrorized the woman I wanted. Who would never give her up, because he considered her his property. Who had no real occupation and was of use to no one. Who
missed no chance to point out that he was weary of life. I had only to release my grip. I could let Theo go and look away while he vanished silently into the lower depths. No one would ever connect me with his death.

It was only for a brief moment, but I hesitated.

Then I shoved the diving regulator between Theo’s teeth. I took pains to close his lips around the mouthpiece in such a way that the least possible amount of water could get in. I held his nose and pressed the purge button. A rush of air bubbles shot up. The pressure pumped air into Theo’s lungs. He suddenly opened his eyes very wide. He couldn’t see much in the brine. He could only sense my embrace and the cold water and the likelihood that his life was about to end. He dug his fingernails into my forearm and whirled around like a fish. As best I could, I protected my air hose from the imminent attack.

But Theo didn’t attack. In spite of the stinging seawater, he stared into my face at extremely close range. His head was shrouded in a whirl of bubbles. His lungs were pumping so hard that there was barely any distinction between his inhalations and his exhalations. The sight of him acted like a sign stimulus. We were diving instructor and diving student. My student was hooked up to my emergency air supply and hyperventilating. He was staring at me because he loved me, the way helpless nurslings love their mothers. I squeezed Theo’s forearm several times to get his attention. His eyelids fluttered. Some part of his brain made an effort to concentrate, and I nodded encouragingly, as if to say,
Good. Like that
. He watched as I slowly moved one hand away from my mouth:
Exhale. Wait
. I brought the hand back to my lips.
Inhale. Slowly
. I pointed to him and repeated the gesture:
Exhale. Inhale
. It
took a little while, but eventually he joined in. His breathing slowed. We found a common rhythm. His body abruptly relaxed. He became so limp that I had to hold him more tightly. We’d done it. He allowed me to turn him around. I could hold him better from behind. From the way his back shook, I could tell he was weeping. On impulse, I gave him a hasty pat-down. The reason why he was being pulled down so inexorably into the deep was stuck in his jeans pockets: lead. Lead weights, that is, from my reserve supply. I removed the weights, and they headed for the bottom at high speed. I helped Theo take off his shoes and his jeans. The clothing also sank into the dark depths below us, but at a more leisurely rate.

After that, holding on to Theo was child’s play. I detached my substitute mask from its strap, drew it over Theo’s face, and adjusted it until it sat right. Theo tilted his head back and blew air out of his nose to expel water from the mask. Now he could see me as clearly as I could see him. He raised a hand, made the “okay” sign, and smiled. His lips were blue from cold. As I answered his sign, I felt like crying too. He might have been an asshole, but his fortitude was preternatural. He didn’t even try to ask me, in pantomime, why we weren’t going up to the surface. He’d apparently been listening to me closely during the past few days.

We spent the following thirty minutes switching back and forth between the different gases, checking our air supply again and again, and performing together some gymnastic exercises that were supposed to keep Theo from hypothermia. We did knee bends, rolled our wrists and shoulders, swam one behind the other in little circles around the anchor cable. We were connected by the air supply as though by an umbilical cord.

When my required decompression time was over and I could complete my ascent without danger, I signaled to Theo that we were going up. I took hold of him from behind again and carried him laterally a little way, until we were no longer directly under the
Aberdeen
. When we reached a safe distance from the boat, we slowly rose to the surface. The air tasted warm and sweet. Theo began to pant. It’s quite possible that he’d only just grasped where he was and what had happened. By all rules of logic, he should have been dead. Maybe he imagined himself in a next world that looked confusingly similar to this one.

Jola stood in the stern, waving and seething. “Fucking hell! Why didn’t you send up the deco buoys? Can you imagine how worried I’ve been?”

I wondered if she’d gone crazy, but there was no time to answer that question or any other. I gave instructions, brought Theo over to the
Aberdeen
’s stern, and closed his fingers around the side rails of the boarding ladder. He didn’t have enough strength to pull himself up. I explained to Jola how she should grab hold of him and shoved up from underneath until Theo plopped on the deck like a wet sack. He’d used up his last ounce of strength and lay there like a corpse. I hurriedly removed the things I’d put on him while he was underwater—dive mask, hood, gloves. I ordered Jola to pull off his soaked shirt, and then I sent her to get some towels, a thermal blanket, and the emergency oxygen kit. She obeyed. Theo not only lay there like a corpse, he also looked like one. His skin was waxy yellow. His closed eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His lips, hands, and feet were appallingly blue. A thin stream of blood ran out of the hair near his left ear. I felt a laceration and a great deal of swelling. While we were underwater,
I hadn’t noticed the wound. I was just thinking that he shouldn’t be moved for any reason when a coughing spell caused him to rear up. I rolled him into a stable position on his side, and salt water came gushing from his mouth. Jola brought the kit. I pressed the breathing apparatus to Theo’s lips and said to her, “Drive the boat.”

“He wanted to kill himself,” she said. As if I’d asked a question that required such an answer. My mouth contorted in disgust. Suicides may stuff lead weights in their pockets, but they don’t whack themselves across the head with the big water-pump pliers usually kept in the engine room belowdecks.

“Drive!” I shouted at her. “Drive as fast as you can!”

She dithered a moment and then turned around and ran to the helm stand. The engine sprang to life. A speed of six knots had never been slower. I wrapped Theo in the blanket, gave him oxygen, massaged his limbs. When I was sure I could leave him briefly alone, I crowded next to Jola at the helm stand and made a radio call. Then, when my cell phone finally found a network, I called the hospital. They promised to send a helicopter.

The rest of the return trip seemed endless. While I knelt beside Theo, who gave no more signs of life, my mind kept returning helplessly to how normal he’d seemed underwater. Downright calm and relaxed. As if everything was fine.

I first noticed the coast guard when their Zodiac inflatable boat hove to alongside us. We were still two kilometers from land. Jola turned off the engine. All at once, the
Aberdeen
was full of people. The situation proved too much for me. I frantically warded off the rescue personnel’s hands. I may even have tried to keep them away from Theo.
“No tocar! No se debe mover!” Don’t touch him, don’t move him
. My own voice sounded shrill in my ears. Someone pushed me aside. They laid Theo on a stretcher and lifted him over the rail. Jola clambered over behind him. A guy from the rescue service grabbed my arm and tried to get me to leave the boat too. I struck out at him. The
Aberdeen
. I couldn’t just leave her out there. The Spaniards exchanged a few quick words, pointing to me and shaking their heads. “We be back here!” one of them called out in English. The outboard motor roared and the Zodiac sped away, leaving a wake of white foam behind it.

And suddenly I was alone. I savored the stillness. No people, no birds. A little wind and the lapping of the waves. The fading sound of the outboard motor as the Zodiac, now far off, hurtled landward. I made no move to get the
Aberdeen
under way again. I simply stood there. Still in my dive suit. I hadn’t even dried my hair. I couldn’t tell whether I was sweating or freezing. The here and now took my breath away, like a pressure of one thousand bars. As though I were lying on the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean. A helicopter rose up above Playa Blanca. It was the last I saw of Jola and Theo.

18

She’d hidden it in such a way that it would pretty much have to be found. Not placed it so obviously that it seemed to have been planted. Nor, however, was it concealed so well that any island police inspector, no matter how dim-witted, could overlook it.

I have hardly any memories of the day after the Wednesday diving expedition. It’s as though that whole Thursday has been expunged. Maybe I slept completely through it. Or spent it staring unseeing out the window, stupefied by the emptiness that surrounded me. On Friday morning I ran out of the house before breakfast, armed with vacuum cleaner and mop pail, as if my life depended on doing the usual post-guest cleaning in the Casa Raya. Normally that would have been Antje’s job. She would have done it on Saturday afternoon, right after Theo and Jola’s departure, so that the house would be ready for the Sunday arrival of our next clients. I, meanwhile, would have taken the day off. But Antje wasn’t there anymore, and I had three
free days. I didn’t even dare to think about Sunday. It seemed to me completely implausible that I’d spend part of it waiting in the airport terminal, holding a sign with the names
MARTIN & NANCY
. That mental image belonged to a universe that no longer existed.

When I stepped into the Casa Raya, I felt as though someone had punched me in the pit of the stomach. They were still there. They’d left the house only briefly to take a stroll by the sea. At least, that was the statement their stuff made. Everything was hanging around as though still warm from contact with them. There were clothes on the floor. Toothbrushes in the bathroom. An open book on the dining-room table. Only the dried coffee dregs in the cups revealed that some time had passed.

I walked around for a while without knowing where to begin. The unmade bed. The remains of a hasty breakfast. Jola’s bikinis hanging over the shower-curtain rod. Tidying up and cleaning had never been my strong points. Most of all, however, I couldn’t bring myself to touch anything. The objects all looked to me like props in an amusement park’s haunted house.

Then my paralysis metamorphosed into a frenzy of activity. Swift as the wind, I gathered up all the clothes that were lying around and threw them into the washing machine. I cleaned out the closets and meticulously distributed their contents between the two wheeled suitcases. I carefully removed Lotte’s photograph from the wall. In the bathroom I packed the toilet kits, never taking longer than a second to decide what belonged to Jola and what to Theo. All at once, things sorted themselves. I washed the dishes, pulled the sheets off the beds, took fresh linens from the bathroom closet, and set about making the beds with the clean
sheets. When I lifted up the big double mattress, there it was. On the slats underneath. A black notebook.