Decompression

16

Tuesday, November 22, 2011. A near-perfect day. Light north-northeast wind, no more than twelve kilometers an hour. Expected high temperature: twenty-four degrees Celsius, seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit.

A typical November morning, in other words. I stood on the terrace in my boxer shorts, cup of coffee in hand, and thought about damp cold and the smell of rotting cabbage. About the ground fog that hung over the fields until noon, the wetness that crawled under your jacket and numbed the skin on your thighs as you walked. I thought about the days when the sun went down before there was ever any proper daylight. No wind, no sea, no sky. Just mute silence, and behind it the hum of the Autobahn. The silhouettes of apple trees with all their leaves gone and a couple of wrinkled brown fruits still hanging on. The silhouettes of my parents, hand in hand, my mother (helped by shoes and hairdo) taller than my father. And about knee-high, something that was always in motion and never cold: Todd the First, practically overcome by the sheer joy of a family walking party. “Cold, but lovely,” my mother would say. Antje was also somewhere in that fog, still no higher than a fence post, her hair gleaming blond. There was the memory of the summer, the certain knowledge of the fall, the prospect of a wet winter, and the abstract hope for a spring that still lay much too far in the future. There was the year and the season. Had anyone told me fourteen years ago I’d be on the island in November and I’d miss, of all things, the bad weather in the Rhine Valley, I would have told him he was out of his mind.

I stood there drinking my coffee in the warm breeze that morning and longed for temperatures a few degrees below freezing. For fumes rising from my cup. For the possibility of putting on a sweater. I’d slept wonderfully in the big bed, a deep, dreamless sleep that stripped my soul and promised a new beginning. When I woke up, the silence in the house — no radio, no clattering dishes, no dog’s paws — had reminded me of winter.

Twice a year, Antje flew to Germany alone to spend a week with her family. I thought of those days as holidays, even if I had to work and the annoying task of washing the dive suits every evening fell to me. Not that I was usually tormented by her presence, but her absence opened up rooms. I stretched out. I did a lot of thinking, without being able to say later what it was I’d been thinking about. By the end of the week, having stretched myself out and thought myself out, I’d look forward to the moment when the place would come back to life.

Lights went on in the Casa Raya. I saw Theo stagger into the living room and over to the little kitchen, where he paused, as though he couldn’t remember what all those appliances were for. Then he filled the espresso pot with water and set it on the stove. He stood in front of the open refrigerator and drank something from a bottle. I couldn’t tell whether it was juice or wine. Though as a matter of fact, bottled juice wasn’t available on the island. Theo scratched his head with his right hand and stuck his left down the back of his pajama pants. He ate a few spoonfuls of something in the fridge, maybe olives or caviar. He emptied the bottle and dropped it on the floor. He poured out his coffee, took a sip of milk from the open carton on the counter, and immediately spat into the sink. Hadn’t Antje told them they should buy only long-life milk on the island? Anything else went bad almost at once, even in the refrigerator. Theo took his black coffee into the bedroom.

When I envisioned the future, I imagined a contradictory picture. I firmly believed that Antje would come back. She’d never spent more than a week away from home. I couldn’t manage the diving school for longer than that without her. She was surely staying in some girlfriend’s house, and I figured she’d keep up the Ricardo act for a few days in order to punish me. Then, one evening, suddenly she’d be there again. At the same time, I saw myself waking up in the morning and gazing at Jola, asleep beside me in the double bed. I saw Antje lying in the bathtub and Jola standing before the mirror. While Antje made breakfast, Jola set the table. I saw Jola sorting invoices while Antje sent e-mails to clients. Snow was falling outside the windows.

I went back inside, shaking my head. I hadn’t taken care of the gecko yet. I tore off part of a paper towel, picked up Emile’s cold little body, carried him into the bathroom, and threw him in the toilet. He wouldn’t flush down. I covered him with toilet paper, flushed, waited, flushed again. Until he finally disappeared.

They were both standing in front of the house. I hadn’t reckoned on more than one of them. On this morning, as on every morning, they waited at the foot of the Casa Raya’s front steps while I backed the van across the sandlot. Jola wore a red dress with a swaying skirt that I hadn’t seen before. Theo looked like he wasn’t awake yet. I got out of the van, walked up to Jola, put my hands on her waist, and kissed her on the mouth. I didn’t know why I did that. I hadn’t planned it. Nor did it feel good.

“Whoops!” said Jola.

Theo looked past us, gave a slight nod, and smiled.

Some fuse in my head must have blown overnight. In the van, I gazed at Jola from the side and stroked her cheek with my forefinger. I put a hand on her knee. She seemed happy, but also a little mixed up. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere. At the dive site, when she turned her back on Theo and me to take off her dress and get into her suit, I had to keep my hands still. I felt like a boy forbidden to test out his new toy, even though it had so many functions he’d yet to discover. Theo was suddenly full of questions about technical diving. Only then did I remember that tomorrow was the day I’d been waiting months for. My fortieth birthday, one hundred meters underwater. No matter what the wrecked ship’s original name had been, I was going to rename it after myself. A few more preparations remained to be made; there were tanks to fill, various pieces of equipment to check, calculations in the dive plan to be gone over one last time. The impending expedition seemed far away to me, like something I’d already lived through and concluded. That perception had to change. I needed my full concentration. I answered Theo’s questions without properly listening to myself. While I was explaining that helium, even under high pressure, had very little narcotic effect, and that this was the reason why divers at hundred-meter depths breathed a helium-oxygen mixture, I looked at Jola, who was standing a little away from us. She returned my gaze with her head slightly tilted to one side, like someone contemplating a piece of furniture, uncertain about which room to put it in.

I thought about how urgently I needed to make a few decisions, and this immediately put me in a bad mood. Then I reflected that such decisions were best left to fate, and my mood improved. I said that the thermodynamic law of ideal gases didn’t take the interaction between gas atoms into account, and that therefore it was advisable to fall back on the van der Waals model when using helium. I thought that I had as valid a right as anyone to follow the laws of logic. Which meant that if Theo, Antje, Antje’s girlfriends, Bernie — if the whole island — assumed that I was having an affair with Jola, then it was only logical that I should actually have the said affair. The thought appealed to me. A man who didn’t want to lose his reason had to make sure that idea and reality were coextensive. As a general rule, one adapted ideas to reality. Sometimes the opposite method was the simpler one. An affair with Jola would ease the sting of Antje’s unjust accusations, give my conviction a retroactive basis, and put me back at the negotiating table. I’d had enough of feeling that I couldn’t explain anything because no one would believe me no matter what I said. I composed a text message to Antje in my head: “Just slept with Jola, so you can stop thinking I’m a liar.” Let her try to get over that.

Jola watched me as I thought. She appeared to know what was in my mind. I smiled. She smiled. I laughed. She shook her head. As though she couldn’t rightly believe what she read in my thoughts. Come to your senses, her look seemed to say. All the same, she’d been coming on to me for days. It bordered on the miraculous that a woman of her caliber was prepared to go to such obstinate lengths to get a man.

I’d apparently broken off my helium lecture at some point in the middle; nevertheless, the Boltzmann constant and Charles’s law of volumes were still hanging in the air somehow. Theo looked unsatisfied.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go for a dive.”

Three hours later, when the dive was over and we were back in the van, Jola asked me, “Do you own a dinner jacket?” I said I didn’t. “Then a clean pair of jeans and a white shirt will have to do,” she said. “But with long sleeves!”

She hadn’t asked me whether I wanted to go out with them.

“Dinner on the Dorset,” Theo explained. “Aperitifs at seven.”

I gave some brief consideration to what Antje might be planning for dinner, but then I recalled that Antje wasn’t home. My aversion to parties was irrelevant in this case. Theo and Jola were scheduled to depart on Saturday. The time remaining until then must be utilized, deliberately and thoroughly. Relishing the thought, I swung the van through the open gate and onto my property.

“Would you like to come in?” I asked in Jola’s direction, addressing her as casually as possible. Theo burst out laughing and left the van. Jola extended an index finger, poked me on the nose, and got out too. Her sports bag dangled jauntily from her shoulder as she walked over to the Casa Raya and disappeared inside.

With his back to me, Theo was standing on some indefinite spot between the gate entrance and the sandlot, approximately where the sidewalk would be in a German village. As he turned around, I could see a cigarette between his lips. He was crying. It was a weird sight: the forty-two-year-old man with the old face, the burning cigarette, the tears. Like a still shot from a movie that Antje would have liked.

“When we were children,” Theo said, “we wouldn’t have imagined we’d come to this one day.”

His flamboyant talk of the past few days was still in my ears. I’ll put up with you banging her, he’d said. Just stop denying it. As my mother would have observed, there’s no pleasing some people. Right there and then, I found Theo repulsive. He wasn’t only smoking and weeping, he was also smiling, all at the same time.

“Just imagine,” said Theo. “Seeing that drowned swimmer didn’t bother her a bit. It was almost as if she was enjoying it.”

He wiped his face with his cigarette hand. With the other, he made a regretful gesture, as though sympathizing with me about something. You had to hand it to him — he certainly had a knack for producing shock effects. Without turning around again, he crossed the sandlot and entered the Casa Raya.

Jola wore a silver-white dress that gave off a pale, liquid shimmer and reacted to her slightest movement. Her dark hair was braided and wound around her head like a wreath. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

She had made sure we’d arrive fifteen minutes late. As we went up the gangway, she took my arm. The conversation on board fell silent. Theo walked behind us. I felt ashamed to be wearing jeans.

It was a moment I’ll never forget. Bittmann, tuxedoed and filthy rich, stared at us wide-eyed, as if he were standing on a raft while I steered a luxury yacht in his direction. Because of Jola, my jeans suddenly presented no problem; on the contrary, they seemed like a clever gambit.

A young girl wearing a man’s suit and a 1920s hairdo served the aperitifs: Aperol spritzes. My question as to what those might be made everybody laugh. A guy who was a singer in an East German band ordered a beer. On my left a young black man wearing gym shoes and a hoodie was grinning nonstop. I asked him how he liked the island. He understood neither German nor English nor Spanish. I couldn’t speak French.

We stood in a circle on the quarterdeck. The Dorset radiated light to all points of the compass. People in Morocco could probably see that something was going on here. A couple of children whom Bittmann had permitted to take a tour of the ship ran up and down the deck. Their parents were on the quay, so curious they didn’t know what to do. We gazed at the starry sky, or rather at what there was to see of it behind the haze of the Dorset’s lights, and said, “Fantastic” and “Spectacular” alternately. Jola greeted a tall man in his sixties named Jankowski, whom Bittmann introduced as Germany’s most important literary critic. Next to Theo stood a lady wearing a multicolored shawl; according to Bittmann, she was the star director of the Schauspiel Köln theater. The other guests included a famous photographer with unwashed hair and the noted East German singer with his beer. The young black man was an artist from Burkina Faso who glued together collages of plastic bags; an exhibition of his work had opened in a gallery in Hamburg a few weeks before.

“Jola Pahlen and Theodor Hast need no introduction,” Bittmann said. “And this is …”

“My personal trainer,” said Jola, raising her glass to me.

I found that mortifying and therefore laughed with everyone else.

“Lovely to have you here,” Bittmann thundered, and all the glasses met in the center of the circle. “To art and culture!”

“To art and culture!” the guests shouted to the stars, and I began to have an uneasy feeling that my dinner companions, no matter how well or little they were acquainted and whether or not they liked one another, all belonged to a kind of club, a club whose membership didn’t include me. It had been an eternity since I’d last stepped into a museum. I didn’t read books, didn’t listen to music, rarely watched a movie, never went to the theater, and couldn’t even stand the works bequeathed to the island by its local artist. Such things, I felt, required me to make myself small and to tilt my head as far back as possible.

“Art is always where you aren’t,” Antje had said to me one day. She meant this observation as a reproach, but I considered it a compliment. Maybe it was an either-or proposition: you could love nature, or you could love art. Nature needs no admirers. It works, in every respect, by itself. I took another glass of Aperol from the flapper’s tray.

“I wouldn’t have recognized you,” Jankowski said to Theo. “The photograph on your book must be a little old now.”

“As old as the book,” said Jola with a bewitching smile.

“When will we see something new from you?” Jankowski asked.

“I’m working on a big project,” said Theo. “It’s a social novel that—”

“Great,” said Jankowski.

“He writes short stories,” I remarked.

“Touché!” Jola cried out and pressed my hand. Jankowski laughed.

“Short stories,” he said, winking at me. “What do you know.”

I saw Theo’s jaw muscles working, felt unclear about what exactly I’d just done, and emptied my glass. Bittmann shooed the children off the yacht and invited us to move to the dining salon on the lower deck.

With an elegant naturalness that surprised even me, I stepped back and let Jola go first down the stairs. Antje was one of those women who got irritated when someone held a door open for them. Jola inclined her head like a queen, gathered up her dress, and descended the steep steps. The action of her thigh muscles showed through the clinging material she wore. An athlete’s legs. I looked from above at her artfully braided hairdo. The impulse simply to turn around and run home grew almost overwhelming. The other guests crowded down the narrow steps behind me. Everything is will, I thought. Without knowing what I meant by that. One after the other, we plunged into the Dorset’s belly.

Down there, the past was waiting for us. The restorers had returned the interior of the Dorset to its original 1926 splendor. Cherrywood paneling on the walls. Cream-colored leather upholstery on chairs and armchairs. Every door handle, every little wall lamp, every drawer pull was polished brass. The large skylight in the ceiling overhead reflected the candles on the dining table. Over the sideboard, an oil painting of the “Big Five”: the five biggest racing cutters of the 1920s sailing in a regatta, the Dorset in the midst of them. Shamrock, Westward, Britannia—I couldn’t think of the fifth schooner’s name. Jola would certainly have known it at once.

The flapper had duplicated herself. The two of them were now passing out glasses of Moët & Chandon, an activity that required them to snake among the guests. The presence of nine people standing in the salon showed how small it actually was. We formed a miniature group of banqueters in a miniature banquet room. The noise level rose. Glasses clinked. The champagne was excellent. The girls distributed refills. When she laughed, Jola clutched my forearm, which I was holding bent at an angle, like a waiter. The warmth in the room seemed to emanate from her body. At last, Bittmann suggested we take our places at the table. The seating arrangement was up to us. We sat down. Jola was on my right, the black Frenchman still on my left. Theo sat at the other end of the table, far from Jola, who now belonged to me. That was exactly what I thought: She belongs to me. I let myself lean back, laid my arm across the top of Jola’s chair, and laughed at a joke I hadn’t understood at all.

Scallop and swordfish carpaccio with lime-tomato marinade.

The photographer scarfed down the appetizer in something under two minutes. Then he wiped the marinade from his mouth and declared that the European economic crisis would widen the gap between rich and poor. Bittmann pointed out that the Riesling we were drinking came from a good friend’s vineyard on the Mosel River, where a coalition of the righteous was staunchly protesting against the building of a bridge. The star director chimed in, observing that the people were in the process of being repoliticized. Jankowski asked the singer, who was washing down his scallops with beer, why there were so many Nazis in the former DDR. The young black man and Jola chatted in French, leaning across me from both sides in order to hear each other better. The star director talked about her latest play, in which actors who’d spent weeks conversing with hookers, junkies, and homeless people played hookers, junkies, and homeless people. She spoke rapidly, making frequent use of the word authenticity. When I asked who’d written the play and what it was about, Jankowski went into a paroxysm of laughter. He struck the table with the flat of his hand and cried out, “Sven, you’re priceless!” Jankowski had liked me from the start. The director’s answer was drowned in the general uproar. Theo looked at me from the other end of the table in a way I couldn’t interpret. The evening was getting better and better. In Jola’s mouth, French sounded like a song with no beginning and no end.

Black ribbon pasta with lobster sauce.

The photographer, his shirt sprinkled with droplets of sauce, asserted that the financial crisis had signaled the definitive end of capitalism. The singer informed us that his band had been supporting projects to combat right-wing extremism ever since the reunification. Jankowski, nodding distractedly, listened while Bittmann praised the real economy.

“Oh, Lars,” cried the director, who’d been a little marginalized. “It’s so wonderful, the way you always bring it off!” She wasn’t referring to rising sales figures, but rather to something about dialogue and the connection between culture and politics. Shouting loudly, Theo asserted that the finance economy was the metaphysics of poker players. The twin servers circled the table tirelessly, Riesling bottles in hand. The little curls on their temples hadn’t budged an inch.

King prawns in sesame tempura, served on a cucumber bed with papaya tartare.

I wasn’t properly listening anymore. I thought about Germany, where these people lived when they weren’t sailing off the coast of Africa. I knew how they felt. They were confronted daily with the task of accommodating their own personal crises to the bank crisis, the financial crisis, the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the education crisis, the euro crisis, the pension crisis, and the Middle East crisis. For fifteen minutes in the evening, every evening, they watched people on television elucidate for them the imminent decline of the West and the inability of politicians to prevent it. Meanwhile the viewers clung to the totally private and slightly embarrassing hope that, in the end, everything would nevertheless remain as it was. Just keep on going. Their lives were wholly dedicated to keeping on going. To crossing hours and days and things to do off the list, one after another. Although the future appeared to them like the place where the coming catastrophe would be accomplished, they fought their way doggedly through the trenches of the present. They were soldiers who’d lost their faith in victory and cared exclusively about their own survival. They didn’t desert because they didn’t know where to go. In a world without differences, there was no such thing as exile.

I looked around. The temperature was rising steadily; alcohol and candles were heating up the little salon. I felt my cheeks glowing. My shirt stuck to my back. I recognized the anxiety behind the papaya tartare. All the faces were laughing in the way I recognized from Jola: with their mouths open too wide. They all talked like Jola: emphatically, with broad gestures that put glasses and candlesticks in danger. A wave of sympathy washed over me, flipped me around, ebbed away, and left behind a sandy feeling of love for the people at the table.

“It’s too bad you can’t fondle wine,” Theo cried. He’d been watching me the whole time I was looking over the others. Our eyes met again and again. He seemed amazingly relaxed. He clearly assumed he’d be taking Jola back to Germany with him on Saturday. I had the distinct feeling I must not allow that to happen. Bide your time, I told myself, and raised my glass to Theo. He lifted his glass as well and sent me a little nod. Jola gave back her plate practically untouched, which nobody commented on.

Cream of celery soup with chard-wrapped salmon roulades.

The evening metamorphosed into a tableau of light, heat, and noise. In my memory, the conversations around the table are covered up by loud music, something classical, somebody’s ninth whatever, but at the same time, I’m not completely sure there was any music at all. I didn’t turn down the twins’ offers to refill my glass. And Jola’s nearness intoxicated me. She kept groping me, laying her hand on my shoulder, on my arm, on my thigh. She leaned against me, and I could smell her hair. She whispered into my ear, and I could feel her breath. There was a dark red film of wine on her chapped lips. Smeared mascara ringed her eyes. She dug her fingers into my shirt while she laughed. Too bad you can’t drink a woman, I thought. During those minutes, I believed I’d never before loved anybody so much. In fact, my sympathy with the others at the table had its source in the profusion of my love for Jola. The East German singer and his faith in beer, the lady director’s strident isolation, Jankowski’s tragic perception of his own past, the young African, locked inside himself, Theo’s pretended serenity, the social-climbing Bittmann and his protein bars — all that provided an overflow basin for my feelings. My affection poured itself over them, fused them into a wedding party that had journeyed from far-off Germany in order to celebrate my marriage to Jola. The mere presence of these people made us a couple, for which service I owed them my thanks. They all moved me to tears. Jola and I, individually and together, moved me to tears. I put an arm around her and felt her soft yielding as I pulled her against me. Ever since the king prawns, I’d been hiding a semi-erection under the table, a reaction to the scent of Jola’s perfume. I knew what lay ahead of me. I saw Jola in my bed, in my kitchen, in front of my computer, in my living room; I saw Jola as an island resident, wearing shorts and flip-flops; I saw her talking to clients and helping run the diving school. Along the way, I’d train her to be a diving instructor in her own right, and she, Jola, would recover from Germany day by day, month by month; she, Jola, would laugh more softly and gesticulate less and become more and more beautiful. In my fantasy she didn’t give up her career, she only downsized it, and occasionally I accompanied her to Germany, where we lived in an apartment overlooking the rooftops of Berlin and went out to events in the evenings. She wore the shimmering dress and I was at her side, the same as now. Film premieres, television awards. Jola in the spotlight, and I the silent observer. People looked at me askance. Photographers took pictures of us. I smiled, unspeaking; now and then Jola pressed my hand. On the return flight, we imitated the people we’d met and laughed so much that the other passengers complained. Jola was wearing enormous sunglasses so as not to be recognized, and after we landed she said softly, “Welcome home.” One morning she’d bring me coffee in bed, gaze at me for a long time, and tell me she was expecting a child. Even that was something I could imagine.

Terrine of various fish in octopus mantle over sautéed sugar snap peas.

I started out of my reverie. Something had changed: the light, the ambient noise, the guests’ looks. I was apparently in a state of extreme sensitivity, in which I could detect the tiniest vibrations. When Bittmann began to speak of Yvette, I knew something was wrong. Or better, I knew something was going to go wrong in a second.

Yvette was such a dear, according to Bittmann. He’d known her a long time. A fabulous beauty, he said. And of course, a superb actress. Yet despite her accomplishments, she’d remained the same. Still the nice girl next door.

Maybe the movement I felt beside me was Jola, suddenly sitting up a little too straight. In any case, the noise level around Bittmann’s voice seemed to drop down so far that I could hear every word he said. The music, if in fact any was playing, fell silent. Everybody listened.

Yvette had sailed on the Dorset before, Bittmann said, and she would have very much liked to come along this time too. A good addition she would have been, because by now she was an expert sailor.

“But seasick,” the lady director cried out.

“But seasick,” Bittmann confirmed.

“Could you all please stop repeating the word seasick?” Jankowski asked.

“But you refused my pills,” the photographer cried.

“Ingwer! Please!” cried Jankowski.

They laughed together about something that had happened on the boat a few days before. It was Theo who took it upon himself to bring the conversation back to its topic. He asked, “So why couldn’t Yvette be here this time?”

It was clear that all the guests aboard the Dorset knew the answer already. Theo too looked as though he’d been informed. Bittmann had probably told him earlier what Yvette Stadler’s present occupation was. Theo just wanted to make sure that the matter would be gone over in public one more time. When he asked his question, he was looking at Jola, not Bittmann. His face shone with pleasant anticipation. He looked like a man scarcely able to suppress his laughter. I felt Jola tense up beside me. As though her body were preparing for a life-threatening assault.

“Yvette’s on the shores of the Red Sea as we speak,” said Bittmann. “Beautiful spot. A few years ago, on our legendary tour, we ran into a heavy storm. We were all drenched to the skin, and when we finally reached the new marina in Hurghada, Boris and Til, wearing nothing but underpants, jumped into the water and—”

“But what’s Yvette doing down there by the Red Sea?” Theo asked impatiently. He was grinning. He’d obviously lost all desire to control himself. I had the impression that Jola was starting to tremble.

“She’s preparing for a new role,” Bittmann said. Now he too was looking at Jola. “Surely you’ve heard about it? From your father?”

Jola didn’t react. She extended a hand toward her wineglass, reconsidered halfway there, and put the hand in her lap.

“What role is that?” asked Theo.

“Well, they’re making a film about the life of this woman deep-sea diver.” Bittmann was speaking to Jola again. He assumed that such news would be of professional interest to her. “I can’t come up with her name at the moment.”

“Lotte Hass,” Theo said.

“Yes, maybe so.”

Bittmann still had noticed nothing. Everyone except him and the African had lowered their spoon to their terrine bowl. They gazed at Jola, who had turned as pallid as a corpse.

“In any case, we must keep this among ourselves until the official press conference. I know about it only because it was Yvette’s reason for declining my invitation. Otherwise she would’ve come aboard in Casablanca.”

Theo turned toward Jola. “Wasn’t that role the reason why we came down here, love?” he asked. “The reason why you’re taking this diving course?”

“But casting …” Jola cleared her throat. “But casting doesn’t start until the week after next.”

Her voice toppled over at the end. I admired her. She fought against domination like a bull in an arena. Theo thrust in the next lance. “Wasn’t your heart set on playing the Girl on the Ocean Floor?”

“What I told you was insider information,” Bittmann said. “They made an internal decision that Yvette absolutely had to get the part.”

“Didn’t you say”—Theo started laughing again—“didn’t you say this was your last chance?”

“Jola …” Bittmann looked stricken. “Don’t tell me you intended to try for the role yourself.”

“Because otherwise you’d never be able to get out of that soap-opera shit?” Theo slapped the table with delight. “You’d never be taken seriously as an actress? You’d just be an aging TV whore nobody would remember in a few years?”

Jola had lost. She’d lost against Theo, against the people around the table, and especially against herself. A gasp escaped her throat. She sprang to her feet and ran out of the salon and up the steep stairs. I wanted to go after her and was already half out of my chair when my eyes fell on Theo. He broke off laughing to raise his eyebrows and shake his head. That meant Let her go. I sank back down. He kept looking at me while his chest began to quiver with laughter again. Now what was that? His eyes seemed to ask. You couldn’t give your new girlfriend any help at all? Fucking beginner.

Amid the general silence, the African turned his head from one side to the other and asked in English, “What is?”

After a longish pause, Bittmann said, “I feel very sorry about that.”

“She’ll get over it,” Jankowski opined.

“I don’t think so,” said Theo.

“Dessert?” Bittmann asked.

Vanilla panna cotta with pistachios and red wine jelly.

When the dessert plate lay in front of me, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I murmured an apology and left the table. Before I reached the main deck, my cell phone rang. I thought it must be Jola and answered at once. It was Bernie. He spoke in English, and pretty rapidly at that. A stream of mostly incomprehensible language rushed past my right ear. Every now and then, single words I could understand briefly emerged from the torrent: “Fuck”; “Dave”; “Aberdeen.” I heard the word crazy twice.

“Bernie,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“You can have the fucking boat. But don’t ever ask me again.”

“Pardon?”

“Aren’t you listening, man? You can take the Aberdeen out tomorrow morning. But forget about us! Dave — is — not — coming — and — neither — am — I, understand? It’s the last thing I’ll ever do for you. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“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 fight, 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.

All at once I smelled the sea and felt the Dorset’s slight movements. I was alive again. All the pain was still there, but so was joy. I lived toward Sven, as though love were a direction. I took him in my arms. The stream of his words dried up immediately. I said I’d come with him. It would be a fantastic expedition, I said.

He said, I need Theo too. I said, Then Theo’s coming with us. He said, Theo’s important. We can’t do it without Theo. I said, Don’t worry, he’ll come. Then Sven wanted to know if I could promise that. I promised. He made me repeat the promise. Both of us, Theo and I. Tomorrow morning at six, in front of the Casa Raya. Ready for action. Sven stressed every single word. Like we were plotting a bank robbery. I kissed him. He stroked my hair. I wasn’t interested in thinking about the future anymore. Not even about Saturday. Only about now and tomorrow morning. Then Sven said it was late. He told me to take a cab and go to bed. He’d bring Theo home. We all needed at least a few hours’ sleep.

The sleeping part’s hard. I’ve got so much to think about, so much I’d like to write about. But Sven’s right. We need sleep. I think I can hear his van driving up. The light has to be off when Theo comes in. I’ll stop now.