Decompression

2

A typical evening. All the windows were open. Warm air flowed through the house and eliminated the difference between inside and outside. Antje was banging around in the kitchen. A sound as pleasant as rain on a tent roof. I was glad to sit at the computer in our tiny office while she busied herself around the stove.

Three hundred and eighty-four thousand hits on Google. That was a shock. Even though I didn’t know exactly why it frightened me. In the background, a software program was uploading data from my dive computer. If Antje appeared in the doorway, I could click onto the other screen in a flash. I didn’t feel like explaining what I was doing and why. Googling clients wasn’t really my style.

It looked like half the Internet consisted of Jola. Wikipedia entry, fan pages, Facebook profile, Twitter, press reports, YouTube. Hundreds of photographs. How many faces could one person have? The longer I looked, the faster they seemed to multiply. From page to page, from link to link. It was fascinating. And somehow offensive.

Jolante Augusta Sophie von der Pahlen (stage name: Jola Pahlen), born 5 October 1981 in Hanover, is a German actress. Von der Pahlen comes from a Baltic German noble family. At the age of eleven, she recorded a CD of children’s songs and performed a singing role in a production of Woyzeck at the Staatstheater in Hanover. She gained her first television experience (1995–1997) in the children’s program Toggo, which was broadcast on the Super RTL network. Since December 4, 2003, von der Pahlen has played the role of Bella Schweig in SAT.1’s daytime drama Up and Down. Jolante von der Pahlen lives with the writer Theodor Hast.

See “Jola Pahlen” in the Internet Movie Database (German and English versions)

A chirping sound came from the ceiling. The gecko had left his sleeping quarters behind the curtain rod and was preparing himself for his nightly insect hunt. Years ago, when I saw him for the first time, he was approximately three centimeters long, practically transparent, and clueless about life. Now he was longer than my index finger, and he knew he had nothing to fear from me. I’d baptized him Emile, even though Antje declared he was a female. She claimed that this particular gecko species includes no males whatsoever; the females reproduce by self-cloning, she said. Then she grinned at me, as though she was talking about some masterstroke on Nature’s part. None of that bothered me. I liked Emile. He had the most beautiful feet, and he used nanotechnology to run upside down across the ceiling.

“Frau Pahlen, you come from a noble family. In what ways has your family background shaped your character?”

“Everybody’s shaped by their origins. I’ve learned from my family to protect and preserve beautiful things. It causes me physical pain to see someone put a water glass without a coaster on the bare wood of a Biedermeier table. Carelessness is beauty’s worst enemy.”

“Your father is a successful film producer. Your family is rich. Do you sometimes feel a desire to do something independently?”

“Everything I do I do independently. My father doesn’t stand in front of the Up and Down cameras, and neither does anyone else in my family. That’s me.”

“But people say, don’t they, that your father got you the part in Up and Down?”

“Success always requires a combination of luck, hard work, and talent.”

“Frau Pahlen, you turned thirty last week. Isn’t it time to leave Up and Down?”

“Why? Do you think thirty’s too old for soap operas?”

“Not for soap operas, but maybe for a first real film role.”

“I’m looking at a serious project right now.”

“Then we wish you good luck, Frau Pahlen.”

The delicate scampering of soft feet. Emile appeared on the computer monitor, whose illuminated surface attracted little flies. He walked across the screen and sat in the middle of Jola’s face. Then he looked at me with his black button eyes and stuck out his tongue. In the movies, if a reptile sits on a character’s picture, that character will go crazy before the end.

Theodor Hast racked up 12,400 links on Google. Most of them referred to his relationship with Jola Pahlen. His Wikipedia entry consisted of two lines, with no accompanying photograph: “German writer, born 1969 in Reutlingen. His first novel, Flying Buildings, was published in 2001. He lives in Berlin, Stuttgart, and New York.”

The triple residence awakened unpleasant memories. In law school we were taught to cite all the publishing offices when quoting from the technical literature: “Volker Schlön, Securities Law, with Special Emphasis on the Securities Trading Act. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 6th edition.” A book like that cost 129 deutschmarks, and the copy in the university library was notoriously unavailable whenever a paper relating to securities law actually had to be written. In Theo’s case it wasn’t his book but he himself who apparently lived in three places at the same time.

“An irritating gem.”

“A clear harbinger of future masterpieces.”

“ ‘There are many people who like me, but only one has to live with me. And that one’s myself.’ (Theodor Hass, Flying Buildings, p. 23.)”

According to the jacket copy posted on the publishing house’s home page, the novel was about a character named Martin and the search for identity. It sounded complicated. I scrolled down and came to an excerpt from the text:

He asked himself how it could be that God created the world in six days and gave himself the seventh day off. Were there already days before the earth took its first twenty-four-hour spin around the sun? And how was it that God opted for the seven-day week? That must mean God had held down a job somewhere. Martin would have very much liked to know where. He set his glass down and looked up. The tattered sky was hurrying eastward, as if it had something urgent to do there. Emigrate, he thought. But that would make sense only if the country we escape to weren’t always and only ourselves.

Antje read a lot. Whenever I tried to read a novel, it would put me to sleep.

A pan started sizzling. I smelled rabbit. I got up but left the computer on. The monitor was a fabulous hunting reserve for Emile.

Antje had set the table for four. Two glasses per person, one for water and one for wine. I noticed that the glasses were standing on the bare wood of the teak dining table. I started searching the sideboard for coasters.

Jola talked a great deal. Her hands flailed the air as though she was shooing away insects. Her long hair seemed to be in her way. She was constantly swiping it from one side to the other. Antje served salt-crusted Canary potatoes, mushrooms in olive oil, and three different mojo sauces. The conversation revolved around Jola’s movie project. She was reading a book about Lotte Hass, and she had romantic notions about the adventure of diving: you put on a chic bathing suit, jumped into the water, and quickly emptied your breathing tank, preferably while eye to eye with a whale shark. Theo ate potatoes. In a steady rhythm, one after the other, like a man doing a job.

I said I was going to instruct them strictly by the book. Caution and security would be primary concerns in every situation. It wasn’t about having an adventure, it was about knowledge of the subject and mastery of technique.

Jola stuck out her lower lip and played the little girl. Couldn’t she make friends with a whale shark?

I said we’d see angel sharks. Six feet long at most, and generally lying flat on the seafloor. At this the little girl turned into a strategist with narrow eyes and a dangerous smile. “Just as long as I can tell Casting I’ve had experience with sharks.”

I thought it wasn’t at all necessary for her to act that way. A cute little space between her upper incisors compelled me to keep looking at her mouth. Suddenly her hand was lying on my arm. The way she batted her eyelashes revealed practice. Didn’t I think she’d make a good Lotte?

Theo looked up from his plate. “Get ahold of yourself,” he said.

It sounded like a slap. Antje flinched as though it had been meant for her. The wind moved the curtains on the open windows; the air had become slightly cool. The clock on the wall gave the time as shortly before seven. The night was already creeping out of the corners of the rooms. I stood up to turn on the lights and close the windows.

“Don’t you like the potatoes?” Antje asked.

“Oh yes,” said Jola, quickly snatching the smallest one off her plate with her hand and stuffing the little morsel in her mouth. “But I’m not really hungry.”

“Eating disorder,” Theo explained. He emptied his second glass of wine and poured himself some more. “She’s already too old for the part. If she gets fat to boot, she won’t have a chance.”

He laughed as though he’d told a very good joke. Antje disappeared into the kitchen to fetch the rabbit dish. Jola stared at her unsoiled plate. Clients were like family members; you didn’t get to pick them. While we were waiting for the main course, I broke the silence to clarify once again what we could expect from one another. They would get exclusive rights to my services for two weeks, twenty-four hours a day, with an unlimited number of dives, completion of the Advanced Open Water Diver course, and nitrox certification, in addition to lodgings in the Casa Raya, the loan of all equipment, and chauffeur service to all the diving spots and places of interest on the island. I would get fourteen thousand euros. Ordinarily I had several clients, whom I would divide into groups. Jola and Theo were paying for the fact that I hadn’t accepted any other requests for the coming fourteen days. It wasn’t cheap, but in return I belonged to them alone. We shook hands. Jola’s telephone chirped. She read the display, smiled, and tapped in a reply. Antje came back, carrying a steaming stewpot between two kitchen towels.

“Conejo en salmorejo,” she said.

Bones were sticking out of the ragout. Theo’s telephone chirped. He smiled and put his hand on Jola’s thigh. They were actually sending each other text messages while in the same room. Antje served out rabbit pieces. Her cocker spaniel, Todd, came out of the kitchen, where he’d been worshipping the stove, assessed the situation, and took up a position next to Jola. He apparently considered her the weakest link in the chain. I tasted the food, praised it, and reminded my clients of my single condition: on the Wednesday after next, November 23, I would have a day off. Theo wanted to know why they would be obliged to do without my services on that particular Wednesday. He liked the rabbit. He also liked the wine, which he was drinking practically alone. With a quick look, I stopped Antje from getting a second bottle. Jola saw us exchange glances and laughed; for the first time that evening, her laughter was completely unaffected.

“What?” asked Theo.

“Nothing,” said Jola.

You’re not right for each other, I thought, and once again I forbade myself to think like that. The private lives of my clients had nothing to do with me. I explained what was up on November 23. Late that past summer, I’d been out deep-sea fishing and started to get an unusually strong sonar signal. There was an object about one hundred meters down, an object more than eighty meters long. Maybe it was only a heap of stones with an unusual shape. Or maybe it was a sensational find. For years there had been hardly any new discoveries of sunken ships anywhere in the world, and certainly none in divable waters. I marked the coordinates on my GPS device; finding the right place again wouldn’t present much of a problem. But diving into a wreck for the first time at a depth of one hundred meters wasn’t exactly child’s play — especially if you did it alone. I’d spent weeks preparing for the dive, calculating gas mixtures, racking my brains to figure out how I could lengthen my stay on the bottom by twenty minutes and yet avoid needing more than three hours’ worth of decompression stops before I could surface. In addition, I’d ordered some specially made dry gloves, and I was working on a heating system to install in my diving suit. Bernie had promised that he and his equally Scottish pal Dave would man the Aberdeen to provide my floating base. These were all professional requirements for a professional undertaking.

Jola listened as though the word of God were coming out of my mouth. Her big eyes began to reflect my own enthusiasm. I found it hard to come to the end.

On November 23 I’d be forty years old, and I wanted to celebrate my birthday one hundred meters below the surface of the ocean. Alone. Or better yet: in the company of a World War II freighter that went missing seventy years ago.

“I want to go too,” Jola said. “I can help the boat crew.”

“This is an expedition, not an excursion,” I said. “Every move the crew makes has to be exactly right.”

She looked at me insistently. “I grew up on ships.”

“Her father owns a Benetti Classic,” Theo said.

I had to pause and digest this information. A used Benetti cost about as much as a luxury penthouse. And in Manhattan, at that.

“Nevertheless,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Or you could train me for that depth and then I could dive with you. Lotte would have liked that.”

Against my will, I laughed.

“Please!” Jola cried out. “We have two whole weeks!”

“You’d need at least two years,” I said. “If I tried to take you down there with me, I’d wind up in prison.”

“For how long?” asked Theo, without taking his eyes off Jola’s pleading face.

“For life,” I said. “Convicted of murder.”

“That’s enough,” said Antje, who didn’t like the conversation. “Only professional divers can survive those kinds of expeditions. Would anyone like some cactus pear sorbet?”

“I’d be more than happy to spend a couple of years in prison,” Theo said in the tone of a man who wants to change the subject. “Then I’d finally have enough peace to write.”

Antje drew back the hand that was reaching for his plate. She said, “But in exchange for that, you’d have to harm another person.”

“That’s the advantage, isn’t it?” Theo turned the wine bottle upside down and shook the last drops into his glass. “If someone already wants to go to jail, he gets a free shot. Then all he has to do is pick his target.”

Jola was scraping rabbit pieces off her plate with the back of her knife. Todd caught them on the fly. “Don’t listen to Theo,” Jola said. “Shocking his audience is part of his job. Unfortunately, for the past few years he’s preferred to be shocking at the dinner table rather than the computer keyboard.”

“Which is still better,” Theo said, “than making a fool of yourself by standing in front of a camera and spouting idiotic lines.”

Jola stood up abruptly and walked over to the window. “My idiotic lines,” she said with her back turned to us, “pay our rent.”

Humming and sizzling inside the wall lamp, a moth was burning itself to death. The rabbit fibers between my teeth gave me an uncomfortable feeling that spread through my whole body. Antje raised her head and gave Theo a sympathetic look. “So why don’t you write anymore?” she asked.

Sometimes I could kill her.

JOLA’S DIARY, FIRST DAY

Saturday, November 12. Night.

They’re so cute, both of them. Blond, friendly, down-to-earth. Serving potatoes and bunny stew in their little white house. Normal and … yes, that’s it: healthy somehow. So what does that make us? Abnormal and sick? We didn’t even thank them properly for dinner. All of a sudden the old man was in this big hurry to leave. At first he didn’t even want to wait for dessert. Cactus pear sorbet. Difficulty level: complicated. Time required: two hours. According to my iPhone. Poor Antje. Now I’m waiting for the old man to fall asleep. He doesn’t like me to be lying next to him while he’s trying to doze off. I sleep well, he doesn’t. Sleep turns you into a corpse, he tells me. How am I supposed to relax with a dead person next to me?

I text him: “Sleep well, Theo. I love you.”

His phone chirps in the bedroom. I can hear the sound through the thin wall. No answer. It’s pitch-dark outside. Every now and then a dog howls. Our first night here and already I’m alone on the living-room sofa. This is how it begins, our very last serious attempt to get things straightened out.