“Missing you. Your Friend J.”
“Lotte on a school of fishes: It was as if I were in the presence of a great power that observed me with a thousand eyes. Good, don’t you think? So does Your Friend J.”
“Shall we go down to the beach? Surf, moonlight, just the two of us? YFJ.”
In the mornings it would start up again while I was still lying on the couch. “Looking forward to what comes next. Your Friend J.”
I didn’t answer. I tried to keep Jola at a distance. Nevertheless, people I knew kept seeing me with her again and again. I wondered whether she could be doing it on purpose. In the Wunder Bar café, she even sat jokingly on my lap right when Bernie came in. I badly wanted to push her off my knees, but that would have looked like an admission of guilt. And so she stayed there while Bernie and I had a brief conversation about the expedition we were planning. The Aberdeen was shipshape, Dave knew what was up. If the weather held, there shouldn’t be any problem on November 23.
“As easy as a walk in the park,” Bernie said in English. He nodded to Theo and went to the counter in search of a piece of chocolate cake. As if he hadn’t seen Jola.
Another time she was standing in front of me and rummaging in my jeans pockets for the car key. Before I could grab her hands, Bernie’s pal Dave came around the corner. He looked away and didn’t say hello. On the promenade in Puerto del Carmen, Jola was hanging on my arm when a group of Spanish women walked toward us. I thought I recognized two of Antje’s girlfriends, even though with all the bright dresses and big noses and thick black hair, I couldn’t ever be sure about them.
The island was a village. People knew one another. Nothing happened unnoticed. The strange thing was that in actual fact nothing happened, but that wasn’t unnoticed either. I began to feel I was always being watched.
While we waited for Theo, who was off somewhere buying cigarettes, I emphatically asked Jola to stop.
“Stop what?” she said, taking my hand.
“That, for example!” I pulled my hand away.
“Maybe I’m just a bit more honest than you.” She snatched up my other hand and laid it on her hip. “Tell me that feels bad.”
It was always the same: at that very moment, a silver Land Rover Defender drove past us. There was only one silver Defender on the island, and it was driven by Geoffrey, who owned the Lobster’s Paradise. Could Jola know that? Could she have seen him before I did? Or was I getting paranoid? The sun turned Jola’s eyes into green glass. I liked looking into it. Moreover, I couldn’t claim that her hip felt bad. On the contrary. Theo came out of a shop shortly before I let her go.
“Don’t let me disturb you, Little Shit,” he said.
What was even stranger was how lighthearted Jola seemed at that time. She laughed a lot. Antje, with her simplistic understanding of human nature, would have attributed Jola’s behavior to new love. Even though it made no sense, Jola’s beaming smiles made me proud. Her face darkened only when she looked at Theo. Theo, who was now calling me nothing but “Little Shit,” seemed to find real enjoyment in the situation. He followed our every movement with his eyes, smiled pathologically when Jola touched me, and waited eagerly for what would happen next. I didn’t want to form any judgments, but I found Theo’s lack of pride repellent. His presence got on my nerves. It was like being permanently exposed to toxic radiation. Besides, I didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. Whatever Jola might have told him, he was free to find another diving instructor or leave the island altogether. As long as he continued to require my services, my only option was to do my job, as decently as possible. He could hardly have failed to notice my efforts to keep Jola off me. As best I could, I stayed out of the cross fire. Jola was the one who engaged in blatant behavior. Moreover, it wasn’t my fault that we three were together almost around the clock and separated only to sleep. They never wanted to go home after a dive. I chauffeured them up and down the island, trying hard to make the most of its meager sightseeing attractions. We ate duck in Omar Sharif’s former villa. We looked into the green water in the sea-level crater known as El Golfo. We trudged around every single piece bequeathed to the island by its artist. On one side I had Jola’s overheated chatter, on the other Theo’s icy silence. I told myself that only an idiot would have expected to pocket fourteen thousand euros just for a few diving lessons. I was being paid to handle two neurotics who’d anticipated their need of supervision while on vacation. Contrary to Theo’s implication, I wasn’t so stupid as to consider myself the problem. When Jola took my hand in public, I knew she was doing it for him.
During that time I often thought of a talk show that Antje and I had seen years before. A couple sitting on a white sofa had discussed their sadomasochistic inclinations. The two were in their late forties, conventionally dressed, the parents of two grown children. Without subordination, love wasn’t possible, the man said. Whoever claimed otherwise demonstrated not modernity of attitude but dishonesty. He declared that equal status or even freedom in interpersonal relations represented an illusion. The difference between someone who lived the S&M lifestyle and a normal citizen didn’t arise from the possession or not of an underground torture chamber, but from the fact that the S&M practitioner acknowledged that illusion. The man asserted that the viewers should take the trouble, just once, to think about their own relationships.
Antje and I had sat motionless on our couch. There was something embarrassing about our torpor. It was as if we weren’t actually following the program but rather staring frantically straight ahead so we wouldn’t have to look at each other.
The viewers could just examine their own sexual fantasies, the woman remarked. She doubted that anyone masturbated while dreaming about gentle foreplay and the missionary position.
About what, then? Asked the moderator, for whom things were not proceeding scandalously enough.
About young things who desired to be put properly through their paces, said the woman. About mothers who did it with their sons. About teachers and their female students, willing prostitutes, Africans with long cocks. Hadn’t the moderator ever visited a standard porn site? The name of the game was submission, she said.
The most important thing in life, the man explained, was being able to count on each other. And for that, you needed rules. Then everyone knew what he or she had to do.
And what the other person had to do, the woman added. That gave you a sense of security.
Then what looks from the outside like hell on earth is happiness on the inside? the moderator asked.
If you want to put it that way, yes, the woman replied.
Hell outside, happiness inside: I remembered that image when Jola’s hand brushed my belt buckle. I was looking for an explanation. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that Jola and Theo were following the rules of a game I didn’t understand. Basically, I don’t understand it to this day. It’s strange that even in retrospect, no explanation occurs to me. Yet we’re supposed to think that explanations are our well-deserved reward for enduring the passage of time. We’re entitled to them. We go crazy when we don’t get them.
JOLA’S DIARY, EIGHTH DAY
Saturday, November 19. Early morning.
I’m happy. That sounds funny—I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever write such a sentence. I don’t even recognize myself. A strange woman with bright eyes and a knowing smile. Happiness is always a secret. Happiness always belongs to yourself alone. People write all kinds of drivel about happiness, and it always sounds false somehow. The beautiful part is that neither of us has a clue about happiness. I don’t, and Sven doesn’t either. That’s obvious from his embarrassment. From his tic of pushing me away if I touch him. From the way he’s always trying to dodge me. He doesn’t want to believe it. Can’t believe he deserves it. And then all at once he pulls me against him. Fastens himself to my mouth. In the middle of the supermarket. While his diving instructor colleagues look on, and through their eyes the entire island. We know absolutely nothing about happiness. Sve
n’s Antje and my old man weren’t very good guides. We’ll have to teach ourselves. Each in his own way. Sven struggles, I press forward. He probably has it harder than I do. More to lose. He’s going to have to hurt a sweet person like Antje. And whom must I hurt? Only the old man. That’s brutal, that only. I offered Theo a ticket on the next flight back to Berlin and told him he could stay in the apartment at first. A trial separation. So we can calmly wait and see how everything develops. With me. With Sven. Then we’ll figure out what’s next. But he doesn’t want to go. He says things like, I’m not abandoning the field to Little Shit. I have a right to be cuckolded by you. I’m staying until the bitter end. And: If nothing else, I can always write about it.
That would be lovely, I throw in. And see how his eyes flash. But he controls himself. Gets a grip. Says, That would be lovely. Exactly right.
Of course, I knew he wouldn’t go home. Did I ask him just to make him mad? Is it even possible that I want him to stay? Do I need him as an audience? Sometimes I wonder whether my happiness exists only for his sake, only to make him suffer. Whether any Sven would be possible without Theo. Then Sven wouldn’t be the end of Theo’s story, but only the next chapter in it. A new quality. At this thought, sheer horror seized me.
I cried out, You’ll never lay a hand on me again. If I tell Sven about this, he’ll break every bone in your body! He’ll kill you! It sounded like, Wait until I get my big brother. Was probably meant that way too.
The old man says, You love me. You’re not capable of leaving me. A little sun, a little sea, feeling good—you’re not the type for that sort of thing, not at all. You need me, Jola. I just have to wait until you realize Little Shit can’t make you happy.
I tremble at the thought that he could be right.
At night Sven comes to the window and calls softly. He waits until Antje’s asleep before he sneaks out. Which means he still hasn’t told her. I’m applying no pressure. The old man has taught me at least one thing: you can’t force men to do anything.
We go down near the water. Sven lays a camping mat on some flat rocks. At night the Atlantic roars even louder than it does during the day. The racket drowns out our cries. The darkness is absolute. A kind of darkness unknown in Berlin. Even if the old man were standing a few meters away, he could neither hear nor see us.
Sex and oceans—many corny things have been said about that subject. I’m afraid they all apply. Mostly it happens pretty fast. Then we wrap ourselves up in a blanket and wait half an hour before beginning again. More slowly, with a different sort of force.
Sometimes, in the midst of it all, panic suddenly overcomes me. Something’s not right. The whole thing’s too improbable. I’m losing control. It’s as though Sven could at any moment rip off his face, and someone else’s would emerge from under it. My father’s. Or the old man’s. Then all at once hatred is mixed in with pleasure. I want to draw up my feet and kick Sven in the stomach so that he falls backward into the breakers. When Theo slaps me around, at least I know: this is reality. Unmistakably. Senseless, unfair, brutal reality. No error possible.
Such thoughts soon vanish again. Most likely I’m just not used to being treated well. It scares me.
We go back, not touching each other, and separate in silence. Each to one side of the sandlot, each to a different house. In the morning, when I wake up: a sudden flood of happiness. Like a child on Christmas morning, I know something lovely is in store. I get up and make coffee for me and the old man.
11
We strolled down to the port. The evening was mild. The island enjoys about three hundred mild evenings per year, but this particular evening had something special. The breeze was so soft it made me suspicious again. The contours of people and buildings looked vaguely blurry. On the other hand, all sounds seemed somehow to have sharp outlines. Theo and Jola also noticed something. While we walked along the steep asphalt road, he kept moving closer and closer to her. After we reached the harbor promenade, she allowed him to put his arm around her. She even leaned her head on his shoulder. When I saw that, I felt relief. I let myself drop back a few steps and looked in another direction, as if we weren’t together.
The small group of people stood out even from a distance. Gathered at the spot on the quay where the berths for yachts over twenty meters began, they didn’t appear to be waiting for a table at one of the restaurants. Rather they were gazing across the harbor basin toward the arrival jetty on the inner side of the mole.
“Can you believe these morons?” Jola said. “They’re actually waiting for that Stadler bitch.”
Yvette Stadler was a famous German singer and actress, whose name I’d heard for the first time that morning. Antje’s Spanish was good enough to extract news from the chatter she listened to on Crónicas Radio, and at breakfast she’d relayed a bulletin: the sailing yacht Dorset, chartered by the German protein-bar heir Lars Bittmann, was expected to arrive early this evening at the marina in Puerto Calero. Among the passengers on board was the aforesaid Yvette Stadler. Antje laughed when I asked who that was.
“Just drive over to Puerto Calero and take a look.”
“Are you nuts?” I asked. “Why would I do that?”
And there I was. It had been Jola’s idea, like everything else we’d done over the past few days. She had on insect sunglasses and a fancy turban, accessories to what she called “going incognito.” No matter what disguise she wore, I would have recognized the space between her teeth.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all those dopey faces,” Jola said.
“Just imagine, Sven,” Theo added. “They’ve been waiting two hours, and for a B-list celebrity.”
It was the first time in two days that Theo hadn’t called me “Little Shit.” His eyes were gleaming with happy anticipation, which shone under Jola’s sunglasses as well. The Dorset seemed to mean something to both of them.
“Bittmann always does this,” Jola explained. “He gathers together some members of the cultural jet set, sails halfway around the world, and faxes his guest list to the news agencies. The most famous person on the list isn’t really on board at the time.”
Thinking about German celebrities made me nauseous with indifference. I didn’t understand what was so funny about watching a few island tourists waiting in vain for Yvette Stadler. But Theo and Jola were feeling cheerful for the same reason—the first time that had happened in days—and I spotted Dave among the group of onlookers. He was taller by a head than anyone he was standing with. Theo’s arm was still around Jola’s shoulders. I couldn’t have wished for a better statement to make in public; I even imagined we might be at a turning point. I thought maybe Jola had just been using me in recent days to win Theo back. Women pulled things like that, ultimately harmless tricks that led straight back into normality.
“Dave!”
He turned to us, and I could see him register what he saw, and in what order: me, then Jola and Theo, and then the fact that they were walking arm in arm while I strolled along next to them, relaxed, hands in my pockets. “Hey,” I said to Dave, patting him on the shoulder. We always spoke in English. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Just paying my respects to a world-famous beauty.”
“Yvette Stadler? Don’t tell me you’re a fan.”
“Christ, no.” Dave laughed. “I’m here for the boat!”
“The Dorset’s the biggest gaff cutter in the world,” Jola explained. “Built in 1926, meticulously restored in 2006. Sails under the British flag.”
The look Dave gave her showed his deep amazement. It was as though Jola had just changed from a talking doll to a genuine human person right before his eyes. “So you know about the Dorset?” he asked her.
“She’s a legend! She held her own against modern boats at the Superyacht Cup in 2007, then took two first places at the Saint-Tropez Regatta the following year!”
Another few seconds and Dave would be proposing marriage to her. “You’re saying she can do nine knots?”
/> That was surely a trick question. No boat wins a regatta with a speed of nine knots. Jola’s mouth spread in a wide grin. “You’ve got to be kidding! Bittmann says she’s done seventeen or more, and she was recorded as breaking twenty-two back in the twenties.”
It was all over for Dave. Generously and resignedly, Theo removed his arm from Jola’s shoulders. Once again, he was lending out his girlfriend.
“You know a thing or two about boats,” Dave said.
“My dad’s always been into sailing,” Jola answered as they took a few steps to one side. “I was co-skipper by the time I was twelve. I knew exactly when to reef the sails or start the engine.”
The longing expressed in Dave’s body language was something to behold. He bent his six-foot-four frame slightly so he could come as close as possible to Jola’s face. While she spoke, he stared at her mouth. Theo followed my eyes. His lips curled in the familiar sneering smile. “Anyone who wants to own a mare like that has to be tolerant when other stallions come sniffing around her,” he said.
At first I thought I’d misheard him, and then I didn’t know how to reply.
“Look at me,” he said. He spread out his arms like a Mafia godfather. “I put up with you banging her. So you have to put up with the Englishman gawking at her a little.”
“Scotsman,” I said.
The upper part of a mast appeared over the top of the mole. The ship the mast belonged to must still have been a good distance away. Before long we could see the topsail, and a little later the gaff. Apparently the mast was some forty meters high. The Dorset was big. And fast. No wonder Dave had crossed half the island to welcome her. Even though he now had eyes only for Jola. The others in the waiting group stretched out arms and index fingers and pointed out the tip of the mast to their companions. Some of them carried binoculars.
Theo’s hand gripped my arm. Another favorable statement. Everyone could see how well we got along. I briefly wondered when I’d started using the word statement in connection with appearing in public.