“One advantage,” Theo said, “is that I’ve always got a guy standing next to me who’s going through the same shit I go through.” He patted my shoulder encouragingly.
“Thanks all the same,” I said. “But let me make this clear one more time: I’m not ‘banging’ Jola.”
“Perfectly clear.” He was staring squinty-eyed at the harbor entrance. “You screw her with great tenderness.”
The Dorset was rapidly approaching. The skipper had probably received instructions to head into port under full sail. It made an undeniably impressive sight.
“Not that either,” I said. “Seriously. We’re not having an affair or anything like that.”
Theo spun around as though something had bitten him. All the former friendliness in his demeanor was gone. He said, “Do you know what honor is?”
I shook my head and got angry, both in the same moment. Of course I knew what honor was. I just didn’t understand where the question was leading. Moreover, our public statement looked like it was about to degenerate horribly.
“I thought not.” Theo laughed. “I’ve already explained it to you. Not so long ago. Bang her. Enjoy it. But don’t lie to me.”
“Can you lower your voice a little?”
“Can you act like a grown-up?”
“Look, Theo.” I moved closer to him and spoke softly. “I don’t know what Jola has told you—”
“Get out of here!” He said it loud. A few people near us looked our way. Dave and Jola also turned their heads. “You know it. I know it. The whole island knows it. You two don’t even bother to hide it. So do me a favor and stop with this shit.”
“But we haven’t—”
“Theo!” Jola yelled.
Either she knew him well enough to read his mind, or the past few days had damaged my reflexes. While I was still wondering why Jola was yelling, Theo already had me by the shoulders. I was too flummoxed to defend myself. I saw people jumping out of the way in slow motion. Then I was tipping backward off the quay wall. One crystal-clear thought flashed into my consciousness: Don’t fall on the landing stage. I pushed off before I lost the ground under my feet, did a half turn in midair, and dove into the water. I knew at once I wasn’t hurt. I swam a few strokes close to the bottom. It was surprisingly warm in the harbor basin. Little fish nibbled at the keels of the anchored boats. I kept telling myself, Surface. Breathe. Laugh. My breath was running out. I surfaced, inhaled, saw twenty anxious faces looking down at me from the quay wall, and laughed.
Only the Dorset’s final maneuvers put an end to the laughter and talk about my plunge into the harbor. While the yacht’s sails sank down together, I stood in my own private puddle. We could hear the skipper’s orders. The tourists became deadly serious. Suddenly every one of them was looking through binoculars. The diesel engine started up, and the Dorset sailed majestically into the harbor at Puerto Calero.
I thought of this line: My heart burns for love. That was exactly how I felt. The Dorset showed what true beauty signified: not symmetry, but the combination of power and elegance. Pure power came across as crude; mere elegance was vanity. Only the merger of the two had the force to touch you at the deepest part of yourself, which was exactly where I found myself touched. Jola was standing very straight on the edge of the quay, held by Dave’s and Theo’s arms in turn. The yacht looked as though it was putting into port for her sake. Proud and strong and yet so susceptible to storms. I stood in the background and played the good-natured diving instructor whose clients’ idea of a joke was to toss him into the drink. I felt love and pain and sadness and wasn’t sure whether they weren’t all the same.
Two hours later, behind the wheel of my van, I laughed all the louder, despite the terrible mood that had come over me. My clothes, in the meantime, had dried. All possible jokes—about being launched or getting baptized or cooling off—had already been cracked on the quay. But Jola was still in top form. Her crumpled turban lay among the equipment, her sunglasses hung from the rearview mirror. Her bare feet, which she braced against the windshield, left behind an impression that could still be seen weeks later when the glass fogged up from inside. She and Theo were recapitulating the Dorset’s arrival. Their focus wasn’t the beauty of the vessel, it was the fact that Yvette, as predicted, had not been among the guests. Jola mimicked Bittmann, the way he’d spread his arms out as he stood on the gangway and said, first in German, “My apologies, folks, Yvette has canceled,” and then in English, just in case the entire crowd wasn’t made up of German sightseers: “Sorry, guys, Yvette couldn’t come.” Next Jola parodied the yacht’s five passengers. In Jola’s version, they had gone down the gangway at the exact moment when the disappointed crowd dispersed, and then they’d had to stand around like stranded orphans, hoping that someone would recognize them. I’d simply seen five people leaving a ship. They’d looked perfectly normal to me, but in Jola’s and Theo’s eyes each of them was apparently a laughingstock. Jola bent over with laughter and practically put her face in my lap. On other such occasions, I’d shoved her away from me. I’d begged her not to crowd me. In my best killjoy voice, I’d pointed out that I had an automobile to steer. But now I tried to get ahold of her hair. I wanted her to keep lying on my lap. And it irritated me that she was already leaning toward Theo’s side again. I would have liked to say something. But I knew neither the literary critic nor the woman who directed plays nor the photographer. All that remained to me was my own joyless laughter, designed to show that I belonged.
Back in Lahora, I parked the car and stood for a moment at the gate to watch Jola and Theo cross the sandlot and disappear into the Casa Raya. They had turned down my suggestion that we go to Giselle’s for some fish soup. Jola wanted to cook. I went into the house, found Antje sitting on the terrace with a book, hauled her into the bedroom, and threw her on the bed. Unlike what happened in movies, I had no trouble whatsoever calling her by the right name.
JOLA’S DIARY, EIGHTH DAY
Still Saturday, November 19. Evening.
Little girls wait for the white knight who’s going to lift them up onto his horse and ride away with them. Grown women, on the other hand, negotiate contracts. Our latest deal: the old man will leave me alone if I jerk him off on demand while telling him about Sven. About Sven’s giant cock, which fills my mouth and throat so completely I nearly choke. About Sven’s big balls, which lie in my hands. About how Sven grabs me and fucks me so hard I think I’ll fall apart.
But humiliation is a complicated business. The old man sits there on the sofa, his semi-stiff member between my fingers. He clutches the cushion with one hand and my hair with the other while he listens to dirty stories about me and our diving instructor. The question of who’s humiliating whom in this scene must be neither posed nor answered. He’s a forty-two-year-old writer with just one published novel to his name. His pants are tangled around his ankles, his face red with effort. A tormented, self-tormenting creature.
I told him so. Whereupon our deal was canceled again. He pulled up his pants and ran into the bathroom. The victim had abandoned her own integrity for a sweet moment of triumph. I love to gaze into Theo’s eyes and see something shatter in there. I love to see the infinitely wronged look that comes over them because the traitor who thrust in the dagger was, of all people, me. Such a wonderful feeling. For a few seconds I know—no, I clearly see—how much he loves me. When can you actually see love? It’s a rare and precious experience. I’ll think about that if he comes back and
12
After Antje fell asleep, I got out of bed. I’d overexerted myself, I’d had no dinner, and we’d done it twice in succession. Antje had put herself at my disposal for the second go-round as though for an athletic endeavor in which she functioned as both playing field and spectator. My knees were trembling. For several minutes I stood before the opened refrigerator, contemplating Antje’s leftover, cellophane-wrapped tapas. Todd’s reproachful look identified me as the kind of villain who won’t even give the needy what he
himself doesn’t want.
After a couple of pointless turns around the living room, it became obvious that the magnetic attraction the computer was exercising on me could no longer be attributed to anything else. As before, I shut Todd out of the office, and while the machine booted up I looked around for Emile, who didn’t want to show himself that evening. By now I’d seen enough episodes of Up and Down to be able to follow the plot, to find characters appealing or unappealing, and to predict with some certainty when Bella would turn up next. I’d really been enjoying Bella’s appearances since she’d gone back to her old boyfriend the doctor. There was a lot of kissing, sighing, and groping, even though it was thoroughly obvious that the doctor wasn’t about to end the affair he was having with a nurse. For her part, Bella was only using him so she could get her hands on the drugs that would help her avenge herself on a director who hadn’t cast her in a role she’d very much wanted. Bella had just caught the doctor in flagrante delicto with the nurse and was making quite a scene when I heard music. Loud music. I stood up and drew the curtain aside. Out in the hall, Todd started to bark.
I was gazing right into the Casa Raya. When the living room was lit up at night, it looked like a stage. I saw—I wasn’t exactly sure what I saw. I saw two people who seemed to be dancing exuberantly. They embraced, staggered backward, circled each other, crashed together. Every now and then one of the figures would disappear, as if he or she had fallen or briefly run out of the room. Immediately afterward they’d be stumbling around again, locked in another embrace, falling on the floor together, getting back on their feet.
The desire to be with them made me press my face to the windowpane. I saw a kind of energy over there that never manifested itself in my life. Which was, therefore—it came to me in a flash—not rightly a life. Both my hands were flat against the glass, and I was staring with wide-open eyes. I would have sacrificed everything to be a part of that scene. Beyond control. Beyond strategy. Beyond escape. Even when I realized that what I was watching was no dance. At first I was repelled, but then the need to run over there became even more urgent. But I stayed where I was. I clenched my fists on the glass. I wasn’t interested in stopping whatever was going on in the Casa Raya; I wanted to join in, that was all. To plunge in. To scream over the music and be someone else, someone other than Sven, the nice diving instructor. I didn’t know which was more frightening, what I saw or my reaction to it. Across the way, one of the figures raised an object high overhead. A relatively large object. A living-room chair. The nice diving instructor would have long since intervened. Whatever was going on over there, he would have stopped it.
Instead it was Todd who showed some initiative. His little body darted down the gravel walk in front of the Residencia. Yelping hysterically, he raced across the sandlot, ran up the steps to the Casa Raya, and flung himself against the door. The music stopped, the lights went out. The logic machine in my head, working lethargically, concluded that someone must have let the dog out of the house. I spun around. Antje was standing in the office doorway. I shot a quick glance at the computer monitor. The screensaver was hiding Bella’s face.
Antje, who’d followed my eyes, said, “Oh, Sven, not to worry. I know what you do in here anyhow. You never clear your browsing history.”
I didn’t know what a browsing history was. I stared at her. Her blond hair was disheveled, an effect I’d helped produce.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I wasn’t able to come up with an answer to that one either. I couldn’t take my eyes off her dressing gown, which was printed with strawberries. Why strawberries? I wondered.
“Your friends are slowly starting to get on my nerves, do you know that?”
I finally managed to unclench my teeth. “They’re not my friends,” I said. “They’re our clients.”
“Right you are, Sven, sure,” Antje said and went back to bed.
Disgust suddenly overcame me. Over in the Casa, all was still. I lay down on the sofa to wait for morning.
JOLA’S DIARY, NINTH DAY
Sunday, November 20. Very early morning.
Bella Schweig’s a slut. But always a victim. Never a perpetrator. Who wants to be a perpetrator? Nobody. Except maybe at the moment of perpetrating the deed. But the deed is brief. And forever after, all sympathy belongs to the victim. The victim impulse is part of human nature. The smallest child will whack another kid and cry, “He started it!” Four-year-old girls master the innocent-as-a-lamb eyeblink by practicing it in the mirror. People form couples and share houses and join clubs and parties and societies so that there will always be someone else to blame everything on. The art of playing the victim is easy when you’re performing with a suitable costar. Someone stupid enough to accept the buck when it’s passed. Someone who’ll lash out without thinking and then beg for forgiveness. Such a willing perpetrator yields huge innocence dividends! Innocence with interest, an innocence retirement plan. If you have your own perpetrator, you never have to worry about the victim role again.
Who’d want to break off such a profitable relationship? Nobody in her right mind. The perpetrator smiles a little, zing, and the judicious victim’s back in a win-win situation. So do I go for self-esteem, self-protection, a modicum of self-defense? Not a chance. I’ll stay where I am, comfortably ensconced in my own woe, domiciled in doom. Let’s not forget, there was my difficult childhood, a father who was never there unless a party was being thrown, and a mother locked in combat with the passage of time. Such conditions apparently suffice for a lifetime of self-sacrifice on the offspring’s part. What difference does a bloody nose make, as long as you know it’s for a good cause? Even when the bleeding won’t stop.
Tomorrow the old man will tell Sven he broke the chair by sitting on it too hard. He’ll laugh and demonstrate how he threw himself down on the thing and wham, it fell apart under him. Ha-ha, the good island food, ha-ha, the good island wine! He’ll generously offer to pay for the chair—with my money, by the way—and we won’t be stingy. Maybe he’ll use too many words to describe a basically insignificant event, but he’s a writer, after all, and as such used to embellishing his lies.
Sven will believe him. Sven’s had no experience with lies. The way he gawked when we were down at the port! The loneliness without end that spoke out of his eyes. A ship will come in, but it won’t be his. Meanwhile he’s the one asking for more time. Let’s not rush things. Let’s make no waves. He still hasn’t told Antje. But I know what to think about that. It’s not for lack of love. Men are simply cowards. That’s why they make such good perpetrators. No, stop: Sven’s no perpetrator. Sven’s a victim himself. All you have to do is listen to him to know that. He didn’t leave Germany as a winner, he left as a loser. And now he likes to drone on about the war zone.
“Are you going back to Theo?” That’s what his eyes said down at the port. My silent reply: “Have I left him, then?”
Sven didn’t stand under the window and call me last night. All the same, after the old man went to sleep, I walked down to the edge of the rocks overlooking the sea. Down to our spot. But the pounding of the waves scares me. It’s as if the bit of rock I’m sitting on could be ripped away at any time.
I don’t dare to think about how I behaved in the van earlier. How I sat between lover and life partner and sucked up to both of them. I made jokes about Bittmann’s guests to please the old man. Because he’d acted friendly for a few minutes. Because he’d tried to fight for me by throwing Sven in the water. The perpetrator acts, zing, and the victim’s back. If I could look at it from the outside, I’d have to puke. I’d turn the music loud out of sheer nausea so no one could hear my screams and punish me for being not only a disgusting whore but also a disgusting ass-kisser.
The truth requires only a few words: I’m at the end of my rope. Taking a lovely trip together, maybe even turning myself into Lotte, trying for happiness with someone new—rubbish, all of it. I’ll always go back to the old man, again and again, until he destroy
s me. I need help. Sven has to make a decision. This isn’t your standard case, where the man can take his sweet time deciding which woman he prefers and in the meantime amuse himself with both. What we have here is an exception. If Sven really wants me, he has to do something.
13
“Hold on, Sven, I have a confession to make,” said Theo, standing inside the door on the driver’s side of the van. I was behind the wheel, having just dropped him off, and about to drive over to the Residencia. I’d put the van in gear, reached out to close the door, and there he was. It was about seven thirty in the evening and had been dark for a good hour already. Theo leaned across me and switched off the engine.
Jola hadn’t come diving with us that morning. Her monthly visitor, Theo had explained. After our second dive, he’d talked me into doing a third and then a fourth, speaking so urgently I wondered whether he wanted to go home at all. It was already dusk when we climbed out of the water for the last time. Now my main thought was dinner. Antje had called to tell me she was cooking paella.
“I’m really sorry. It was stupid, but I don’t want you to think we’re wrecking your whole guesthouse. It was an accident, truly, I have no idea how it could have happened. Maybe too much good island food. In any case, I’ll obviously pay for the damage, no matter what it costs.”
“What did you break?” I asked.
“Oh, I haven’t told you yet?” He laughed.
My expression didn’t change. I’d been thinking about the situation all day long, but I hadn’t made any sort of progress. I’d persuaded myself I wasn’t even sure whether there was a “situation.” The answer to the question of what was going on, if indeed something was going on, kept slipping through my fingers. I felt ashamed and didn’t want to know what I was ashamed of. In a way I’d even been glad to see that Jola wasn’t going to come diving with us. My head felt like an overheated engine. Maybe I was just exhausted. What I needed was a tranquil dinner with Antje, preferably with candlelight and soft music. A miniature paradise.