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-climbin
g 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.