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.
17
“Sweet,” Jola said, and jumped aboard.
The Aberdeen is a converted fishing cutter, nine meters long, with a small cabin, two single berths, and all-wood construction. Nineteen sixties diesel engine, seventy-five horsepower, six knots. Although it was still dark, Jola inspected the helm stand while I unloaded the steel cylinders from the van. The VW’s headlights illuminated the quay. We were the only people in sight. The Marina Rubicón was still asleep. Unlike Puerto Calero, this harbor contained no luxury yachts; instead there were little vacation vessels, family boats, small, trim cutters—a floating campground in the last minutes of nighttime peace. A narrow streak of dawn appeared behind the promontory.
“Only radar and radio?”
I handed her the bag with the portable devices: depth sounder, GPS, chartplotter. She gave a satisfied nod and started to set things up. I lugged aboard my dive suit, stage tanks, and chests with other accessories. Theo sat on a bench a little apart and dedicated himself to transpiring alcohol.
“Almost exactly four kilometers southwest of here? So about twenty-nine north, fourteen west?”
Jola was good. Very good. The wreck lay at latitude 28°50′33.8″ north, longitude 13°51′8″ west. I gave her the exact coordinates and felt myself relax. Jola was wearing jeans and a checkered shirt and moving about with great assurance, as if she sailed the Aberdeen on the Atlantic Ocean every day. I believed I could rely on her ability. Theo, staring off in another direction, lit his third cigarette.
I find that day difficult to describe. My memories aren’t like a coherent, linear film; they’re individual images, still shots, like a puzzle with half the pieces missing. At the same time, every single detail is probably important right now. Herr Fiedler, do you really think we’re interested in the horsepower of an old fishing cutter? Don’t you think we’d rather hear about the impression Frau von der Pahlen made on you on the morning of November 23, 2011? The allegations you’ve brought us are very grave, Herr Fiedler! Give us a chance to believe you! Was Frau von der Pahlen different from usual? Did she act despondent? Aggressive? Hysterical? Come, come, Herr Fiedler, you can surely offer us a few descriptive words. This cannot be so difficult!
But it is. Jola was always “different,” every day; with her, there was no “usual.” If I honestly ask myself whether anything struck me on that particular morning, whether I could have known or at least sensed what would happen in the next several hours, I must answer with a clear “No.” It’s possible I wasn’t paying sufficient attention. I might have been concentrating too hard on the upcoming dive. On going over my equipment, which I checked at least five more times. As far as I noticed, Jola acted neither despondent nor aggressive. Maybe a little too chirpy. Which, after the events on the Dorset, wouldn’t have surprised me—had it crossed my mind to give any thought to such matters. Above all, she struck me as being in a very good mood. She seemed to be looking forward to our adventure. It was obvious that the Aberdeen gave her great pleasure; it was as if she was finally in her true element. And I liked the way she looked in jeans and a work shirt. Even more, actually, than the way she’d looked in her evening dress.
As soon as she was finished installing the navigation devices, Jola jumped onto land, pulled Theo off the bench, and sang, “Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main,” in his face. He lurched into motion, grumbling, a burned-down cigarette clamped between his pale lips. The previous night, I’d needed a full hour to tear him away from his audience. He couldn’t retell the tale of Jola’s defeat often enough. How she’d spent the past weeks preparing for the role of Lotte Hass. How she’d read books, taken a diving course, even pinned a photograph of the lady in question to the wall over her bed. How she’d made her future, her happiness, and her very self dependent on being allowed to play Lotte. And now: Yvette Stadler. Theo didn’t seem to notice how embarrassing his behavior was. Or didn’t care. He told us again and again that it was the end of Jola. The end of arrogance and pride. From now on, he said, she’d be nothing but grateful if someone should volunteer to attend her slow decline. Her daily aging into insignificance. He, Theo, was prepared to perform that service. He could imagine no finer occupation than observing and documenting Frau von der Pahlen’s disintegration. Preferably over the course of decades. The slower and more excruciating, the better. In the end, Theo said, he would turn this story into the novel of the century. A thousand-page metaphor for an undignified age. Only Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks would be comparable to it in scope and importance. This evening was the end of Jola and the beginning of a tragic masterpiece.… Theo kept talking like a maniac. At some point, I grabbed him under t
he arms and pulled him off his chair. I didn’t so much support as carry him up the steep stairs. Corpses and drunks are heavy when they’re not floating in water.
Now Jola cried out, “Come on, old man! You of all people should try to enjoy our little excursion. You don’t have much time left.”
I figured this was a joking reference to his alcohol and tobacco consumption, but Theo seemed to take Jola’s words literally. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Time for what?”
They were facing each other, standing near the quay’s edge. Swaying a little on the brink of the abyss, I thought. Their favorite position.
“For taking boat trips,” said Jola. “After all, you’re flying home on Saturday.”
“And you aren’t?”
For the next few seconds, we stared at Jola as if she were an oracle about to deliver the final pronouncement on our fates. I suddenly imagined, with crystal clarity, what it would be like if she should disappear into the sky above the airport on Saturday afternoon. She’d be at my side—and a moment later she’d be gone, vanished, as if she’d never existed.
Jola raised her nose to the wind and gave her verdict: “North, eleven knots. Ideal conditions. Like sailing on a duck pond.”
She saw the looks on our faces and laughed. Then she jumped back on deck, verified that my gear was loaded on board, and started the diesel engine. A few minutes later, we reached the end of the breakwater and chugged out into the open sea. A little to the east, the first ferry to the neighboring island was getting under way. Theo sat on the bow, waiting for the invigorating effects of the north wind. Jola stood at the helm. She didn’t look as though she needed any additional tips from me. I left it up to her to hold the course and started my diving preparations. The trip out wouldn’t take more than an hour, and for starters, the urinary sheath required several minutes. Sitting on deck with my back against the wheelhouse, I rolled down my swimming trunks and slowly massaged myself until I reached the proper degree of stiffness. I dedicated the utmost care to fitting the sheath and applying the adhesive tape. If the sheath slipped off, I’d have no choice in the coming hours but to pee in my wet suit. On the other hand, I’d been in the Red Sea with an experienced diver who suffered a contusion of the ureter because he’d taped too tightly. Eighty meters down, he was seized by the most fearsome pains. A quick ascent to the surface was not an option, not at that depth. Never. Not at eighty meters, and most certainly not at a hundred. As my army diving instructor used to say, when you’re deep underwater, you’ve got a glass ceiling above your head. You solve your problems down there or not at all. I knew enough stories about people who’d died while on dives. In most cases, it wasn’t even possible to track down what had gone wrong. I preferred to go over every detail twenty times and come back up alive.
I put on my undersuit and wet suit. Fastened the hose to the urinary sheath. Checked fins, mask, gloves, hood, weight belt, dive light, backup dive lights, battery packs, knife, camera, surface marker buoys, reels, plastic bags, dive computer. Sat on the boat rail and breathed into my back. Now I could feel the aftereffects of the previous night’s drinking. A slight dizziness, a throbbing at the temples. Under normal circumstances, residual alcohol would have been a reason to call off the expedition. But this wasn’t a normal situation. It was—I don’t know what it was. A desperate attempt at self-assertion. I forced myself to concentrate. The last minutes before a dive were the most important of the entire expedition. I turned my gaze inward, went over all the points of my gas plan one more time, visualized every single movement. My intensity seemed to rub off on Jola and Theo. They maintained a resolute silence. The farther the Aberdeen got from land, the more the onboard tension increased. Even Theo looked as though he was slowly coming to full consciousness. When he wasn’t squinting at the Atlantic, he was eyeing me thoughtfully. I didn’t try to sustain his gaze. I was glad to have a day when he wasn’t my responsibility. I could keep my mind on more important matters than the question of what was up with him.
The diesel engine’s decibel level and stroke rate diminished, the steady noise of the bow wave became softer and then fell silent. I joined Jola on the narrow helm stand and looked at the GPS. She’d hit the coordinates exactly and had moreover maneuvered the boat into the best anchoring position. The depth sounder showed an elevation in the ocean bed. The wreck lay a little east of us, around 107 meters down. Its outline was clearly recognizable on the sonar screen. I placed my hand between Jola’s shoulder blades so that she’d know how proud I was of her. She pushed past me and prepared to cast the anchor. No one had spoken a word since we left the harbor. At that point, I no longer doubted that the expedition would go off without a hitch. All Theo had to do during the three hours of the dive was to watch the water surface and look out for my buoys. If he should prove unreliable, Jola would share the task with him. She’d keep one eye on the instruments and the other on the Atlantic. Bernie and Dave were good, but when it came to boats, Jola was obviously better than the two of them together.
I spent the next ten minutes fastening seventy kilos of equipment to my body with snap hooks. The six cylinders with the different gas mixtures seemed particularly heavy. I was sweating feverishly in my hermetically sealed dive suit. The biggest challenge consisted in standing up, fully outfitted, in the rocking boat, making my way to the stern, and putting on my fins. When I was finished, Jola gave me the “okay” sign, and I responded in kind. I’d just as soon have gone over the side amid general silence, but Theo had constructed a question out of his various preoccupations, and he just had to ask it. He took hold of my wrist to prevent me from dropping into the water before he could speak.
“Suppose we disappeared with the boat. Would you die?”
“Almost certainly,” I said.
Theo let my arm go and nodded approvingly, as if giving me points for mortal danger. I let myself tip over backward. Before I hit the water, I thought I heard Jola’s voice call out, “Happy birthday, Sven!”
My fortieth. When I was a kid in school, there used to be stickers that read ATTENTION: TODAY IS THE BEGINNING OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. For the first and only time, that inane dictum seemed appropriate. It just needed an additional line to indicate whether it was a promise or a threat.
As soon as I was in the water, the familiar calm came over me. The weight of the dive tanks had disappeared. Under me there was neither firm ground nor empty air but instead a liquid three-dimensionality that I could traverse in any direction I wanted. No swells, visibility excellent. I grabbed the anchor cable and began a brisk descent. Soon the current caught me, and I hung on perpendicularly, like a banner in the wind. Sixty meters down, the first brief stop to change over to bottom gas. Soon afterward, the wrecked ship came into sight, a gigantic shadow in the everlasting semidarkness of the ocean floor.
I’d figured this dive would be an extraordinary experience. All the same, my own reaction surprised me. With every meter, the closer I sank to the wreck, the more my hands started to shake. I felt as though all the hairs on my body were standing up. The ghost ship below me was as long as a football field and broken into two pieces. The bow had separated from the rest of the ship and lay a little distance away from it. The ship’s waist appeared to be well preserved, except for a loading crane that had snapped off and fallen diagonally across the bridge. The stern loading crane still stood upright, as did, in fact, the entire steamer. The Fiedler, as I’d baptized her, looked as though a mighty hand had placed her there to wait for a secret future assignment. If—as I guessed— she’d sunk sometime during the Second World War, no human eye had looked on her for about seventy years. On the deck down there, people had once lived and worked, sung and quarreled, had harbored thoughts and feelings, and in the end had most probably gone to the bottom together with their ship. I was hovering above an inscrutable past that was principally, in the way of pasts, a graveyard. No one but the fish had taken care of those dead bodies. Maybe they were still to this day unaccounted for. Maybe there were
grown grandchildren somewhere who believed Grandpa had absconded to America in the middle of the war and left Grandma alone with two little ones.
The most impressive feature of the Fiedler was, beyond a doubt, her enormous funnel, which towered at some distance from me. I decided to leave the anchor cable, swim over there, and negotiate the rest of my descent alongside the chimney. Because of the sunken ship’s imposing size and the strong current, I had to make sure I’d be able to find the cable again. The anchor would surely creep some distance over the seafloor; on the other hand, visibility was better than I’d expected that far down. I let go of the cable, battled against the current with strong fin strokes, and got my camera ready. The effort was worth it. I was looking down into a black maw big enough to swallow a cow. A dense school of sardines, as pliant as cloth, as agile as a single creature with a single will, wound around the funnel. When I got close, they formed dents and bubbles, but then they immediately went back to circling the chimney. One level down was a large battery of barracudas, too satiated to hunt. I pressed the shutter-release button. Those photographs would be the envy of the entire island.