Decompression

  “It’s absolutely beautiful here,” she said.

  I shivered and turned the ignition key.

  Today it seems to me as if that first meeting took place half an eternity ago, in another century or in an alien universe. Although I can still see the Atlantic through my window as I write, the island’s no longer in the present tense. I’m literally living out of suitcases. Down at the port in Arrecife, a container holding all my equipment is awaiting shipment to Thailand, where a German from Stuttgart wants to open a dive center on some palmy island with white beaches. A second container with my personal stuff is almost empty. When I was considering what I could use in Germany, hardly anything occurred to me. What would shorts, sandals, portholes from sunken ships, and a swordfish I caught and mounted myself be doing in the Ruhr? The only suitable place for all that is the past.

  We coasted slowly down the dirt road and turned left at the touchingly hubristic little wall that divided the Atlantic from the dry land. My property constituted the end of the village. Standing at oblique angles and a stone’s throw from each other on the edge of a large sandlot were the two houses: the two-story, generously roof-terraced “Residencia” where Antje and I lived, and the “Casa Raya,” the somewhat smaller guesthouse. The area both houses occupied had been blasted into the black rock overlooking the sea. They stood raised up on natural stone foundations the sea spray couldn’t hurt. I’d acquired the houses for a good price and renovated them lavishly, and Antje had worked real miracles in the gardens around them. She’d fought with the contractor for days on end about how much excavation would be required, she’d drawn up irrigation plans, she’d insisted on bringing in special soil. She’d conscientiously investigated wind load and sun angles and the direction of root spread. With the passage of the years, there had sprung up on the edge of the rocky wasteland an oasis it cost me a fortune to keep watered. Royal Poinciana, hibiscus, and oleander bloomed all year round. Masses of bougainvillea threw their cascades of color over the walls, and above them two Norfolk Island pines stretched their thick-fingered needle leaves to the sky. The bloom of flowers on Lahora’s outermost edge burned a bright hole in the bare surroundings.

  “No, not possible,” said Theo, shaking his head and laughing softly, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Jola had her sunglasses back on and remained silent.

  There were clients who didn’t care for Lahora, but everybody liked the Casa Raya. The house, a simple white cube with blue shutters on its windows, contained only a bedroom, a living room, a bathroom, and a cooking niche, but in spite of its small size, there was something majestic about the place. Under the steps that led up to the front door, the lava rocks were battered by the Atlantic, which seemed not so much raging as experienced; it’s been throwing itself against them in the same way for a couple of million years. Every two minutes the water in the cove surged up and spewed skyward a huge fountain sixty feet high. It was incredible that such a drama had nothing, not the smallest thing, to do with us humans. After guests left the Casa, they’d go back to Germany and write us to say that the fabled roar of the surf had stayed in their ears for days. It was a sound that inhabited you.

  Antje was already sitting on the Casa’s steps, waiting for us. Todd, her cocker spaniel, was asleep on the hood of her white Citroën. The only dog in the universe that would voluntarily lie on hot sheet metal in blazing sunlight. This was his way of making sure Antje wouldn’t drive away without him. Or so she believed. When she saw us coming, she jumped up and waved; her dress was a big, shiny spot. She owned an entire collection of vivid cotton dresses, each in a different pattern. She’d accessorize from a range of flip-flops in various matching colors. On this particular day, little green horses on a red background galloped over her body. When she extended her hand to Jola, it looked for a few seconds as though someone had taken still shots of two different women in two different films and artfully spliced them together. Theo gazed at the ocean with his hands in his trouser pockets.

  I set the luggage on the dusty ground. Antje raised her hand in thanks. We’d greeted each other rather scantily. I didn’t like her to touch me in the presence of other people. Even though we’d lived together for many years, it always struck me as funny that we were a couple. In public, at any rate.

  While I lugged the empty scuba tanks from the morning dive into the Residencia’s garage, where the fill station was located, Antje showed our guests around their vacation home. Getting clients settled in was one of her responsibilities. In addition to the Casa Raya, she also managed a few holiday apartments in Puerto del Carmen for their owners. My diving students made up the majority of the guests. Antje did bookings, turned over keys, settled up, cleaned up, tended the garden, supervised workers. At the same time, she ran the business end of my diving school—took care of the office, updated the website, did all the paperwork required by the various diving organizations. It had taken her less than two years after our arrival to make herself indispensable. She even knew how to cope with the mañana mentality of the Spanish islanders.

  I threw the used diving suits into the washing shed in the yard and went into the house. I was suddenly thirsty for an aperitif. Campari over ice. Ordinarily I drank only when I had to: in airplanes, at weddings, or on New Year’s Eve. The Campari I wanted at the moment was somehow related to Jola and Theo. I could smell and taste it before I knew whether Antje had any on hand. I found a bottle in the refrigerator, poured myself a large glass, and listened with pleasure to the crackling ice cubes. Glass in hand, I stepped out onto the lower terrace. If you put your chair right up against the railing, you could look across the sandlot and into the Casa’s living room. Just then the curtains were opened. Antje’s colorful dress was visible through the window. I could see Jola and Theo in the background, contemplating the cooking alcove. They were probably used to much better kitchen arrangements. Or maybe they were wondering how they could get anything to cook anyway, seeing that there wasn’t so much as a chewing-gum machine in Lahora. On this, their first evening, Antje would invite them to dinner, and tomorrow after the morning dive, she’d take them shopping for supplies. That was what we always did with the guests who came to the Casa.

  Across the way, Antje was explaining stove, microwave, and washing machine. Theo appeared to be listening, while Jola let herself drop onto the sofa. Her head bounced up and down in the window; she was probably testing the sofa for springiness. I was tempted to imagine Theo throwing her onto the dining table and pushing up her dress—but I deleted the image at once. Female clients were taboo. In my profession, your work clothes were a pair of swimming trunks.

  JOLA’S DIARY, FIRST DAY

  Saturday, November 12. Afternoon.

  Incredible place. White facades and barred shutters. Blazing sun and black sand. Zorro might come around the corner at any minute, rushing to prevent a duel. The air tastes salty. I find it fabulous here, but since Theo likes it too, I naturally have to take the opposite side. The sublime aesthetics of the austere! All right, old man. Why not just give it a rest? The world doesn’t become any more beautiful because you dump your poetry on it. Not bigger either, or more important or better. All you do is crash into the world and bounce off. Like the sea hitting the rocks, your words burst into spray and flow back into you. If you had ten thousand years, maybe you’d be able to round off a little corner, but you won’t live that long. You least of all.

  As for me, I’m keeping my mouth shut. I’m not talking about literature, I’m not talking about dying. We’re both making an effort. This is going to be a lovely vacation. I won’t provoke him, and he won’t let himself be provoked. Armistice.

  Well, maybe vacation isn’t the word. The real reason why I’m here is the part. The part I want. The part I need. Lotte’s my last chance. I tore her picture out of the book and pinned it to the wall over the bed. I could look at her and look at her. Charlotte Hass, Lotte Hass. The Girl on the Ocean Floor. She’s wearing a red swimsuit and old-fashioned diving equipment and holding on
to part of a sunken vessel. Her eyes are heavily made-up behind her diving goggles, and her long hair is spread out like a water plant around her head. She’s so beautiful. And strong. A female warrior. Home and children weren’t enough for her. She went looking for danger. Her diary’s as thrilling as a crime novel. In the 1950s diving wasn’t a sport, it was pioneer work. A test of courage for men, not for women. Lotte was the first girl who insisted on swimming with the fish. When Theo noticed the photograph over the bed, he bit his tongue.

  Sven’s a beamish boy. Only two years younger than Theo, but built differently. With webbed feet and gills behind his ears. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t even see me. Probably because I’m not a fish. Which is what he’s supposed to turn me into. That’s what he’s being paid for, and he doesn’t come cheap.

  Sven comes with Antje, who’s his—what? Assistant? Wife? Sister? Secretary? She introduced herself as “Sven’s Antje,” as though giving both her job title and her family status in one go. Sven, meanwhile, was staring into space. Antje apparently embarrasses him. She’s a little thing but quite a looker, she talks a lot, and she smells like Nivea. Blond as a Swede. She stays out of the water. She made us aware of that right from the start. The water, she said, is Sven’s “state of matter.” I think she probably meant “element” or maybe “business.” Something like that goes through the old man like a burning knife. If you can’t talk right keep your trap shut, that’s his motto. He can’t stand to be around people he thinks sound like children. On the other hand, he seems quite happy to gaze upon Sven’s Antje.

  Lahora. The Spanish textbook in school had some strange sample sentences: My dogs are under the bed. I hear myself scream. Te llegó la hora—Your hour has come. Not another soul for miles. No automobile except for Antje’s, the car with the dog on the hood. Without a car, there’s no getting out of here. In short, except for us, the place is deserted. The old man liked that right away: “Somebody ought to set a story here,” he said. Go right ahead. Set a story. Write something instead of always just talking about writing something. I didn’t say anything.

  The old man let his eyes rest on Antje’s Swedish bosom and listened to her attentively. Used toilet paper should be thrown not in the toilet but in the bucket next to the toilet, because otherwise the pipes get blocked. Electrical appliances are to be turned off whenever we leave the house. If we want warm showers, don’t take one right after another. Don’t drink from the taps. Don’t put any garden furniture on any of the watering hoses. When we want to log on to the Internet, tell Sven so he can adjust the satellite dish. No swimming, and no going for walks—but we knew that already.

  Then I stood in the garden for a long time and watched the sea playing with itself. All at once the old man was behind me with a glass of red wine in his hand. He put an arm around my shoulders, pulled me to him, and kissed the crown of my head. “Little Jola,” he said, nothing more.

  My eyes got damp. I held him tight. When he’s in the mood, it can be a great thing to touch him. It’s always this way: you travel thousands of miles to sleep less comfortably and understand yourself better.

  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 cle
ar 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.