Not long afterward, he started snoring. The bedroom door was ajar. I took my notebook and came to sit out here in front of the house. Now I imagine I’m on the deck of a ship, and the heat is the reason I can’t sleep.
6
She’s asleep. Her lips are slightly parted, revealing the adorable space between her front teeth. I feel a mighty urge to stroke her head, and I consider whether I dare do such a thing. When my fingers touch her forehead, she opens her eyes. I say her name: Jola. We look at each other for a few seconds, and then her jaws spring open. Like a moray eel, she has a second pair of jaws in her throat and launches them into her mouth. With the teeth of a predatory fish, she snaps at my fingers.
I flinched away from her and sat up in the bed. It was pitch-dark; the digital alarm clock read 4:00 A.M. Very gradually, I came to the realization that the woman beside me was not Jola but Antje. She was sleeping on her back with outstretched arms, her head tilted down to one side, in an attitude of crucifixion.
My revved-up heart slowly calmed down. Now I understood the unnatural darkness: Antje had closed the shutters. The wind was still blowing around the corners of the house, though not howling as hungrily as a few hours earlier. I hated dreams that seemed like the inventions of a psychologist. There was no question of my going back to sleep. I figured I might as well get up and go out to my workshop.
I stood briefly in front of the house, looking over at the Casa Raya, the only bright spot in the midst of black darkness. For a moment I thought something long-haired and human-shaped was crouching on the garden wall, but it turned out to be nothing but a cactus pear whose paddles were moving in the wind.
The package had come the previous day, and Antje had put it on my workbench. For the first time, I’d decided to equip a dry suit with a heating system. At a depth of one hundred meters, seawater’s cold. The helium in the gas mixture promotes the loss of body heat, and the long decompression times are an additional factor. The package I’d received contained twenty meters of monopolar wire—the kind also used in heating car seats—a heating unit, electric cable, a couple of E/O cords, and a twelve-volt battery. I spread my undersuit on the table, threaded a needle, and got to work. In an instant, I forgot everything else. When Antje came to get me, it was already broad daylight outside and almost time to set out.
The weather had turned cooler. Theo had exchanged his linen suit for jeans and an anorak, which made him more simpatico. Although the wind had died away, experience told me the sea wouldn’t calm down until late in the afternoon. My suggestion that we spend the day sightseeing on land was rejected. My references to the waves we’d encounter when entering the water and the bad visibility below the surface also fell on deaf ears. I spoke sentences in which the phrases difficult conditions and at your own risk occurred. Jola smiled at me and climbed into the van. I was glad to see that her teeth were in fine shape. We started to drive across the island—I thought it would be best to try our luck on the leeward side.
There was something strange about my two clients that morning. We were in Teguise before I realized what was different about them: they were behaving like perfectly normal people. Theo asked, “Sweetheart, can you reach in the backpack and get the water bottle?” Jola answered, “Sure,” and handed him the mineral water. They were both sitting up front with me, swaying a little with the movements of the van and holding their hands on their knees. When a phone rang, it was mine, with a text message from Jola: “Looking forward to the dive. J.”
The dive site near Mala was a lonely spot, not easy to reach. Level places for entering the water were nonexistent. You had to clamber down barefoot over slippery rocks with the heavy scuba tank on your back and the fins and mask under your arm until you were close enough to the bay to jump. I left the van on the edge of the gravel road; we stood in black sand and changed into our diving gear. Slowly, step by step, reaching for each other’s hand to get over the hard parts, Jola and Theo climbed down. The sea was rougher than I’d hoped it would be. I decided to hurry up so they wouldn’t have too much time to stare down into the waves. I quickly demonstrated how they should jump into the water, with one hand on their weight belt and the other in front of their face. Theo stroked Jola’s shoulder before launching himself. He surfaced near me and made the “okay” sign.
Jola was still standing on the rocks; her body language was the picture of a struggle. Apparently she was giving her legs orders they had no wish to carry out. At last she leaped forward, a little too forcefully, and dropped right on top of me. I softened her impact, held on to her, fully inflated her buoyancy compensator, made sure her head remained above water. She’d temporarily lost her diving regulator, and she was coughing. I wanted to get under as quickly as possible, because it was dangerous to stay so close to the rocks. Under the water, calmness would reign. I gave the sign to submerge, and down we went.
Immediately, a great quiet surrounded us. The special silence of the sea. Movements slowed down and communication became a dance, a choreography of signs and gestures. Underwater, relationships were simple, requirements unequivocal, and responses radical. If you dove down ten meters, you simultaneously traveled back ten million years in the history of evolution—or back to the beginning of your own biography. You were in the water where life began, floating and mute. Without speech, no concepts. Without concepts, no justifications. Without justifications, no war. Without war, no fear. Not even the fish were afraid of us. Some curious ones came close and accompanied us for a while. If we kept still, they’d cast intense glances into our diving goggles. In exotic worlds, the tourist doubled as an attraction. I was fascinated by the peace that prevailed underwater, where hunter and prey lived together, courteously avoiding one another—a peace interrupted only by the brief cravings of hunger, which was no treachery but rather a generally accepted process of selection.
Despite the swells, subaqueous visibility was amazingly good. One of the most beautiful dive sites on Lanzarote stretched out before our eyes. The island’s bizarre volcanic landscape continued underwater, forming a stone city with towers, columns, archways, and battlements. When the sun broke through the clouds above, we found ourselves floating inside a dome of rising air bubbles and light. I felt happiness like a fist in my stomach. Theo lay in the water next to me and looked up too.
Something wasn’t right with Jola. In order to get around a lava stream that reached well out into the sea, I’d led my two clients close to the rim of the ledge, where the seafloor dropped straight down. Two groupers, as long as grown men, lay on the rim as though enjoying the view. Jola had swum out over the ledge, emitting air bubbles far too frequently. Like a bird unsure of whether it could really fly, she was staring into the deep. Fear of heights presented a serious problem underwater. With a couple of fin strokes, I moved beside her and grasped her arm. She flinched away. For a second I thought she was going to strike at me.
Over the years, I’d developed an automatic reaction: the more frantic a diver was, the calmer I became. I slowed my movements down to the point where I hardly knew whether I was actually doing something or merely present. Behind her diving goggles, Jola stared at me with wide-open eyes. Her chest rose and fell much too fast; she was already hyperventilating. I squeezed her forearm several times, trying to get her to focus her attention. When her eyelids stopped fluttering and she began to concentrate on me, I nodded approval and signaled, Good. I moved one hand slowly away from my mouth and closed my eyes: Exhale. Wait. I opened my eyes: Now you. She exhaled but immediately filled her lungs again, shot panicked glances left and right, and even looked upward, considering whether she should simply go back up to the surface. I tightened my grip on her arm and shook my head emphatically: No. Look at me. Exhale. Wait. Inhale slowly. Now she was following my instructions, but her eyes were still too wide. We found a common rhythm. Exhale. Wait. Inhale slowly. She calmed down. I let go of her arm, took her hand, and shook it: Congratulations, well done. She sheepishly returned my “okay” sign. When I tried to wi
thdraw my hand, she clung to me hard: Don’t leave me! Peering through her mask, I could see she was crying. The sensation of suffocating is among the worst a person can experience. At that moment, Jola needed only one thing in the world: me.
The reading on her pressure gauge was under 100 bar; she’d breathed her tank half empty in two minutes. I was determined to proceed with the dive, and it was essential to do so in an orderly fashion. One of the most important principles beginners must grasp is that diving problems have to be solved underwater. Emergency surfacing isn’t an option. I signaled to her that we were going to share my air supply. We’d practiced this—two divers breathing from one tank—in shallow water. Now I showed her my octopus, my spare demand valve, and made sure she understood me. Inhale. Take your own regulator out of your mouth and switch to the octopus. Breathe again. She did everything right.
We took each other by the hand. From that point on, we were joined together like Siamese twins, connected to the same air supply by two different hoses. We swam away slowly. I could feel her trembling; hyperventilation leads to poor blood circulation. She probably felt she was on the verge of freezing. As well as our equipment would allow, I put an arm around her waist and drew her close to me. Naturally, my body heat couldn’t warm her underwater, but freezing, like most things in life, is primarily a matter of attitude.
Theo had observed the scene with interest. Instead of looking out for rays, he’d kept his eyes on us, as though he’d discovered the two most fascinating marine animals in the Atlantic Ocean. I guided Jola close to the coastal rocks and showed her some bright yellow snails and the shrimp that were hiding in crevices between stones and groping toward us with their long feelers. I shone my pocket flashlight on a starfish to bring out its red color. Jola turned her head and smiled at me, and then something happened. I suddenly realized that I liked holding her in my arms. I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted to stay down there with her, I wanted us to observe the creatures of the sea together until the last trumpet. Jola felt how hard I recoiled and pressed herself closer to me. I gently pushed her away and signaled that she should switch back to her own air supply before we started to ascend. The exchange was flawless. We detached ourselves from each other. It felt like an amputation.
When I knocked on the Casa Raya’s door that evening, intending to pick up Theo and Jola and drive them somewhere for dinner, Jola didn’t want to come. She declared that she had to study for her nitrox certification. Then she looked away and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. Nothing to be done. After the unsuccessful dive a few hours earlier, she’d stood off to one side, wrapped in a towel, with the volcanic panorama in the background. I could still see her like that: shivering piteously and looking small, as if the coldness of the water had shrunk her, with hunched shoulders and blue lips and strands of wet hair stuck to her cheeks and neck. Theo had carried her equipment to the van. Now he glanced over at me with a new, thoughtful look on his face.
Theo and I left Jola in the Casa Raya and drove away. While we rumbled down the gravel road in the direction of Tinajo, I reproached myself. I shouldn’t have expected Jola to execute the difficult water entry at Mala. Instead I ought to have insisted on taking a day off and chalking it up to bad weather. At the very least, I should have kept Jola away from the brink of the ledge. After all, I knew she lacked Theo’s fundamental confidence in uncertainty. I also knew she had a strong will, which caused her to make bad decisions in moments of doubt. In all probability, she’d felt fearful of the sheer ledge and for precisely that reason she’d swum out past it. That wasn’t her fault. Judging how much I could expect of clients was part of my job. If my assessment was wrong, the responsibility was mine and mine alone.
After a panic attack like that, some people never went diving again. That’s why it would have been important for Jola to recompose herself a little more. I would have gladly told her that such a thing could happen to anyone. I knew experienced divers who went out one fine day and for no apparent reason began to hyperventilate. We could have discussed my theory that it was particularly hard for women to feel safe while diving, because unlike men, women didn’t readily make their lives dependent on technical apparatus. Women liked to maintain control. It was the same reason why they viewed automobiles, computers, and airplanes with mistrust. Above all I wanted to tell Jola that she would become a good diver, more than good enough for the role of Lotte Hass. It was harder to overcome fear than not to be afraid. We would have had so many things to talk about. If she didn’t want to see me, it probably meant she was angry.
At this point I forced myself to stop brooding. It wasn’t my style to try to think my way into other people’s heads. I’d accept their behavior, and in that way I’d get along with them quite well. Now it was a question of winning back a diving student’s confidence. I stopped the van on the side of the road, asked Theo to excuse me for a moment, and got out. While I positioned myself beside a large rock as if I had to pee, I took my cell phone out of my pocket and wrote, “Good luck with your studies. You’re in our thoughts. S.” Because I rarely sent text messages, I needed a long time to tap out those few words. The answer came back so fast it made me jump. It was brief and it hit me like an open hand, delivering either a blow or a caress; I couldn’t tell: “It’s not because of you. J.”
Giselle made a fish soup that was one of a kind, a recipe handed down from her French great-grandmother. Giselle was French-Canadian; her husband came from the Congo. On the walls of their little restaurant, African masks hung beside photographs of Notre-Dame de Québec. We were the only guests. Theo let me talk, and I talked as though I’d been wound up. One diving story after another. About manta rays, dolphins, and whale sharks. About the wrecked ship I was going to dive down to in the following week and how this exploit would make me famous in diving circles. Along the way I praised his and Jola’s talent and stressed how enjoyable it was to dive with sensible people.
He asked, “You find us sensible?”
Aside from that he sat there in silence, smiling thoughtfully and drinking apple juice. After the meal he suggested we go for a walk.
As a general rule, Tinajo’s streets were lively, but that evening the temperature had dropped below sixty degrees—unusually cool—and there was barely a soul in sight. Theo walked down the middle of the street, swinging his arms and watching his feet. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten my presence. In the village square, we sat on one of the whitewashed benches near the little church. The dragon trees screened the light from the streetlamps. At regular intervals, the end of Theo’s cigarette glowed in front of his face. Now that we’d come this far, I found myself wishing we had simply walked back to the van after dinner.
He said, “You’ve got the hots for her, don’t you?”
I started to make some reply to this, but he waved me off. “Forget about it. It’s what she does. It’s like an addiction with her.” He offered me a cigarette, which I declined. “Basically, I just want to warn you.”
It would have been easier for me to listen to him that evening if he’d been drinking. Unfortunately, I knew he was cold sober.
“Jola comes from an old family. They got rich by exploiting other people and managed to preserve their fortune through two world wars. A woman like Jola has no idea what it means to work for something. She expects to be given what she wants. The only thing she’s never been able to get is recognition. And that’s precisely what makes her dangerous.”
I wasn’t remotely interested in anything he was telling me. Nevertheless, I suddenly wanted him to go on talking.
“Basically, she’s still just a little girl, trying her best to win her father’s respect. Hartmut von der Pahlen. Does that name mean anything to you?”
I shook my head.
“Film producer. One of the most important in the business. Also an asshole. Whatever.”
Theo stubbed out his cigarette and lit himself another one before going on: “I’m a substitute father for her. She’s still lookin
g for paternal love, and that’s where I come in. As long as I don’t give it to her, she stays with me. And exacts her revenge a thousand times a day.”
“Only child?”
I bit my lip. Listening was bad enough. Asking questions was even worse. Normally in such situations, I changed the subject.
“She has two older brothers, one a doctor and the other a banker. Jola’s father never gets tired of enthusing about how successful they are. Whatever.”
A motor scooter drove by. The young woman sitting behind the driver yelled something in his ear. They both laughed.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Theo said. “It’ll help you understand how Jola grew up. When she was a child, she desperately wanted a pet. A guinea pig, a bunny, something she could cuddle with, something she could love. When she got a kitten for a Christmas present, she was overjoyed. She tended to the little animal night and day and carried it around with her wherever she went. Two weeks after Christmas, the heating in her house went on the blink. So the kitten wouldn’t freeze, Jola took it to bed with her and covered it with her pillow. The next morning she found the kitten under her pillow, cold and stiff as a piece of wood. Jola’s mother threw the kitten into the trash can, and from then on she told the story at parties. She’d pull Jola’s braid and laugh and say, ‘My little murderess.’ ” Theo looked around the square with narrowed eyes. “Whatever,” he said. It seemed that this was becoming his favorite expression. We fell silent for a while.
“Maybe you’re asking yourself what I’m doing with her in the first place,” Theo said at last. “It’s quite simple. I love her. Besides, I can’t get it up with other women. I’ve tried. With assistant directors in theaters, with culture-hungry housewives after readings, with street hookers. Total disaster.”