Juli Zeh - Decompression

It was good. It would have been good. But something was wrong. It was the way Jola had turned her back to me. Her questioning look, sexy and provocative. What are you waiting for? When she did that, she looked like an actress. I rubbed my cock between her thighs. She wasn’t particularly wet, but she nevertheless threw her head back immediately and forcefully. She groaned in time with my movements. As if we were playing the leads in some vacation porn movie. I could have penetrated her and gone at it hot and heavy, and we could have finished in a minute. But what would have been the point of that?

Maybe the problem was that out of the water, we were humans. Deep inside me was a dead silence. The intense feelings of a short while ago were hushed. I saw the two of us as though from the outside. The Volkswagen van, the equipment strewn on the ground. A female student and her male diving instructor, on the verge of forgetting his principles. Sex represented a powerful form of involvement. The error of thinking he could enjoy a quickie and emerge from it scot-free had undone many a man before me.

I drew back, patted Jola’s ass, and murmured an apology. Then I slipped into my jeans and set about loading the equipment. I’d have to write off the dive site at Mala as currently jinxed. When I settled in behind the steering wheel, Jola was already in the passenger seat. She didn’t seem angry. Rather a little absent. She stared straight ahead, as if an important idea had just occurred to her. I briefly put my hand on her knee. Then I needed that hand to shift.

In the course of a man’s life, he grows used to the fact that women, with few exceptions, do not wish to go to bed with him. A woman, on the other hand, can take it for granted that theoretically every man wants to go to bed with her. Today I wonder what it must have meant to a woman like Jola to be rejected. Can it really be that fate had required me, at that moment, to bring matters to an end? Unanswerable questions are those best suited to being asked over and over.

JOLA’S DIARY, FOURTH DAY

[pages torn out and pasted back in]

Tuesday, November 15. Afternoon .

Algae produce 80 percent of our oxygen. According to my iPhone. It also says that whole mountains of limestone were formed from marine organisms. Humans use it to make concrete. We build cities out of snail shells and conches. The image appeals to the old man. Maybe he can use it in one of his stories .

A happy mood works just the way a bad one does. You have to take it out on someone. Since there’s no one else here, the old man gets to enjoy himself. He lies on the sofa and uses up tissues. I make him some tea, plump his pillows, and acknowledge his suffering as the most tragic in the universe. I read him pearls of wisdom from the Internet. So a good time with one turns into tenderness for the other. Note: a good time, not a guilty conscience .

What I’d most like to do is to tell the old man a completely different story. To give him a detailed account of how Sven, who usually talks the whole time we’re in the van — describes the upcoming dive, points out the few sights the island offers, relates anecdotes from his underwater life — suddenly found himself speechless. Instead of talking, he kept turning his head every twenty seconds to look at me. Why don’t I tell Theo that? Because he’d go berserk, that’s why. Because he’d beat the daylights out of me, maybe even kill me. Inadvertently. He doesn’t deserve to hear a good-time story. And holding my tongue is at least as much fun. So I sit on the bed in the bedroom and laugh to myself every now and then .

What’s so funny? The old man calls out from the sofa .

Did you know cuttlefish change color when they’re courting? I call back .

On land I find it difficult to take Sven seriously. Those thick arms, that innocent look. A failed lawyer, escaped to an eternal kindergarten, with 100 percent sun and 0 percent real life. But underwater, he’s another person. No, wrong: another being. The innocence becomes self-confidence, the eagerness turns into deepest concentration. So much assurance is never really found in people; only animals have it. I look at him and feel his calmness pervading me, too. I stop struggling. I want only to be close to him .

Today I wasn’t afraid at all. The water carried me, it was like slow flying. Sven was waiting for me on the bottom. We knelt before each other like a priest and a priestess. Nature knows only one kind of divine service .

In 1996 the Neoselachii, a group that includes modern sharks and rays, were subdivided according to morphological characteristics into two monophyletic taxa, the Galeomorphii and the Squalea. According to this proposal, sharks are paraphyletic and hence a form taxon, while rays are assigned to a mere subgroup of squalomorphic sharks .

When Theo asks me again what I’m laughing at, I read him that paragraph off my iPhone .

I say, We saw some rays today .

He says, Lucky you, you had a good time .

He could hardly have given me a funnier answer. To tell the truth, we had a very fine time indeed! I have to pull myself together or he’ll get suspicious .

The rays glided through the water like slow-motion birds and paid not the slightest attention to us. It was as if we weren’t there. Sven’s hands on my breasts under the buoyancy compensator. I could feel how hard he was through his diving suit. Our slow ascent was time-release torture. With every meter closer to the surface, our tension grew. Falling for the diving instructor. And so what? Other women who get treated like shit at home fuck the ski teacher or the tennis pro. Lotte Hass married her expedition leader. We practically ran the distance to the car. In spite of all the equipment. If I’d had any idea of refusing him, he would have taken me by force. Never have two people stripped off their diving suits faster. The metal side of Sven’s van was hot under my hands. He stood behind me, bending his knees a little in order to penetrate me. There was nothing coarse about it. He was very warm. He thrust into me almost questioningly. Impatience had nearly driven us crazy; now we had all the time in the world. And though all mankind, in order to spare men’s feelings, may go on saying that size doesn’t matter, I will simply note that Sven has the ability to fill me up. It was sweet to feel my will steadily vanishing. The sound of the surf, the light breeze, the black landscape. Except for us, not a living thing in sight, far and wide. As though life existed only in the sea we’d just climbed out of. Two aquatic animals, coming on shore to mate. When I sleep with the old man, even when it’s good, I think about something else. Sven found the rhythm. My knees got weak, and he had to hold me up. He couldn’t get enough of my breasts. Whenever I started to think it couldn’t become more intense, it moved to another level. I heard myself stammering foolish words. Sven began to cry out my name. When it was over, he literally collapsed on top of me. It was the first time I’ve ever come standing up .

He dropped to the ground on his back and pulled me onto him. We lay together in the dirt. He twisted my hair into braids and stroked the back of my neck. He said, I love you, Jola. I didn’t take it amiss — I knew what he meant. It was a moment of perfect peace .

Theo asks, How come you two went on only one dive?

I say, Oh, you know, without you it’s only half as much fun .

He laughs: Little hypocrite .

While we drove up the gravel track from Mala, Sven kept one arm around me. He feels good even when he’s dressed. Shortly before we reached the main road, he had me move away and sit at a decent distance. Everybody on the island knows everybody else. Our silence now had another quality. We smiled a lot. When he let me out, he said, See you tomorrow. I said, Give my best to Antje. He said, I will. That meant, Everything, really everything, is all right .