Juli Zeh - Decompression

But there he is now, sitting hunched over the table. It appears that Antje’s supplying him with bottles; he’s always got one in reserve. As long as he boozes and broods, he leaves me in peace. Maybe Theo and Antje could fall in love, and everybody would live happily ever after. The four of us, next-door neighbors .

I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying the scene with Theo in my head. Where did he get off, calling me a coward because I left Germany? The cowards were people like him, people who saw through the game and went on playing it anyway. I’d already heard enough of that kind of talk, complete with set phrases, from clients. They railed against the achievement-oriented society and sent their children to Chinese classes. They rejected the ideologies of economic growth and took to the streets for their next pay raise. They accused executives of greed and searched the Internet for the stock funds that promised the highest yield. They settled down in front of their brand-new flat-screen TVs and watched talk-show discussions about the evils of capitalism. Everybody cursed and swore, everybody played along. It made me want to puke. And in the end, only broken, burned-out types emerged. Guys like Theo. The fact that he was smart enough to recognize the absurdity made things even worse. If he called me a coward, it could mean only that in reality he envied me. The other question was, What had Jola told him? Nothing at all, probably. Theo had probably just been carried away by his imagination. The best thing for me to do was nothing. Ninety percent of all problems resolve themselves if you keep calm.

It was shortly after midnight. I got up and went to the kitchen, where I drank a glass of water and ate some olives and cheese cubes directly from the refrigerator. That wouldn’t help me go to sleep. I went into our little office. Emile was sitting on the keyboard, waiting for me. When I reached out my hand, he climbed my fingers like stairs, scurried over my wrist and up my arm, and nestled in the crook. In November, the nights became a little chilly. I had enough body heat to give some of it away. Using one hand so as not to disturb Emile, I turned on the computer, opened Up and Down ’s home page, and after a brief search found the archived episodes. April 16, 2010: “Deadly Lies.” The soft clicking of paws on terra-cotta tiles came from the hall, followed by snuffling in the doorway. Todd entered the room, joyously wagging his tail because he’d found me. I shoved him back into the hall with my foot and closed the door. A snitch was the last thing I needed.

Two guys in a café setting. One, about twenty years old, sported a baseball cap and a three-day beard, which was supposed to make him seem casual and congenial. The other, not much older and properly clean-cut, was dressed in a suit, which immediately identified him as the nice guy’s enemy. I had to grin. It was typical: the villain in a television show produced by moneygrubbing jerks was a moneygrubbing jerk. Capitalism denouncing its most faithful servants.

They talked about the nice guy’s café. The guy in the suit, having invested in the nice guy’s café, wanted to see some profits now, while the nice guy asked for a little more time to get his business on its feet. The suit started to make some nasty threats, but then a blond bimbo came up to the table and hung her solarium-tanned silicon décolletage over the nice guy’s shoulder. I fast-forwarded. The summary had promised an appearance by Bella Schweig. Emile’s cold feet moved in the crook of my arm, but then he sat still again.

Bella stood in front of an apartment door, biting her lips. She wore a garishly printed, somewhat-too-youthful dress that nevertheless presented her figure quite appropriately. At last I could take my time and look at her calmly. I could sit there and observe every detail of her face and every movement of her body. She tousled her hair with both hands. She rubbed her eyes and pinched her cheeks. When the camera showed her in close-up again, her makeup was smeared and tears were running down her face. Then she pressed the doorbell. I sat there spellbound. A band of pain tightened my chest. Of course, she was the most beautiful woman I knew, but there was also something behind that beauty, something that went deeper. Something that touched me. The viewer felt a constant urge to call out to her: You shouldn’t do that .

A good-looking man, older and graying at the temples, opened the door. I liked his plain gray knitted sweater and his dark jeans. Their conversation revealed that he was Bella’s ex-boyfriend and didn’t want to let her in. But she wept uncontrollably and eventually threw herself into his arms. She’d been in the neighborhood only by chance, she said, and down in the street she’d witnessed a terrible accident. A truck had run over a cyclist. Blood everywhere, she said. Then she fainted.

I thought she did all that very well. And I was glad for her because her partner in that scene looked so much more sensible than the two wankers in the café.

He carried her to a couch and laid her on it with her feet raised. Apparently he was a physician. He touched her forehead with one hand and her belly with the other. The pain in my chest increased. I turned off the computer and sat for a while in the dark. Without my prodding him, Emile left my arm and climbed up on the softly crackling monitor.

When my cell phone rang, I reached the window in one bound and peered through the curtains. The Casa Raya lay in utter darkness. No light shone through the shutters, nothing moved in the garden. I opened my text messages.

“Can’t sleep either. Thinking of you. J.”

I stood motionless for a long time. My phone screen went black. I heard Todd panting outside the door. There was nothing I could have done next.

For a few days afterward, I felt as though I had a fever. The typical combination of weakness, confusion, and nervous euphoria. Actually not an unpleasant feeling. Suddenly the whole world took a step back. It was like watching a movie with me in the lead role. As if life was an entertaining adventure without consequences. My mother used to call that my “don’t give a shit” mood. She’d say, “You’re not leaving the house, not in that don’t give a shit mood. Get in bed and wait until you can think clearly again.”

Of course, I didn’t really have a fever. Nevertheless, in retrospect it’s not easy for me to describe correctly what happened. The days leading up to the dinner on the Dorset , where I now believe all decisions were made, flow together in my memory and refuse to arrange themselves in a clear sequence, blending instead into a fuzzy continuum with no beginning and no end. At night I’d wait for Antje to fall asleep so that I could sit at the computer and watch a few episodes of Up and Down . I’d set Emile on one arm and pull my cock out of my boxer shorts. I liked to wait until Bella finally appeared, and in general I took my time. I could sit through as many as three episodes. When I was finished, the clock showed it was after one, so sleep was out of the question. I lay on the couch and pondered whether my new passion for Up and Down was having a bad effect on my work with Theo and Jola. After careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that what I undertook in my free time had nothing to do with my business relationships. No lawyer would withdraw from a case just because he was having fantasies about his sexy client.

In summary it may be said that only underwater did everything remain unchanged. Theo was back in the company; in spite of his sniffles, he insisted on participating in every dive. I explained the risks to him and forbade nose drops. He took an excruciatingly long time to equalize his pressure, but he managed to get down to the planned depth every time. He’d apparently decided he wasn’t going to let Jola and me out of his sight again, not even twenty meters under the surface of the sea. The three of us drifted through the liquid silence, pointing out angel sharks and rays and groupers to one another. We fed sea urchins to octopuses and watched barracudas on the hunt.