Juli Zeh - Decompression

“Theo!” Jola yelled.

Either she knew him well enough to read his mind, or the past few days had damaged my reflexes. While I was still wondering why Jola was yelling, Theo already had me by the shoulders. I was too flummoxed to defend myself. I saw people jumping out of the way in slow motion. Then I was tipping backward off the quay wall. One crystal-clear thought flashed into my consciousness: Don’t fall on the landing stage . I pushed off before I lost the ground under my feet, did a half turn in midair, and dove into the water. I knew at once I wasn’t hurt. I swam a few strokes close to the bottom. It was surprisingly warm in the harbor basin. Little fish nibbled at the keels of the anchored boats. I kept telling myself, Surface. Breathe. Laugh . My breath was running out. I surfaced, inhaled, saw twenty anxious faces looking down at me from the quay wall, and laughed.

Only the Dorset ’s final maneuvers put an end to the laughter and talk about my plunge into the harbor. While the yacht’s sails sank down together, I stood in my own private puddle. We could hear the skipper’s orders. The tourists became deadly serious. Suddenly every one of them was looking through binoculars. The diesel engine started up, and the Dorset sailed majestically into the harbor at Puerto Calero.

I thought of this line: My heart burns for love . That was exactly how I felt. The Dorset showed what true beauty signified: not symmetry, but the combination of power and elegance. Pure power came across as crude; mere elegance was vanity. Only the merger of the two had the force to touch you at the deepest part of yourself, which was exactly where I found myself touched. Jola was standing very straight on the edge of the quay, held by Dave’s and Theo’s arms in turn. The yacht looked as though it was putting into port for her sake. Proud and strong and yet so susceptible to storms. I stood in the background and played the good-natured diving instructor whose clients’ idea of a joke was to toss him into the drink. I felt love and pain and sadness and wasn’t sure whether they weren’t all the same.

Two hours later, behind the wheel of my van, I laughed all the louder, despite the terrible mood that had come over me. My clothes, in the meantime, had dried. All possible jokes — about being launched or getting baptized or cooling off — had already been cracked on the quay. But Jola was still in top form. Her crumpled turban lay among the equipment, her sunglasses hung from the rearview mirror. Her bare feet, which she braced against the windshield, left behind an impression that could still be seen weeks later when the glass fogged up from inside. She and Theo were recapitulating the Dorset ’s arrival. Their focus wasn’t the beauty of the vessel, it was the fact that Yvette, as predicted, had not been among the guests. Jola mimicked Bittmann, the way he’d spread his arms out as he stood on the gangway and said, first in German, “My apologies, folks, Yvette has canceled,” and then in English, just in case the entire crowd wasn’t made up of German sightseers: “Sorry, guys, Yvette couldn’t come.” Next Jola parodied the yacht’s five passengers. In Jola’s version, they had gone down the gangway at the exact moment when the disappointed crowd dispersed, and then they’d had to stand around like stranded orphans, hoping that someone would recognize them. I’d simply seen five people leaving a ship. They’d looked perfectly normal to me, but in Jola’s and Theo’s eyes each of them was apparently a laughingstock. Jola bent over with laughter and practically put her face in my lap. On other such occasions, I’d shoved her away from me. I’d begged her not to crowd me. In my best killjoy voice, I’d pointed out that I had an automobile to steer. But now I tried to get ahold of her hair. I wanted her to keep lying on my lap. And it irritated me that she was already leaning toward Theo’s side again. I would have liked to say something. But I knew neither the literary critic nor the woman who directed plays nor the photographer. All that remained to me was my own joyless laughter, designed to show that I belonged.

Back in Lahora, I parked the car and stood for a moment at the gate to watch Jola and Theo cross the sandlot and disappear into the Casa Raya. They had turned down my suggestion that we go to Giselle’s for some fish soup. Jola wanted to cook. I went into the house, found Antje sitting on the terrace with a book, hauled her into the bedroom, and threw her on the bed. Unlike what happened in movies, I had no trouble whatsoever calling her by the right name.

JOLA’S DIARY, EIGHTH DAY

Still Saturday, November 19. Evening .

Little girls wait for the white knight who’s going to lift them up onto his horse and ride away with them. Grown women, on the other hand, negotiate contracts. Our latest deal: the old man will leave me alone if I jerk him off on demand while telling him about Sven. About Sven’s giant cock, which fills my mouth and throat so completely I nearly choke. About Sven’s big balls, which lie in my hands. About how Sven grabs me and fucks me so hard I think I’ll fall apart .

But humiliation is a complicated business. The old man sits there on the sofa, his semi-stiff member between my fingers. He clutches the cushion with one hand and my hair with the other while he listens to dirty stories about me and our diving instructor. The question of who’s humiliating whom in this scene must be neither posed nor answered. He’s a forty-two-year-old writer with just one published novel to his name. His pants are tangled around his ankles, his face red with effort. A tormented, self-tormenting creature .

I told him so. Whereupon our deal was canceled again. He pulled up his pants and ran into the bathroom. The victim had abandoned her own integrity for a sweet moment of triumph. I love to gaze into Theo’s eyes and see something shatter in there. I love to see the infinitely wronged look that comes over them because the traitor who thrust in the dagger was, of all people, me. Such a wonderful feeling. For a few seconds I know — no, I clearly see— how much he loves me. When can you actually see love? It’s a rare and precious experience. I’ll think about that if he comes back and

After Antje fell asleep, I got out of bed. I’d overexerted myself, I’d had no dinner, and we’d done it twice in succession. Antje had put herself at my disposal for the second go-round as though for an athletic endeavor in which she functioned as both playing field and spectator. My knees were trembling. For several minutes I stood before the opened refrigerator, contemplating Antje’s leftover, cellophane-wrapped tapas. Todd’s reproachful look identified me as the kind of villain who won’t even give the needy what he himself doesn’t want.

After a couple of pointless turns around the living room, it became obvious that the magnetic attraction the computer was exercising on me could no longer be attributed to anything else. As before, I shut Todd out of the office, and while the machine booted up I looked around for Emile, who didn’t want to show himself that evening. By now I’d seen enough episodes of Up and Down to be able to follow the plot, to find characters appealing or unappealing, and to predict with some certainty when Bella would turn up next. I’d really been enjoying Bella’s appearances since she’d gone back to her old boyfriend the doctor. There was a lot of kissing, sighing, and groping, even though it was thoroughly obvious that the doctor wasn’t about to end the affair he was having with a nurse. For her part, Bella was only using him so she could get her hands on the drugs that would help her avenge herself on a director who hadn’t cast her in a role she’d very much wanted. Bella had just caught the doctor in flagrante delicto with the nurse and was making quite a scene when I heard music. Loud music. I stood up and drew the curtain aside. Out in the hall, Todd started to bark.