Juli Zeh - Decompression

“Yvette’s on the shores of the Red Sea as we speak,” said Bittmann. “Beautiful spot. A few years ago, on our legendary tour, we ran into a heavy storm. We were all drenched to the skin, and when we finally reached the new marina in Hurghada, Boris and Til, wearing nothing but underpants, jumped into the water and—”

“But what’s Yvette doing down there by the Red Sea?” Theo asked impatiently. He was grinning. He’d obviously lost all desire to control himself. I had the impression that Jola was starting to tremble.

“She’s preparing for a new role,” Bittmann said. Now he too was looking at Jola. “Surely you’ve heard about it? From your father?”

Jola didn’t react. She extended a hand toward her wineglass, reconsidered halfway there, and put the hand in her lap.

“What role is that?” asked Theo.

“Well, they’re making a film about the life of this woman deep-sea diver.” Bittmann was speaking to Jola again. He assumed that such news would be of professional interest to her. “I can’t come up with her name at the moment.”

“Lotte Hass,” Theo said.

“Yes, maybe so.”

Bittmann still had noticed nothing. Everyone except him and the African had lowered their spoon to their terrine bowl. They gazed at Jola, who had turned as pallid as a corpse.

“In any case, we must keep this among ourselves until the official press conference. I know about it only because it was Yvette’s reason for declining my invitation. Otherwise she would’ve come aboard in Casablanca.”

Theo turned toward Jola. “Wasn’t that role the reason why we came down here, love?” he asked. “The reason why you’re taking this diving course?”

“But casting …” Jola cleared her throat. “But casting doesn’t start until the week after next.”

Her voice toppled over at the end. I admired her. She fought against domination like a bull in an arena. Theo thrust in the next lance. “Wasn’t your heart set on playing the Girl on the Ocean Floor?”

“What I told you was insider information,” Bittmann said. “They made an internal decision that Yvette absolutely had to get the part.”

“Didn’t you say”—Theo started laughing again—“didn’t you say this was your last chance?”

“Jola …” Bittmann looked stricken. “Don’t tell me you intended to try for the role yourself.”

“Because otherwise you’d never be able to get out of that soap-opera shit?” Theo slapped the table with delight. “You’d never be taken seriously as an actress? You’d just be an aging TV whore nobody would remember in a few years?”

Jola had lost. She’d lost against Theo, against the people around the table, and especially against herself. A gasp escaped her throat. She sprang to her feet and ran out of the salon and up the steep stairs. I wanted to go after her and was already half out of my chair when my eyes fell on Theo. He broke off laughing to raise his eyebrows and shake his head. That meant Let her go . I sank back down. He kept looking at me while his chest began to quiver with laughter again. Now what was that? His eyes seemed to ask. You couldn’t give your new girlfriend any help at all? Fucking beginner .

Amid the general silence, the African turned his head from one side to the other and asked in English, “What is?”

After a longish pause, Bittmann said, “I feel very sorry about that.”

“She’ll get over it,” Jankowski opined.

“I don’t think so,” said Theo.

“Dessert?” Bittmann asked.

Vanilla panna cotta with pistachios and red wine jelly.

When the dessert plate lay in front of me, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I murmured an apology and left the table. Before I reached the main deck, my cell phone rang. I thought it must be Jola and answered at once. It was Bernie. He spoke in English, and pretty rapidly at that. A stream of mostly incomprehensible language rushed past my right ear. Every now and then, single words I could understand briefly emerged from the torrent: “Fuck”; “Dave”; “Aberdeen.” I heard the word crazy twice.

“Bernie,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“You can have the fucking boat. But don’t ever ask me again.”

“Pardon?”

“Aren’t you listening, man? You can take the Aberdeen out tomorrow morning. But forget about us! Dave — is — not — coming — and — neither — am — I, understand? It’s the last thing I’ll ever do for you. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“But, Bernie, why won’t—”

The conversation was interrupted, because Bernie had hung up. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t answer. I went up the last steps to the deck, stood next to the mast, and stared into space. In front of this space was a section of the ship’s rail. Jola was leaning against it, looking at me. She too had a telephone in her hand, and she held out the illuminated screen so I could see it. For a moment I imagined Bernie had also called her to cancel the expedition.

“Text message from my father,” Jola said. “Bittmann’s right. Stadler got the part.”

So much for that , I thought. Weeks of preparation, all for nothing. I had no chance of finding people to replace Dave and Bernie on such short notice. And December would bring the winter currents, which would make it impossible to reach the wreck. At a stroke, my whole project was dead. Deferred until some future date that, try though I might, I couldn’t imagine would ever come. I didn’t even know what the following days would bring. The following week. I felt my life disintegrating into its component parts. For months I’d envisioned celebrating my fortieth birthday, my personal farewell to the first half of my existence, at a depth of one hundred meters. Having to abandon that plan undermined everything else. I didn’t have the slightest idea why Bernie had canceled at the last minute like that. All I knew was I couldn’t rely on anything anymore.

Jola put her cell phone away. Side by side, we leaned on the rail and looked out at the massive breakwater formed by the lower edge of the night sky. A cold wind snatched at us from all sides. I wanted to put my jacket around Jola’s shoulders and discovered I wasn’t wearing one; at some point in the course of the evening, I must have taken the coat off and hung it on the back of my chair. Everything struck me as unreal. The Dorset wasn’t a normal ship; she was a seafaring piece of Germany. And that was the way I felt: German. Overburdened, disoriented, disgusted by the world.

“Is something wrong?” Jola asked.

I told her about Bernie’s call, and she laughed sardonically. “So we’ve both had the ground under our feet yanked away. Me a little more than you, maybe. But I’m not so sure about that.”

There weren’t many people who could recognize another’s misery alongside their own. For a while we were silent, gazing out to sea. Then the five minutes began, the five minutes I’ve gone over in my mind again and again during the past several weeks. Never before have I regretted such a short span of time for so long. Jola seized my arm, looked me in the face, and said, “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

I didn’t grasp what she meant at first, though I felt the effect of her smile. It crossed my mind that I’d come up on the deck to comfort her. To help her gather up the shards of her life and build a new life out of them. I took her in my arms. From that moment on, my body made all the decisions itself. Instead of patting her consolingly, I pressed her against me and kissed her throat. She shoved me away so that she could keep looking at me. “You’re diving down to your wreck,” she said. “Theo and I will sail the Aberdeen .”