Juli Zeh - Decompression

“I’m looking at a serious project right now.”

“Then we wish you good luck, Frau Pahlen.”

The delicate scampering of soft feet. Emile appeared on the computer monitor, whose illuminated surface attracted little flies. He walked across the screen and sat in the middle of Jola’s face. Then he looked at me with his black button eyes and stuck out his tongue. In the movies, if a reptile sits on a character’s picture, that character will go crazy before the end.

Theodor Hast racked up 12,400 links on Google. Most of them referred to his relationship with Jola Pahlen. His Wikipedia entry consisted of two lines, with no accompanying photograph: “German writer, born 1969 in Reutlingen. His first novel, Flying Buildings , was published in 2001. He lives in Berlin, Stuttgart, and New York.”

The triple residence awakened unpleasant memories. In law school we were taught to cite all the publishing offices when quoting from the technical literature: “Volker Schlön, Securities Law, with Special Emphasis on the Securities Trading Act . Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 6th edition.” A book like that cost 129 deutschmarks, and the copy in the university library was notoriously unavailable whenever a paper relating to securities law actually had to be written. In Theo’s case it wasn’t his book but he himself who apparently lived in three places at the same time.

“An irritating gem.”

“A clear harbinger of future masterpieces.”

“ ‘There are many people who like me, but only one has to live with me. And that one’s myself.’ (Theodor Hass, Flying Buildings , p. 23.)”

According to the jacket copy posted on the publishing house’s home page, the novel was about a character named Martin and the search for identity. It sounded complicated. I scrolled down and came to an excerpt from the text:

He asked himself how it could be that God created the world in six days and gave himself the seventh day off. Were there already days before the earth took its first twenty-four-hour spin around the sun? And how was it that God opted for the seven-day week? That must mean God had held down a job somewhere. Martin would have very much liked to know where. He set his glass down and looked up. The tattered sky was hurrying eastward, as if it had something urgent to do there. Emigrate , he thought. But that would make sense only if the country we escape to weren’t always and only ourselves.

Antje read a lot. Whenever I tried to read a novel, it would put me to sleep.

A pan started sizzling. I smelled rabbit. I got up but left the computer on. The monitor was a fabulous hunting reserve for Emile.

Antje had set the table for four. Two glasses per person, one for water and one for wine. I noticed that the glasses were standing on the bare wood of the teak dining table. I started searching the sideboard for coasters.

Jola talked a great deal. Her hands flailed the air as though she was shooing away insects. Her long hair seemed to be in her way. She was constantly swiping it from one side to the other. Antje served salt-crusted Canary potatoes, mushrooms in olive oil, and three different mojo sauces. The conversation revolved around Jola’s movie project. She was reading a book about Lotte Hass, and she had romantic notions about the adventure of diving: you put on a chic bathing suit, jumped into the water, and quickly emptied your breathing tank, preferably while eye to eye with a whale shark. Theo ate potatoes. In a steady rhythm, one after the other, like a man doing a job.

I said I was going to instruct them strictly by the book. Caution and security would be primary concerns in every situation. It wasn’t about having an adventure, it was about knowledge of the subject and mastery of technique.

Jola stuck out her lower lip and played the little girl. Couldn’t she make friends with a whale shark?

I said we’d see angel sharks. Six feet long at most, and generally lying flat on the seafloor. At this the little girl turned into a strategist with narrow eyes and a dangerous smile. “Just as long as I can tell Casting I’ve had experience with sharks.”

I thought it wasn’t at all necessary for her to act that way. A cute little space between her upper incisors compelled me to keep looking at her mouth. Suddenly her hand was lying on my arm. The way she batted her eyelashes revealed practice. Didn’t I think she’d make a good Lotte?

Theo looked up from his plate. “Get ahold of yourself,” he said.

It sounded like a slap. Antje flinched as though it had been meant for her. The wind moved the curtains on the open windows; the air had become slightly cool. The clock on the wall gave the time as shortly before seven. The night was already creeping out of the corners of the rooms. I stood up to turn on the lights and close the windows.

“Don’t you like the potatoes?” Antje asked.

“Oh yes,” said Jola, quickly snatching the smallest one off her plate with her hand and stuffing the little morsel in her mouth. “But I’m not really hungry.”

“Eating disorder,” Theo explained. He emptied his second glass of wine and poured himself some more. “She’s already too old for the part. If she gets fat to boot, she won’t have a chance.”

He laughed as though he’d told a very good joke. Antje disappeared into the kitchen to fetch the rabbit dish. Jola stared at her unsoiled plate. Clients were like family members; you didn’t get to pick them. While we were waiting for the main course, I broke the silence to clarify once again what we could expect from one another. They would get exclusive rights to my services for two weeks, twenty-four hours a day, with an unlimited number of dives, completion of the Advanced Open Water Diver course, and nitrox certification, in addition to lodgings in the Casa Raya, the loan of all equipment, and chauffeur service to all the diving spots and places of interest on the island. I would get fourteen thousand euros. Ordinarily I had several clients, whom I would divide into groups. Jola and Theo were paying for the fact that I hadn’t accepted any other requests for the coming fourteen days. It wasn’t cheap, but in return I belonged to them alone. We shook hands. Jola’s telephone chirped. She read the display, smiled, and tapped in a reply. Antje came back, carrying a steaming stewpot between two kitchen towels.

“Conejo en salmorejo,” she said.

Bones were sticking out of the ragout. Theo’s telephone chirped. He smiled and put his hand on Jola’s thigh. They were actually sending each other text messages while in the same room. Antje served out rabbit pieces. Her cocker spaniel, Todd, came out of the kitchen, where he’d been worshipping the stove, assessed the situation, and took up a position next to Jola. He apparently considered her the weakest link in the chain. I tasted the food, praised it, and reminded my clients of my single condition: on the Wednesday after next, November 23, I would have a day off. Theo wanted to know why they would be obliged to do without my services on that particular Wednesday. He liked the rabbit. He also liked the wine, which he was drinking practically alone. With a quick look, I stopped Antje from getting a second bottle. Jola saw us exchange glances and laughed; for the first time that evening, her laughter was completely unaffected.

“What?” asked Theo.

“Nothing,” said Jola.

You’re not right for each other , I thought, and once again I forbade myself to think like that. The private lives of my clients had nothing to do with me. I explained what was up on November 23. Late that past summer, I’d been out deep-sea fishing and started to get an unusually strong sonar signal. There was an object about one hundred meters down, an object more than eighty meters long. Maybe it was only a heap of stones with an unusual shape. Or maybe it was a sensational find. For years there had been hardly any new discoveries of sunken ships anywhere in the world, and certainly none in divable waters. I marked the coordinates on my GPS device; finding the right place again wouldn’t present much of a problem. But diving into a wreck for the first time at a depth of one hundred meters wasn’t exactly child’s play — especially if you did it alone. I’d spent weeks preparing for the dive, calculating gas mixtures, racking my brains to figure out how I could lengthen my stay on the bottom by twenty minutes and yet avoid needing more than three hours’ worth of decompression stops before I could surface. In addition, I’d ordered some specially made dry gloves, and I was working on a heating system to install in my diving suit. Bernie had promised that he and his equally Scottish pal Dave would man the Aberdeen to provide my floating base. These were all professional requirements for a professional undertaking.