Juli Zeh - Decompression

We discussed wind directions and sea swells and speculated about what kind of weather the rest of November would bring. Although the daytime temperature seldom dropped below sixty-eight degrees, the island had its seasons too; you just needed to pay closer attention. Then our conversation moved from meteorology to the European economic situation. Bernie, the Scot, argued in favor of controlled bankruptcy for Greece. Laura, who was from Switzerland, believed that smaller countries should get international support. I had no interest in politics. If I’d wanted to spend the whole day surfing the Internet for news, I wouldn’t have had to leave the Federal Republic of Germany. Laura and Bernie agreed that Germany was the new economic policeman of Europe — powerful, but unloved. The two of them looked at me expectantly. Every German abroad is Angela Merkel’s press spokesperson.

I said, “As far as we’re concerned, the crisis has been over for a long time.” Germans and Brits were going on vacations again. We were doing better, and some of us were even thriving.

We kept our cardboard signs wedged under our arms. The clients listed on Bernie’s sign were the EVANS FAMILY and the NORRIS FAMILY. Laura’s sign said ANNETTE, FRANK, BASTI, and SUSANNE. My sign bore only two names that day — THEODOR HAST and JOLANTHE AUGUSTA SOPHIE VON DER PAHLEN — but they went on so long that they barely fit. The signs had to be small enough that we could make them disappear under our jackets at a moment’s notice. An island law designed to protect taxi drivers forbade us to pick up clients at the airport. If we were caught doing so, the fine was three hundred euros. The taxi drivers stood just outside the glass doors of the arrivals terminal and kept an eye on us. Because of them, we usually greeted our baffled clients by hugging them like old friends. On the board above our heads, the display flipped: 20 minutes delayed . Bernie raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. We nodded.

“With much milk,” I said.

“Lots of,” Laura said.

Laura had been trying for years to teach me English, but I’d never even learned Spanish very well. Bernie didn’t care about my bad English as long as he could understand what I meant. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts and strolled over to the coffee stand. His five-day beard and swaying gait always made him look like a man walking on the deck of a ship.

We’d finished our coffee by the time the first passengers came out into the arrivals area. Some of Bernie’s people immediately surrounded him. Five so far — he’d make good money. I pictured the two members of my group as an elegant older lady and a white-haired man, the latter pushing a cart piled high with an assortment of different-colored suitcases. That was the only way I could imagine a Theo and a Jolanthe. The deal we’d agreed on gave them exclusive rights to my services, at a price that could be paid only by people who already had a large part of their lives behind them.

It was always exciting to pick up new clients at the airport. You never knew who you were going to get, who had taken it into their head to give sport diving a try. Because Antje handled all the office work, I usually hadn’t even spoken to clients by telephone when I met them for the first time. What would they look like? How old would they be? What preferences, occupations, life stories would they have? Being near the ocean was something like being on a train; in a very short time, you came to know other people amazingly well. As I was in the habit of never judging anyone, I got along just fine with everybody.

The Air Berlin passengers came through the gate at the same time as passengers deplaning from a Madrid flight — shorter people, less warmly dressed, and not so pale. I’d had a lot of practice at guessing nationalities, and when it came to identifying Germans, I guessed right almost 100 percent of the time. A couple was coming my way. I glanced at them briefly, thought father and daughter , and kept looking past them for Theodor and Jolanthe. The couple stopped in front of me, but only when the woman pointed to the sign in my hand did I realize that my new clients had found me.

“I’m Jolante, but without an H,” the woman said.

“Are you Herr Fiedler?” the man asked.

A taxi driver was observing us through the revolving door. I spread my arms and embraced Theodor Hast.

“I’m Sven,” I said. “Welcome to the island.”

Theodor tensed up while I kissed the air to the left and right of his face. A faint scent of lavender and red wine. Then I grabbed the woman. She was as yielding as a stuffed animal. For a moment I was afraid she’d fall to the floor as soon as I let her go.

“Wow,” Theodor said. “What a greeting.”

I’d explain the effusive welcome in the car. “I’m parked right outside,” I said.

By then, Bernie had gathered his second family around him, and Laura was standing in the middle of a group of young Germans. They all fell silent and stared over at us. I looked back at them and shrugged. Antje would have laughed at me and pointed out, once again, that I was “slow on the uptake.” Theodor and Jolante casually guided their wheeled suitcases toward the exit. He had on a tailored suit, but neither a dress shirt nor a tie; his open jacket revealed a light-colored T-shirt. She was wearing combat boots and a sleeveless gray linen dress with a knee-length skirt. Her long black hair glistened on her back like crow feathers. She and Theodor bumped shoulders together, laughing about something. Then they stopped and turned around to me. And now I saw it too: They didn’t come across as tourists. They looked more like models in a travel ad, and Jolante seemed somehow familiar. Half the people in the arrivals terminal were gaping at her. The words magnificent specimen crossed my mind.

“Well, have a great time,” Laura said, her eyes on Frau von der Pahlen’s legs.

“Canalla,” Bernie said in Spanish, grinning and slapping me on the shoulder. You rascal . His new clients — two families — were all redheads. That meant sunburn and nervous children.

Outside in the parking area, I opened the side door of my Volkswagen van and invited my clients to get in, but they thought it would be more fun to sit in the front with me. The front seat had room for three; Theodor sat squashed in the middle. I was wearing shorts, and my bare leg looked uncouth next to his suit pants. When I put the van in gear, my hand brushed his left thigh. He kept his knees pressed together for the rest of the trip.

“We go by first names here,” I said. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Theo.”

“Jola.”

We proffered hands. Theo’s fingers, warm but limp, lay briefly in my own. Jola had a man’s firm handshake, but her hand felt amazingly cold. She rolled the window partly down and stuck her nose into the wind. Her sunglasses made her look like an insect. A really cute insect, I must admit.

Arrecife was a concentration of various kinds of unpleasantness. Government offices, law courts, police stations, hotel complexes, hospitals. Antje used to say you didn’t drive to Arrecife unless you had a problem. I had one on the day in question, but I didn’t know it yet. I was just happy to be leaving the city. I stepped on the gas, turned onto the arterial road, and reached escape velocity. The landscape opened up: a couple of bearded palms standing beside the road, and everything beyond them black, all the way to the horizon. The island was no beauty, not in the classical sense. Looked at from an airplane, it resembled a gigantic granite quarry, with what seemed to be the remains of snow lying in the valleys between the brown-gray hills. During the final descent, the snowy patches revealed themselves as villages of white houses standing close together. A landscape without any vegetation is like a woman with nothing suitable to put on — they both have a hard time being admired. The island’s lack of vanity was the precise reason why I’d fallen in love with it from the very start.