Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

I selected a tank, BCD and regulator, strapped the BCD to the tank, made sure it was good and tight, then attached the regulator to the tank. The four black hoses of the regulator snaked around my feet like half an octopus.

Two of the regulator’s hoses had mouthpieces-a black one for me and a bright yellow one for anyone who might need it-another hose ended with gauges monitoring air supply and depth, and the final hose had a metal clip that I attached to the BCD. There was a little hose on my BCD so that I could regulate my buoyancy by inflating or deflating it. Finally I turned on the tank’s valve and, as it hissed into life, checked the air supply.

The gauge read 210 bar. A full tank. Everything was as it should be. Except somehow it wasn’t as it should be at all.

What I liked about Ramon was that he was always there while we were putting our equipment together. He would advise us about the amount of weights we needed, he would check to see that our kit was up to scratch, he would make sure our checks were done properly. I needed all that.

Ramon always gave me the impression that nothing was more important to him than safety. But as the rising wind whipped off the sea, I thought that this skinny kid acted as though nothing were more important to him than large Norwegian breasts.

I stood at the stern of the boat, feeling it pitch and fall beneath my feet, taking a part of my stomach with it every time it fell. The fins that I was wearing made it easier for me to keep my balance but harder for me to move. I stood there staring at the heads bobbing up and down in the choppy sea. They looked so fragile.

Everyone else was in the water. The skinny dive master. The Norwegian girls. A young Japanese couple. A rubbery old German who looked as though he had spent his life under the tropical sun. And Rose, her face half-hidden behind her mask but lifted toward me. They were all waiting for me.

It was raining hard now. The coast wasn’t far away-we had reached the dive site in less than twenty minutes-but it was completely hidden behind a mist that seemed to be growing thicker by the second. Black clouds rumbled and rolled above the dive boat. There was a clap of thunder overhead, a jagged slash of lightning on the horizon. The rain seemed to be coming in sideways. I placed one hand on my mask and another on my tank and stepped off the side of the boat.

I hit the water, went under for an instant and was suddenly on the surface. The waves were even rougher than they looked from the boat and I took in a mouthful of water, managing to gag most of it up.

My mask was already getting misty. I should have spat on the glass and cleaned it with sea water, as that always prevented it steaming up, but it felt like there hadn’t been enough time. The skinny dive master had taken us all up to the bow to talk through the dive plan and next thing after that we were getting into the water. I pulled off my mask, hawked on the glass and dipped it under the water, rubbing hard.

Rose was finning to my side. “You okay?”

“I miss Ramon,” I said, tasting the salt and bile.

“Me too. I think we’re off.”

I pulled on my mask and saw that the rest of them were already going down. I quickly stuffed in the mouthpiece of my regulator and faced Rose. She made a thumbs-down gesture, meaning going down, and I returned the signal. I released a few puffs of air from my jacket and exhaled, immediately starting to sink feet first below the waves.

I was aware of the hull of the boat, other divers nearby, the dive master floating weightless far below us. And that’s when I felt the excruciating pain in the bridge of my nose. I was going down too fast, the pressure on the air space in my sinuses was causing a squeeze.

Rose was beside me, making a soothing gesture with her hands, slowly waving them in front of her chest-take it easy, take it easy. I nodded, went up a meter and the squeeze immediately cleared.

With one hand I made my thumb and index finger into a circle-I’m okay-and with the other I pinched my nose, gently blowing through it as I once more tried to go down. This time it worked and I slowly began to sink without my nose feeling as though it was in a vice.

Visibility was poor. I was used to seeing these waters flooded with sunlight and marine life, but today the sea was murky and dark, with only a few fish swimming through the gloom, bright splashes of color in the enveloping darkness. Then I realized that Rose and I were alone.

Rose was floating weightless by my side, looking all around. But there was no sign of the other divers. They had left us. Water began to seep into my mask. I tilted my head upward, pulled back my mask and roughly exhaled through my nose. My mask cleared. Rose was looking at me, her blue eyes wide behind glass, jerking her thumb from side to side.

Which direction?

I checked around, hoping for the reassuring sight of some human shapes finning through the darkness. There was nothing. And every direction looked the same. I gazed up at the hull of the boat, far above us now. It seemed to be drifting away from us. Or perhaps we were doing the drifting. Rose jerked her thumb to the right.

Go that way.

I shook my head. Was she crazy? She was indicating that we should swim out to sea. I stabbed my thumb in the opposite direction, toward the shore. Or to where I imagined the shore to be.

Go that way.

She shook her head, tapping the compass she had strapped to her wrist. My finger and thumb formed a reluctant circle.

Okay.

She led the way and we finned into the darkness. My mouth was dry with nerves. I looked at my air gauge. Still plenty left.

Then we were suddenly on top of it, emerging out of the twilight like some great abandoned city, the rotting gray and black metal encrusted with more than fifty years of coral.

A sunken Japanese troop ship from World War II.

We grinned at each other with shock and elation. This ship was the reason for our dive. There was still no sign of the others but they were probably on another part of the ship. You could only see a fraction of it in this light. By now we didn’t care.

The ship was sitting in deep water but the upper deck and the bridge were just about within our limit. We finned across the deck and I felt something icy enter my heart. The gaping windows of the bridge were like empty eye sockets. The dead wood of the deck was like dried bones. Men had died in this place.

We were in a graveyard.

I knew that we shouldn’t be here. Rose indicated the gaping hold, giving me the thumbs up as she pointed into the black abyss. I emphatically shook my head. Was she crazy? I tapped my air gauge. Time to think about going up.

Rose hovered weightless above the void, her arms crossed casually in front of her chest, her breathing regular. Then she reared backward as a giant turtle suddenly emerged from the darkness of the hold and almost collided with her. She looked at me, her eyes wide with wonder, and I had to smile.

The turtle had the head of a thousand-year-old man and yet it moved with an impossible grace. Below the crusty shell its legs were like magic paddles and it glided across the surface of the sunken ship as if it believed itself to be a thing of infinite beauty. And in a way, it was. So I was hardly surprised when Rose began to follow it into the colder waters where the bottom of the sea abruptly dropped away beneath us.

The turtle-it had to be a female, it was so large-turned its bald head to look at Rose, its large eyes blinking with what seemed more like shyness than alarm. Rose gently touched the scaly shell and spun on her back, shaking her head with a joy that was unconfined. Then the current hit us.

It was like being seized by a giant hand and thrown into a tunnel that went all the way to the end of the world.