“Don’t let me disturb you, Little Shit,” he said.
What was even stranger was how lighthearted Jola seemed at that time. She laughed a lot. Antje, with her simplistic understanding of human nature, would have attributed Jola’s behavior to new love. Even though it made no sense, Jola’s beaming smiles made me proud. Her face darkened only when she looked at Theo. Theo, who was now calling me nothing but “Little Shit,” seemed to find real enjoyment in the situation. He followed our every movement with his eyes, smiled pathologically when Jola touched me, and waited eagerly for what would happen next. I didn’t want to form any judgments, but I found Theo’s lack of pride repellent. His presence got on my nerves. It was like being permanently exposed to toxic radiation. Besides, I didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. Whatever Jola might have told him, he was free to find another diving instructor or leave the island altogether. As long as he continued to require my services, my only option was to do my job, as decently as possible. He could hardly have failed to notice my efforts to keep Jola off me. As best I could, I stayed out of the cross fire. Jola was the one who engaged in blatant behavior. Moreover, it wasn’t my fault that we three were together almost around the clock and separated only to sleep. They never wanted to go home after a dive. I chauffeured them up and down the island, trying hard to make the most of its meager sightseeing attractions. We ate duck in Omar Sharif’s former villa. We looked into the green water in the sea-level crater known as El Golfo. We trudged around every single piece bequeathed to the island by its artist. On one side I had Jola’s overheated chatter, on the other Theo’s icy silence. I told myself that only an idiot would have expected to pocket fourteen thousand euros just for a few diving lessons. I was being paid to handle two neurotics who’d anticipated their need of supervision while on vacation. Contrary to Theo’s implication, I wasn’t so stupid as to consider myself the problem. When Jola took my hand in public, I knew she was doing it for him.
During that time I often thought of a talk show that Antje and I had seen years before. A couple sitting on a white sofa had discussed their sadomasochistic inclinations. The two were in their late forties, conventionally dressed, the parents of two grown children. Without subordination, love wasn’t possible, the man said. Whoever claimed otherwise demonstrated not modernity of attitude but dishonesty. He declared that equal status or even freedom in interpersonal relations represented an illusion. The difference between someone who lived the S&M lifestyle and a normal citizen didn’t arise from the possession or not of an underground torture chamber, but from the fact that the S&M practitioner acknowledged that illusion. The man asserted that the viewers should take the trouble, just once, to think about their own relationships.
Antje and I had sat motionless on our couch. There was something embarrassing about our torpor. It was as if we weren’t actually following the program but rather staring frantically straight ahead so we wouldn’t have to look at each other.
The viewers could just examine their own sexual fantasies, the woman remarked. She doubted that anyone masturbated while dreaming about gentle foreplay and the missionary position.
About what, then? Asked the moderator, for whom things were not proceeding scandalously enough.
About young things who desired to be put properly through their paces, said the woman. About mothers who did it with their sons. About teachers and their female students, willing prostitutes, Africans with long cocks. Hadn’t the moderator ever visited a standard porn site? The name of the game was submission, she said.
The most important thing in life, the man explained, was being able to count on each other. And for that, you needed rules. Then everyone knew what he or she had to do.
And what the other person had to do, the woman added. That gave you a sense of security.
Then what looks from the outside like hell on earth is happiness on the inside? the moderator asked.
If you want to put it that way, yes, the woman replied.
Hell outside, happiness inside: I remembered that image when Jola’s hand brushed my belt buckle. I was looking for an explanation. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that Jola and Theo were following the rules of a game I didn’t understand. Basically, I don’t understand it to this day. It’s strange that even in retrospect, no explanation occurs to me. Yet we’re supposed to think that explanations are our well-deserved reward for enduring the passage of time. We’re entitled to them. We go crazy when we don’t get them.
JOLA’S DIARY, EIGHTH DAY
Saturday, November 19. Early morning.
I’m happy. That sounds funny — I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever write such a sentence. I don’t even recognize myself. A strange woman with bright eyes and a knowing smile. Happiness is always a secret. Happiness always belongs to yourself alone. People write all kinds of drivel about happiness, and it always sounds false somehow. The beautiful part is that neither of us has a clue about happiness. I don’t, and Sven doesn’t either. That’s obvious from his embarrassment. From his tic of pushing me away if I touch him. From the way he’s always trying to dodge me. He doesn’t want to believe it. Can’t believe he deserves it. And then all at once he pulls me against him. Fastens himself to my mouth. In the middle of the supermarket. While his diving instructor colleagues look on, and through their eyes the entire island. We know absolutely nothing about happiness. Sven’s Antje and my old man weren’t very good guides. We’ll have to teach ourselves. Each in his own way. Sven struggles, I press forward. He probably has it harder than I do. More to lose. He’s going to have to hurt a sweet person like Antje. And whom must I hurt? Only the old man. That’s brutal, that only. I offered Theo a ticket on the next flight back to Berlin and told him he could stay in the apartment at first. A trial separation. So we can calmly wait and see how everything develops. With me. With Sven. Then we’ll figure out what’s next. But he doesn’t want to go. He says things like, I’m not abandoning the field to Little Shit. I have a right to be cuckolded by you. I’m staying until the bitter end. And: If nothing else, I can always write about it.
That would be lovely, I throw in. And see how his eyes flash. But he controls himself. Gets a grip. Says, That would be lovely. Exactly right.
Of course, I knew he wouldn’t go home. Did I ask him just to make him mad? Is it even possible that I want him to stay? Do I need him as an audience? Sometimes I wonder whether my happiness exists only for his sake, only to make him suffer. Whether any Sven would be possible without Theo. Then Sven wouldn’t be the end of Theo’s story, but only the next chapter in it. A new quality. At this thought, sheer horror seized me.
I cried out, You’ll never lay a hand on me again. If I tell Sven about this, he’ll break every bone in your body! He’ll kill you! It sounded like, Wait until I get my big brother. Was probably meant that way too.
The old man says, You love me. You’re not capable of leaving me. A little sun, a little sea, feeling good — you’re not the type for that sort of thing, not at all. You need me, Jola. I just have to wait until you realize Little Shit can’t make you happy.
I tremble at the thought that he could be right.