I can see him in memory, gently drifting down toward me. In reality, he must have dropped like a stone. Nevertheless, I had endless time to reflect, or so it seems to me today. Jola, I thought. Something’s happened to her. To be more precise, what I thought was: Now it’s happened. As though it had always been a given that something would, to her.
Against the light, the body showed like a dark spot that grew larger as it came nearer. Its contours billowed in the agitated water. This person has to return to the surface at once, I thought. I’d already let go of the anchor cable and would have simply swum up if the rope hadn’t held me back. My reason seized the opportunity to yell my instinct down: You’re staying where you are!
If I surfaced now, the nitrogen inside me could expand fatally. Or make me very sick: vomiting, breathing difficulty, paralysis of arms and legs. I might pass out with blood running from my ears. Moreover, I didn’t know what had happened on the Aberdeen. Jola wasn’t making any swimming movements. Had she hit her head and fallen overboard? But then why wasn’t Theo making any attempt to rescue her? Was he asleep in a fog of alcohol fumes? I thought it was something else. I thought Jola and Theo must have had another quarrel. He’d knocked her down and thrown her into the water. Or she’d been injured in the struggle and fallen over the rail. In any case, it was clear, as the seconds went by, that Theo was purposely letting her drown. If I broke the surface with the unconscious Jola, I ran the risk of his attacking us both in the heat of the moment. Or he might simply start the boat and chug away. Even if he didn’t become aggressive, I still couldn’t assume he’d do whatever it would take to get me to the nearest decompression chamber. And not even considering the question of whether I’d survive long enough for that. You solve your problems down here or not at all.
The interval between the moment when the body hit the water and the moment when I unhooked my mooring rope couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I swam away from the cable on a course to intercept the sinking body, but I made sure not to ascend as I did so. Our paths intersected at a depth of six meters, a short distance off the port side of the Aberdeen’s bow. I thrust out both hands, grabbed cloth, and got pulled down a little way. I struck out hard with my fins until at last I could free one hand and use it to inflate my buoyancy compensator and thus make up for the additional weight. Swimming on my back, I towed my unconscious companion to the anchor cable. My unconscious male companion. With one arm around his chest, I used my other hand and the mooring rope to attach myself as tightly as possible to the cable again. Technical diving, my instructor always said, is the art of doing everything with one hand. Without looking.
Time changed tempo and direction. Up until then, events had gone past as though in slow motion, but now they rushed at me with the speed of light. In retrospect, I see a vortex, at whose center I’m struggling to save a life. Before me is a face with closed eyes and half-open mouth. An underwater face. A face that seems to belong to a corpse. Theo’s face. Not Jola’s.
From 1992 to 1995, I spent a large part of my semester breaks as a rescue diver. I knew how drowning worked. In the first phase, the victim made uncoordinated movements, gasped frantically for air, and therefore swallowed water. In phase two, a reflex closed off his larynx. That was what gave Theo a chance. As far as I’d seen, he’d been already unconscious when he fell into the water and had therefore skipped phase one. It was possible that this was a case of dry drowning, and that no water had reached his lungs. Even on land, freeing the breathing passages from water was a difficult undertaking. I’d never yet heard of anyone who rescued a drowning man while remaining submerged. But maybe Theo had entered the suffocation phase, which would be followed by spasms and apnea, but not before two or three minutes had elapsed. If that was the case, I could reactivate his breathing reflex by giving him oxygen, and I wouldn’t have to resort to resuscitation measures.
That wasn’t something I thought. It was something I knew. There was no time for thinking. I’d long since switched to trimix, and in one hand I was holding the diving regulator with pure oxygen, ready to put it in Theo’s mouth. The greatest danger for both of us was the possibility that he’d come to and panic. It’s by no means unusual that drowning people kill their would-be rescuers. But I couldn’t think about self-defense, not as long as Theo and I were hanging on an anchor cable six meters underwater. It wasn’t possible to put any distance between me and the drowning man. The only reason he wasn’t still sinking was that I was still holding on to him. If he started thrashing around, he could easily rip out my own air tube. He could cling to me in a panic, damage my equipment, immobilize me. Drowning men possess superhuman strength. They’re more dangerous than any hammerhead shark.
And that was the moment when it happened. A tiny moment that showed me who I’d become in the last fourteen years.
I hesitated.
I asked myself for whom or what I was about to put my life on the line. For a man who terrorized the woman I wanted. Who would never give her up, because he considered her his property. Who had no real occupation and was of use to no one. Who missed no chance to point out that he was weary of life. I had only to release my grip. I could let Theo go and look away while he vanished silently into the lower depths. No one would ever connect me with his death.
It was only for a brief moment, but I hesitated.
Then I shoved the diving regulator between Theo’s teeth. I took pains to close his lips around the mouthpiece in such a way that the least possible amount of water could get in. I held his nose and pressed the purge button. A rush of air bubbles shot up. The pressure pumped air into Theo’s lungs. He suddenly opened his eyes very wide. He couldn’t see much in the brine. He could only sense my embrace and the cold water and the likelihood that his life was about to end. He dug his fingernails into my forearm and whirled around like a fish. As best I could, I protected my air hose from the imminent attack.
But Theo didn’t attack. In spite of the stinging seawater, he stared into my face at extremely close range. His head was shrouded in a whirl of bubbles. His lungs were pumping so hard that there was barely any distinction between his inhalations and his exhalations. The sight of him acted like a sign stimulus. We were diving instructor and diving student. My student was hooked up to my emergency air supply and hyperventilating. He was staring at me because he loved me, the way helpless nurslings love their mothers. I squeezed Theo’s forearm several times to get his attention. His eyelids fluttered. Some part of his brain made an effort to concentrate, and I nodded encouragingly, as if to say, Good. Like that. He watched as I slowly moved one hand away from my mouth: Exhale. Wait. I brought the hand back to my lips. Inhale. Slowly. I pointed to him and repeated the gesture: Exhale. Inhale. It took a little while, but eventually he joined in. His breathing slowed. We found a common rhythm. His body abruptly relaxed. He became so limp that I had to hold him more tightly. We’d done it. He allowed me to turn him around. I could hold him better from behind. From the way his back shook, I could tell he was weeping. On impulse, I gave him a hasty pat-down. The reason why he was being pulled down so inexorably into the deep was stuck in his jeans pockets: lead. Lead weights, that is, from my reserve supply. I removed the weights, and they headed for the bottom at high speed. I helped Theo take off his shoes and his jeans. The clothing also sank into the dark depths below us, but at a more leisurely rate.