After that, holding on to Theo was child’s play. I detached my substitute mask from its strap, drew it over Theo’s face, and adjusted it until it sat right. Theo tilted his head back and blew air out of his nose to expel water from the mask. Now he could see me as clearly as I could see him. He raised a hand, made the “okay” sign, and smiled. His lips were blue from cold. As I answered his sign, I felt like crying too. He might have been an asshole, but his fortitude was preternatural. He didn’t even try to ask me, in pantomime, why we weren’t going up to the surface. He’d apparently been listening to me closely during the past few days.
We spent the following thirty minutes switching back and forth between the different gases, checking our air supply again and again, and performing together some gymnastic exercises that were supposed to keep Theo from hypothermia. We did knee bends, rolled our wrists and shoulders, swam one behind the other in little circles around the anchor cable. We were connected by the air supply as though by an umbilical cord.
When my required decompression time was over and I could complete my ascent without danger, I signaled to Theo that we were going up. I took hold of him from behind again and carried him laterally a little way, until we were no longer directly under the Aberdeen. When we reached a safe distance from the boat, we slowly rose to the surface. The air tasted warm and sweet. Theo began to pant. It’s quite possible that he’d only just grasped where he was and what had happened. By all rules of logic, he should have been dead. Maybe he imagined himself in a next world that looked confusingly similar to this one.
Jola stood in the stern, waving and seething. “Fucking hell! Why didn’t you send up the deco buoys? Can you imagine how worried I’ve been?”
I wondered if she’d gone crazy, but there was no time to answer that question or any other. I gave instructions, brought Theo over to the Aberdeen’s stern, and closed his fingers around the side rails of the boarding ladder. He didn’t have enough strength to pull himself up. I explained to Jola how she should grab hold of him and shoved up from underneath until Theo plopped on the deck like a wet sack. He’d used up his last ounce of strength and lay there like a corpse. I hurriedly removed the things I’d put on him while he was underwater — dive mask, hood, gloves. I ordered Jola to pull off his soaked shirt, and then I sent her to get some towels, a thermal blanket, and the emergency oxygen kit. She obeyed. Theo not only lay there like a corpse, he also looked like one. His skin was waxy yellow. His closed eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His lips, hands, and feet were appallingly blue. A thin stream of blood ran out of the hair near his left ear. I felt a laceration and a great deal of swelling. While we were underwater, I hadn’t noticed the wound. I was just thinking that he shouldn’t be moved for any reason when a coughing spell caused him to rear up. I rolled him into a stable position on his side, and salt water came gushing from his mouth. Jola brought the kit. I pressed the breathing apparatus to Theo’s lips and said to her, “Drive the boat.”
“He wanted to kill himself,” she said. As if I’d asked a question that required such an answer. My mouth contorted in disgust. Suicides may stuff lead weights in their pockets, but they don’t whack themselves across the head with the big water-pump pliers usually kept in the engine room belowdecks.
“Drive!” I shouted at her. “Drive as fast as you can!”
She dithered a moment and then turned around and ran to the helm stand. The engine sprang to life. A speed of six knots had never been slower. I wrapped Theo in the blanket, gave him oxygen, massaged his limbs. When I was sure I could leave him briefly alone, I crowded next to Jola at the helm stand and made a radio call. Then, when my cell phone finally found a network, I called the hospital. They promised to send a helicopter.
The rest of the return trip seemed endless. While I knelt beside Theo, who gave no more signs of life, my mind kept returning helplessly to how normal he’d seemed underwater. Downright calm and relaxed. As if everything was fine.
I first noticed the coast guard when their Zodiac inflatable boat hove to alongside us. We were still two kilometers from land. Jola turned off the engine. All at once, the Aberdeen was full of people. The situation proved too much for me. I frantically warded off the rescue personnel’s hands. I may even have tried to keep them away from Theo. “No tocar! No se debe mover!” Don’t touch him, don’t move him. My own voice sounded shrill in my ears. Someone pushed me aside. They laid Theo on a stretcher and lifted him over the rail. Jola clambered over behind him. A guy from the rescue service grabbed my arm and tried to get me to leave the boat too. I struck out at him. The Aberdeen. I couldn’t just leave her out there. The Spaniards exchanged a few quick words, pointing to me and shaking their heads. “We be back here!” one of them called out in English. The outboard motor roared and the Zodiac sped away, leaving a wake of white foam behind it.
And suddenly I was alone. I savored the stillness. No people, no birds. A little wind and the lapping of the waves. The fading sound of the outboard motor as the Zodiac, now far off, hurtled landward. I made no move to get the Aberdeen under way again. I simply stood there. Still in my dive suit. I hadn’t even dried my hair. I couldn’t tell whether I was sweating or freezing. The here and now took my breath away, like a pressure of one thousand bars. As though I were lying on the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean. A helicopter rose up above Playa Blanca. It was the last I saw of Jola and Theo.
18
She’d hidden it in such a way that it would pretty much have to be found. Not placed it so obviously that it seemed to have been planted. Nor, however, was it concealed so well that any island police inspector, no matter how dim-witted, could overlook it.
I have hardly any memories of the day after the Wednesday diving expedition. It’s as though that whole Thursday has been expunged. Maybe I slept completely through it. Or spent it staring unseeing out the window, stupefied by the emptiness that surrounded me. On Friday morning I ran out of the house before breakfast, armed with vacuum cleaner and mop pail, as if my life depended on doing the usual post-guest cleaning in the Casa Raya. Normally that would have been Antje’s job. She would have done it on Saturday afternoon, right after Theo and Jola’s departure, so that the house would be ready for the Sunday arrival of our next clients. I, meanwhile, would have taken the day off. But Antje wasn’t there anymore, and I had three free days. I didn’t even dare to think about Sunday. It seemed to me completely implausible that I’d spend part of it waiting in the airport terminal, holding a sign with the names MARTIN & NANCY. That mental image belonged to a universe that no longer existed.
When I stepped into the Casa Raya, I felt as though someone had punched me in the pit of the stomach. They were still there. They’d left the house only briefly to take a stroll by the sea. At least, that was the statement their stuff made. Everything was hanging around as though still warm from contact with them. There were clothes on the floor. Toothbrushes in the bathroom. An open book on the dining-room table. Only the dried coffee dregs in the cups revealed that some time had passed.
I walked around for a while without knowing where to begin. The unmade bed. The remains of a hasty breakfast. Jola’s bikinis hanging over the shower-curtain rod. Tidying up and cleaning had never been my strong points. Most of all, however, I couldn’t bring myself to touch anything. The objects all looked to me like props in an amusement park’s haunted house.