Then my paralysis metamorphosed into a frenzy of activity. Swift as the wind, I gathered up all the clothes that were lying around and threw them into the washing machine. I cleaned out the closets and meticulously distributed their contents between the two wheeled suitcases. I carefully removed Lotte’s photograph from the wall. In the bathroom I packed the toilet kits, never taking longer than a second to decide what belonged to Jola and what to Theo. All at once, things sorted themselves. I washed the dishes, pulled the sheets off the beds, took fresh linens from the bathroom closet, and set about making the beds with the clean sheets. When I lifted up the big double mattress, there it was. On the slats underneath. A black notebook.
I knew immediately what I was looking at. The dates. The handwriting. A few pages torn out and then glued back in. I started reading at random:
What would Lotte have done? When I tried to get up, he put his hands around my throat. I told him to let me go. He tried to shove himself into my mouth. I clenched my teeth. He pressed on my windpipe. My lips opened and I gasped for air.
I dropped the notebook as though it had burned my fingers. Then I picked it up again and laid it on the table. When I’d finished vacuuming and dusting the whole house, cleaning the bathroom, and remaking the beds, when the two suitcases were standing packed and ready at the door, the black notebook was still lying there. The local police inspector would have jumped for joy. The discovery I’d made had been intended for him. If there was one person in the world who wasn’t supposed to get his hands on that notebook, that person was me.
Apparently Jola had figured on never going back to the Casa Raya. Even more certainly, she’d assumed that I would never set foot in it again. Had Theo drowned as planned, she would presumably have waited until I was back on board the Aberdeen and knocked me out with the water-pump pliers too. She’d have taken off my dive suit, maybe arranged a few signs of struggle, and then informed the police by radio. Help! My partner’s been killed! The murderer’s here, right next to me! Twenty-nine north, fourteen west. Please come quick! They would have arrested me while we were still at sea and taken me to the police station for questioning. Jola would have come along as a witness. The suspect: totally distraught. The witness: well prepared. Her statement carefully thought-out and more convincing than mine. Two rivals who have learned to hate each other’s guts in the past ten days come to blows on a boat. Between them is a woman who’s been abused by one of them and is trying to start a new life with the other. A woman too weak to prevent the catastrophe. Jola wouldn’t have accused me; instead she’d have sought, through her tears, to defend me. Confusion and anxiety in perfect balance. And, if possible, in fluent Spanish. It’s all my fault, Señor Comisario. Herr Fiedler was only trying to protect me. He was at his wit’s end, just as I was. I should never have told him about any of that. What would you do if you knew the woman you loved was being beaten by another man? Por favor, if you will, imagine that. What would you do?
I would have remained in custody. The stupid police inspector would have privately expressed his respect for me, man-to-man. Then he would have set to work checking Jola’s statement. He would have asked half the island about our affair. The guests on the Dorset would have been questioned concerning the previous evening’s bitter altercation. Divers would have been sent to look for Theo one hundred meters down and might even, in spite of the current, have found his body. With a bad head wound and scuba divers’ lead weights in his pockets. The police would have searched my house and, it goes without saying, the Casa Raya. And in the end, they would have discovered the rather ostentatiously hidden diary. Germany would have filed a request for extradition. My trial would have been held there.
In the course of the past few weeks, like a man obsessed, I’ve gone over Jola’s plan again and again. Its complexity. Its refinement. The sheer cold-bloodedness with which she’d developed and then implemented her calculations, one by one, carried along by her conviction that life works like a crime noveclass="underline" no weak points allowed. Of course, one might believe that only a sick mind would be capable of such painstaking malice. But Jola isn’t crazy. It follows, therefore, by an argumentum e contrario, that what she did was normal. Maybe not strictly so, statistically speaking, but still within the ordinary human spectrum. Even though she did it extraordinarily well.
I called up Bernie. Countless times. At first he hung up, and then he refused to take my calls. When he was finally ready to talk to me, I asked him why he’d backed out of the expedition the night before it was supposed to take place. He told me that as far as he was concerned, I was the one who’d backed out. He said he got a text message from me informing him that I still needed the boat but not the crew, and that I wanted to go on my expedition with Jola and Theo instead. Right away, Bernie said, that had seemed to him like an idea conceived by a madman.
A text from my phone, just as described in Jola’s diary. I found the message in my “Sent” box. She’d mimicked my bad English so well that I wondered for a moment whether I’d written the text myself. On the Dorset, Jola had sat next to me the whole time. Practically on my lap. Of course she’d had access to my telephone. I couldn’t help admiring her ingenuity. It’s said that hostages identify with their captors as a way of coping with their own situation. Maybe believing that Jola’s brilliant is the only way for me to bear the unbearable.
I’ve tried to feel sorry for her. If only a small part of what she says about Theo’s excesses is true, she’s lived through hell on earth. A defense lawyer would say that a woman who’s been brutally and systematically abused over a long period of time finds herself in a permanent state of psychological emergency. He’d arouse the compassion of judge and jury and plead for their recognition of extenuating circumstances. But Jola doesn’t need any extenuating circumstances. She’s not the accused. I don’t feel like pitying her. Nor can I manage to hate her, even though she was prepared to put me behind bars for the rest of my life. Loving her for that would certainly be absurd. Maybe fascination is what you’ve got left when you don’t know how you should feel.
Did she arrive on the island with her plan already formed? Or did she come up with it only after she got here? If so, when? Was it some kind of game at first, and then at a certain point it turned serious? Did Theo’s behavior on the Dorset finally tip the balance? Or was it my refusal to have sex with her by the beach in Mala that got everything rolling? Looking for answers, I’ve read her diary so many times I know some passages by heart.
On Saturday morning, I lined up the van, went over to the Casa, and picked up the two suitcases. I left in good time for the return flight to Berlin that Jola and Theo had booked. Their tickets and identification documents were in my shirt pocket. It was as though I was driving ghosts to the airport. When I passed the spray-painted EVERYTHING IS WILL, I turned my head to the right. The passenger seats were actually empty.
I thought about the past Wednesday, the day of the murder attempt, about how I’d driven the same stretch of road on the way to the hospital. I’d brought the Aberdeen back to her anchorage as quickly as I could and forced myself to off-load at least the most expensive pieces of my equipment. After tearing across the island like a mental case, I was made to wait at the hospital reception desk. Half an eternity had to pass before the hospital was able to confirm that one Theodor Hast had been admitted more than two hours previously. When asked whether I was a relative of the patient, I stupidly answered, “No.” Nobody could tell me anything about his condition. No physician was available for me to talk to. Whether one Jolante von der Pahlen was present in the hospital could not be determined. In any case, no patient with that name had been admitted. When I tried Jola’s number, I got a dial tone. She was refusing my calls. Before long, her cell phone was turned off. There was no reception on Theo’s phone either.