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.
Rose and the turtle and the ship were gone. I was going down into the freezing blackness and I couldn’t stop myself. There was a sheer wall of coral by my side and I tried to fin toward it. I kept trying until my legs were heavy with exhaustion, but the down current was like being trapped in a broken lift, and I believed that this would be the last day of my life.
My face and body slapped hard against the coral, knocking my regulator out of my mouth and cracking my mask. I grabbed two fistfuls of razor-sharp coral and held on tight as it tore at my fingertips. Swallowing a gutful of sea water, I fumbled for my regulator through my broken vision and forced it into my mouth, gulping terrified mouthfuls of air. My mouth was dry. Completely dry. My wet suit was shredded on one side. There was a terrible pain in my hip.
I looked for Rose. I couldn’t see her. I checked my gauges. Forty meters. And down to 30 bar of air. But I couldn’t surface. Rose might be looking for me. Rose would definitely be looking for me.
Then I saw her, clinging to a clump of dead coral, her legs horizontal from her body in the current. She had lost her mask. Her eyes were half closed and almost blind. But she finned over to me, one bloody hand clinging to the coral, the other waving across her chest.
Calm down, calm down.
I nodded, sort of laughing and crying at the same time. I began to float upward. She gripped my BCD and pulled me down with a strength I never knew she possessed. If I came up too fast from this depth, I would certainly get decompression sickness and possibly die. But I couldn’t stop myself from drifting upward. I just couldn’t stop myself.
Rose pointed at my waist. I had lost my weight belt. Still holding on to me, she desperately tore a rock from the face of the coral and stuffed it into my hands to weigh me down. But my hands were ripped and torn, and I couldn’t hold it. It slipped through my fingers.
I looked at my air gauge. It was all gone. Rose forced her spare mouthpiece between my lips. But there was next to nothing there. The short gasps of breath seemed to stutter and die. We were breathing borrowed air.
Rose touched the top of my head.
Then we let go of the coral.
I started to ascend to the gathering light while Rose, looking like an astronaut cut from her mooring in space, no longer trailing bubbles, drifted down into shadows that seemed to stretch to infinity.
I watched her drop away from me through the tears and bloody mucus that streaked the inside of my cracked mask. I tried to say her name but I couldn’t make a sound.
She was my reason.
8
W HAT I NOTICE FIRST about her are the clothes.
Her black raincoat is unbuttoned and you can see her tube top, short skirt and these sort of furry high heels. Are they called kitten mules? She looks like she’s on her way to a club. A bit too much makeup. Her skin is white and her tights are black and her hair is bottle blond. The roots need some attending to. Is that a gold ankle chain concealed beneath her tights? Probably. She doesn’t look as though she’s going to some funky, fashionable club in the middle of town. She looks like she’s going to a club in the deepest suburbs.