Finally, at the beginning of a new year, I am motivated to start writing short stories and flash fiction again. This story is based on the final, fatal dive of Audrey Mestre, the French free diver. Her story is told in the Netflix movie, No Limits.
Bea saw the signal then heard the grind of metal as the winch released the sled.
‘Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me…’
The soundtrack to all her dives plays in her head as she plunges down. She holds on to the bar of the sled allowing it to pull her deeper and deeper.
Seconds before the countdown, Bea was concentrating on gulping in enough air to make her record-breaking dive. She stilled her thoughts, focussing only on filling her lungs that in a matter of seconds would be squeezed to the size of an orange. Claude, her husband, mentor, Svengali, soulmate, nemesis – her everything – bobbed over and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. A Judas kiss that distracted her, upsetting the rhythm of her breathing. She shuddered inwardly but maintained her calm. She had been born to do this and she had to prove to her detractors, as well as to those who believed in her, that she could.
Her preparation had been off this morning and she was unable to empty her brain. Relaxation was key. Focus on the goal – reaching 171 metres, the deepest free dive of her life. She knew her body would always obey her mind, but her mind was playing tricks on her, gainsaying her ability and commitment. She needed to muster both to face the mammoth challenge she had been set.
Joy to the fishes…
She fiddles with her nose clip, expending valuable energy that she will need to make it down and back up again safely. Much like a climber who knows the descent of the mountain is as dangerous as the ascent, divers know that making it to the marker is a job only half done and that there are three things you must do before you start that speedy rise back to the surface. Grab the bar, open the valve to the air tank and pull the pin
She feels the burn, the compression of her lungs, but withstands the onset of the pain. She keeps her eyes closed, making sure her posture is right. No limits means feet first, assisted by the weight of the sled, but on other free dives she loves the sense of finning head down into the dark silence. She tilts her head a little. She knows about offering the least resistance – in life as in the water. Don’t fight it, it doesn’t help.
She hears one of the safety divers tap his air tank – the signal that she has reached the halfway point. Halfway down, that is, but the dive is far from over. She’s now at zero buoyancy but must still rely on the metal weight and not gravity to get her to the marker as quickly as possible.
She’s also around halfway into her maximum lung capacity. She can hold her breath for a little under four minutes. She had loaded as much as she could before going down and is comfortable. She flicks her eyes open but it’s too fleeting and the visibility too poor to see anything. She imagines what she would see if she was wearing a mask, floating amongst the teeming marine life. The contrast of beauty in the underwater sea world when she’s diving for pleasure versus the hostile environment it represents when she’s under this kind of pressure – literally and figuratively – is stark. Diving without a wet suit gives her the ultimate connection between her body and the water. Her ungainliness on land doesn’t exist when she dives. She feels no pain of twisted limbs and a bent spine. She is weightless, her skin stroked by the slow currents. Today thought, she is clad in neoprene, only her head, hands and feet exposed.
Joy to the fishes…
She continues to surge down, the only sound is her body as it cleaves like a torpedo through the water. Almost there. Her confidence returns. She’s going to break her arch-rival’s record and Claude will be proud of her and will love her, return to her again. She pushes the thoughts of the recent turbulence in their relationship out of her head.
The sled slows imperceptibly then comes to an abrupt stop as it reaches the end of the guide rope. She sees the last safety diver circling close by. Jubilation. She hooks her elbow over the bar of the lift tank. Her brain is foggy but she forces herself to concentrate. Turn the wheel that will release the airflow and inflate the balloon. She thinks she’s done it. Turns the wheel back and forth. The safety diver approaches cautiously. Jubilation short lived. She signals that the tank appears to be empty. Didn’t Claude check it? She supresses an early sense of panic. If she doesn’t make it safely to the surface and has a black out, the dive will be invalidated. The safety diver removes his mouthpiece and feeds some of his air into the bag which partially inflates. Bea resists the urge to take a drag of air from the diver. It would nullify the dive which wasn’t over yet and would potentially explode her by now tiny lungs. She also knows he can’t accompany her up to the surface without endangering his own life. It would be hours before he could make his way in stages to the surface.
The bag floats gently upwards, nowhere nearly fast enough to effect as rapid a rise as Bea needs. Her lungs are fit to burst. She has a loose grasp on the bar but feels her bent elbow tire and loosens her grip. Her body drifts away from the guideline, towards a pod of whales that is calling to her.
Joy to the fishes…
But whales are not fishes, she thinks. They are mammals and her favourite creatures in the whole world. She smiles to herself. As her lips curl, a small stream of bubbles escapes and she knows she needs to release the air and get back to Claude who is waiting for her. In a superhuman effort not to breathe, she marks off the stages her body has gone through since the sled was launched, more than four minutes ago. Her brain knows it must conserve whatever vestiges of oxygen she has left and divert those miniscule amounts to her vital organs, depriving others. Her body is obeying her mind, as it should, but the problem is both are dangerously adrift and close to a total shut down. Bea feels at peace.
She is dragged roughly back, as her midway safety diver attempts to pull an inflatable life jacket on her. She thinks of dressing her baby niece, trying not to twist tiny arms into sleeves. Her own limbs are similarly uncooperative. An air steward announcement advising that life vests should not be inflated inside the aircraft plays in her fuddled brain and so she shrugs the jacket off. Funny, she has always feared flying way more than diving, but she knows now that she will die here, now. She is too far from the surface of the ocean that is about to swallow her. She swallows it right back, taking in massive mouthfuls of salty water. The whales sing a mournful song.