Our Wives Under The Sea — Chapter no 6

Leah.

Jelka prayed, because that was what Jelka did. Matteo said nothing, only checked and rechecked the oxygen systems and announced every time that we were fine, still fine, still breathing. I’m not entirely sure what I did. It occurred to me several times in a mildly hysterical manner that a submarine going down was not in itself a terrible thing. It occurred to me several times to say this – What are we worried about, this is just what we’re supposed to be doing! I didn’t say this, of course, only held my finger against the transmission button at ten-second intervals and registered dead signal each time. Typically, it should take a manned submersible craft anywhere between three and four hours to reach the deepest point in the ocean, depending on the size of the craft and its engines. I wondered, in a fairly distant way, what would happen when we hit the bottom and couldn’t control the ballast tanks to bring us up again. I wondered how it was that the system had cut out in all meaningful ways except when it came to the COscrubbers. I wished, with a vehemence which felt vaguely misplaced,2 that I had thought to bring a deck of cards with me. I imagined the three of us sitting at the bottom of the ocean and playing Old Maid.

The deep sea is dark, particularly when the lights on your submersible craft have cut out for reasons unknown. I did my best to keep my gaze away from the windows, thought of strange-shaped ocean creatures peering in at the three of us and smiling with all of their teeth.

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