The High-Rise Diver Read online

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  BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU

  Riva is a “high-rise diver,” a top athlete with millions of fans and a perfectly functioning human on every level. Suddenly she rebels, breaking her contract and refusing to train. Cameras are everywhere in her world, but she doesn’t know her every move is being watched by Hitomi, the psychologist tasked with reining Riva back in. Unquestionably loyal to the system, Hitomi’s own life is at stake: should she fail to deliver, she will be banned to the “peripheries,” the filthy outskirts of society. For readers of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Circle, and Brave New World, this chilling dystopia constructs a world uncomfortably close to our own, in which performance is everything.

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  Praise for The High-Rise Diver

  “Straightforward and cool, the author’s short, unadorned sentences reveal how the promise of salvation through greater efficiency, growth, and individual luck actually represses, stifles, and destroys the very essence of life: spontaneity, pain, dirt, emotion, poetry.”

  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

  “A glistening novel about the blockade of welfare that is closing in on the entire world.”

  CLEMENS SETZ, author of Indigo

  “What makes Julia von Lucadou’s novel so impressive is the accuracy with which she describes this high-gloss, modern, but by no means completely fictional world. Every detail is so precise that, lurking beneath the flawlessness of the text, the central theme of perfidious self-optimization seems to always be present.”

  Süddeutsche Zeitung

  “Julia von Lucadou’s science fiction cuts close. Against the backdrop of the gleaming images used to portray this Orwellian-style city-state, the tragic moments of direct human encounters take on a dimension of clever criticism.”

  Spiegel Online

  “The author’s precision in depicting the process of decay, later marked by delusional episodes, is the explosive force behind this text. It meticulously states the consequences of a society governed by totalitarian control and optimization. Welcome to neo-liberalism 4.0!”

  Berliner Zeitung

  “In literary and discursive terms, the most exciting debut of the autumn season.”

  Kulturnews

  “With clear analysis and precision, Julia von Lucadou describes the merciless surveillance of the world of big data.”

  Inforadio

  “The High-Rise Diver is a highly intelligent, prescient, and entertaining novel about our brave new world of voluntary surveillance. An outstanding debut!”

  WDR

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  JULIA VON LUCADOU was born in Heidelberg in 1982. She studied film and theater at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Victoria University of Wellington and earned her PhD in Film Studies in 2015. Lucadou worked as both an assistant director and a television editor prior to writing The High-Rise Diver, her debut novel, which was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2018. She lives between Biel, New York, and Cologne.

  SHARMILA COHEN is an award-winning German-to-English translator and writer with more than a decade of experience and over a dozen book-length publications to date. She has worked with big publishing houses like Bonnier (Manila), Ullstein, and Bastei Lübbe, and also been published in well-known periodicals such as Harpers Magazine and Bomb. Originally from New York, she was brought to Berlin over six years ago on a Fulbright Scholarship to work on a project about literary translation.

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  AUTHOR

  “Our modern, capitalist society is all about performance, about optimization, about speed. I used to really internalize that pressure, working in the film and television industry. And this book was a way to distance myself from that, to question my own ideology of selfoptimization and to figure out where it came from. Writing a novel is such a great tool to reflect. It is a slow process, it gives you time to really think through ideas you have about people, about yourself, about society.”

  TRANSLATOR

  “The great challenges of translation are often also the great pleasures. This was particularly apparent with The High-Rise Diver as I was tasked with conveying a text widely praised for its nuance, precision of language, and clarity. Tasked with carefully selecting each specific word that would shape this imagined and yet remarkably realistic world; a futuristic dystopia; a point on the road between our current existence, a potential future, and something else entirely.”

  PUBLISHER

  “This book reads like a movie—it is obvious that Julia von Lucadou used to work in film. What I admire most about this glossy, stark novel is its crystal-clear language. Von Lucadou shapes her prose like a masterful sculptor, putting every single word expertly in place. This novel is so accomplished that it’s hard to believe this is only a debut.”

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  Julia von Lucadou

  The High-Rise Diver

  Translated from the German

  by Sharmila Cohen

  WORLD EDITIONS

  New York, London, Amsterdam

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  Published in the USA in 2021 by World Editions LLC, New York

  Published in the UK in 2021 by World Editions Ltd., London

  World Editions

  New York / London / Amsterdam

  Copyright © 2018 Hanser Berlin im Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München

  English translation copyright © Sharmila Cohen, 2021

  Author portrait © Maria Ursprung, 2018

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed therein are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available

  ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-076-4

  ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-084-9

  First published as Die Hochhausspringerin in 2018 by Hanser Berlin im Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München

  This book was published with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Twitter: @WorldEdBooks

  Facebook: @WorldEditionsInternationalPublishing

  Instagram: @WorldEdBooks

  www.worldeditions.org

  Book Club Discussion Guides are available on our website.

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  Imagine the world.

  Imagine the globe floating in space.

  From your vantage point, the world is round and smooth. Enjoy its uniformity; imagine that it exists only for you. Close your eyes for a moment, take a deep breath in and out. After a few seconds, open your eyes again and consider the earth anew.

  Now zoom in a little closer. You can make out irregularities in the evenness of the earth’s surface, elevations and depressions. They form a soft, undulating relief. The shifts from red to blue to brown create a mottled pattern.

  As you get closer, a silver fleck stands out against this earth-colored display. What you see here, from afar but steadily approaching, is a city. It glistens because it is made of glass and steel, you can see that now. The city lies beneath you like a secret waiting to be revealed. So zoom in at ease, don’t be shy, you’re allowed to look.

  You find it reassuring to see that the city also maintains a sort of uniformity; the buildings conform to an architectural style and are arranged geome
trically in rectangular and star formations. Side by side, the almost delicate-looking skyscrapers are indistinguishable as they reach up into the atmosphere.

  The city is now unfolding beneath you, an infinite sea. And yet it has an end, an edge, back there, where clouds of dust and exhaust fumes rise into the sky. Must it be this way, you think, must the beautiful city be tainted by the sight of filth? Why must it end anywhere at all? But can you imagine the sea without the beach or the cliff or the pier? No, without the peripheries, without its repulsive exterior, the city, now shimmering in the orange afternoon light, would only be half as beautiful.

  Concentrate on the center of the city. One of the skyscrapers rises above the others by several dozen floors.

  There’s a color deviation around the building. At first it looks like an image error, but then, as you zoom in, it turns out to be matter, moving, alive. Between the houses you can see a swarming cluster, densely packed heads, a crowd of people. It vibrates, the heads move, and then you see what the crowd is waiting for down there: There’s a glittering object on the roof of that imposing tower.

  In the close-up, you realize it’s a woman in a silvery suit. The flysuit™ conforms to the contours of her well-toned physique, making her every curve and shape visible, so that she appears almost naked.

  Consider the woman’s face. What a face, you think, so symmetrical, as if someone had just created half and then mirrored it. It’s a young face, the woman is maybe twenty years old, you suppose, at the height of her beauty, her body taut, her eyes wide open. Look closely at those eyes, you will not find a single blemish, no redness, no clouding of the irises or unequal pupil dilation. Instead, sharp focus, concentration. What you see is a professional athlete at work. Every one of this woman’s muscles is under control. If you asked her to describe the feeling in her right big toe, she could do so with great precision.

  At this very moment, a jolt passes through her body; she moves to the edge of the roof. It’s time. Maybe you would like to pull away a little, out of the close-up, and open up your view to what lies below. The corridor between the buildings is a one-thousand-meter drop, precisely one thousand meters of altitude, as defined by the guidelines of the Global Committee for High-Rise Diving™.

  The audience holds its breath as the woman steps to the outermost edge of the flat roof. She has a supernatural sparkle in her flysuit™. The people on the ground and in the viewing boxes on the opposite building—all the way up to the skybox™—reach their arms up towards her.

  What you’re experiencing is a physical manifestation of euphoria. It pulsates between the buildings. Close your eyes. Let it infect you. Feel what’s happening inside you. Feel it down to your fingertips, feel your heart throbbing as the feeling spreads throughout your body.

  When you open your eyes, the woman is diving headfirst from the skyscraper roof.

  At first you’re scared. Your body tenses up as if it were falling beside her.

  But then you see the diver as a bird in flight. You feel her absolute certainty that she will be able to withstand the fall.

  You follow the falling body, stay close to it. You see how it rotates around itself with perfect precision, first horizontally, then vertically, twisting into a ball and then stretching out again within fractions of a second. In the next moment, you see the ground. It fills your field of vision, you hold your breath. She is plummeting towards it, threatening to crash. The hot sun-drenched asphalt is already palpable when her body suddenly shoots up, lifted by the flysuit’s™ flight mode, triggered at the last possible moment, fractions of a second before impact. You can hear the air being released from the open mouths of the audience, a collective exhale.

  The crowd applauds, the diver shoots like an arrow into the sky. In flight, she smiles into the cameras, a weightless figure.

  Imagine how this woman feels, her experience, falling into the depths with unwavering certainty, knowing you will take flight again. Without any fear of impact, of obliteration.

  You enjoy defying gravity; death can no longer harm you. What a feeling, weightlessness. What a sublime feeling.

  Now back away again, zoom out slowly, carefully, without shaking, so that the movement remains pleasant to the eye. Imagine that the body between the buildings rises and falls again and again, even when you can no longer recognize it as a body, when it’s just a spot in motion, then a point, a possible pixel error, and then nothing at all. You zoom out and see the globe floating in space again, uniform and calm.

  Imagine the body in its eternity, immortal, its continuous rising and falling, like breathing, like a pulse. Savor this thought, take refuge in it, draw confidence from it. Now, in this moment, as you slowly withdraw from the world, there is no death, only life.

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  1

  This is how I see Riva today: playing with a plastic top like a child. Legs spread, upper body hunched forward. I can hear the sound of the top filling her apartment, the monotonous humming. Then, the top falls to the side. Her hand reaches for it. I see the hand, hear spinning, humming, silence, spinning, humming, silence, in an endless loop.

  I wonder whether this game can be described as a compulsive act. And where she got a hold of the toy. Maybe it’s going through a revival on some lifestyle blog, a trend that will be forgotten in a few months’ time.

  I see Riva’s long, white, outstretched legs. Her summer dress clings to her body, her chest glistens with sweat. Refusal to turn on the air conditioning, I make a note and in the comment column: Self-castigation / indication of feelings of guilt?

  There’s too much light, the picture is overexposed. The neighboring buildings reflect the sun in through the wide windows. I adjust the monitor’s brightness.

  The sound of the top drones in my ears. I feel slight nausea and the onset of a cluster headache around my right eye. I concentrate on my breathing to prevent an attack, in and out.

  The image on the monitor blurs before my eyes. Ice cubes clatter against the side of my water glass. I hold it to my forehead and let the condensation run down my nose.

  The weather forecast for the next three days: heat, no rain, air quality index poor, fine dust pollution high.

  Condensation drips down into my cleavage. I put the glass down to refill the ice and start the game over again: forehead, nose, mouth, chest.

  Suddenly, a piercing notification beep. I look for the tablet on my desk. It’s blinking silently. The sound is not my sound; it’s coming from the monitor speakers, slightly distorted. I pivot the camera away from Riva and around the room until I spot the tablet on her coffee table.

  Riva doesn’t respond.

  After twenty seconds, she begins to imitate the sound, beeping like a machine.

  My temple throbs, I turn down the volume.

  Your stress hormone levels are too high, Masters said. You need to take better care of yourself. Meditation, relaxation exercises. Conscious breathing. Avoid noise.

  On the monitor a door opens. Aston appears in the doorframe. He runs to the tablet and taps on the screen. The beeping stops. My neck muscles relax.

  —For fuck’s sake, can’t you turn it off yourself!

  I note Riva’s evasive demeanor, the reflexive way she draws her legs in towards her body. Defensive posture, I write, and in the research column: Indication of domestic violence? So far, the data analysis has shown no evidence of it.

  Aston turns on the air conditioning. At the window, he lifts his camera to his face and looks down at the city through the lens. I have not seen him in the apartment without a camera since this project began. He wears it on a strap around his neck so that it protrudes like a tumor at stomach level.

  Aston seems most vulnerable, most himself when taking a photo. The moment is so intimate that I almost feel uncomfortable watching it. His half-open mouth tenses behind the camera as he focuses; the corners of his lips sinking back down as they r
elax after the shutter release.

  In the overhead shot, the living room appears to fray around the edges, with the space divided into segments like individual rays of light. Aston has installed partition walls with digital picture frames perpendicular to the wall in order to maximize the space. The continuously alternating images are like advertising loops on a taxi screen. There is something narcissistic about the way he turns their precious shared living space into his own personal gallery. Every night he uploads new photographs before going to bed. The pictures from the past few weeks: all the same high-rise-complex perspective, a bird’s-eye view of ant-sized heads and toy-sized vehicles in various formations. In my first daily report, I put forward the hypothesis that this is an empathic exercise. The attempt to put himself in his partner’s position, a partner whose only remaining connection to the outside world is the view from the window.

  With its own partition wall in the middle, Aston’s magnum opus Dancer_of_the_Sky™ is on four thirty-two-inch digiframes on a ten-minute loop. It’s the photo series that made him an overnight success four years ago. Images of Riva diving, Riva in the air, her elongated form between the rows of buildings, her body precisely aligned, her hands stretched out above her head like a ballet dancer. Her body silver and sparkling in the flysuit™. Using an exposure technique, Aston manipulated the light reflecting from the skyscraper walls, burning out the background around her. A sacred superhero swooping down from the heavens.

  The constant clicking of Aston’s shutter blends with the sound of Riva repeatedly spinning her top. The rhythmically contoured soundscapes are almost melodic. An unintentional ensemble.

  I make note of the effect in another column of the log. As the amount of data grows, so does the need for marking systems, a means of organization that facilitates analysis. Only when enough information has been made available does the noteworthy become visible, subtle breaks and contradictions, the underlying structures, the inner drives.