Reflection of 24 hours before a tragedy
Posted By Paul Kotik on 25 October 2002
The evening before the record event, Friday evening, October 11, I found myself seated for dinner with a group that included journalists, IAFD crew and Jeff Blumenfeld. The mood was festive. The reporters drank a lot, and complained about the food while pillaging the steam tables. They joked about European Union regulations that prohibit them from working more than one day out of five. Jeff, the eyes and ears of Mares, Pipin's key sponsor, scribbled notes and reminded one of an earnest anthropologist doing field studies among the cannibals.
I tried a bit of one-upsmanship on the journalists, who had begun to whine about the early morning hour the press boats would be launched from the beach.
"I'm not even going out to watch the dive" I announced. "Too early! In fact, I've already filed my story." I noted Jeff Blumenfeld's raised eyebrow, watched him scrawling on his little pad, and immediately regretted what I'd said. He'll tell Pipin I'm a lazy wise-ass who shouldn't be invited to cover any more Mares-sponsored events, I thought. "Of course", I hastened to add, "I filed two endings, Ending A and Ending B. I'll phone in after the dive and tell them which one to run." I don't know what I meant, and the cautious silence at the table suggested nobody else did, either.
Gila, my wife, asked me soto voce whether I really thought Audrey might not set a new world record. "Of course she will!" said I. That was, after all, the plan.
Why on earth would it be otherwise? People make plans and carry them out. Pass the salt, please.
I had arrived at the Viva resort in Bayahibe, Dominican Republic the afternoon of October 6, and after a nap, ran into Pipin and Audrey walking a tropical garden path in the evening air. They walked hand in hand, as usual. I'd not seen them for a few months and greeted them, I'm afraid, after the fashion of a rambunctious puppy. Pipin grinned but was oddly reserved. Warm, but subdued. Audrey was as well. I began to wonder whether I'd forgotten an invitation, neglected to return a phone call or otherwise slighted one or both of these people.
"How's the train- up going?" I inquired. "When does the boat leave tomorrow?"
"Oh, Audrey already did the dive on Friday" he replied. "She did 166 meters." Audrey seemed to be studying my response to this news, her face impassive. I was confused. I was not certain what this meant. I looked her in the eyes and asked her how the dive felt.
"Fine." she said, deadpan. No smile, nothing. "We're taking a couple of days off now."
Pipin said they were on their way to dinner and asked whether I had eaten. I had not, and I should have joined them, but I didn't. It felt wrong. Walking back to my room, alone, I persuaded myself that I had encountered a team that was in the zone, exquisitely tuned for a monumental effort, and that I had done well not to intrude on this perfect serenity.
The thing about Audrey was this grin she did. It was fleeting, and subtle, but it spoke volumes. It was inviting, sympathetic, comic, morose, wicked, pleading and commanding all at the same time. It was amazing. When she gave you one, you felt like you'd known her since the beginning of time. It occurred to me later that evening that this was the first and only occasion I'd ever interacted with her and not been rewarded with the grin.
Gila was still back in Florida. I woke up the next morning, Monday, and found my way to the Viva Dominicus Palace buffet. The hour was quite late, well after 9 AM, and the place had nearly emptied out, but I found IAFD folk lingering at two tables. Audrey presided over the French-speaking ensemble, and I joined Pipin, Matt Briseno and Bill Stromberg for some coffee and English.
Pipin was quite animated, but for the most part his conversation ran to anecdotes involving mutual friends and acquaintances in the freediving community, all in good spirits. In the end, though, it led him back to the matter at hand: no-limits. Training Audrey. Pipin described how he had on occasion taken scuba gear to depth and grabbed hold of the lift bag as Audrey ascended from a training dive, flaring to slow her down to a crawl. "She can't see me coming, but now it does not scare her at all. She is totally calm." he affirmed. "She is prepared for any possibility." I reflected on how I might respond to being restrained like that in the last seconds ascending from a deep dive, and I could see Matt and Bill were doing the same.
Audrey drifted over like a wraith. She put a hand on Pipin's shoulder, nodded to us, the men sitting with him, and then led him away.
After a while, Matt said: "Mental toughness. That girl's got it like nobody else. That's what this dive is all about."
The IAFD crew took Monday and Tuesday off from training. I had no contact with any of them until Tuesday night when I retired to my room after dinner and found a handwritten note had been slipped under my door. It was from Matt Briseno, and advised me that boats would leave the Viva beach at 9:00 the next morning for a deep training dive.
Audrey's 170-meter dive of Wednesday, October 9, looked to me like a cakewalk. I noticed Matt had a little trouble pulling the sled release at top time, and that Audrey coughed for a while, intermittently, after surfacing, but it looked good. In fact, it looked great. We were back at the buffet for lunch by 1:00 that afternoon. I puzzled over it later that afternoon: I had just witnessed the deepest apnea dive by any human being, ever, and it all seemed so banal, so non-incredible. Well, I thought, that's what they say about true champions - they make it seem so easy.
Gila arrived by taxi from the La Romana airport. My wife has no interest in diving or aquatics of any sort, and in fact has never gone beyond knee-high into any body of water.
She speaks no French, no Spanish and her proficiency in English is modest. Gila is in her mid-50's and has concerned herself with keeping house and raising our children, regarding all other human activities with amused tolerance. Her coming to the Dominican Republic to watch a freediving world record event was unprecedented, completely out of character.
She came because of her feelings for Audrey, who she had met only once in the Ferreras home in Miami. The two of them talked at some length, about what I cannot imagine, while I tried to help Martin Stepanek and Karoline dal Toe' through a Kafkaesque negotiation of the logistical plan for a recreational freediving outing. When I told Gila that Audrey would be making an attempt on the no-limits record, she dropped everything and arranged her flight to the Dominican Republic.
Shortly after Gila arrived, we attended a dinner party for the IAFD crew and media. It was boisterous, noisy and lots of fun. I don't think Gila and Audrey got to talk, but I saw them exchanging little girl-waves across the room from time to time. As for me, I got one of those grins, and found it undiminished by the long range and acoustic interference. It was a great evening. The world was at peace.
Thursday came and went, no training, a bit of PR and media activity going on in the background. I don't think we saw Pipin or Audrey at all.
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