The Three Sirens (40 page)

“Virgins?” Tehura was genuinely horrified. “To be a virgin after sixteen would be a disgrace. It would be a sickness below as sonic have above, in the head. A girl cannot grow, become a woman, if she is a virgin. She would always be a girl. Men would despise her.”

Marc thought of his friends on the staff at Raynor College, and his friends down in Los Angeles, and how they would enjoy this information. His mind leaped beyond California, to New York, to the nation between the two, and how vast audiences would enjoy every word he repeated. Overnight, he might become—and then, coldly, he pricked the bubble of his fantasy, knowing he would become nothing with this information. For Matty would have it, too, from other sources, and Matty would be the first to reveal it to the nation, and she would be the center. He would remain what he had always been, her assistant, echo, the one in her shadow.

Then this was all hopeless. Yet, aside from its audience value, there were elements that intrigued him personally. “Tehura, what happened to you at sixteen?”

“The usual ceremony,” she said. “I was taken to the Sacred Hut. A special physical examination was performed on me by an elder woman of the Marriage Hierarchy. I was pronounced ready to enter the Social Aid Hut, and I was asked to select my first partner from among the older, experienced, unmarried men. I had always been attracted to one, a handsome athlete of twenty-five, and I pointed to him. We were led to the Sacred Hut and left together for a day and a night. We came out only to visit the lavatory and take in our food and drink. I had been taught all about love, and had no fears to practice it. We made body love six or seven times, I do not remember, but I was limp, and the next day I was a grown woman.”

“And you were free to make love with anyone after that?”

“No, no—not anyone. The unwed girl can only have pleasure with the unwed man—the married man is tabu, except one week in the year or when he has need of the Social Aid Hut—I do not have the time to tell you all of that today—another time I will. But I answer your question. I was free to make love with anyone I desired who was not married. Do not have the wrong idea about this. Tom had the wrong idea in the beginning, but then learned the truth. Tom taught me the word promiscuous, and later the word selective. We are not promiscuous. We are selective. I have never lay down with a man I did not want.”

“Have you ever been married?”

“No. It will happen. One day I will wish it, and it will happen. Now it is better this way. I am happy.”

She smoothed out the wide grass of her skirt, and drew her long hair back over her shoulders, preparatory to rising and returning to the village.

Marc cast aside his cigar butt. “I wish we had more time. I have so many questions—”

“You will ask them next time.” She came to her feet lightly, then, legs apart, arms lifted high, so that her breasts flattened and widened, she stretched like a cat. Dropping her arms to her sides, she considered Marc a moment. “I have one question to make to you.”

Marc was standing, dusting his trousers. He looked up with surprise. “A question? Go ahead.”

“Last night, you were angry with your wife when she came with me and showed her breasts. Why were you angry?”

“Well …” Tehura’s breasts were before his eyes, and Claire’s behind his eyes, and he must be careful to explain one without insulting the other. “You know by now, Tehura, that customs in my country are much different than those in your village. In my country, for many reasons—historical religious strictures, morals, the climate—women almost always, except when they are dancers or such, almost always cover their bosoms in public.”

“That is so? Then something else is strange. Tom once showed me American book magazines with pictures—the way your women wear so much on their bodies except in the front the garments are cut down to show some of their breasts—”

“Yes, low-cut gowns—decolletage, it is called. Our women know this attracts men, so they expose a little here, a little there, a trifle, but they do not show everything. It is simply not done, except in private.”

“That is why you were angry with your wife? She broke the tabu?”

“Exactly.”

Tehura smiled sweetly. “I do not believe you.”

Marc felt the jab of fear in his chest. He stiffened to counter the threat. “What in the devil is that supposed to mean?”

“Simply, I do not believe you. Come, let us—”

He moved to intercept her. “No, wait—I want to know—Why do you think I became angry with my wife?”

“I cannot explain to you. It is a feeling I have that there are other reasons. It is also some things Tom has told me about the American men. Maybe someday I can speak of this. Not now. Come, I will be late.”

Sullen at her superiority, Marc walked beside her.

Her eyes, on his features, were amused. “You should not always be so angry at everyone, at yourself. You have so much, have you not? You are a handsome man—”

“Well, thanks for that.”

“—with a beautiful wife. I am beautiful, too, and proud of it, but when I was beside her last night, I felt less beautiful.”

“Don’t tell me you envy a poor American.”

“Oh, no. I have more than Mrs. Hayden in other ways. I am jealous of no woman. What is there to want?” She started toward the path, stopped, and slowly turned, “The bright ornament she wore from her neck. I have never seen such—”

“You mean, the diamond pendant?”

“Is it rare?”

“It is costly, but not rare. Countless American women receive them as gifts from their husbands and lovers.”

Tehura nodded, thoughtfully. “For a female, such things are nice, very nice.”

She turned and went down the path. Marc’s heart swelled. Until this second, her self-satisfaction, her supremacy, had been impregnable. In the prism of Claire’s diamond, he could see the crack in Tehura’s armor. She was vulnerable, after all, this too-perfect, too-assured child of nature. She was a female like any other, to be lured, to be enticed, to be finally bought and brought down.

Almost jauntily, hands thrust in his pockets, Marc entered the path behind her. For the first time, he looked forward to what lay ahead.

* * *

A half-hour after lunch, Dr. Rachel DeJong stood in the front room of the vacant hut that Courtney had located for her work, and ruefully, she considered its shortcomings.

Missing from the room were couch and chairs, desk and lamps, bookcase and file cabinets, telephone and message pads. While the primitive office was hers alone, tabu to all but patients, any atmosphere of seclusion, so necessary, was shattered by the village noises—squealing youngsters, chattering women, shouting men, cawing birds—that ambushed her through the thin cane walls.

So very far from the hushed slickness of Beverly Hills, California, U.S.A., Rachel thought. If only her learned colleagues, with their endless social weekends in Ojai and sports cars and decorators, could see her now. The idea of this diverted Rachel, and she could not repress a smile. With a practical eye, she studied the room, trying to figure out what might be done to improve it for her consultations.

Since there were only the pandanus mats, she set about rearranging those. She brought all the extra mats from the edges of the room, and by piling one on the other, she created a legless couch and headrest that would elevate the patient several inches from the floor. For herself, next to the headrest but slightly behind it, she built her legless chair with added mats. This done, all furnishing possibilities had been exhausted.

Rachel’s watch told her that in ten minutes the first of her three patients would arrive.

As frugal about time as she was with her income and her emotions, Rachel prepared to use her ten minutes gainfully. She found the pen and shorthand pad in her purse, and with these she sat on her mat chair and resumed the diary, the supplement to her clinical notes, that she had begun writing yesterday afternoon.

“Morning began with orientation lecture by Maud Hayden. Enjoy her, but find her platform manner cross between Mary Baker Eddy and Sophie Tucker. Most of it elementary tenderfoot Baden-Powell handy hints. Got kick out of her advice we emotionally transfer to natives. Doesn’t she know they must transfer to me?

Actually, she was very good on necessity of establishing rapport and being participant observer. I shall be firm with myself on this, overcome that in my nature which makes me stand off, watch from arm’s length, regard everyone as specimen. That, I suppose, was the barrier between Joe and me. (I had better make this diary less personal or there will be nothing of The Three Sirens in it.)

“After lecture, Courtney escorted Marc H to Chief’s place. Marc not unattractive, but one feels strain held behind amiability—suspect potential paranoid schiz—battered superego—possibly paranoid defense against latent homosexuality—can’t be sure yet.

“Afterwards, Courtney took Orville Pence and self across village to the Social Aid Hut. I find Pence a dictionary of repressed tends. I can almost see him writing the letter John Bishop wrote to Increase Mather: ‘The Lord rebuke that worldly, earthly, profane & loose spirit up & down in the country …’ To know his fantasies! I had double curiosity about the Social Aid Hut—for myself, to know what it was really like, and for Orville, to see how he would react. His shield of professionalism hides everything. Except his eyes. They sparkle. The voyeur, no question.

“The Social Aid Hut looks like a huge hill made of woven bamboos. I did not know what to expect inside. Revels? Orgies? It turned out to be quite as proper and orderly as Brigham Young’s Lion House, except in one respect. The unclad young men and women everywhere, the excessive amount of vigorous flesh, gave the center its sensual character. How can I describe the pleasure house? Inside it was comparable to a huge sport field house with many locker rooms. Actually, there were private rooms and open compartments and several big social rooms. We saw healthy young men, and some older ones, squatting or lolling about, smoking, gossiping. Could not find out why they were not working. Also, here and there, six or seven women napping or having their meals. Women ranged from—a guess—nineteen to one of fifty years.

“According to Courtney, the Social Aid Hut is a central meeting place, a club forbidden to all others, for the diversion of unmarried natives, meaning bachelors, single women, the divorced, the widowed. Here they consort, and have social as well as sexual intercourse. It serves another function, at which Easterday hinted, some unique method of giving the villagers full sexual satisfaction, but what this method is our Courtney would not reveal. He preferred that the information come to us directly from a native. The Social Aid has for its overseers not chaperones but administrative heads, decision-makers—one woman of forty-five, Ana, and one man of fifty-two, Honu. The woman was not present, but the man was, a straight, spare, kindly man whom I liked instantly. Honu offered to show us around more carefully, but Courtney had made an appointment for me with the Marriage Hierarchy, and since this concerned my immediate work, I left with Courtney. Orville Pence stayed behind with Honu, and I shall have to find out what he learned.”

Rachel’s fingers felt cramped on the pen, and she ceased recording the events of her day momentarily to knead her hand. Doing so, she read what she had written, and then she idly considered whether Joe Morgen would or would not have the opportunity to one day read her diary. What would he make of it, of her apparent ability to write about love and discuss it frankly and with detachment, and her inability to face it in her own life?

When she had sent him the long, personal letter informing him—if he was still interested—of her six-week sabbatical to the South Seas, and alluding to certain problems of her own that were at the root of their separation, he had responded speedily. He had met with her in a neutral area, the quiet booth of a cocktail lounge, and he had been amusingly concerned and formal, poor bewildered bear. He had assured her that he was interested in no woman (she made no mention of the Italian starlet) except Rachel. His marriage proposal stood as before. He hoped to spend his life with her.

Relieved by this, grateful for it, Rachel had told him more of her secret self than ever before, of her fears of having a real relationship with a man and of facing the consequences this relationship might produce in marriage. She had come to the feeling, she had told him, that she might solve her problem on this trip. If she succeeded in doing so, she would become his wife upon her return. If she was unable to solve it, she would tell him so, and that would be the end of their association. The getting away, the time to think in a new environment for six weeks, might give her a rational view of herself, and of Joe and herself, and if he would wait, she would do her best. He would wait, he promised. She would write, she promised.

She had the urge to write him this very minute, merely to have contact with him, to know he was there and she was here, and that she was thinking of him. But she knew the diary came first. The mail pickup was still five days off and there would be plenty of time to tell him of her adventure, one that she was not yet sure would profit them.

For a short interval, she stared unseeing at the ledger in her lap, then she recalled what she wanted to make note of, and she resumed her diary.

“In a room of the Chief’s hut, I met the five members of the Marriage Hierarchy, three women and two men, all in their late fifties or early sixties. Their spokesman, a plump lady, dignified (a real triumph, for she wore naught but the grass skirt, and was drooping and bulging), was one named Hutia, wife of the Chief. After Courtney had effected the introductions, and gone off, Hutia explained to me in most general terms the function of her board or panel or whatever it is, the function being largely to supervise marriages and divorces on the Sirens, and to investigate and arbitrate marital disputes. I imagine this is somewhat like a marriage counseling service, but I am not sure.

“Hutia requested that I clarify my own requirements and wizardry. Since Maud had prepared me for this, I was ready. Obviously, not one of them had heard of Dr. Freud or the psychoanalytic process, and trying to explain this, relate this to their everyday life, was not easy. I think we came to an understanding that I had a means of helping the troubled exorcise demons from their souls. Hutia said that they had six applications for divorce, and that she and the Hierarchy would defer investigating any three that I chose to subject to my own techniques.