Authors: Irving Wallace
When he had gone to Boulder to deliver those summer lectures, Beverly, an executive secretary in the Administration Building, had been assigned to guide him and look after his academic needs. Although he had painstakingly, through the years, constructed a fortress of ambition and activity around himself, as a protection against the assaults of aggressive and dangerous young women, somehow he had always managed to leave one bridge down over the moat. Occasionally, he had invited a young lady to cross the bridge. But whenever she had become an unwanted distraction, he saw to it that she was ousted from his fortress. In Boulder, he had encouraged—or permitted, for he was no longer sure which it had been—Beverly to cross this bridge. He had been impressed, from the start, by her seriousness, intellectuality, common sense. Above all, she had seemed to understand him and the importance of his work.
Their relationship, entirely cerebral, had ripened through the summer, so that finally, he had not wanted to face the summer’s end. By the time he had returned to Denver, he realized that Beverly had become as much, or almost as much, a part of him, a habit of his, as his mother, Crystal, or his sister, Dora. When he had missed her, he found himself doing what he had never done before—disrupting his routine to continue seeing her. Every week he had traveled the thirty miles northwest, into the Rocky Mountains to Boulder, commuting to Beverly. More and more, he had begun to entertain thoughts of what had once seemed impossible—thoughts of marriage to a young lady who would not change his life or upset his program or disturb his work, but rather improve his daily existence.
Yet, insensibly, three months ago, he had begun to see less and less of her, and one month ago, he had ceased seeing her altogether. She had telephoned, and accepted his excuse of an overload of work, and once more, she had called, and heard out his circumlocutions with less cordiality, and since that time, she had not called again.
Reviving all of this now, he tried to remember what had happened between them. The fact was, nothing had happened between them. They had not quarreled and their affection for one another had not lessened. But then, Orville did remember one thing. It had occurred to him a week ago, before falling asleep, and again the night before, but on both occasions he had shoved it aside as something he did not wish to believe. The thought was back, and this time, with some courage, he examined it.
Vaguely, until now, he believed he had decided to see less of Beverly, not become further involved emotionally, because of a defect in her personality. The defect was her superiority as a human being. She was uncomplicated, entirely integrated, self-assured, educated, attractive to men. If he married her, she would gain the ascendency. At present, she needed him, because she was a single woman who wanted to achieve social conformity through a good marriage. Thus, at present, he was the superior person. Once married to him, the close-up view, the intimacy, might bare his weaknesses—everyone had weaknesses. At the same time, her own qualities of independence, made stronger by the confidence that marriage gave a woman and reinforced by the inevitable knowledge of his shortcomings, would develop and make him uneasy and disrupt his life. She would be superior; he would be inferior. In marriage, their positions would change to his disadvantage. In short, she was not right for him. He wanted a mate who was less than he was, and would remain so, forever looking up to him, depending upon him, pinching herself for her luck in having him. Beverly was not such a girl. So, discreetly, he had ousted her and pulled up the last bridge to his fortress.
This, he had believed, was the reason for the rupture in their relationship. Now he believed something else, even though the new perception did not entirely invalidate his earlier feeling about her. What he saw now was that he had begun withdrawing from Beverly a week after he had introduced her to his mother, sister, and brother-in-law, three months ago.
He had wanted to make up his mind, and so he had put her to the final test, the obstacle course, as he liked to think of it. Only twice before in his life had he invited young ladies to the test. Beverly had responded with enthusiasm. She had come down from Boulder on the train, and he had been waiting at the Union Station, proud of her bearing and grooming. He had driven her to his mother’s apartment, where Dora and her husband, Vernon Reid, in from Colorado Springs, and his mother, croaking from an arthritic attack and wheezing from her hay fever, had been heroically in attendance. Despite the pressure of the occasion, Beverly had acquitted herself with honors. She had been dignified yet friendly. Perhaps nervousness had made her talk more than usual, but her talk was interesting. The evening had gone smoothly. Later, driving Beverly back to Boulder, Orville felt a greater warmth and possessiveness for her than he had ever felt before.
The initial response of his relatives at breakfast the next morning had been favorable, as best he could judge. Actually, they had not discussed her much, simply referring to her as “a nice pleasant child” and “rather intelligent.” However, in the week that followed—Orville could see this now as he had not seen it before—they had begun to chip away at Beverly. His mother had discussed not Beverly in particular, but “certain intellectual-type girls” who “lead a man around by the nose.” Dora had referred to Beverly by name as someone “who has a mind of her own, you bet,” the last somewhat darkly. Vernon had spoken of her irreverently as “a looker” and wagered that she’d “been around,” and had been reminded by her of a tall coed he had known who had satisfied an entire fraternity. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Orville, I’m not inferring anything, only the physical resemblance reminded me of Lydia.”
Unaccountably, in the days following, Orville had begun to brood about Beverly, wondering about her past, projecting her strength into his future. Somehow, in some subtle way, her perfection had been tarnished. It was as if on instinct, on immediate love rather than investigation, you bought an original sculptured piece, and enjoyed it until friends began to make casual remarks about the dubious quality of its originality, its beauty, its value, so that in the end you were unsure and pure joy was modified and finally dissipated by too much reflection.
With the sudden clarity born of honesty, a luxury that Orville rarely permitted himself, he saw that he had come to avoid Beverly not for her own defects but for suspicions of defects implanted in his mind by his family. As always, they had successfully brainwashed him. Long ago, he had known the truth about them, but dependence on them had conditioned him to close his eyes to the truth. Never would he allow himself to relate their tactics to his state of bachelorhood.
His mother had been married four years, and had been delivered first of Dora and then himself, when his father had abandoned her for a younger, a less demanding, a more feminine woman. His mother had blamed the catastrophe on sex, the evil in his father’s nature, the ugly, unclean, warped urge known as lust. Dora, the moment that she was of age, had revolted against excessive maternity, left home, married Vernon, moved to Colorado Springs, and raised children of her own to harass. Orville, without his older sister’s anger to protect him, had been kept close to his mother, a hostage for his erring father. It had taken him a decade after he had come of age to dare to find an apartment that would give him some privacy—but even now, with his own quarters, he spoke to his mother on the telephone twice a day, dined with her three times a week, and drove her to her multitude of physicians and club socials.
Through the Roentgen rays of this self-examination, Orville could link these people of his blood with his bachelorhood. He could see, plainly, their stake in keeping him single. Had he married Beverly, or any of the others before, his mother would have been deserted by a second husband, left lonely and bereft. Had he married, and undertaken a life of his own, his sister and brother-in-law would have been forced to do their share for his mother. As matters stood, they tolerated his mother for one week each year under their roof in Colorado Springs, and contributed a small monthly sum toward her Denver apartment. They spent money, he thought bitterly, while he spent emotion. They gave up cash, while he gave up freedom. Alone in Denver, he was forced to carry the real burden alone. Dora went her aloof and selfish way. If he were married, Orville realized, he might have an ally in independence, and Dora would have to do her fair part.
In the brightness of this beam of truth, Orville hated his sister. He dared not entertain so strong an emotion toward his mother, but he told himself that if he could not hate her, at least he would not love her. Knowing all of this, feeling as he did, why did he not rush off to Boulder and kneel before Beverly and ask for her hand? Why was he thus immobilized? Why did he not act? He knew the answers, and finally despised himself, too. He knew that an unnamed fear kept him in bondage. He tried to name and define the fear: he was afraid of loneliness, afraid to leave and possibly lose what was safe and dependable, the two wombs, for an untried and foreign womb that one day might be too superior to need him. That was the crux of his indecision. What to do? He would see, he would make up his mind.
He brought his attention back to the lectern, to his notes, to his class, to the one in the lemon sweater who was this instant uncrossing her legs, opening them—the pink inner thigh—and crossing them. Consulting the large wall clock, Orville could see that in seconds the period would be ended. He finished what he had been saying, straightened his notes, and then he said, “Next week, I will take up, in detail, the numerous threats to the institution of marriage, and show their role in the evolution of sex through the ages. To begin with, I will take up the role of the so-called Other Woman. During the past centuries, the illicit ‘wife’ of a married, or sometimes unmarried, man has had many names and faces—adulteress, common-law wife, concubine, demirep, courtesan, prostitute, cocotte, harlot, hetaera, strumpet, demimondaine, paramour, doxy,
fille de joie
, tart, kept woman, bawd,
femme entretenue
, lady of easy virtue. These, with but slight variations in implied function and performance, have described the same woman—the mistress. Next week, I shall discuss the mistress in the evolution of sex… . Thank you. Class dismissed.”
Gathering his notes, hearing the bedlam of the students rising, moving, conversing, he wondered if the one in the lemon sweater was staring at him, still flirting. Although Orville’s shining head was bent, he was able to lift his gaze slightly to bring her into view. She was standing, books and pad under one arm, her back to him waiting for two girl friends to join her. Together, they began to leave the room. The one in the lemon sweater, whom he knew so intimately, passed before him without so much as a glance. It was as if he were no more than a neuter gramophone that had been shut off. He felt foolish and cheated and, finally, embarrassed.
After the room had emptied, and he had closed his brief case, he did not linger. Usually, he liked to join a few of the more intelligent members of the faculty at coffee, to exchange professional talk and departmental gossip. This morning, he had no time. He had promised the Censorship Committee of the C.S.W.A., the Colorado Senior Women’s Association, that he would meet them at the theater at eleven-fifteen for the preview of the newly imported French film, Monsieur Bel-Ami. There was no time to waste.
He left the campus hastily, was briefly delayed in maneuvering his new Dodge out of the faculty parking lot, but at last he was on his way. Driving on Broadway, toward Civic Center, he remembered the letter from Dr. Maud Hayden. Most of the time, he did not read his mail in the morning. The personal mail sent to his apartment, he left for the leisure of evening; the business mail delivered at the office, he read after lunch. This morning’s mail had contained the envelope with Dr. Hayden’s name and return address on it, and he had not been able to resist opening it. The information on The Three Sirens had so absorbed him that, for almost the only time in a decade, he had come close to forgetting to telephone his mother. Because the letter had made him late, he had given his mother only five minutes’ conversation. He had promised himself that he would give her more time when she telephoned him at the office after lunch. Now, going past Civic Center, he was less sure he would give her more time.
As he continued along Broadway, he analyzed the contents of Dr. Hayden’s letter. His studies in comparative sexual behavior had been largely secondhand, based for the most part on the writings and memories of observers and fellow ethnologists. He, himself, had made only two minor trips in the field: the first trip, to gather material for his Ph.D. dissertation, had involved six months on a Hopi reservation (with his mother boarding in a hotel nearby); the second, backed by the Polar Institute at the University of Alaska, had been for three months among the Aleuts on the islands off the Alaskan mainland (cut short by his mother’s illness in Denver). In neither case had he adapted well to life in the field. He had no affection for primitives or for discomfort, and he had, in truth, been grateful to be able to leave the Aleuts for his mother’s bedside. He had vowed never to live like a savage again. He had told himself that active participation and observation were not necessary. Had not Da Vinci painted “The Last Supper” without attending it? Had not his guiding star, Sir James Frazer, written his immortal
The Golden Bough
without once seeing or visiting a primitive society? (An old anecdote supported him. William James had asked Frazer, “You must tell me about some of the aborigines you have met.” And Frazer had replied, “But God forbid!”)
Yet, despite his reluctance to travel, Orville had to admit to himself that the prospect of a visit to The Three Sirens titillated him, as did the sexual customs on all South Seas islands. Somehow, it was more glamorous, less rigorous and revolting, than the Hopis and the Aleuts. He had always been fascinated by orgy as practiced by the Arioi group of Tahiti, by
coitus interruptus
as practiced on Tikopia, by disapproval of breast petting but approval of scratching during intercourse as practiced on Pukapuka, by enlargement of the female clitoris through dangling a weight from it as practiced on Easter Island, by acceptance of mass rape as practiced on Ra’ivavae.