Authors: Irving Wallace
Folded in her hard seat, she felt the tightness across her chest, which extended even to her arms beneath the pale blue sweater. Was it concern over what was unfamiliar, not before known, as she suspected it was with young Mary Karpowicz and Lisa Hack-field? Or was it simply a fatigue after the drive of building toward the climactic arrival these last days? She compromised. It was both, a little of each.
Only five days before, they had all gathered as a team, for the first time, at the Hayden house in Santa Barbara, and President Loomis had graciously provided living accommodations on campus for the visitors. The ten of them had met and mingled, feeling one another out, trying out each other’s personalities, and there had been a series of briefings by Maud, as field director, and after that a series of informal question-and-answer sessions. There had also been a last-minute scurrying for supplies that had been forgotten, and much repacking, and then a luncheon tendered by Loomis and the senior faculty members.
Late in the afternoon, in three limousines supplied by Cyrus Hackfeld (two for themselves, one for the luggage) they had been taken down to the Beverly Hilton Hotel at the edge of Beverly Hills. Hackfeld had reserved rooms for them—his own wife had refused to return with him to their Bel-Air mansion, and in spite of his opposition had stayed with the rest—and then there had been a press conference, expertly handled by Maud, followed by an early farewell dinner, planned by Hackfeld and several of the Board members of the Foundation.
At eleven o’clock in the evening, they had been driven in the private limousines through waning traffic the long distance to the International Airport on Sepulveda Boulevard. In the vast modern terminal, where Maud had checked passports, visas, smallpox certificates, the list of luggage, they had all been pervaded by a sense of loneliness, as if standing huddled in a hospital corridor after bedtime. There had been no one but Cyrus Hackfeld to see them off. A telegram from Colorado Springs had arrived for Orville Pence, and Rachel DeJong had been paged for a telephone call from someone named Mr. Joseph Morgen. Otherwise, the strands of old ties were lying loose. It was as if they had been abandoned by the known world.
At last, Flight Number 89 of TAI had been announced, and, with a cluster of other night-weary passengers, they had filed out of the terminal, and presently into the metal capsule of the DC8 jet aircraft of the Compagnie de Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux, which was scheduled to speed nonstop from Los Angeles to Papeete, Tahiti. Their accommodations had been economy class instead of first class—Maud had fought Hackfeld on this, and with Lisa’s support had won out—and this meant but little deprivation to realize a savings, round trip, of 2,500 dollars on tickets. In economy class, the soft fabric chairs had been three on one side of the aisle, and three on the other, so that they sat six in a row, and took up most of two rows. The rest of the second row had been filled in by an amiable Pomona dentist, off on a vacation, and a beefy, well-dressed, bearded youth, celebrating his graduation from college.
At precisely one hour after midnight, their jet had begun to move, lumbering slowly, then picking up speed, finally roaring down the concrete runway, and soon they were airborne. Too quickly, the multitude of yellow dots of the metropolis below, and another patch of shimmering habitation, and yet one more, were left behind, and they were catapulted high above the Pacific Ocean into the inky blackness.
This portion of the journey had been restful. Sitting between her husband and her mother-in-law, Claire had begun to read a compact guidebook to Oceania, while Maud and Marc leafed through the free magazines in three languages furnished by TAI. Later, at reduced rates, they had ordered glasses of Mumm champagne, served by a raven-haired Tahitian stewardess wearing a blue cotton pareu.
The champagne had given Maud a feeling of well-being, and her pudgy person relaxed and her tongue loosened. In her festive mood she had, finally, reconciled herself to the size of the team, and had even thought that the variety of experts might prove advantageous to the study. “Ten persons isn’t a record number, you know,” she had said. “Once, a wealthy young man—I think his family was in the banking business—took a team of twenty—twenty, mind you—to Africa, and I believe it worked out. This wealthy young man dressed himself as fastidiously as our Dr. Pence. In the field, he wore a dressy shirt and tie, and a Brooks Brothers suit. According to the story, one day the natives of the African tribe invited this wealthy young man to dine with them. Their piece de resistance was a fried patty-cake made up of various greens, vegetables, and mud. When the young man told the experience later, someone asked him, ‘Well, did you eat it?’ He threw up his hands. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, ‘I can barely eat the food at the Yale Club!’”
Claire and Marc, and Lisa Hackfeld across the aisle, had laughed, and Maud had gone on reminiscing for another half-hour. Eventually, she had tired, and turned upon her side to doze off. Gradually, because there was nothing to do or see, lulled by the even monotony of the flight, by the champagne, by sedatives, most of the team had gone to sleep.
At six-thirty in the morning, one by one, they had been awakened. The remnants of the night still hid Polynesia from sight, and so they had occupied themselves with the bathrooms and with packing their loose effects and having breakfast. Through all of this, the night had fled, the sun curved over the horizon, and the broad glassy ocean was to be seen far below. The loudspeaker had crackled instructions: secure safety belts, put out cigarettes, in several minutes Tahiti.
For Claire, the legendary island had meant a jumble of all her readings, had meant Cook and Sieur de Bougainville, Bligh and Christian, Melville and Stevenson, Gauguin and Loti, Rupert Brooke and Maugham, and she had strained against her window for sight of the enchanted place. At first there was only the cloudless pale sky merging with the cerulean sea, and then, like a faint and distant color slide of an exquisite and fragile Hiroshige—in Oriental emerald-green projected on a curtain of air—there was Tahiti.
Claire had gasped audibly at seeing the lovely print take dimension and grow in her vision. Briefly, she had felt an ache that this had been on the earth so long, and she on the earth so long, before their meeting. But she had appreciated her good fortune in possessing this for a memory at last, and she had remembered exactly, as a caption for the scene, the words of Robert Louis Stevenson: “The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense.” Silently, she had thanked him for his perception of her feelings.
What had next dominated the view had been the velvety green of towering Mont Diademe, and suddenly they were dropping. Maud had leaned over, partially blocking the window, and Marc had engaged Claire with some instructions, and after snatching one final flash of the red-brown roofs of Papeete, she could see no more.
There had been the rush and noise of their landing, the gradual slowing on the runway, and the final stopping. They had all come to their feet with their hand kits, and descended into the misty, tepid, early-morning air. What awaited them was an indescribable confusion of brown people and scented flowers and airport music. The chortling pretty native girls, so graceful and supple, in their vivid pareus and thong sandals, wearing white tiara blossoms on their ears like jewelry, were everywhere. One had thrown a wreath of flowers around Claire’s neck, and another had laughingly kissed Marc and called out “
laorana
” the Tahitian welcome.
Claire had singled out Alexander Easterday immediately, before their introduction, and once more had marveled at Maud’s accuracy of memory and description. Observing Easterday, as he pumped Maud’s hand, Claire saw a squat and waddling Germanic type in pith helmet and neatly pressed but worn beige tropical suit. It had made her nervous to watch his precarious pince-nez and graying mustache jiggling on either end of his tomato nose. It had also seemed incredible to her that this caricature of a Herr Professor, so unlikely amid the swarm of flowers and bosoms and pareus, had been responsible for the ten of them standing here on the island of Tahiti.
There was a bump that shook Claire loose from the memory of their arrival in Tahiti, and set her firmly into the bucket seat of Rasmussen’s seaplane heading for The Three Sirens. Shifting her position, Claire could see that Maud had been rocked into slight wakefulness, but with determined eyelids still hooded over tired eyes she continued to sleep. Across the aisle, Marc remained undisturbed in his slumber, but Pence had awakened and was trying to get his bearings.
Claire’s cigarette was but one-third burned. She shook off the ash, brought the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, determined to enjoy the rest of it in Tahiti. She tried to fasten her mind on the fantasy of the day past that had gone so swiftly. It had been a kaleidoscope of a day, and in her mind she turned it and turned it, sorting the fragments of colored glass, trying to fix on the actual pattern of what she had witnessed.
The variegated pattern would not take form, but changed in memory, so that she could see only one piece here and one piece there. They had gone through customs easily, she recalled. They had been taken, in rented Peugeots, outside the city to a cluster of thatched huts and coconut palm trees, near a lagoon, opening on the ocean, and this had been the Hotel Les Tropiques, with several huts reserved for those of them who wished to change or rest.
The early lunch in the patio had included steamed fish, fried chicken, Martinique rum, and hot poi, consisting of taro with pineapple, banana, and papaya in coconut cream. There had been a remarkable view of Moorea, ten miles across the way, and Easterday had said that Captain Ollie Rasmussen lived on Moorea and would be coming over on the launch after dinner.
Easterday had given Maud the schedule for her group. He had taken the liberty of arranging for everyone an auto tour of the island of Tahiti, over one hundred miles around the perimeter. This, and sightseeing and shopping in Papeete, would use up their afternoon. He had hoped that the Haydens would be his guests for dinner. The others would eat at the hotel, of course. He had left the evening open, suggesting they rest, since they would need their strength for the trip to the Sirens. At midnight, he would escort Maud, alone, to the Vaima Cafe on the waterfront to meet Rasmussen, while the others of the team, together with their baggage, would be driven to the quay and put aboard Rasmussen’s seaplane. Easterday had thought that they would take off for the Sirens an hour or two after midnight, and arrive at their destination by dawn. He had made all arrangements, through Rasmussen, with Courtney and Paoti on the Sirens. The team would be accommodated for the six-week period that had been agreed upon. There was one more thing, Easterday had added, just one thing—the pledge of secrecy about the location of the Sirens must begin this minute. There must be no loose talk. He had begged Maud to impress the need for this self-control upon every member of the team, and she had promised to do so.
For Claire, the rest of the seventeen hours in Tahiti had been a dizzying experience. She had been given no leisure or meditative period during which to adjust to the change-over. In a single night she had gone over from the world of Raynor, Suzu, Loomis, Beverly Hilton to the world of Polynesia, Easterday, Rasmussen, Les Tropiques.
There had been the tour, the rented autos heading northward in the heat: the tomb of Tahiti’s last King, Pomare V, such a lover of liqueur that a coral replica of a Benedictine bottle crowned the tomb amid the airo trees; the sights from Venus Point, where Captain Cook had stood in 1796 to observe the moon’s path across the sun; the far-off waterfall of Faaru, like so many white threads swaying in the breeze; the late lunch in the bamboo dining room of the Faratea Restaurant, with the smell of pink acacias all about; the coolness of the Grotto of Maraa, with its pool inside the deep cave; the walls of black lava at the Temple of Ashes, where priests recited pagan rites; the cluster of huts representing the island’s second-largest city, Taravao, with the nearby blowholes of spray.
When they had made the full circle, and entered Papeete, the colored-glass fragments of Claire’s mental kaleidoscope reflected an odd assortment of remembrances: the foam on the coral reefs; the wayside cafe with its Algerian wine; the colonial house encircled by breadfruit trees thick with green leaves; the white churches with rust-colored steeples; the boxes, like mailboxes, along the highway, for the delivery of long French breads and pasteurized milk; the rickety native bus, packed with schoolgirls in navy blue, with blocks of ice on its roof; and everywhere, the green gorges and sparkling streams and red bougainvillaea.
Of Papeete, the city, she remembered only the sturdy laughing girls in their colored pareus, walking along in pairs; the buzzing motor scooters weaving in and out of wide baked streets; the copra schooners, yachts, fishing boats, and one gray liner in the water along the quay; the bamboo lettering that spelled “Quinn’s” over a raucous nightclub; the French and Chinese stores, and the jumble of exotic artifacts inside Easterday’s shop in the Rue Jeanne d’Arc.
She had been weary at dinner, eye-weary, leg-weary, senses fatigued, and through dinner with Easterday at Chez Chapiteau, she had eaten her filet mignon and fried potatoes and hardly listened as Maud and Marc discussed Rasmussen and The Three Sirens with their host. Back at Les Tropiques, she had flung herself on her bed and slept hard and motionless the hours before midnight. When Marc had shaken her awake, he told her that Maud had already gone off to meet Rasmussen at the Vaima Cafe, and that a young Polynesian named Hapai was waiting outside to drive them to the seaplane.
It had been after one o’clock in the morning when the flying boat had churned through the water, leaving behind the lights and music and shouts of Papeete, and lifted them into the sky once more toward The Three Sirens. She had met Rasmussen briefly, after the take-off. While Hapai was at the controls, Rasmussen had entered the main cabin, and Maud had made the introductions. Claire had been pleased by his appearance: a waterfront character wearing a venerable marine cap, open-collared, short-sleeved white shirt, blue jeans, and dirty tennis shoes. His bloodshot eyes had been rheumy, and his scarred, unshaved Scandinavian face a battleground of dissipation. His speech had been raspy, grammatically unpolished, but direct, serious, humorless. After the introductions, he had disappeared whence he came, into the seaplane’s nose, and had not been seen again.