The Three Sirens (35 page)

“I am proud, too, Tehura,” Courtney said quietly.

Paoti coughed. “We have spoken enough for our first meeting. The hour grows late. It is time for the ceremony of the rite of friendship to begin.” He fumbled for the gnarled wooden walking stick against his chair, and reached over and hit the table twice. He pointed his stick to the platform beyond Moreturi and Atetou.

Everyone turned to watch the platform. Claire, her gaze on Tehura and Courtney, saw Maud and Marc twist toward her and she tried to read their familiar faces. Obviously, Maud had enjoyed Tehura’s frank, simple, unembarrassed recital, and seen rich material for her paper. Marc’s face was clenched, and Claire guessed at his growing dislike for these open, simple people. Shifting herself toward the stage, Claire tried to define her own reaction to Tehura’s confession. What she felt was uneasiness and inferiority. It was an emotion sometimes engendered at parties in Santa Barbara or Los Angeles, when another couple made some veiled references to their sex life that made it appear that their mating was superior to all others. Claire suffered this emotion now. They had the magic. She had none. They were healthy. She was crippled. She suffered even more for Marc, who was more vulnerable than she, and then she put Tehura out of her mind.

A tall, lithe, statuesque girl, no more than nineteen, had materialized on the center of the platform. She stood motionless, arms outstretched, legs wide apart. Two brilliant garlands of hibiscus dangled from her neck and partially covered her young, small breasts. From her waist hung two short strips of white tapa cloth, one in front between her legs, and one behind, with her naked hips and thighs exposed entirely.

The percussion and wind instruments filled the room, the sounds slithering and insinuating themselves among those around the table. As the swell and beat of the music grew and grew, the tall, tan girl on the platform began to move, never leaving her place, letting all but her bare feet become animated. Her snaking hands caressed the air, and the parts of her face and body began to dance, first one, then another, until all were alive in sensuous motion. Her eyes danced in her head, and her mouth opened and closed, and her tiny breasts shimmied in and out of the flowers, and her belly shook, and her seductive hips revolved. At first the undulations were slow, but gradually they picked up tempo, and her face was transported and her figure shaken with fleshly tremors, until she exploded into the air, and slowly sank down to a crouch on the platform.

Enrapt, Claire understood what was being performed, the wild ecstasy of love fulfilled, and what was following now was the procreation, the labor pangs that would bring forth the birth of friendship.

The dancer lay on the stage, on her back, drawing up her legs and lifting only her torso into the air. The almost naked pelvic muscles pressed, and strained, and heaved to the music, and Claire held her arms tightly and felt the dryness in her mouth and the terrible throb in her throat and the want in her own body. The taunting scene became filmed over for her by her drunkenness and moist eyes, and she envied this symbol on the stage, and wanted some man, a man, a man who wanted her, to come into her and leave the seed of a new life. And suddenly, as the music abruptly stopped, and the dancer swayed erect and frozen, Claire caught the sob in her chest and maintained her poise.

The tall dancer on the platform was immobile once more. Two young males, carrying a large steaming wooden bowl, had lifted it to the platform before the dancer. There was a rapping on the dinner table, and it was from Paoti’s stick.

“Dr. Maud Hayden,” he was saying, “we reach the final step of our traditional rite of friendship, a rite infrequently used in recent centuries. One female of our blood and one female of your blood amongst you will ascend the platform. They will stand on either :side of the dancer. They will remove their upper garments, and hold ready their naked breasts for the holy anointment which joins our peoples in friendship and removes the tabu against strangers. To represent our blood line, I designate the female who is my dead brother’s daughter, I appoint the one known as Tehura.”

Tehura bowed her head to Paoti, uncrossed her legs, leaped gracefully to her feet, and ascended the stage to stand on one side of the dancer.

Paoti was addressing Maud again. “And which female of your blood family do you designate to represent your party?”

Maud pursed her lips, thoughtfully, and then she said, “I believe it best that I represent my family and our party.”

“Matty, for Chrissakes—” It was Marc.

“Don’t be foolish, Marc,” said Maud, crisply. “When your father and I were in the field, I engaged in similar rites on several occasions.” She addressed Paoti. “We are familiar with the rites of acceptance in all cultures. I once did a paper on the Mylitta, whose custom it is to receive a visitor by offering him one of their young women. When she gives of her love, she receives a coin, and after this exchange there is friendship.”

Clumsily, Maud began to rise, when Marc restrained her. “Dammit, Matty, I won’t have you getting up there—we’ll get one of the others—”

Maud showed her annoyance. “Marc, I don’t know what’s got into you. This is a tribal custom.”

Dizzily witnessing the disagreement, Claire suddenly felt shame for her husband and for herself before the natives. She knew that she could not allow Maud to go up there and uncover her aged, pendulous bosom. She knew that she, Claire, Tehura’s counterpart, should enact the rite. The idea gripped her, and the kava and palm drinks swam beneath her, lifting her to her feet.

“I’ll do it, Maud,” she heard herself say.

Swaying, she had started for the platform, when Marc had grabbed for her, and missed, and fallen foolishly to the matting. “Claire, cut it out!”

“I want to do it,” she called back, “I want us to be friends with them.”

On the platform, she stumbled, finally taking her position on the other side of the motionless dancer. Briefly, she noted the ring of faces below, Moreturi approving, Marc fuming, Maud worried, Paoti and Courtney revealing no emotion.

The tall dancer had moved to Tehura, and was slowly unwinding the tapa-cloth binder that covered her chest. The cloth ran out, was released, and fell to the floor. With the removal of the upper garment, Tehura’s breasts seemed to burst free. Claire tried not to look, but curiosity consumed her. She must know what Tehura, who knew of love, had offered to Courtney. From the corner of an eye, Claire inspected her opposite number, and she could see that the sloping, shining shoulders had kept their promise, as they blended without a break or crease into the two curved rises of high rigid breasts with their distinct red nipples.

The dancer was facing Claire, and the moment had come, and to her relief Claire found that she was unafraid. And then she knew why, but before she could think about it, she realized that her attendant required help. The brown-skinned dancer had never been introduced to the mysteries of a Western dress. Claire nodded, understandingly, and reached behind her, unhooked the top of the yellow shantung, zipped it downward, and wriggled free of the upper half of the garment, which collapsed to her waist. She was wearing her new transparent lace brassiere, and she was glad of that. Quickly, she reached behind once more and opened it, and then she dropped her arms to her sides and waited. The attendant understood, immediately taking the loose straps of the brassiere and drawing them down Claire’s arms, so that the large webbed cups were pulled free of her flesh and she stood in nudity to the waist.

When her white brassiere had been dropped away, Claire straightened to her full height. She could see Tehura, whom she had envied, staring at her with admiration, and then Claire knew why she was unafraid. In a world where protuberant mammary glands, their capacity, their contour, were marks of womanly beauty, she would seem highly favored. The size and arch and firmness of her breasts, the circumference of the brown nipples now soft, accentuated by the sparkle of the diamond pendant that had fallen into the deep cleft between, were her femininity, her advertisement of love. Thus revealed, she was no longer Tehura’s inferior, but her equal, and perhaps in the eyes of those below, her superior.

The attending young girl had knelt, dipped her hands into the bowl, and brought up a warm oil. She poured some into Tehura’s open hands, and some into Claire’s, and then she signaled them to come forward, to meet over the friendship bowl. Tehura reached out, and lightly, she applied the oil over the tops of Claire’s breasts, and Claire, realizing this was expected of her, in turn smoothed the oil over the top portions of Tehura’s bosom. Tehura smiled and stepped back. Imitating her, Claire stepped back, too.

The attending girl sang out a single word in Polynesian.

Chief Paoti rapped his stick on the table, and trembled to a standing position.

“It is done,” he announced. “We welcome you to the village of The Three Sirens. Henceforth, our life is your life, and we are as of one blood.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later—it was almost midnight—Claire walked beside Marc through the village, darkened and asleep, the only illumination coming from the few torch stumps flickering on either side of the stream.

Since she had dressed, and said her farewells, and since they had come into the compound together—Maud having lingered behind with Courtney—Marc had not looked at her or spoken one word to her.

They went on in silence.

When they reached their hut, she stopped and saw the ridges of anger in her husband’s face.

“You hate me tonight, don’t you?” she said suddenly.

His lips moved but no words came, and then they came in a shaking abrasive rush. “I hate anyone—I hate anyone who gets stinking drunk—and provokes a lot of filthy sex talk—and who behaves like a goddam whore.”

Even in the cushioning softness of the night, the slap of his words stung and pained her through. She stood, weaving, ashamed of him, so ashamed of him. He had never, in almost two years of marriage, spoken to her with such unrestrained fury. Always, his criticisms had been controlled, and when they had been made, she had taken them with little contention. But now, in this terrible moment of the night, all that had happened, all that she had seen and heard and drunk, gave her support, an odd safe freedom to be herself for once, to speak her true feelings at last.

“And I,” she said low and unafraid, “I hate anyone who is a shameful, dirty-minded prig.”

She waited, breathless, expecting him to strike her. Then she knew that he was too weak for that. Instead, he shot her a look of loathing, turned his back on her, and slammed into the hut.

She remained where she was, shivering. Finally, she fished a cigarette out of her dress pocket, and lighted it, and slowly, she walked toward the stream and then back to the hut, and then back and forth, smoking, remembering her life before Marc, remembering her life since, picturing Tehura with Courtney, reliving the rite of acceptance, then reviving old dreams and fond hopes. After a half-hour, she had calmed down, and when she saw that the lamps in their hut were all out, she started for the door.

He had been as drunk as she had been, and he would be asleep. She felt kindlier toward him, and better about everything, and when she went inside she felt certain that they would both be sober and forgiving in the morning.

IV

CLAIRE HAD SLEPT
as if in a deep pit, enveloped in black and deadened air, slumbering without the twisting or turning of partial wakefulness. What had brought her back up, at last, had been the thin stretching fingers of the new morning’s sun, groping through the cane walls, finding her, backing and warming her with their tips, until she had opened her eyes. Her left arm and hip felt stiff and bruised from the first night on the matted floor. Her lips felt cracked, and her tongue perched and swollen, and so finally, she remembered the events of the evening before. She picked up her wrist watch. It was twenty minutes after eight in the morning.

Hearing footsteps, she rolled over, pulling down the nylon pajama top that had crept up on her—she remembered that, too—to the undercurve of her public breasts, and she saw Marc beside the back window, holding up an oval mirror, meticulously combing his close-cropped hair. He was already dressed, sport shirt, denims, sneakers, and if he was aware that she was awake, he did not acknowledge it. For Claire, the invasion of the sun, the freshness of the day, the crispness of her husband, made the activities and talk of nine hours before seem distant, remote, improbable.

“Hi, Marc,” she said. “Good morning.”

He hardly took his eyes from the mirror. “You slept like a log.”

“Yes”

“Did you hear Karpowicz? He came around with a message from Matty. She wants us all in her office by ten.”

“I’ll be ready.” She sat up, and was relieved that she had no hangover. “Marc—”

This time he turned and acknowledged her, but about his lips, there was no yielding.

She swallowed and wanted it over with. “Marc, I guess I was drunk last night. I’m sorry.”

His lips let go slightly. “It’s all right.”

“I don’t want to hate myself all morning. I—I’m also sorry about the things we said to each other.”

He bent, and dropped the mirror and comb into the pile of his personal effects. “Okay, honey, let’s forget it, let’s just forget it. I didn’t say what I said. You didn’t say what you said. Clean slate. Only let’s—let’s both remember who we are, and not lower ourselves before anyone’s eyes. Let’s keep our dignity.”

She said nothing, wishing that he would at least come to her and lift her up, and kiss her, only kiss her. He was at the door to the living room, and leaving her with no more than a pinned note of reminder.

“Try to be on time, Claire. The weekend is over. We’re back at work.”

“I’ll be on time.”

After he had gone, she straightened her sleeping bag and his, observed that he had tidily set aside the clothes that he had worn and which were to be washed, and then, listlessly, she unbuttoned her tepid pajama top. She had no interest in her public breasts, but then she noticed that the diamond pendant still hung between them. She removed it, and knelt to put it in her leather jewel box. In this posture, she could not be unconscious of her breasts, and she looked at their white mounds and conjured up the male eyes—Moreturi, Paoti, Courtney (an American!)—that had seen them like this, and now, in the embarrassment of daylight, she felt truant and shameless. This moment, she did not blame Marc for his anger. She was a wife, an American wife—she had almost added “and mother,” but had not—and she had behaved, her first night out, like a nymphomaniac, well practically. Until now, she had trapped such outrageous behavioral fancies in her head, properly classified in the cabinet of shibboleths marked Strictly Brought-Up and Men Respect A Decent Woman, and Love, Honor, and Obey. Her restraining wall had been built up of Modesty, Decency, Chastity and one more brick—yes, Timidity. How and why had she brought it all down last night? She had been wanton, and now, as she reconstructed the restraining wall, brick upon brick, she did not see how she could bear to have Courtney or the others see her again. What must they think?