The Three Sirens (46 page)

“It was all very simple,” said Claire. “Maud is extremely thorough, and she researched what she could, including Daniel Wright, Esquire, including Thomas Courtney, Esquire.”

He nodded. “Yes, I see. I suppose nothing can be secret any more. There must be a file somewhere on the most non-nonentity. You know, Mrs.—are you sure I can call you Claire?—all right, Claire, you know, sometimes when I was with the firm, preparing divorce settlements, it astonished me how much I could know of a person without meeting him or her. A man would come to us, instigating divorce, and I might never see his wife, yet I would know all about her—and probably accurately—from papers, documents—things like income tax returns, leases, financial statements, clippings, just things like that, let alone what the husband would tell me. So I shouldn’t be too surprised that my life is an open book, too.”

Claire liked him. She liked his courtesy and his intelligence. She liked his amiability. She wanted to know more, much more. “You’re not quite an open book,” she said. “Our dossier on you reveals when you left Chicago. It doesn’t tell why—or why you came here—and how—or why you’ve stayed so long. I suppose it’s none of my business—”

“I have no real secrets,” he said. “Not any more. I have a shy streak. I’m not certain anyone is interested in—well, in motives.”

“Very well. I am interested. I adopt you as my key informant. I’m doing an anthropological paper on divorce lawyers and their society.”

Courtney laughed. “It’s not as dramatic as you might expect.”

“Let me be the judge. One day you’re shooting at MIGs over Korea. The next you are back as junior partner in a big, stuffy law firm. The next you are an—an expatriate on an unknown South Seas island. Is that par for divorce lawyers?”

“For ones who have come to distrust their fellow man, yes.”

“Fellow man? Does that mean everyone?”

“It means specifically women. Out of context, that sounds juvenile. Nevertheless, it is what I mean.”

“Based on the evidence at hand—I quote Tehura, as of last night—you hardly seem misogynous to me.”

“I’m talking past tense. Toward the last of Chicago, I was a confirmed misogynist. The Three Sirens reformed me, gave me a proper perspective on myself.”

“Well, you’ve been to the spa. You’re healed. Why don’t you go home, American?”

He hesitated. “I’ve become used to it here, I guess. I like it here. It’s an easy life, no demands, a man can have as much solitude or companionship as he desires. I have my work here, my books—”

“Your women.”

“Yes, that, too.” He shrugged. “And so I stay.”

She stared at him. “And that is all of it?”

“There may be other reasons,” he said slowly. He smiled. “Let’s save something so I have an excuse to talk to you again.”

“As you wish.”

He sat straighter. “Why did I leave Chicago? I don’t mind telling you. In fact, I’d like to. I think our attitudes harden early. I know my own, toward women, toward marriage did. My parents were hellishly married. There was one roof, but it was like two separate houses. If they met in one room, it was the same as throwing two cocks into a pit. Well, when it’s that way, you grow up with the notion that marriage is not exactly Elysium. And when your mother is the dominant shrew, that colors your attitudes, too. You get to think Disraeli was right. You know: ‘Every woman should marry—and no man.’ I spent a lot of time with girls, through school, and after, too, but always very cautiously. Then, late in ‘51, I met the one, I was smitten, and my defenses went down. We were formally engaged. Before we could be married, I was off to Korea. We swore to be true, to be chaste, to wait for one another. Sure enough, she was there waiting for me when I returned. I married her. It was only after the ceremony that I found out she had been pregnant before I came home and before we were married. She didn’t give a damn about me any more. She needed a fall guy, a sucker, someone to give her and her kid legitimacy and a name. The minute it came out, and I saw how I had been taken, I left her and had the marriage annulled. That’s why I could say to you before that my knowledge of the husband breed is secondhand. I stand by that. I don’t feel that I’ve ever been married.”

‘Tm sorry that happened, Tom. It shouldn’t have.” She felt comfortable with him, more familiar, now that he had revealed a personal failure.

“No, I shouldn’t have let it happen, but I did.”

“So it’s the crippled old cliche—one woman spoiled all women for you, soured you on everything?”

“Not quite. There’s more to it. After that experience, after all not uncommon, which only reinforced what I had known of my parents, and which made me suspicious of close relationships with people, I concentrated more than I ever had on my legal work. In a short time, I was promoted to junior partner, and it was Sellers, Woolf and Courtney. But a curious drift was occurring in my work. I had been doing a good deal of tax law, advising corporations, that sort of thing. Then bit by bit, I began usurping, from others in the firm, more of the court cases, much of it divorce work. I became an expert on divorce law, handled hundreds of litigations, and soon was giving this field my entire energy. Looking back, I can see what drove me into this. It was as if I wanted firsthand evidence to buttress my own thinking about women and marriage. I didn’t want to see the best side of it—healthy, relatively happy couples in solved marriages. That would have made me the outsider, the unsuccessful one. By burying myself in the world of marital strife—and I can’t tell you how women and men look in a divorce office, the hostility, hatred, petty meanness, sheer misery—by making myself a part of this, pretending this was the norm, I justified my determined bachelorhood. I was warped to begin with. You have no idea how much more warped you can become if you live in the world of separate maintenance, property settlement, child custody, suit and countersuit, and bitter divorce. You come to say to yourself, All women are untrustworthy or sick, and all men are the same, and the devil with both. You understand?”

“Do you still feel that way?” Claire asked.

Courtney was thoughtful a moment. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.” He considered the entire matter once more, a kind of communing with himself, as he absently lighted his cold pipe. “Anyway,” he said, lifting his head toward Claire, “I became so tired of the people I was in contact with daily—everything was so expected and boring—and I was so revolted by the chicanery of the life around me, that one day I studied my bank account, saw that I had enough, and quit. My partners made it a leave of absence. But for me, I quit. I hear from one of them about every six months, or did, asking if I’ve got this nonsense out of my system., if I’m ready to come back to those dark green walls and detailed briefs, from wherever I am. I write back no. Lately, the letters have been fewer.”

“Did you come straight here after you quit?”

“First, I went to Carmel, California. I thought I would rest, think, and occupy myself with an attorney’s biography of Rufus Choate—I became interested in the wonderful historical coot when I was going to school, had loads of notes—but I didn’t feel like working. And Carmel was full of the same kind of people I had known in Chicago—well, like the set in Woodstock, Illinois—so I knew I had not run far enough. Finally, I went up to San Francisco, joined a Pacific cruise, and took the S. S. Mariposa for Sydney. When we stopped over in Tahiti, and went ashore, I was the only one with enthusiasm for the island. Almost all the passengers expected too much, and I expected nothing, and we were both fooled. They were disappointed at the tawdriness and commercialism. I was elated to find the first place on earth where one was infused with—with languor—all bad poisons drained out of you. You could lie in the sun and say to hell with the world. So, when the S. S. Mariposa went on, I stayed behind … There you have it, the whole Courtney saga. Do we stand adjourned?”

Claire, who had hardly moved in her chair, protested mildly. “Objection,” she said. “I don’t have the whole saga. We last left the hero indolent on Tahiti. But the past three or four years he has been on The Three Sirens, not Tahiti. Do you want to skip the transition?”

“Objection sustained, but really nothing to skip. I hung around Papeete several months. I drank a lot. When you hit the bottle, you make friends, and sometimes they become good friends. Captain Ollie Rasmussen was one. We drank together. We became quite close. I liked the cynical old boozer, and he liked me. I came to know about him, most everything except his work, which didn’t interest me much anyway. All I knew was that at intervals of two weeks, he was off to acquire imports. Anyway, one such interval came, and I understood him to be away, and waited for his return in a couple of days. When he didn’t show up, and when a week passed, I became concerned. Just as I began making inquiries, I received a message from his wife on Moorea. She said that Ollie was ill, and had to see me right away. I hurried over there on the launch. I found the Captain in bed, gaunt and weak. I learned he had been down with pneumonia for a couple of weeks. At the same time, his copilot, Dick Hapai, had cut a foot, suffered a bad infection, and was still in the hospital. As a result, the Captain had missed his last two trips out, and it meant that for at least a month the people he usually visited had been missing him. All the while he spoke, he kept appraising me, and suddenly, he took my wrist and said, ‘Tom, I wanna ask you somethin’—”

Courtney halted, apparently reliving what had followed, and shook the ash from his pipe into a coconut tray. He considered Claire’s intent features, then resumed his narrative.

“What Captain Rasmussen wanted to ask me was if I could still fly. He knew I’d had a fighter over the Yalu. I told him I hadn’t forgotten a thing. Then he had another question. Did I think I could manage his Vought-Sikorsky? I said I thought so, provided I had someone to brief me first. The Captain said that would be no problem. He was too unsteady to handle the plane, but he would be able to prop himself up and come along, showing me what to do, if I would execute his directions. I said fine, but I wondered why the necessity to get the amphibian up. Couldn’t he wait until he was well, and able to handle the controls himself? That was the crucial moment in our relationship. He wanted to know if he could trust me with a secret. The secret involved not only his honor, but his livelihood. He hardly waited for my reply. He knew very well that he could trust me with anything. ‘Okay, Tom,’ he said, Tm gonna spin you a yarn about a place you never heard of—even the old lady don’t know about it—a place called The Three Sirens.’ For two hours he confided the whole story to me. I sat through the recital dazzled, like a boy at the feet of Strabo or Marco Polo. Wasn’t that the way you felt when you read Professor Easterday’s letter?”

“I’m not sure how I felt,” said Claire. “It seemed too much of a marvel in a mundane world. Our distance from Polynesia, I suppose. It seemed unreal.”

“Well, I was closer, and it was real enough filtered through Ollie Rasmussen’s down-to-earth language,” said Courtney. “After he told me of the Sirens, he went on to say that when he had last left Paoti, there was some fear of their having the first epidemic in the islands’ history. The Captain had promised to return with needed medications. Now, he was a month overdue. He was afraid to risk a longer delay. Someone had to fly his plane to the Sirens. The upshot of this was that two days later I was at the controls, and a weak Ollie Rasmussen beside me. I managed the flight and the landing with no difficulties. My unexpected appearance on the Sirens was greeted with some hostility. When Ollie explained who I was, and what I had done, Paoti was satisfied. I was treated to a feast and welcomed as a benefactor. In the next few months, in Hapai’s place, I accompanied Ollie on every trip to the Sirens. Soon I was entirely accepted by the villagers, as much as the Captain himself. These visits began to have a peculiar effect on me. I found the very antithesis of what I despised at home. And while Tahiti, along with liquor and women, had been an escape, I had not entirely thrown off my old bitterness and feeling of strain. The Three Sirens had the effect of making me feel content and peaceful. On one visit, I asked Ollie to leave me behind until he called again. When he returned, I had shed my clothes and other inhibitions. I had no desire to return to Papeete even for my belongings. In fact, I didn’t. The Captain got them for me. Presently, I was initiated into the tribe. I had my own hut. Because of my learning, I had mana. Except for occasional forays into Tahiti, to buy reading material and tobacco, I’ve been here ever since.” He paused, and offered Claire an apologetic smile. “You’re very effective, Claire. I haven’t been so totally autobiographical in years.”

“I’m pleased,” said Claire simply. “However, I don’t think you’ve been totally autobiographical. I think you’ve told me what you wanted to tell me, and no more.”

“I’ve told you what I know of myself. The rest is being processed and inventoried.”

“But you’re perfectly satisfied here?” She had put it as the slightest question, without challenge.

“As much as a man can be—yes. Waking every morning is now something I look forward to.”

“In other words, you don’t plan to return to Chicago?”

“Chicago?” Courtney repeated the word as if reading from a scrawl on a lavatory wall.

Claire saw the grimace he had made, and at once she had to be loyal to her childhood, the most treasured of her possessions. “It’s not that bad,” she said. “It was always enjoyable on the Outer Drive and swimming in Lake Michigan and going to the Loop on Saturdays. I can even remember the pony rides in Lincoln Park. Why, I—”

“You mean you come from Chicago, too?” he said, incredulity on his face.

“What’s so unusual about that?”

“I don’t know. You don’t look it, whatever that means. You look more California.”

“Because I’ve been longer in California. I was in Chicago only until I was twelve, when my dad was—when he died in an accident. He used to cart me around with him everywhere. He was wonderful. I was a fixture in the press box at Wrigley Field and Soldier’s Field—”

“Was he a sports writer?”