The Three Sirens (52 page)

“For you, that is good. For me it is not enough. I have not yet a want of you.”

“I thought you cared for me. These last days—”

“I am interested. You are a different one. You have mana. But to offer myself without the desire—no.”

Words had brought him this far, and he was determined that they should win the day. He gripped her arm. “Tehura, listen to me—I’ve told you—in America I’m very—I—a hundred, a thousand young girls would be thrilled by my attention.”

“Good for them. Good for you. I am not in America.”

“Tehura, I want to prove my love. How can I convince you this is not merely a sport? How can I show my seriousness?”

She considered him shrewdly. “You have a wife. On The Three Sirens married men are tabu.”

“So I have a wife. I did not know one like you existed, or I would have waited, I would not have a wife. I’ll do anything. I’ll treat you as well as I do her.”

“Yes? How?”

“You can have whatever she has. I’ll buy you expensive clothes, all the things—”

“Clothes?” She regarded him as she would a madman. “What would I do with that foolishness here?”

“Other things, then. You said your men give a girl they love all kinds of gifts—beads—I’ll get you beads—anything you want.” He remembered. “The diamond necklace—pendant—my wife wore. You admired it. I’ll order you one just like it. I’ll have it flown in. It’ll cost a fortune, but I don’t care. Would you like that?”

She hesitated, frowning, before replying, too lightly, “Do not bother.”

His anxiety had made him frantic. “Dammit, then you name it. What can I do to impress you?”

“Nothing.”

“You told me yourself—you gave your love to Courtney—all those other men. You are even thinking of taking up with that new one—whatever the hell his name is—”

“Huatoro. Yes, he is good.”

“Well, what’s so good about him? Who the devil is he? Why should you regard him more highly than me?”

“He is free, for one thing. He loves me—”

“So do I,” he interrupted.

“You are prominent in America, but here Huatoro has more mana. He will be our first athlete in the festival. He will win the swim, and all my friends will want him. I will have him.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’ll give yourself to a man because he wins some lousy swimming race?”

She bridled. “It is important to us,” she said. “It is as important to win the race here as to make much money for the bank or own a building and big house in America.”

“All right, I grant you the importance of your damn race,” he said hastily. “But who says he’s going to win? Hell, I probably can outswim him by a country mile. Back home, I was on the team in college—we had more candidates for that team than you have people in this entire village—and I still swim all the time. I can beat any man on our college faculty, and most of the students, too.” He abhorred reducing himself to her juvenile level. “Will your uncle allow me to enter the race?”

“Everyone on the island can race. There will be maybe ten or twenty. Tom was in it a few times and always losing.”

“Okay,” said Marc churlishly. “Count me in. And if I beat your friend, Huatoro—and I will, you can count on that—if I beat him, what then?” He paused. “Will you treat me as you would him?”

She laughed, and jumped to her feet. “Beat him first,” she said, “and then we will see.”

With that, she ran through the trees and was gone, and he was left fuming over his immediate frustration and grateful only that the moment he fancied was not yet hopelessly lost.

* * *

Mary Karpowicz held her breath and prayed that no one, not Nihau beside her in the last row of the classroom, or anyone, would detect her apprehension.

The instructor, Mr. Manao, had seconds before removed his steel-rimmed spectacles, twirled them, set them low on his nose again, and announced, “The introductory phase in our study of
faa hina’aro
is completed. For twelve days I have discussed the evolution of mating in animals, from the lower species to the higher. Today we reach the highest order of life—the human being. As with the animals, our method will emphasize the practical rather than the theoretical. I have two volunteers in my room from the Social Aid Hut. I will bring them forth, and we shall begin.”

Hitching his loincloth up the sharp side of his frame, Mr. Manao had left the room.

The students in front of her were whispering, and Mary Karpowicz forced her shoulders, involuntarily raised high around her head like a tortoise shell, to drop, and she exhaled. She wanted to turn to Nihau, who had been so friendly, and inquire what would happen next. Yet, she was afraid to betray herself. Above all, she did not want to reveal unsophistication.

She kept her eyes straight ahead. She reviewed Mr. Manao’s teachings of the last days. What he had to say of animals had been, well, interesting, but somehow disappointing and unrelated to herself. There were oddities. But nothing you could not learn, if you read between the lines, from your Reader’s Digest or biology textbooks. Certainly, there had been no acquisition that would be useful in Albuquerque. Knowledge of the gestation period of the wild boar would give her no equality with Leona Brophy. She had wanted to learn about herself, about the mysteries of it, and filled with great expectations she had dutifully attended classes every day, fully reporting to her parents the news of each subject but this one (which she had decided not to mention). Now, what she had anticipated so long, the key to self-assurance, was about to be offered her. And she was scared and longed for the wild boar.

The whispering in front of her had ceased, and necks stretched and strained for the best view. Mr. Manao had returned, followed by the pair from the Social Aid Hut. Mary’s back stiffened, and she pretended that she wore protective blinkers. The pair were uncommonly handsome. The young man, in his late twenties, was of medium height and darkly tanned. His face was wide and good-natured, his shoulders broad, and his entire naked body above the white supporter laid over with muscles like the bony plates of an armadillo’s armor. The young lady, also in her twenties, was entirely of Polynesian caste, with black hair streaming to her shoulders, perfectly round cantaloupe breasts, and flaring hips that precariously held the band of her grass skirt.

Mary heard Nihau’s breathing, close to her ear. “The two of them are well known to the village,” Nihau said in an undertone. “He is Huatoro, one of our best athletes at every festival. He is twenty-eight. She is Poma, only twenty-two but a widow, and much loved by many men for her manner.”

Mary nodded her thanks without looking at Nihau. Her eyes remained on the living exhibits.

Mr. Manao had taken the young lady named Poma by the elbow and led her to within three or four feet of the first row of seated students. Her partner, Huatoro, the athlete, had remained behind, settling on the matted floor to await his turn.

Still holding Poma’s elbow, the instructor addressed the class. “We will begin with the female,” he said. “While every part of the body is concerned with sexual pleasure and procreation, especially several sensitive areas, we will devote ourselves in the beginning to only the genitals, externally and internally.” He released her elbow, stepped back and sideways, facing her. “Please, Poma.”

Watching from the last row, Mary could not believe it would happen. Her hands, locked together in the lap of her cotton summer dress, tightened, as she saw it happening. Poma had reached both hands behind her, and suddenly the grass skirt was untied and held before her like a screen. She flung it to the floor, and stood revealed in the nude, her ample figure erect, her arms loose at her sides, her eyes staring over the heads of the class. Because the grass skirt had protected her pelvic region from the sun, her skin was light from the waist to the upper thighs.

This brazen exposure overwhelmed Mary with mortification. Back home, she and her girl friends went about nude in the gym locker room and sometimes at pajama parties, with complete equanimity. Never before had Mary seen a young woman stand unclothed before mixed company. Her shame was less for Poma than for herself and her own femaleness, reflected so openly before the males of the class, especially the one beside her. What would he see the next time he looked at her?

The back of Mary’s neck ached, and her hand went behind her head to massage it.

Distantly, she heard the instructor addressing the class. She realized that her hearing had registered none of his opening description, and her sight had been directed at the floor. With effort, she lifted her sight. She recorded no more than a glimpse of what was taking place: Poma, standing there, as unconcerned as an artist’s model; Mr. Manao, his hand a pointer, designating and explaining that part of woman’s anatomy. Mary felt dizzy. It was not to be believed.

Once more, her eyes were averted, but her eardrums resounded at the impact of clinical words and phrases for the female organs, terms she had read but rarely heard spoken aloud. Worse, far worse, there were Mr. Manao’s sentences, elucidating precisely, in excruciating detail, the reason for, the purpose of, the workings, the uses, which each part—oh, to be temporarily deaf!

Stubbornly, she tried to will herself, her hearing, into becoming impervious to the instruction. For a while, she succeeded, but the effort was too much for her, and she allowed the voice to enter. She guessed that Dr. Manao was, fortunately, almost finished with his exposition on Poma.

She could hear him droning, “In other parts of the world, this tiny organ above the main organ remains throughout the life of a female very small on the surface. I know this is unbelievable to most of you, since it makes excitation of the area most difficult. It is our practice, as the girls in the class know, to develop and elongate the surface in childhood, in order to guarantee fulfillment in adulthood. I would say that what you observe of Poma’s development in this respect is typical of all our young ladies on the island. Now then, let us go further, so that everything will be clear, so that you young men will know what to expect and you young women will understand your own pleasure systems—”

Mary had kept her eyes downcast, but her ears open, through the last crude revelation. With determination, she had posed herself in an attitude of appearing undisturbed and attentive. Especially had she tried to maintain her poise during Mr. Manao’s remarks about women “in other parts of the world” as compared to women on The Three Sirens. She had imagined all eyes upon her, or felt they should be upon her, for she was the one who had something “unbelievable,” she was the outsider, the freak. The passage had been her Calvary. She dreaded the time when she must stand before their eyes at recess.

She looked up to observe her neighbors. All eyes were concentrated on the spectacle before them. She had the privacy to close her eyes and her ears. No one would notice. She did not dare actually close her eyes, but she again dropped her gaze to the bare back of the boy in front of her. Then, through some resource of strength unknown, she lowered the register of Mr. Manao’s voice, so that his discourse was indistinct. Thus, she sat in a somnolent state.

Once, relieved to find that the instructor’s voice had ceased, wondering if it was over and time for recess, she had raised her eyes over the shoulder ahead. Indeed, the nude female exhibit was no longer there, only the instructor in an attitude of waiting, and suddenly the athlete, Huatoro, strode into focus, casting aside some shred of white cloth. He turned toward her. She sucked in her breath at the sight of what she had never seen before. Against all the censors of her brain, her gaze stayed fixed. It was only when Mr. Manao pointed to Huatoro, and calmly resumed his lecture, that she ducked her head. She tried to defend herself against the running of the words, but they sped at her, the clinical male words. She wanted to rise and flee, even intended to, but did not, because she would then be the spectacle instead of what was being demonstrated.

When she heard the recess call, she blindly scrambled to her feet. She wanted to see no one, and wanted no one to see her. She was naked, and they were naked, and it was wrong in public. Her one wish was to hide.

Emerging into the glare of the outdoors, she had intended to run. She desired as much distance between her and this bawdy house as possible. The students who had preceded her, and filled the school lawn in clusters, made running impossible. Swiftly as she could, ignoring all eyes, Mary wove in and on, and hastened toward the compound.

Departing thus, she realized that Nihau would miss her. In the last two weeks it had been their unspoken agreement to meet during the two recesses. If she came out of the class ahead of him, she would wait beneath a tree, and in seconds he would inevitably appear, shyly smiling, his strong face more tentative than ever, his hands holding forth two half-shells of fruit juice. They would sit beneath the tree, frequently joined by one or another of his friends, and review what had gone on in the classroom or in the years of their lives. Today, for the first time, she would not be under the tree. What would Nihau think?

She really did not care what anyone would think. The startling ugliness of what had passed before her eyes, in the school, had suffocated all reason. She just wanted to be away from it, where she could breathe.

She came fast down the decline, out of sight of the grassy schoolyard, and running at last. Reaching the rim of the village compound, she halted, stood panting, not knowing which way to turn. If she went to their hut, her mother or father or both would be there. They would see that she was agitated. They would know she was supposed to be in school. There would be questions. She would be cajoled into describing the one class she had omitted telling them about. She wanted none of that, not right now.

“Mary!”

Hearing her name, she responded, and saw Nihau jogging down the grass toward her. When he was beside her, she saw that his sensitive face was drawn tight with concern.

“I was not far behind when we came out of the room,” he said. “I could see how you left. Something is bothering you?”

“I don’t want to talk now.”