The Three Sirens (55 page)

Perhaps, Rachel had thought in this past week, Atetou is not so frigid as Moreturi had made out. Perhaps, in the eyes of one like Moreturi, any wife would be frigid. Unconsciously, Rachel supposed, she was always defending Atetou, because this was a defense of her sex. Men like Moreturi were a threat to the dependence women must have upon monogamy. At the same time, although Rachel did not examine this ambivalence in herself too deeply, she was secretly with Moreturi against his wife. Somehow, Atetou stood between Rachel and her patient. There was no direct line between analyst and analysand, because Atetou made it a triangle. Rachel squirmed under the restriction of guilt, whenever caught up in Moreturi’s crazy babble, and the guilt that held back further communication was the warden eye of Atetou.

But Rachel knew that she was deceiving herself. Atetou did not stand between Moreturi and herself at all. The major inhibition was Rachel’s insistence upon continuing to communicate with Moreturi through psychoanalysis. With each day, it was proving more impossible. She would speak to him of a young female’s penis envy or a young male’s castration fear, and Moreturi would roar with laughter. She would speak to him of Oedipal guilts and displacement of unacceptable desires, and Moreturi would ridicule her until she was brought to the verge of tears.

Gradually, Rachel was coming to this conclusion: a system of mental help, originated before the turn of the century in sophisticated Vienna by a brilliant Jew with a beard, did not work well, if it worked at all, in a civilization not oriented to the tensions of the West. It was arduous for Rachel to relate her knowledge of neurotics and psychopaths who developed out of a highly literate, clothed, repressed, material, competitive society to a relatively indolent, unpersevering, hedonistic, isolated semi-Polynesian society, where so many values were reversed. Yes, Rachel could see that if Freud, Jung, Adler had taken over the Hierarchy on The Three Sirens, they would have been driven by despair into analyzing one another.

But then, Rachel saw, this was a second subterfuge. It was not Atetou and it was not Western psychoanalysis that were the obstacles between her and a success with Moreturi. It was, finally, herself. Her patient’s assurance, lack of inhibition, maleness, these frightened her, and shackled her. She would pursue no relevant point with him, pursue him down no path, because he was strong and she was weak, and she dared not let him know it. Superior knowledge was fine. It gave you control in an air-conditioned office in Beverly Hills. It gave you dominance over a person who was ill in the judgment of an orderly society. On the other hand, it gave you no strength in the primitive brush when it was your only armament. Coming upon a large animal, a free roaming animal that survived by instinct and appetite, you did not curb him by applying the wisdom of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. What you did was to avoid close contact. You ran like hell.

Now, here was the mate of the King of the Beasts before her. The mate represented one-half of a real problem that Rachel had undertaken to resolve. Something must be done. Rachel saw that her visitor had put down the cup and was waiting, the fingers of one hand fidgeting across the waistband of her grass skirt. Rachel finished her own cup, set it aside, and, with effort, assumed her professional mien.

“I repeat again, Atetou, how pleased I am that you have come here,” said Rachel. “Do you understand anything of my work?”

“My husband and mother-in-law have told me.”

“Good. Then you appreciate I want to help you and your husband with your problem.”

“I have no problem.”

Rachel had predicted that she would be unyielding, and Rachel was not surprised. “Be that as it may, your husband appealed to the Hierarchy for a divorce on the grounds that you were having marital troubles. The matter was turned over to me. I am merely trying to serve in the place of the Hierarchy.”

“I have no problem,” she repeated. “He has the problem. He made the appeal.”

“That is true,” Rachel conceded, recalling that Moreturi had made a similar denial and accusation in his first visit. “Nevertheless, if one member of a marriage is unhappy, that would indicate the other member may be, too.” Then she added, “In certain cases, anyway.”

“I did not say I was happy. I could be happy. The problem is his.”

“Well, would you be willing to let things go on as they are between you two?”

“I do not know…It is possible.”

Rachel could not allow this to continue. She would have to bring Atetou into the open. “You know I have been seeing your husband daily, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“You know he speaks of his own life and his life with you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know of what he speaks?”

“Yes.”

“Atetou, I have his side of it. To be fair to both of you, I want your side. When he tells me, day after day, you are not friendly, not sociable, not performing as a wife, I must believe that he should have a divorce—that is, if I listen only to him. But it would not be right to listen only to him. I must listen to you. Truth has two voices.”

For the first time, features on Atetou’s face shifted. Her composure was disintegrating. “He lies,” she said.

“Are you sure? How does he lie?”

“He says I do not perform as a wife. I perform as well as any wife in the village. When he says I am not a friendly wife, a sociable wife, a wife at all, he means one thing. He has no more sense than a child. He does not know a wife means not one thing but many things. I cook for him. I make his home clean. I am interested in him. I take care of him. All this is meaningless to him. Only one thing matters.”

Rachel waited for her to say more, but she did not. “You said only one thing matters. What is that?”

“Body love. That means wife, nothing else.”

“Do you object to body love—sexual intercourse, we call it—do you resist it?”

Atetou’s face showed indignation for the first time. “Object, I do not. Resist, I must. Is there no more to marriage than this? Three, four times a week, I am ready, I have the feeling, I join. But morning to night, every day, every day? It is a madness. One wife cannot satisfy this. A hundred wives cannot. That is not marriage.”

A thrill of incredulity shot through Rachel, followed by bewilderment over the fact that Atetou’s version differed so much from her husband’s version. “What you are saying is not what Moreturi has told me,” said Rachel.

“He tells you what is not true.”

“He tells me you are an excellent wife in all ways except what to him is the most important. He says you are cold, and turn him away always. He says he demands only what is normal here, but you will not sleep with him more than once or twice a month.”

“That is a lie.”

“He speaks of constantly calling upon the Social Aid Hut to satisfy him. Does he?”

“Of course. What one woman can satisfy him?”

“Let me ask something else, Atetou. When you do sleep with him, are you pleased?”

“Sometimes, I am pleased.”

“Most of the time you are not.”

“There is too much pain in his love.”

“Can you clarify that?”

“He is not himself when he loves. He is crazy. He gives hurt. We are not made the same and he gives hurt.”

“Was it always this way?”

“Maybe yes, but I did not care. Pleasure overcomes the pain. Now it is worse, no pleasure, only pain. He wants to be rid of me.”

“Why not be rid of him? Why endure this?”

“He is my husband.”

A thought came to Rachel. “And he is the Chief’s son.”

Atetou’s reaction was immediate. Her expression was irate. “Why do you say that? What is the meaning?”

“I’m trying to find out if there might be other motives you don’t understand that influence—”

“Do not speak to me that way!” She had sprung to her feet, infuriated, and stood over Rachel. “You are with him as one. I try all the time to have patience with you. Maybe you are fair. But he has won you, like all the women. You think he does not lie. You think I lie. You think I am cold. You think I do not please. You think I try to hold him only for the mana. You want him to divorce me.”

Rachel came quickly to her feet. “Atetou, no, why would I want to do that? Be reasonable—”

“I am reasonable. I see you plain. You want him to divorce so he will be free for you. That is the truth. You think of you and not of me, and you are against me.”

“Oh, Atetou, no—no—”

“I see your face and I know the truth. Do what you will but do not bother me.”

Hastily, Rachel followed her to the door, took her arm to restrain her. Atetou shook free. She opened the door, and hurried away.

Rachel intended to call after her, but she did not. Closing the door, she remembered that it had been this way at the Hierarchy. She had meant to reject Moreturi’s name, and had not. Then she knew why, and she shivered. Through some gift of instinct, Atetou had caught a glimpse of Rachel’s subconscious, and had seen what Rachel had refused to see—that Rachel was competing with her for her husband—that Rachel was trying to help herself but neither of them.

Rachel remained beside the door, ill with self-loathing.

Long minutes later, when her emotions had been flogged back into place, and reason reigned, she was able to make her decision. She must wipe her hands of those two, forever. She would go to Hutia and the other women and men of the Hierarchy and turn the case back to them.

As a field investigator, she would be a failure. As a woman, she would not be a fool.

* * *

For more than a half-hour, in the waning afternoon, Tom Courtney had been taking Maud and Claire on a tour of the communal nursery.

The nursery consisted of four rooms—actually, one airy hall seventy feet in length divided by three partitions—and these were sparsely furnished except for rods of bamboo, blocks of wood, carved representations in miniature of adults and of canoes, cheap toys Rasmussen had brought in from Tahiti, refreshment bowls of fruit, all intended to occupy the youngsters.

Several children between the ages of two and seven bounced in and out of the rooms, active and noisy, supervised by two young women (mothers who volunteered to serve a week at a time). According to Courtney, attendance was not compulsory. Youngsters were deposited here or came here as they desired it or as their mothers wished it. There was no rigid program. Sometimes the youngsters undertook a project or sang or danced in a group, with instruction, but for the most they did as they pleased. Juvenile anarchy reigned.

Courtney had explained that originally old Daniel Wright hoped to introduce a radical system, rooted in Plato, whereby the newly born were taken from their parents and raised with other newly born. Since identities would be merged, parents would be required to love all children as their own. However, this dream broke down when it came up against the Sirens’ strict incest tabu. Wright’s plan, if put in effect, might have been responsible for brother and sister marrying one another, in later years, without knowing their blood relationship. The very thought was abhorrent to the Polynesians. Courtney had quoted Briffault as saying that it was not a moral sense that made incest unacceptable to the natives. Rather, the tabu existed for ancient mystical reasons, and because, subconsciously, mothers loved their sons and wanted to stave off the competition of their daughters.

In the end, old Daniel Wright had given the Polynesians their way, and had never been sorry, since their system attained his own ideal by less drastic means. Wright’s only major contribution to the raising of children on the Sirens had been the communal nursery, which had survived to the present day.

While the three of them observed the children playing in the last of the rooms, Maud and Courtney discussed the merits of the Spock and Gesell disciplines as compared to those on the Sirens.

Claire, half listening to the two, half observing the recreational activity in the room, had retreated into herself, her mind reviving recent resentments against Marc for keeping her childless.

She became aware of Courtney, so gangling, moving toward the door. “Let’s have a look outside,” he was saying. “The kids usually play in here when it’s too hot outside, or during rainy spells. Most of the time they’re out in the back, romping around like little savages.”

Claire and Maud followed him through the open door into the unkempt grassy court. Neither fence nor wall guarded the area. Instead, the three open sides were bounded in a haphazard pattern by trees and bushes. Except for a few strays skipping and throwing, most of the children outside were gathered about the first rising of what would soon be their own playhouse, each contributing to the construction of the dwarfed hut of bamboo stalks and leaves. Claire watched for a while, then found herself alone. Courtney had brought Maud to the wide shaded arc beneath the leafy umbrella of an ancient tree. Maud settled to the turf slowly, like a dirigible. Courtney flopped down beside her. In a moment, Claire had joined them on the turf, stretching luxuriously.

Claire knew that Courtney was scrutinizing her, not the children, but she pretended that she did not notice. Yet, conscious of him, she tried to arrange herself as gracefully as possible, like Canova’s reclining Paulina Bonaparte in the Villa Borghese. Continuing contact with the self-exiled Chicago attorney had not dulled Claire’s interest in him. Despite his one revelation to her of his past, twelve days earlier, he still remained an enigma in Claire’s eyes. Not once since that time had he spoken at such length about himself. Occasionally, like a player at the end of a stud poker game, he would turn up information one card at a time, exasperatingly, so that she would receive a single autobiographical fact, the clue to only a small insight into him. He had settled into the role of combination guide and mentor, and when his audience came too close, he held its members off with banter or cynicism.

Suddenly, she decided to let him know that she knew she was being observed. She met his eyes frankly, without a smile. But he smiled. “I was just watching you,” he said. He spoke past Maud, as if Maud were not there, which in a sense she was not, for she was concentrating on the play of the youngsters. “You have the same kind of curling-cat grace as the little girls out here,” he said.