Authors: Irving Wallace
Again, she had cause for gratefulness. He was seated on the mat ting, in the center of the room, his long curved back toward her. His arms encircled his knees, and his head hung low. He remained in this posture for what seemed an eternity—five minutes, perhaps—and gradually, uncontrollably, Rachel felt pity for him. She wanted to reach out, touch him, comfort him. She wanted to be beside him, speaking soothingly to him. As an analyst, she had heard much of the animal desire in men, and understood it, and understood the iron bands of repression and frustration. Then her position as onlooker, espionage agent, overwhelmed her, and she was suffused in shame.
She intended to whisper to Nanu that they must leave, but before she could do so, there was a sound of footsteps inside the hut.
She heard Atetou’s small voice, although Atetou could not be seen. “You did not go, Moreturi?”
His head came around, and whatever he saw made his black eyes dilate. “No—no—I did not go.”
“You still want your Atetou?”
“I must love,” he said fiercely.
“Then come to me.” Her voice was fading, as she returned to the bedroom. “I wait.”
Before Rachel could close him from sight, Moreturi had come to his feet and turned toward her. Rachel felt the tremor in her arms and across her chest, watched hypnotically as the huge naked aroused animal crossed the room, left her vision and the room.
Rachel’s gaze remained fixed on the vacated room, and she hated Atetou and swore she would not be a witness to Atetou’s triumph. Then, Rachel started at the first sound from the bedroom. It came from Atetou’s throat, and it was not restrained. It was a female cry of pain, comingled with pleasure, and the cry melted into a drawn-out groan.
Rachel felt her stomach rise into her throat, and she began to choke. She tore herself from the wall, batted down the old crone’s grasping hand that was trying to bring her to the bedroom. Rachel whirled toward Narmone, plunged past him, almost bowling him over, fell down to her knees, groping for the exit that would liberate her. Something gave, the door swung high, and Rachel, intending to rise but still crawling, was out of the false wall, free of the Hierarchy, free of the copulating beasts.
She staggered to her feet, and ran into the compound, and not until she reached the stream did she halt. She stood over the water, between the torches, disheveled and panting.
After a while, her heart ceased pounding, and her trembling disappeared. Atetou’s outcry no longer resounded against her eardrums, and she was able to sit down on the slight embankment, relatively calm. She located a cigarette, and smoked, and tried to erase from mind the memory of the recent experience. What had driven her to this, and this place? How she longed to be home, a housewife drab, in a cottage without false walls, in a community without a Hierarchy, in the security of the title that could be Mrs. Joseph Morgen. But that was impossible, too. She was too smart to expect to find such a refuge. She could not escape her skin. She was she.
It was ten minutes later when the pair came across the compound to stand over her.
“They sleep,” the old woman said. “Our work for the first night is ended.” Nanu cocked her head at Rachel. “Why did you leave in such a way?”
Rachel rose, brushing the dust from her skirt. “I began to get a coughing spell,” she said. “I had to leave before I gave us all away. It would have been awful. So I ran out, where I could cough and have fresh air.”
Nanu contemplated her, apparently unconvinced. “I understand,” she said. “I hope the evening was instructive.”
“Yes—yes, it was,” said Rachel. “Actually, it is more in Dr. Maud Hayden’s line. She will be taking over tomorrow.”
“You had better have some sleep,” Nanu said. “We all need sleep now.”
Rachel nodded, and walked with them a short distance, and then parted from them and went on alone. There were still lights and music and the sounds of voices in the Marc Hayden hut, but she hardly noticed. She was very tired, too tired to enter the experience either in her journal or in her clinical notes. By tomorrow, she would have probably forgotten the details, so she would not bother to enter them then, either. At least, she hoped she would not. She wanted total recall in her patients. She wanted none of it in herself.
* * *
It was after midnight. The second anniversary party of the Haydens had ended a half-hour before, with the departure of Paoti, Hutia, Courtney, and finally Matty. The cook and servant, Aimata, a tall sinewy, unsmiling native woman in her late thirties, had cleaned the earth oven and the front room and left ten minutes ago.
Marc Hayden was alone, at last, in the front room of his hut. Claire had gone into the back, with their presents, to undress for bed. Marc was grateful for a respite of solitude, but he was uncomfortable. The room was clammy, humid, foul with the lingering smoke of the oven, the cigarettes, the candlenuts Claire had used in place of the lamp. There was a faint odor of whiskey in the air. He had drunk too much, everyone had drunk too much. Instead of feeling light and cheerful, he felt sodden and dispirited. He felt waterlogged, whiskey-logged.
He shuffled aimlessly about the dank room. His clothes were sticky. He tore off his necktie, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off and dropped it on the floor. This was better. He loosened the belt of his gray slacks one notch, went to the front door, opened it, and sat on the stoop, trying to revive himself with fresh air. He scanned the empty, dark compound, automatically bringing out his last bent cigar, biting off the end, and lighting it. He puffed and puffed, and still felt wretched. He tried to review the events of the eventless evening, but found trouble concentrating. The whiskey had numbed his brain. Nevertheless, he was able to resurrect a few of the better or worse moments.
Everyone appeared to have an enjoyable time, except Marc. It was to be, Claire had decided, a thoroughly American evening, an oddity for Paoti and Hutia, a nostalgia for Courtney, a good digestive interlude for Matty, a bit of auld lang syne for the young married celebrants. There were Scotch and bourbon highballs from the team’s imported stock, and there were Vivaldi, Gershwin, Stravinsky from the portable tape. Claire cooked the canned vegetable soup, canned chicken, canned fruit dessert, and Aimata served each course. There were toasts from Courtney and Matty, which Marc accepted with forced smiles. There were elaborate recollections by Claire of her first meetings and courting period with Marc, all over-romantic (for she was high with drink), which irritated Marc. There were grave questions about American marriage from Paoti, which Marc intended to answer but which Matty and Claire answered before him.
The anniversary presents were opened after dinner by Claire. There was a piece of native sculpture—it resembled something pre-Colombian—from the Paoti Wrights. There was an ancient Sirens feasting bowl from that bastard Courtney. There was a Polaroid camera, brought along for this occasion, from Matty. There was from Claire to Marc, with love, all old sins and omissions forgiven this anniversary night, so with love, a tooled-leather cigar case, expensive, attractive. There was from Marc to Claire, there was nothing, absolutely nothing.
He had forgotten to shop before leaving home. He had forgotten to dig up something here on the Sirens, because his mind was not on Claire or on their damn anniversary. He pulled it off well, though, he thought, and the crestfallen look on Claire’s face was fleeting. He had ordered something for her from Los Angeles, a secret, a surprise, and it had not come in time. It would be waiting for her when they returned home. He preferred not to identify it tonight. That would spoil the fun of it. Claire had displayed her pleasure with a quick, Scotch-scented kiss, but beyond Claire’s puckered lips Marc caught a glimpse of his mother’s bland face. He knew that she knew the truth. Well, damn her, he thought, damn her and all X-ray machines that gave no approval, only trouble.
After that, there survived in his mind but three fragments of the conversation. The rest had floated away on whiskey. Three fragments of no consequence.
Fragment one.
He was making another drink, another drink, and Claire was beside him, complaining in an undertone. Probably about the drink. “What are you, Carrie Nation or somethin’?” he said to her, yes, it was about the another drink, and he said exactly that.
She said, “We’re all drinking, but I don’t want you passing out on our anniversary, darling.”
“Yes, wife” he said, and finished making the drink. He had taken a swallow, when Courtney joined them.
Courtney said, “Well, Dr. Hayden, I hear you’re participating in our festival, entering the swimming contest.”
Marc said, “Who told you?”
Courtney said, “Tehura told me. If it’s true, I feel I should caution you, one red-blooded American to another, it’s a rugged go. You may be out of your league.”
Marc said, “Don’t you worry about me. I’m a fish in the water. I can beat those monkeys with one arm tied behind me.” His eyes narrowed at Courtney. “I heard you entered a couple of times.”
Courtney said, “Twice, to my regret. Never again. It’s a big dive and long haul, and unless you’re built the way they are, there’s no chance. I ached for weeks after.”
Marc said, “You’re you and I’m me. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Claire said, “Where tomorrow, Marc? What are you two talking about?”
Marc said, “The big sports event that kicks off the festival. A swimming contest tomorrow. I’m in it.”
Claire said, “Oh no, Marc—but why?—you’re not a schoolboy any more—contests, my God—why are you in it, Marc?”
Marc wanted to say, said it only in his head, “Because I’m after a real piece of tail, honey, not a castration artist like you.” Marc said aloud, “Participant observation, wife, the key to field anthropology. You know all about that, don’t you, wife? Isn’t that why you showed the natives your tits the night of Paoti’s feast?”
Claire flushed crimson, and Marc felt better as he lurched away to ask the others if they needed refills.
Fragment two.
Doctor Matty, good ol’ Whistler’s Mother Matty, with her usual oral diarrhea, bending ears, noisily talking and talking, still talking to Paoti and Hutia when he served her a fresh drink.
“Matty,” he interrupted maliciously, “here’s your drink, getting cold.”
Matty shot him a skewer look, half turned her back to him, to ignore his rude tone, and went on, while Marc, reduced to inferior sonhood, stood lamely listening.
“For years,” Matty said to Paoti, “the big problem with science—I include social science—in our countries was that it could not communicate itself to the masses below, who had no preparation, no understanding, yet whose support was needed. It was not enough to come up with a Theory of Evolution or a Theory of Relativity. One was required to explain it, filter it down to the broad base of the uninformed for their approval, because without approval there would be no interest in and financing of basic research. Today, in America, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, everywhere, science is understanding this, and finding a way to communicate itself popularly, and therefore receiving more support.”
Marc watched Matty-Maud-Mother sip her drink, and heard her go on. “We in the field of anthropology have been especially successful in getting across our findings. We are learning to speak the language of our people. I, personally, have always been fanatically interested in writing to be read by everyone, to be read widely and understood. I believe in having a commercial publisher bring out my work; even when it is technical, I always prefer a commercial publisher to a university press. Now, some anthropologists resent those of us who publish for popular consumption. I have been called a self-publicist and a drum-beater. I have been castigated for running pieces in nonprofessional magazines. The hard core who believe only in their own journals and in university presses feel that money and reputation are external to anthropology. They feel an anthropologist should be a scientist, and not a writer or popularizer. Some are sincere. But most of the resentment is motivated by sheer envy. And also by intellectual arrogance and snobbery. My own position, Chief Paoti, is that I don’t want to limit my study of the Sirens only to my friends and enemies down the hall. I want everyone to know about it, and to be wiser for it.”
Woozily, Marc continued to watch her and listen with wonder. His mother was not a puddly mom at all, he told himself, she was a Force of Nature, with the grandeur of a Juggernaut. Paoti had spoken something to her, which Marc had missed, and then he saw that Matty was nodding, smiling, and resuming.
“Yes, that too,” she said. “We are what we are. What drew me into anthropology was that it was a field that I understood, a science that encompassed all mankind, and one that I could popularize. You see, the obscurities of science, which I might understand but others would not, interest me less than the living drama of science. I’ll tell you what interests my mentality. It interests me that the gill arches of ancient fish are still part of the human ear apparatus—how dramatic, this carry-over from the past. It interests me that fossilized sea shells and sea creatures are now found impressed in the strata of inland mountains, hundreds of miles from open water—another living link. It interests me that there still swims in the ocean off South Africa a fish known as the Coelacanth, a fossil fish that was swimming there fifty million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the shores—the dinosaurs are extinct but the Coelacanth is alive. It interests me that the bright star we see shining outside this window is sending light to us that began traveling toward us a thousand years ago, so that message of light there, the one we see now, first began shining and traveling toward us when the Saracens were destroying the Venetian fleet and Constantine was an emperor. It interests me that you, Chief Paoti, hidden from the world, enforce a set of standards first created almost two centuries ago. That is the science I value—understand—the science that makes my blood tingle—and in those terms I try to enlighten the world around me, no matter what some of my colleagues may think of me.”