Authors: Irving Wallace
“Don’t waste amenities on me, Tom. You know I’d be pleased.” She indicated the platform. “When does the show begin?”
“Right after this Sirens version of the fanfare. Then Nurse Harriet, Queen of the Festival, appears to open the proceedings.”
“Nurse Harriet Unsheathed,” Claire stated, as if reading a headline. “Well, if she’s not embarrassed, I’m not. In fact, I can’t wait.”
“She’s not. I’ve seen her backstage, so to speak. The Sirens men are attached to her like barnacles.”
Claire suddenly smiled. “I just remembered again—who am I to talk?—after my strip-tease that first night here, Tehura and I at Paoti’s dinner.”
There was a flicker on Courtney’s face that was not pain so much as concern. He said resolutely, “As I told you before, the rite of friendship was natural, just as this will be.”
She was going to say, Tell Marc. Instead, she swallowed the words, withdrew, and pretended to concentrate on the platform before them.
There was activity on the platform. The music had ceased, but left no void of silence, for the babble of voices all around hummed and sang in the warm night. Two native boys, carrying a bench that resembled a high square coffee table, were climbing onto the platform. With great care, they centered the bench on the stage. Then, like twins crouching, they accepted from outstretched hands below a gigantic bowl, which they handled gingerly, for it was filled to the brim with liquid, and they placed this bowl on the middle of the bench.
As they hopped off the huge dais, two more natives ascended it, grown men, sleekly handsome, and one Claire recognized as the swimmer who had humbled Marc. And as they came to their full height, Claire realized that they had helped a young woman up on the stage between them, and the young woman was Harriet Bleaska, Queen of the Festival.
Apparently, Harriet had been rehearsed, for she moved with practiced assurance. When she advanced toward the bench, away from the ring of flame, and sat down, Claire was able to make her out plainly.
“My God,” murmured Claire.
Harriet’s cinnamon mouse bangs and long hair were festooned with a garland of tiara blossoms. Hung low from her bumpy hips, covering her from an inch or two below her navel, was a flaring green grass skirt no more than eighteen inches in length. What held Claire’s attention first was the unrelieved whiteness of her in this setting, and next, the oval of space between her thighs curving inward to knock-knees. Nothing on her body moved as she went in regally measured steps to the bench, and the reason that nothing moved was a preponderance of unfeminine flat planes in her figure and the lack of protuberant mammaries. If one strained, one could make out nipples that seemed pinned to her like brown clasps or broaches, and only when she half-turned to sit on the bench did one see the tentative swell of bosom. Nevertheless, such was the dignity of her bearing, the delight in her narrow gray eyes and wide mouth, that her unsightly features and physique seemed again to transmute into comeliness before the eye, and lo, Miss Hyde was Miss Jekyll.
Claire could hear the slit drums and the flute, and a kind of hurrahing all about, as the ceremony opening the festival began. The swimming champion, the sturdy humbler of Marc, had dipped a coconut half-shell into the bowl, and handed the spilling drink to Harriet. She accepted it like a love potion, rising with it and toasting the members of her team and the natives behind them. Then she drank. Next, she moved to another side of the square bench, sat, stood up, toasted the villagers on that side, and drank again. And so she went around the bench, toasting and drinking, to the accompanying roar of the entire adult Sirens population.
By the time Harriet had returned to her original place on the bench, Claire became conscious of a new and nearer activity. Older women of the village, in pairs, were hurrying up and down the aisles, one partner passing out clay cups, the other filling the cups with palm juice from a tureen.
Presently, everyone had been served, and Harriet was standing once more, flanked by her native escorts, surrounded by the animated musicians. Harriet held her coconut cup aloft, and revolved her long whiteness and brown broaches majestically to booming acclaim, and then she drank deeply.
Claire looked down to find Courtney touching his clay cup to her own. “With this drink,” she thought she heard him say, “the Saturnalia begins.”
Obediently, she did as he did, and drank. The liquid went down warmish and sweet, conjuring to mind the first night on the island when she had become inebriated on kava and this palm juice. Courtney winked at her and gulped again, and once more she did as he did, except this time the toddy was not warmish and sweet but smooth as an old whiskey. She continued to drink, until the clay cup was empty, and the effect upon her was incredibly swift. The effect of the liquid, as best she could comprehend, was to blot up and absorb from her head, especially behind the temples, and from her arms and chest, anxiety, apprehension, clotting memories of the past, be the past an hour ago or a year ago. What remained was the head-spinning present.
When she turned away from Courtney, she found the two older native women before her, one taking the cup from her hand, the other holding out the tureen. And then Claire had her cup back, again full to the top with the remarkable fluid.
Another drink, and she raised her head and pointed it to the stage. At first, she could not see clearly, and she realized that between her and the platform crouched Sam Karpowicz. His white shirt was pasted to his back by perspiration, his neck was pink, and his eye was fastened to a Leica.
She shifted her position closer to Courtney to see what Sam was shooting. What Sam saw through his view finder, she now saw: Harriet Bleaska, flower garland askew, grass skirt slipping precariously, waving her now unfilled coconut cup as she paraded, pranced really, before the alignment of male and female dancers, who beat their hands and stamped to her impromptu gyrations. Claire could make out Lisa Hackfeld, wearing bra and red pareu, among the dancers in the background. Lisa’s gray-streaked blond hair was in Medusa disarray, and her fleshy arms and shapely legs in constant animation.
The entire unrestrained scene, Claire thought, had the curiously old-fashioned quality of an early talking motion picture about errant daughters and boozing young blades of the roaring twenties. Or better, it all seemed a moment out of Tully’s
A Bird of Paradise
, circa 1911, with Laurette Taylor doing the hula dance. It is not to be believed, Claire thought. But there it was, it was, indeed.
A sudden altercation, almost lost in the noise, removed Claire’s attention from the platform. Sam Karpowicz, who had been before her, had crawled to his left, crouched low, going crabwise, to stamp better the half-nude Harriet Bleaska for posterity on his Leica film. His position, shooting upwards, was directly before Maud, Rachel DeJong, and Orville Pence. Unexpectedly, Orville, his partially bald cranium yellow in the torchlight, his shell-rimmed spectacles jumping on his sniffing clerical nose, had come to his feet, bounded forward, and roughly taken Sam Karpowicz by the shoulder, throwing the photographer off balance.
Sam looked up, his long face unnaturally livid. “What the hell! You made me lose the best shot—”
“I want to know what you are taking pictures of—of what are you taking pictures?” Orville was demanding, his words dragging themselves through palm juice.
“Chrissakes, Pence, what do you think I’m taking pictures of? I’m shooting the festival, the dance—”
“You’re shooting Miss Bleaska’s bosom, that is what you are doing. I say it is highly improper.”
Sam screamed incredulity. “What?”
“You are supposed to record the activities of the natives, not the shameful excesses of one of our own. What will people back home say when they see these pictures of an American girl exposing herself up there, without decency—”
“Chrissakes, now we got Anthony Comstock to deal with. Look, Pence, you attend to your knitting and let me do mine. Now, don’t bother me.”
He pulled away, determined to ignore Pence, and focused his Leica upon Harriet Bleaska once more. She loomed overhead, laughing and pounding her palms together, shaking her shoulders and brown broaches, grinding her hips, waving in response to the cheers breaking out of the semidarkness.
As Sam froze her to his film, Orville grasped the photographer’s shoulder a second time, in another effort to censor this obscene outrage.
“Cut it out!” Sam roared, and he lav his free hand against Orville’s profile and shoved him away. The push sent Orville reeling backwards and down, to land ludicrously on his haunches. He regained his feet, trembling, and might have started for the photographer again, had not Maud risen and planted her authoritative mass in his path.
“Orville, please, please, Sam is only doing his job.”
For a moment, Orville tried to find words, found none, then gestured toward the stage, and the gesture was a fist. “It’s her—that disgraceful performance up there—”
“Please, Orville, all the villagers are—”
“I will not endure another minute of this—this revolting spectacle. I’m shocked that you condone it, Maud. I had better not say more. I bid you good night.”
With a snort, he yanked his tie into place, stuffed the tail of his shirt into his trousers, and marched off into the crowd. Maud was openly perturbed, when next Claire could see her face. Maud surveyed all of them, and, muttering “Some people should not drink,” sat down beside Rachel to try to enjoy the remainder of the dance.
For fleeting seconds, the altercation dwelt in Claire’s mind. Strange, strange, she thought, what our coming here seems to be doing to some of us. The island has a spell that accents our weakest and worst qualities: Orville, bloodless at home, heated with indignation here; Sam Karpowicz, amiable at home, furious here; Marc, serious and withdrawn at home, angry and cruel here. And me. Claire, so—well, whatever—at home, and so—well, dammit, enough of that, I’m going to drink—here.
She drank. She and Courtney drank. Everyone drank. Sometimes she saw the stage, and the undulating dancers, weaving and swaying, behind the torches. Sometimes Lisa Hackfeld dominated the stage, as gay. as abandoned as Nurse Harriet, who had disappeared with her entourage, Lisa of Omaha not Beverly Hills, Lisa of rediscovered youth exorcising the demons of matronage.
Claire knew not how much time had passed, nor how many pourings of palm juice had filled her cup, but faintly, she was hearing Courtney’s voice. She knew it beckoned her from above, for he was standing, and all around, others were standing, yet she remained seated. Then he was bending down, and lifting her as easily feather pillow to her feet.
“Everyone’s dancing,” he was saying in her ear. “Want to dance?”
Her bleary eyes gave consent, and she had his hand, and then some native man’s hand, and there was this circle of people, and in they went like red Indians whooping and kicking, and backwards they went shouting and laughing, and all around there were these circles. And now their circle broke into smaller ones, and Claire felt set free in the melee, throwing oft her sandals, letting her hair fly loose, allowing her hips to swing-a-ring-a-ding.
Then there was no more circle at all, only Tom Courtney, and the torches were further away, and the music, too. She could not find .Maud or Sam. Briefly, she had a glimpse of Rachel DeJong walking with some native, and here and there she could see, as she clung to Courtney, spun round and round with him, she could see native couples dancing, everyone dancing everywhere.
Her legs were jelly, she knew, and even though Courtney held her, she stumbled, and lurched deeply into his arms. She was caught by his arms, and lay her head, panting and exhausted, against his chest … and then it was almost like that other time, coming up from the lake front in Chicago, in Alex’s arms, drowsing against his chest … yet now it was different, hearing as she did the pounding of Courtney’s heart, and listening to the pounding of her own, and not knowing about his, but knowing about hers, knowing the hammering came not from the exertion of the dance … yes, it was different, for Alex’s chest meant Being Loved, which was safety, and this strange tall man’s chest meant … something else, something unknown, and what was unknown was dangerous.
She managed to extricate herself, tear herself away. She did not look up at him. She said, “I’ve been overmatched, like my husband.” Then she said, “Thanks for a good time, Tom. Please take me home.”
* * *
Only when they were in the narrow canoe, and he was thrusting the paddle rhythmically into the silver sheen covering the black water, sliding them through the hushed channel a world away from the populated large island and closer to the nearer coral atoll, did Rachel DeJong sober ever so slightly. She considered ordering him to stop, to stop and turn around, to stop and turn around and take her back to her civilized friends and civilization.
She had meant to verbalize her change of mind, but seeing Moreturi’s smiling face in the semidarkness, and the bulging and easing of his biceps as he sank the paddle into the channel waters, she knew that she could not speak what she felt. Her instinct told her that her voice would be the sound of fear. She recalled: you did not show fear to an animal; any weakness gave the beast ascendancy over you. She was still Rachel DeJong, M.D., trained into superiority, master of human destiny, hers, his, and forever in control of any situation. And so she maintained her silence in collaboration with that of the night.
Once more, she realized that she was deeply seated in the hollow of a canoe, legs stretched before her. She had never in her life been in a canoe before. She wondered why not. She reasoned that it was because canoes were so fragile—what kept them afloat? what kept an airplane aloft?—and she always imagined that they rolled over, and you went to a watery grave like that poor thing in the Dreiser book—yes, Roberta Alden—but that had been a rowboat, had it not?—and Clyde had hit her with his camera. Well, this was a canoe and she could see that Moreturi was born in one. His canoes would never tip over.
She tried to relax in the sliver of hollowed log that held her between the sweet night air and the cool water. What did one do in a canoe? One played a guitar, banjo—heavens, how that dated her—so, what else? One trailed one’s hand in the water. Rachel DeJong lifted a limp hand and dropped it over the low side into the swiftly passing water. The water was sensuous, and seemed to enter her pores, course upwards through her arm and across her shoulders and around her heart cavity. She could see Moreturi peering at her, as he worked the paddle, and she feared that his observation of her well-being might give him another view of weakness, and so she closed her eyes, so that he could not read anything in them.