The Three Sirens (79 page)

She was suddenly furious. “That’s right, Marc. He said they positively do not steal. There’s never been a case in their history. They know nothing of such misbehavior. They do not covet another’s material possessions.”

Marc’s mind went to Tehura, the fallible, and he felt like throwing her at Claire, but he did not. “Your fuggin’ Courtney seems to know everything,” he said. “His word is always better than mine.”

“About the Sirens, yes. Because he’s open-minded and sensible. You’re so full of prejudices—”

“Prejudices aren’t automatically bad,” he snapped. “I have mine, and one of them is that I’m prejudiced against failures who blame their failure on everything but themselves. Your lawyer in Chicago couldn’t make it in big time, so he ran away, and here he’s a hot-shot frog in a small pond of primitive illiterates. He pontificates against everything we know is good, our country, our system, our customs. Rut everything here, in this nothing place where he’s somebody at last, that’s perfect, that’s great—”

“Oh, God, stop it, Marc, he’s not like that, and you know it.”

“And speaking of prejudices, I have another. That’s against wives who are so damn hostile to their husbands that they side with everyone else against their husbands, in ideas, discussions, everything. Privately, they take their husbands’ money and homes and status, but they chip away at their men in public.”

“Are you referring to me?”

“I’m referring to you and plenty of women like you. Thank the Lord they’re not the only women on earth. There are other women who are proud of their men.”

“Maybe they have reason to be,” she said, her voice rising. “Maybe they’re married to real men. How do you treat me? How do you behave to me? When was the last time you came to bed with me? Or paid me the least bit of attention? Or treated me like your wife?”

“A woman gets what she deserves,” he said, with slurred viciousness. “What do you do for me? A woman—”

“You won’t let me—you won’t let me be a wife.”

“Living with you isn’t living with a woman, it’s living with an Inquisitor, closing in, shoving, demanding—”

“Marc, I don’t do that to you, you do it to yourself. Marc, I want to talk about this. I’ve been watching you, not only here but at home, and I think you’re all mixed up—I won’t use the word sick, but mixed up—about yourself, your values, your attitude toward having a family, yourself and women. Just take one thing, the normal practice of a husband and wife sleeping together with some regularity, degree of desire and—”

“So that’s it. Well, I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you—a man wants to sleep with a real woman, not an obsessed little chippy with a whore’s mind—”

She teetered on the last brink of self-control. “You mean, a woman who thinks of love, being loved, has a whore’s mind? Is that what you think?”

He yanked the knapsack up and over his shoulder with a savage motion. “I think you’ve been riding me long enough, two years long, and that’s enough. You make me want to throw up, and that means throwing you up, too. If I’m sick, it’s that I’m sick to the gut of you and the guilts you try to saddle me with—”

“Marc, I’m only trying to work it out.”

“You’re trying to justify what you’ve really got in that cheap nooky mind of yours. Have you ever looked at one of the natives here from the waist up? No, you’re trying to justify getting into the sack with every big brown—”

“Damn you!” She swung at him, and her palm resounded against his cheek.

Automatically, with his free hand, he struck back, the side of his hand catching her on the mouth and chin. The strength of his blow sent her reeling, but she maintained her balance, rubbing her mouth in mute shock.

“I’ve had enough of you for the rest of my life!” he shouted. “Just stay out of my way!”

With the knapsack, he strode to the door.

“Marc,” she cried after him, “unless you apologize, I’ll never—”

But then no one was there. She wavered, eyes full, and made a conscious effort not to dignify the scene and his insanity with her tears. When she removed her hand from her mouth, she saw that there were spots of bright red blood on her fingers.

Slowly, she started for the jar of water in the rear room. Unaccountably, Harriet Bleaska’s words of yesterday came to her mind. Harriet, beset by her own dilemma, had said to Claire, “Orville seems to me so much like your Marc, maybe you can tell me what it would be like with such a man. Can you, Claire?” At the time, she could not. This moment, she wished that she had. But perhaps Harriet would not be such a fool as she.

* * *

Harriet Bleaska, in her white nurse’s uniform, strode back and forth across the front room of her hut, constantly flicking the ash from her cigarette, constantly wondering if she had been a nincompoop. Heretofore, at this hour, which was the last of the morning, she was always famished. Now, she was not famished at all. Her belly was filled with a gravestone, and it was not clear to her, but quite possibly the stone was etched with the word
folly
.

She had made her decision after breakfast, and hastily written the brief note accepting his proposal of marriage. No more than a minute or two before, she had sent off the note with a native boy. By now it was beyond recall. Momentarily, it would be received, read, and shortly afterwards the recipient would be at her door, in her room—her husband-to-be!—and the die would be cast. Forever after, her life would be a different life, her will bent to another’s, her personality and history submerged beneath another’s, her single Bleaskaness evaporated into thin air for all eternity. It was the merger and change that she had longed for since adolescence, and yet, now that it was upon her, the mutation struck her with terror.

Then, more coolly, as she lighted a fresh cigarette of! the old one, she realized that what engulfed her with terror was not this drastic altering of her life, but rather, the continuing worry about whether she had or had not made her choice wisely and well. How many young women had such radically different suitors from whom to select a legal mate? Did anyone, anywhere, ever have to decide between two men so dissimilar and between living conditions so contrasting?

One last time, before giving up her Bleaskaness along with her isolation behind The Mask, she reviewed the men and what they offered side by side. Roaming the room again, smoking steadily, she examined the good and the bad of being the wife of Vaiuri, half-Polynesian, half-English medical practitioner on The Three Sirens, and of being the wife of Dr. Orville Pence, ail-American, all-somebody’s-son, ethnologist from Denver, Colorado.

Harriet made her nurse notes with nurse brevity in her head.

Vaiuri’s assets: he is physically attractive, he is intelligent, he is interested in what I am interested in, he is probably a good lover like all of them here, he would appreciate my skill at this, he would want many children and so do I, he has a wonderful family and fine friends, he would see that I never starve or need, he loves me.

Vaiuri’s liabilities: he is possibly too serious and dogged about everything, he lacks my formal education, he has no high ambition because there is no incentive here, he will cheat on me every year during the festival, he will sometimes feel I’m inferior because I am all white.

The Three Sirens’ assets: it is like a perpetual summer resort, I can be myself here, I will have no pressure, I am beautiful here.

The Three Sirens’ liabilities: I can’t show off my husband to my old friends, no baby showers, no Cokes, no House Beautiful, no television programs, it’s so far from—from what?

Orville Pence’s assets: he is a successful American, he wants me for his wife.

Orville Pence’s liabilities: I can’t imagine him undressed, he’s a spinster type, he’s a two-minute man for sure, he has a sister, he has a MOTHER, he’ll lecture me, he’ll allow us one child maybe, he’s something of a bore, he’s something of a prude, he’ll give me only pin money, he’ll make me feel he did me a favor, he’ll make me join the Faculty Wives’ Club and vote Republican, I can’t imagine him undressed.

Denver’s assets: it is an American city.

Denver’s liabilities: it is an American city. P.S., inhabited by a MOTHER.

Oh, damn, she thought, if only there were a computing machine to solve these problems and guarantee the correctness of the result. There is no such machine, she thought, and there was no one to give me real advice, not Maud, not Claire, not Rachel. It was left to me, and now it is done. Did I do right?

She put a third cigarette between her lips, pressed the butt of the burning one to it, drew, then discarded the butt. She walked. Back and forth she walked. Had she done right? She evoked the bad years, which were most of the years. How ill-used she had been. Always, always, she had offered her body as an apology for The Mask. She had only wanted to belong, but she never had, except now and then, temporarily, but out of sight.

Yes, she decided, yes, yes, yes. She had made the right decision.

She had come to this reassurance, even as she heard the rapping on her cane door.

She crushed her unfinished cigarette into the shell ashtray, quickly patted her impossible hair, licked her endless lips to rid them of any tobacco flake, and called out, “Please come in!”

He bolted into the room, then stood there, eyes wide with nervous uncertainty.

“I got your note,” he was saying. “You said to come at once. You said you had good news. Is it what I think it is?”

“I’ve thought it over, and I’ve made up my mind. I’ll be proud to be Airs. Orville Pence.”

It surprised her a little, and delighted her very much, to see the relief reflected in his face.

“Harriet,” he said, “this is the happiest moment of my entire life.”

“Mine, too,” she said.

“We’ll announce it at Maud’s luncheon today.”

She swallowed. “Orville, aren’t you going to kiss the bride?”

As he came stiffly toward her, she remembered, for the last time, the sacrifice that she had made. Forever, she had forsaken the chance to be beautiful—would he ever know that?—because she was the heiress to all those damn shadowed ancestors she had never known, who had shaped the placenta that produced her for this final conformity.

And when he awkwardly embraced her, like a missionary welcoming his flock, she became aware that he smelled of soap and all Presbyterian cleanliness. He kissed her. Liability: she felt no passion. Asset: she felt so safe. Then she kissed him back, perhaps too fervently, for after all, it was no small thing to be Mrs. Pence and to belong.

After a while, she gave an involuntary sigh.

A life of unceasing gratefulness, she knew, had just begun.

* * *

From his place of partial concealment, behind the several coco palm trees that fronted the steep path leading out of the village, Marc Hayden could keep an eye on the comings and goings of the members of the team.

He had observed Claire leave his hut, and disappear into Matty’s office. In the fifteen minutes that followed, he had seen Rachel DeJong meet Harriet Bleaska and Orville Pence in the compound, and shake their hands, and together the three of them, in obvious high spirits, had gone into Matty’s office. Next, Lisa Hackfeld had burst forth from her residence, and hurried to Matty’s place. The only ones who had not left their hut were the only ones that he had any interest in at this moment. For some reason, Estelle and Sam Karpowicz, and their girl, had not emerged yet.

Originally, when Marc had walked out on Claire (the bitch) this morning, and taken his knapsack to hide behind Tehura’s hut, he had planned to ask Tehura to keep the Karpowiczes occupied at either the lunch or dinner hour. Since he did not dare invade Sam’s darkroom earlier, to remove photographs and reels of film, for fear that Sam would have too much time to discover that they were missing, Marc had to plan his borrowing or sharing for today. He would not allow himself to believe that taking the photographs and motion picture film was a theft. He had convinced himself that everything accomplished by members of the team, in the field, was community property, held in common. By this rationalization, Marc owned some share of the product of Sam’s cameras. If this were not so, then, at the very least, Marc had a right to borrow the product, and make copies of it for Garrity and himself, and later return the originals to Albuquerque.

Still, Marc could see that Sam Karpowicz might have objections to this arrangement. Sam had recently proved, in his explosion over his daughter’s education, how hot-tempered he could be. Not that Sam had been wrong about that. Marc felt that he would have acted in the same way as Sam under the same set of circumstances. If you gave them their heads, little sluts like Mary grew up to become big sluts like Claire. The thing to do was to catch them early, hold the reins tightly. He had been too easy with Claire, even from their lousy honeymoon night, that had been his mistake, and look how she had turned out.

Marc’s mind had wandered, and he brought it back to Sam. Yes, Sam could be difficult, and rather than contend with his unreasonableness, Marc had decided to remove what he required from the darkroom in secrecy, and no fuss about it. The problem was getting into the darkroom today when none of the Karpowiczes were home. His morning’s plan to have his collaborator, Tehura, invite them to her hut for lunch or dinner had been delayed because Tehura was not in her home and so far was nowhere else to be found. Fortunately, during his search for her, Marc had run into Rachel DeJong, who was on her way to her therapy hut. They had exchanged a few inconsequential words, but in parting, Rachel had said, “Well, see you at your mother’s lunch.”

Marc had completely forgotten about Matty’s luncheon, arranged for twelve-thirty. The luncheon, Marc thought, knowing his mother as he did, would be for the purpose of morale building. The field trip had passed the halfway mark. Adley had said this was always “the critical point,” and Matty liked to quote him. This was the time when people became ragged, started to unravel in an alien place and clime. This was the time to gather them together, have them listen while their inspiring leader improved their dispositions, have their leader hear out their grievances and problems, and smooth all down to purring contentment. Oh, how good Matty was at this Kiwanis crap. Thank God that would soon be behind him.