The Three Sirens (80 page)

The reminder of this luncheon gave Marc the chance for his visit to the darkroom. He would need nothing more of Tehura until tonight. It was ironic, but Matty was his accomplice in her own downfall. He had never before seen so clearly how he was contributing to her downfall. Once he was gone, and on his way with his Garrity project, Claire (the bitch) would be crushed and Courtney dishonored. But Matty, ah, Matty would be ruined. With Marc and Garrity parading the debauchery of The Three Sirens about the lecture platforms of the United States, Matty would be left with no fresh ammunition for her American Anthropological League meeting. In fact, she would be an object of censure, a disgrace to her profession for her role in betraying a society. She would be lucky to retain her post at Raynor College. Oh, President Loomis, senile fool, would keep her on, and there let her die in the elephant’s unknown graveyard, let the two of them, Matty and Claire, grow older and older, wither and shrivel, and disappear together.

Marc awakened from his musings and became alert. He could see that Estelle and Sam Karpowicz had just emerged from their hut. They stood in the glare of the compound discussing something, before they went the five huts down to Matty’s office.

The second that they were out of sight, Marc left his concealment behind, and hurried into the compound. The Karpowicz hut was the end hut, and the nearest to him. In less than a minute, sweating, he reached it, and ducked into the side alley to the darkroom in the rear.

Passing the first window, he heard a voice, and froze to his tracks. It was unmistakably Mary Karpowicz’ voice. He had quite forgotten about her. God damn. Why wasn’t she at the luncheon? Quietly, he eased alongside the window, so that he could not be seen, and waited, wondering what he should do next. The voices inside, one Mary’s, the other a male, and from the slight accent a native male, reverberated upon his ears and infuriated him.

She said, “But if you care for me, why not, Nihau?”

He said, “You are too young.”

She said, “I’m older than your Sirens girls here.”

He said, “You are not a Sirens girl. You are different. In your country it is different.”

She said, “Not so different as you think. Nihau, I don’t believe you, I don’t believe it is only my age. Tell me why you won’t—?”

He said, “You have learned much here, Mary. You have come to adulthood. You are wiser than before. You will have very much to offer the man of your own world you find and love. It will happen soon, two years, three, four. When you find him, you will remember me and thank me. I do not want to spoil you for that. I want you to come to that at the proper time.”

She said, “You’re the kindest person, Nihau, but I don’t understand. You are making such a big thing of it, when you yourself said that on this island you are taught, as you have taught me, that it is natural and—”

He said, “Mary, you are not of this island and you will not be with us much longer. You must live and think as your parents and your own people teach you to live and think. I would love to—to engage in this thing—but I will not, because I understand you and care too much for you. That is the end of it. I will not forget you, and you must never forget what you have learned here. Now, come, we will go to my family and have our meal.”

Listening, about to mutter an obscenity at the frustration these kids had haltered him with, Marc was profoundly thankful that they had come to their senses. Quickly, he returned to the compound, going as far as the bridge. When he turned around, he could see Mary and the native boy leaving the hut. Marc started strolling casually, so that he would pass them, and as he did, he waved cheerily, and both of them waved back.

Continuing in the opposite direction from them, he slowed down near the palm trees. He glanced behind him. They had gone over a far bridge and were headed toward the row of houses. Marc watched their receding figures. In seconds, they were out of sight among the huts, and the stifling compound was empty of all life but his own.

Almost on the run, Marc returned to the Karpowicz dwelling. He scurried around it and to the rear.

The cramped, thatched shack, Sam’s darkroom, stood in solitary splendor.

Marc tried the flimsy door. It opened easily. On the threshold of riches, his mind leaped ahead. He would take a sampling of the still photographs, the most spectacular of them, and a dozen reels, the most representative of them. He would take enough, but not enough to be missed should Sam happen into the darkroom this afternoon, and not too much to carry out tonight. He would take his booty to his hut, pack and camouflage it, and carry the bundle by a circuitous route toward the Sacred Hut, then double back across the compound to Tehura’s hut. He would hide his bundle beside his knapsack, in the thick foliage nearby, until it was evening.

All this must be accomplished swiftly, before Matty’s luncheon guests disbanded.

He stepped into the darkroom, shut the door behind him, and was alone, at last, with Ali Baba’s riches.

* * *

Inside Maud Hayden’s office, an hour and a half had passed and her solidarity luncheon was almost at an end. The guests remained seated on the matting, around the long, low bench which served them as a banquet table. All members of the field team were present, with the exception of Marc Hayden and Mary Karpowicz. The one outsider who had been invited was Tom Courtney, because he was of their world as well as the other world, and he sat at the corner of the improvised table closest the door, and across from Claire.

The luncheon had begun on a note of high celebration. Orville Pence, with Harriet Bleaska on his arm, had arrived with a well-traveled bottle of bourbon. When the team had assembled, he had thumped the heavy bottle on Maud’s desk for attention. The moment that the room was stilled, he had announced his engagement to Harriet and said that they would be married and have their honeymoon in Las Vegas, Nevada, the day after returning to the United States.

Everyone, it seemed, had pumped Orville’s hand, and kissed Harriet’s cheek. Only Claire, except for favoring the pair with a smile, had remained withdrawn. Once, when Orville was pouring the bourbon for the first toast, Claire had caught the nurse’s eye. Harriet’s face had been aglow with the pleasure of being the center of all this special observance, but when she saw Claire, her smile gave way to uncertainty. Immediately, Claire had been sorry, for she knew that her own expression was one of pity, and that Harriet had read the sorrow in it. To prevent spoiling Harriet’s precious moment, Claire had forced upon her features a representation of approval, and she had winked, and made some sort of gesture of genuflection. But the passing moment of truth had not been entirely obliterated: Harriet knew, and plainly sensed that Claire knew she knew, that Claire had wished the bride-to-be had gone native.

After the toasts, there had been the luncheon, served by a lanky, rigid, impassive native woman of indeterminate years. As the woman came from the earth oven, going silently around the table with her dishes, Claire found something familiar about her. Not until the native servant was standing over her did Claire identify her. This was the one named Aimata, condemned to slavery for having murdered her husband some years ago. Aimata’s husband had been thirty-five, and since the limit of life was arbitrarily put at seventy, she had been sentenced to thirty-five years of being an outcast drudge. After that, Claire had not been able to take her eyes off the tall brown woman, and throughout the luncheon Claire’s food had stuck in her throat.

The luncheon itself had been a success. There had been coconut milk in Maud’s plastic cups, the inevitable breadfruit, yams, red bananas, and there had been taro, barbecued chicken, some sort of steamed fish, and finally an incongruous dessert of assorted cookies from Maud’s American larder.

All through the meal, as the guests sucked, chewed, swallowed, sipped, smacked their lips, Maud Hayden had talked. She had drawn steadily from her vast storehouse of anecdotes about the South Seas, about the marvels and pitfalls of anthropology. Always, she had told her stories with humor, although sometimes a moral peeked through. Claire had heard these anecdotes not once, but many times in the last two wordy years, and she was less attentive than the others. Nevertheless, despite her hatred for Maud’s progeny, Claire told herself that there was no reason to hate Maud or her anecdotes, and so like the others, like Courtney across from her, all listening, all diverted, she pretended to listen and be regaled.

Maud had told them about the peculiar notions the Marquesan natives had had of America in the early 1800s. In those days, the only knowledge the Marquesans possessed of America was from contact with the whaling men from New England who landed on their shores, and who were interested not in their artifacts or customs or society, but only in their women. With such singleness of purpose did the American sailors concentrate on the Marquesan women that it became an absolute belief in those islands that distant America was a society populated entirely and solitarily by men. In short, from their behavior, it was obvious the visitors had never seen live women before, and now that they had, they were making the most of it.

When Maud had finished, the guests had been entertained. Claire had made the only acid comment. “Maybe the Marquesans were right and are still right,” she had said. To this, Rachel DeJong had tapped her cup on the table in applause, and said, “Excellent, Claire, another truth spoken in a jest.”

But already, Maud, who was essentially humorless, had embarked on another anecdote about the primitive marriage custom known as couvade. According to this custom, when the wife was pregnant, it was the husband who went to bed. This had led to an uproar of appreciation, and then to a learned discourse on maternity customs among savages by Orville Pence.

By the time the table was cleared, Maud’s anecdotes had taken on a more serious theme, beneath their whimsical packaging. She had reminded them all of the teasing wickedness many primitive societies possessed. There had been the instance of Labillardiere, on his visit to the South Seas, trying to compile the native words for numerals. He had made his inquiries among chosen informants, and written down the words, and only after publication had he learned that the word they had given him for one million really meant not one million in their tongue but nonsense, and that the word they had given him for a half-million had not been that at all but
fornicate
.

“John Lubbock told the story first,” Maud had explained, “because he believed that field workers should keep this sort of disaster in mind when working with native informants. You must check and double check, to know whether you are getting facts or having your leg pulled.” Everyone had enjoyed the story, and had got the point. In the final weeks, all of them would be more careful, more wary, in short, more scientific.

During this, Claire had been tempted to add an anecdote of her own. Her bruised lower lip, painted deep carmine, reminded her of her own anthropologist and her exchange with him hours ago. He had said, “I’m sick to the gut of you.” Now there was the perceptive, balanced scientific approach demanded by the obese conveyor of anecdotes at the head of the table. What if Claire repeated this. Would it also regale them? She felt weak with disgust of him.

Knowing the relief of deliverance, Claire saw that the others were beginning to rise from the bench-table. She realized that Aimata had disappeared with the last of Maud’s tin plates and plastic cups. The horrid luncheon was over, or nearly over, for Sam Karpowicz was calling out, “Would any of you care to see my last week of photographs? I’ve just printed them.”

There was a chorus of assents. Claire found herself standing upright, somewhat removed from the others, between the door and the desk. She watched Sam Karpowicz explaining something to Maud, Orville, and Courtney. Then he came to the desk, opened a manila envelope, and extracted two parcels of photographs, glossy black and whites, five by seven inches, eight by ten inches, and began to remove the rubber bands that bound them. Something about the top picture troubled him, and he laid it aside, then hastily riffling through the others, he laid two more aside, and quickly slipped all three back into the envelope. Aware that Claire had observed him, Sam grinned foolishly. “Diplomacy,” he murmured. “I’d taken some of Harriet at the festival dance, you know, the bare-breasted ones—and I think a certain party here whose initials are Orville Pence might take a dim view of them now.”

Claire nodded. “Very wise,” she said.

Sam weighed his pile of photographs lovingly. “Some really good stuff here. I shot everything, even went a little corny on layouts and picture stories. You know—a typical day in the life of the Chief’s son; the development of a festival dance; the home of an average Sirens inhabitant; the eloquent history of the Sacred Hut—everything. Would you like to see some of it?”

“I’d love to,” said Claire politely.

He took a fistful of photographs and handed them to Claire. “Here, have a look. I’ll pass the others around.”

Across the room, Sam gave the rest of his photographs to Maud, who in turn relayed them to the guests grouped around her.

Claire remained where she was, isolated from the others, disinterestedly glancing at each photograph in her stack, and placing it beneath the others. She had finished with the series of posed and candid shots of the Hierarchy in solemn session, and she found herself gazing at a full-length shot of Tehura standing before the open door of her hut. Attired only in her provocative grass skirt, Tehura looked like Everyman’s dream of Polynesia. Claire could see that both Maud and Sam would do sensationally well with this set back home.

Claire continued to pick through the photographic layout of Tehura. The home of an average Sirens inhabitant, Sam had labeled this collection. Here was Tehura kneeling beside the massive stone fertility idol in the corner of her front room next to the door. Here was Tehura bent over the earth oven. Here was Tehura posing as if in slumber on the mats of her back room. Here was Tehura laying out three of her grass skirts and two of her tapa-cloth pareus. Here was Tehura proudly pointing at her jewelry and ornaments from suitors. Here was a close-up picture of the jewelry and ornaments laid out in a neat row on the pandanus mat.