The Three Sirens (87 page)

The other day, in a different mood, she had considered remaining behind on The Three Sirens to see how that would work. If it did not work, there would always be Rasmussen to rescue her. But it made no sense, absolutely no sense. It was too dramatic for prosaic she, and she had not the bravery for such a change. Oh, if Tom Courtney had suggested it, she fancied that she might have said yes, whatever he meant, whatever she meant, and stayed on to see what would come of it. He had not suggested it, and so she had put the fancy out of her mind.

One more cigarette, she told herself. Then, drawing smoke from it, she drew also from various memories of her life on The Three Sirens. Bred as she had been, raised in a culture so different, there was little that she could take home with her from this island that would be of advantage. What she had appreciated most was utterly unacceptable among those she had grown up with. Yet, these people here, their customs, had reinforced certain secret beliefs that she had held, and that was good. Their behavior had given her more probing insights into herself, and into the life she had lived and to which she must return. Except for the one blight, it had been a good time.

Her wrist watch ticked persistently, and she was nearer to tomorrow. The exactness and inevitability of tomorrow made her feel restless for the first time this evening. She hated leaving the isolated comfort and freedom of this island. Almost overnight, she would be plunged into the strain of counterfeit behavior, the horrid widow pose, while here there was less necessity for that. How terrible to leave a place that had become more home than the home to which she must return. Yet, what was it that she would miss of the Sirens, really, but really, above and beyond the need for no pretense? She had not been close to any of the natives. Then what was it? In her isolation in this room, no one around, no prying, no peering at her, in this privacy, she could be herself and be truthful. So finally, she could admit that all she would miss would be one, the one who was Tom Courtney.

This attachment to him, which she knew, and which he did not, made her nervous. She ground out her cigarette, stood up stiffly, flexed her shoulder muscles, and went into the rear room to change for bed, before packing.

Slowly undressing, she found him entering her thoughts again, and she forgave him. What was there about Tom Courtney that made her reluctant to leave him? How could she miss someone who, from his recent behavior, had given no sign that he would miss her the second after she had departed?

The last question lingered as she slipped the pleated white nylon nightgown down over her body. If only, he would answer the last question for her this last night. Then she could leave without reservations. If only she was not she, and had the nerve …

* * *

The timid knocking on his cane door, in the stillness between the dark and the daylight, seemed to reverberate in the air.

The door came open almost immediately, and there they stood, he in his doorway, she outside it, and they were both surprised. She had never seen him this way before. He was like a white native, attired only in the pubic bag, and she realized that he must be this way in the privacy of his rooms, and that the shirt and trousers he wore outside were a concession to civilization’s team. She drew her loose pink robe more tightly across her nightgown, and she stood there, not sure how she had done this or why or what she must say.

“Claire,“‘he said.

“Did I wake you, Tom? I’m sorry. This is crazy. It must be a million hours after midnight.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “I was lying in the dark thinking about—well, yes, about you—”

“You were?”

“Come in, come in,” he said, and then quickly, realizing the state of his undress, he said, “Hey, wait, let me change—”

“Don’t be a child,” she said, “because I’m not one, either.” She crossed before him into his room.

He closed the door and strode to the bamboo rod of candlenuts. “Let me get some light.”

“No, Tom, don’t. Leave it this way. It’s easier to talk to you. There’s enough moonlight from the windows.”

She had lowered herself to the pandanus matting. He approached her, his head lost high in the upper darkness, before he came down into sight, and sat a few feet from her.

“I’ve never called on a man before,” she said. “I should have sent you one of those festival shells first. This is The Three Sirens, isn’t it?”

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “I was going to call on you a dozen times last night, tonight. It’s harder for a man.”

“Why, Tom? That’s the reason I had the courage to—to come here. I couldn’t leave tomorrow, just disappear, without finding out about you. We were so friendly for a while. It was important to me. You have no idea how important. And suddenly, after Marc’s death, you weren’t there. Why? Respect for the widow?”

“Yes and no. Not for the reasons you seem to think. I was afraid to be alone with you. That’s it, really.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“Because overnight you were possible. Before, you were not, and all at once you were, and I was afraid of what I might say to you or do. I had strong feelings about you, from the day you arrived, but I had to hide them. Then, all at once, I realized I could express them. And at the same time, I realized that I had no idea how you would feel about my feelings. I’m talking like an idiot, but I mean—before, guarded by a husband, you could afford to show interest in me. Without protection, you might not have the same interest. And if I came in—”

“Tom,” she said softly, “thank you.”

“For what?”

“For making it possible for me to be here with you without having to blush about it for years after.”

“Claire, I’m not saying all of this to—to make you comfortable. I’m speaking to a woman in a way I would not have been able to speak four or five years ago. The fact is, I’m the one who must thank you. Do you want to know why?”

“Yes.”

“You made me grow up, and you never knew it. My four years on the Sirens made a man of me. My knowledge of you made a mature man of me. Until today, I was going to stay on here indefinitely. The old reasons. This is an easy, permissive, hedonistic life. You go on in an empty-headed way, and you let your body live. And you’re important in this little pool. Going home becomes more and more difficult. If you return, you lose this importance, you become like everyone else. You’ve got to work too hard for new importance. And you’ve got to live with your head, too, not just your body. You’ve got to wear the strait jackets of progress, follow the clock, the law, the conventions like civilized clothes, and what-not. But today I changed my mind. I went to Maud and asked her if I could return to Tahiti and the United States with all of you in the morning. I’m going back with you, Claire.”

Claire sat very still, one hand clasping her robe together at the bosom, her flesh pervaded by a weakness and a running warmth. “Why are you leaving here, Tom?”

“Two reasons. Reason one. I’ve grown up, and I decided that I could come to grips with the outside. Claire, I’ve been hiding out these last years, hiding from life. It was your presence here, the thoughts you induced, that made me realize my exile was illusory happiness, superficial, shallow, pointless compared to what you represented. Seeing you, perhaps some of the others, made me restless and deeply dissatisfied, even ashamed of myself. That was when I knew I had solved nothing, and never would, unless I solved it in your world, which is my world, too.”

He paused, avoiding her eyes, staring down at his hands, and then he looked up at her. “I—I don’t want to make a big dramatic speech about returning to a life that most other men take for granted. I only want you to know how I’ve come to the decision. I fully realize it’s not as easy and idyllic at home as it is here. Existence can be more abrasive and troublesome in the States. But I’ve come to believe that I was set down on this earth, in that place called home, to live my days there and cope with it and do what a man must do. Instead, when the going got rough, I ran. I’m not alone. I’m one of millions. All men have their ways of running. Some run inside themselves. Others act it out, as I did. One bad marriage, one war, one disillusioning job, and I ran for real. I thought the four years here liberated me. They did. Yet, only in small ways. In a big way, I’ve been a coward. The mature man who does not run, who stays on in the workaday world in which he was born and raised, he is the one who shows a kind of heroism. That’s the real unsung heroism, the facing of day-in-and-day-out living, the facing up to conventional work, marriage, procreation, and making of it a good thing. The euphoria of hidden islands and coconut palms and dusky maidens belongs in dreams. If life at home is not up to those dreams, then it is a man’s job to make life at home better, improve it, fight for it in his house, neighborhood, community, country. The main thing is to meet life face to face on your own battleground, and this I am going to try to do. That is why I am going back.”

He paused, and waited, but Claire said nothing.

“Claire,” he said, “you haven’t asked the second reason I am going back.”

She did not speak.

‘it is you, Claire. I am in love with you. I have been in love with you from the moment I set eyes upon you. I want to be near you, be where you will be, if you want it or not.”

She could hear herself breathing in the darkness. She was frightened by the thumping of her heart. “Tom—do you—do you mean that?”

“I mean it more than any words I have spoken in my entire life. I am so in love with you that I can’t think or speak properly. I’ve wanted you since you came here, I’ve wanted you tonight, I’ve wanted you for my own for the rest of the days of my life. It’s—it’s all I can say—and what I’ve been afraid to say until now.”

She found that she had covered his hand with her own. “Tom, why do you think I came here tonight?”

“Claire—”

“I want you, too. I need you. I need you tonight and as long as there are nights and the two of us on this earth. I’ve never—I’ve never said such things before, to anyone.” She had come into his arms, and buried her head against his naked chest. “Maybe it’s not right for me to admit these things now.”

“What a human being feels about love is right.”

“Then, that’s what I feel, Tom. Love me always. Love me, and never stop.”

* * *

It was eight o’clock in the morning of the last day, and a cooling breeze frolicked with the palm fronds over the village of The Three Sirens.

Through the open front door of her hut, from behind the desk where she sat, Maud Hayden rested from her dictation into the tape recorder and observed the first activity of the morning in the compound. The young native males, the bearers, four or five of them, were carrying the suitcases and crates out to the bank of the stream.

Maud’s gaze left the compound, and went to the silver microphone in her hand. In the past half-hour, she had recorded what had remained to be recorded of her factual notes on the Sirens. What had been set down this morning, and during six weeks of mornings, was important and unusual, and she knew the uses to which she could put it and the impact it would make on her colleagues and the nation. For the first time since her grief—that awful week after, when she had twice wept uncontrollably and secretly—she felt if not completely recovered, at least purposeful. The blinding puffiness was gone from around her eyes, the knifing arrow of pain gone from her chest, and in her bones she felt the healing strength of her accomplishment. Silently, she thanked them all, Easterday, Rasmussen, Courtney, Paoti, and the distant Daniel Wright, Esq., too, for giving her back her occupation. No longer was work a livelihood and a vanity. It was now her husband, her son, the meaning of her life.

There was hardly any time left. She took in the packings all around the room, and once more her eyes fell on the microphone in her hand. What else was there to record?

A final summary would not be amiss. Her forefinger pushed the recording button on the machine and the spools of tape began to revolve.

In a low, rasping voice, she spoke aloud.

“One more thought. The practice of love and marriage on The Three Sirens, which I have observed firsthand, remains for the most part utterly unlike any other system I have known on earth. For these natives, schooled to it, adjusted to it across so many decades, it appears to be perfect. Yet, I am convinced that this pattern of perfection could not be grafted on our own society in the West. We are heirs of a competitive and restless society, with its advantages and disadvantages, and we must live within our emotional means. What I have seen work out successfully on The Three Sirens would probably not work in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, or anywhere in the modern world. But this I think, this I think: we can learn from societies like the Sirens; we can learn a little; we cannot live their life but we can learn from it.”

She allowed the tape to run on a few seconds, before she pressed the button marked “Stop.”

Something else was needed, she felt, some justification for all the burrowings of the social anthropologists and their colleagues who participated in these often difficult and unsettling trips into the field. Whenever she required reassurance of the value of their work, what they had gone through to garner their scratchy facts, what they had gone through as individuals, what sacrifices were offered up, she remembered a statement made by one of her own whom she admired.

Bending over, she opened her book bag, and examined and returned several titles, until she had located the volume that she wanted. The microphone still in her right hand, she opened Robert Lowie’s Primitive Society to its introduction, and after turning a dozen pages she found it.

For the last time on this trip, she pressed the recording button, watched the tape unwind, and, reading slowly from Lowie, she addressed the microphone.

” ‘The knowledge of primitive societies has an educational value that should recommend its study even to those who are not primarily interested in the processes of culture history. All of us are born into a set of traditional institutions and social conventions that are accepted not only as natural but as the only conceivable response to social needs. Departures from our standards in foreigners bear in our biased view the stamp of inferiority. Against this purblind provincialism there is no better antidote than the systematic study of alien civilizations … We see our received set of opinions and customs as merely one of an indefinite number of possible variants; and we are emboldened to hew them into shape in accordance with novel aspirations.’ “