The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  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.

&nbs
p; “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.”

  Wondrous, wondrous Matty, Marc thought, and he felt puny, disabled, and felt incredulous that a mountain had loins that had produced a molehill.

  Fragment three.

  The last drink had been served. The guests prepared to leave. Claire thanked both Paoti and Hutia for the use of their servant, Aimata, the most efficient housekeeper she had ever known, even counting Suzu back in long-ago Santa Barbara.

  “Oh, she is not our servant,” Hutia Wright said. “She is the slave of another family. We borrowed her for you.”

  “Did I hear you correctly?” asked Claire. “Aimata is a slave?”

  “But yes—for her crime …”

  The perplexity on Claire’s face made Maud quickly intercede. “It is something that Easterday touched on in his letter, but which has not yet been fully explained to you or the others,” she said. “There is, at least we would consider it so, a unique system of punishment of crime on The Three Sirens. There is no capital punishment here. In fact, there is much to be said for the system. It is both humane and practical. In the United States if a person commits wilful murder, we most often deliberately execute him by rope, electric chair, poison gas, firing squad. While this eliminates the possibility of his killing again, such vengeful retribution by society neither gainfully serves the community nor recompenses the bereft family of the victim. Here on the Sirens, if a person commits murder, he is sentenced to slavery, to serve the family of his victim for the number of years of life the victim has probably lost.” She gestured to Paoti. “Perhaps you can relate this principle or law to the person of Aimata.”

  “Yes,” said Paoti to Claire. “It is simple. Aimata was thirty-two, her husband thirty-five, when she decided to murder him. She pushed him off a cliff. He was killed instantly. There was no trial before me, for Aimata confessed. Our criminal custom states that the average person should live seventy years on this island. Therefore, Aimata had deprived her husband of thirty-five years of life. By murdering him, she had also deprived his other kin of help, support, and attention. Therefore, Aimata was sentenced to replace the one she had murdered, for those thirty-five years. She is the slave of the victim’s blood kin for that period, without privileges; she cannot marry, enjoy love, enjoy recreation, and must eat only the scraps of their meals and wear the garments they discard.”

  Claire’s hand had gone to her mouth. “I’ve never heard anything like that. It’s terrifying—”

  Paoti smiled sympathetically. “It is effective, Mrs. Hayden. We have had only three murders in the village in thirty years.”

  “There are systems and systems in this world,” Maud added to Claire. “There is a tribe in West Africa, the Habe they are called, who also never hang a murderer. They consider that a waste, as here. They send a murderer into exile for two years. Then they bring him back from exile, and make him live and copulate with a relative of the murdered person until a child is born to replace the victim. Odd, but it has a justice of its own, like this system here. I’m not so certain we in the West have better ways of dealing with crime.” She turned. “Mr. Courtney, you are the lawyer—what do you say?”

  “I say aye,” said Courtney, “and now I say thank you and good night.”

  The fragments had dissolved.

  Marc found himself seated still on the stoop, his shoulders and chest somewhat cooled, but his mouth and tongue hot and raw from all the whiskey and the half-finished cigar in his fingers.

  It was then that he heard Claire’s muffled voice from the rear room. “Marc—it’s so late—”

  He did not reply.

  Claire’s voice again. “Marc, aren’t you coming to bed? I have a surprise for you.”

  Surprise, surprise. He knew the surprise for their anniversary, and he knew that he had been sitting here, alone, avoiding it. She was going to offer her tiresome body. It was a gift he did not desire. Two years of her had wearied him of that body. But then, assessing the two years, a vague computing, he realized that he had not possessed that body intimately as many times as he imagined. It was just that the body was there, always there, always around, always irritatingly available, and what went with it, the rebuke of her person, that made her seem so used.

  He realized that he had not slept with her
in a month or two. Now he was being drafted for an Occasion. He hated the duty. He did not want her. He wanted the brown one, with her arrogance about sex, and bare breasts, and beautiful thighs hidden by nothing but grass. He remembered the incident earlier in the day, how he had almost possessed Tehura, and was certain he would possess her yet. The imagined passion of fulfillment with Tehura coursed through his frame and awakened him. He wanted her now, but he could not have her, and so he decided to waste the passion on duty.

  He rose, throwing his cigar into the compound. “Be right with you,” he called to Claire. He shoved the door closed and fastened it.

  He crossed to the corridor, went through it, and entered the dimly lighted bedroom. The room seemed empty. He could not find Claire on the sleeping bag or in the shadows. He heard a movement parallel to him, to his right, and then she emerged from the shadowed wall toward the candle and wheeled in its circle of yellow to show herself to him.

  He blinked dumbly.

  “Surprise on our second, darling,” she said.

  In his amazement at her appearance, he thought for an instant that by some trick this was Tehura, but his sobering sensibilities told him it was Claire. She was garmented exactly as Tehura was garmented, as all the women of The Three Sirens were dressed. There was an outrageous flower in her hair. The diamond pendant hung between her bold white breasts with their indecent brown nipples. The slash of her navel contracted and expanded above the band of the too-short grass skirt. The thighs, legs, feet were bare.

  Rage bolted through him. He wanted to crush her, brand her with a shout, brand her as a harlot, strumpet, doxy, bawd. That she would dare to mock him with the wanton undress of this tropical whorehouse! That she would insult him with this evidence that she was one of these village animals, a sex animal, and he was less!