The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  “It sounds pretty dangerous to me.”

  “It isn’t, Claire, not really, especially against the background of this culture. It is all discreet fun. If I’ve been married and had a secret crush on you all year, well, today or tomorrow I’d send you a shell. If you wore the necklace I’d made, we’d talk, arrange a meeting outside the village. This doesn’t mean that automatically, you’d sleep with me. It means let’s meet and talk, drink and dance, and see what comes next.”

  “What happens next week?”

  “Well, my fictional wife wouldn’t be angry with me, and I’d have nothing against her. Life would resume its routine course. Sometimes, not frequently, after this week, there are readjustments. New love affairs burgeon, and then the Hierarchy steps in to mediate.”

  “What about nine months later?” asked Claire. “What if an extramarital child is produced by one of these affairs?”

  “It rarely happens. Great care is taken. Their precautions are effective. When an offspring does result, the mother has the option of keeping the infant or turning it over to the Hierarchy to dispose of to some barren couple.”

  “They think of everything,” said Claire. “Okay, I’m still for it.”

  “It wouldn’t work back home,” said Courtney. “I’ve thought about it often, but no. These people have had a couple of centuries of orientation to it. They are prepared by background and from birth. We’re not ready at home. Too bad, too. I think it’s so sad, at home, the way you grow up toward marriage not being able to meet many people you think you might love. I remember once, in Chicago, standing on the corner of State and Madison, and seeing a slender young brunette, so lovely, and for ten seconds I was in love, and I thought, if only I could speak to her, go out with her, see if she was for me, but then the green light changed and she disappeared in the crowd and I went my way and never saw her again. No shell necklace to pass, you see. Instead, I had to confine myself to artificially created and limited social groups and make my choice from these. I sometimes feel I was shortchanged. You know what I mean?”

  “I know.”

  “And after marriage, well, the anthropologists know this, there’s no extramarital freedom at home, both sexes chafe along on the same rails toward old age, scenery ignored, side trips not allowed. Church and State are kept happy. It is unrealistic, and if you stay on the rails, it’s a strain, and if you don’t, if you sneak in a few detours, it’s also a strain. I’ve been there, Claire, I know. Remember, I was a divorce attorney.”

  “Yes,” said Claire. “I guess a number of us have had the same feelings, brought on by the purpose behind the festival. We just haven’t been able to articulate it, or maybe don’t want to. Although, come to think of it, Harriet Bleaska did tell me that when we first came here, Lisa Hackfeld mentioned to her an awareness of some of the same shortcomings at home, the confinement of being single or married, that you’ve been talking about.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Courtney. “My own years in the Midwest seem incredible to me since I’ve lived here—”

  A piercing, reedy whistle sliced through Courtney’s sentence, and an immediate powerful chorus of cheering from off to the left ended his reflections completely. Courtney and Claire swiveled their heads in unison and they saw the faraway line of contestants plunge free of the earth and plummet through space. Some arched gracefully and some spun crazily, flopping through the ozone like so many Raggedy Andys. The bodies all seemed brown, and then, near the water, Claire saw the one that was white and hairy, arms forward like an arrowhead, body rigid as a plank of wood.

  Marc was among the vanguard of a half-dozen to hit the water.

  Of them all, Marc alone did not actually hit the water, spatter it, but appeared to knife into it, cleanly, beautifully, and disappear from sight. Around him were splashes and geysers, and then heads bobbing afloat. And then, Marc slithered out of the water, five or ten yards ahead of his nearest competitor. Employing the Australian crawl, his white arms began to revolve, pulling at the water, head pillowed against the hospitable sea, legs opening and closing like scissors, leaving a trail of foam, as he sped ahead.

  “Your husband’s got the early lead,” Courtney said, above the steady din of the spectators. “That’s Moreturi behind him, and right behind him Huatoro.”

  Claire’s eyes shifted from Marc to the two brown figures thrashing in pursuit of him. Their swimming was choppier than Marc’s, more primitive and explosive. Both Moreturi and Huatoro were beating the water harder with their hands, rolling farther onto their sides to suck for air, kicking their legs more visibly. Minutes were passing, and yards behind the three leaders the other brown faces, brown shoulders, brown arms were beginning to string out.

  Claire watched without emotion, quite detached here high and above, as if viewing the spectacle of small windup toys pitted against one another in a tub of water.

  She became aware of Courtney’s watch, his finger touching the crystal. “Fifteen minutes and they’re at the half-mile,” he was saying. “Very good time. You were right. Your man can swim.”

  My man, she thought, thinking at last, letting my man my man my man echo and reverberate in her brain chamber.

  “Look at him open up that lead,” Courtney was saying.

  She had been looking, but had not seen, so now she put mind’s sight into her eyes. It was true. There was open sea between Marc and the native pair, maybe a full twenty yards. She stared down at the white one, the great white lover, superior man, superior race, putting on his symbolic show of virility. Here again the persistently nagging questions: Do manly manners and manly feats make a manly man? Is Marc a man? Unless I know, how am I to know if I am a woman?

  “You must be so very proud!” It was a thrilled young female voice addressing her, and Claire realized that the beautiful Tehura had come to kneel between Courtney and herself. The native girl’s eyes glistened and her white teeth shone.

  Claire gave some kind of dumb nodding assent, and Courtney said teasingly to the girl, “Your friend Huatoro is not used to looking at another’s feet.”

  “I have no favorite,” said Tehura primly. “Huatoro is my friend, but Moreturi is my cousin, and Marc Hayden is my—” She hesitated, groping in her limited word cupboard, and then concluding, “—he is my mentor from far away.” She pointed below. “Look, Tom, Huatoro is passing poor Moreturi!”

  Ignoring the race, Claire stared wonderingly at the native girl. She had always regarded her as just one more attractive female of the village, a special female since Tehura had stood beside her at the first night’s rite of acceptance, but still one more member of a tribe being studied. Yet, for the first time, she realized that the girl had a closer relationship to Marc and herself. Marc was her “mentor.” She was Marc’s “informant.” For a good part of two weeks, Marc had spent long hours of days with her. This girl had probably seen more of Marc, in this time, than had Claire. What did she think of Marc, that strange, sullen, almost middle-aged man from California? Did she think of him as a man at all? How could she, who knew so much, think so, if Claire, who knew so little, was not sure? But these questions were fruitless. Tehura did not know Marc at all. She knew an anthropologist asking questions and making notes. She knew a muscular white man swimming ahead of her fellow villagers. She did not know the Puritan Father who had insulted the grass skirt, Tehura’s own, that Claire had worn in love last night.

  Claire saw that Courtney and Tehura, and everyone behind them, were absorbed in the contest below. She sighed and leaned forward. Since she had last looked, the design on the green water, formed by the swimmers, had altered. Minutes before, she had thought that they resembled a long rope of foam, with knots strung out along the rope, the knots being the heads and shoulders of the competitors. The foam rope was gone. Instead, the design on the water was that of a tight triangle moving toward the stone shore beneath her. The front point of the triangle was still Marc, his wet, chalky arms moving out of the water and over and stroking down, lik
e paddles of a Mississippi gambling boat. Diagonally behind, to his left, quite near Marc it seemed, was the broad-shouldered one called Huatoro. Diagonally, to the right, further back, was Moreturi. Then, closer than they had been before, the rest of the triangle formed by the other brown swimmers, with their relentless flaying arms, fluttering kicks, rollings, exhalings, inhalings.

  She heard Courtney’s voice announcing to Tehura, “They’re closing in on him in the stretch. Look, there’s Huatoro. I didn’t think he’d have that much left—”

  “He is strong,” said Tehura.

  Claire was conscious of the swelling clamor of the spectators, and then it burst into pandemonium. As if lifted by the detonation of two hundred throats crying out as one stentorian bellow, Courtney and Tehura leaped to their feet.

  “Look at them—look at them!” Courtney shouted. He half-turned, “Claire, you must see the finish—”

  Unwillingly, Claire responded. The contestants, a portion of the front ones, had been briefly out of her vision, but when she came up next to Courtney and Tehura, she could see them all.

  Marc had just touched the foot of the great benched cliff, and he was hauling himself out of the ocean like a soggy albino seal. He was upright, the first on land, and as he shook free of the film of water, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see the broad, powerful frame of Huatoro hoisting itself ashore.

  Spurred by the closeness of the other, Marc started up the incline, with a five-yard lead over his rival. The banks of the cliff were craggy and steep. There was no worn path. One did not merely walk up it or march up it. Rather, one snatched it, each indentation above, did a pull-up, and caught one’s breath, climbing when the ladder rungs of stone were closer, but gripping and rising by force when they were separated. In this manner, Marc ascended the terraced slope, with Huatoro steadily behind him, as a swarm of others just touched the rocky shore.

  Marc and Huatoro were halfway toward their summit finish, the judges on their knees above, waving, beckoning, encouraging, and then they were two-thirds toward the final height, and then Claire could see that Marc was faltering. As he reached each small bluff, and pulled himself erect, he took an increasingly longer time to propel himself to the next precipice above. Until these seconds, he had been as regular as a machine, but now it was as if the machine had become clogged and was slowing. Marc’s ascent became slow-motion, painful to behold. His pauses were longer and longer, as if the last of his strength had seeped out of him.

  Fifteen feet from the top, on a narrow ledge, he stopped, staggering on rubbery legs, whiter than before, almost deformed by-fatigue. And here it was that Huatoro caught him, clambering onto a parallel ledge no more than three feet to one side. For the first time, Claire, who had been concentrating upon her husband, could plainly see his rival. Huatoro came up, side by side with Marc, with the vigor of a young, plunging bull. He hesitated only a split second to look across at his opponent, and then he reached one muscular arm upwards, and the other, and followed his arms with his rippling shoulders and torso.

  Claire could see Marc shaking his head, hard, like a gladiator risen from the arena floor, trying to unscramble his senses and make them signal his unsteady calves into motion. The next high ledge was near, and Marc attained it with hardly any help from his hands. As he reached it, Huatoro was already a full stride ahead in the climb. Desperately, Marc tried to keep up with the other. Higher they went, nearer the finish, pull, jump, stop, climb, crawl, stop, another, another, and then they were on the same small promontory, but not long side by side, for Huatoro was still moving, scrambling upwards, while Marc was wavering near collapse, going down to one knee, the gladiator fallen again, not by a blow but by weakness and loss of will.

  Then it was that Claire once more became conscious of the thunderous cheers of the spectators, and heard Tehura screaming, shaking Courtney’s arm, screaming, “Look—look—oh, nooo—nooo—”

  Claire turned back to see the finish, and found that Marc was upright, not climbing, but snatching for the ledge directly above which Huatoro had just scaled. But instead of grasping the ledge, Marc’s hand closed on Huatoro’s ankle. The native, starting to move, found himself one-legged, the other leg fastened down by his rival’s grip. Bewildered no doubt, perhaps angered (his features could not be clearly seen), Huatoro shouted something at Marc, and he shook his captured leg once, twice, and a third time hard, kicking free of Marc, as if kicking free of some small troublesome terrier.

  Liberated, Huatoro climbed swiftly upwards to the very summit and his victory, while Marc remained where he had been kicked down by the other, down on both hands and both knees, immobilized, by fatigue and public humiliation. And it worsened, for as he stayed on his hands and knees, prostrated, Moreturi came vaulting up, glanced down at him, and then continued to work his way to the finish. Then came the others, the tenacious and robust young men, the first passing Marc to reach the summit third, and then another and another. Finally, finally, Marc rose, and shakily and all palsied, so slowly, he went up the last few ledges, ignoring outstretched hands, to lift himself to the summit. Huatoro and Moreturi, and one or two others also, approached him, evidently trying to speak to him, but he turned from them and, shoulders and chest heaving, went off alone, to one side, to recover his strength and his pride.

  The shouting had dropped to a low babble of voices in the air. Claire twisted away from the scene, firmly put her back to it, only to find Courtney observing her.

  She did not attempt to smile or shrug off her reaction. Quietly, on a pitch of irony, she quoted, ” ‘When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He writes not that you won or lost but how you played the game.’ “

  Courtney frowned. “I don’t think so, Claire, I don’t think he really tried to hold Huatoro back. He was reaching for the ledge and by accident—he didn’t know what he was doing—he grabbed Huatoro’s ankle, just held on—instinct of self-preservation.”

  “I don’t need that pill, Tom,” she said, suddenly angry. “I know the patient. He was a fool to enter this, and he was a double fool in the end. If a man’s got to prove himself, I know better means, and different means. No more sweeteners today, thank you, Tom.”

  Tehura had come forward, a strange questioning look in her face as she confronted Claire. “Is that what you see, Mrs. Hayden? I see different.” She paused, and she said stiffly, “I think he did well.” With a nod, she departed.

  Claire’s eyebrows shot up with puzzlement as she watched the native girl leave. Claire turned to Courtney, and she shrugged. “Well, when the Great Scorer comes, I guess he had better come to The Three Sirens first … Thanks for your company, Tom. I think I’d best get back to the hut, and put a bandage on my hero’s virility.” She blinked at his expressionless face, and she added, “We’ll need our strength. It’s going to be quite a festival.”

  * * *

  At several minutes after eight o’clock in the evening, the fringes of the village were darkened, and this served to accentuate the great decorative ball of light in the very center of the compound.

  The ball of light was actually a blending of three rising rings of blazing torches surrounding the mammoth platform constructed in the early morning. The torches went up from the ground like candles surmounting a three-decker birthday cake. There was the wide ring of torches, broken in half only by the stream, planted in the earth itself, among the clustered villagers. The fingers of flame went straight up, without flickering or bending in the windless calm of night, as if the High Spirit was not panting or breathing heavily upon his children, but sitting serenely with them for an interlude of pleasure uninterrupted by work. The second circle of lights came from the torches attached to the wooden step built around the platform, two feet above the turf, two feet below the stage, and which was used as stairs by the performers. Upon the platform itself was the topmost circle of illumination, where the stubbier, wider, brighter torches resembled footlights on four curving sides.

  Courtney had told
the Hayden team that the oval platform was almost forty feet in length and twenty feet in width, and the planks were used over and over again, for every annual festival, so that the surface was worn smooth as carpeting by innumerable dancing bare feet.

  At the moment, except for the seven native males who were the musicians—young, enthusiastic brown men, two beating hollowed tree trunks made into slit drums, one with a flute, two with bamboo rods they struck together, two with big hands clapping loudly—the stage was empty.

  The members of the Hayden team had been given the seats of honor, places in the first row which began fifteen feet back from the front of the platform. They sat on the grass, with villagers seated row upon row behind them, until lost in the outer darkness.

  Claire was at the end of their row, looking relaxed in her sleeveless white Dacron blouse and navy blue linen skirt that covered her knees. Her sandaled feet were discreetly crossed beneath the skirt. She sat quietly, hands folded in her lap. She heard Orville Pence, kneeling beside Rachel DeJong and Maud, who were next to her, saying, “—and the musicians insisted that even their instruments are ancient sex symbols; the hollow drum up there represents the female, and over there the wooden flute, obviously the male. All one more part of the festival theme. Then, if you consider—”

  Claire closed her ears to the rest. She was bored with the Freudian patter. There would be this, and there would be Boas and Kroeber and Benedict, and always Malinowski, and most certainly Cora DuBois and the island of Alors, and inevitably the subject of Psychodynamics. For Claire, these would be the intruders, the unwanted guests, who analyzed, who explained, who took apart and put together, who peeled of! primitive beauty so that only the misshapen core was left in full disfigurement.