Nevertheless, Maud had set her alarm for the customary hour of seven, and at seven, she had grimly awakened and grimly gone about her toilet and dressing. Despite only four hours of sleep and a hangover, and her many years, she would not indulge herself. In the field, she was miserly about time. An hour wasted in self-coddling, in toadying to one’s bodily demands, meant an hour subtracted from the sum of human knowledge. This morning, the only crutches she would permit herself were the two aspirins.
By the time she had finished dressing, and prepared her coffee on the small Coleman stove, the aspirins had begun to do their work. The invisible pincers began to release their grip on her head, and she was able to think more rationally. As always, at this period in the morning, before marching to the day’s work (a session with Mr. Manao, the schoolteacher, scheduled for twenty minutes from now), she liked to review her troops in the field.
She reviewed her troops.
She used, as her mental starting point for inspection, the mailbag that had rested in her office late yesterday afternoon and that had been flown back to Tahiti by Captain Rasmussen in the evening.
Lisa Hackfeld had brought in the bulkiest envelope of all, a manila one addressed to her husband, Cyrus Hackfeld, Los Angeles, California, and with it an ordinary airmail envelope addressed to her son, Merrill, who was visiting Washington, D.C., on a conducted tour. Before depositing both in the canvas bag, Lisa had kissed the thick manila envelope with feigned affection. She had explained that her data on the miracle stimulant, the herb known as puai, was in that envelope, as well as Lisa’s projected plans for enslaving the entire Western world with Vitality. Cyrus would be proud of her brainstorm, she was positive.
Today, and every day until their departure, Lisa would be occupied from morning until night with her Operation Ponce de Leon, as she now enjoyed referring to it. She would be interviewing dozens of dancers who used the herb, as well as most of the village elders who could relate its history, traditions, and their personal experiences with it.
Of all the people on her team, Maud thought, sipping her coffee, it might be Lisa, rather than one of the professionals, who proved to be the best anthropologist on the trip. Very likely, too, it might be that Lisa would profit most, financially, of those who had come to The Three Sirens. The rich get richer. It was Adley, dear Adley, who liked to say that. And they get younger, too, Maud amended it, richer and younger. Whatever happened with the ridiculous herb, Maud thought, even if it failed commercially, Lisa still would have succeeded for herself. For, on The Three Sirens, she had unwittingly found the antidote against age, the one herb that was anti-death. The ingredient was simple: keeping busy. If anything worked, this was what worked. Maud had no doubt. She knew.
Shortly after Lisa had left Rasmussen’s mailbag, Rachel DeJong had appeared beside it, more cheerful and amusing than Maud had ever known her to be. Rachel it was who brought in the greatest number of letters, dashed off in the late afternoon. Rachel had been surprisingly talkative. She had shown Maud one envelope addressed to a Miss Evelyne Mitchell, and had explained that this and most of the others were to her patients, announcing her return. Yes, she intended to resume practice, at least for a year. She displayed another letter to one Ernst Beham, M.D., and had added, “And then I’ll give up my practice, if Dr. Beham lets me. He’s my training analyst.” Finally, she had tapped one more envelope addressed, Maud could see, to a Mr. Joseph Morgen, and she had said, “He’s wanted to marry me for some time, and now he’s out of luck, because I just wrote him yes.”
Today, Maud knew, Rachel would be continuing with her native analysands, and collating their information for her psychiatric paper, and would spend the remainder of her time in her study of the Hierarchy.
Before Rachel had taken her leave, Orville Pence had darted in with a letter, thrown it into the sack, and fled. In a half-hour he had returned, knelt beside the bag, dipped into it, found his letter, and proceeded to tear it up in Maud’s presence. “To my mother,” he had explained. “I wrote her something I did yesterday. I’ve just decided it’s none of her damn business.” With that, and no further explanation, he had gone. But Maud knew what Orville had done, for late yesterday Harriet Bleaska had confided it to both Maud and Claire.
Today, thought Maud, Orville won’t do much work. He’ll be waiting in a state of harried suspense for Harriet to decide between Vaiuri and himself. He may, she thought, come away from the Sirens with more than he had bargained for, or he may come away with less, with a terrible sense of defeat, should Harriet choose the native, a native, over him. Whatever the outcome, Maud thought, he will leave without his mother.
Then she thought of her own letter, the one she had finished dictating quite late to Claire, the report to Walter Scott Macintosh. Inevitably, the thought of it led her into her near future, the possible separation from Marc and Claire, and her thinking began to center on Marc, but she resisted it. She drank her cooling coffee near the Coleman stove, and moved her inspection of her troops away from the mailbag.
Harriet Bleaska had appeared last night, with her dilemma, as Claire and Maud were parting to dress for dinner. After a short period of discussion—they had been no help, they could not be—Harriet had gone with Claire. Finally, when it was nightfall, and Maud was readying to go to Marc’s hut next door, Estelle Karpowicz had stopped in briefly, to say Mary had been found and that all was well between Mary and Sam. Maud’s relief had been enormous, for she liked that family and had suffered for both father and daughter. Today, Maud thought, would be a good day for the Karpowiczes. Sam had caught up on his prints, and would be out hunting his plant specimens, and Mary would be in the village with her mother.
Maud had completed her inspection, and her coffee as well, and a new day, the first of the fourth week on The Three Sirens, was about to begin. Yet, going to her desk for her pencils and pad, she was nagged by the fact that as leader she had been remiss, for she had avoided inspecting one member. She had been afraid to look too closely at her son.
For a moment, standing at her desk, she remembered last night seeing Tom Courtney at Claire’s, Courtney instead of Marc, who had been called away somewhere, and of the traitorous thought that she had entertained, before evicting it, as the three of them had walked in step to Paoti’s dinner. The thought had been that the three of them were more comfortable as three, than if the three had been herself, Claire, and Marc. What a terrible thing.
And so, unhappily, in the early morning, leaning on her desk now, she inspected him and herself. In this minute, she had a deep insight into Marc and herself, but actually, it was more herself, and it was this, that Marc was the victim of her selfishness. For she had been selfish, that was unmistakable. She had borne Adley only one child, because Adley had been enough for her and she had been enough for him. And even the one child had suffered from this selfishness. The one son had been treated like no son at all, but rather like a distant relative hopelessly competing for the attention of both a mother and father who were fenced off from him, self-contained, this pair, absorbed in one another, pleased with one another, needing no other person or, indeed, anything else.
The wrongness of it loomed up at her through the far faded years. Now, she thought wretchedly, now so near the end, all that would be left of her on earth would be Marc, her failure. She took the entire blame, absolved Adley completely (“of the dead say nothing but good,” amen). If only it could all be relived, those old times, but with her present wisdom superimposed on the past. She would have brought their son into the family, not given all her love to Adley and their career. She would have made the son surer, happier, secure in maternal love, and he would have grown to become a man who in turn could have children he loved, which he had not with Claire.
And, were it possible to do it over again, she would have done so much more. She would have had several children, many, instead of the one automatic basic boy, who lived to mock her failure. But here it was, and here was she, and no matter how much she wished it, how s
trongly she willed it, there could never be another child on earth, let alone several others, out of her womb, the better to represent her passage through this time on earth. How helpless, how helpless old women are with their old memories. She could stamp on the earth, she could hurl imprecations at the heavens, she could beg of the High Spirit, she could wheedle or sob and curse, and no matter what were the cries from her heart and lungs, there could be no more children, for there was no more Adley and there was no more youth.
She stood there, at her makeshift desk in the filtered sunlight, and she felt enfeebled and lost. Ah, how wrongly she had guessed about the later years. Her young dreams about later years had al-ways been of herself as still young and with Adley and with the perfect son who adored them both, and somehow, with that, one could never imagine loneliness. Once, once, she might have spun the wheel, and spun it again and again, and today had the earnings of that effort, two, three, or four numbers to bet on for the final years. Instead, she had spun the wheel one time, and not even looked, casting all on a single number, and she had lost.
This morning she could admit it: there was no one to blame but herself.
Then she thought of Lisa Hackfeld’s legacy that would be taken from the Sirens. Activity. Keep busy, keep occupied, keep going, never stop. That is the single anti-death for old women. It was her mistake of this morning. She had stopped. She had permitted her mind the liberty of a woman’s mind and a mother’s mind. She was not that at all. She was a social anthropologist, and a busy one, and she vowed that she would never forget that again.
She took up the pencils, the pad, and briskly, she went off to her appointment …
* * *
Before ten o’clock in the morning, while his wife still slept, Marc Hayden finished packing his worn canvas knapsack. Into it he had squeezed every necessary article that he would require between here and Tahiti. The rest of his personal belongings, he was forfeiting. It did not matter. From the second he arrived in Tahiti, he could spend as lavishly as Croesus, using his traveler’s checks and savings account for his material needs, not needing to worry about depleting his bank balance, for an inexhaustible income awaited him.
During the period that he packed, he had expected Claire to interrupt him. Therefore, when she did, he was prepared for her. She came into the front room, knotting the belt of her pink cotton robe over her white nightgown, just as he picked up the knapsack by its shoulder straps to test its weight.
“Morning,” he said. He slung the knapsack over his shoulders, to judge its weight better. “I’m going off on an exploration of the island. Be back after midnight, if I can, or maybe by tomorrow early.”
“Since when is all this?” Claire wanted to know. “Whom are you going with?”
“Several of Moreturi’s friends. Been planning it for a week. Want to see some of the old stone ruins, the temple put up before Daniel Wright’s time. Also, I’m told, there are a few outlying shacks the first Wright erected after landing here from England.”
“Have fun,” she said, and covered her yawn. She wandered aimlessly about the room, hesitated at the fruit bowl, then knelt and peeled and began slicing a banana for her breakfast. She glanced at him. “You look chipper enough, after last night.”
“What was last night?”
“Why, the amount we drank. Whew. You were staggering around, insulting our hosts and Tom—”
“Is this the beginning of another lovely day?”
“Well, you did behave like that. Not that you’re any different when you’re sober. When we left, your mother apologized to them.”
Marc snorted, and settled his knapsack on the floor. “If your report is complete, I’ll—”
“As a matter of fact it isn’t,” Claire said. “You came to the dinner quite late and I had a chance to take Courtney aside and speak to him.”
“Naturally.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “I mean about my missing diamond pendant. I told him what you said, that you were sure one of the natives had stolen it.”
“And he said—” His voice went falsetto and registered pretended horror, “Mercy me, but our people here don’t steal, they don’t steal at all, they’re too busy lovin’ and fornicatin’.”
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.
<
br /> “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.
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