The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  The impact of Maud Hayden’s letter and enclosure jolted her into space and landed her, vibrating, on a serene, foundationless, weird planet, a blend of Malinowski’s Boyawa, Tully’s South Sea dreamland in A Bird of Paradise, and D. H. Lawrence’s Wragby Hall. She tried to project herself into the picture of The Three Sirens, and found her sensible self fascinated by the culture but repelled by the evident eroticism of that culture. At an earlier time, when her nerves had been less raw and repressions comfortably buried, she would have been interested, she knew, and she would have telephoned Maud Hayden instantly.

  Rachel remembered, as Maud reminded her in the letter, that a year ago, she had volunteered for a field trip under a director and mentor capable of teaching her so much. She had been interested in the mores of marriage, extremely interested. That was at another time, when her mind and her work and her social life (she had just started going out with Joe then) were organized and controlled. Today, such a trip would be folly. A study of uninhibited sexual play and successful marriage would be unbearably painful. She no longer had the objectivity or poise for it. Besides, how could she leave her relationship with Joe unresolved? How could she leave Miss Mitchell and thirty other patients for six weeks? Of course, several times in the past she had left her patients for protracted periods, and there was no indication that her remaining here would resolve anything with Joe. Still, at a time like this The Three Sirens was pure fantasy, impossible self-indulgence, and she must forget it.

  The appearance of the waitress with the bill brought her out of never-never land. She consulted her watch. Eighteen minutes to one. She would have to speed to make the panel.

  Hurrying out of the snack shop to her car, and then in her car to Beverly Hills High School, she arrived backstage just as the moderator was putting in a call for her. The audience was waiting, a filled auditorium, and presently—all activity had a detached, somnambulant quality for her this afternoon—she found herself behind the table, between Dr. Samuelson and Dr. Lynd, participating in a lively discussion of teen-age marriages.

  The minutes fled, and she knew that she was playing a passive role in the debate, allowing Dr. Samuelson and Dr. Lynd to dominate the floor, hold the strong exchanges, and speaking herself only when spoken to. Usually, she did well in these public polemics. This afternoon, she knew, she was doing poorly—jargon, banalities, quotations by rote—and she didn’t give a damn.

  Rachel was dimly aware that the panel discussion had ended, and questions from the floor were being flung at the three of them. She was the target of two, and her colleagues the other dozen or more. The wall clock told her that the ordeal was almost over. She settled back, considering a possible showdown with Joe.

  Suddenly, she heard her name, which meant a question was being directed at her. She stiffened in her wooden chair, and tried to comprehend it fully.

  After the question mark, her countenance assumed the expression of thoughtfulness—Joe would have seen through this—and she began to reply.

  “Yes, I understand, Madam,” she said. “I have not read this popular piece of his you mention. But if the content is what you say, I can honestly state that I would not touch that popular penis of his for anything—”

  Her voice halted, bewildered. Puncturing the hush of the audience had come a squeal, followed by giggles, and now a low breaker of tittering and voices buzzing.

  Rachel hesitated, lost, and concluded lamely, “—well, I’m sure you get the point I’m making.”

  Unaccountably, the entire audience broke into a roar of laughter.

  In the hubbub, Rachel turned helplessly to Dr. Lynd, whose cheeks were flushed, and who was staring straight ahead, as if he had to pretend not to have overheard a scene of indiscretion. Rachel whirled toward Dr. Samuelson, whose lips were curled in a smile, he too looking directly at the audience.

  “What’s got into them?” Rachel whispered against the noise. “Why are they laughing?” She tried to remember what she had said, something about not touching that magazine article for anything—for anything—that article—that popular piece—piece—thing—Suddenly, she gasped, and whispered to Dr. Samuelson, “Did I—?”

  And he, gaze still directed ahead of him, replied from the corner of his mouth in a cheerful undertone, “I’m afraid, Dr. DeJong, your Freudian slip is showing.”

  “Oh, God,” Rachel groaned, “you mean I did.”

  The moderator rapped his gavel, and quickly order was restored, so that the slip was soon lost in the questions and answers that followed. Rachel trusted herself to speak no more. It was a test of character to brazen it out, to sit there on exhibit, wooden and unsmiling. As the words built their fence about her, her mind went back to her student days and her reading on “speech-blunders” in Sigmund Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life: “A lady once expressed herself in society—the very words show that they were uttered with fervor and under the pressure of a great many secret emotions: ‘Yes, a woman must be pretty if she is to please men. A man is much better off. As long as he has five straight limbs, he needs no more!’…In the psychotherapeutic procedure which I employ in the solution and removal of neurotic symptoms, I am often confronted with the task of discovering from the accidental utterances and fancies of the patient the thought contents, which, though striving for concealment, nevertheless unintentionally betray themselves.”

  Rachel had been dwelling on this, and her own “speech-blunder,” for some seconds, when she realized that the discussion was over and that the meeting had been adjourned. Rising and walking off the stage, slightly apart from the others, she knew that she would be writing two letters tonight. One would be to Joseph Morgen, confiding in him the truth of her problem and letting him decide if he was willing to wait until she worked it out, for better or for worse. The other would be to Maud Hayden, informing her that Rachel DeJong would have her affairs in order and be ready to accompany a team to The Three Sirens for six weeks in June and July.

  * * *

  Maud Hayden had taken up the carbon copy of the letter Claire had typed and sent to Dr. Sam Karpowicz, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Before reading it, she turned to Claire.

  “I hope this dazzles him,” she said. “We’ve simply got to have Sam. Not only is he an excellent freelance botanist, but he’s a brilliant photographer, one of the few creative ones. The only thing that worries me is—well, Sam’s such a family man, and I pointedly ignored inviting his wife and daughter along. Maybe they’d be no problem, but I’m trying to keep the field team small.”

  “What if he insists upon bringing his family?” asked Claire.

  “Then I don’t know, I really don’t know. Of course, Sam’s so important to me that I suppose I should accept him under any conditions, even if I had to take along his grandfather, pet poodles, and hothouse… . Well, let’s hold a good thought, and cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s see what Sam has to say.”

  * * *

  It was after ten o’clock in the evening when Sam Karpowicz locked the door of his darkroom shed and crossed the few yards of wet green lawn to the flagstone steps, wearily ascending them to the constricted patio. Beside the outdoor wicker lounge he halted, inhaling the cooling, dry night air, and clearing his head of the darkroom fumes. The intake of air was as delicious as any intoxicant. He closed his eyes and inhaled and exhaled several times, then opened his eyes and momentarily enjoyed the distinct rows of street lights and scattered residential lights off toward the Rio Grande. The street lights seemed to shimmer and move, with yellow grandeur, like the torchlights of a nighttime religious procession he had seen last year between Saltillo and Monterey, Mexico.

  He stood quietly in the patio, reluctant to give up the pleasures of the place and its scenes. His affection for this suburban neighborhood, for the dusty pueblos of Acoma and San Felipe nearby, the flat grazing land and irrigated chili pepper fields, the blue spruce mountains, was deep and unshakable.

  He remembered, with a pang, what had brought him here, so un
likely a place for one who knew nothing but New York’s Bronx from birth to early manhood. During the war—the Hitler war—he had come to know Ernie Pyle very well. Sam had been a press officer and Signal Corps photographer, despite his university degree in botany, and Pyle had been a battle correspondent. In their long hikes together, on three Pacific islands, Sam would discourse on the wonders of Pacific plant ecology, and Pyle, at Sam’s urging, would speak of his passion for the peace of his New Mexico. Some months after Pyle’s death in action, Sam had been sent to California for discharge from the service. He had purchased a beaten-up old car and driven through the Southwest toward New York, determined to have one look at this country before burying himself in the monotony of metropolitan teaching.

  His route had taken him through Albuquerque, and once in the city, he knew that he could not leave it without visiting Mrs. Pyle, and Ernie’s cottage, and the neighborhood his late friend had so often discussed with such love. Sam had put up in a four-dollar single at the Alvarado Hotel, next to the Santa Fe station. After cleaning up and dining, and making inquiries at the desk, he had driven through the hot, quiet business district, past the pueblo-styled University, until he had come upon Girard Drive. He had turned right on the paved street, so familiar and friendly after his dead friend’s descriptions, and had cruised onward for a mile, between Spanish adobe homes, until the street became gravel, and after several blocks he had arrived at the corner of Girard Drive and Santa Monica Drive. Ernie Pyle had said that his cottage was at 700 South Girard Drive, a corner house with shrubbery, cement patio, a dog named Cheeta, a green-shingle roofed white house made for peace.

  Sam had parked and gone to the house and knocked. The door had been opened by a nurse, and he had identified himself and explained his mission. The nurse had told him that Mrs. Pyle was too ill to see anyone, but suggested that if he was a friend of Ernie’s, he might like to see Ernie’s room, untouched since the day he had left it forever. In his mind’s eye, Sam had seen the room often, and it held no surprises. Somehow, it was more his own room than the one in the apartment in the Bronx where Estelle waited for him. Slowly, he had circled the room—the open dictionary on the stand, the autographed drawing by Low, the two walls of books, the framed photograph of Ernie chatting with Eisenhower and Bradley, the dirty green baseball cap hanging from a peg—and finally, with thanks and regards for Mrs. Pyle, Sam had left.

  Once outside, Sam had wandered along the gravel road, nodding to a neighbor mowing his lawn, observing the University buildings some distance off, poking about several empty lots, often halting to stare at the faraway hills, and at last he had returned to his car and to the city.

  He did not remain in Albuquerque overnight. He remained a week. In that week he applied for a post at the University of New Mexico, and after that he resumed his cross-country journey.

  One year later, he was an instructor at the University, with a private laboratory and shining new compound microscope, and two years later he had his own adobe on South Girard Drive.

  And here, on the patio of this cottage, he stood tonight. Not one day had he ever regretted the move, nor had Estelle regretted it either. The only occasions that he had ever known regret had been those occasions when he had found it necessary to leave Albuquerque on work trips.

  One last time, he breathed the invigorating air, letting it fill his thin chest, and, partially revived, he went into the house through the open glass doors of the dining room. Securing the doors, he shouted, “Estelle, how about some coffee?”

  “Ready and waiting!” she called back. “In the living room!”

  He found Estelle curled in the wide armchair. Her purplish-gray hair was done up in curlers, and her large loose bathrobe was flung out to cover both her ample frame and the sides of the chair. She resembled, he decided, a comfortable teepee. She was reading, with the dogged intentness that denotes self-improvement, Riesman’s Individualism Reconsidered, and now she laid the book aside to rise and take the coffee pot from the portable hot plate. Sam made for the opposite armchair and, as if being lowered by a derrick, settled his lengthy skeleton frame creakingly into the chair. Once seated, spindly legs outstretched, he groaned pleasantly.

  “You’re making sounds like an old man,” said Estelle, pouring coffee into the cup that rested on the lacquered table.

  “The Torah says when a man is forty-nine, he has the license to groan with equanimity.”

  “So groan then. Did you accomplish much?”

  “I printed some of the stuff I shot around Little Falls. That Mexican sun is so bright you have to work like a dog to get true definition. Anyway, the pitahaya turned out beautifully. I’m almost at the end. I think I can wind it up in a few weeks. How’s the typing going?”

  “I’m caught up to you,” said Estelle, returning to her place. “When you write the rest of the captions, I’ll do them.”

  Sam tasted his coffee, noisily blew at it, and finally drank with enjoyment and set down the half-filled cup. He removed his rimless square glasses—“the Schubert glasses,” his daughter called them—because they had steamed, and then, feeling untidy, he smoothed down his mussed saffron-gray hair, ran a finger across each of his peaked eyebrows, and finally searched for and found a cigar. As he prepared it, he suddenly glanced around. “Where’s Mary? Is she back yet?”

  “Sam, it’s only ten-fifteen.”

  “I thought it was later. My legs feel like it’s later.” He started his cigar glowing, and drank his coffee again. “I hardly saw her today—”

  “We hardly saw you, hour after hour in that black hole in the back. A human being at least comes in for dinner. Did you eat the sandwiches?”

  “Darnit, I forgot to bring in the tray and dishes.” He put down his empty cup. “Yes, I cleaned the tray.” He sucked at the cigar again, erupted a cloud of smoke, and asked, “What time did she go out?”

  “What?” Estelle had gone back to her reading.

  “Mary. What time did she leave here?”

  “Sevenish.”

  “Who was it tonight—the Schaffer boy again?”

  “Yes, Neal Schaffer. He took her to a birthday party at the Brophys’. Imagine, Leona Brophy is seventeen.”

  “Imagine, Mary Karpowicz is sixteen. What I can’t imagine is what Mary sees in that Brophy girl. She’s absolutely vacuous, and the way she dresses—”

  Estelle dropped the book to her lap. “Leona is perfectly all right. What you object to is her parents.”

  Sam snorted. “Anyone who puts Americanism stickers on his car—God, how often I try to think what’s in the minds of those people. Why would anyone have to go around billboarding the fact that they are Americans in America? Of course, they’re Americans, and so are we, and so is almost everyone in this country. It’s so damn suspect. What are they trying to say—that they’re super-Americans, special Americans, more American than ordinary Americans? Do they want to prove that everyone else might want to overthrow the government some day or sell secrets to a foreign power, whereas the stickers prove that they guarantee they will not, as long as they live? What crazy dark things are inside those people, that they have to prove their citizenship and loyalty? Why doesn’t old man Brophy also wear a lapel button saying Marriedism or Manism or Godism?”

  Estelle accepted her husband’s outburst patiently—the truth was, she secretly adored him in these moments of indignation—and when she saw that Sam was done, she returned with practicality to the central point. “All of which has nothing to do with Leona or her birthday party or Mary going there.”

  Sam smiled. “Right you are,” he said. He studied the cigar. “This Schaffer kid—Mary ever discuss him with you?”

  Estelle shook her head. “Sam, you’re not going to pick on him, are you?”

  Sam smiled again. “In fact, I was, but only mildly. I don’t have much more than an impression of him, but he seems too smart and old for her.”

  “They’ll all be too smart and old for her, as long as you’re her Father
and she’s growing up.”

  Sam was tempted to make a wisecrack, but he did not. Instead, he nodded placid agreement. “That’s right, I suppose you’re right and Mother knows best—”

  “—about Father. She sure does.”

  “The subject is changed.” He surveyed the lacquered table. “Any calls today—visitors—mail?”

  “All quiet—nothing in the mail except an invitation to a dinner dance at the Sandia Base—some bills—a report from the Civil Liberties Union—The New Republic—more bills—and that’s about—” She suddenly straightened. “Oh, dear, I almost forgot—there’s a letter for you from Maud Hayden. It’s on the dining room table.”

  “Maud Hayden? I wonder where the old girl is now? Maybe she’s coming out this way again.”

  “I’ll get it for you.” Estelle was already on her feet and, bedroom slippers plopping, on her way to the dining room. She came back with a long envelope and handed it to Sam. “It’s from Santa Barbara.”

  “She’s becoming sedentary,” said Sam, opening the envelope.

  As he began to read the letter, Estelle stood beside him, stifling a yawn, but unable to leave until she knew what it was all about. “Anything important?”

  “As far as I can make out …” His voice trailed off, as he read on, absorbed. “She’s going on a field trip to the South Pacific in June. She wants company.” He handed her the page he had finished, absently groped for his spectacles and hooked them on and continued to read.

  Five minutes later, he had finished the letter, and waited thoughtfully, looking up at his wife, as she read to the end of the Easterday enclosure.

  “What do you think, Estelle?”

  “Fascinating, of course—but Sam, you promised we’d stay put this summer—and I don’t want you trotting off without us—”

  “I never said I would.”

  “There are a hundred things to be done to the house, and work you have to catch up on, and we’ve promised my family that this year they could come out and—”