“Professor Easterday, everyone, has imposed such a curtain of secrecy over the Sirens,” Maud said, “that I keep wondering how anyone, outside those islands, knows about it. For example, this Courtney. And yourself, too. How do you know about it?”
Rasmussen contracted his brow, as if examining the reply he must make. Obviously, thinking was a slow and painful process for him. He needed time for his reply. At last, he made it. “Won’t speak for Tom Courtney. It’s his business an’ he might not wanna tell how he come there, an’ you ask him. You’ll have time enough. He’s a good easy talker, like all of us down these parts, but he’s not given much to talkin’ about hisself. So you ask him.”
“But what about you?” Maud persisted.
“Me? I got no secret about that from you, specially since you’re goin’ in there. Me? Well now, haven’t remembered it for a century, maybe. Was like thirty years ago, when I was more a kid than grown, an’ shovin’ my nose in everywhere, an’ sometimes even gettin’ it bent out of joint, you bet. Well, I’d been workin’ for them big copra outfits—the ones that took over from J. C. Godeffroy an’ Son, an’ those British, the Lever Brothers—an’ I got me a little stake roll, an’ I was pretty feisty. I bought me a schooner—a beaut—an’ went off on my own. Well, on one of my tradin’ voyages, I got off the regular path, kind of lookin’ around—an’ one mornin’ we sighted this young Polynesian fellow adrift in an outrigger canoe—had a ripped pandanus sail—an’ was kinda wheelin’ around in the water. Well, we picked him up, sorta got him revived, an’ what happened was he was goin’ somewhere, then got sick in the gut—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am—an’ he went out like a light an’ then just layin’ there he got sunstroke. Anyways, I don’t know much what to do with him. He says he’ll die unless we take him to his home, which he says is near. He says they can fix him. He tells where his place is an’ I thought he was sick an’ off his rocker at first, ‘cause I never heard of no such place, an’ I knew most of them. Anyways, we take him there—in the direction—an’ sure enough—we find the Sirens an’ drop anchor off. By the time I got the kid on shore—he’s feelin’ better by then—he’s scared stiff, because he give me the directions when he was delirious an’ no one up to then knew about this place an’ strangers are strict tabu. But bein’ a feisty kid myself, I don’t give no damn about that native nonsense, an’ I see the kid’s in no condition to even get off the shore. So I kinda get whichway outa him an’ half lug him to the village. Well, I tell you, instead of takin’ off my head, those villagers make me practically a hero, because the kid I saved, he’s a blood relative of the Chief. He’s also—well, he’s dead now—but he was Dick Hapai’s father.”
Maud and Claire followed Rasmussen’s finger to the dark-haired, light-brown young man bent over the controls. He turned slightly, briefly meeting their eyes, and he bobbed his head. “Yes, true,” he said.
“To make a long story short,” said Rasmussen, “the medical guy in the tribe, he saved Hapai’s father. He only died a few years ago. Me—they wouldn’t leave me go—wined an’ dined me till I couldn’t hardly move—an’ to overcome the tabu, they had rites an’ made me an honorary member of the tribe. How do you like that?”
“Yes, it is sometimes done,” said Maud.
“It was done for me an’ they couldn’t do enough. I could have whatever I wanted. Well, after a year or two I got to the habit of droppin’ in for a visit, just for the sport—it’s a great rompin’ place, full of high jinks, wait’ll you see—an’ I keep learnin’ about the place an’ them. Then, one day I find out they gotta special product which I can see is better than copra or pearls or Trochus shell an’ I ask permission to exclusively export an’ trade it, in return payin’ them with outside goods they need from other islands. An’ I been doin’ this ever since. In the olden days, I used to come here in my schooner maybe four times a year, but after the second war I could see everything was turnin’ to speed an’ flyin’. So when there was a chance to grab this old flyin’ boat, I bought it. I miss the lazy olden days of the schooners—”
“What about your crews?” asked Maud. “Why didn’t they go out and tell everybody about the Sirens?”
Rasmussen snorted. “Crews? What crews? I used to take along two drinkin’ Chinks, see? They couldn’t read a compass even, never knew where we were, an’ I kept them boozed up whenever we got near here. They never even once went ashore. Later on, when the Chinks was dead, Paoti started tellin’ me I should use his own people to keep it safer, so that’s how I got Hapai here, an’—I had his cousin before him. Good boys. So there’s how the place is still secret. I never had cause to snitch to anybody about it, ‘cept once, an’ that’s my business. I always kept it secret because it give me the exclusive rights on the produce I export, but that’s not the real reason either, ma’am. You see, I’m part of these people now, honorary kin, an’ I’d die before betrayin’ them—or havin’ the place spoiled by outsiders. That’s what was drivin’ me nuts about that professor, old Easterday, his hittin’ on this by accident an’ forcin’ my hand.”
“Captain Rasmussen,” said Maud, “you need have no fear about us. We are all, every member of the team, pledged to protect the privacy of the Sirens. And even if one of us were indiscreet, not one of us knows, has the slightest knowledge, of where we are.”
“You still gotta be careful,” said Rasmussen, “because now you know the general area. If someone had a clue, and searched long enough, they’d find it sure one year or another.”
“When I do my paper,” said Maud, “I intend to locate it in Polynesia, saying no more, no less.”
“Captain,” Claire said, “I’m surprised someone didn’t find it during the Second World War. The Pacific was buzzing with Japanese and American aircraft and ships. And since then—”
“I’m sure loads of flyers and ship lookouts seen it,” said Rasmussen. “But from the sea, it looks uninhabited, and the ones who seen it, they also seen it don’t look like much an’ it got no bay, an’ is too shallow, and often there’s a hard surf runnin’. As to the airplanes, sure they passed over, but they seen nothin’ either—that’s the great thing about the Sirens—it’s so set up that the one village is practically all hidden from sight, from the sky or the sea—there’s nothin’, looks like nothin’. As to these days, all the same holds true, an’ besides it’s off the main trade routes an’ everyone wants to go to the known islands anyways. They figure everythin’ good is known and everythin’ else is nothin’. That’s what’s saved us.”
Maud was about to say something more, when Hapai’s hand touched Rasmussen’s arm.
“Cap’n,” said Hapai. “Siren Islands ahead.”
They all looked off. The night had disappeared, and it was sunrise. The ocean below, gray-blue and gold-flecked by the early rim of sun, stretched before them for seemingly endless liquid acres. Claire’s eyes swept the sea, and there, somewhere before infinity, exactly as Easterday had described it in his letter of months ago, she saw the vague sketch against the horizon of an arc of land. She savored the announcement: Siren Islands ahead.
Maud’s sighting of it came seconds later. She exhaled pleasurably. “I can see it, Captain. What would you call it—a moist atoll or a weathered volcanic island?”
“I’d call it both and be right,” said Rasmussen, who had turned his back to them. “Actually, callin’ it a high island would be correcter, because it’s got that small empty volcano—you see, where the thick white clouds are bunched above—but it’s not as rugged and jungly as most of the high islands out here, an’ while it’s got a ring of coral, it’s also got some salt swamps, an’ better vegetation than the atolls. The good thing about it, you’ll see—from the Sirens’ point of view—is that it’s craggy and steep-to an’ hard to get into like Aguigan and Pitcairn.” He paused. “You’ll be seein’ for yourself in a few minutes.”
Claire and Maud stood rooted in awe as they sped over the tight pongee sheen of the Pacific, and the top of the yellow d
isc of sun expanded and enlarged, circularly framing the main island, a torn and unpolished piece of jade immobile in the tropical calm.
They were almost upon it, sliding across it and bending around it, and Claire could distinctly see what Easterday had seen: steep terraced black cliffs sculptured by erosion, rain, time; a luxuriant verdigris carpet of plateau; a broken mountain rising high and proud as the ruin of an ancient castle; splashes of purple lagoons; ravines scooped out by Loti’s “patient hand of ages”; slopes of trees and crystal brooks and creases of green valleys. Yet, Claire thought, all delicately detailed in miniature as if from a Polynesian Breughel’s brush.
They had dipped past the two adjoining atolls and were heading back toward a gash in the rocky perimeter. Claire could make out the strings of coconut palms, their fronds tiny bursts of celebration in the sky. Beyond lay the cobalt ocean, greening brightly as it neared a strip of sea beach, where the narrow run of sand sparkled back to the sun. All lay inanimate, except for the bubbling white foam against the cliffs gathered about the small extent of beach, all still except for these tentative breakers and signs of movement far below on the sand.
Claire’s heart leaped. “Aren’t those people down there on the beach?”
Rasmussen grunted. “Yeh, probably Courtney to make you welcome an’ some of the villagers to carry your baggage.” But now Rasmussen was busy at the controls. “We’re goin’ in. Better wake up your people an’ then sit down. Sometimes the water’s a cushion an’ sometimes it’s like a rutted road.”
Maud was the first to turn away, and Claire was reluctant to follow her. One more moment, her eyes feasted on the primitive place, the rainbow of color beneath the wing, and then she murmured, to herself alone, “Iaorana.” She tore her gaze free from what was deflowering her senses, and went back to the reasonable security of mate and companions.
When Claire reached her seat, she saw that Marc and the others were awake, and she waved vaguely, still seduced, and sat just as the seaplane slumped forward. She held tightly, staring at the boarded portholes, and descended with the fat, brown Polynesian bird, felt it contact the water, bouncing and slithering, until the engines coughed their last spasms and were still, and they roosted wonderingly on the calm waters off the sand beach of The Three Sirens.
The egg of Creation has been dropped, Claire thought. She waited for the shell to break and free her, so that life could begin, at last …
* * *
It was still early morning, although they had waited on the sand of the beach for over an hour while Rasmussen and Hapai assisted nine young males of the Sirens in moving the crated supplies, and now their baggage, from the rolling seaplane to the shore.
The sun was a full blazing orb by this time, and the rays of heat it sent toward them could almost be seen. The air about was still and incandescent, faintly moist with the consistency of steam, boiling ever so slowly. It was a heat unusual to find in this part of Oceania.
Claire stood, sweater over her arm, enjoying the heat on her face and neck, and the warmth of the grains of sand covering her sandals. Beside her, Rachel DeJong and Lisa Hackfeld were less comfortable. Rachel appeared wretched in her black wool suit, and she began to remove her jacket. Inspired by this informality, Lisa Hackfeld also started to shed her white jacket.
“It must be the humidity,” Lisa said apologetically. “It’s smothering.”
“We’ll have to learn to dress properly,” said Rachel DeJong.
Claire watched a tall young native, the color of maple wood, darker than his friends, as he bent forward, hands on his knees, ready to receive the oncoming long canoe. From behind, the native appeared naked. His sloping shoulders, ridge of spine, long flanks and thin buttocks were entirely exposed. Only his waist held the string which supported the pubic bag.
When first she had been helped down into the canoe, and met these natives, their masculinity accented rather than hidden by the bags, Claire had averted her eyes with embarrassment. She had dreaded reaching the beach, where she knew that the white man, Tom Courtney, would be waiting with Maud, who had gone earlier in the first canoe crossing. On the natives, the brevity of attire, if embarrassing, was at least acceptable. They were, after all, of another race, another people and place. You did not equate them with yourself, did not identify or imagine. But for one of her own to be similarly revealed would be unsettling.
With dread, Claire had endured the gliding passage to the beach, no longer aware of either the scenery or her oarsman. She had stood on the sand as Maud introduced her to Mr. Thomas Courtney, and to her wild relief he was not flesh and codpiece but civilized decency itself.
“Welcome to the Sirens, Mrs. Hayden,” he had said.
As she had taken his hand, avoiding looking up at his face, she could see that he wore a thin cotton gym shirt already blotched with perspiration, wrinkled light-blue dungarees rolled up at the ankles, and his bare feet were caught in leather thonged sandals. Only later, when he was occupied elsewhere, had she matched his face with the image her mind had created from Easterday’s letter. She had expected him to have sandy hair, but it was a darker brown, as were his eyes, and it was thick and tangled. His face was longer, more sensitive and amused than Easterday had reported, and it was wonderfully seamed at the smile lines by the outdoors, the weather, the years of early middle-age. He was rangy, probably strong, but he moved about them on the beach in long strides that were awkward, as if he were too tall and too shy. He possessed when he was still, Claire had noted, the gift of repose, of letting go, of seeming deceptively indolent—a contrast to her own Marc, who was always coiled tight and taut.
Now, beside Rachel DeJong and Lisa Hackfeld, as she watched the rear of the native at the water’s edge, Claire had a feeling that he and the other natives were sensible about their attire and that she and the team were not. She had a momentary feeling that, as much as she enjoyed the morning heat, she wanted to rid herself of her blouse and skirt and fling them away and know the entire pleasure of the sun and air and water.
Lisa had complained of smothering, and Rachel of having to learn to dress properly, and now Claire said lightly, “Well, Dr. DeJong, maybe we’ll have to learn to undress—imitate the natives.”
Rachel offered only her lips in a smile. “I doubt it, Mrs. Hayden. I’m afraid we’re in the position of the Malayan Englishman, in Empire days, who dressed for dinner in the jungle.”
“Thank God for people like him,” said Lisa Hackfeld. “How can they run around like that?”
“They don’t usually have company,” said Claire.
Rachel DeJong nodded off. “This should be our personal luggage now. I hope they’re careful.”
They all looked at the sharp pointed prow of the oncoming canoe being steadily paddled by eight of the husky young natives. The canoe was piled high, in the center, with the luggage of the team.
“I can’t get over how they look,” said Lisa. “I expected them to be darker, more native.”
“They’re both English and Polynesian,” Claire reminded her.
“I know, but anyway …” Lisa said. “Why, the American—Mr. Courtney over there—he’s more darkly colored than they are. I hope I can get a tan like his. I’ll be the envy of everyone back home.”
Rachel DeJong had been concentrating on the approaching canoe. “Their complexions may be fair,” she observed, “but I believe their features have a definite Polynesian cast. They are all big and muscular, black hair, broad noses, rather full lips, yet there is some kind of effeminate air about them, I suppose their grace of movement.”
“I think they’re definitely masculine,” said Claire, and for a second glanced about to be sure Marc had not overheard her.
“They leave no doubt,” said Rachel dryly.
The thirty-foot canoe hit the shore, and the paddlers spilled out into the shallow water to push it up on the sand as their waiting tribesman, at the prow, pulled with all his strength.
“I want to see if my things are there,”
Lisa said. She started through the sand toward the canoe.
“I’d better check, too,” said Rachel DeJong, and she went after Lisa.
Claire had no interest in her luggage for the moment. Her eyes followed Rachel and Lisa to the canoe, and then she wheeled about to see what everyone else was doing. In the shade of a boulder, Maud, Marc, and Orville Pence were absorbed in a discussion. Nearby, Courtney crouched with Hapai, going over a list of some kind, while Rasmussen stood listening, mopping his forehead. Some distance off, at the water line, Mary Karpowicz was wading, while her father and mother observed her with parental pride.
Briefly, Claire considered joining her husband, but decided that she wanted this time to herself. Turning her back on the others, she lifted her shoulder purse from the sand, and, lazily swinging it, she strolled past the canoe which was being unloaded. She made her way toward a group of curving coconut trees, and when she reached the first, she lowered herself to the sand, plucked a cigarette from her package and lighted it, and then leaned back against the base of the tree and dreamily soaked in the landscape before and above her. It was easy to depopulate the scene, to return it to its virginal state, for it had a magnificent grandeur that overwhelmed all its temporary habitation.
Closed in as she was by the reaching cliffs, the raw and uncontained vegetation, she felt for the first time that she was severed from civilization, from all that was familiar and controlled. It was as if she had stepped off the safe world into outer space, and been the first to land on a hot unknown planet. Gone was the pasteurized, sanitary, antibiotic, aluminum, plastic, electrical, automatic, Constitutional world of her entire life past. Here was the primeval first world, unregimented, unchecked, undefeated, uncultivated, untamed, untaught, uncultured, uninhibited. Gone was the way of gentility, sophistication, progress, and here, instead, the way of nature, crude, primordial, pagan.
For the first time since infancy, she was at the mercy of others. How would she exist? Her mind fled to the cocoons of her recent life, their easy silken safeties, the downy soft bed from which she rose, the bathroom with its gadget splendors, the kitchen with its mechanical gluttonies, the living room and study with their fabric and leather and wooden furniture, and records and books and art. At home she was visited by civilized friends who could be understood and who were reassuringly garmented and who were as conscious of the amenities and obedient to the rules as was the Victorian gentry.
The Three Sirens Page 21
