The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  A surprise, but then no surprise, for Courtney had explained earlier. Instead of the pubic bags, the two native men, the Chief and his son, Moreturi, wore ample matted kilts, as did the retainers. And here the women were not bare-breasted, not grass-skirted, but bound around the bosoms and waists in colorful tapa cloth, although shoulders, midriffs, legs, feet were bare. Then, speeches from the Chief and his son. Then music. Then kava, served differently than she had read about, served both men and women, and as part of the feast. Then palm juice. Then endless courses, the roasted pig taken from the earth oven filled with heated stones, and then the rest, the relays of alien foods. Then, eating with fingers, with a leaf to wipe them, and talk and talk, mostly the Chief and Maud, sometimes Courtney, sometimes Marc, the women silent, Moreturi restrained but friendly, amused. And now, more serving. Poi with coconut sauce.

  It must now be ten-thirty, Claire decided.

  Slowly, her neck contracted and her head came down and settled, and she squeezed her eyes and sobered and looked around the table. They were eating their food, absorbed, enjoying. At the head of the table, to her right, above them on his ridiculous chair, being fed by a kneeling child-girl, was Chief Paoti Wright. In the reflected light of the flickering candlenuts, his wrinkled parchment skin was browner than any other in the room. His face was skeletal, sunken, sunken eyes, sunken cheeks, almost toothless. Yet, the cropped hair, banker-gray, the alertness of the eyes, with white bushy eyebrows, the clipped but unnatural preciseness of his English, sometimes archaic, often colloquial, the importance of him—the scurrying and ducking about him—gave him the dignity of any monarch, an Indian ruler, an English chairman of the board, a Greek billionaire. She judged him to be in his late sixties, and she judged that the benign aspect hid cunning and severity.

  To his left sat Maud Hayden, and then Marc, and then herself. And beside her, the boundary for her side of the table, sat Moreturi, the heir. Upon meeting him, Claire had brought forth Easterday’s memory of him: black, wavy hair, broad face with slanted eyes and full lips and tan complexion, powerful and muscular to the hips, and slender. Easterday had said: about thirty, about six feet. Since meeting Moreturi, Claire had tried to revise the portrait she had held of him. There was no single detail that she could correct, except that he was less lean, somewhat stockier than she had expected. Yet, he appeared different from what she had imagined, and now she knew why. She had, in her mind, categorized him as strong and silent. This would be the type. To her surprise, he was neither. Despite the bulge of his muscles, he resembled no athlete that she had ever seen. Because his skin was devoid of hair, without fat or wrinkle, there was a natural smoothness, grace, beauty to his form. As to being the silent partner of strong and silent, she detected from his occasional utterances, above all from his reactions to the talk of others, the air of the amused extrovert. She guessed that, removed from the presence of his father and the solemnity of the feast, he might be foolish fun.

  Automatically, as Easterday had done, Claire sought to compare Moreturi to Courtney, his white counterpart and friend. In making the visual transition from Moreturi to Courtney, Claire’s eyes had to pass across the woman who sat opposite Moreturi. Of the party, Claire knew her least. She had been introduced as Atetou, wife of Moreturi. Alone, of them all, she had not spoken a word since the meal had begun. Avoiding her husband’s eyes and any reply to Courtney’s asides, she devoted herself to food, drink, secret soliloquies.

  Atetou was handsome, Claire decided, but not attractive. Her features, small, regular, unyielding, were carved from a beige ivory complexion. There was something sullen and disappointed about her, too old for her hardened face, which could not have known more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years. She seemed the embodiment of all women who had married young, with high hopes and great expectations, and had been soured by the economic or romantic failure of their mates. Claire squeezed her eyes: poor Atetou, she can no longer laugh at her husband’s jokes.

  At last, Claire had reached Thomas Courtney. She had meant to compare him to Moreturi, as Easterday had done, but she saw that there was no comparison, for there was hardly any similarity, except that both were male, both good-natured. Courtney was the more mature, Claire’s instinct told her. It had nothing to do with more education or more years of life. It had nothing to do with a seamier, hawkish, wiser face. It had entirely to do with the quality of Courtney’s sense of humor versus Moreturi’s sense of humor. Moreturi’s drollery was boy merriment. Courtney’s amused air was grownup, its roots deep and fanned out in layers of experience, self-probing, understanding, philosophic adjustment. He may be cynical, she thought, but he is not entirely bitter. He may be sardonic, but he would not be cruel. Guessing, guessing. Kava, palm juice.

  Suddenly, Claire realized that she was gazing at two persons, for the one on the other side of Courtney, the youngest and most beautiful female at the table, the niece of the Chief, was leaning close to Courtney, whispering into his ear. Listening to her, he smiled and smiled, nodding, and then Claire detected something else. The niece, Tehura, as she whispered, absently had placed her hand nearest Courtney on Courtney’s thigh, and she rubbed the hand gently, possessively, intimately across his thigh. Claire felt a pang of envy and regret, envy of Tehura, for the naturalness of that hand, regret for herself, for herself and Marc and their self-conscious condition.

  As if to acquire information, a lesson in the art of artlessness, Claire inspected Tehura more carefully. Paoti’s niece was exquisite. Melville would have known her at once as the daughter of Fayaway, yet the crossing of two races had made her more. Her perfection, Claire knew, could be measured by Marc’s stunned dumbness upon being introduced to her. In the morning, both Marc and Orville Pence had chided Courtney about Polynesian young women, had referred disparagingly to their heaviness of nose, jaw, waist, ankles. Courtney had replied by calling these women beautiful inside. If the loveliness and grace of the young women in the village, seen from afar in the afternoon, had already supported Courtney’s refutation, the presence of Tehura, now, in the evening, as his prime exhibit, made his case secure. Claire still could not perceive Tehura’s inner beauty, but her magnificent physique was enough. Certainly, it had been enough to reduce Marc to mute. Eating the poi, Claire was aware that Marc constantly watched Paoti’s niece. Yet, Claire was not jealous, any more than she would have been jealous had her husband been entranced by some classical work of artistic genius.

  Tehura had straightened away from Courtney, to finish her meal, and Claire tried to locate the sources of her beauty. She was, for one thing, a shining girl: her jet-colored hair, tumbling down her back, was lustrous; her large round eyes were liquid and capering bright; her sheath of taut flesh had the glow of burnished light copper. Her facial features, dainty as those of a Romney portrait, were contradicted only by the sensuous line of her neck and sloping shoulders. The bosom, tightly constricted by the tapa cloth, appeared small, but the exposed belly and navel above the skirt line, and the outline of hips beneath the knot, were fuller. No more than twenty-two, Claire judged. There were other factors that were anomalous. When inattentive, there was a languor about Tehura’s person. When speaking or spoken to, she was filled with vivacity. The delicacy of her countenance gave an impression of unapproachable virginity, yet conflicting with this was her bold, almost flirtatious, almost wanton, manner toward Courtney.

  Tehura, having finished her poi, leaned away from Courtney to listen to something her aunt, Chief Paoti’s wife, was saying to her. The Chief’s wife, Hutia Wright, was a squat and considerable person. Her face was round and serious, unwrinkled although she must be almost sixty, and in her profile there were traces still of youthful fairness. She spoke English as precisely as her husband, took her rank seriously (for she measured the content of her every remark), and served, Claire had overheard, as her husband’s delegate on one of the village’s most important ruling or policy committees.

  Hutia Wright had finished speaking to Tehura, and had turned
her attention back to her husband and to Maud. Tehura, freed of conversation and food, glanced about aimlessly, and her eyes intercepted Claire’s concentrated study of her. Almost appreciatively, Tehura’s gleaming teeth were revealed in a smile. Embarrassed to be caught, Claire strained to return the smile, then, flushing, she bowed her head over the untouched poi, automatically sought a spoon and found none, and awkwardly began to take what she could of it with her fingers.

  With her eyes cast downward, distractions removed, Claire could hear again. She heard the beat of the percussion instruments from the next room. She heard the scrape of the coconut shells on the table. She heard, at last, the voices around her. She listened.

  “—but ours is an insular society—insular—sheltered by good favor from the outside world.” It was the voice of Paoti Wright that she heard. The voice, reedy, singsong, went on. “The system works so well for us—so well—that we have always challenged any—any—Mr. Courtney, that legal phrase you are fond of employing-?”

  “Invasion of privacy, sir,” said Courtney.

  “Yes, yes, our life is so smooth that we have always resisted any invasion of our privacy. I am certain this insularity has its infirmities, yes. Perhaps we are too ingrown. Perhaps we are too complacent. An excess of happiness can weaken the fiber of a people. To be strong, contentious, a society must have its ups and downs, unhappiness as well as happiness, conflict. This is the combustion of progress, survival in war, but you see, Dr. Maud Hayden, we need no such strength, for we require no further progress, we have no wars to survive, and we compete with no one outside our little community.”

  “Are you not curious as to exactly what is on the outside?” Maud inquired.

  “Not very,” said Paoti.

  “Sir.” It was Marc, and Claire lifted her head to support her husband. “I’d like to enlarge upon my mother’s question,” said Marc. “As satisfied as you are with what you have, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that a knowledge of the more civi— more sophisticated islands of Polynesia might improve your own village? Or furthermore, that you might gain by adopting progressive ideas from America or Europe? We’ve advanced fast and far since the eighteenth century, you know.”

  The faintest paternal smile touched the old Chief’s lips. “I know,” he said. “You have advanced so fast and so far, that before your time, you are at the brink of the grave. All that remains is one more step … Do not think me arrogant and vain about our own ways. We have our lacks—yes, lacks, and there is much, I understand, we can gain from you. However, these benefits might bring with them—might bring—certain nuisances, penalties that would outweigh them. So we keep to the old ways.” He cleared his throat. “I might add, the outside is not a complete mystery to us on the Sirens. For a century, our young men have been permitted to sail their long canoes and outriggers on the sea, and have frequently touched on the nearest islands, never revealing from whence they came. Occasionally, they do this today, as a feat of strength. They have always returned to this place, been pleased to return, and have always brought thither extensive data concerning the more progressive islands of Polynesia. On a few occasions, in the past, people of your race have come to us, and what they have revealed has told us more of the outside. Then, Captain Rasmussen, although often not the most profound observer, has educated us further, and Air. Courtney here has been generous with information on your own country. We have much admired the technology in your place called America. We have held less admiration for the manner of life brought on by that technology, and by your customs.”

  Claire could see that Marc had been restless throughout Paoti’s recital. Now Marc spoke, controlling the pitch of his voice. “I don’t know what Mr. Courtney has told you of our culture, sir. Each of us has our personal prejudices and viewpoint, and it may be that the America he has described would not be the same America my mother and I might show you.”

  Paoti ruminated on this, bobbing his gray head slowly. “True, true, yet—yet, I wonder.” He turned his head from Marc to Maud. “As you know, Dr. Maud Hayden, we have pride in the enduring success of our mating system. We all partake of its emoluments. It is the core of our happiness.” Maud nodded, but did not interrupt. Paoti continued. “From Mr. Courtney, I have been brought up to date on your own mating system. Perhaps Mr. Courtney has colored the facts with his own personality, as your son suggests. On the other hand, if what I have heard is approximately true, I am astonished. Is it true that your children receive no practical education in the art of love at any time before maturity? Is it true that virginity is much admired in women? Is it true that a married man is supposed never to enjoy the pleasures of another woman, and that if he does it is usually done in secrecy and is called ‘adultery’ and is regarded with a tincture of disapproval by the law and society? Is it true that there is no organized method for sexually pleasing a man or a woman left unsatisfied by the act of love? Is this approximately true?”

  “It is true,” said Maud.

  “Then, I believe, your son would have little to add to what Mr. Courtney has told us.”

  Marc leaned forward. “Wait, now, what I—”

  Maud ignored her son, and overrode him. “There is more to say, Chief Paoti, but all that of which you speak is true.”

  Paoti nodded. “Then there is little that we would wish to adopt from your society. On the other hand, it is your way, and I respect it. It is your way, and so perhaps you wish it that way and prefer it to all else. However, Dr. Maud Hayden, as you discover our way, I will be interested in your opinions of how it compares, in every detail, to the customs in your own homeland. I said that I am not greatly curious about the outside. I am not. Nevertheless, I have pride in my people, our system, and I will have interest in your comments.”

  “I look forward to these conversations,” said Maud.

  Claire, made more lightheaded than ever by the drink and the implications of Paoti’s words, suddenly leaned forward and called out, “Mr. Courtney—”

  Courtney turned toward her, surprised.

  “Tell us,” Claire said, “tell us what you really told them about our mating habits.” She settled back, waiting, unsure what had impelled her to speak, yet smiling so that he would know she was not allied with Marc here, not challenging.

  Courtney shrugged. “There’s so much, nothing that we, all of us from the United States, don’t know.”

  “Like what?” Claire persisted. “Name one big thing about our sex lives that’s different from here. Name one. I’m interested.”

  Courtney stared at the table a moment. He looked up. “All right,” he said. “We live in a sexual pressure cooker in America, and they don’t here.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Claire.

  “Meaning there’s pressure on sex at home, all kinds of stupidity and ignorance and foolishness, all kinds of inhibitions, leering, four-letter words, puritanism, secrecy, the cult of the breast, all that.”

  “For women, maybe,” said Claire, “but not for men so much, it’s easy for men.” She found Tehura and Hutia Wright listening to her with interest, and she said to them, “Men have fewer problems than women in our society, because—”

  She felt Mark’s hand on her arm. “Claire, this is no place for a sociological—”

  “Marc, I’m fascinated by the subject.” She faced Courtney once more. “I’m absolutely fascinated. Don’t you think I’m right?”

  “Well,” said Courtney, “I had really been telling Chief Paoti about our morality as a whole, our whole society—”

  “Did you tell him that men have less pressure?”

  “Not exactly, Mrs. Hayden,” said Courtney, “because I’m not sure it is true.”

  “You aren’t?” said Claire, not dismayed but eager to know what he thought. “All through Western history, men have forced chastity on their women while they chased around, still do. They’ve enjoyed themselves, whereas women—” She opened her hands in cheerful despair.

  “If you really want my views—” s
aid Courtney. He glanced about, somewhat apologetically, and saw that all were intent upon him.

  “Please go on, Mr. Courtney,” said Maud.

  “You asked for it,” he said with a grin. At once, he was solemn. “I think that Mrs. Hayden is right about one thing. From the time of the cave man through the Victorian era, men had it fairly much their way. It was, indeed, a man’s world. Women were merely the vassals of men, in all matters including love. The ultimate goal of a coupling was that the man be satisfied. The woman was there to give pleasure, not to share it. If she enjoyed herself too, that was incidental. That’s the way it was in other times.”

  Listening, Claire’s giddiness had subsided and she tried to examine what Courtney was saying. A noiseless servant behind her crept closer, unobtrusively offering a fresh drink of palm juice in a coconut shell. Automatically, Claire accepted it. “Do you think anything has changed?” she asked Courtney. She was conscious of Marc’s annoyance with her questions, and now with her accepting the coconut shell. In deliberate defiance of him, she drank and waited for Courtney’s reply.

  “I believe a good deal has changed, Mrs. Hayden,” said Courtney. “Somewhere between Freud and Woodrow Wilson, the age of emancipation, liberalism, confession came into being. Men conceded equality to women, privately as well as publicly. This filtered down from the ballot box and the office to the bedroom. Women won not only the vote, but also the right to the orgasm. They enjoyed their discovery and dinned it into all ears and used it as one measurement of happiness. Overnight, it seemed, the tables were turned. Men, who’d had it their own way for so long, had to give as well as take, had to satisfy as well as be satisfied. Men had to restrain their natural animal love-making, inhibit it while devoting themselves to being considerate. Overnight, their primitive pleasure became conditional on their other halves. This is what I mean by pressure on the male in our own society today.”