The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  Claire had nodded throughout this recital, but then she was diverted by Chief Paoti addressing her mother-in-law.

  “Dr. Maud Hayden,” the Chief was saying, “do you agree with Mr. Courtney’s observation?”

  “More or less,” said Maud. “Mr. Courtney’s observation has validity, but it is oversimplified. For example, he equates male virility entirely with his ability to bring a woman to orgasm. I don’t think this is a valid criteria in America or England or Europe. Our women have varying definitions of virility. If a man is a good provider, dependable, safe, rather than a great lover, he may be considered a real man. On a different level, a man who has wealth or power or prestige will find these effective substitutes for the virility conferred by orgasm-giving.”

  Paoti had turned to Courtney. “An interesting qualification to your point, yes?”

  Courtney accepted the qualification. “Absolutely, Dr. Hayden,” he said. “Rich or famous men are exempt from this modern pressure. If they fail to provide sexual pleasure, they are still capable of providing other pleasures even more valuable in our society. I’d go this far—I’d say that the upper and lower classes of men suffer less pressure than the middle class. The upper classes have other means of satisfying their women. The lower classes are generally too poor and uninformed to care about mutual orgasms. In women suffering from poverty, the desire for basic security supersedes the desire for orgasm, and a mate who can give this security is man enough. These women want to be satisfied economically first. The other, they regard as a refinement of leisure.”

  “But the middle classes?” asked Paoti.

  “There the pressure on men is unremitting,” said Courtney. “The broad, so-called average, in-between economic class, literate enough to know of the new equality, secure enough to get along on payments, without wealth or prestige or the obsession for bread as substitutes for virility, these are the male members of our society under the greatest tension. They go along now, in their mating, aware that they must be what the books call thoughtful and considerate, succeeding sometimes, failing more often, aware constantly that this whole thing isn’t as pleasant as it used to be for their grandfathers. This nostalgia for the past, I sometimes think, is what accounts for the prostitutes, call girls, party girls who accommodate the middle and upper-middle classes. These girls are a throwback to the vassal girls of old. They give pleasure, but demand none, and for this fun they ask only an impersonal commodity, a little gift or a little cash.”

  For a few moments, except for the distant music, the great cane and bamboo room was still. Claire sipped her palm sap, and she wondered what the native hosts made of this talk, which she was now convinced was mostly true. Of course, she told herself, Courtney had omitted discussing women, the universal ennui and dissatisfaction of most married women, and the causes of this and the problems involved. Who had said that the final tragedy of love is indifference? Mr. Maugham had said that. Final tragedy of love, indifference. Claire considered bringing it up, but then refrained because of Marc, so restless beside her. Instead, lowering her coconut-shell cup, she determined to find out what Courtney had yet left unsaid about the pressures on men.

  “Mr. Courtney, I—you—you seemed to be speaking only of the condition of men in America, in the West—” les.

  “Don’t men have exactly the same pressures everywhere on earth, even here, even on the Sirens?”

  “No. Not men, not women either.”

  “Why not?”

  Courtney hesitated and glanced at Paoti, who sat hunched above them all. “Perhaps Chief Paoti is better qualified—”

  Paoti waved his frail hand negatively. “No, no, I defer to you, Mr. Courtney. You are more eloquent at speechifying, better able to represent our way to your countrymen.”

  “All right,” said Courtney simply. His serious eyes went from Maud to Marc to Claire. “I speak from the experience of four years among these people. These pressures don’t exist on The Three Sirens because of their upbringing, their education, their traditional customs, all of which contribute to a healthier, more realistic attitude toward love and marriage. In the United States or England, for example, our prohibitions about sex have created a warped and magnified interest in it. Here on the Sirens the prohibitions are so few and minor, the consideration of the subject so natural, that it becomes a normal, acceptable part of day-to-day living. Here, when a woman hungers for food, she takes it and sees nothing wrong or special about eating. In the same way, when she hungers for love, she has it, and there’s no more to it. And the point is, she has it in the best way, without guilt or shame. On the Sirens, children learn about love in their school, not only in theory but in practice, so that they know as much about it as they know about their history and language. Growing young people are not avidly curious about sex, for nothing has been concealed from them. Nor are they repressed. If a young man wants a woman, or a girl wants a man, neither is frustrated. And the act of premarital coitus is gay, passionate but gay, great sport, because there are no tabus to create guilt or worry, no need to be furtive or afraid. In marriage, both partners are always fulfilled, if they wish to be fulfilled; the community guarantees this. Provisions are even made to satisfy widows and widowers, spinsters and bachelors. There is no homosexuality here, no violence, no rape, no abortion, no dirty words on walls of latrines, no adultery, no secret longings and unfulfilled erotic dreams. Because the old carefree Polynesian ways have been preserved, and interwoven with and improved by Daniel Wright’s liberal social ideas, the practices of sex, love, marriage are all synonymous with contentment on The Three Sirens.”

  “Those practices can be satisfactory in the United States, too,” said Marc coldly.

  “I’m sure they can be and sometimes are,” replied Courtney. “However, from my experience as an attorney handling civil cases, and from my reading, I think they are less enjoyable than they should be in America. As I look back, now that I have lived in these two contrasting societies, I believe what I find most incredible is this—that we in the so-called civilized nations, with all our overpowering teaching, learning, education, with our communications and know-how in all fields, with our machines to wash and dry, and machines to hurtle across the country, and machines to X-ray our insides, and machines to toss a human being beyond the reach of gravity—with all that, we have not invented the simple machine, or improved the human machine, to raise children sensibly, to make marriages happy, to make life relaxed. Yet here, on this remote island, where they have not a single machine, not a suit or dress, hardly a book, where orbit and gravity and X-ray and jet have no meaning, these people have been able to create and perpetuate a society where children and parents are wonderfully happy.

  “And one last point. While humans are the most emotionally complicated of all mammals, yet like the rest, in the matter of coupling, they are most simple. One is concave, the other convex. You join them, and there should be automatic pleasure and sometimes procreation. Yet, in the West, we have not mastered nature’s set of directions. Somehow we join the concave and the convex, and while the result is often procreation, it is too rarely pleasure. With all our expertise, our progress, our genius, we have not solved this first problem of all peoples on earth. Yet here, on this bump of land in the Pacific, a couple of hundred white-brown, nearly naked, semi-literate people have solved it. I think, in six weeks, you will agree with me. I hope so…In any event—” He had turned from Paoti and Maud back to Claire. “—I apologize for my overlong discourse, Mrs. Hayden. This will teach you not to ask me questions about my favorite subject. I’ve talked more tonight than in the last four years. I blame it on the kava, the kava and the juice, and a growing desire to become a missionary.”

  Claire’s bleary eyes went wide. “A missionary?”

  “Yes. I want to lead a set of holy fathers, from the Sirens, to New York and London and Rome and convert the heathen to nature’s way.”

  Claire faced her husband, squinting him into focus. “Let’s be converted, Marc
.”

  “Not so fast, dear,” Marc said. “I’m not buying a pig in a poke. Mr. Courtney may be exaggerating, may be taking a certain poetic license in his praise of this place.”

  Marc is angry, Claire thought, that is why he is speaking too loudly. But Marc’s face was contained, as he went on to his wife, but speaking for all ears. “After all, would Mr. Courtney leave his own country for so long if he were not discontented? And staying here so long, may he not have lost his perspective?”

  Marc looked at Courtney, whose expression was bland and un-combative. “Mr. Courtney, do not misunderstand me,” Marc continued. “I am only saving what I said this morning—sailors, long at sea, came upon these islands when they were edgy and disgruntled, and therefore they found them more pleasurable than they really were. I’m not calling you a romancer. I’m not trying to be argumentative. But, you see, I am a social scientist, most of us on the team are scientists, and we like to judge all phenomena against impartial, unemotional, scientific standards. I only say I would like to reserve my judgment until I have seen and studied, seen for myself.”

  “Fair enough,” said Courtney.

  Throughout this exchange, the native women had not uttered a word, had sat phlegmatic as graven images. Now Tehura, with a toss of her long black hair, had lifted herself to her knees and taken Courtney’s arm. “It is not fair enough, Tom!” she exclaimed. She stared directly at Marc across from her. “It does not need the scientific study you speak about. It is all true—about America I do not know—but about here on the Sirens I know, and it is true. Everything Tom says is exactly the way it is with our people. I am one of our people, so I know.”

  Marc was suddenly all gallantry. “I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with a beautiful young lady.”

  “Then you must listen, for a little, to this young lady. I will tell you a lovely nice story about Thomas Courtney and Tehura Wright.”

  Marc folded his arms impassively, an artificial smile pressed into his face. Maud’s head was cocked in the devoted attitude of anthropologist to informant. Only Claire’s expression reflected her inner excitement, like that of waiting for a curtain to rise and disclose a drama that would reveal the truth about the enigmatic Courtney.

  Tehura had slipped her arm inside Courtney’s arm, and she resumed earnestly. “When Tom first came here, so long ago, he was not the one you see today. He was like a different soul. He was—I do not know every word to describe it—sad, he was sad, and—Tom, how would you say it?”

  Courtney considered her with affectionate indulgence. Revealing some inner amusement, he said, “He was Odysseus in a wash—and-wear shirt and seersucker suit, with the battle ribbons of Ogygia, Ilium, Aeolia, and other Madison Avenues, on his patch pocket, who decided that since he had no Penelope awaiting him, he had no reason to return to Ithaca. So he managed to untie himself from his ship’s mast, and listen to the Sirens, and succumb to them. Some evil god, even like Odysseus’ Poseidon, had infected him with weariness, lack of spirit, apathy, cynicism, and a distrust of life. He offered himself to the Sirens because he was tired of his journey, and prayed they could give him the strength to go on—or remain.”

  Tehura squeezed Courtney’s arm. “Exactly.” Some private look passed between them, and then Tehura turned her attention to the others once more. “When he was taken into the village and made one of us, his bad spirit fell away. He lived with us, and he became alive with being curious. He wanted to know everything we did and why we did it. Like music, our life was an ancient rhythm, and after many months Tom took off his old ideas the way he finally took off his foolish hot clothes, and he became more sympathetic. I desired him from the first day, and when he understood us, was more sympathetic, I was able to tell him my love. It was then I learned that he had much passion for me. At once we were lovers. It was beautiful, was it not, Tom?”

  Courtney touched her hand. “Yes, Tehura, very.”

  “But not immediately,” Tehura said to the others. “At first he was not good—he had much goodness, but in sex embrace he was not good. He was too formal, too worried, too hard—”

  Courtney, staring down at the table, interrupted. “They may understand, Tehura. We have spoken of the pressures on love in my homeland—for both sexes—so much of it a mixture of alcohol and drugs, hostility and guilt, so much of it anxiety and fear and stress.”

  “But I was different, I had not suffered such things, and I knew the happiness of it,” said Tehura to the Haydens. “And so I taught Tom, with what I had been taught, to enjoy the sport, the game, without a heavy mind, without a heavy body, to be so natural as the waves rising and falling and so free as the breeze blowing through the forest. Many months passed, and we had the tenderness, the passion, the life we lived together, in our own hut—”

  Marc was staring at her strangely. “Then you’re married?”

  Tehura’s face was transformed. “Married?” she whooped with glee. “Oh, never! We are not to be married, we are not for each other in too many ways. We loved each other only that body way, until last year when it ended. I had enough of Tom’s body. He had enough of mine. We no longer needed each other’s love. Besides, I had deeper feeling for another—for Huatoro—but that is the future. Now, Tom and I are not the lovers, but we are the friends. When I have a trouble, I go to his hut and I speak and speak, and he counsels me. When he has to have more understanding of my people, he comes to me in my house, and we sit and eat taro and speak of my people and his people. I tell you of Tom and myself because I am proud of our once love. When I told the village, the first time, Tom was surprised. He said in his country a woman would not reveal to all of her body love when unmarried, but you see, as he has learned, we do not think it wrong, and we are happy, and I am proud.”

  “I am proud, too, Tehura,” Courtney said quietly.

  Paoti coughed. “We have spoken enough for our first meeting. The hour grows late. It is time for the ceremony of the rite of friendship to begin.” He fumbled for the gnarled wooden walking stick against his chair, and reached over and hit the table twice. He pointed his stick to the platform beyond Moreturi and Atetou.

  Everyone turned to watch the platform. Claire, her gaze on Tehura and Courtney, saw Maud and Marc twist toward her and she tried to read their familiar faces. Obviously, Maud had enjoyed Tehura’s frank, simple, unembarrassed recital, and seen rich material for her paper. Marc’s face was clenched, and Claire guessed at his growing dislike for these open, simple people. Shifting herself toward the stage, Claire tried to define her own reaction to Tehura’s confession. What she felt was uneasiness and inferiority. It was an emotion sometimes engendered at parties in Santa Barbara or Los Angeles, when another couple made some veiled references to their sex life that made it appear that their mating was superior to all others. Claire suffered this emotion now. They had the magic. She had none. They were healthy. She was crippled. She suffered even more for Marc, who was more vulnerable than she, and then she put Tehura out of her mind.

  A tall, lithe, statuesque girl, no more than nineteen, had materialized on the center of the platform. She stood motionless, arms outstretched, legs wide apart. Two brilliant garlands of hibiscus dangled from her neck and partially covered her young, small breasts. From her waist hung two short strips of white tapa cloth, one in front between her legs, and one behind, with her naked hips and thighs exposed entirely.

  The percussion and wind instruments filled the room, the sounds slithering and insinuating themselves among those around the table. As the swell and beat of the music grew and grew, the tall, tan girl on the platform began to move, never leaving her place, letting all but her bare feet become animated. Her snaking hands caressed the air, and the parts of her face and body began to dance, first one, then another, until all were alive in sensuous motion. Her eyes danced in her head, and her mouth opened and closed, and her tiny breasts shimmied in and out of the flowers, and her belly shook, and her seductive hips revolved. At first the undulations were slow, but gradual
ly they picked up tempo, and her face was transported and her figure shaken with fleshly tremors, until she exploded into the air, and slowly sank down to a crouch on the platform.

  Enrapt, Claire understood what was being performed, the wild ecstasy of love fulfilled, and what was following now was the procreation, the labor pangs that would bring forth the birth of friendship.

  The dancer lay on the stage, on her back, drawing up her legs and lifting only her torso into the air. The almost naked pelvic muscles pressed, and strained, and heaved to the music, and Claire held her arms tightly and felt the dryness in her mouth and the terrible throb in her throat and the want in her own body. The taunting scene became filmed over for her by her drunkenness and moist eyes, and she envied this symbol on the stage, and wanted some man, a man, a man who wanted her, to come into her and leave the seed of a new life. And suddenly, as the music abruptly stopped, and the dancer swayed erect and frozen, Claire caught the sob in her chest and maintained her poise.

  The tall dancer on the platform was immobile once more. Two young males, carrying a large steaming wooden bowl, had lifted it to the platform before the dancer. There was a rapping on the dinner table, and it was from Paoti’s stick.

  “Dr. Maud Hayden,” he was saying, “we reach the final step of our traditional rite of friendship, a rite infrequently used in recent centuries. One female of our blood and one female of your blood amongst you will ascend the platform. They will stand on either :side of the dancer. They will remove their upper garments, and hold ready their naked breasts for the holy anointment which joins our peoples in friendship and removes the tabu against strangers. To represent our blood line, I designate the female who is my dead brother’s daughter, I appoint the one known as Tehura.”