The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  “I think, they are only half-women,” he said. “They have jobs like men. They speak words like men. They cover all parts of their beauty. They are not full women.”

  “I see.”

  “So I am curious.”

  “Then you intend to examine me while I try to help you?” said Rachel.

  “I intend to help you while you help me,” he corrected her nicely.

  Good-by old Seventeenth Amendment, she thought. When in Rome, she thought. “Good,” she said. “Maybe we can help one another.”

  “You do not believe it,” he said.

  Be honest with them, Maud had cautioned, do not tell a lie. “I believe it,” she lied. “Perhaps you will help me. Right now, I’m concerned with you. If you are concerned with yourself, we can go on.”

  “Go on,” he said, suddenly sullen.

  “You say there is nothing wrong with you. You say you are here for other reasons. Very well; yet, you have appealed to the Hierarchy for assistance?”

  “To divorce my wife.”

  “Then there is a problem.”

  “Not mine,” he said. “Her problem.”

  “Well, let’s find out. Why do you want a divorce?”

  He studied her suspiciously. “I have reasons.”

  “Tell me your reasons. That is why I am here.”

  He fell to brooding, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Rachel waited and waited. She surmised that almost a minute had passed before he turned his head toward her.

  “You are a woman,” he said. “You will not understand man’s reasons.”

  “You yourself told me that I am not like your women, I am a half-woman, more like a man. Regard me as a man, a man doctor.”

  The absurdity of this appealed to him, and for the first time in a while, he smiled. The smile, she could see, was not born of the previous mockery but of genuine merriment. “It is impossible,” he said. “I take your garments off with my eyes and I see a woman.”

  It was the second time his impertinence had made her blush, and this reaction left Rachel perplexed. Then she knew that it was not impertinence that got through to her, but rather a sexual arrogance that he possessed. “I’ll tell you what, Moreturi,” she said, “let’s go at this another way. Tell me a little about your marriage. What is your wife’s name? What is she like? When did you marry her?”

  The specific questions reached him, and he responded directly. “My wife is Atetou. She is twenty-eight. I am thirty-one. She is not like most village girls. She is more serious. I am not that way. We have been married six years.”

  “Why did you marry her?” Rachel wanted to know.

  “Because she was different,” Moreturi said instantly.

  “You married her because she was different, and now you want to divorce her because she is different?”

  A shrewd expression crossed Moreturi’s countenance. “You mix the words up,” he said.

  “But it’s true, what I said.”

  “Yes, maybe true,” he conceded.

  “Was Atetou your first love when you married her?”

  “First?” Moreturi was astonished. “I was an old man when I married her. I had twenty girls before her.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question. I did not inquire how many girls you’d had. I inquired if Atetou was your first love.”

  “I did answer your question,” Moreturi insisted, combatively. “Atetou was not my first love because I had twenty girls before her and I loved them all. I do not make sex with a woman unless I love her with my whole inside and outside.”

  He was earnest, she could see, and devoid of sexual arrogance now. “Yes, I understand,” she said.

  “I love even the first one, who was fifteen years older than me.”

  “How old were you with the first one?”

  “Sixteen. It was after the manhood ceremony.”

  “What kind of ceremony?”

  “In the Sacred Hut. They took my—my—”

  “Genital,” she said hastily.

  “Yes. They took it and quick slit the top foreskin.”

  “Like circumcision in America?”

  “Tom Courtney told me no, you do it different, you take off the whole foreskin, we open only the upper part. Then it heals and there is a scab. Before the scab falls off, we are taken to the Social Aid place to find an older, experienced woman.” He smiled, relishing some memory. “I took a widow of thirty-one. Even though I was a boy, I was strong as a tree. She was stronger. I lost the scab quickly. I was fond of her. For a year after, in the Social Aid place, when I could have anyone, I would have her.”

  The room was humid, and Rachel hoped that she was not obviously perspiring. “I see,” she said. Then, to say anything, “What do you use for contraceptives here?” He did not understand. She elaborated. “To retard—to stop conception of children?”

  “The first one taught me to rub the prevention salve on the genital.”

  “A salve?”

  “To make feeble the male sperm. It retards the procreation more than not, though Tom says you have better means in America.”

  “Very interesting. I’ll have to look into it.” She hesitated, and then said, “We started out discussing your wife—”

  “Not my first love,” he said with a smile.

  “That’s clear,” she said dryly. “And now you don’t like her because she is different.”

  He rose on an elbow, and instinctively, she recoiled. “We have talked of love matters and so I can speak more frankly of Atetou,” he said. “She does not like to do the—the—I cannot think of Tom’s word—the word for embrace—”

  “Intercourse? Coitus?”

  “Yes, yes—she does not like it, and for me it is a joy all the time. I am not angry with Atetou. The High Spirit makes each person not the same, but it is not good they be put together. When I wish the joy of it, my wife does not. It is difficult. More and more, I must go to the Social Aid. More and more, my night dreams are filled with the women I have seen in the day. Too much, I wait every year for the festival.”

  Rachel had a hundred questions now, but she locked them securely inside. Moreturi’s lustiness repelled her. She wanted no more of it dinned into her ears. Worse, for the first time, Atetou had become a living person in her mind, because Atetou had a face, and it was Rachel’s own. Her mind slipped back to the glacial Miss Mitchell on the couch in Beverly Hills. And then to others. And then back to Atetou. And finally to herself. The half-women.

  She consulted her watch. “I have taken too much of your time, Moreturi—” She was conscious of him sitting up, the bulk of him. She swallowed. “I—I have a better picture of your immediate problem.”

  “You do not blame me for needing the divorce?”

  “Not at all. You are what you are. There is nothing wrong with your—your requirements.”

  His features reflected the slightest admiration. “You are more than I thought. You are a woman.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We will talk again? Hutia says you wish to see me every day at this time. Is it true?”

  “Yes, you and the others. We’ll continue to—to go into all this, arrive at a better understanding of your conscious and unconscious conflicts, and your wife’s as well.”

  He had pushed himself fully erect. “You will see Atetou?”

  Rachel had no need of another Miss Mitchell, but she knew her duty. “I haven’t decided yet. I’ll want more time with you. Later, I suppose—well, since it is a divorce matter I may have her in for a consultation.”

  “When you meet her, you will understand me better.”

  “I’m sure she has her side of the story, too, Moreturi. After all, the problem may arise from your own neurotic—” But she broke off, because the psychiatric patois would mean little to him here on The Three Sirens, and because she knew that she was defending Atetou on behalf of herself. “At any rate,” she said, “I want to concentrate on your side of it for the next few weeks. Try to remember everything you can
about your past. And dreams, you mentioned dreams, they give valuable insight into your unconscious. Dreams may be symbols for—for unconscious fears.”

  He was above her, hands on his hips. “I only dream of other women,” he said.

  “I’m sure you’ll find there is more—”

  “No, only other women.”

  She rose, and extended her hand. “We’ll see soon enough. Thank you for cooperating with me today.”

  He enclosed her hand in his large one, shook once, and released her hand. Reluctantly, she thought, he went to the door, opened it, and then turned, his wide face serious. “I had a dream last night,” he said. “It was about you.”

  “Don’t tease me, Moreturi. You’d never seen me before today.”

  “I saw you come into the village with the others,” he said, gravely. “Last night, I dreamt.” His smile began. “You are a woman—yes, very much.”

  He was gone.

  Slowly, Rachel sat down, hating the perspiration on her brow and upper lip, and dreading the night that would soon be upon her. She did not want to dream.

  * * *

  Mary Karpowicz, arms wound around her knees, rocked in her place on the floor in the last row of the main classroom and wished that she were twenty-one and could do as she pleased.

  While she resented her father for bringing her to this idiotic island, she could not, in all filial fairness, blame him for forcing her to attend the school. She had only herself to blame. It had been the sheer boredom, and finally convincing herself the experience might give her an ascendancy over the other girls back home (providing her with a daring background that would make up for her virginity), that had driven Mary to enroll.

  Without moving her head, merely by shifting her eyes from one side to the other, she took in half of the thatched circular room before her. There were the bare backs of the two dozen students, the girls in pareus, the boys in loincloths, mostly attentive, but occasionally engaging in horseplay and giggling. There was the caricature of an instructor addressing them in English. And there was herself, dulled down and wearied by the routine.

  Three hours before, there had at least been hope of something different. Three hours before, she had parted company with her father, who was wearing cameras like so many dangling medals, and nervously followed Mr. Courtney into the building that from afar had resembled a mossy three-leafed clover. They had entered a cool, shaded room, much like the ones in her own hut, except here round instead of square. She had expected furniture, but there were only open chests along the walls, all the chests heaped with the instructor’s books and other teaching paraphernalia.

  Mr. Manao, the instructor, having heard them, had come swiftly into the room, accepting Mr. Courtney’s introduction to her with a courtly bobbing. Mr. Manao had proved to be an almost bald, stringy man—you could see all his ribs in front, and when he turned, his vertebrae in back—who was not quite as tall as her father. He wore old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles, pinched low on his nose, and below he wore a floppy loincloth (like Ghandi) and thonged sandals. The incongruous spectacles had made him seem like a nineteenth-century deacon out for a chaste swim. His English, she had supposed, was textbook perfect, although his inflection gave one the feeling that he was conjugating as he spoke.

  Mr. Courtney, whom she admired for being enigmatic and casual, and for not talking down to her (as if she were merely somebody’s kid and not a grown woman), had tried to put her at her ease with a really funny anti-school joke. She and Mr. Courtney had enjoyed it the more for enjoying it together, since Mr. Manao had been only bewildered. After that, Mr. Courtney had left her, and the very Dickensian—her classical semesters back home were paying off—Mr. Manao had escorted her on a guided tour.

  Mr. Manao had explained that the room they were in was his study as well as living quarters for his wife and himself. A hall had led to the next circular room where Mrs. Manao and two student teachers were suffering with the eight-to-thirteen-year-old group. Another hall had led them to the last and largest room, where the fourteen-to-sixteen group was already assembling. Mr. Manao had introduced Mary to native girls her own age, and she had felt awkward in their presence. They had been shy but friendly with her, and tried not to be obvious about staring at her blue Dacron dress and ankle socks and sneakers.

  She had been directed to sit in the rear between a native girl and a nice native boy, who, she was soon to learn, was named Nihau and was her own age. There had been three monotonous classes. The first was devoted to the history and legends of the Sirens tribe, filled with long head-swimming names of old chiefs and their deeds, and deferential references to Daniel Wright of London. The second was devoted to manual arts; the sexes were separated, and the boys were taught practical skills like hunting, fishing, building, and agriculture, while the girls were taught weaving, cooking, household ceremonies, and personal hygiene. The third, and last, was devoted for a portion of the year to oral instruction in English and Polynesian, another portion of the year to flora and fauna, and one more portion of the year to faa hina’faro, which Mary had not bothered to have interpreted.

  The best parts of the three hours had been the two social breaks or recesses between classes, when most of them had gone outside, some to attend the lavatory, some to sprawl beneath the trees, and some to converse or flirt. During the latter of the two breaks, Mary had found herself with the boy who had been at her left in the classroom, the boy named Nihau, and he had timorously invited her to try a fruit drink. When he brought her the drink in a half shell, and haltingly revealed the pleasure all the villagers had in the fact that she and her parents would be on hand for the annual festival, Mary became aware of him as a person, and her contemporary, for the first time. He was a few inches taller than she, with a sunburned rather than brown complexion, eyes slitted, nose a bit flattened, chin determined, neck and chest sturdy like the football players back in Albuquerque. Mary, sensitively attuned to every degree of male interest, had decided that Nihau was interested in her. She remained reserved, noncommunicative, because she was not certain if his interest was in her as Mary Karpowicz, a she-individual, or as Mary Karpowicz, a mammalian species from across the sea.

  Thinking of Nihau now, she brought her attention to his profile—Paleolithic man, but with sensitive mouth and alert eyes directed toward Mr. Manao up front teaching the class—and Mary decided that she owed it to him, and the swell Mr. Courtney, to display the courtesy of attention, too. She peered between the bare backs ahead, found Mr. Manao, and tried to understand what subject he was discussing. Quickly, she realized that he had finished his instruction for the afternoon and was speaking of a new subject that would be undertaken in this same period tomorrow but only for the sixteen-year-olds.

  “The study of faa hina’aro,” Mr. Manao was saying, “will commence tomorrow and go on for three months. It is, as you all know, the culmination of what you have studied on this subject before. It is the final teaching, the practical supplanting the theoretical, before those of you in your sixteenth year undergo the long-anticipated ceremonies that bring you to manhood and womanhood. The subject of faa hina’aro—”

  The references to manhood and womanhood piqued Mary’s interest. She leaned toward Nihau and whispered. “What do those words mean?”

  Nihau continued to look ahead, but from the corner of his mouth he replied in an undertone, “It is Polynesian for physical love. The translation to English-American is—I think—sex.”

  “Oh.”

  Immediately, and for the first time, Mary was entirely attentive to Mr. Manao.

  “In the ancient times, before our ancestors Tefaunni and Daniel Wright modified and improved our education,” Mr. Manao was saying, “the young Polynesians of the tribe here learned faa hina’aro by custom. No one was ignorant then just as no one is ignorant now. In those times, all the family lived in one room, and the young ones could observe their parents in the love embrace. Also, in the ancient times, there was often spontaneous coupling in the p
ublic places of the village—especially during festival periods—and the young ones could learn from observation. There were also the ceremonial dances where all the processes of love, from coupling to birth, were re-enacted, and this, too, was instructive. In those days, when a boy had reached manhood or a girl arrived at womanhood, their last instruction came from an older neighbor of the opposite sex. When Daniel Wright settled here, he arrived with many proposals he had learned from the writings of the Western philosophers—Plato and Sir Thomas More, among others—these proposals including one that mating be eugenically supervised, another that bride and groom see each other naked before marriage, another that there be a free-love period of living together before formal wedding ceremonies. While Daniel Wright’s proposals were not entirely acceptable, the one proposal that he got incorporated into custom was that education on matters of love become part of the formal curriculum in a school. Tefaunni agreed to this without reservation. In all the generations since, as you well know, we have taught the art of love in this school. Upon your completion of the study of faa hina’aro, three months from tomorrow, those of you who are sixteen will be taken to the Social Aid Hut and the Sacred Hut to begin a lifelong practice of what you have learned. Knowledge of love, skill at the game, are necessary to your future health and pleasure. In the weeks to follow, the last phase will be taught you through description, observation, demonstration, and when you leave here, there will be no mysteries, there will be wide knowledge, and you will be prepared to encounter the truth of life.”

  Mary had listened with almost breathless expectation, waiting for every new sentence, and slowly digesting it. Within her there swirled sensations similar to those that she had known at the beginning of the year, when Leona Brophy had slipped her a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover marked with pencil. A door to adulthood had opened that afternoon, in the secrecy of her bedroom, and now, in this weird classroom, a larger door was beginning to open, and tomorrow it would be wide open and the last mysteries of maturity would be revealed to her.

  What had concerned her most, as she hung on every word of Mr. Manao’s, was his unexpected candor and the lack of reaction to it by the native students. Back at her high school, the subject was never in the open. It was one of those hidden things, as if outlawed. In the corridors, when she saw Neal Schaffer and his friends, all huddled and talking in low voices, she suspected that coarse and lewd references were being made to it and to the girls who were the recipients of it. As to Leona Brophy and several other female friends, they were furtive and winking about it, about each new morsel of knowledge, as if it were a forbidden vice. All of these attitudes had crystallized, inside Mary, the feeling that it was wrong but smart, that it was an enormous surrender to be endured to achieve peace and worldliness.