The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  What Marc did not speak of to her, biding his time, waiting until she was entirely disarmed, was his all-consuming desire for her. His instincts told him that if he moved too soon, he would repel or frighten her. The right moment was that moment when she was so in awe of him, or what he represented, that succumbing to him would enhance her pride. Awaiting that moment, through the past two weeks, Marc had lived out an entire imaginary life with her that she knew nothing about. He had no time for the tedium of note-making—it would have stunned Matty to know he had made not a single note since his arrival—and he had no patience with his mother or interest in his wife. His mind was filled entirely by his seduction of Tehura.

  Among the twisting nerve cords of his gray brain matter, he had slept with the naked Tehura on the mats of her hut, in the grass of their grove, on the sand of the beach; he had slept with her in Papeete, in Santa Barbara, in New York; he had slept with her in this position, in that, in the other one, too; he had slept with her an hour, ten hours, one hundred hours, and she had clung to him, always transported, and he had let her cling, enjoying less her art than her begging need of him. His brain had swarmed with the erogenous parts of her stripped anatomy, and when he brought the parts together, the public parts and the private pans, she was always reclining, her face the face of love, and this first seduction was the moment he fantasied the most and doggedly worked toward in each day’s reality.

  Now the moment was nearing. He sat, cross-legged on the grass, shading his eyes, and impatiently waited.

  “—and so, when we grow up with such freedom, we must feel as I do,” she was saying. “Our life of love is simple, like everything else we do.”

  He dropped his hand from his eyes. “I understand everything you’ve said, Tehura. Only one thing puzzles me. You, and everyone here, keep referring to love as an art. You did so a few minutes ago. Yet, you admit you—I mean all of you—do not believe in preliminaries, what we in America call foreplay. You do not believe in kissing or permit a partner to pet you above the waist—”

  She came off her back and around, toward him, on her side, so that he could watch her breasts become full again. “I did not say that, Marc. Of course, we have what you call preliminaries. They are different than yours, that is all. In your country, women wear garments and take them off to excite the man. You do not see breasts, so when you see them uncovered, you are excited. Here we all wear the same, there is little to take off, and breasts are always exposed, so they do not excite. Here a man will show his ardor by bringing gifts—”

  “Gifts?”

  “Tiara flowers arranged very beautiful. Or necklaces. Or food he has hunted. If I am interested, I will meet with him. We will dance together. Do you know our dance? It excites more than your foolish custom of touching mouth to mouth. After the dance, a woman will lie down to catch her breath, and a man will stroke her hair and shoulders and thighs. With that, a woman is ready.”

  “And no more? No kiss, no caressing?”

  She shook her head. “Marc, Marc—when will you understand? If only we could educate you.”

  Marc stirred. “I wish you would.”

  “It is for your wife. She must be taught, and you must be taught, if you will understand our way.”

  “I want to understand you. I want to be like you. Teach me, Tehura.”

  She lay still on her side, began to speak, did not speak, then averted her eyes.

  The moment, thought Marc. An old maxim played through his head: silence gives consent. Now, he thought. His entire body was filled with his craving. Slowly, he changed his position, lowering himself full-length beside her, eyes on her face, as she avoided his gaze.

  “Or let me teach you,” he said in an undertone.

  She remained silent and motionless.

  His hand reached for her arm above the swelling breast. “Tehura, if I—if I touched your breasts, are you sure you know how you’d feel?”

  “Yes. I would feel nothing.”

  “You are positive?”

  “It would be the same as if you touched my elbow or toe—or put your mouth on mine—nothing.”

  “Let me prove you are wrong,” he said with intensity.

  Her eyes, meeting his, showed confusion. “What?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

  “This,” he said. He had clutched her arm, and fiercely, pulled himself over her. His mouth found her open, startled lips, and as he kissed her hard, the palm of his hand was at last upon one breast, moving over it.

  It surprised him that she did not struggle, and he pressed his conquest, grinding his lips against her lips, dropping his hand to her grass skirt, then lower to her thigh. As his hand began to inch upward, she suddenly shoved hard against his chest, pushing him away.

  “No,” she said, in the tone one used to rebuke a child, and then she sat up, drawing down her skirt.

  Dismayed, Marc straightened. “But, Tehura, I thought—”

  “What did you think?” she said, flatly, without anger. “That your advances brought me to the time of love? No, I have told you, I am not given desire by such silly touches. I let you go on to see if I would be, but I was not. When you went further, I had to stop you.”

  “Why did you have to stop me? You can tell I need you, want you—”

  “For you, that is good. For me it is not enough. I have not yet a want of you.”

  “I thought you cared for me. These last days—”

  “I am interested. You are a different one. You have mana. But to offer myself without the desire—no.”

  Words had brought him this far, and he was determined that they should win the day. He gripped her arm. “Tehura, listen to me—I’ve told you—in America I’m very—I—a hundred, a thousand young girls would be thrilled by my attention.”

  “Good for them. Good for you. I am not in America.”

  “Tehura, I want to prove my love. How can I convince you this is not merely a sport? How can I show my seriousness?”

  She considered him shrewdly. “You have a wife. On The Three Sirens married men are tabu.”

  “So I have a wife. I did not know one like you existed, or I would have waited, I would not have a wife. I’ll do anything. I’ll treat you as well as I do her.”

  “Yes? How?”

  “You can have whatever she has. I’ll buy you expensive clothes, all the things—”

  “Clothes?” She regarded him as she would a madman. “What would I do with that foolishness here?”

  “Other things, then. You said your men give a girl they love all kinds of gifts—beads—I’ll get you beads—anything you want.” He remembered. “The diamond necklace—pendant—my wife wore. You admired it. I’ll order you one just like it. I’ll have it flown in. It’ll cost a fortune, but I don’t care. Would you like that?”

  She hesitated, frowning, before replying, too lightly, “Do not bother.”

  His anxiety had made him frantic. “Dammit, then you name it. What can I do to impress you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You told me yourself—you gave your love to Courtney—all those other men. You are even thinking of taking up with that new one—whatever the hell his name is—”

  “Huatoro. Yes, he is good.”

  “Well, what’s so good about him? Who the devil is he? Why should you regard him more highly than me?”

  “He is free, for one thing. He loves me—”

  “So do I,” he interrupted.

  “You are prominent in America, but here Huatoro has more mana. He will be our first athlete in the festival. He will win the swim, and all my friends will want him. I will have him.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’ll give yourself to a man because he wins some lousy swimming race?”

  She bridled. “It is important to us,” she said. “It is as important to win the race here as to make much money for the bank or own a building and big house in America.”

  “All right, I grant you the importance of your damn race,” he said hastily. “But
who says he’s going to win? Hell, I probably can outswim him by a country mile. Back home, I was on the team in college—we had more candidates for that team than you have people in this entire village—and I still swim all the time. I can beat any man on our college faculty, and most of the students, too.” He abhorred reducing himself to her juvenile level. “Will your uncle allow me to enter the race?”

  “Everyone on the island can race. There will be maybe ten or twenty. Tom was in it a few times and always losing.”

  “Okay,” said Marc churlishly. “Count me in. And if I beat your friend, Huatoro—and I will, you can count on that—if I beat him, what then?” He paused. “Will you treat me as you would him?”

  She laughed, and jumped to her feet. “Beat him first,” she said, “and then we will see.”

  With that, she ran through the trees and was gone, and he was left fuming over his immediate frustration and grateful only that the moment he fancied was not yet hopelessly lost.

  * * *

  Mary Karpowicz held her breath and prayed that no one, not Nihau beside her in the last row of the classroom, or anyone, would detect her apprehension.

  The instructor, Mr. Manao, had seconds before removed his steel-rimmed spectacles, twirled them, set them low on his nose again, and announced, “The introductory phase in our study of faa hina’aro is completed. For twelve days I have discussed the evolution of mating in animals, from the lower species to the higher. Today we reach the highest order of life—the human being. As with the animals, our method will emphasize the practical rather than the theoretical. I have two volunteers in my room from the Social Aid Hut. I will bring them forth, and we shall begin.”

  Hitching his loincloth up the sharp side of his frame, Mr. Manao had left the room.

  The students in front of her were whispering, and Mary Karpowicz forced her shoulders, involuntarily raised high around her head like a tortoise shell, to drop, and she exhaled. She wanted to turn to Nihau, who had been so friendly, and inquire what would happen next. Yet, she was afraid to betray herself. Above all, she did not want to reveal unsophistication.

  She kept her eyes straight ahead. She reviewed Mr. Manao’s teachings of the last days. What he had to say of animals had been, well, interesting, but somehow disappointing and unrelated to herself. There were oddities. But nothing you could not learn, if you read between the lines, from your Reader’s Digest or biology textbooks. Certainly, there had been no acquisition that would be useful in Albuquerque. Knowledge of the gestation period of the wild boar would give her no equality with Leona Brophy. She had wanted to learn about herself, about the mysteries of it, and filled with great expectations she had dutifully attended classes every day, fully reporting to her parents the news of each subject but this one (which she had decided not to mention). Now, what she had anticipated so long, the key to self-assurance, was about to be offered her. And she was scared and longed for the wild boar.

  The whispering in front of her had ceased, and necks stretched and strained for the best view. Mr. Manao had returned, followed by the pair from the Social Aid Hut. Mary’s back stiffened, and she pretended that she wore protective blinkers. The pair were uncommonly handsome. The young man, in his late twenties, was of medium height and darkly tanned. His face was wide and good-natured, his shoulders broad, and his entire naked body above the white supporter laid over with muscles like the bony plates of an armadillo’s armor. The young lady, also in her twenties, was entirely of Polynesian caste, with black hair streaming to her shoulders, perfectly round cantaloupe breasts, and flaring hips that precariously held the band of her grass skirt.

  Mary heard Nihau’s breathing, close to her ear. “The two of them are well known to the village,” Nihau said in an undertone. “He is Huatoro, one of our best athletes at every festival. He is twenty-eight. She is Poma, only twenty-two but a widow, and much loved by many men for her manner.”

  Mary nodded her thanks without looking at Nihau. Her eyes remained on the living exhibits.

  Mr. Manao had taken the young lady named Poma by the elbow and led her to within three or four feet of the first row of seated students. Her partner, Huatoro, the athlete, had remained behind, settling on the matted floor to await his turn.

  Still holding Poma’s elbow, the instructor addressed the class. “We will begin with the female,” he said. “While every part of the body is concerned with sexual pleasure and procreation, especially several sensitive areas, we will devote ourselves in the beginning to only the genitals, externally and internally.” He released her elbow, stepped back and sideways, facing her. “Please, Poma.”

  Watching from the last row, Mary could not believe it would happen. Her hands, locked together in the lap of her cotton summer dress, tightened, as she saw it happening. Poma had reached both hands behind her, and suddenly the grass skirt was untied and held before her like a screen. She flung it to the floor, and stood revealed in the nude, her ample figure erect, her arms loose at her sides, her eyes staring over the heads of the class. Because the grass skirt had protected her pelvic region from the sun, her skin was light from the waist to the upper thighs.

  This brazen exposure overwhelmed Mary with mortification. Back home, she and her girl friends went about nude in the gym locker room and sometimes at pajama parties, with complete equanimity. Never before had Mary seen a young woman stand unclothed before mixed company. Her shame was less for Poma than for herself and her own femaleness, reflected so openly before the males of the class, especially the one beside her. What would he see the next time he looked at her?

  The back of Mary’s neck ached, and her hand went behind her head to massage it.

  Distantly, she heard the instructor addressing the class. She realized that her hearing had registered none of his opening description, and her sight had been directed at the floor. With effort, she lifted her sight. She recorded no more than a glimpse of what was taking place: Poma, standing there, as unconcerned as an artist’s model; Mr. Manao, his hand a pointer, designating and explaining that part of woman’s anatomy. Mary felt dizzy. It was not to be believed.

  Once more, her eyes were averted, but her eardrums resounded at the impact of clinical words and phrases for the female organs, terms she had read but rarely heard spoken aloud. Worse, far worse, there were Mr. Manao’s sentences, elucidating precisely, in excruciating detail, the reason for, the purpose of, the workings, the uses, which each part—oh, to be temporarily deaf!

  Stubbornly, she tried to will herself, her hearing, into becoming impervious to the instruction. For a while, she succeeded, but the effort was too much for her, and she allowed the voice to enter. She guessed that Dr. Manao was, fortunately, almost finished with his exposition on Poma.

  She could hear him droning, “In other parts of the world, this tiny organ above the main organ remains throughout the life of a female very small on the surface. I know this is unbelievable to most of you, since it makes excitation of the area most difficult. It is our practice, as the girls in the class know, to develop and elongate the surface in childhood, in order to guarantee fulfillment in adulthood. I would say that what you observe of Poma’s development in this respect is typical of all our young ladies on the island. Now then, let us go further, so that everything will be clear, so that you young men will know what to expect and you young women will understand your own pleasure systems—”

  Mary had kept her eyes downcast, but her ears open, through the last crude revelation. With determination, she had posed herself in an attitude of appearing undisturbed and attentive. Especially had she tried to maintain her poise during Mr. Manao’s remarks about women “in other parts of the world” as compared to women on The Three Sirens. She had imagined all eyes upon her, or felt they should be upon her, for she was the one who had something “unbelievable,” she was the outsider, the freak. The passage had been her Calvary. She dreaded the time when she must stand before their eyes at recess.

  She looked up to observe her neighbors. All ey
es were concentrated on the spectacle before them. She had the privacy to close her eyes and her ears. No one would notice. She did not dare actually close her eyes, but she again dropped her gaze to the bare back of the boy in front of her. Then, through some resource of strength unknown, she lowered the register of Mr. Manao’s voice, so that his discourse was indistinct. Thus, she sat in a somnolent state.

  Once, relieved to find that the instructor’s voice had ceased, wondering if it was over and time for recess, she had raised her eyes over the shoulder ahead. Indeed, the nude female exhibit was no longer there, only the instructor in an attitude of waiting, and suddenly the athlete, Huatoro, strode into focus, casting aside some shred of white cloth. He turned toward her. She sucked in her breath at the sight of what she had never seen before. Against all the censors of her brain, her gaze stayed fixed. It was only when Mr. Manao pointed to Huatoro, and calmly resumed his lecture, that she ducked her head. She tried to defend herself against the running of the words, but they sped at her, the clinical male words. She wanted to rise and flee, even intended to, but did not, because she would then be the spectacle instead of what was being demonstrated.

  When she heard the recess call, she blindly scrambled to her feet. She wanted to see no one, and wanted no one to see her. She was naked, and they were naked, and it was wrong in public. Her one wish was to hide.

  Emerging into the glare of the outdoors, she had intended to run. She desired as much distance between her and this bawdy house as possible. The students who had preceded her, and filled the school lawn in clusters, made running impossible. Swiftly as she could, ignoring all eyes, Mary wove in and on, and hastened toward the compound.

  Departing thus, she realized that Nihau would miss her. In the last two weeks it had been their unspoken agreement to meet during the two recesses. If she came out of the class ahead of him, she would wait beneath a tree, and in seconds he would inevitably appear, shyly smiling, his strong face more tentative than ever, his hands holding forth two half-shells of fruit juice. They would sit beneath the tree, frequently joined by one or another of his friends, and review what had gone on in the classroom or in the years of their lives. Today, for the first time, she would not be under the tree. What would Nihau think?