The Three Sirens

by Irving Wallace

  Marc’s accounts were consistently glowing, because they were, in a sense, sincere, born of a new conviction within him that through Garrity their future would be sublime. It would be a world without a single abyss of failure, a happily-ever-after land in which the air he would breathe, the language he would use, the amenities he would know were all Success. So strongly had he converted himself to this vision of what lay ahead that he was able to impose it convincingly on his past, on Claire’s past, on the reality of what life was in America. This sincerity had made Tehura an unwavering confederate. Yet, in their meetings, she had not wanted too much of it, of the fairyland. Her half-primitive mind could accept only a half-vision of civilized perfection at any one time. She would have her fill, and escape their meetings as soon as possible. After each conversation, he would be left wondering how she was translating their mutual ambition into a practical means of attaining it. But tonight, the word had come: she must see him in the next hour.

  Having finished with the mirror, Marc realized that he had only one task left. He must tell Claire to go on to the Chief’s dinner without him. He must let her know that something had come up, and that he would be a few minutes late. What had come up? Where must he go first? To visit his native informant about a matter important to Matty’s work? Possibly. It would slide down well, yet it gave Tehura, at this crucial moment, too much importance. It was risky. He must invent something better. Before he could do so, he was conscious of Claire’s presence in the room.

  He whirled around to inform her that he would be delayed, but her stance was so improbable, his purpose was deflected. He watched her with detached interest. Claire was stooped low, sometimes almost crouching, as she moved across the matting, examining every crack and fold of the floor covering.

  “What in the devil are you doing?” Marc said.

  “My diamond,” she answered, without looking up, “I can’t find it.”

  He had not been fully attentive, and so he repeated, “Diamond? What diamond?”

  She glanced at him, and stood up. “I have only one, Marc, besides my ring. My diamond pendant necklace. I want to wear it to the dinner.” She shook her head. “I simply don’t know where it is.”

  Marc tried to hide his reaction, but his heart thudded inside his chest. Easy does it, he told himself. “It’s probably somewhere in that junk of yours. Forget it. You have a dozen other things to wear.”

  “I want the diamond necklace,” she persisted. “When I know I have something and can’t find it, then it becomes doubly provoking. I can’t stand missing things. Like reaching the telephone a split second after the last ring. Things like that drive me insane.”

  “Have you gone through our luggage?”

  “Every inch of it. Not only the jewel box, but everything. I thought maybe I might have dropped it on the floor here …” She scanned the floor once more. “No, it’s not—”

  “It’s perfectly obvious what happened,” Marc said. “One of the native kids stole it.”

  “Oh, Marc, really—what a ridiculous notion.”

  Her condescending dismissal of his suggestion irritated him. “What’s so damn ridiculous about my notion? I know these people better than you do—I’ve been studying them—and I wouldn’t trust any one of them for a second. Of course, one of them stole it.”

  “Marc, what in heaven’s name would a native locked up on this island do with a diamond necklace, what would he do with it?”

  He was about to say that the native might give it to his woman, as an ornament and a gift, but he clamped his mouth on this. Instead, carefully, he said, “The native who took it might sell it one day, after we’re gone, to that bandit Rasmussen.”

  “Well, I for one refuse to believe such a thing.” She stared at him. “Why is it you always see the worst in everyone?”

  He met her stare with his own, which was one of distaste as he remembered how much he despised her. How he would love to see her face with its superior look on the day that she learned he had left her. This reminded him of what he must do, and he determined to bring their pointless haggling to an end. “It’s better to know that people have a bad side, too,” he said, “than to be gulled, the way you’ve been, by a bunch of savages and taken in by some beachcomber phony from Chicago.” She was about to retort, but he added, hastily, “Hell, let’s not go on with this. Okay, no one swiped your precious diamond. So it’s here. Find it. I’ve got to go.” He started for the door, then remembered that she did not know he had another appointment. He hesitated. “By the way, I forgot to tell you, I’ve got to do something first before going to the feast.”

  “Both of us were invited to dinner, not me alone,” she said, coldly.

  “Lay off, Claire. We will be there together. I just had word, while you were dressing, that Orville has—has some kind of problem, needs my advice. I promised to see him a few minutes before going to Paoti’s palace. Do you mind?”

  “Do I have the right to mind anything you do?”

  You’re goddam right you don’t, he wanted to say, but he also wanted to be rid of her, so he said, instead, “Matty’ll be here any second, and your friend Mr. Courtney, too, so you’ll be escorted in style. I’ll be right behind you. Nobody’ll miss me. See you there.”

  He went outside, turning toward Tehura’s hut, but after a few steps he slowed down. The frontal lobes of his brain, the ones that anticipated everything, were extraordinarily alert to each action he took now, and these sent down the nerve impulses that inhibited his motion. In his favorite stories, he recalled, great plots and plans were always brought tumbling down because the hero had overlooked some trivial detail, made some minute omission. For Marc, there was too much at stake to fall prey to an insignificant lie. He had told his wife that he was going on to see Orville Pence. What if she ran into Orville and questioned him?

  Immediately, Marc reversed his direction, and hurried past his hut and the DeJong hut, until he reached Orville’s door. He rapped, and opened the door slightly. Orville was seated in the center of the front room, one hand holding a highball, the other peeling playing cards off a deck.

  “Orville, sorry to bust in—”

  “Come in, come in, old fellow,” Orville said, less formal, more genial than ever before. He tapped the deck of cards. “Telling my fortune. Third time around already. Going to keep doing it till it comes out right. If you’ll wait, I’ll tell yours, too.”

  “Thanks, Orville, but I’m in a rush. There’s a little favor I want from you.

  “Anything, anything.”

  “No questions, but listen. I have to see someone. Personal business. Wives are not always tolerant about the someones their husbands have to see. So I left Claire saying you needed to talk to me about something urgent.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Orville. “I may have made a foolish commitment today, I’m sure I have, but I feel good about it. I don’t know what will happen yet. If you have a little time, I’d like to discuss—”

  “Orville, I have no time at all. Can’t we talk it over tomorrow?”

  “Why, certainly.”

  “Remember, if you run into Claire, I was with you tonight.”

  “Well, you were,” said Orville, righteously.

  “Okay, I’m on my way.” He started to leave, then called to Orville. “Let me know how it comes out.”

  Orville seemed bewildered. “What comes out? You mean you—”

  “Your fortune, pal. Let me know what’s in the cards.”

  Marc closed the door, and turned into the compound, when he saw his mother, followed by Courtney, entering his own hut. He flattened into the shadows, until they had disappeared inside. Once it was safe, he hurried to the bridge, crossed to the opposite side of the compound, and continued swiftly in the direction of Tehura’s hut.

  In less than five minutes, he was at his destination. He put his knuckles to her door, and knocked lightly. He heard her movement behind the door, heard her speak something in Polynesian, and after a
moment the door opened several inches. Before he could enter, she slipped outside.

  “Someone is with me,” she said under her breath. “I do not wish her to know it is you. Come.”

  She touched his arm and guided him into the passageway between the residences, and then upwards a short distance from her place.

  “Who’s in there?” he wanted to know.

  “Poma,” she said in an undertone. “The one who is helping us. She came by to discuss it again, but I did not want her to see you.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “Yes,” said Tehura flatly. “I will explain very quick, and then you must leave.”

  Marc waited nervously to learn their fate, praying it would be what he wanted, yet uncertain that it could have worked out.

  “It was not easy to think of someone, the right one,” said Tehura. “If I made one mistake, it would have been bad for both of us. Finally, I thought of Poma. She is a young widow, very beautiful. She is in love with Huatoro. He is in love with me. Because of me, she cannot have him. She volunteered to work with him in the classroom of the school, but he is now indifferent to her because of me. Yet, she knows she could have him for husband, were I not here. Then, in my thinking, there was another reason for Poma. She has a younger brother.” Tehura touched her head. “Weak mind, you understand? He is called Mataro—the sailor—because it is all he can do, all he likes to do, like a child.”

  “But if he’s an imbecile, how—?”

  “Not important. A good sailor. Also, he has an eighteen-foot-long outrigger canoe with thick pandanus mat sails. It carries a water cask. He sails by his nose, and at night by the star overhead. Always, he admires Captain Rasmussen’s compass. Everyone pokes fun at him for that. He must have a big compass, too. This was my thinking, so I took the chance. I spoke to Poma this morning.”

  To know that their secret was shared by an outsider disturbed Marc. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said, ‘Poma, it is between us only, but I wish to leave the Sirens and go to Tahiti to live and be like the American women who are here.’ She said, ‘You cannot, no woman of the Sirens has ever left.’ I said, ‘Poma, I will be the first if you will help me.’ I reminded her that Huatoro has loved us both, but me most. Then I told her I had no love for him. I reminded her if I was forever gone, she would have Huatoro for herself. If I stayed, she would never have him. It pleased her, of course. She is much in love with him. She said, ‘I will help you if I can. What must I do?’ I said, ‘Your brother, Mataro, has two, three times made the feat of sailing his outrigger canoe to other islands. I want him to take me on such a trip. In return, he will have wealth for his compass.’ She said, ‘How could you give him wealth for his compass?’ I said, ‘One of the Americans has given me a diamond worth a fortune on the outside. When we are away from here, I will sell it, and have the wealth for Ma-taro’s compass and enough left to take me ahead to Tahiti.’ She said, ‘When it is known, Paoti will be angry with my brother.’ I said, ‘Yes, but Paoti will not punish him, for he knows your brother is weak in the head and foolish.’ That was our conversation.”

  “Did she agree to help?”

  “Yes, Marc. She will help. In the afternoon, she summoned me and said it would be all right. Tonight she called upon me, for her brother, to see for herself that I did not lie about the diamond. I was showing it to her when you came to my door.”

  “Good, very good, Tehura, wonderful,” Marc said, taking her hands, trying to contain his relief and jubilation. “I love you, Tehura.”

  “Shhh.” She had put her finger to her lips. “There will be time for everything between us.”

  “Do Poma and her brother know about me?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, not a word. It is better this way.”

  “Yes. What will her brother say when I show up at the boat with you?”

  “Nothing. He will be pleased that one with such wealth will be along, to reward him with a second compass maybe, and even a sextant, too.”

  “Anything.”

  Tehura smiled. “It is agreed to happen tomorrow night.”

  He removed his hands from hers, and knotted them tightly, to keep them from quivering. “So soon?”

  “You wanted it soon, did you not?”

  “Yes, absolutely—”

  “Tomorrow night,” she said again. “Come here to my hut, with everything you need, at ten o’clock in the evening. We will rest until the village is asleep. After that, we will go. We will go to the far beach where you came here. Mataro will be there with his canoe and supplies, and we will leave. The voyage to the nearest island will take two days and one night. There, I am told, French planters have some large skiffs. We will pay one to take us to another island where there is a person who has a seaplane like Captain Rasmussen’s. That one will fly us to Tahiti. The rest is in your hands.”

  “My friend from America, Mr. Garrity, will be waiting,” said Marc. “Together, the three of us will go to my country.”

  “Are you pleased, Marc?”

  He embraced her. “I’ve never been happier.”

  “I am happy, too.” She pushed free of him. “Now go.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned, and departed between the huts. Once, at the edge of the compound, he looked over his shoulder. He could see Tehura opening her door. The light of the candlenuts caught her in profile, and he could see the high curve of her nude breasts. He made a minor memorandum in his head: remind her to bring along some kind of brassiere, we’re going to California and New York and the new world of the corseted.

  Tomorrow! he exclaimed within himself, and he wanted to cry it to all the world and to sing of his defiance and his victory and his prize. He wanted to shatter the equatorial-like calm of the tropical night, to light up the heavy-lidded blackness of the compound, to climb the range of coco palms ahead and to wave their fronds and signal Garrity that he was on his way, on his way at last.

  He walked bumpily, so drunk was he with the fever of what was possible and what was to be. Was this how the ragged ones, the oppressed felt, when they burst out of the Bastille? Yes, yes. And was this how they felt, too, later when they sat row upon row behind Madame Defarge watching as Dr. Guillotin’s namesake did its work?

  And so, finally, the pleasure of it had come to be Madame Defarge’s pleasure. He ticked off the heads in the basket: obliterated forever the ghostly head of Adley the father, the slaveholder head of Matty the mother, the reproaching head of Claire the wife. And there would be smaller heads in the basket, too, every one of the taunting savages on the Sirens, and that cocky bastard Courtney with them, for when he and Garrity were through with the expose of this place, the islands would be found, and become a land of resort motels and restaurants like any other, and every sonofabitch on it would become a servant, grubbing for tips from their betters.

  The heads in the basket had sold him short, had conspired through the years and the last weeks to keep him from his true stature as a man. Vet, in the end he was smarter and bigger than any of them. He would have riches and fame. He hummed it to himself: riches and fame, riches and fame. And he would have a bonus besides, that Polynesian piece of ass, Tehura, orifice of orifices, to do with as he pleased.

  The thought of Tehura brought his mind to Claire once more, and there was something about Claire’s image that would not give him the full satisfaction of victory. By leaving her for another, he would have humiliated her. He knew her uncertainty as a woman. This would cripple her. Yet, it bothered him that it might not humiliate and destroy her entirely. She would always hug the belief that in their relationship she had been more of a woman than he had been a man. Nothing would make that part of her grovel, no flight, no success. Total obliteration of her could only be accomplished by himself, by his taking the wreck of her back one day, or the knowledge of her knowledge would gnaw at him forever as it did this night.

  Perhaps later, he thought, he would have to abandon
Tehura. She might look dreadful in dresses, stockings, high heels. Native girls always went to fat, and aged early, that was a fact, if not an anthropological fact. Outside her native environment, she might prove more of a social detriment than an asset. Once he had slept with her, and used her on platforms, and on television for several years, she would be tiresome. What could a man talk about to a woman like that? Where could he take her—to LaRue’s and Chasen’s? To the Plaza Hotel and Twenty-One? No, there was nowhere. Except as an exhibit, she would be useless. In due time, he would have to send her back to the islands. She could join her friend Poma as a waitress in The Three Sirens-Hilton Hotel.

  In any case, she would have to make way, sooner or later, for Claire. He had little doubt about Claire. Divorce or no divorce, when he beckoned, she would come running. There would be conditions to his accepting her again, letting her sit on the second throne. She would have to be humble. She would do as he commanded her. She must make no demands, no demands allowed. He would make her eat crow, and she would like it, like anything on his terms. Yes, dammit, she would please him and not taunt him to please her. Crawl, Claire, you bitch, because you are going to have to.

  Suddenly, Marc realized, he had arrived at the entrance to Paoti’s royal hut. He brought himself up short, and heard the music and the sounds of gaiety inside.

  He smiled to himself. Soon the deluge, and they would be heads in a basket. And himself, tomorrow night at almost this time, his new life would begin. How many people on earth, this day, could say that for them tomorrow would bring a new life? How many on earth possessed his secret wizardry?

  He had earned a toast to himself. He would have it now. He squared his shoulders, and strutted inside, to have one last pitying look at the doomed.

  VIII

  EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Maud Hayden, alone in the bedroom behind her office, interrupted her dressing to place two aspirins on her tongue and swallow them with water.

  Paoti’s feast, the night before, had been enlivened by native music, village dancers, and vast quantities of the almost lethal palm juice and kava. Everyone had been mildly intoxicated, even Maud herself (out of deference to her host), and the party had not ended until the small hours of the morning.