The Three Sirens (45 page)

The outpouring had made Lisa breathless, and as she tried to recover, Harriet asked, “What made you change your mind?”

“The dancing, darling—wow!” She dug into her pockets, and then said, “I even lost my cigarettes. Can I borrow one?”

As she accepted one, and the light, Lisa resumed her recital. “Even when that Courtney took me out to where they’re rehearsing for the festival, I didn’t want to go. I kept saying to myself, What am I letting myself in for at my age? And who gives a hoot about a bunch of undressed natives wriggling around in the sun? Anyway, our beachcomber friend kept saying it would be sport, so I pretended that it might be, and dragged along with him. We got to a clearing, fifteen minutes from the village, and there were about twenty of them, young men and women, getting together. Courtney turned me over to a snappy young woman, sort of the Katherine Dunham type, her name was Oviri. She runs the show. Well, she sat down on the grass with me, real friendly, I must say. She explained a little about festival week. That got me interested, I’ll tell you. Have you heard about it?”

“Not much,” said Harriet. “Only what Maud told us about a big dance, and sporting events, and a nude beauty contest. Also, something about giving license to married couples—”

“To everyone, that’s just it,” interrupted Lisa. “You know how it is back home. Before you’re married, you see a man who interests you, maybe in the street or in a store or across the room of a bar, but usually, you never meet him. I mean, you simply don’t. You meet only the people you’re introduced to and get to know. And after you’re married and become older—well, you wouldn’t know that yet, Harriet, but take my word—it gets worse, it just does, it’s gruesome, sad as hell. Lots of people have their cake and eat it. All kinds of furtive ratty cheating and infidelity goes on. I’m sure Cyrus has been unfaithful to me more than once, though I’ve never done that to him, I wouldn’t consider it. I mean it’s improper and dangerous and simply wrong. So you become older and older, a woman does, until you haven’t got a chance, and you sort of die bit by bit on the vine.”

She was lost in reflection a moment, and Harriet waited. Walking, Lisa stared at the turf, and then she looked up.

“I was just thinking—no, it’s not like dying on the vine—it’s like—well, you have only one life to live—and it lets out of you so gradually, like the air leaking out of a poorly tied balloon. There is nothing left. Do you understand, Harriet? All the while this is happening, you sometimes meet another man at a party or someplace and he thinks you’re still something and you think he is charming and sweet. And you wonder, you wish—well, you think—maybe here is someone who could tie the balloon, stop life escaping. You would be new to him. He would be new to you. Everything would be taut and fresh again, not doughy and old. When you’ve been married as long as I have, Harriet, you collect a lot of bruises and bumps along the way. Every time you go to bed with your husband, you take beneath the blanket the scars of every disagreement, every unreasonableness, every lousy day. You also take all you know of his weaknesses, his failures as a person, his attitudes toward his mother, his father, his brother, his ineptness with his first business partner, his stupidity about his son, the way he couldn’t hold liquor that night at the beach party, his childishness about getting into that club, his fears about colds and heights, his lack of grace at dancing and the way he can’t swim and his awful taste in pattern neckties. And you take under the blanket yourself, your oldness and being taken for granted and neglected, and you know he thinks about you, if he thinks about you at all, the way you do about him, all the scars. You forget the good parts. So sometimes you long for someone else—not variety or sex alone—but only to be new to someone and be with someone new. You can’t see their scars. They can’t see yours. But what happens when you find a candidate? Nothing happens. At least not with women like myself. We’re too conventional.”

She seemed almost to have forgotten her companion, when suddenly, she looked at Harriet. “I guess I got off the track a little,” Lisa said, “but maybe not. Anyway, what I started to say is that right here on this island they’ve got it licked. The yearly festival is their safety valve. That’s where you’re recharged. According to this dance woman, in that one week any man or woman, married or unmarried, can approach any other person. For example, take a native married woman, maybe married ten or fifteen years. She is fascinated by someone else’s husband. She simply hands him some kind of token—I think a shell necklace—and if he wears it, it means he reciprocates her feeling. They can meet openly. If they want to sleep together, they do. If they only want each other’s company, fine, that’s it. After the festival is over, the wife goes back to her husband and life goes on. No recriminations. It’s tradition, perfectly healthy, acceptable to all. I think it’s great.”

“Are you sure about no recriminations?” asked Harriet. “I mean people are possessive, they get jealous.”

“Not here,” said Lisa. “They’ve grown up with this custom and it’s with them all their lives. The dance woman, Oviri, said there were some adjustments sometimes, an appeal to the Hierarchy to shed one mate and take a new one, because of the festival, but rarely. I still think it’s great. Imagine, doing whatever you want for a week with no one watching you or caring, and yourself not feeling guilty.”

“It’s fantastic. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Well, we’ll be here, we’ll see it. Anyway, this Oviri said the whole festival kicks off with the ceremonial dance exhibition the first night. It is supposed to create an atmosphere of—of celebration and freedom. That’s what I saw them rehearsing an hour ago. After Oviri left me to go and work with her troupe—there were some new ones who had to be taught to perform with the group—I sat there alone, kind of apart, a little wound up by what I’d heard, but still sort of lonely and by myself. Once they started dancing, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I know something about the dance, but, honey, I’ve never seen anything like this. Speak about our bumps and grinds. Kindergarten play. They had a fertility dance going, a line of men and a line of women, facing each other, everything synchronized and planned—a couple of musicians started with the flutes and wooden drums—and those women started clapping and chanting, throwing their heads way back, pushing their breasts and pelvises way out, all their muscles going, going in a frenzy, and the men, hips rotating, it was wild. I’m surprised it didn’t end up in an orgy. I guess I was impressed and showed it, eyes bugging, palms slapping on my hips, because Oviri skipped over and offered me her hand. Well, I had no more thought of joining them—at my age—and I haven’t really danced for years—but I got caught up in it, and there I was in that pack of strangers, swinging away. After a few minutes they took a break, thank the Lord, because my mouth was dry and my arms and legs ached and I thought I’d collapse. Drinks were passed around, some kind of milky something made of herbs, and Oviri explained the next number, and I hadn’t intended to go on, but all at once I was eager and ready. They formed a circle, and I was in it, and we began stamping, and twirling, and going in and out, and I picked up the rhythm and went crazy. I’m glad Cyrus and the old crowd couldn’t see me. What a spectacle. It got so frenzied—I was wet through and through—that I wanted to be like those Sirens women with nothing on but some grass around the middle. I still had enough sense not to be foolish, but I kicked off my ballet slippers, and as we were wheeling and grinding, I yanked out my blouse and tried to unbutton it and finally ripped it off—that’s why no buttons—and there I was in bra and skirt, a maniac. I’m a quick study and I learned the motions fast. Well, it’s been years since I felt so free, not giving a damn about anyone, even about myself, only having a ball. And when it was over, I wasn’t even tired or sore. Isn’t that something? Anyway, they liked me, I liked them, and I promised Oviri I’d come there every day. I’ll have to make notes on it for Maud … One funny thing. That kind of crazy dancing is for young people. At least, at home it is. Married women my age, and with a son in prep school, they don’t do the young Zelda Fitzgerald or Isadora bit. But you know, when I was leaving, I got up the courage to ask Oviri her age. She’s older than I am—forty-two—can you imagine that? I guess the letting-go agrees with her. I know it does with me. I can’t wait for tomorrow.”

Listening to Lisa Hackfeld’s enthusiasm, Harriet was delighted for her. As always, she wanted everyone to be happy. She had almost forgotten her own recent sorrow, but now, visualizing the festival dance, she conjured up an image of Uata as part of it. How abandoned and alive he must have been.

She was reminded of her duty, and halted, aware that they had gone several huts past Maud’s dwelling. “It sounds sensational, Lisa,” she said. “You’ll have to show me how it goes one day … Listen, I almost forgot, but I have to see Maud on some business. Will you excuse me?”

“You go along. Forgive my running off at the mouth like this.”

They had started to separate, when Lisa remembered an amenity. “Oh, Harriet, I meant to ask, what kind of a day did you have?”

“Like you, a ball, a great big wonderful ball.” She knew that Lisa would not detect, and not understand if she did detect, the irony in her tone.

* * *

It was a little after four in the afternoon—at home always the purgatory part of the day, when you regretted what you had or had not done up to that moment, when you suffered the approach of night with its disappointments—and Claire Hayden was glad, at this time, to be occupied.

Since her own table would not be ready until tomorrow, she sat at Maud’s desk, finished the last of the typing on the third letter, pulled it from the machine, and fixed paper, carbon, paper for the fourth letter. Before leaving to see Paoti, Maud had dictated seven letters to colleagues in the United States and England, each short but provocative, each hinting at an amazing forthcoming study.

Maud’s casual letters were carefully calculated to spread favorable gossip by word of mouth in anthropological circles. A Dr. So-and-So would open his letter in Dallas, flattered to hear from the legendary Maud, curious about “the secret island” from which she was writing, and he would remark to others in the field, “Sa-ay, Jim, guess who I heard from last week—Maud—Maud Hayden—the old battle-axe is out in the South Pacific on some hush-hush field trip, a big one this time—can’t count her out—she’s off and running. Got to give credit to those Boas-Kroeber gals.” Thus, artificially seeding the atmosphere, Maud would create the right climate for a dramatic appearance and paper at the American Anthropological League this fall. Thus, she would reinforce Dr. Walter Scott Macintosh’s support. Thus, she would brush aside the threat from Dr. David Rogerson. And thus, she would be enshrined as executive editor of
Culture
. Her daughter-in-law knew that from this day on the typewriter keys would not be still.

Satisfied to collaborate in this promotion, to help win Maud her high post, thereby winning Marc a better position and their own privacy for the first time in their marriage—although, today, she was less sure she wanted that—Claire slipped the blank pages into her machine and rolled them through.

She had bent to read her shorthand ciphers, when suddenly the door swung open and the bright sunlight enveloped and blinded her. She covered her eyes, heard the door close, dropped her hand, and saw that the caller looming above her was Tom Courtney, appearing congenial and attractive in a T-shirt and blue dungarees.

He showed surprise at finding Claire behind the desk. “Hello …” he said.

“Hello yourself.”

“I-I guess I expected to find Maud.”

“She’s with the Chief.” Her mind swiftly reversed itself, and she found she had no patience for work. She wanted company. “She should be back any minute,” Claire said quickly. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“If you don’t mind? Because if you’re busy—”

“I’m through for the day.”

“All right.” He made for the bench, pulling pipe and pouch from his hip pocket, then sat down and packed his pipe bowl. “I should apologize for bursting in without knocking. Everything is so informal here. You gradually forget your—your American manners.”

She watched him put the flaming lighter to his pipe. She wondered what was in his mind about her, if anything. Aside from her husband and doctor, no other white man, except this stranger, had ever seen her unclad to the waist. What had he thought?

She slid around in the chair to face him, drawing her skirt down. He had his pipe billowing smoke, and he looked up at her, smiled crookedly, crossed his long legs.

“Well, Mrs. Hayden—” he said.

“I’ll trade you Claire for Tom,” she said. “It might as well be Claire. You know me practically as—as intimately as my husband.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m afraid I made a spectacle of myself last night. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, come and see the new strip queen of The Three Sirens.’ “

Some concern touched his features. “You’re not really worried about that, are you?”

“I’m not. My husband is.” She did not mind being disloyal to Marc today. “He thinks the place is making me dissolute.”

She had spoken the last lightly, but Courtney’s reply was devoid of humor. “It had to be done, and you were right to do it,” he said. “I thought you handled yourself with dignity. You made a wonderful impression on Paoti and the others.”

“Well, hurrah for that,” she said. “I’ll have to bring you as an affidavit for my husband.”

“Husbands are a special breed,” he said. “They are often possessive and resentful.”

“How do you know? Were you one of the breed?”

“Almost. Not quite.” He worried his pipe. “My knowledge of the breed is secondhand,” he said carefully, speaking to the pipe. He looked up. “I was a divorce lawyer.”

“Sellers, Woolf and Courtney, Attorneys-at-Law, Chicago, Illinois. Northwestern and Chicago Universities. Army Air Force, Korea, 1952. En route to the Sirens, 1957.”

He blinked steadily, and made no effort to hide his surprise. “Where did you say you were from—221B Baker Street?”