The Three Sirens Read online

  With this position, she would have a salary of twenty thousand dollars a year, offices in Washington, D.C., a cottage in Virginia, and be the nation’s anthropologist emeritus. Yet, for all this reward, for the temporary stimulation given by Macintosh’s letter, she had been unable to act decisively. She had sunk back into her spiritless rut, too inert to conceive a new study, too tired to propel herself into motion. Finally, after some delay, she had replied gratefully but ambiguously to Macintosh’s kind suggestion. Thank you, thank you, she would see, she would think, she would let him know. And, in the two months since, she had done no more about it. But now. She touched Easterday’s letter lovingly.

  Yes, she was alive. She stared at the bookshelves across the room where ranged the colorful volumes on the Fijians, the Ashantis, the Minoans, the Jivaros, the Lapps, that she and Adley had written. She could visualize one more monument: the Sirens Islanders.

  She heard footsteps, and knew them to belong to Claire descending the staircase. There was that, too—her daughter-in-law, Claire, and Marc. Maud did not belong in the same house with Marc, now that he was married. She suspected that he chafed to be free of her, socially as well as professionally. The Three Sirens would make that possible. Her freedom might be Marc’s liberation, also. It would help the marriage, she knew, and then she wondered why she thought the marriage needed any help at all. But this was not the morning for that. Another time.

  The electric walnut-framed desk clock told her that she still had fifty minutes to her class. While it was all bursting in her mind, she had better make notes. Nothing must be overlooked. Time was of the greatest importance.

  She took up Easterday’s bulky letter, handling it as if it were a fragment of the Scriptures, and laid it to one side. She placed her large yellow pad before her, found a ball-point pen, and hastily began to scribble:

  “Number 1. Rough out a colorful project statement for Cyrus Hackfeld re obtaining sizable grant.

  “Number 2. Consult Marc and Claire—several graduate students, too—on research clues in Easterday’s letter to build up presentation for Hackfeld. Research area of 3 Sirens—any mention in history of anything resembling it?—research Daniel Wright and Godwin—research parallel customs elsewhere to 3 Sirens—look into Courtney background, etc.

  “Number 3. Narrow down list of names for possible team to accompany us. Hackfeld likes big flash ones. Possibilities—Sam Karpowicz, botany and photography—Rachel DeJong, psychiatry—Walter Zegner, medical—Orville Pence, comparative sex studies—and others. Once Hackfeld okays, then dictate letters to Claire for all team personnel to inquire if available and interested.

  “Number 4. Write Macintosh if time still open to read new paper to League symposium on Polynesian Ethnology. Tell him about Sirens. Don’t write him. Telephone.”

  She sat back, studied the yellow pad, and felt that she had covered about all that was to be done immediately. Then she realized that she had omitted one task, perhaps the most important of all. She bent over the pad once more.

  “Number 5. Write and airmail letter to Alexander Easterday—Tahiti—tonight. Tell him yes—absolutely yes, yes, yes!”

  II

  OF THE four members of the Hayden household—four members, that is, if you recognized Suzu, Maud’s continually smiling Japanese day helper—Claire Emerson Hayden, she told herself, had been the least affected in the matter of daily routine by the arrival of the Easterday letter some five weeks before.

  The transformation of her mother-in-law, Maud (Claire still found her too formidable, after almost two years, to call her Matty), had been the most marked. Maud had always been busy, of course, and efficient, too, but in the past five weeks, she had become a dervish of activity, doing the work of ten people. More than that, before Claire’s very eyes, she had become increasingly youthful, energetic, creative. Claire imagined that she was now as she must have been at her physical peak, when Adley was her collaborator.

  Thinking all of this, Claire, this moment immersed to the shoulders in her luxurious bubble bath, lazily fanned a path through the foam with one palm. She permitted her mind to travel to her sketchy memories of Dr. Adley R. Hayden. She had met him twice before her marriage, when Marc had brought her up to Santa Barbara for social functions, and she had been much impressed by the tall, stooped, slightly paunched scholar, with his dry wit and broad knowledge and understanding. Even as Marc had stammered in his father’s presence, challenging him too often and being turned aside too easily with good-natured ridicule, she had found herself stupefied by Adley’s authority. She had always felt that she had made a sorry impression, although Marc had reassured her that his father found her “a mighty pretty young thing.” She frequently wished that she could have been more to Adley, but a week after their second meeting, he had suddenly died of a heart attack, and in his Valhalla, she was sure, she was still regarded by him as no more than a mighty pretty young thing.

  The soap bubbles had formed again before Claire’s body, and absently, she began to smooth them. Her mind had wandered, she knew, and she tried to remember what she had been thinking. She remembered: the Easter day letter five weeks ago, and its effect on all of them. Maud had become a dervish, yes. And Marc, he was busier now, more intense (if that was possible), more nervous, more complaining about petty annoyances but above all about the questionable wisdom of the field trip. “Your Easterday sounds like a romancer,” he had told Maud just two nights before. “A thing like this ought to be investigated properly before wasting all this time and money.” Maud had treated him as she always treated him, with the infinite patience and affection of all mothers with their precocious little boys. Maud had defended Easterday’s solidity and explained that the circumstances permitted no investigation and reminded him of her infallible ear for a good thing, the result of instinct as well as experience. As usual, once overruled, Marc had retreated, and submerged himself in the burden of extra work.

  Only Claire’s routine had seemed unaffected by the recent event. There was more typing and filing to do now, but these did not appreciably fill her hours. Every morning, still, she could linger in her warm, soapy bath, read at breakfast, consult with Maud, do her customary work, then participate with the other young faculty wives in tennis or tea or attendance at a lecture. And the nights when Marc was too busy to take her to a movie or out for a drive, or when there was no party, she would let him pore over his notes, do his research, correct his papers—man’s work—while she read novels or watched, with sleepy boredom, the portable television’s screen. None of this had been changed by Easterday and The Three Sirens.

  Yet, Claire was positive, something had changed for her. It had nothing to do with daily routine. It had to do with a feeling—almost a tangible effervescent sac of emotion—inside her being. She had been Mrs. Marc Hayden, officially, legally, for better, for worse, forever, for one year and nine months now. With the marriage—“a good one,” her mother and stepfather had decided—the sac of feeling within had been buoyant and fun, like a bubble that carried you up, up, up, and all below was marvelous. But gradually, in the aging of her marriage, the bubble of buoyancy had subsided, settled, flattened into a dreary little puddle that represented nothing at all. That was the look of the bubble: nothing. That was her feeling toward everything: nothing. It was as if all excitement and possibility of joy had fled. It was as if all of life was predictable, every day ahead, even to the last day, and there was no hope of wonder. This was the feeling, and when she heard new mothers discuss post-baby blues, she wondered if there were post-marriage blues, also. There was no one to blame for the disappointment—surely not Marc, not Marc at all—except possibly the inexperienced bride herself, with her wilting bouquet of over-romantic and great expectations. If she had the money, she thought, she would finance a team of experts to find out what happened to Cinderellas after they-lived-happily-ever-after.

  But five weeks ago, or thereabouts, something good had happened to Claire. Its effect on her whole person was imme
diate, but hidden from those around her. She felt awakened. She had a feeling of well-being. She felt that there was going to be more to life than unfulfillment. And she knew that the inspiring element had been the Easterday letter. She had lovingly typed abridged copies, double-spaced, of this letter. All that Easterday promised, she knew by heart.

  Except for one week-long trip to Acapulco and Mexico City, with her mother and stepfather when she was fifteen (she remembered the Pyramids, the Floating Gardens, Chapultepec, she remembered not being alone one instant), Claire had never been outside the United States. And now, almost overnight, she would be transported to an unknown and exotic place in the South Seas. The promise of change was unbearably stimulating. The actual details of The Three Sirens had little reality, and therefore little meaning to her. They resembled too closely the thousands of words in Maud’s books, in countless other anthropological volumes she had perused, and they seemed like mere history and the ancient past and no part of her present life. Yet, the date was drawing nearer and nearer, and if Easterday was not the “romancer” that Marc had labeled him, if these things were real things and not word things, she would soon be in a sweltering hut, among almost naked men and women, who took food from a common storehouse, who regarded virginity as a defect and practical education in sex a necessity, who practiced love in a Social Aid Hut and at an uninhibited festival (with a nude beauty contest, no less!).

  Claire glanced at the enameled clock beside the wash basin. It was nine-fifteen. Marc’s early class would be over. Today, he would have four hours before his next class. She wondered if he would return home or go on to the library. She decided that she had better dress. Reaching out, she spun the lever beneath the faucet, and the outlet clanged open and the water and suds began to gurgle down the drain.

  She pulled herself erect, gingerly stepped over the side of the tub, and stood dripping on the thick white mat. As the rivulets of water rolled downward across the curves of her glistening flesh, her mind returned again to the Easterday letter. What was it that he had said of the mode of dress on The Three Sirens? The men wore pubic bags held loosely in place by strings. Of course, that wasn’t really shocking, considering how men dressed on the beach every summer. Still, just those little bags and nothing else. Yet, they were natives and that made it decent, almost clinical. She had seen hundreds of pictures of natives, some of them without even pubic bags, and it had seemed quite natural for them.

  The thought occurred to her, standing as she was now in the middle of the bathroom without a stitch on, that this was the way she might be expected to appear in public on The Three Sirens. No, that could not be quite true. Easterday had written: the women wore short grass skirts “without any undergarment” and with breasts bare. But heavens, that was next to naked.

  Claire swung around to face the full-length mirror on the door. She tried to imagine how she would look, this way, naked, to the natives on The Three Sirens. She was five feet four and weighed 112 pounds on the scale this morning. Her hair was dark and shiny, cut short, with the ends clustering against her cheeks. Her almond eyes were of a vague Far Eastern cast, evoking the submissive and demure girls of ancient Cathay, and yet the effect was contradicted by their color, smoke blue, “sexy,” Marc had once said. Her nose was small, with overdelicate nostrils, her lips deep red and her mouth generous, too generous. From the slope of her shoulders and chest, her breasts developed gradually. Her breasts were large—how she had hated that in adolescence—but still high and young, which was a source of gratification in her twenty-fifth year. Her ribs showed somewhat—what would the natives think?

  —but her abdomen was almost flat, only slightly rounded, and the proportions of her thighs and slender legs were not too bad, not really. Still, you could not tell what other people in other cultures would feel—the Polynesians might consider her skinny, except for her bosom.

  Then she remembered the grass skirt. Twelve inches. She could see that twelve inches permitted only four inches of extra modesty. Forgetting any breeze—My God—what happened when you bent over or lifted your leg to ascend a step, or, for that matter, how did you sit down? She determined to discuss the whole business of dress with Maud. In fact, since this was her first field trip, she must ask Maud what would be required of her on The Three Sirens.

  As she dried, she saw herself in the mirror once more. How would she look when she was pregnant? Her belly was so small, really. Where would there be room for another person, her child? Well, there always was, and nature had its way, but it seemed absolutely impossible at this moment. Thinking of the child she would have, but did not have, her brow automatically creased. From the first she had spoken wistfully, later practically, of bearing a child, and from the first Marc had been against it. That is, he was against it for the time, he always said. His reasons seemed important when he stated them to her, but when she was alone, and free to think, they always seemed puny. They must adjust to marriage first, he once said. They must have some free years together, without added responsibilities, he said another time. And lately, it had been that they must get Maud settled, apart from them, and be on their own, before having a family.

  Now, rubbing the towel along her legs, she wondered if any of these reasons was honest, let alone valid, or if they concealed the truth: that Marc did not want a child, dreaded having one, because he was still a child himself, a grown child who was too dependent to take on responsibility. She did not like the momentary suspicion, and determined not to speculate further.

  There was a rap on the door behind the mirror. “Claire?” It was Marc’s voice. She started with surprise, and felt guilty with her thoughts now that Marc was so near.

  “Good morning!” she called out, cheerfully.

  “Did you have breakfast yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m just dressing.”

  “I’ll wait for you then. I had to miss it this morning. Overslept. What should I tell Suzu? Anything special?”

  “The usual.”

  “Okay…By the way, the last of the research came in from Los Angeles.”

  “Anything exciting?”

  “Haven’t had time to look at it yet. We’ll go over it together at breakfast.”

  “Fine.”

  After she heard Marc leave, she hurriedly fastened on her brassiere, then pulled on her panties, garter belt, rolled on her sheer stockings and secured them, and got into the pink slip. Emerging from the warm bathroom into the cooler, sunny upstairs bedroom, she wondered if the final research had turned up anything more. In minutes she would know. Quickly, she combed her hair, made up her lips, but used no cosmetics on the rest of her face, then stepped into her light cocoa-colored wool skirt, drew on the beige cashmere sweater, buttoned it, found some low-heeled shoes, shoved her feet into them, and hastened into the hall and descended the stairs.

  Suzu, grinning, was putting down the breakfast, and Marc was at the kitchen table, bent over an open folder, when Claire entered. She hailed Suzu, and then brushed her palm over Marc’s crewcut as she pecked a kiss at his cheek.

  She slid into a chair, gulped her grapefruit juice, grimaced, having forgotten to sweeten it. She looked across the table. “Isn’t Maud back yet?”

  “Still hiking across the moors,” said Marc, without looking up.

  Claire broke off the corner from a piece of toast. “Well,” she said, indicating the research, “does our Polynesian Disneyland really exist?”

  Marc lifted his head, then shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I wish I could be as sure as Matty.” He tapped the papers in front of him. “Our graduate students seem to have done a thorough job, even at the Library of Congress, combed South Seas literature, published and unpublished. No mention of The Three Sirens anywhere. Absolutely not a word—”

  “That shouldn’t be surprising. Easterday said it was an unknown group.”

  “I’d feel more comfortable if there was something in print. Of course—” He began to leaf through the notes again. “—certain other findings tend to s
upport Easterday a little.”

  “Like what?” asked Claire, her mouth full.

  “There actually was a Daniel Wright, and he did live in Skinner Street in London before 1795. Also, there was an attorney named Thomas Courtney practicing in Chicago—”

  “Really? … Anything more about him?”

  “Dates, mostly. He’s thirty-eight. Degrees from Northwestern and the University of Chicago. Junior partner in some old-line firm. Flew for the Air Force in Korea in 1952. Then back in practice in Chicago. The listings stop in 1957.”

  “That’s when he went to the South Seas,” said Claire, flatly.

  “Could be,” said Marc. “We’ll know soon enough.” He closed the folder, and devoted himself to his cereal and milk.

  “Eleven shopping weeks left to Christmas,” said Claire.

  “I don’t think The Three Sirens will quite be Christmas,” said Marc. “It’s no place for a woman, among those primitives. If I could leave you behind, I would.”

  “Don’t you dare try,” said Claire, indignantly. “Besides, they’re not entirely primitives. Easterday said the Chief’s son spoke in perfect English.”

  “Plenty of primitives speak English,” said Marc. He smiled suddenly. “Including some of our best friends. I wouldn’t want you to spend too much time with them, either.”

  Pleased by his unusual concern, Claire touched his hand. “You mean you really care?”

  “Male duty and instinct,” said Marc. “Protect one’s mate … But seriously, field trips are not picnics. I’ve told you how much I hated the ones I’ve been on. They’re never as idyllic in real life as they sound when they’re glossed over in print. You usually find you don’t have much in common with the natives, aside from working with them. You miss all the amenities of life. Inevitably, you get laid low by dysentery or malaria or some damn fever thing. I don’t like exposing a woman to all that hardship, even for a short time.”