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.

Nevertheless, Maud had set her alarm for the customary hour of seven, and at seven she had grimly awakened and grimly gone about her toilet and dressing. Despite only four hours of sleep and a hangover, and her many years, she would not indulge herself. In the field, she was miserly about time. An hour wasted in self-coddling, in toadying to one’s bodily demands, meant an hour subtracted from the sum of human knowledge. This morning, the only crutches she would permit herself were the two aspirins.

By the time she had finished dressing, and prepared her coffee on the small Coleman stove, the aspirins had begun to do their work. The invisible pincers began to release their grip on her head, and she was able to think more rationally. As always, at this period in the morning, before marching to the day’s work (a session with Mr. Manao, the schoolteacher, scheduled for twenty minutes from now), she liked to review her troops in the field.

She reviewed her troops.

She used, as her mental starting point for inspection, the mailbag that had rested in her office late yesterday afternoon and that had been flown back to Tahiti by Captain Rasmussen in the evening. Lisa Hackfeld had brought in the bulkiest envelope of all, a manila one addressed to her husband, Cyrus Hackfeld, Los Angeles, California, and with it an ordinary airmail envelope addressed to her son, Merrill, who was visiting Washington, D.C., on a conducted tour. Before depositing both in the canvas bag, Lisa had kissed the thick manila envelope with feigned affection. She had explained that her data on the miracle stimulant, the herb known as puai, was in that envelope, as well as Lisa’s projected plans for enslaving the entire Western world with Vitality. Cyrus would be proud of her brainstorm, she was positive.

Today, and every day until their departure, Lisa would be occupied from morning until night with her Operation Ponce de Leon, as she now enjoyed referring to it. She would be interviewing dozens of dancers who used the herb, as well as most of the village elders who could relate its history, traditions, and their personal experiences with it.

Of all the people on her team, Maud thought, sipping her coffee, it might be Lisa, rather than one of the professionals, who proved to be the best anthropologist on the trip. Very likely, too, it might be that Lisa would profit most, financially, of those who had come to The Three Sirens. The rich get richer. It was Adley, dear Adley, who liked to say that. And they get younger, too, Maud amended it, richer and younger. Whatever happened with the ridiculous herb, Maud thought, even if it failed commercially, Lisa still would have succeeded for herself. For, on The Three Sirens, she had unwittingly found the antidote against age, the one herb that was anti-death. The ingredient was simple: keeping busy. If anything worked, this was what worked. Maud had no doubt. She knew.

Shortly after Lisa had left Rasmussen’s mailbag, Rachel DeJong had appeared beside it, more cheerful and amusing than Maud had ever known her to be. Rachel it was who brought in the greatest number of letters, dashed off in the late afternoon. Rachel had been surprisingly talkative. She had shown Maud one envelope addressed to a Miss Evelyne Mitchell, and had explained that this and most of the others were to her patients, announcing her return. Yes, she intended to resume practice, at least for a year. She displayed another letter to one Ernst Beham, M.D., and had added, “And then I’ll give up my practice, if Dr. Beham lets me. He’s my training analyst.” Finally, she had tapped one more envelope addressed, Maud could see, to a Mr. Joseph Morgen, and she had said, “He’s wanted to marry me for some time, and now he’s out of luck, because I just wrote him yes.”

Today, Maud knew, Rachel would be continuing with her native analysands, and collating their information for her psychiatric paper, and would spend the remainder of her time in her study of the Hierarchy.

Before Rachel had taken her leave, Orville Pence had darted in with a letter, thrown it into the sack, and fled. In a half-hour he had returned, knelt beside the bag, dipped into it, found his letter, and proceeded to tear it up in Maud’s presence. “To my mother,” he had explained. “I wrote her something I did yesterday. I’ve just decided it’s none of her damn business.” With that, and no further explanation, he had gone. But Maud knew what Orville had done, for late yesterday Harriet Bleaska had confided it to both Maud and Claire.

Today, thought Maud, Orville won’t do much work. He’ll be waiting in a state of harried suspense for Harriet to decide between Vaiuri and himself. He may, she thought, come away from the Sirens with more than he had bargained for, or he may come away with less, with a terrible sense of defeat, should Harriet choose the native, a native, over him. Whatever the outcome, Maud thought, he will leave without his mother.

Then she thought of her own letter, the one she had finished dictating quite late to Claire, the report to Walter Scott Macintosh. Inevitably, the thought of it led her into her near future, the possible separation from Marc and Claire, and her thinking began to center on Marc, but she resisted it. She drank her cooling coffee near the Coleman stove, and moved her inspection of her troops away from the mailbag.

Harriet Bleaska had appeared last night, with her dilemma, as Claire and Maud were parting to dress for dinner. After a short period of discussion—they had been no help, they could not be—Harriet had gone with Claire. Finally, when it was nightfall, and Maud was readying to go to Marc’s hut next door, Estelle Karpowicz had stopped in briefly, to say Mary had been found and that all was well between Mary and Sam. Maud’s relief had been enormous, for she liked that family and had suffered for both father and daughter. Today, Maud thought, would be a good day for the Karpowiczes. Sam had caught up on his prints, and would be out hunting his plant specimens, and Mary would be in the village with her mother.

Maud had completed her inspection, and her coffee as well, and a new day, the first of the fourth week on The Three Sirens, was about to begin. Yet, going to her desk for her pencils and pad, she was nagged by the fact that as leader she had been remiss, for she had avoided inspecting one member. She had been afraid to look too closely at her son.

For a moment, standing at her desk, she remembered last night seeing Tom Courtney at Claire’s, Courtney instead of Marc, who had been called away somewhere, and of the traitorous thought that she had entertained, before evicting it, as the three of them had walked in step to Paoti’s dinner. The thought had been that the three of them were more comfortable as three, than if the three had been herself, Claire, and Marc. What a terrible thing.

And so, unhappily, in the early morning, leaning on her desk now, she inspected him and herself. In this minute, she had a deep insight into Marc and herself, but actually it was more herself, and it was this, that Marc was the victim of her selfishness. For she had been selfish, that was unmistakable. She had borne Adley only one child, because Adley had been enough for her and she had been enough for him. And even the one child had suffered from this selfishness. The one son had been treated like no son at all, but rather like a distant relative hopelessly competing for the attention of both a mother and father who were fenced off from him, self-contained, this pair, absorbed in one another, pleased with one another, needing no other person or, indeed, anything else.

The wrongness of it loomed up at her through the far faded years. Now, she thought wretchedly, now so near the end, all that would be left of her on earth would be Marc, her failure. She took the entire blame, absolved Adley completely (“of the dead say nothing but good,” amen). If only it could all be relived, those old times, but with her present wisdom superimposed on the past. She would have brought their son into the family, not given all her love to Adley and their career. She would have made the son surer, happier, secure in maternal love, and he would have grown to become a man who in turn could have children he loved, which he had not with Claire.

And, were it possible to do it over again, she would have done so much more. She would have had several children, many, instead of the one automatic basic boy, who lived to mock her failure. But here it was, and here was she, and no matter how much she wished it, how strongly she willed it, there could never be another child on earth, let alone several others, out of her womb, the better to represent her passage through this time on earth. How helpless, how helpless old women are with their old memories. She could stamp on the earth, she could hurl imprecations at the heavens, she could beg of the High Spirit, she could wheedle or sob and curse, and no matter what were the cries from her heart and lungs, there could be no more children, for there was no more Adley and there was no more youth.

She stood there, at her makeshift desk in the filtered sunlight, and she felt enfeebled and lost. Ah, how wrongly she had guessed about the later years. Her young dreams about later years had always been of herself as still young and with Adley and with the perfect son who adored them both, and somehow, with that, one could never imagine loneliness. Once, once, she might have spun the wheel, and spun it again and again, and today had the earnings of that effort, two, three, or four numbers to bet on for the final years. Instead, she had spun the wheel one time, and not even looked, casting all on a single number, and she had lost.

This morning she could admit it: there was no one to blame but herself.

Then she thought of Lisa Hackfeld’s legacy that would be taken from the Sirens. Activity. Keep busy, keep occupied, keep going, never stop. That is the single anti-death for old women. It was her mistake of this morning. She had stopped. She had permitted her mind the liberty of a woman’s mind and a mother’s mind. She was not that at all. She was a social anthropologist, and a busy one, and she vowed that she would never forget that again.

She took up the pencils, the pad, and briskly, she went off to her appointment …

Before ten o’clock in the morning, while his wife still slept, Marc Hayden finished packing his worn canvas knapsack. Into it he had squeezed every necessary article that he would require between here and Tahiti. The rest of his personal belongings, he was forfeiting. It did not matter. From the second he arrived in Tahiti, he could spend as lavishly as Croesus, using his traveler’s checks and savings account for his material needs, not needing to worry about depleting his bank balance, for an inexhaustible income awaited him.

During the period that he packed, he had expected Claire to interrupt him. Therefore, when she did, he was prepared for her. She came into the front room, knotting the belt of her pink cotton robe over her white nightgown, just as he picked up the knapsack by its shoulder straps to test its weight.

“Morning,” he said. He slung the knapsack over his shoulders, to judge its weight better. “I’m going off on an exploration of the island. Be back after midnight, if I can, or maybe by tomorrow early.”

“Since when is all this?” Claire wanted to know. “Whom are you going with?”

“Several of Moreturi’s friends. Been planning it for a week. Want to see some of the old stone ruins, the temple put up before Daniel Wright’s time. Also, I’m told, there are a few outlying shacks the first Wright erected after landing here from England.”

“Have fun,” she said, and covered her yawn. She wandered aimlessly about the room, hesitated at the fruit bowl, then knelt and peeled and began slicing a banana for her breakfast. She glanced at him. “You look chipper enough, after last night.”

“What was last night?”

“Why, the amount we drank. Whew. You were staggering around, insulting our hosts and Tom—”

“Is this the beginning of another lovely day?”

“Well, you did behave like that. Not that you’re any different when you’re sober. When we left, your mother apologized to them.”

Marc snorted, and settled his knapsack on the floor. “If your report is complete, I’ll—”

“As a matter of fact it isn’t,” Claire said. “You came to the dinner quite late and I had a chance to take Courtney aside and speak to him.”

“Naturally.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “I mean about my missing diamond pendant. I told him what you said, that you were sure one of the natives had stolen it.”

“And he said—” His voice went falsetto and registered pretended horror, “Mercy me, but our people here don’t steal, they don’t steal at all, they’re too busy lovin’ and fornicatin’.”

She was suddenly furious. “That’s right, Marc. He said they positively do not steal. There’s never been a case in their history. They know nothing of such misbehavior. They do not covet another’s material possessions.”

Marc’s mind went to Tehura, the fallible, and he felt like throwing her at Claire, but he did not. “Your fuggin’ Courtney seems to know everything,” he said. “His word is always better than mine.”

“About the Sirens, yes. Because he’s open-minded and sensible. You’re so full of prejudices—”

“Prejudices aren’t automatically bad,” he snapped. “I have mine, and one of them is that I’m prejudiced against failures who blame their failure on everything but themselves. Your lawyer in Chicago couldn’t make it in big time, so he ran away, and here he’s a hot-shot frog in a small pond of primitive illiterates. He pontificates against everything we know is good, our country, our system, our customs. But everything here, in this nothing place where he’s somebody at last, that’s perfect, that’s great—”

“Oh, God, stop it, Marc, he’s not like that, and you know it.”

“And speaking of prejudices, I have another. That’s against wives who are so damn hostile to their husbands that they side with everyone else against their husbands, in ideas, discussions, everything. Privately, they take their husbands’ money and homes and status, but they chip away at their men in public.”

“Are you referring to me?”

“I’m referring to you and plenty of women like you. Thank the Lord they’re not the only women on earth. There are other women who are proud of their men.”

“Maybe they have reason to be,” she said, her voice rising. “Maybe they’re married to real men. How do you treat me? How do you behave to me? When was the last time you came to bed with me? Or paid me the least bit of attention? Or treated me like your wife?”

“A woman gets what she deserves,” he said, with slurred viciousness. “What do you do for me? A woman—”

“You won’t let me—you won’t let me be a wife.”

“Living with you isn’t living with a woman, it’s living with an Inquisitor, closing in, shoving, demanding—”

“Marc, I don’t do that to you, you do it to yourself. Marc, I want to talk about this. I’ve been watching you, not only here but at home, and I think you’re all mixed up—I won’t use the word sick, but mixed up—about yourself, your values, your attitude toward having a family, yourself and women. Just take one thing, the normal practice of a husband and wife sleeping together with some regularity, degree of desire and—”

“So that’s it. Well, I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you—a man wants to sleep with a real woman, not an obsessed little chippy with a whore’s mind—”

She teetered on the last brink of self-control. “You mean, a woman who thinks of love, being loved, has a whore’s mind? Is that what you think?”

He yanked the knapsack up and over his shoulder with a savage motion. “I think you’ve been riding me long enough, two years long, and that’s enough. You make me want to throw up, and that means throwing you up, too. If I’m sick, it’s that I’m sick to the gut of you and the guilts you try to saddle me with—”

“Marc, I’m only trying to work it out.”

“You’re trying to justify what you’ve really got in that cheap nooky mind of yours. Have you ever looked at one of the natives here from the waist up? No, you’re trying to justify getting into the sack with every big brown—”

“Damn you!” She swung at him, and her palm resounded against his cheek.

Automatically, with his free hand, he struck back, the side of his hand catching her on the mouth and chin. The strength of his blow sent her reeling, but she maintained her balance, rubbing her mouth in mute shock.

“I’ve had enough of you for the rest of my life!” he shouted. “Just stay out of my way!”

With the knapsack, he strode to the door.

“Marc,” she cried after him, “unless you apologize, I’ll never—”

But then no one was there. She wavered, eyes full, and made a conscious effort not to dignify the scene and his insanity with her tears. When she removed her hand from her mouth, she saw that there were spots of bright red blood on her fingers.

Slowly, she started for the jar of water in the rear room. Unaccountably, Harriet Bleaska’s words of yesterday came to her mind. Harriet, beset by her own dilemma, had said to Claire, “Orville seems to me so much like your Marc, maybe you can tell me what it would be like with such a man. Can you, Claire?” At the time, she could not. This moment, she wished that she had. But perhaps Harriet would not be such a fool as she.

Harriet Bleaska, in her white nurse’s uniform, strode back and forth across the front room of her hut, constantly flicking the ash from her cigarette, constantly wondering if she had been a nincompoop. Heretofore, at this hour, which was the last of the morning, she was always famished. Now, she was not famished at all. Her belly was filled with a gravestone, and it was not clear to her, but quite possibly the stone was etched with the word folly.

She had made her decision after breakfast, and hastily written the brief note accepting his proposal of marriage. No more than a minute or two before, she had sent off the note with a native boy. By now it was beyond recall. Momentarily, it would be received, read, and shortly afterwards the recipient would be at her door, in her room—her husband-to-be!—and the die would be cast. Forever after, her life would be a different life, her will bent to another’s, her personality and history submerged beneath another’s, her single Bleaskaness evaporated into thin air for all eternity. It was the merger and change that she had longed for since adolescence, and yet, now that it was upon her, the mutation struck her with terror.

Then, more coolly, as she lighted a fresh cigarette off the old one, she realized that what engulfed her with terror was not this drastic altering of her life, but rather, the continuing worry about whether she had or had not made her choice wisely and well. How many young women had such radically different suitors from whom to select a legal mate? Did anyone, anywhere, ever have to decide between two men so dissimilar and between living conditions so contrasting?

One last time, before giving up her Bleaskaness along with her isolation behind The Mask, she reviewed the men and what they offered side by side. Roaming the room again, smoking steadily, she examined the good and the bad of being the wife of Vaiuri, half-Polynesian, half-English medical practitioner on The Three Sirens, and of being the wife of Dr. Orville Pence, all-American, all-somebody’s-son, ethnologist from Denver, Colorado.

Harriet made her nurse notes with nurse brevity in her head.

Vaiuri’s assets: he is physically attractive, he is intelligent, he is interested in what I am interested in, he is probably a good lover like all of them here, he would appreciate my skill at this, he would want many children and so do I, he has a wonderful family and fine friends, he would see that I never starve or need, he loves me.

Vaiuri’s liabilities: he is possibly too serious and dogged about everything, he lacks my formal education, he has no high ambition because there is no incentive here, he will cheat on me every year during the festival, he will sometimes feel I’m inferior because I am all white.

The Three Sirens’ assets: it is like a perpetual summer resort, I can be myself here, I will have no pressure, I am beautiful here.

The Three Sirens’ liabilities: I can’t show off my husband to my old friends, no baby showers, no Cokes, no House Beautiful, no television programs, it’s so far from—from what?

Orville Pence’s assets: he is a successful American, he wants me for his wife.

Orville Pence’s liabilities: I can’t imagine him undressed, he’s a spinster type, he’s a two-minute man for sure, he has a sister, he has a MOTHER, he’ll lecture me, he’ll allow us one child maybe, he’s something of a bore, he’s something of a prude, he’ll give me only pin money, he’ll make me feel he did me a favor, he’ll make me join the Faculty Wives’ Club and vote Republican, I can’t imagine him undressed.

Denver’s assets: it is an American city.

Denver’s liabilities: it is an American city. P.S., inhabited by a MOTHER.

Oh, damn, she thought, if only there were a computing machine to solve these problems and guarantee the correctness of the result. There is no such machine, she thought, and there was no one to give me real advice, not Maud, not Claire, not Rachel. It was left to me, and now it is done. Did I do right?

She put a third cigarette between her lips, pressed the butt of the burning one to it, drew, then discarded the butt. She walked. Back and forth she walked. Had she done right? She evoked the bad years, which were most of the years. How ill-used she had been. Always, always, she had offered her body as an apology for The Mask. She had only wanted to belong, but she never had, except now and then, temporarily, but out of sight.

Yes, she decided, yes, yes, yes. She had made the right decision. She had come to this reassurance, even as she heard the rapping on her cane door.

She crushed her unfinished cigarette into the shell ashtray, quickly patted her impossible hair, licked her endless lips to rid them of any tobacco flake, and called out, “Please come in!”

He bolted into the room, then stood there, eyes wide with nervous uncertainty.

“I got your note,” he was saying. “You said to come at once. You said you had good news. Is it what I think it is?”

“I’ve thought it over, and I’ve made up my mind. I’ll be proud to be Mrs. Orville Pence.”

It surprised her a little, and delighted her very much, to see the relief reflected in his face.

“Harriet,” he said, “this is the happiest moment of my entire life.”

“Mine, too,” she said.

“We’ll announce it at Maud’s luncheon today.”

She swallowed. “Orville, aren’t you going to kiss the bride?”

As he came stiffly toward her, she remembered, for the last time, the sacrifice that she had made. Forever, she had forsaken the chance to be beautiful—would he ever know that?—because she was the heiress to all those damn shadowed ancestors she had never known, who had shaped the placenta that produced her for this final conformity.

And when he awkwardly embraced her, like a missionary welcoming his flock, she became aware that he smelled of soap and all Presbyterian cleanliness. He kissed her. Liability: she felt no passion. Asset: she felt so safe. Then she kissed him back, perhaps too fervently, for after all, it was no small thing to be Mrs. Pence and to belong.

After a while, she gave an involuntary sigh.

A life of unceasing gratefulness, she knew, had just begun.

From his place of partial concealment, behind the several coco palm trees that fronted the steep path leading out of the village, Marc Hayden could keep an eye on the comings and goings of the members of the team.

He had observed Claire leave his hut, and disappear into Matty’s office. In the fifteen minutes that followed, he had seen Rachel DeJong meet Harriet Bleaska and Orville Pence in the compound, and shake their hands, and together the three of them, in obvious high spirits, had gone into Matty’s office. Next, Lisa Hackfeld had burst forth from her residence, and hurried to Matty’s place. The only ones who had not left their hut were the only ones that he had any interest in at this moment. For some reason, Estelle and Sam Karpowicz, and their girl, had not emerged yet.

Originally, when Marc had walked out on Claire (the bitch) this morning, and taken his knapsack to hide behind Tehura’s hut, he had planned to ask Tehura to keep the Karpowiczes occupied at either the lunch or dinner hour. Since he did not dare invade Sam’s darkroom earlier, to remove photographs and reels of film, for fear that Sam would have too much time to discover that they were missing, Marc had to plan his borrowing or sharing for today. He would not allow himself to believe that taking the photographs and motion picture film was a theft. He had convinced himself that everything accomplished by members of the team, in the field, was community property, held in common. By this rationalization, Marc owned some share of the product of Sam’s cameras. If this were not so, then, at the very least, Marc had a right to borrow the product, and make copies of it for Garrity and himself, and later return the originals to Albuquerque.

Still, Marc could see that Sam Karpowicz might have objections to this arrangement. Sam had recently proved, in his explosion over his daughter’s education, how hot-tempered he could be. Not that Sam had been wrong about that. Marc felt that he would have acted in the same way as Sam under the same set of circumstances. If you gave them their heads, little sluts like Mary grew up to become big sluts like Claire. The thing to do was to catch them early, hold the reins tightly. He had been too easy with Claire, even from their lousy honeymoon night, that had been his mistake, and look how she had turned out.

Marc’s mind had wandered, and he brought it back to Sam. Yes, Sam could be difficult, and rather than contend with his unreasonableness, Marc had decided to remove what he required from the darkroom in secrecy, and no fuss about it. The problem was getting into the darkroom today when none of the Karpowiczes were home. His morning’s plan to have his collaborator, Tehura, invite them to her hut for lunch or dinner had been delayed because Tehura was not in her home and so far was nowhere else to be found. Fortunately, during his search for her, Marc had run into Rachel DeJong, who was on her way to her therapy hut. They had exchanged a few inconsequential words, but in parting, Rachel had said, “Well, see you at your mother’s lunch.”

Marc had completely forgotten about Matty’s luncheon, arranged for twelve-thirty. The luncheon, Marc thought, knowing his mother as he did, would be for the purpose of morale building. The field trip had passed the halfway mark. Adley had said this was always “the critical point,” and Matty liked to quote him. This was the time when people became ragged, started to unravel in an alien place and clime. This was the time to gather them together, have them listen while their inspiring leader improved their dispositions, have their leader hear out their grievances and problems, and smooth all down to purring contentment. Oh, how good Matty was at this Kiwanis crap. Thank God that would soon be behind him.

The reminder of this luncheon gave Marc the chance for his visit to the darkroom. He would need nothing more of Tehura until tonight. It was ironic, but Matty was his accomplice in her own downfall. He had never before seen so clearly how he was contributing to her downfall. Once he was gone, and on his way with his Garrity project, Claire (the bitch) would be crushed and Courtney dishonored. But Matty, ah, Matty would be ruined. With Marc and Garrity parading the debauchery of The Three Sirens about the lecture platforms of the United States, Matty would be left with no fresh ammunition for her American Anthropological League meeting. In fact, she would be an object of censure, a disgrace to her profession for her role in betraying a society. She would be lucky to retain her post at Raynor College. Oh, President Loomis, senile fool, would keep her on, and there let her die in the elephant’s unknown graveyard, let the two of them, Matty and Claire, grow older and older, wither and shrivel, and disappear together.

Marc awakened from his musings and became alert. He could see that Estelle and Sam Karpowicz had just emerged from their hut. They stood in the glare of the compound discussing something, before they went the five huts down to Matty’s office.

The second that they were out of sight, Marc left his concealment behind, and hurried into the compound. The Karpowicz hut was the end hut, and the nearest to him. In less than a minute, sweating, he reached it, and ducked into the side alley to the darkroom in the rear.

Passing the first window, he heard a voice, and froze to his tracks. It was unmistakably Mary Karpowicz’ voice. He had quite forgotten about her. God damn. Why wasn’t she at the luncheon? Quietly, he eased alongside the window, so that he could not be seen, and waited, wondering what he should do next. The voices inside, one Mary’s, the other a male, and from the slight accent a native male, reverberated upon his ears and infuriated him.

She said, “But if you care for me, why not, Nihau?”

He said, “You are too young.”

She said, “I’m older than your Sirens girls here.”

He said, “You are not a Sirens girl. You are different. In your country it is different.”

She said, “Not so different as you think. Nihau, I don’t believe you, I don’t believe it is only my age. Tell me why you won’t—?”

He said, “You have learned much here, Mary. You have come to adulthood. You are wiser than before. You will have very much to offer the man of your own world you find and love. It will happen soon, two years, three, four. When you find him, you will remember me and thank me. I do not want to spoil you for that. I want you to come to that at the proper time.”

She said, “You’re the kindest person, Nihau, but I don’t understand. You are making such a big thing of it, when you yourself said that on this island you are taught, as you have taught me, that it is natural and—”

He said, “Mary, you are not of this island and you will not be with us much longer. You must live and think as your parents and your own people teach you to live and think. I would love to—to engage in this thing—but I will not, because I understand you and care too much for you. That is the end of it. I will not forget you, and you must never forget what you have learned here. Now, come, we will go to my family and have our meal.”

Listening, about to mutter an obscenity at the frustration these kids had haltered him with, Marc was profoundly thankful that they had come to their senses. Quickly, he returned to the compound, going as far as the bridge. When he turned around, he could see Mary and the native boy leaving the hut. Marc started strolling casually, so that he would pass them, and as he did, he waved cheerily, and both of them waved back.

Continuing in the opposite direction from them, he slowed down near the palm trees. He glanced behind him. They had gone over a far bridge and were headed toward the row of houses. Marc watched their receding figures. In seconds, they were out of sight among the huts, and the stifling compound was empty of all life but his own.

Almost on the run, Marc returned to the Karpowicz dwelling. He scurried around it and to the rear.

The cramped, thatched shack, Sam’s darkroom, stood in solitary splendor.

Marc tried the flimsy door. It opened easily. On the threshold of riches, his mind leaped ahead. He would take a sampling of the still photographs, the most spectacular of them, and a dozen reels, the most representative of them. He would take enough, but not enough to be missed should Sam happen into the darkroom this afternoon, and not too much to carry out tonight. He would take his booty to his hut, pack and camouflage it, and carry the bundle by a circuitous route toward the Sacred Hut, then double back across the compound to Tehura’s hut. He would hide his bundle beside his knapsack, in the thick foliage nearby, until it was evening.

All this must be accomplished swiftly, before Matty’s luncheon guests disbanded.

He stepped into the darkroom, shut the door behind him, and was alone, at last, with Ali Baba’s riches.

Inside Maud Hayden’s office, an hour and a half had passed and her solidarity luncheon was almost at an end. The guests remained seated on the matting, around the long, low bench which served them as a banquet table. All members of the field team were present, with the exception of Marc Hayden and Mary Karpowicz. The one outsider who had been invited was Tom Courtney, because he was of their world as well as the other world, and he sat at the corner of the improvised table closest the door, and across from Claire.

The luncheon had begun on a note of high celebration. Orville Pence, with Harriet Bleaska on his arm, had arrived with a well-traveled bottle of bourbon. When the team had assembled, he had thumped the heavy bottle on Maud’s desk for attention. The

moment that the room was stilled, he had announced his engagement to Harriet and said that they would be married and have their honeymoon in Las Vegas, Nevada, the day after returning to the United States.

Everyone, it seemed, had pumped Orville’s hand, and kissed Harriet’s cheek. Only Claire, except for favoring the pair with a smile, had remained withdrawn. Once, when Orville was pouring the bourbon for the first toast, Claire had caught the nurse’s eye. Harriet’s face had been aglow with the pleasure of being the center of all this special observance, but when she saw Claire, her smile gave way to uncertainty. Immediately, Claire had been sorry, for she knew that her own expression was one of pity, and that Harriet had read the sorrow in it. To prevent spoiling Harriet’s precious moment, Claire had forced upon her features a representation of approval, and she had winked, and made some sort of gesture of genuflection. But the passing moment of truth had not been entirely obliterated: Harriet knew, and plainly sensed that Claire knew she knew, that Claire had wished the bride-to-be had gone native.

After the toasts, there had been the luncheon, served by a lanky, rigid, impassive native woman of indeterminate years. As the woman came from the earth oven, going silently around the table with her dishes, Claire found something familiar about her. Not until the native servant was standing over her did Claire identify her. This was the one named Aimata, condemned to slavery for having murdered her husband some years ago. Aimata’s husband had been thirty-five, and since the limit of life was arbitrarily put at seventy, she had been sentenced to thirty-five years of being an outcast drudge. After that, Claire had not been able to take her eyes off the tall brown woman, and throughout the luncheon Claire’s food had stuck in her throat.

The luncheon itself had been a success. There had been coconut milk in Maud’s plastic cups, the inevitable breadfruit, yams, red bananas, and there had been taro, barbecued chicken, some sort of steamed fish, and finally an incongruous dessert of assorted cookies from Maud’s American larder.

All through the meal, as the guests sucked, chewed, swallowed, sipped, smacked their lips, Maud Hayden had talked. She had drawn steadily from her vast storehouse of anecdotes about the South Seas, about the marvels and pitfalls of anthropology. Always, she had told her stories with humor, although sometimes a moral peeked through. Claire had heard these anecdotes not once, but many times in the last two wordy years, and she was less attentive than the others. Nevertheless, despite her hatred for Maud’s progeny, Claire told herself that there was no reason to hate Maud or her anecdotes, and so like the others, like Courtney across from her, all listening, all diverted, she pretended to listen and be regaled.

Maud had told them about the peculiar notions the Marquesan natives had had of America in the early 1800s. In those days, the only knowledge the Marquesans possessed of America was from contact with the whaling men from New England who landed on their shores, and who were interested not in their artifacts or customs or society, but only in their women. With such singleness of purpose did the American sailors concentrate on the Marquesan women that it became an absolute belief in those islands that distant America was a society populated entirely and solitarily by men. In short, from their behavior, it was obvious the visitors had never seen live women before, and now that they had, they were making the most of it.

When Maud had finished, the guests had been entertained. Claire had made the only acid comment. “Maybe the Marquesans were right and are still right,” she had said. To this, Rachel DeJong had tapped her cup on the table in applause, and said, “Excellent, Claire, another truth spoken in a jest.”

But already, Maud, who was essentially humorless, had embarked on another anecdote about the primitive marriage custom known as couvade. According to this custom, when the wife was pregnant, it was the husband who went to bed. This had led to an uproar of appreciation, and then to a learned discourse on maternity customs among savages by Orville Pence.

By the time the table was cleared, Maud’s anecdotes had taken on a more serious theme, beneath their whimsical packaging. She had reminded them all of the teasing wickedness many primitive societies possessed. There had been the instance of Labillardiere, on his visit to the South Seas, trying to compile the native words for numerals. He had made his inquiries among chosen informants, and written down the words, and only after publication had he learned that the word they had given him for one million really meant not one million in their tongue but nonsense, and that the word they had given him for a half-million had not been that at all but fornicate.

“John Lubbock told the story first,” Maud had explained, “because he believed that field workers should keep this sort of disaster in mind when working with native informants. You must check and double check, to know whether you are getting facts or having your leg pulled.” Everyone had enjoyed the story, and had got the point. In the final weeks, all of them would be more careful, more wary, in short, more scientific.

During this, Claire had been tempted to add an anecdote of her own. Her bruised lower lip, painted deep carmine, reminded her of her own anthropologist and her exchange with him hours ago. He had said, “I’m sick to the gut of you.” Now there was the perceptive, balanced scientific approach demanded by the obese conveyor of anecdotes at the head of the table. What if Claire repeated this. Would it also regale them? She felt weak with disgust of him.

Knowing the relief of deliverance, Claire saw that the others were beginning to rise from the bench-table. She realized that Aimata had disappeared with the last of Maud’s tin plates and plastic cups. The horrid luncheon was over, or nearly over, for Sam Karpowicz was calling out, “Would any of you care to see my last week of photographs? I’ve just printed them.”

There was a chorus of assents. Claire found herself standing upright, somewhat removed from the others, between the door and the desk. She watched Sam Karpowicz explaining something to Maud, Orville, and Courtney. Then he came to the desk, opened a manila envelope, and extracted two parcels of photographs, glossy black and whites, five by seven inches, eight by ten inches, and began to remove the rubber bands that bound them. Something about the top picture troubled him, and he laid it aside, then hastily riffling through the others, he laid two more aside, and quickly slipped all three back into the envelope. Aware that Claire had observed him, Sam grinned foolishly. “Diplomacy,” he murmured. “I’d taken some of Harriet at the festival dance, you know, the bare-breasted ones—and I think a certain party here whose initials are Orville Pence might take a dim view of them now.”

Claire nodded. “Very wise,” she said.

Sam weighed his pile of photographs lovingly. “Some really good stuff here. I shot everything, even went a little corny on lay outs and picture stories. You know—a typical day in the life of the Chief’s son; the development of a festival dance; the home of an average Sirens inhabitant; the eloquent history of the Sacred Hut—everything. Would you like to see some of it?”

“I’d love to,” said Claire politely.

He took a fistful of photographs and handed them to Claire. “Here, have a look. I’ll pass the others around.”

Across the room, Sam gave the rest of his photographs to Maud, who in turn relayed them to the guests grouped around her.

Claire remained where she was, isolated from the others, disinterestedly glancing at each photograph in her stack, and placing it beneath the others. She had finished with the series of posed and candid shots of the Hierarchy in solemn session, and she found herself gazing at a full-length shot of Tehura standing before the open door of her hut. Attired only in her provocative grass skirt, Tehura looked like Everyman’s dream of Polynesia. Claire could see that both Maud and Sam would do sensationally well with this set back home.

Claire continued to pick through the photographic layout of Tehura. The home of an average Sirens inhabitant, Sam had labeled this collection. Here was Tehura kneeling beside the massive stone fertility idol in the corner of her front room next to the door. Here was Tehura bent over the earth oven. Here was Tehura posing as if in slumber on the mats of her back room. Here was Tehura laying out three of her grass skirts and two of her tapa-cloth pareus. Here was Tehura proudly pointing at her jewelry and ornaments from suitors. Here was a close-up picture of the jewelry and ornaments laid out in a neat row on the pandanus mat.

Suddenly, Claire had stopped turning over the pictures. Incredulously, she brought the last one closer to her eyes. There could be no mistake, no mistake at all. There it was.

Helplessly, she cast around the room for Courtney, saw him. “Tom,” she summoned him.

He came to her, searching her face in an attempt to understand its agitation. “Yes, Claire, what is it?”

“I—I’ve found my missing necklace, the diamond pendant.”

“You have?”

“Here it is.” She handed him the two photographs. “Tehura has it.”

For a long time, it seemed, he studied the photographs. Frowning, he looked up. “It’s a diamond pendant all right, nothing native. You’re positive this is the one?”

“Could there be any other?”

“Claire, she couldn’t have stolen it. I know Tehura. She wouldn’t in a million years.”

“Maybe she didn’t have to.”

Courtney’s head jerked toward her, his long face troubled.

“I think I’d better go over and see her,” Claire said.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No,” said Claire firmly. “There are some things a woman has to do alone.”

All the afternoon she was tensely poised for her showdown with Tehura, and all the afternoon she was thwarted, because Tehura was not there. Three times, in the clammy heat of the afternoon, Claire had made her way across the endless compound, from her hut to Tehura’s hut, and three times Tehura’s hut had been empty.

Blindly, in the frustration of waiting between each visit, she had returned to her own quarters, and kept herself occupied with cleaning and laundering. She would not permit herself to anticipate confirmation of the means by which her favorite piece of jewelry had been transported from her luggage to Tehura’s possession. She knew, but she would not dwell upon it. She must have the evidence from the native girl’s lips.

Now it was after five o’clock, and for the fourth time, Claire was making her way to the hateful hut. If Tehura was still not home, Claire determined to post herself before the door and wait. If she was home, Claire would not waste words. There and then she would finish the last of her unfinished business with Marc.

She reached the hut that had become a dominant site in her life, and when she lifted her fist to knock, she intuitively knew that there would be a response.

She knocked.

The response was instantaneous. “Eaha?”

Claire shoved the door, and stepped from the outside heat into the shaded, cooler interior of the front room. Tehura was curled comfortably against the far wall, a bowl of vegetables beside her thigh, and she was in the midst of cutting the vegetables for cooking. At the sight of Claire, Tehura showed not her customary pleasure but an immediate uneasiness. She did not display her quick smile. She did not offer to rise in the practiced gesture of hospitality. She sat unmoving, in an attitude of watchful waiting.

“I had to speak to you, Tehura,” Claire said, still standing.

“Is it so important? I must serve a dinner tonight. Can it not wait until tomorrow?”

Claire stood her ground against the rebuff. “No, Tehura.”

The native girl shrugged, and dropped both vegetables and paring bone into the bowl. “Very well,” she said with a pout, “you tell me what is so important.”

Claire hesitated. Whenever she was in the presence of one of these native women, she felt at a disadvantage. Several weeks ago she had thought it was because of their superiority in sexual activity. When you are in the company of a woman who has known many men, and you have known but one or perhaps none, you feel inferior. But now, Claire understood that it was much more superficial than that. It was exactly what she had perceived her first afternoon in the village, when she had felt like a missionary’s wife. It was a matter of clothing, or lack of clothing. There was the native girl, without a stitch on except for the brief grass skirt drawn so high as to almost reveal her private parts. There she was, so female, flaunting every magnificent curve of her tawny brown body. And by contrast, here stood Claire in two binding layers of clothing, announcing in this place her shame of femininity. It gave her the feeling of being constricted, and inhibited. Then, she thought of what she had seen in Sam’s photographs, and she forgot her disadvantage.

Claire dropped to her knees, directly before the native girl. She would have to struggle to keep her voice from quavering. “Tehura,” she said, “how did you get my diamond necklace?”

Claire had the satisfaction of seeing the girl lose her composure. Tehura flattened against the wall, in the posture of a small house pet at bay. Her slow, vacuous little mind was groping, Claire perceived. In an instant, she would make up some stupid lie.

Claire spoke again. “Don’t bother to deny it and embarrass us both. I know you have my necklace. Our photographer took pictures of you—remember? He took pictures of all your possessions. I saw the pictures. And there was my necklace. Tell me how you got it. I’m determined to find out.”

Claire waited, and she could see that Tehura was going to brazen it out.

“Ask your husband,” Tehura said suddenly. “He gave it to me.”

So, thought Claire, that part of it is confirmed. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I expected it was Marc.”

“A gift,” said Tehura quickly, “he gave it to me as a gift for being his informant. He said he would buy you another.”

“I don’t want another,” said Claire, “and I don’t want this one back. I only want the truth about what’s been going on between you and Marc.”

“What truth?” Tehura demanded.

“You know very well what I mean. Let’s not play little-girl games. You’re grown up and so am I. Marc gave you my most expensive and most sentimental possession, took it from me and gave it to a stranger. I insist on knowing why. For simply being an informant?”

Technically, Tehura could afford to be righteous, and so there was pious righteousness in her voice. “For being what else? What else could there be?” Then, with a thrust of cruelly, she added, “He is your husband, he is not mine.”

“He is not mine, either,” said Claire.

“That is your business as a woman, not my business,” said Tehura.

She is actually being insolent to me, Claire thought, and it is not mere defensiveness, it is from an actual feeling of superiority. There could only be one reason for this, and Claire made up her mind to ferret out an admission.

For seconds, Claire studied the native girl, appalled at how she had changed in these weeks. From her first encounter with Tehura in Paoti’s hut, before and during the rite of friendship, she had liked and admired Tehura. The young brown girl had been, to Claire, the perfect symbol of a free soul, gay, amusing, unspoiled. The High Spirit’s simple Eve. All that had vanished now. Tehura was as complex, secretive, covetous, inhibited, nervous as any Western woman. When and how had the metamorphosis taken place? Who had put upon her the cankers of outside civilization? What had been the infecting agent? Again, Claire was certain she had the answers, but she had to hear them from Tehura’s lips, just as Rachel DeJong always knew the answers, but had to hear them from her patients’ lips so that they would come to know, too.

“Tehura, I’m going to ignore your obvious contempt for me,” Claire said, slowly. “I’m going to have a short talk with you, I’m going to speak to you honestly, as sincerely as I can, and then you may say what you wish, and after that I’m going to leave you.”

“Say whatever you want to say,” said Tehura peevishly.

“You’ve changed, you’ve changed almost before my eyes. You are not the same young woman I met when I came here. I thought this society was impervious to outside influence. I thought you had progressed far beyond us, in certain ways, and could absorb our visit and throw us off, back to where we came from, without suffering any ill effects. But I see some of you on the Sirens are fallible human beings too, and there must always be one or two in any group who are more susceptible than the rest, more sensitive to outside influences. Something nasty has been at work on you, and that something has warped you. You were a nice person, almost perfect, but you’ve become something else, too much like many of us outsiders, something imperfect. You’ve been constantly exposed to only one of us in these last weeks—and so I must suspect him, because I know him so well. Marc has done this to you.”

Tehura leaned forward, and there was wrath in her voice. “Marc has done nothing to me—except good. Marc is a good man. You do not appreciate him, that is all. You are the one who is spoiled, and you try to spoil him.”

“I see,” said Claire. “What do you know about my husband? How do you know he is such a good man?”

“I have been with him every day for weeks in our work. He cannot speak to you, so he speaks to me. I know him well.”

“How well, Tehura?”

“Not what you think with your mind.”

“I simply asked how well you know him?”

“Better than you do. With me he can speak, be free, he is a man. With you, he is made into nothing but air.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“It is what I see with my eyes. He cannot live with you.”

Claire bit her lip. “Do you think he can live with any woman? Do you think he can live with you?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Claire, “this is a serious thing. He has really got to you. Let me tell you, Tehura, let me give you a piece of free advice. I don’t know what he’s told you or planned for you. I don’t know if he’s merely trying to sleep with you, or has actually talked you into coming to the United States to be his mistress. Or could it be wife?”

“You are saying such things, not Marc.”

“No matter what he has in mind, or you have, you listen to me while you can, Tehura. He’s a word man, nothing more. That’s the cheapest seduction and the worst one, because after the words there is little else, only meanness. Do you understand? Whatever he’s said to you, told you these last weeks, about himself, about me, about our life at home, about our country, has been designed to delude and corrupt you.”

“No.”

“I tell you yes,” said Claire forcefully. “We live a dull, monotonous life at home, competing with the Joneses—oh, you don’t know what that means, but try to feel what I say—a nervous, restricted, high-tension life, fighting for jobs, status, fighting edginess, ennui—always wondering how we can escape it, make it better. You already have it better here in a thousand ways. Your vocabulary does not even have the words for tranquilizers, campus politics, ambition, frustration, envy, debts, frigidity, loneliness. But these are a great part of our life in my country. I won’t say our life is all bad, and yours is all good, but I will say—I have no doubt of it—that Marc has not painted a true picture for you.” She caught her breath, and then rushed on. “I will tell you more, Tehura. Marc is not a man for you or for any normal woman. I’ve learned that on the Sirens. What could he give you that your own men could not? He is intelligent, highly educated, not unattractive, and occasionally he has money for necklaces, that is true, but it is so little, Tehura, so little. He has no strength of tenderness, of understanding, of love. He is stunted, angry, self-centered, too neurotic, sick of mind, to function, behave, as a grown man should behave. He is corroded with envies, hates, self-pity, fantastic prejudices, unrealistic dreams. His values are no more mature than those of a very young boy, less so. I mentioned love. In this place you’ve treated love as love has never been treated in any society before. You have confessed that you have enjoyed your native men. You will not enjoy an American man in the same way—”

“Tom Courtney was my lover.”

“Even Tom, and he’s a million years more mature than Marc, even Tom, you told me, you had to teach to be a man. Marc is not Tom and Marc will not learn, and he is not the men you have known. I haven’t experienced a good lover, but Marc, dammit, I can tell you, Marc is the worst. He has no interest in a real woman. He cannot give of himself. He thinks only of himself. Tehura, for your own sake, not mine, I warn you—”

Tehura rose to her feet, trying to maintain some pose of dignity. “I do not believe you,” she said.

Claire stood up. “You do not believe me?”

“You are a wife who cannot keep her man. You are jealous and afraid.”

“Tehura,” Claire pleaded, “how can I reach you, the person you’ve become, he’s made you into?” She saw that it was no use. “All right,” she said, “but I hope you will realize it is truly not jealousy. I’m through with Marc. Do as you wish.”

She started for the door.

“You can have your necklace,” Tehura called out.

“Keep it,” Claire said, staring at the door, holding the latch, not turning around. “Keep it, but don’t keep him, if you’ve had that in mind, because if you do, you’ll be as much of a fool as I have been.”

She went outside, and when she had shut the door behind her, she felt her knees begin to give. As she steadied herself against the hut, she discerned that she was neither tearful nor bitter, only emotionally spent.

It’s over, thank God, it’s over, she thought. The next time Rasmussen came, she would leave with him. It could not be soon enough.

As for Marc and Tehura, she did not know if there was anything between them, or if ever there would be. She did not care about Marc. But for one moment she had pity for Tehura.

Poor girl, she thought, and then she left her, that native child, to her do-it-yourself purgatory.

It had been night on The Three Sirens for several hours, and Marc Hayden, returning to the village, was conscious that he was late for his final appointment on the island. When, from the sloping path, he could make out the basket silhouette of the Social Aid Hut directly below, he sagged with relief at having found his way and because what he had done until now had been done so well. Descending to the village, in the direction of his Tehura’s dwelling, he enjoyed a sense of well-being. It was as if, with each step, he was shedding one more hampering coat of his chrysalis. Soon he would be free, and in full flight.

He was pleased with himself, with the way he had handled his last afternoon and evening. After hiding what Rex Garrity called the “single piece of corroborating evidence, that is, evidence that The Three Sirens exists and is what you say it is,” after covering it with brush, Marc had slipped into Tehura’s empty hut and partaken of a filling meal that would carry him until nightfall. When he was certain that he could not be seen, he had removed himself from her hut and any chance meeting with wife or team members by taking one of the few trails out of the village that he had traveled before. He had gone up the rise behind the Social Aid Hut until he arrived at the clearing where he and Tehura, as anthropologist and informant, had spent so many hours. After resting in the shade, he had strayed onward until he recognized the scene of his swimming fiasco, where surely no member of his group would venture on an ordinary working day.

In the curb of harbor, below the cliff, he had seen several young native men preparing to launch their long canoes. Believing that he recognized Moreturi among them, he had made his way carefully down the ladder of rock (conscious, briefly, that here he had committed his foul on Huatoro and here, plainly, shown the extent of his love for Tehura). At last, he reached the curved bow of water. The natives had proved to be fishermen, and their leader was, indeed, none other than Moreturi.

Much as Marc detested this one in particular, and all the natives in general, he saw the meeting could provide a means of escaping introspection. As he had expected, he was invited to join in the netting of albacore in deeper waters, and gratefully he went along. He had offered his hand at the paddles, and his volunteering this, and subsequent amiability, had surprised Moreturi and pleased the others. The long dugout had been filled with the catch, and by the time they had returned to the shore, it was evening.

Refreshed by his excursion on the water, Marc had followed the natives up the terraced rock. At the summit, one who had gone ahead of the others had prepared a bonfire. Then five or six of them had stayed on the cliff, and sat around the glowing coals, while fish and sweet potatoes roasted. Marc could not remember when he had savored a dinner more. Through the eating, the natives, as a courtesy to their visitor, had limited their conversations to English. There had been some discussion of the sea, and tales told of the exploits of ancestors. By adroitly leading Moreturi on, Marc had got a vague idea of the position of The Three Sirens in relation to other unnamed nearby islands. What he sought to confirm, and had had confirmed to his total satisfaction, was Tehura’s claim of an island two days and one night away. His confidence in Poma’s brother, the sailor-idiot Mataro, had been bolstered. The escape, he had decided, would present no problems.

Because of his private plans, Marc, thanking the natives profusely, had left them while they still ate around the fire. The trip back to the village, because of the darkness, had taken twice as long. When he had come upon the clearing that he and Tehura had often used, he felt more secure. In that place, for some length of time, he sprawled and rested, dreaming of the glories that were ahead.

Lying there, scanning the starry sky above, the immense and scornful roof that had seen so much of weakness, failure, folly, it gave him satisfaction again that he would not be one of the planet’s tramped-down ants. One death fear had always possessed him, that he would make this single passage on earth beneath that sky without achieving distinction. His inarticulated constant prayer had been that he not live and die a mere digit, one of so many statistical digits expiring on earth every new second. To leave this place and time so casually, remembered only as “the son of the eminent” and survived by others as anonymous as he, remembered by only a few friends who would themselves go soon, marked in time by only a few pitiful paid-for obituaries and chiseled engravings on a rock tablet, this had been the terror that haunted him. Now, by sheer strength of character, he had changed all of that. Henceforth, the world would know him as an aristocrat, crowned by celebrity, and thousands and thousands would mourn his passing, and columns would be studded with his pictures and praise of his accomplishments, and he would be alive as long as there were men on earth. Good-by, he thought, good-by old writ on water.

Ah, how good he felt this night.

Then it was that his soaring mind came down to more earthly rewards. One immediate reward was minor, the other major. The minor one was that, after tomorrow, he could abandon anthropology forever. He had gone into it while living under a tyranny. There had been no free and open ballot. A son of Adley and Maud Hayden could have only one party to join, one way to vote. Nine years before, he had received his B.A., and had gone thereafter into the field for a year. This trip was followed by the two years of graduate seminars needed for his doctorate. The field trip with Adley and Maud had been the worst period. He had been in the field with his parents earlier, as a child, but even as an adult fortified with a B.A., the earlier terror haunted him. In the remote high Andes (his parents’ second visit there, to accommodate him), cut off from civilization, every fiber of his being had resisted the isolation. He had been obsessed by the possibility of an accident, to himself or to his parents. If it happened to him, he would be left behind. If it happened to them, he would be left alone. He had never fully shaken off these fears, and he dreaded a life in which this periodic isolation was required for advancement. He dreaded it almost as much as he detested a life wasted upon the anonymity of teaching a roomful of nobodys for the possible recompense of—maybe someday—twenty thousand dollars a year.

Now, that terror was exorcised. Enjoying this minor reward, he could also enjoy the major one so near at hand. He conjured up the person of Tehura, whom he had come to know and would soon see. He imagined their reunion. She had promised him herself this night. What had so long been elusive would be his to possess, to possess tonight and for all the nights that he wished it. He envisioned her both as she was, and as he had not yet seen her, his stripped vessel, and the vividness of what he saw so stimulated him, that he roused himself from his rest, and resumed his journey to the village.

It was almost ten o’clock in the evening when he passed the outskirts of the village compound. Except for a few natives strolling in the distance, none of the enemy was in sight. Cautiously, he traversed the area deep beneath the overhang. By counting off the huts, so alike, as he progressed behind them, he was able to locate Tehura’s residence in the darkness. He could see the yellow illumination behind the shuttered windows. Nothing had gone wrong. His woman was waiting.

There was one last act before joining her. He burrowed into the tangled foliage, parting the bushes, uncovering his cache, until he had both knapsack and bundle of film. Shouldering one, carrying the other, he moved speedily to Tehura’s door, and without knocking, he went inside.

It was a moment before he could see her. She was seated lazily in a shadowed corner of the front room, outside of the circle of burning candlenut lights. She was as provocative as ever, bare-breasted, barelegged, wearing only the short grass skirt, and now, he saw, a lovely white hibiscus in her black hair. She was reposeful, sipping liquid from a half-shell.

“I was worried, Marc,” she said. “You are late.”

He dropped his knapsack and bundle of film beside the stone idol near the door. “I was in hiding,” he said. “I was far from the village. It took time to get back in the dark.”

“Anyway, you are here. I am pleased.”

“Is there any more news?”

“None. The arrangements are made. Poma’s brother will be waiting on the far beach with his outrigger. He will expect us to be there just as the tomorrow’s light comes. Soon, we will go. We will be far and safe before we are missed.”

“Wonderful.”

“We will leave the village at midnight. Everyone will be asleep. We will go behind the huts to the other side, and take the long path by which you first came here.”

“Isn’t there a shorter route?”

“Yes, but bad in the night. The long way is easier and more certain.”

“Fine.”

“We have two hours, Marc,” she said. “Let us drink to a safe journey. And let us nap a short time to be strong.” She offered her half-shell. “Have some of our palm juice. I have just begun.”

“Thanks, Tehura,” he said, “but not enough kick. I have a couple of pints of Scotch in my sack. That’ll go down better.”

He opened his knapsack and tugged free a bottle. With a twist, he unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to his mouth, and took three swallows. The whiskey burned his throat, and fanned hotly through his chest, and was followed by the soothing afterwave of delivery from self.

“What did you do today?” he asked.

“Saw my kin family. It was for farewell, but they did not know it.”

“Did you see Huatoro?”

“Of course not.”

“Courtney?”

“No. Why do you ask? What is in your head?”

These first drinks always made him uncommonly suspicious and aggressive. He must watch himself. He swallowed from the bottle again, and said, “Nothing is in my head. I just wondered about the people you saw the last time around. Did you see anyone else?”

“Poma, to be certain everything was ready.”

“And that was all?”

She hesitated, then said emphatically, “No one else but you.”

“Good.”

“Who have you seen?” she demanded in turn.

“Since I left my wife this morning, no one. Except, this afternoon I went fishing with some of your friends. Moreturi, and several others.” The whiskey had crept up behind his eyes, and he squeezed them to bring her into focus. “You packed?”

“Very little to take. It is in the other room.”

“Tehura, where we’re going, you can’t go around like that.”

“I know, Marc. I have learned. I have packed my binding for here—” She touched her breasts. “—and my long tapa skirts, the ones for ceremonies.”

He was gulping down whiskey once more. The bottle was almost empty. He set it on the floor, and considered her. “Not that I mind you as you are. You’re beautiful tonight, Tehura.”

“Thank you.”

He went to her, waiting until she had finished with the half-shell and removed it from her lips. He lowered himself beside her, and encircled her naked back with his arm. “I’m in love with you, Tehura.”

She nodded, and looked into his face.

His other hand went to her breasts, and slowly he began to stroke them, the curve of one, and then the other.

“I want you, Tehura, right now. I want to begin our love tonight.”

“Not tonight,” she said, but she did not remove his hand.

“You promised me.”

“There is not enough time,” she said.

“There’s more than an hour.”

She peered at him strangely. “That is not enough time for love.”

“It is more than enough time.”

“Not enough in my country,” she persisted.

He laughed without conviction, but felt the fire of the whiskey in his shoulders and groin. “That’s big talk for a little girl.”

“I do not know what you mean, Marc.”

“I mean love is love, and you do it when you feel like it. I feel like it now. I’m sure you do. We’ll have time to rest a little afterwards, and then we can go. Look, Tehura, you said we would—”

“I said we would,” she agreed flatly.

“I want you here just once. I’ve got it bad.”

Her smooth young face had been stoical. Suddenly, examining his, it reflected a small curiosity. “Yes,” she said, “we will make love.” With that, she removed his hand from her bosom, and stood up. “In the back room,” she said. “It is better.”

She went into the rear room. Eagerly, Marc came to his feet, then halted, detoured to his bottle, finished the last of the whiskey, and entered the back room. In the darkness, he could make her out in the middle of the room, still with the flower in her hair and the grass skirt around her torso.

“Let’s have at least one light here,” he said. “I want to see you.” He handed her his matches, and she struck one, and lighted a wick that had been set in a container of coconut oil. The illumination was low, unsteady, but it overcame all but the deepest shadows.

As she remained standing in the center of the room, he studied her figure possessively. With rising desire, he unbuttoned and discarded his sport shirt. Next, he pulled off his shoes and socks. Watching her, in her immobility, he unbuckled his belt, let his trousers drop, and kicked them aside. Now, he wore only his white jock shorts. He pulled himself to his full height, having pride in the athletic hardness of his body and his obvious virility.

“You look like one of us,” she said.

“You’ll find me better,” he said, smelling the fumes of his own whiskey. “I’m better for you, Tehura.”

He moved swiftly to her, wanting to bring her down fast, and took her into his arms and pressed his lips against her mouth. He worked fiercely at her mouth, until it was open, and then he tried to use his tongue, but from the way her head swerved, he sensed that this was repugnant to her. His hands were upon her breasts, caressing them, waiting for the telltale sharpness of the nipples. The nipples remained flaccid, and she remained passive. He paused, and demanded crossly of her, “What’s wrong?”

Her arm snaked around him, and upwards, playing with his hair. “Marc,” she said softly, “I have told you that I do not know of kissing, and the breast play does not arouse me. There are other parts to caress, after the dance.”

Desire had so consumed him, that he found it almost impossible to speak. “Dance?”

“You will see.” She disengaged herself. “Let us both be naked and dance close; do as I do, and we will both be in passion.”

He nodded silently, pulled down his jock shorts, threw them away, and straightened. She was taking the flower from her hair, loosening her hair, when she saw him. She smiled. “Our men are not so hairy,” she said.

He vibrated with the wanting of her, but waited, for she was untying the band of her skirt. She had freed it, and suddenly she opened the skirt, drew it off her body, and flung it against the wall. “There,” she said. “We are as we should be.”

He stared at what he had not seen before, and was overcome by the magnificent sheath of her brown skin, all a flawless texture, top to bottom, head to toe.

She was holding out her arms. “Come, Marc, the love dance.”

Dazed, he went into her arms, while he embraced her, he felt her arms go around his back, and her fingers play down to his buttocks. He felt her breasts tormenting his chest, and her sweet insinuating voice humming in his ear, and then the slow gyrating of her hips as her large thighs touched his and moved away and touched his again. “Do as I do, Marc,” she whispered, and hummed again, and sensuously she revolved her hips toward him and away, toward him and away. Instinctively, he imitated her motions, and gradually he realized that her nipples were hard against his chest.

“Goddammit, honey, let’s—” he tried to pull her toward the pile of matting that was her bed, but she resisted.

“No, Marc, we are only beginning. This, and caresses, and after that—”

“No!” he shouted, and with his entire strength, his fingers vises on her arms, he lifted her off her feet, and dumped her on the bedding.

She tried to sit up. “Marc, wait—”

“I’m ready and so are you, and stop the tease, dammit, I’ve had enough of it.”

He shoved her on her back, and laid both of his hands on her thighs.

“Please, Marc—” she protested.

“You’ll love me,” he said angrily, and without another word, he entered her.

She resigned herself to the act at once. “Yes, Marc, I want to be like you. Love me well, and I will love you.”

There was little grace or finesse in his movement. Frenziedly, he pounded at her, as if she were an inanimate mound of flesh.

“Marc, Marc, Marc,” she kept calling into his ear, “let us love.” He had no idea what she meant, and did not care, for she was not there, and he continued to punish her with all his power.

She tried and tried, but he had no interest in her skill. Her hands were inside his thighs, massaging them, and her fingers pressed firmly over his perineum, so that his virility grew. She was swinging her hips now in wide, rounding rotary motions, as in her erotic dance, and he was despising her for what was happening.

“Another position, Marc,” she was calling into his ear. “It is our way—many positions—better—”

“Shut up,” he groaned.

He mounted high, and then down and down, and felt all his strength and maleness seep out of him, and he flattened upon her like a great gas balloon suddenly deflated.

“Whew,” he said, rolling off her and to his side, “that was something.”

She was watching him with bewilderment. “No more?” she asked.

“No more what?”

“It was only a few minutes,” she pleaded, “there must be more, more strength from you, or when you are weak, more love after.”

He felt his face reddening. Another Claire, the bitch. The world was full of Claires, the bitches. “What the hell are you complaining about?” he demanded. “That was the best humping you ever got, and you know it. You were squealing in my ear every minute. You enjoyed it.”

“Marc, you made love alone, you did not make love with me.”

He forced a grin, to give himself a face. “I get it, you’re having fun, more teasing. I know that’s the big sport here. Look, we’ve both had it. The sample was great and we’ll have some big times ahead. Now let’s have ourselves some sleep, and we’ll hit the road.”

He had begun to turn over on his side, away from her, when she sat up, and grasped his arm. Wearily, he came back to her.

There was a naked female urgency about her that nauseated him. “Marc, please Marc, it is not done yet—for you, yes, for me, no—here, when it is not done for both, one tries to make the other happy in other ways, until it is done for both.”

“Send a letter to the Social Aid,” he said with annoyance.

“You know that I cannot,” she said seriously.

“Tehura, relax, will you? I’m whipped. We both need rest. I promise you, as we go along, know each other, our love will get better and better.”

She refused to release him. “What if it does not, Marc? I will have no Social Aid Hut in California.”

“You’ll have my love, that’s enough.”

“Enough?”

He had turned over to rest again, fatigued by the long day, the fishing, the hiking, the drinking, the orgasm.

She was on her knees over him. “Marc,” she beseeched him, “if we are to be lovers, you must learn to love. It is not impossible. Tom Courtney learned. You can learn. Our people learn how to satisfy, and you must try to be like them. I will teach you, I will help you, but we must begin now, right now.”

When this insult had penetrated the alcohol and exhaustion upon which he was cradled, his heart went berserk inside its cavity. He pushed himself to a sitting position. “You’ll teach me?” he shouted. “Who in the hell do you think you are, you little colored chippy? You’re nothing but an ignorant animal, and you’re lucky I’m even doing you the favor of trying to make a human being out of you. Now you keep your dirty trap shut, or you’re going to be in real trouble with me. If there’s any teaching to be done around here, I’ll be the one to do it. You remember that. I’ll forgive you this once, but there’s no second time.”

It surprised him that she was already on her feet, going to retrieve her grass skirt, then fastening it to her hips with deliberation as she stared back at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“I have had enough of you,” she said. She had finished with the grass skirt. “Your wife is right about you.”

“My wife?” he said. “What in the hell does that mean?”

Tehura was not intimidated by the rising temper in his tone. She stood her ground. “It means that she came here to see me today, late today, and she told me about you.”

“Here? She was here?”

“She learned, through some photograph, you had given me the diamond necklace. She came here. She told me about you.”

“That silly bitch. And you listened to her?”

“I did not. I thought she was a jealous wife, that is all. I did not even mention it to you. Now I can tell you, Marc. She is right.”

He scrambled to his feet, and his manner was ugly. “She’s right about what?”

“She did not know if you wanted me for mistress or wife, but she guessed it would be one or the other, and in either way she said it would be bad for me. She said you lied about your life back home. She said you have no interest in anyone but yourself. She said you are incapable of pleasing a woman. She said you are a poor lover. I laughed at her, but tonight I want to weep. Now I know for myself. She is right in everything.”

He had lost his faculty of speech. He was nearly blind with rage. He wanted to choke this colored chippy. He wanted to strangle her until she was still forever. What restrained him from violence was a flashing remembrance of Garrity’s advice: bring tangible evidence of the Sirens’ existence. Tehura was such evidence. Marc knew he dared not lose her.

Relentlessly, she was going on. She would not stop. “Once, I told you that I knew what was wrong with you. I do know now, as your wife has always known. Why were you angry when she showed her breasts the first night? Why are you always angry with what she does? You are angry because you know that some day she might find men who will make her happier than you can, in bed and out of the bed, and you want to prevent it, even to prevent her from thinking about it. You know you cannot give her what other men could, and so you are always afraid. You are ashamed of your sex, so you want to keep it away from your woman and yourself, and to do that you make sex a bad thing, a sin thing. You are always afraid because you are not virile. You do not know that is not wrong. What is wrong is that you could learn, but you will not learn, because that shows someone else and maybe the world you are weak, and you want it to be your secret. It is not a secret to your wife. Now it is not a secret to me. Good-by, Marc.”

She turned away and started into the front room, but Marc pursued her, and jumped in front of her, blocking her path to the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

“I’m going to Poma,” she said, eyes smoldering. “I am going to stay with her.”

“And tell her you’re not leaving here with me, is that what you are going to do?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is what I am going to do.”

“And have her hold back her brother and alert the whole village, you little whore?” All hopes of conciliating her had left him. “Do you think I’m going to let you do that?”

“No one will stop you. No one cares about you. Go ahead and do what you want, and leave me alone.”

He remained solidly between her and the door. “You are not leaving here alone,” he said. “You’re going with me to the beach. Once I’m in that outrigger and gone, I’ll turn you loose. I never wanted you on the boat anyway. I only wanted the boat, and wanted to fuck you.”

“Get out of my way!”

“No, damn you!”

She hurled herself at him, trying to push past him, groping for the door. He had braced himself against her, and now he had her shoulders and thrust her off. She staggered, and then, her face contorted, she tried to force her way past him once more. He intercepted her again, and her nails went to his cheeks and ripped downward.

The pain of his torn skin made him cry out, and he lashed at her with his hand. She sobbed, but kept grinding her nails into his face. He balled his right hand into a fist, even as he tried to fend her off with his left, and then he swung at her face. The smashing blow caught her high on the cheek, lifted her off her feet, and sent her reeling toward the corner. She went over backwards, falling hard, and the impact of the base of her skull on the stone image in the corner sent a cracking sound through the room.

For a split second, lying there, her eyes rolled uncontrollably, and then they closed. She slumped sideways to the matting in the crunched, grotesque posture of so many mummified bodies found in the ruins of Pompeii.

Marc hung over her fallen body, winded, gasping for breath. When his chest had the air he needed, he knelt and bent his head close to her face. She was unconscious, but exhaling faintly. Good enough, he thought, she’ll be out for hours, the ignorant little whore. There was time enough, and he would be well rid of her. He decided that he hadn’t needed her person at all. His photographs would be evidence enough of the Sirens. He must go for the beach and the boat as fast as possible.

On unsteady legs, he made his way to the rear room. The impression of her figure was still deep in the matting of her bed. It pleased him. He had had all he ever wanted of her anyway, the means of escape and the piece of tail.

Quickly, he pulled on his shorts, and began to dress ….

It had been one more of those strange evenings for Claire Hayden, one where she lived almost entirely oblivious of her surroundings, and was instead deeply inside that part of herself which was furnished with the bric-a-brac of her past. More and more, since she had become transformed all but officially from Claire Hayden to Claire Emerson, did she go back to remember what had been Claire Emerson’s life and not Claire Hayden’s. It had not been the perfect life, anything but that, yet it was far, far away and therefore comforting.

This digging into the past—her archeological evenings, she thought wryly—was not healthy, she decided, after an unusually long uncovering of ruins. There was no book or doctor to tell her these retrogressions were bad, but she felt that they were, because they represented some kind of running from reality. This gave her guilts, so similar to the guilts that had been imposed upon her by her mother, when her mother used to say, “Claire, how long are you going to keep your nose in those books? It’s not healthy for a growing girl, being a bookworm. You should get out more.” Dutifully, she had always left the better world for the worse one. The echo of her mother’s voice caught her again, this alone night in the Pacific, and so she removed herself from the better world to the one that she must contend with.

She refused to think of her morning scene with Marc, so mean that scene, or the other, six or seven hours ago with Tehura, so unfortunate. What she hoped, through the evening, was that Tom Courtney would drop by, as he had promised he might. There could be sensible talk, some candor and unburdening, and it would be a more attractive world of reality. She wanted to tell him a little about Marc, and of the entire meeting that she had suffered with Tehura, and afterwards her own feelings and position might be more orderly in her mind.

In fact, she recalled, it was Tom who had suggested that he would try to call upon her. He had known she would see Tehura, and he was anxious about the outcome of their confrontation. He would be busy, he had said, for most of the evening. He had promised to take Sam Karpowicz and Maud to some kind of dinner with the members of the Hierarchy, and he was to help Sam prepare another photographic layout of the Hierarchy holding one of its decision meetings.

Waiting for Tom, wondering if it was already too late for him, she realized that thinking of her mother had created a desire to write her. They corresponded occasionally, but Claire had not written to her mother once from the Sirens.

Thus, with pen and tablet, she used up much of the remaining time before midnight. She wrote three pages to her mother. That finished, she was impelled to write several more letters, to girlfriends and married couples she had known before marrying Marc. When her hand began to cramp, and she completed this sudden correspondence, and covered the envelopes with her scrawl, she wondered what had made her write her mother and these old friends. Then she knew. All of them were Claire Emerson’s people, and it was Claire Emerson who was reaching out for them, to revive them in her life against the immediate future when she would be single once more.

Finally, it was after midnight, and she gave up on Tom. That was disappointing, but there was tomorrow. She decided that she had better take her sleeping pills now. By the time she had undressed, she would be drowsy and not think too much. Before she could go for the pills, she heard the sounds of conversation in the compound nearby.

She stepped to her front door and opened it, to find Tom Courtney approaching. He waved.

“I didn’t think you’d be up,” he said. “I was going to see if your light was on.”

“I hoped you would come by. Were you with someone just now?”

“I came back with Sam and Maud. Sam got some good shots to night. He’s thrilled as a child.” Courtney shook his head. “Wish I had an enthusiasm like that.” She still held the door wide, and he said, “Mind if I come in for a few minutes?”

“Please. I’m not a bit sleepy. I’m in the mood to talk.”

He went past her into the living room. She remained at the door, then said, “I’ll leave it open a little while, to air the room.”

He smiled. “And to keep from being compromised.”

Claire came away from the door. “I’m in the mood to be compromised,” she said. “Take a good look at me.” She pirouetted before him, her skirt swinging above her knees. “You see the ex-Mrs. Hayden.”

Courtney’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious?”

“The most ex-Mrs. Hayden the world has ever known.”

Courtney fidgeted. “Well—” he said.

“You were a divorce lawyer, you know all the questions, but you don’t have to be embarrassed about asking them. In fact, you don’t have to ask a thing. I’ll be only too glad to tell you, if you are interested.”

“I am interested, of course. Is it Tehura?”

“She’s the least of it,” said Claire. “Let’s be social. What’ll you drink?”

“I’ll have a light Scotch and water, if you will.”

“No sooner said than done.”

He sat, and watched her thoughtfully as she brought out the bottle of whiskey, the two tin cups, and the pitcher of water. While she made ready the drinks, he said, “You appear quite gay for an ex-anybody. They were never that way when they came to my office. They were always angry.”

“I’m just relieved,” she said, sitting down. “I’m good and relieved.” She handed him his drink, and could see that his face was uncomprehending. “I’ll tell you what it’s like, Tom,” she said, picking up her own drink. “What it feels like, I mean. It’s like that ugly meeting you hate to undertake, waiting for the hour to fire someone, or better, to tell someone you’ve learned the truth about how they’ve been swindling you, and the anticipation of the meeting gnaws at your nerve ends, drives you crazy, and suddenly there it is, and you have it out, and everything you wanted to say you’ve said, and it’s over and good-by. You are relieved. That’s how it feels” She lifted her tin cup. “Toast?”

“Toast,” he said, holding up his cup.

“The fifth freedom,” she said. “Freedom from marriage, bad marriage, that is.”

They drank, and she observed him over her cup. His eyes would not meet her eyes.

“I’ve embarrassed you, Tom,” she said suddenly. “I see something now. You are very conservative about the holy wedlock—”

“Hardly.”

“—and you think I’m being frivolous about it, and you are secretly disappointed, maybe offended.”

“Not a bit. I’ve been the route many times, Claire. I guess I’m surprised, that’s all.”

“You’re better than that. You knew we weren’t getting along, you knew that.”

“Maybe I—I thought about it, yes.”

She took another sip, and she said with earnestness, “Tom, don’t make any mistakes about me, not at this late date. Some women are made for careers, and some for being alone, and some for tumbling into a hundred beds, and some are made for being wives and mothers. I’m the last category. I was made to be a wife and have a billion kids and the hearth and home and pumpkin pies and his slippers ready. Maybe that is dull to you, but that is the meaning of life to me. It is all I ever wanted. Small ambition? So I thought. I was wrong. It’s wanting too much, I guess.”

“Not too much, but a lot.”

“It takes two, Tom, to make one wife a wife.”

“Yes, I believe that.”

“Marc couldn’t help. He couldn’t help himself, let alone help me. We’ve been married two years, and we’ve had no contact. He never grew up, so how could he have children? Or a wife? Well, don’t let me go on. I won’t give you two years’ worth of that. I’ll simply say we’ve been having it out every day, and this morning was the blowup. This morning he said he had enough of me for the rest of his life, and he said more, and I hit him, and he hit me, and the final bell rang. Fight’s over. For him it was two years ago. For me, today.”

“And Tehura had nothing to do with it?”

“Not really. Had I weakened, that shameful incident would have been the capper. You know I went to see her, don’t you?”

“You said you would. I didn’t know if you had. What happened?”

“Have you seen her lately, Tom?”

“Not much, no, not actually. I’ve been too busy.”

“I realize she was your girl once, and I know, for myself, what she was less than a month ago. But she’s changed. I tell you, she’s not recognizable. And I blame it on Marc, her friend Marc. She must have been susceptible, but it took a Marc to transform her into one of us, the worst of us.”

“In what way?”

“No more the guileless half-primitive. She’s shrewd, she’s feline, she’s bursting with ambition. In short, civilization’s tot. As for my diamond pendant—yes, she has it. She did not steal it. We both knew that. Marc gave it to her. Part of the grand seduction, I suppose. The point is not that he would give it to her, but that she would want it and accept it. I read her the book on Marc. You know what that made me? I quote her. Jealous wife who mistreats and is unable to keep a husband.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Sorry, Tom.”

“It’s just that—” He kept shaking his head. “I know her so well. You understand. No one here knows her as well as I do. When you speak of her, I don’t recognize the same person.”

Claire shrugged. “Your client. See for yourself.”

“I may,” he said. “In fact, I will. I don’t want to tangle with Marc, but I feel a responsibility for her. If she’s off the straight and narrow, I’ll try to set her right again. I’m troubled by that whole necklace episode. Do you mind if I discuss this openly with her?”

“I told you to see for yourself, go ahead. But if you are thinking you want to pry her away from Marc, to save Marc for me, forget it. You won’t be doing me a favor, but a disservice. If you really want to see her for her own sake, to help the poor girl, that’s another matter. I’m with you.”

“That’s all it would be,” said Courtney. He rose abruptly, and paced restlessly about the room. “There has to be more to it than a mere affair. I tell you, I know Tehura’s mind. She, none of them, make anything of an affair. That’s as natural as kissing is to us. But when a girl changes so drastically, wants diamond necklaces that are not her own—I don’t know—something is going on, something more than an affair. I’ll find out, you can be sure. Tomorrow morning—”

It was then that the interruption came. They were both alarmed by it. The indistinct but harsh sounds of words, as if fired from rifles, rattled across the compound to their open door. Claire leaped up and, with Courtney, she ran outside.

The sight that met their eyes was that of Sam Karpowicz, in a state of dishevelment, gesticulating wildly, pouring out indistinct words at Maud, who stood in her nightdress before the stoop of her hut next door, nodding and nodding.

“Something’s wrong,” Courtney said to Claire, and the two rushed to find out what it was.

They reached Sam and Maud, just as Maud, touching the botanist’s arm, had begun to speak. “Yes, it is terrible, Sam. We’ll have to act with dispatch. I would suggest that we consult Paoti—”

“What is it?” Courtney interrupted. “Is there anything I can do?”

Sam Karpowicz, shaking with distress, turned to Courtney. “It’s awful, Tom, awful. Somebody’s raided my darkroom, stolen at least a third of my printed photographs, negatives, reels of sixteen-millimeter movie film.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Positive,” Sam asserted, forcefully. “Positive,” he repeated. “When I left you a little while ago, I went into the darkroom to develop what I did tonight. I was too busy to notice anything peculiar right off. But I realized, as I worked, that there were funny gaps in the room. I’m very methodical. I pile this here, that there, and suddenly there were no piles. I began to check my layouts and reels against my written inventory—do you want to see?—a third of it gone. It must have happened either this afternoon or this evening.”

Maud said, “We simply can’t figure out who would do a thing like that.”

“That’s what beats me,” said Sam. “None of us on the team would have to steal film. I mean, here we are together. And the natives. What good would it do them?”

Claire spoke for the first time. “Unless there’s some religious fanatic among the natives—the way there is in some societies—who feels capturing images on paper is capturing the soul, or something like that. Could that be it?”

“I doubt it, Claire,” said Maud. “I’ve found no tabu whatsoever against photography.”

Courtney gripped Sam’s arm. “Sam, does anyone else know about this?”

“I only discovered the robbery ten minutes ago. I dashed right in the house and woke up Estelle and Mary, to be sure they hadn’t been fooling around with the photographs. They were as mystified as I. Then I asked Mary if she’d seen anyone hanging around here today—you know—but she said she was gone most of the day. Earlier in the day, she said, Marc was about—”

“When?” asked Claire sharply.

“When?” said Sam Karpowicz with surprise. “Why, it must have been—it was after we went to Maud’s lunch—Mary stayed behind a while, and later went out with Nihau, and that was when she saw your husband.”

Claire glanced at Courtney, then back at Sam. “That’s odd. He left early this morning to go on an exploration into the hills with some of the villagers. He said he wouldn’t be back until after midnight, maybe tomorrow, and now you say—?” Once more, she looked at Courtney. “Tom, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Courtney.

“It would explain a lot of things.”

“Yes,” said Courtney gravely. “We may be way off, but—”

Maud had elbowed herself closer into the group. “What’s going on? If it concerns Marc—”

“It might,” said Courtney. He consulted his watch. “Almost one o’clock. Nevertheless, I think I’d better go over and see Tehura.”

“Let me go with you,” said Claire.

Courtney frowned. “It could be embarrassing.”

“I don’t care,” said Claire.

Sam Karpowicz said, “What’s this got to do with the missing film?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Courtney, “or maybe everything.” He scanned the faces of the other three. “If you all want to come along with me, it’s okay. But I’d prefer to see Tehura alone, first. I think I should do this before you go to Paoti.”

Without reluctance, Maud Hayden relinquished leadership of the evening to Tom Courtney. She showed her worry as plainly as Sam showed his perplexity. Courtney and Sam had started toward the bridge and, out of some instinct, Maud linked her arm in Claire’s before following them.

In the dim light of Tehura’s hut, the three of them, Courtney, Maud Hayden, Sam Karpowicz, stood huddled across the room, their eyes fixed on the limp body of the native girl, broken across the stone fertility idol.

Courtney it was who had come upon her first, sprawled unconscious, her pulse giving up its almost imperceptible beat. He had noted the blood behind her sightless eyeballs, and the blood caked at her eyes, mouth, and ears. He had hurried out and shouted his order to Claire, “Bring Harriet Bleaska, fast!” And when Claire had gone, he had beckoned Maud and Sam into Tehura’s room.

Then they had waited.

Once, Maud, in a strained voice, had addressed Courtney. “What is it, Tom? You know more than you’ve told me.”

He had only shaken his head, and stared down at Tehura’s figure, remembering the pleasure of their old love, and the pain of this shocking sight, and none of them had spoken again.

It seemed five eternities, but it was no more than five minutes, before they heard the approaching voices and footsteps. Harriet Bleaska, in a robe, carrying a small black medical valise, came in alone. She acknowledged the three of them, and, seeing Tehura’s limp body, fell to her knees beside her.

“Better leave me with her for a little while,” she called over her shoulder.

Tom guided Maud outside, and Sam was behind them. Beyond the door waited Claire and Moreturi, speaking to one another in undertones. When they looked up, Moreturi came up to Courtney.

“Tom,” he said, “how is she?”

“I think she’s alive, but—I really don’t know.”

“I was coming into the village with the others, we had our catch of fish, when Mrs. Hayden and Miss Bleaska told me what happened. Could it be an accident?”

“I honestly don’t know, Moreturi.”

Claire had joined them. “Tom,” she said, “Marc was out in the hills this afternoon. He fished with Moreturi.”

“It is true,” Moreturi said.

Courtney scratched his head, trying to make something of this, and he suddenly asked, “Did he come back with you?”

“No,” said Moreturi. “He ate some food with us, but when it was dark, he left in the middle of our meal.”

“Did he speak of Tehura at all?”

“Not that I can remember.”

Then they heard Harriet Bleaska’s voice, and as one they turned to the open doorway, which she filled. “Tom,” she had called out. Now she repeated it, “Tom.”

He made a step toward her, when she said, “Tehura is dead. Less than a minute ago it happened. There is nothing to be done.”

They stood, all of them, like statues of grief in the semidarkness. The only movement, finally, was by Moreturi, who buried his face in his hands. The only sound, at last, was Maud Hayden’s, a kind of wail, and she said, “Poor child.”

Harriet had emerged from the doorway toward Tom Courtney. “It was a fracture of the skull, a severe one,” she said. “It was too violent, the fall, to be an accident. Her head hit the stone idol, I suppose, and there was brain injury and a torrent of internal bleeding. You saw evidence of the blood. She was unconscious most of the time I think, but dying all the while. She kept trying to say something, even with her eyes closed. I couldn’t make it out, really. It might have been—just before she died—there was—” Harriet squinted at Claire, confused, and stopped.

“There was what?” Courtney demanded to know.

“I thought she said ‘Marc,’” Harriet said quickly. “I could be wrong.”

“You are probably not wrong,” said Claire.

“And then,” said Harriet, “something I didn’t understand—maybe it’s Polynesian. First she said, ‘ask’ and she said this twice, Poma.’ What is Poma?”

“A person, a girl who is Tehura’s friend,” said Courtney.

Moreturi had composed himself, and was beside Courtney. “She said, ‘Ask Poma’?”

Harriet was troubled. “I think so.”

Moreturi and Courtney exchanged some private look. Courtney nodded and Moreturi announced, “I go to Poma, to tell her our Tehura is dead, to ask Poma what she knows of this.”

Moreturi sprinted off into the night.

“There was one more thing,” Harriet was saying. “I should mention it now. The fracture is behind and above the base of the skull. But there is evidence of some lesser injury in front, on one side of her mouth and cheek. There is swelling and a bruise. It is as if she had been struck, not by an instrument, I don’t think, but struck. Maybe someone punched her, knocked her down, and that’s how she fell against the stone thing.”

Courtney’s features revealed no emotion. “Thanks, Harriet.” He looked around. “I suppose someone had better notify Paoti. I want to wait here—”

“Let me do it,” Harriet volunteered. “It will not be the first time. I want to go inside again, to straighten out, and after that, I’ll go to Paoti.”

With Moreturi still absent, and Harriet back inside the hut doing whatever nurses did with the dead, those who remained outdoors were drawn more intimately together. There was smoking, and there was continued silence. Sam Karpowicz was completely bewildered. What had begun with a theft of his precious photographs and film had led to this, by what route he could not understand, and he was too sensitive to inquire for an explanation. Maud’s dumbness was less grief for the dead girl than for her son, who, it had been made clear, had had some connection with her. Still, she clung to a hidden hope that it was not so. Claire’s silence, like Courtney’s, was a mourning for Tehura, a flame so bright, so suddenly snuffed out. Yet, overshadowing all their private thoughts, was the wonderment. What had happened? What was behind the mystery?

Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen, and then Moreturi materialized, now less sad than angry, out of the darkness.

There were no questions, no interruptions, to delay the urgency of Moreturi’s words.

“At first Poma, after she was awake, would say nothing about today. Then I told her that our Tehura was dead. She wept and she told the truth of it. I will make it brief, for there is much to do this night. Tehura came to Poma, to use her brother and his sailing vessel to leave this island. It was to be tonight and in the morning, at the far beach. Tehura pretended that she was going alone and Poma pretended to believe her. Last night, when Poma was with Tehura here, someone called on Tehura. They stayed outside. Poma was an evil spirit. She could not bear the secrecy. Through the back window, she peeked and listened. The caller was—was Mrs. Hayden’s husband—Dr. Marc Hayden.” Moreturi paused, then went on. “Dr. Hayden planned to come here tonight, and at midnight he and Tehura were to go to the far beach. There was mention also of one name foreign to Poma, one with the name ‘Garrity,’ who would be waiting for them in Tahiti.”

Maud’s voice was hushed. “Marc took your pictures, Sam. He was going to Rex Garrity.”

Courtney addressed his native friend. “Did Poma say more, Moreturi?”

“Only that Marc was to be with Tehura tonight, and they were leaving after the midnight hour, to reach the beach when it was light. No more.”

They had all forgotten Harriet Bleaska, but now she was with them, holding up an empty Scotch bottle. “I found this.”

Courtney accepted it, and looked at Claire. She nodded her head in recognition. “Marc’s brand,” she said. “He was here.”

Courtney turned to Moreturi. “From all the evidence, what has happened is fairly clear. Marc was here tonight with Tehura and he was drinking. He was taking Tehura with him, for whatever reasons he may have had. He was also taking what photographic evidences he could of the Sirens, and he and Garrity were going to sell out the island, exploit it, make a carnival of it. But something happened between Tehura and Marc tonight. Evidently, Marc struck her, and she fell against her stone idol, and died of the injuries. And it is a million to one Marc cleared out with his booty for his partner, Garrity, and is on his way to the beach right now.” He stared at Claire and Maud, but there was no softness in him. “I’m sorry. That’s the look of it.”

“Tom, we must stop him.” It was Moreturi speaking.

“Of course we must. If he gets away, these islands are doomed.”

“If he gets away,” said Moreturi, with no hint of apology for the fineness of his correction, “Tehura will not sleep.”

The two men agreed that they must go in pursuit of Marc Hayden immediately. They ignored the others, as they quickly made their plan. Marc had several hours’ start on them. Yet he was familiar with only one path to the far beach, the long but safe way, made slower for him by the night. There was the steeper, more difficult short route, along the sea, the one the natives often used. Courtney and Moreturi decided to use it now. They were not certain that they could overtake Marc. They could only try.

Without another word, they were gone.

The others went down into the compound. Harriet left the party to bear the sad news to Chief Paoti. Sam Karpowicz separated from Maud and Claire, somewhat awkwardly, to go to his wife and daughter. Of the party, only Maud and Claire, the two Haydens, stood in the compound, before Maud’s hut, absently watching the torches along the stream.

After a while, Claire said, “What if they don’t catch him?”

Maud said, “All will be lost.”

Claire said, “And if they do catch him?”

Maud said, “All will be lost.”

She was pale and old and sorry, as she turned and waddled toward her hut, forgetting to say good night. After Maud had closed the door behind her, Claire walked slowly to her own rooms to wait for morning.

The morning came to The Three Sirens gradually.

The first of the new day appeared as if through a crack in the horizon. The last of the darkness challenged the expanding light, but halfheartedly, and retreated before the advancing gray shafts of dawn and fled entirely from the incandescent glow of the sun’s rim.

The new day would be windless, and the heat would be scalding. In this elevated area, where the two paths to the far beach converged on a spacious boulder ridge, the coconut palms stood straight and calm. Far, far below the eroded cliff, the cobalt sea washed gently against the weathered crags.

The two of them came up out of the sunken gorge, through the dense greenery, to the meeting of the paths, at the point where the paths merged into one crooked footway that led down to the beach. Moreturi’s skin was beaded with perspiration mixed with gray dust. Courtney’s soiled shirt was glued to his chest and spine, and his trousers flapped where thorns and bush had slashed them.

They rested on the broad, barren boulder, panting like animals who had run all through the night, trying now to regulate their breathing and to regain their physical vigor. Finally, Moreturi turned, then strode backwards along the wider trail that rose from the plateau. Several times, he knelt to study the oft-trodden path. Courtney watched him with confidence. The villagers were uncanny at tracking, despite the fact that they were not a nomadic, game-hunting people. Their skill at tracking had been developed because it was one of their traditional sports. They had taught Courtney that the tracker’s art was in being able to observe something recently out of place. An overturned stone, a pebble even, its moist side turned up and not yet dried by the sun, would indicate feet had displaced it minutes or hours before.

Courtney waited. At last, Moreturi, satisfied, joined his friend. “I think no one has walked here today,” Moreturi said.

“You’re probably right, but we’d better make sure,” Courtney replied. “It’s only a half-hour down to the beach. Either the boat is still there, or it’s gone off with him.”

They had begun to move as one, in the direction of the beach, when suddenly Moreturi’s fingers closed tightly on Courtney’s shoulder and held him still. Moreturi lifted his flat hand, a gesture requesting silence, and he whispered, “Wait.” Quickly, he crouched, listening intently to the earth, and then, after interminable seconds, he straightened. “Something or someone comes,” he announced.

“You think so?”

“Yes. Very near.”

Automatically, they parted company, Moreturi fading into the inner brush, Courtney finding a station beside a coconut palm, each a sentinel on one side of the trail, waiting and hoping for the one who would come around the bend from the grasslands and ascend the boulder.

A minute passed, and then another, and suddenly he came into full view.

Courtney’s eyes narrowed. The approaching figure grew larger. There was the hump of a knapsack on his back, and a shabby bundle carried low, and it was evident that he was at the borderline of fatigue. Gone were the personable visage, now drawn, the trim physique, now cramped, the sartorial neatness, now disheveled.

He did not see them at first, but followed the beaten trail from the plateau to the height of the boulder. Pausing once, to shift the agony of the knapsack’s load, he resumed his heavy tread across the high cliff, eyes to the turf, until he reached the meeting of the paths. For an instant, he hesitated, then started doggedly along the single path.

Abruptly, he halted, and astonishment hit his slack mouth and jaw like a giant’s blow.

He looked from left to right, first incredulously, then panic-stricken.

He stood swaying in disbelief, as Courtney and Moreturi slowly came together several yards before him.

He licked his lips, hypnotized by the apparition of them. “What are you doing here?” Marc Hayden’s voice croaked out of a dry throat, the voice of a man who had spoken to no one all the night and expected to speak to no one all the day.

Courtney took a step toward him. “We came to get you, Marc,” he said. “We were waiting for you. The whole sordid mess is out. Tehura is dead.”

The pupils of Marc’s eyes dilated, and then the eyelids quivered uncomprehendingly. He dropped his ragged bundle, and absently he slipped the knapsack off his back and lowered it to the ground. “She can’t be dead.”

“She’ll never be deader,” said Courtney evenly. “You don’t have to say a damn thing. Her friend, Poma, told us practically all there is to know. We’re taking you back, Marc. You’ll have to stand trial before the Chief.”

Marc’s shoulders flinched, but his face was defiant. “The hell I will!” he burst forth. “It was an accident. She tried to kill me, and—it was self-defense—I had to knock her down. She tripped, fell backwards against that hunk of stone, but she was all right when I left. She was all right. It was an accident, I’m telling you. Maybe somebody else killed her.” He gasped, his venomous eyes darting from Courtney to Moreturi. “You’ve got no right to stop me! I can go where I please!”

“Not now, Marc,” said Courtney. “There has to be a hearing. You can have your say there.”

“No—”

“You’re living in The Three Sirens. You’ve got to abide by their laws.”

“Fat chance I’d have,” Marc jeered. “A snowball in hell, that’s the chance I’d have. That colored kangaroo court, naked savages, crying and wailing over their little whore, and me, alone—no, never!” His tone took on an edge of cowardly solicitation. “Tom, for Chrissakes, you’re one of us, you know better than this. If there’s been an accident, and someone wants my version, wants the truth, then see that I get a fair chance—in Tahiti, California, anywhere civilized, among people like us, but not on this Godforsaken pisspot of an island. You know they’ll mumble some crap and string me up.”

“Nobody strings anybody up here, Marc. If you’re not to blame, you won’t be found guilty. You’ll be freed. If you are guilty—”

“You’re crazy, you’re one of them,” Marc interrupted bitterly. “You want me to stand up there in some shack, alone, against their witnesses, that Poma, her cretin brother, all the other brown bastards, and listen to what they dream up? You want me, a scholar, a scientist, an American, to be judged by them? And what about old Matty and Claire, you want me to stand up in front of them, both of them gloating and hating me as much as the tribesmen? Are you kidding? There’d be the death sentence on me before I opened my mouth. I’m telling you—”

“Marc, control yourself. I repeat, there is no death sentence. Sure, the evidence points strongly against you. But there’s still your side of it. Only if that doesn’t hold up, if you are judged in any way responsible for Tehura’s death, will you be declared guilty and sentenced. But, you’ll be allowed to live, except you’ll have to remain here, make up Tehura’s time to her kin, the time she would have had on earth except for you.”

Marc’s eyes blazed. “You’re asking me to spend fifty years in slavery on this goddam place, you lousy bastard?” he yelled. “The hell with you, both of you, I’m not doing it! Get out of my way!”

Neither Courtney nor Moreturi moved. “Marc,” Courtney said, “you can’t get past us. You haven’t got a chance. There’s no place for you to go but back to the village, so listen to reason—”

Even as Courtney spoke, he and Moreturi began to close in on Marc Hayden. It was Courtney’s arm reaching for him that galvanized Marc into action. Instinctively, with all his waning power, he slammed out. His fist caught Courtney on the jaw, sending him off balance into Moreturi’s arms.

At once, Marc, choking, saliva dribbling down his chin, swerved toward the cliffside, preparing to outflank them and make a dash to the beach. But they had left the path, too, and they were both there, impenetrable, both waiting for him. Marc halted, measuring them, glanced to either side of them, and then the trapped expression in his face showed that he knew: Courtney had been right, there was nowhere to go, nowhere at all.

They were advancing steadily toward him once more, and Moreturi was saying with repressed fury, “I will take him, I will take him back.”

Then it was that Marc broke. The sight of the malevolent aborigine drawing near shattered his resistance. Defeat was in his horrified eyes: the civilized wall had come down; the barbarous hordes were engulfing him. His discomposed features seemed to beseech someone not there. “Adley,” he choked out. He reeled in retreat, but Moreturi was almost upon him. “No!” Marc shrieked. “No! I’ll go to hell first!”

He turned and ran, stumbling across the width of the boulder to the very brink of the towering cliff. His back to the horizon, he faced them, teetering dangerously, shaking his fist, but not at them—how strange, Courtney thought—but at the sky. “Damn you!” he screamed. “For all eternity, damn you!”

Courtney’s hand had stayed Moreturi, and Courtney shouted, “Marc, no—don’t—!”

Balancing on the cliff’s edge, Marc laughed without control, and then he howled, a convulsed lunacy in his twitching face. Suddenly he whirled about, toward the long deep sea, ignoring them, alone with his demons, and for a hanging second he stood poised as a high diver is poised. He did not dive. He took a single grotesque step forward into nothingness, suspended momentarily between heaven and hell, then plummeted downward out of sight, the ribbon of a ghastly, drawn-out, receding groan his last link to the society of men.

“Marc!” Courtney cried out, almost as a reflex, but there was no one there.

They raced toward the spot where he had been, and Courtney fell to his knees, and searched below. The drop was sheer and frightening to the eye, at least two hundred feet downward, until the cliff spread out into a small jutting peninsula of jagged rocks that descended into the ocean.

Moreturi touched Courtney, pointing, and Courtney made out what there was of Marc Hayden. His minute body dangled between two spears of basalt, crushed as an eggshell might be crushed when dropped upon cement, and as they watched, they could see the wash of foamy water nudging his remains, until the tiny corpse began to slide off the slimy stone. In seconds, it had slithered into the green sea, and then it was submerged, until it was gone from view, perhaps forever.

Presently, the two of them rose, not looking at one another until they had returned to the path. Then, Courtney sighed, and shouldered the knapsack, and Moreturi took up the bundle.

Moreturi was the one who spoke. “It is best,” he said softly. “Some men are not born to live.”

They said no more, but started the long walk back to the village of The Three Sirens.