Euphoria

Many years later, Andrew’s biographer is most fascinated with how he, Fen, and Nell came up with the Grid system of defining tribe personality types.

On the third night of Andrew’s stay on Lake Tam, the three organize a chart for the North, South, West, and East of temperament. The North is the most aggressive vector, while the South is more caring and responsive; the West is pragmatic, while the East is more intuitive and creative. They decide that the compass points also apply to individuals and that Fen is aggressive and Northern, while Nell and Andrew are more compliant and Southern. Fen is irritable and jealous at the others’ similarity and says to Nell, “Sorry I’m not a sensitive little prat who can pick up on your every thought and tend to every nick and bug bite” (190). Clearly, he is insecure about not possessing the soft qualities that he disassociates himself from. Nell and Andrew talk about whether it is natural to want to possess someone when Fen leaves the room, and Andrew finds it difficult to “contain [his] attraction” (191) to her. They talk about how the founding stories of new tribes are rooted in marital infidelity.

Fen comes back an hour later and gives the impression of having been out in the cold. He then drops the bombshell that Nell is pregnant with his child. Andrew feels devastated and inadequate because he has only produced ideas that excite Nell, whereas Fen has given her a child. Later, Andrew overhears the couple arguing about him. When he makes to leave, Nell begs him to stay another day.

Nell’s notebook account relates her feelings when she is alone with Andrew: “I feel like I am saying—and hearing—the first wholly honest words of my life” (198).

Fen and Xambun head off in Andrew’s canoe on an expedition to find a sacred object. Nell realizes that Fen has been lying to her for weeks. Andrew wonders whether he should set out to track the errant pair, but Nell thinks this is a bad idea.

Andrew overhears the tribespeople talking of Xambun and saying that “he was once a man on fire and he came back a man of ash” (206). They think he has gone on an expedition to find his lost spirit and replace it in his body.

Nell and Andrew sit together to type the day’s notes, and there is great intimacy between them. Nell considers that they bring out each other’s best traits, and Andrew’s attraction to her once again overpowers him. Nell suggests they go out together to do a rain dance like the Zuni. They improvise in the coming rain, and although Andrew wishes he could kiss her, he holds back because he thinks they will have more time.

Nell goes up to the women’s road and finds that the women have spent the morning sexually pleasuring each other. They perform a similar office on Nell. She passes on the instructions to Andrew, and he complies. They have sex, a mutually gratifying experience. Fen returns in a canoe with a sacred flute and the dead Xambun. Xambun was killed in an ambush by the Kolekamban. The Tam want to bury the flute with Xambun. While Andrew thinks this is the “least [Fen] could do for them” (224), Fen wants to keep his treasure and tells Andrew to mind his own business.

Andrew thinks that the three anthropologists must leave after what they have done. Nell is heartbroken to go and says goodbye to everyone in the tribe individually. Later, while Fen is talking to the driver, Andrew tells Nell that he will go to New York with her, if she wishes. However, Fen returns before she can give her answer.

Nell and Andrew stay in separate rooms in the Sydney Hotel. Andrew has an aversion to Australia as a place of “amoral cowards” (230) amongst whom the crime of killing a man would go unnoticed. When Andrew asks Nell if they can run off together, she kisses him and tells him she loves him. Despite her feelings, she dismisses the possibility of their future together.

Fen invites Andrew over to his room. Andrew does not want to go but hopes that they might settle their differences. Fen offers to show Andrew the flute. He tells him that it was given to him in a ceremony. However, Kolekamban and his brothers then said the flute was theirs and aggressively tried to recover it. Xambun was killed because he was seen, whereas Fen was not. Fen suspects that Xambun wanted to kill himself prior to the flute incident because he was toying with Fen’s revolver. At the end, Fen tells Andrew that he cannot have Nell and that she is not Southern, but “a different type all together” (238). When Andrew gets up to leave, Fen makes another attempt at excusing himself, saying that “[he] had to get that flute” so that he does not write second-rate books “behind hers like a fucking echo” (238). Fen maintains that the “books on this thing [the flute] will write themselves” (238).

The next morning, there is a fight between Fen and Nell. Fen says that Nell wants to go to the police and get him put in jail. There is the suggestion that Fen has been violent towards Nell, so Andrew confronts him. Nell leaves Andrew a note saying that she should give some of her things to the Tam in an attempt to “fix what [she] can” (240). Andrew sees off the married couple as Nell and Fen board their ship.

Andrew returns to the Kiona. He tells Teket Fen’s version of events, and Teket scoffs at the thought of a white man being invisible. Rather, in Teket’s view, the tribesmen targeted Xambun because they would have gone to jail if they had attacked Fen.

When Andrew hands over Nell’s gifts to the Tam, Sali is grateful, but Malun is cold in her reception. Andrew then heads back to Sydney, determined to go to New York and find Nell.

Nell’s notebook entry confirms that Fen is full of rage and that she is hiding from him in the ship library. She intends to get off at Aden and head back to Andrew in Sydney.

Mrs. Swale, an acquaintance of Andrew’s in Sydney, finds him waiting for his boat. She tells him that Nell has died from a hemorrhage onboard a ship. Fen insisted on a sea burial, dumping his wife’s body overboard. When Nell’s parents hear of these burial circumstances, they suspect Fen is hiding something. Andrew is devastated.

On a ship back to England, Andrew is haunted by the sea, where Nell’s body has been buried. He writes their theory of the Grid, his thoughts animated by Nell and Fen’s voices. He attributes all three of their names to the theory.

The Grid is a successful theory, published in Oceania journal and anthologies. However, it falls into the hands of the Nazis, who use it to boost their own racial theory. Andrew is saddened by the violence that his research has fueled when he was only trying to make “amends” (253) for Nell’s loss.

In Liverpool, Andrew reunites with his mother and watches the ship make its final trajectory towards New York.

Although Andrew tries to avoid visiting America, he goes to the American Museum of Natural History in 1971 for the opening of the Peoples of the Pacific Hall. While Nell is dead and Andrew has enjoyed a career as an eminent anthropologist, Fen has disappeared into obscurity.

On display at the Museum is Nell’s book, the 1933 Oceania article on the Grid, and a Tam death mask. A button from Nell’s dress has replaced a shell in the mask’s forehead. Andrew recognizes it as a button and thread from “a wrinkled blue dress [he] had once undone” (257).