“And your plans now?” Alma said.
Mr. Pike raised his hands, as though in supplication before heaven. “It has been so long since I made plans, you see.”
“But what would you like to do?” Alma asked.
“Nobody has ever asked me that question before.”
“Yet I ask you, Mr. Pike. And I wish for you to give me an honest answer.”
He turned his light brown eyes upon her. He did look awfully weary. “Then I shall tell you, Miss Whittaker,” he said. “I would like never to travel again. I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent—and working at a pace so slow—that I would be able to hear myself living.”
George and Alma exchanged glances. As though sensing that he was being left behind, Henry woke up with a start, and pulled the attention back to himself.
“Alma!” he said. “That letter from Dick Yancey last week. You read it?”
“I did read it, Father,” she replied, briskly changing tone.
“What do you make of it?”
“I think it unfortunate news.”
“Obviously it is. It has put me in a ghastly temper. But what do your friends here make of it?” Henry asked, waving his glass at his guests.
“I do not believe they know of the situation,” Alma said.
“Then tell them the situation, daughter. I need opinions.”
This was most odd. Henry did not generally seek opinions. But he urged her again with a wave of the wineglass, and so she began to speak, addressing herself to George and Mr. Pike both.
“Well, it’s about vanilla,” she said. “Fifteen years or so ago, my father was convinced by a Frenchman to invest in a vanilla plantation in Tahiti. Now we learn the plantation has failed. And the Frenchman has vanished.”
“Along with my investment,” Henry added.
“Along with my father’s investment,” Alma confirmed.
“A considerable investment,” Henry clarified.
“A most considerable investment,” Alma agreed. She knew this well, for she had arranged the transfers of payment herself.
“It should have worked,” Henry said. “The climate is perfect for it. And the vines grew! Dick Yancey saw them himself. They grew to sixty-five feet tall. The blasted Frenchman said that vanilla would grow happily there, and he was right about it. The vines produced blossoms as big as your fist. Exactly as he said they would. What was it the little Frenchman told me, Alma? ‘Growing vanilla in Tahiti will be easier than farting in your sleep.’”
Alma blanched, glancing at her guests. George politely folded his napkin in his lap, but Mr. Pike smiled in frank amusement.
“So what went wrong, sir?” he asked. “If I may pry?”
Henry glared at him. “The vines did not bear fruit. The blossoms bloomed and withered, and never produced a single blasted pod.”
“May I ask where the original vanilla plants came from?”
“Mexico,” Henry growled, staring Mr. Pike down in a spirit of full challenge. “So you be the one to tell me, young man—what went wrong?”
Alma was slowly beginning to glean something here. Why did she ever underestimate her father? Was there anything the old man missed? Even in his foul temper, even in his semideafness, even in his sleep, he had somehow garnered exactly who was sitting at his table: an orchid expert who had just spent nearly two decades of study in and around Mexico. And vanilla, Alma now remembered, was a member of the orchid family. Their visitor was being put to the test.
“Vanilla planifolia,” Mr. Pike said.
“Exactly,” Henry confirmed, and set down his wineglass on the table. “That is what we planted in Tahiti. Go on.”
“I saw it all over Mexico, sir. Mostly around Oaxaca. Your man in Polynesia, your Frenchman, he was correct—it is a vigorous climber, and it would happily take to the climate of the South Pacific, I suspect.”
“Then why are the blasted plants not fruiting?” Henry demanded.
“I could not say for certain,” Mr. Pike said, “having never laid eyes on the plants in question.”
“Then you are nothing but a useless little orchid-sketcher, aren’t you?” Henry snapped.
“Father—”
“However, sir,” Mr. Pike went on, unconcerned with the insult, “I could posit a theory. When your Frenchman was originally procuring his vanilla plants in Mexico, he may have accidentally purchased a varietal of Vanilla planifolia that the natives call oreja de burro—donkey’s ear—which never bears fruit at all.”
“He was an idiot then,” Henry said.
“Not necessarily, Mr. Whittaker. It would take a mother’s eye to see the distinction between the fruiting and nonfruiting versions of the planifolia. It is a common mistake. The natives themselves often confuse the two varieties. Few men of botany can even tell the difference.”
“Can you tell the difference?” Henry demanded.
Mr. Pike hesitated. It was evident he did not wish to disparage a man he had never met.
“I asked you a question, boy. Can you tell the difference between the two varieties of planifolia? Or can you not?”
“Generally, sir? Yes. I can tell the difference.”
“Then the Frenchman was an idiot,” Henry concluded. “And I was a bigger idiot to have invested in him, for now I have wasted thirty-five acres of fine lowland in Tahiti, growing an infertile variety of vanilla vines for the past fifteen years. Alma, write a letter to Dick Yancey tonight, and tell him to yank up the entire lot of vines and feed it to the pigs. Tell him to replace it with yams. Tell Yancey, too, that if he ever finds that little shit of a Frenchman, he can feed him to the pigs!”
Henry stood up and limped out of the room, too angry to finish his meal. George and Mr. Pike stared in silent wonder at the retreating figure—so quaint in his wig and old velvet breeches, yet so fierce.
As for Alma, she felt a strong surge of victory. The Frenchman had lost, and Henry Whittaker had lost, and the vanilla plantation in Tahiti was most certainly lost. But Ambrose Pike, she believed, had won something tonight, during his first appearance at the White Acre dinner table.
It was a small victory, perhaps, but it might count toward something in the end.
* * *
That night, Alma awoke to a strange noise.
She had been lost in dreamless sleep and then, as suddenly as though she’d been slapped, she was awake. She peered into the darkness. Was there somebody in her room? Was it Hanneke? No. Nobody was there. She rested back into her pillow. The night was cool and serene. What had broken her slumber? Voices? She was reminded for the first time in years of the night that Prudence had been brought to White Acre as a child, surrounded by men and covered with blood. Poor Prudence. Alma really should go visit her. She must make more of an effort with her sister. But there was simply no time. There was silence all around her. Alma began to settle back into sleep.
She heard the sound again. Once more, Alma’s eyes snapped open. What was it? Indeed, it seemed to be voices. But who would be awake at this hour?
She rose and wrapped her shawl around her, and expertly lit her lamp. She walked to the top of the stairs and looked over the banister. A light was on in the drawing room; she could see it glowing from under the door. She could hear her father’s laughter. Who was he with? Was he talking to himself? Why had nobody woken her, if Henry needed something?
She came down the stairs and found her father sitting next to Ambrose Pike on the divan. They were looking over some drawings. Her father was wearing a long white nightdress and an old-fashioned sleeping cap, and he was flushed with drink. Mr. Pike was still in his brown corduroy suit, with his hair even more disarranged than earlier in the day.
“We’ve awoken you,” Mr. Pike said, looking up. “My apologies.”
“Can I assist you with something?” Alma asked.
“Alma!” Henry cried. “Your boy here has come up with a piece of brilliance! Show it to her, son!”
Henry wasn’t drunk, Alma realiz
ed; he was simply ebullient.
“I had trouble sleeping, Miss Whittaker,” Mr. Pike said, “because I was thinking about the vanilla plants in Tahiti. It occurred to me that there might be another possibility as to why the vines have not fruited. I should have waited until morning so as to not disturb anyone, but I did not want to lose the idea. So I rose and came down, looking for paper. I fear I woke your father in the process.”
“Look what he’s done!” Henry said, thrusting a paper at Alma. It was a lovely sketch, minutely detailed, of a vanilla blossom, with arrows pointing to particular bits of the plant’s anatomy. Henry stared at Alma expectantly, while she studied the page, which meant nothing to her.
“I apologize,” Alma said. “I was asleep only a moment ago, so my mind is perhaps not clear . . .”
“Pollination, Alma!” Henry cried, clapping his hands once, and then pointing at Mr. Pike, indicating that he should explain.
“What I believe may have occurred, Miss Whittaker—as I was telling your father—is that your Frenchman may have, indeed, collected the correct variety of vanilla from Mexico. But perhaps the reason the vines have not fruited is that they have not been successfully pollinated.”
It may have been the middle of the night, and Alma may have been asleep only moments earlier, but still her mind was a fearfully well-trained machine of botanical calculation, which is why she instantly heard the abacus beads in her brain begin clicking toward an understanding.
“What is the pollination mechanism for the vanilla orchid?” she asked.
“I could not say for certain,” Mr. Pike said. “Nobody is certain. It could be an ant, it could be a bee, it could be a moth of some sort. It could even be a hummingbird. But whatever it is, your Frenchman did not transport it to Tahiti along with his plants, and the native insects and birds of French Polynesia do not seem capable of pollinating your vanilla blossoms, which do have a difficult shape. Thus—no fruit. No pods.”
Henry clapped once again. “No profit!” he added.
“So what are we to do?” Alma asked. “Collect every insect and bird in the Mexican jungle and try to ship them, alive, to the South Pacific, with the hopes of finding your pollinator?”
“I don’t believe you will need to,” Mr. Pike said. “This is why I couldn’t sleep, because I’ve been considering that same question, and I think I’ve come up with an answer. I think you could pollinate it yourself, by hand. Look, I’ve made some drawings here. What makes the vanilla orchid so troublesome to pollinate is the exceptionally long column, you see, which contains both the male and female organs. The rostellum—right here—separates the two, to prevent the plant from pollinating itself. You simply need to lift the rostellum, and then insert a small twig into the pollinia cluster, gather up the pollen on the tip of the twig, and then reinsert the twig into the stamen of a different blossom. You are essentially playing the role of the bee, or the ant, or whoever would be doing this in nature. But you could be far more efficient than any animal, because you could hand-pollinate every single blossom on the vine.”
“Who would do this?” Alma asked.
“Your workers could do it,” Mr. Pike said. “The plant only puts out blooms once a year, and it would take but a week to finish the task.”
“Wouldn’t the workers crush the blossoms?”
“Not if they were carefully trained.”
“But who would have the delicacy for such an operation?”
Mr. Pike smiled. “All you need is little boys with little fingers and little sticks. If anything, they will enjoy the task. I myself would have enjoyed it, as a child. And surely there is an abundance of little boys and little sticks on Tahiti, no?”
“Aha!” Henry said. “So what do you think, Alma?”
“I think it’s brilliant.” She was also thinking that first thing tomorrow, she would need to show Ambrose Pike the White Acre library’s copy of the sixteenth-century Florentine codex, with those early Spanish Franciscan illustrations of vanilla vines. He would much appreciate it. She couldn’t wait to show it to him. She hadn’t even shown him the library yet at all. She had barely shown him anything at White Acre. They had so much more exploring ahead of them!
“It’s merely an idea,” Mr. Pike said. “It probably could have waited until daylight.”
Alma heard a noise and turned. Here was Hanneke de Groot, standing at the door in her nightclothes, looking plump and puffy and irritable.
“Now I’ve woken the entire household,” Mr. Pike said. “My sincerest apologies.”
“Is er een probleem?” Hanneke asked Alma.
“There’s no problem, Hanneke,” Alma said. “The gentlemen and I were simply having a discussion.”
“At two o’clock in the morning?” Hanneke demanded. “Is dit een bordeel?”
Is this a bordello?
“What is she saying?” Henry asked. Apart from his failing hearing, he had never mastered Dutch—despite having been married to a Dutchwoman for decades, and having worked alongside Dutch speakers for much of his life.
“She wants to know if anyone would like tea or coffee,” Alma said. “Mr. Pike? Father?”
“I will have tea,” Henry said.
“You’re all kind, but I will take my leave,” Mr. Pike said. “I will return to my rooms now, and I promise not to disturb anyone again. Moreover, I’ve just realized that tomorrow is the Sabbath. Perhaps you will all be rising early, for church?”
“Not I!” Henry said.
“You will find in this household, Mr. Pike,” Alma said, “that some of us keep the Sabbath, some of us do not keep it, and some of us keep it only halfway.”
“I understand,” he replied. “In Guatemala, I often lost track of the days, and I fear I missed many Sabbaths.”
“Do they honor the Sabbath in Guatemala, Mr. Pike?”
“Only through the acts of drinking, brawling, and cockfighting, I’m afraid.”
“Then off to Guatemala we go!” Henry cried.
Alma had not seen her father in such high spirits in years.
Ambrose Pike laughed. “You may go to Guatemala, Mr. Whittaker. I daresay they would appreciate you there. But I myself am finished with jungles. For tonight, I should simply return to my rooms. When I have the opportunity to sleep in a proper bed, I would be fool to waste it. I bid you both a good night, I thank you again for your hospitality, and I apologize most sincerely to your housekeeper.”
After Mr. Pike left the room, Alma and her father sat in silence for a while. Henry stared at Ambrose’s sketch of the vanilla orchid. Alma could almost hear him thinking; she knew her father all too well. She waited for him to say it—what she knew was coming—while at the same time trying to figure out how she was going to combat it.
Meanwhile, Hanneke returned with a tray, which held tea for Alma and Henry, and coffee for herself. She set it down with a grumbling sigh, then plopped herself in an armchair across from Henry. The housekeeper poured her own cup first, and put her gouty old ankle up on a finely embroidered French footstool. She left Henry and Alma to serve themselves. Protocol at White Acre had grown relaxed over the years. Perhaps too relaxed.
“We should send him to Tahiti,” Henry said at last, after a good five minutes of silence. “We will put him in charge of the vanilla plantation.”
So there it was. Exactly what Alma had seen coming.
“An interesting idea,” she said.
But she could not let her father dispatch Mr. Pike to the South Seas. She knew this with as much certainty as she had ever known anything in her life. For one thing, she sensed that the artist himself would not welcome the assignment. He had said as much himself—that he was finished with jungles. He did not wish to travel any longer. He was weary and homesick. And yet he had no home. The man needed a home. He needed to rest. He needed a place to work, to make the paintings and prints he was born to make, and to hear himself living.
What’s more, though—Alma needed Mr. Pike. She felt overcome with a wild necessit
y to keep this person at White Acre forever. What a thing to decide, after knowing him less than a day! But she felt ten years younger today than she had felt the day before. This had been the most illuminating Saturday Alma had spent in decades—or perhaps even since childhood—and Ambrose Pike was the source of the illumination.
This situation reminded her of when she was young, and she had found a fox kitten in the woods, orphaned and tiny. She had brought it home and begged her parents to allow her to keep it. This was back in the halcyon days before Prudence had arrived, back when Alma had been given the run of the whole universe. Henry had been tempted, but Beatrix had put a stop to the plan. Wild creatures belong in wild places. The kit was taken from Alma’s hands, not to be seen again.
Well, she would not lose this fox. And Beatrix was not here anymore to prevent it.
“I think it would be a mistake, Father,” Alma said. “It would be a waste of Mr. Pike to send him to Polynesia. Anyone can manage a vanilla plantation. You just heard the man explain it himself. It’s simple. He’s even made the instruction drawings already. Send the sketches to Dick Yancey, and have him enlist someone to implement the pollination program. I think you could find better use for Mr. Pike right here at White Acre.”
“Doing what, exactly?” Henry asked.
“You have not yet seen his work, Father. George Hawkes thinks Ambrose Pike to be the best lithographer of our age.”
“And what need do I have for a lithographer?”
“Maybe it’s time to publish a book of White Acre’s botanical treasures. You have specimens in these greenhouses that the civilized world has never seen. They should be documented.”
The Signature of All Things Page 25