The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  The Raiateans took notice.

  Since then Tomorrow Morning had built an evangelizing empire. He had erected a church—just near Raiatea’s pagan mother temple—that might easily have been mistaken for a palace, had it not been a house of worship. It was now the largest structure in Polynesia. It was held up by forty-six columns, hewn from the trunks of breadfruit trees, and sanded smooth with sharkskin.

  Tomorrow Morning numbered his converts at some three and a half thousand souls. He had watched the people feed their idols to the fire. He had watched the old temples undergo a rapid transformation, from shrines of violent sacrifice to harmless piles of mossy rocks. He had put the Raiateans in modest European clothing: men in trousers, women in long dresses and bonnets. Young boys stood in line to have their hair cut short and respectable by him. He had supervised the construction of a community of tidy white cottages. He taught spelling and reading to a people who, prior to his arrival, had never seen the alphabet. Four hundred children a day attended school now and learned their catechism. Tomorrow Morning saw to it that the people did not merely ape the words of the Gospel, but understood what they meant. As such, he had already trained seven missionaries of his own, whom he had recently sent forth to even more distant islands; they, too, would swim to shore with the Bible held high, chanting the name of Jehovah. The days of disturbance and fallacy and superstition were over. Infanticide was over. Polygamy was over. Some called Tomorrow Morning a prophet; he was rumored to prefer the word servant.

  Alma learned that Tomorrow Morning had taken a wife on Raiatea, Temanava, whose name meant “the welcoming.” He had two young daughters there as well, Frances and Edith, named after the Reverend and Mrs. Welles. He was the most honored man in the Society Islands, Alma learned. She heard it so many times, she was growing weary of hearing it.

  “And to think,” said Sister Etini, “that he came from our little school at Matavai Bay!”

  Alma did not find a moment to speak with Tomorrow Morning until late one night, ten days after his arrival, when she caught him walking alone the short distance between Sister Etini’s house, where he had just enjoyed dinner, and Sister Manu’s house, where he intended to sleep.

  “May I have a word with you?” she asked.

  “Certainly, Sister Whittaker,” he agreed, remembering her name with ease. He gave the appearance of being completely unsurprised to see her coming out of the shadows toward him.

  “Is there someplace more quiet where we might speak?” she asked. “What I need to discuss with you, I would like to address in privacy.”

  He laughed comfortably. “If ever you have managed to experience such a thing as privacy here at Matavai Bay, Sister Whittaker, I salute you. Anything you wish to say to me, you may say here.”

  “Very well, then,” she said, although she could not help but glance around to see if anyone might overhear. “Tomorrow Morning,” she began, “you and I are—I believe—more closely affixed to each other’s destinies than one might think. I have been introduced to you as Sister Whittaker, but I need you to understand that for a short period of my life, I was known as Mrs. Pike.”

  “I will not make you go any further,” he said gently, putting up a hand. “I know who you are, Alma.”

  They looked at each other in silence for what felt like a long time.

  “So,” she said, at last.

  “Quite,” he replied.

  Again, the long silence.

  “I know who you are, too,” she finally said.

  “Do you?” He did not appear the least bit alarmed. “Who am I, then?”

  But now—pushed to answer—she found that she could not easily respond to the question. Needing to say something, though, she said, “You knew my husband well.”

  “Indeed, I did. What’s more, I miss him.”

  This response shocked Alma, but she preferred this—the shock of his admission—to an argument, or a denial. Anticipating this conversation over the previous days, Alma had thought she might go mad, were Tomorrow Morning to accuse her of nefarious lies, or pretend never to have heard of Ambrose. But he did not seem inclined to resist or repudiate. She looked at him closely, seeking something in his face besides relaxed assuredness, but could see nothing amiss.

  “You miss him,” she repeated.

  “And I always will, for Ambrose Pike was the best of men.”

  “So says everyone,” said Alma, feeling vexed and slightly outplayed.

  “For it was true.”

  “Did you love him, Tamatoa Mare?” she asked, again searching his face for a break in his equanimity. She wanted to catch him by surprise, as he had caught her. But his face displayed not a whit of unease. He did not even blink at the use of his given name.

  He replied, “All who met him, loved him.”

  “But did you love him particularly?”

  Tomorrow Morning put his hands in his pockets and looked up toward the moon. He was not in a hurry to reply. He looked for all the world like a man waiting leisurely for a train. After a while, he returned his gaze to Alma’s face. They were not far from the same height, she noticed. Her shoulders were not so much narrower than his.

  “I suppose you wonder about things,” he said, by means of an answer.

  She felt she was losing ground here. She would need to be even more direct.

  “Tomorrow Morning,” she said. “May I speak to you with candor?”

  “Please do,” he encouraged.

  “Allow me to tell you something about myself, for it might help you to speak more freely. Implanted in my very disposition—though I do not always consider it either a virtue or a blessing—is a desire to understand the nature of things. As such, I would like to understand who my husband was. I’ve come all this distance to understand him better, but it has thus far been fruitless. The little that I have been given to understand about Ambrose has brought me only more confusion. Ours was admittedly neither a customary marriage nor a long one, but this does not negate the love and concern that I felt toward my husband. I am not an innocent, Tomorrow Morning. I do not require protection from the truth. Please understand that my aim is neither to assail you nor to make you my enemy. Neither are your secrets in any peril, should you entrust them to my care. I do have reason, however, to suspect that you possess secrets about my late husband. I have seen the drawings that he made of you. Those drawings, as I am certain you can understand, compel me to ask for the truth of your association with Ambrose. Can you honor a widow’s request, and tell me what you know? My feelings do not require sparing.”

  Tomorrow Morning nodded. “Do you have the day free tomorrow, to spend with me?” he asked. “Perhaps well into the evening?”

  She nodded.

  “How able is your body?” he asked.

  The question and its incongruity rattled her. He noted her discomfort and clarified, “What I mean to ascertain is, are you capable of hiking a long distance? I would suppose that as a naturalist you are fit and hale, but still, I must ask. I would like to show you something, but I do not wish to overtax you. Can you manage climbing uphill in steep terrain, and that sort of thing?”

  “I should think so,” Alma replied, irritated once more. “I have traversed the entirety of this island over the past year. I have seen everything there is to see in Tahiti.”

  “Not everything, Alma,” Tomorrow Morning corrected her, with a benevolent smile. “Not all of it.”

  * * *

  Just after dawn the next day, they departed. Tomorrow Morning had procured a canoe for their journey. Not a risky little gambit of a canoe, such as the one the Reverend Welles used when he visited his coral gardens, but a finer one, solid and well made.

  “We shall be going to Tahiti-iti,” he explained. “It would take us days to get there overland, but we can reach it in five or six hours by navigating the coastline. You’re comfortable on the water?”

  She nodded. She found it difficult to tell whether he was being considerate or condescending. She had packed a
bamboo tube of fresh water for herself and some poi for lunch, wrapped in a square of muslin that she could tie to her belt. She was wearing her most tired dress—the one that had already endured the island’s worst abuses. Tomorrow Morning glanced at her bare feet, which, after a year on Tahiti, were as tough and callused as a plantation worker’s. He made no mention of it, but she saw him take notice. His feet were also bare. From the ankles up, though, he was the perfect European gentleman. He wore his customary clean suit and white shirt, though he removed his jacket, folded it neatly, and used it as a seat cushion in the canoe.

  There was no point in conversation on the journey to Tahiti-iti—the small, roundish, rugged, and remote peninsula on the opposite side of the island. Tomorrow Morning had to concentrate, and Alma did not wish to turn around every time she needed to speak. Thus, they proceeded in silence.

  Traveling around the coastline was difficult going in certain areas, and Alma wished that Tomorrow Morning had brought a paddle for her, too, so she could feel as though she were helping along their progress—though, truthfully, he did not seem to need her. He carved the water with elegant efficiency, threading through the reefs and channels without hesitation, as though he had made this trip already hundreds of times—which, she suspected, he probably had. She was grateful for her wide-brimmed hat, as the sun was strong, and the glare off the water made spots dance across her eyes.

  Within five hours, the cliffs of Tahiti-iti were on their right. Alarmingly, it appeared as if Tomorrow Morning was aiming straight for them. Were they to dash themselves against the rocks? Was that to be the morbid aim of this journey? But then Alma saw it—an arched opening in the cliff face, a dark aperture, an entrance to a sea-level cave. Tomorrow Morning synchronized the canoe to the rolling of a strong wave and then—thrillingly, fearlessly—shot them straight through that opening. Alma thought for certain they would be sucked back into the daylight by the receding water, but he paddled fiercely, almost standing up in the canoe, such that they were pitched up on the wet gravel of a rocky beach, deep inside the cave. It was nigh a feat of magic. Not even the Hiro contingent, she thought, would have risked such a maneuver.

  “Jump out, please,” he commanded, and although he did not quite bark at her, she gathered that she had to move quickly, before the next wave came in. She leapt out and scurried to the highest level—which, to be honest, did not feel quite high enough. One big wave, she thought, and they would be washed away forever. Tomorrow Morning did not seem concerned. He pulled the canoe up behind him onto the beach.

  “May I ask you to help me?” he said politely. He pointed to a ledge above their heads, and she saw that he meant to put the canoe up there, for safekeeping. She helped him lift the canoe, and together they pushed it up onto the ledge, far above the reach of the breaking waves.

  She sat down, and he sat beside her, breathing heavily with exertion.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked her at last.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Now we must wait. When the tide goes out fully, you will see that there is a kind of narrow route that we can walk on along the cliff, and then we can climb upward, to a plateau. From there, I can take you to the place I wish to show you. If you feel that you can manage it, that is?”

  “I can manage it,” she said.

  “Good. For now, we will rest for a spell.” He lay back against the cushion of his jacket, stretched out his legs, and relaxed. When the waves rolled in, they nearly reached his feet—but not quite. He must know exactly how the tides operated within this cave, she could see. It was quite extraordinary. Looking at Tomorrow Morning stretched out beside her, she had a sudden poignant memory of the way Ambrose used to sprawl so comfortably across any surface—across grass, across a couch, across the floor of the drawing room at White Acre.

  She gave Tomorrow Morning about ten minutes to rest, but then could contain herself no longer.

  “How did you meet him?” she asked.

  The cave was not the quietest place to speak, what with the water rushing back and forth up over the stones, and all the variations of damp echoes. But there was something about the thrumming rush of sound, too, that made this place feel like the safest spot in the world for Alma to demand things, and to have secrets revealed. Who could hear them? Who would ever see them? Nobody but the spirits. Their words would be dragged from this cave by the tide and pulled out to sea, broken up in the churning waves, eaten by fish.

  Tomorrow Morning replied without sitting up. “I returned to Tahiti to visit the Reverend Welles in August of 1850, and Ambrose was here—just as you are now here.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “I thought he was an angel,” he said without hesitation, without even opening his eyes.

  He was answering her questions almost too quickly, she thought. She did not want glib answers; she wanted the complete story. She did not want only the conclusions; she wanted the in-between. She wanted to see Tomorrow Morning and Ambrose as they met. She wanted to observe their exchanges. She wanted to know what they had been thinking, what they had been feeling. Most certainly, she wanted to know what they had done. She waited, but he was not more forthcoming. After they had been in silence for a long while, Alma touched Tomorrow Morning’s arm. He opened his eyes.

  “Please,” she said. “Continue.”

  He sat up, and turned to face her. “Did the Reverend Welles ever tell you how I came to the mission?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “I was only seven years old,” he said. “Perhaps eight. My father died first, then my mother died, then my two brothers died. One of my father’s surviving wives took responsibility for me, but then she died. There was another mother, too—another of my father’s wives—but subsequently she died. All the children of my father’s other wives died, in short order. There were grandmothers, too, but they also died.” He paused, considering something, and then continued, correcting himself: “No, I am mistaking the order of the deaths, Alma, please excuse me. It was the grandmothers who died first, as the weakest members of the family. So, yes, first it was my grandmothers who died, and then my father, and then so forth, as I have said. I, too, was sick for a spell, but I did not die—as you can see. But these are common stories in Tahiti. Surely you have heard them before?”

  Alma was not sure what to say, so she said nothing. While she knew of the ruinous death toll across Polynesia over the past fifty years, nobody had told her any stories of their personal losses.

  “You’ve seen the scars on Sister Manu’s forehead?” he asked. “Has anyone explained to you their origin?”

  She shook her head. She did not know what any of this had to do with Ambrose.

  “Those are grief scars,” he said. “When the women here in Tahiti mourn, they cut their heads with sharks’ teeth. It is gruesome, I know, to a European mind, but it is a means for a woman to both convey and unloose her sorrow. Sister Manu has more scars than most because she lost the entirety of her family, including several children. This is perhaps why she and I have always been so fond of each other.”

  Alma was struck by his use of the quiet word fond as a means of expressing the allegiance between a woman who had lost all her children and a boy who had lost all his mothers. It did not seem a forceful enough word.

  Then Alma thought of Sister Manu’s other physical anomaly. “What about her fingers?” she asked, holding up her own hands. “The missing tips?”

  “That is another legacy of loss. Sometimes people here will cut off their fingertips as an expression of grief. This became easier to do when the Europeans brought us iron and steel.” He smiled ruefully. Alma did not smile in return; it was too awful. He continued. “Now, as for my grandfather, whom I have not yet mentioned, he was a rauti. Do you know about the rauti? The Reverend Welles has tried over the years to enlist my help in translating this word, but it’s difficult. My good father uses the word ‘haranguer,’ but that does not convey the dignity of the position. ‘Hist
orian’ comes close, but it is not quite accurate, either. The task of the rauti is to run alongside men as they charge into battle, and to keep up their courage by reminding them of who they are. The rauti sings out the bloodlines and the lineage of each man, reminding the warriors of the glory of their family history. He ensures that they do not forget the heroism of their forefathers. The rauti knows the lineage of every man on this island, all the way back to the gods, and he chants out their courage for them. One could say it is a kind of sermon, but a violent one.”

  “What were the verses like?” Alma asked, reconciling herself to this long, incongruous story. He had brought her here for a reason, she supposed, and he must be telling her this for a reason.

  Tomorrow Morning turned his face toward the cave entrance, and thought for a moment. “In English? It does not have the same power, but it would be something along the lines of, ‘Give forth all your vigilance until their will is severed! Hang upon them like lightning! You are Arava, the son of Hoani, the grandson of Paruto, who was born of Pariti, who sprang from Tapunui, who claimed the head of the mighty Anapa, the father of eels—you are that man! Break over them like the sea!’” Tomorrow Morning thundered out these words, and they reverberated across the stones, drowning out the waves. He turned back to Alma—who had gooseflesh up her arms now, and who could not imagine the impact this must have had in Tahitian, if it stirred her so greatly in English—and said in his conversational voice, “Women fought, too, at times.”