The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “Thank you,” she said, though she could not have identified why she said it. “What became of your grandfather?”

  “He died with the rest of them. After my family died, I was a child alone. In Tahiti, this is not so grave a fate for a child as it might be, I suppose, in London or Philadelphia. Children here are given independence from a young age, and anyone who can climb a tree or cast a line can feed himself. Nobody here will freeze to death in the night. I was similar to the young boys you see on the beach at Matavai Bay, who are also without family, although perhaps I was not as happy as they seem to be, for I did not have a little gang of fellows. The problem for me was not starvation of the body, but starvation of the spirit, do you see?”

  “Yes,” said Alma.

  “So I found my way to Matavai Bay, where there was a settlement of people. For several weeks, I watched the mission. I saw that, as humbly as they lived, they still had better things than elsewhere on the island. They had knives sharp enough to kill a pig in one stroke, and axes that could fell a tree with ease. To my eyes, their cottages were luxurious. I saw the Reverend Welles, who was so white that he looked to me like a ghost, though not a malevolent ghost. He spoke the language of ghosts, yes, but he spoke some of my language, too. I watched his baptisms, which were entertaining to everyone. Sister Etini was operating the school already, along with Mrs. Welles, and I saw the children going in and out. I lay outside the windows and listened to the lessons. I was not uneducated, completely. I could name one hundred and fifty kinds of fish, you see, and I could draw a map of the stars in the sand, but I was not educated in the European manner. Some of these children had small slates, for their lessons. I tried to construct myself a slate, out of a dark flake of lava stone that I polished smooth with sand. I dyed my chalkboard blacker still, using the sap of the mountain plantain, and then I scribbled lines on it with white coral. It was nearly a successful invention—although, unfortunately it did not erase!” He smiled at the memory. “You had quite a library as a child, I understand? And Ambrose told me that you spoke several languages, from the earliest age?”

  Alma nodded. So Ambrose had spoken of her! She felt a tremor of pleasure at this revelation (he had not forgotten her!) but there was disturbance in it, as well: what else did Tomorrow Morning know about her? Far more, clearly, than she knew about him.

  “It has been a dream of mine to someday see a library,” he said. “I would also like to see stained glass windows. In any case, one day the Reverend Welles spied me and approached me. He was kind. I am certain you need not stretch your imagination to understand how kind he was, Alma, for you have met the man. He gave me a task. He needed to convey a message, he said, to a missionary in Papeete. He asked me if I could take the message to his friend. Naturally, I agreed. I asked him, ‘What is the message?’ He simply handed me a slate with lines written upon it, and said, in Tahitian, ‘This is the message.’ I was dubious, but I took off running. In several hours, I had found the other missionary at his church by the docks. This man did not speak Tahitian at all. I did not understand how it would be possible for me to convey to him the message, when I did not even know what the message was, and we could not communicate! But I handed him the slate. He looked at it, and went into his church. When he came out, he handed me a small stack of writing paper. This was the first time I had ever encountered paper, Alma, and I thought it was the finest and whitest tapa cloth I had ever seen—though I did not understand what sort of clothing anyone could make out of such small pieces. I supposed it could be sewn together into some kind of garment.

  “I hurried back to Matavai Bay, running the entire seven miles, and handed the paper to the Reverend Welles, who was delighted, for—he told me—this had been his message: he had wished to borrow some writing paper. I was a Tahitian child, Alma, which meant that I knew of magic and miracles—but I did not understand the magic of this trick. Somehow, it appeared to me, the Reverend Welles had convinced the slate to tell something to the other missionary. He must have commanded the slate to speak on his behalf, and thus, his wish had been granted! Oh, I wanted to know this magic! I whispered a commandment to my poor imitation of a slate, and I scribbled some lines on it with coral. My commandment was, ‘Bring back my brother from the dead.’ It puzzles me now why I did not ask for my mother, but I must have missed my brother more at that time. Perhaps because he was protective. I had always admired my brother, who was far more courageous than I was. You will not be surprised, Alma, to learn that my attempt at magic did not work. However, when the Reverend Welles saw what I was doing, he sat to speak with me, and that was the beginning of my new education.”

  “What did he teach you?” Alma asked.

  “The mercy of Christ, firstly. Secondly, English. Lastly, reading.” After a long pause, he spoke again. “I was a good student. I understand that you were also a good student?”

  “Yes, always,” said Alma.

  “The ways of the mind were easy for me, as I believe they were easy for you?”

  “Yes,” said Alma. What else had Ambrose told him?

  “The Reverend Welles became my father, and since then I have always been my father’s favorite. He loves me more, I daresay, than he loves his own daughter and his own wife. He certainly loves me more than he loves his other adopted sons. I understand from what Ambrose told me that you were your father’s favorite, as well—that Henry loved you even more, perhaps, than he loved his own wife?”

  Alma started. It was a shocking statement. She felt wholly unable to reply. What loyalty did she feel toward her mother and toward Prudence across all the years and miles—and even across the divide of death—that she could not bring herself to answer this question honestly?

  “But one knows when one is the favorite of our father, Alma, don’t we?” Tomorrow Morning asked, probing more gently. “It transfers to us a unique power, does it not? If the person of most consequence in the world has chosen to prefer us over all others, then we become accustomed to having what we wish for. Wasn’t that the case with you, as well? How can we not feel that we are strong—people like you and me?”

  Alma searched herself to determine if this was true.

  But of course it was true.

  Her father had left her everything—the entirety of his fortune, at the exclusion of everyone else in the world. He had never allowed her to leave White Acre, not only because he had needed her, she suddenly realized, but also because he had loved her. Alma remembered him gathering her onto his lap when she was a small child, and telling her fanciful stories. She remembered her father’s saying, “To my mind, the homely one is worth ten of the pretty one.” She remembered the night of the ball at White Acre, in 1808, when the Italian astronomer had arranged the guests into a tableau vivant of the heavens, and had conducted them into a splendid dance. Her father—the sun, the center of it all—had called out across the universe, “Give the girl a place!” and had encouraged Alma to run. For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that it must have been he, Henry, who had thrust the torch into her hands that night, entrusting her with fire, releasing her as a Promethean comet across the lawn, and across the wide open world. Nobody else would have had the authority to entrust a child with fire. Nobody else would have bestowed upon Alma the right to have a place.

  Tomorrow Morning went on. “My father has always regarded me as a sort of prophet, you know.”

  “Is that how you regard yourself?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I know what I am. For one thing, I am a rauti. I am a haranguer, as my grandfather was before me. I come to the people and chant out encouragement. My people have suffered a great deal, and I push them to be strong again—but in the name of Jehovah, because the new god is more powerful than our old gods. If that were not true, Alma, all my people would still be alive. This is how I minister: with power. I believe that on these islands the news of the Creator and of Jesus Christ must be communicated not through gentleness and persuasion, but through power. That is why
I have found success where others have failed.”

  He was quite casual, revealing this to Alma. He almost shrugged it off as an easy thing.

  “But there is something more,” he said. “In the old ways of thinking, there were known to be intermediary beings—messengers, as it were, between gods and men.”

  “Like priests?” Alma asked.

  “Like the Reverend Welles, you mean?” Tomorrow Morning smiled, looking again at the mouth of the cave. “No. My father is a good man, but he is not the sort of being to which I refer here. He is not a divine messenger. I am thinking of something other than a priest. I suppose you could say . . . what is the word? An emissary. In the old ways of thinking, we believed that each god had his own emissary. In emergencies, the Tahitian people would pray to these emissaries for deliverance. ‘Come to the world,’ they would pray. ‘Come to the light, and help us, for there is war and hunger and fear, and we suffer.’ The emissaries were neither of this world nor the next, but they moved between the two.”

  “Is that how you regard yourself?” Alma asked again.

  “No,” he said. “That is how I regarded Ambrose Pike.”

  He turned to her immediately after he said this, and his face—for just a moment—was stricken with pain. Her heart clutched, and she had to catch herself, to hold her composure.

  “You saw him the same way, too?” he asked, searching her face for an answer.

  “Yes,” she said. At last they had come to it. At last they had come to Ambrose.

  Tomorrow Morning nodded, and looked relieved. “He could hear my thoughts, you know,” he said.

  “Yes,” Alma said. “That was something he could do.”

  “He wanted me to listen to his thoughts,” Tomorrow Morning said, “but I do not have that capacity.”

  “Yes,” said Alma. “I understand. Nor do I.”

  “He could see evil—the way that it gathers in clusters. That was how he explained evil to me, as a clustering of sinister color. He could see doom. He could see good, as well. Billows of goodness, surrounding certain people.”

  “I know,” said Alma.

  “He heard the voices of the dead. Alma, he heard my brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “He told me that one night he could hear starlight—but it was only for that one night. It saddened him that he could never hear it again. He thought that if he and I attempted together to hear it, if we put our minds together, we could receive a message.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was lonely on earth, Alma, for nobody was similar to him. He could find no home.”

  Alma again felt the clutch in her heart—a clenching of shame and guilt and regret. She balled up her hands into fists and pressed them into her eyes. She willed herself not to cry. When she put down her fists and opened her eyes, Tomorrow Morning was watching her as though waiting for a signal, as though waiting to see if he should stop speaking. But all she wanted was for him to continue speaking.

  “What did he wish for, with you?” Alma asked.

  “He wanted a companion,” Tomorrow Morning said. “He wanted a twin. He wanted us to be the same. He was mistaken about me, you understand. He thought I was better than I am.”

  “He was mistaken about me, too,” Alma said.

  “So you see how it is.”

  “What did you wish for, with him?”

  “I wanted to couple with him, Alma,” Tomorrow Morning said grimly, but without a flinch.

  “As did I,” she said.

  “So we are the same, then,” said Tomorrow Morning, though the thought did not appear to bring him comfort. It did not bring her comfort, either.

  “Did you couple with him?” she asked.

  Tomorrow Morning sighed. “I allowed him to believe that I was also an innocent. I think he saw me as The First Man, as a new kind of Adam, and I allowed him to believe that of me. I allowed him to draw those pictures of me—no, I encouraged him to draw those pictures of me—for I am vain. I told him to draw me as he would draw an orchid, in blameless nakedness. For what is the difference, in the eyes of God, between a naked man and a flower? This is what I told him. That is how I brought him near.”

  “But did you couple with him?” she repeated, steeling herself for a more direct answer.

  “Alma,” he said. “You have given me to understand what sort of a person you are. You have explained that you are compelled by a desire for comprehension. Now let me give you to understand what sort of a person I am: I am a conqueror. I do not boast to say it. It is merely my nature. Perhaps you have never before met a conqueror, so it is difficult for you to understand.”

  “My father was a conqueror,” she said. “I understand more than you might imagine.”

  Tomorrow Morning nodded, conceding the point. “Henry Whittaker. By all accounts, yes. You may be correct. Perhaps, then, you can understand me. The nature of a conqueror, as you surely know, is to acquire whatever he wishes to acquire.”

  For a long while after that, they did not speak. Alma had another question, but she could scarcely bear to ask it. But if she did not ask it now, she never would know, and then the question would chew holes through her for the rest of her life. She girded her courage again and asked, “How did Ambrose die, Tomorrow Morning?” When he did not reply at once, she added, “I was informed by the Reverend Welles that he died of infection.”

  “He did die of infection, I suppose—by the end of it. That is what a doctor would have told you.”

  “But how did he truly die?”

  “It is not pleasant to speak of,” said Tomorrow Morning. “He died of grief.”

  “What do you mean—of grief? But how?” Alma pushed on. “You must tell me. I did not come here for a pleasant exchange, and I assure you that I am capable of withstanding whatever I hear. Tell me—what was the mechanism?”

  Tomorrow Morning sighed. “Ambrose cut himself, quite severely, some days prior to his death. You will remember my telling you how the women here—when they have lost a loved one—will take a shark’s tooth to their own heads? But they are Tahitians, Alma, and it is a Tahitian custom. The women here know how to do this dreadful thing safely. They know precisely how deeply to cut themselves, such that they can bleed out their sorrows without causing dire harm. Afterward, they tend to the wound immediately. Ambrose, alas, was not practiced in this art of self-wounding. He was much distressed. The world had disappointed him. I had disappointed him. Worst of all, I believe, he had disappointed himself. He did not stay his own hand. When we found him in his fare, he was beyond saving.”

  Alma shut her eyes and saw her love, her Ambrose—his good and beautiful head—drenched in the blood of his self-mortification. She had disappointed Ambrose, as well. All he had wanted was purity, and all she had wanted was pleasure. She had banished him to this lonely place, and he had died here, horribly.

  She felt Tomorrow Morning touch her arm, and she opened her eyes.

  “Do not suffer,” he said calmly. “You could not have stopped this thing from occurring. You did not lead him to his death. If anybody led him to his death, it was I.”

  Still, she was unable to speak. But then another awful question rose, and she had no choice but to ask it: “Did he cut off his fingertips, too? In the manner of Sister Manu?”

  “Not all of them,” Tomorrow Morning said, with commendable delicacy.

  Alma shut her eyes again. Those artist’s hands! She remembered—though she did not wish to remember it—the night she had put his fingers in her mouth, trying to take him into her. Ambrose had flinched in fear, had recoiled. He had been so fragile. How had he managed to commit this awful violence upon himself? She thought she would be sick.

  “This is my burden to carry, Alma,” Tomorrow Morning said. “I have strength enough for this burden. Allow me to carry it.”

  When she found her voice again, she said, “Ambrose took his own life. Yet the Reverend Welles gave him a proper Christian burial.”

  It was not a question,
but a statement of amazement.

  “Ambrose was an exemplary Christian,” Tomorrow Morning said. “As for my father, may God preserve him, he is a man of unusual mercy and generosity.”

  Alma, slowly piecing together more of the story, asked, “Does your father know who I am?”

  “We should assume that he does,” said Tomorrow Morning. “My good father knows everything that happens on this island.”

  “Yet he has been so kind to me. He has never pried, never inquired . . .”

  “This should not surprise you, Alma. My father is kindness incarnate.”

  Another long pause. Then: “But does that mean he knows about you, Tomorrow Morning? Does he know what transpired between you and my late husband?”

  “Again, we may reasonably assume so.”

  “Yet he remains so admiring—”

  Alma could not finish her thought, and Tomorrow Morning did not bother replying. Alma sat in astonished silence for a long while after this. Clearly, the Reverend Francis Welles’s tremendous capacity for compassion and forgiveness was not something to which one could apply logic, or even words.

  Eventually, though, yet another terrible question rose in her mind. This question made her feel bilious and somewhat crazed, but—once more—she needed to know.

  “Did you force yourself upon Ambrose?” she asked. “Did you bring injury to him?”

  Tomorrow Morning did not take offense at this implicit accusation, but he did suddenly look older. “Oh, Alma,” he said sadly. “It appears that you do not quite understand what a conqueror is. It is not necessary for me to force things—once I am decided, the others have no choice. Can you not see this? Did I force the Reverend Welles to adopt me as his son, and to love me more than he loves even his own flesh-and-blood family? Did I force the island of Raiatea to embrace Jehovah? You are an intelligent woman, Alma. Try to comprehend this.”