The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  Alma pressed her fists against her eyes again. She would not allow herself to weep, but now she knew a dreadful truth: Ambrose had permitted Tomorrow Morning to touch him, whereas he had only recoiled from her in abhorrence. It was possible this information made her feel worse than anything else she had yet learned today. It shamed her that she could concern herself with such a petty and selfish matter after hearing such horrors, but she could not help herself.

  “What is it?” Tomorrow Morning asked, seeing her stricken face.

  “I longed to couple with him, too,” she confessed at last. “But he would not have me.”

  Tomorrow Morning looked at her with infinite tenderness. “So this is where we are different, you and I,” he said. “For you relented.”

  * * *

  Now the tide was low at last, and Tomorrow Morning said, “Let us go quickly, while we have our opportunity. If we are to do this at all, we must move now.”

  They left the canoe behind on its unreachable ledge, and exited the cave. There was, as Tomorrow Morning had promised, a narrow route along the bottom of the cliff, upon which they could safely walk. They walked for a few hundred feet and then began to ascend. From the canoe, the cliff had seemed sheer, vertical, and unscalable, but now, as she followed Tomorrow Morning, putting her feet and hands just where he put his, she could see that there was, indeed, a pathway upward. It was almost as if stairs had been cut, with footholds and handholds placed precisely where they would be needed. She did not look down at the waves below, but trusted—as she had learned to trust the Hiro contingent—in her guide’s competence and her own sure-footedness.

  About fifty feet up, they came to a ridge. From there, they entered a thick belt of jungle, scrambling up a steep slope of damp roots and vines. After her weeks with the Hiro contingent, Alma was in fine hiking trim, with the heart of a Highland pony, but this was a truly treacherous climb. Wet leaves under her feet made for dangerous slips, and even barefoot it was difficult to find purchase. She was tiring. She could see no sign of a path. She didn’t know how Tomorrow Morning could possibly tell where he was going.

  “Be careful,” he said over his shoulder. “C’est glissant.”

  He must be weary, too, she realized, for he did not even seem to recognize that he just had spoken to her in French. She hadn’t known that he spoke French at all. What else did he have in that mind of his? She marveled at it. He had done well for an orphan boy.

  The steepness leveled out a bit, and now they were walking alongside a stream. Soon she could hear a dim rumbling in the distance. For a while, the noise was just a rumor, but then they came around a bend and she could see it—a waterfall about seventy feet tall, a ribbon of white foam that emptied noisily into a churning pool. The force of the falling water created gusts of wind, and the mist gave form to this wind, like ghosts made visible. Alma wanted to pause here, but the waterfall was not Tomorrow Morning’s destination. He leaned in to her to make himself heard, pointed toward the sky, and shouted, “Now we go up again.”

  Hand over hand, they climbed beside the waterfall. Soon Alma’s dress was soaked through. She reached for sturdy clumps of mountain plantain and bamboo stalks to steady herself, and prayed they would not come unrooted. Near the top of the waterfall was a comfortable hummock of smooth stone and tall grasses, as well as a tumble of boulders. Alma determined that this must be the plateau of which he had spoken—their destination—though she could not at first determine what was so special about this place. But then Tomorrow Morning stepped behind the largest boulder, and she followed him. There, quite suddenly, was the entrance to a small cave—as tidily cut into the cliff as a room in a house, with walls eight feet up on every side. The cave was cool and silent, and smelled of minerals and soil. And it was covered—thoroughly carpeted—with the most luxuriant mantle of mosses Alma Whittaker had ever seen.

  The cave was not merely mossy; it throbbed with moss. It was not merely green; it was frantically green. It was so bright in its verdure that the color nearly spoke, as though—smashing through the world of sight—it wanted to migrate into the world of sound. The moss was a thick, living pelt, transforming every rock surface into a mythical, sleeping beast. Improbably, the deepest corners of the cave glittered the brightest; they were absolutely studded, Alma realized with a gasp, with the jewellike filigree of Schistotega pennata.

  Goblin’s gold, dragon’s gold, elfin gold—Schistotega pennata was that rarest of cave mosses, that false gem that gleams like a cat’s eye from within the permanent twilight of geologic shade, that unearthly sparkling plant that needs but the briefest sliver of light each day to sparkle like glory forever, that brilliant trickster whose shining facets have fooled so many travelers over the centuries into believing that they have stumbled upon hidden treasure. But to Alma, this was treasure, more stunning than actual riches, for it bedecked the entire cave in the uncanny, glistering, emerald light that she had only ever before seen in miniature, in glimpses of moss seen through a microscope . . . yet now she was standing fully within it.

  Her first reaction upon entering this miraculous place was to shut her eyes against the beauty. It was unendurable. She felt as though this were something she should not be allowed to see without permission, without some sort of religious dispensation. She felt undeserving. With her eyes closed, she relaxed and allowed herself to believe that she had dreamed this vision. When she dared open them again, however, it was all still there. The cave was so beautiful that it made her bones ache with longing. She had never before coveted anything as much as she coveted this glimmering spectacle of mosses. She wanted to be swallowed by it. Already—although she was standing right there—she began to miss this place. She knew she would miss it for the rest of her days.

  “Ambrose always thought you would like it here,” Tomorrow Morning said.

  Only then did she begin to sob. She sobbed so hard that she did not make a sound—she could not make a sound—and her face twisted into a mask of tragedy. Something in the center of her broke apart, splintering her heart and lungs. She fell forward into Tomorrow Morning, the way a soldier, shot, falls into the arms of his comrade. He held her up. She shook like a rattling skeleton. Her sobbing did not subside. She clung to him with such force that it would have broken the ribs of a lesser man. She wanted to press straight through him and come out the other side—or, better still, be blotted out by him, absorbed into his guts, erased, negated.

  In her paroxysm of grief, she did not at first sense it, but at length she perceived that he, too, was weeping—not great gusting sobs, but slow tears. She was holding him up as much as he was holding her. And so they stood together in the tabernacle of mosses and wept out his name.

  Ambrose, they lamented. Ambrose.

  He was never coming back.

  In the end they dropped to the ground, like trees hacked down. Their clothing was soaked and their teeth chattered with cold and fatigue. Without discussion or discomfort, they removed their wet clothes. It had to be done, or they would die of the chill. Now they were not only exhausted and sodden, they were laid bare. They lay down on the moss and regarded each other. It was not an assessment. It was not a seduction. Tomorrow Morning’s form was beautiful—but this was evident, unsurprising, beyond argument, and unimportant. Alma Whittaker’s form was not beautiful—but this, too, was evident, unsurprising, beyond argument, and unimportant.

  She reached for his hand. She put his fingers in her mouth, like a child. He allowed it. He did not recoil from her. Then she reached for his penis, which had been—like the penis of every Tahitian boy—circumcised during youth with the tooth of a shark. She needed to touch him more intimately; he was the one person who had ever touched Ambrose. She did not ask permission of Tomorrow Morning for this touch; permission issued from the man, unspoken. All was understood. She moved down his large, warm body, and took his member into her mouth.

  This act was the one thing in her life she had ever really wanted to do. She had given up so much, and s
he had never complained—but could she not, at least once, have this? She did not need to be married. She did not need to be beautiful, or desired by men. She did not need to be surrounded by friends and frivolity. She did not need an estate, a library, a fortune. There was so much that she did not need. She did not even need to have the unexplored terrain of her ancient virginity excavated at long last, at the wearisome age of fifty-three—though she knew Tomorrow Morning would oblige her, had she wished.

  But—if only for one moment of her life—she did need this.

  Tomorrow Morning did not hesitate, nor did he rush her along. He allowed her to investigate him, and to fit whatever she could fit of him inside her mouth. He allowed her to suck on him as though drawing breath through him—as though she were underwater and he was her only link to air. Her knees in the moss, her face in his secret nest, she felt him grow heavier in her mouth, and warmer, and even more permissive.

  It was just as she had always imagined it would be. No, it was more than she had ever imagined it would be. Then he poured himself into her mouth, and she received it like a dedicatory offering, like an almsgiving.

  She was grateful.

  After that, they did not weep anymore.

  * * *

  They spent the night together, in that high grotto of mosses. It was far too dangerous now, in the darkness, to return to Matavai Bay. While Tomorrow Morning did not object to canoeing at night (indeed, he claimed to prefer it, as the air was cooler), he did not think it safe for them to climb down the waterfall and the cliff face with no light. Knowing the island as he did, he must have realized all along that they would have to spend the night. She did not mind his assumption.

  Bedding down in the outdoors did not promise a comfortable night’s sleep, but they made the best of the situation. They built a small fire pit with billiard-sized rocks. They gathered up dry hibiscus, which Tomorrow Morning was able to coax into flame in a matter of minutes. Alma collected breadfruit, which she wrapped in banana leaves and baked until it crumbled open. They made bedding from mountain plantain stalks, which they beat with stones into a soft, clothlike material. They slept together under this crude plantain bedding, pressed against each other for warmth. It was damp, but not insufferable. They denned down like brother foxes. In the morning, Alma awoke to find that the sap of the plantain stalks had left dark blue stains on her skin—although it didn’t show up, she noticed, on Tomorrow Morning’s skin. His skin had absorbed the stain, while hers, paler, displayed it openly.

  It seemed wise not to speak of the previous evening’s events. They remained silent on the subject not out of shame, but out of something that more closely resembled regard. Also, they were exhausted. They dressed, ate the remaining breadfruit, descended the waterfall, picked their way down the cliffs, reentered the cave, found the canoe high and dry, and reversed their journey back to Matavai Bay.

  Six hours later, as the familiar black beach of the mission settlement came into view, Alma turned to face Tomorrow Morning, and put her hand on his knee. He paused his paddling.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “May I trouble you with one final question?”

  There was one last thing she needed to know, and—as she was not certain they would ever see each other again—she had to ask him now. He nodded his head respectfully, inviting her to continue.

  “For nearly a year now, Ambrose’s valise—filled with his drawings of you—has been sitting in my fare on the beach. Anybody could have taken it. Anybody could have distributed those pictures of you all over the island. Yet not one person on this island has so much as touched the thing. Why is that?”

  “Oh, that is simple to answer,” Tomorrow Morning said easily. “It is because they are all terrified of me.”

  Then Tomorrow Morning took up the paddle once again, and pulled them back toward the beach. It was almost time for evening services. They were welcomed home with warmth and joy. He gave a beautiful sermon.

  Not a single person dared to ask where they had been.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Tomorrow Morning left Tahiti three days later, to return to his mission on Raiatea—and to his wife and children. For the most part, over the course of those days, Alma kept to herself. She spent a good bit of time in her fare, alone with Roger the dog, contemplating all she had learned. She felt simultaneously relieved and burdened: relieved of all her old questions; burdened by the answers.

  She skipped the morning baths in the river with Sister Manu and the other women, for she did not want them to see the blue dye that still faintly marked her skin. She went to church services, but she stayed near the back of the crowd, and made herself inconspicuous. She and Tomorrow Morning never had a moment alone together again. In fact, from what she could see, he never had a moment to himself, either. It was a miracle she had ever been able to find seclusion with him at all.

  The day before Tomorrow Morning’s departure, there was another celebration in his honor—a duplicate of the remarkable festivities two weeks prior. Again, there was dancing and feasting. Again, there were musicians, and wrestling matches, and cockfights. Again, there were fire pits and slaughtered pigs. Alma could see more clearly now how venerated Tomorrow Morning was, even more than he was loved. She could also see the position of responsibility he held, and how ably he conducted himself in that position. The people draped numberless strands of flowers around his neck; the flowers hung heavily upon him, like chains. He was presented with gifts: a pair of green doves in a cage, a drove of protesting young pigs, an ornate eighteenth-century Dutch gun that could no longer shoot, a Bible bound in goatskin, jewelry for his wife, bolts of calico, sacks of sugar and tea, a fine iron bell for his church. The people laid the gifts at his feet, and he received them with grace.

  At dusk, a group of women with brooms came down to the shoreline and began to sweep clean the beach for a game of haru raa puu. Alma had never before seen a game of haru raa puu, but she knew what it was, for the Reverend Welles had told her. The game—whose name translated as something like “seizing the ball”—was traditionally played by two teams of women, who faced off against each other across a stretch of beach approximately one hundred feet in length. At either end of this ad hoc field they drew a line in the sand, to signify a goal. The function of a ball was served by a thick bundle of tightly twisted plantain fronds, about the diameter of a medium-sized pumpkin, though not as heavy. The point of the game, as Alma had learned, was to seize the ball from the opposing team and to scramble down to the opposite end of the field without being tackled by one’s opponents. If the ball happened to go into the sea, the game would continue in the waves. A player was permitted to do absolutely anything to stop her opponents from scoring.

  Haru raa puu was considered by the English missionaries to be both unladylike and stimulating, and was therefore forbidden at all the other settlements. Indeed, to be fair to the missionaries, the game went quite a bit beyond unladylike. Women were routinely injured in matches of haru raa puu—limbs broken, skulls cracked, blood shed. It was, as the Reverend Welles stated admiringly, “a stunning show of savagery.” But violence was quite the point of it. In the olden times, as men practiced for war, the women had practiced haru raa puu. Thus the ladies, too, would be prepared, should the time come to fight. Why had the Reverend Welles allowed haru raa puu to continue, then, when the other missionaries had banned it as an unchristian expression of pure savagery? Why, for the same reason as always: he simply could not see the harm in it.

  Once the game began, though, Alma could not help but think that the Reverend Welles had been gravely mistaken on this point: there was potential for tremendous harm in a match of haru raa puu. The moment the ball was in play, the women were transformed into creatures both formidable and frightening. These kind and hospitable Tahitian ladies—whose bodies Alma had seen at morning baths, whose food she had shared, whose babies she had dandled upon her knee, whose voices she had heard uplifted in earnest prayer, and whose hair she had seen ornamented so pret
tily with flowers—rearranged themselves immediately into rival battalions of demonic hellcats. Alma could not determine whether the point of the game was, indeed, to seize the ball or to tear off the limbs of one’s opponents—or perhaps a combination of both. She saw sweet Sister Etini (Sister Etini!) make a grab for another woman’s hair and throw her to the ground—and her opponent had not even been near the ball!

  The crowd on the beach loved the spectacle and raised a clamor of cheers. The Reverend Welles cheered, too, and Alma saw for the first time the Cornish dockside ruffian he had once been, before Christ and Mrs. Welles had saved him from his belligerent ways. Watching the women attack the ball and each other, the Reverend Welles no longer looked like a harmless little elf; he more resembled a fearless little rat terrier.

  Then quite suddenly, absolutely out of nowhere, Alma was run over by a horse.

  Or that was what it felt like. It was not a horse, however, that had knocked her to the ground; it was Sister Manu, who’d come running off the field to charge at Alma sideways with full might. Sister Manu gripped Alma by the arm and dragged her onto the field of play. The crowd loved this. The clamor grew louder. Alma caught a glimpse of the Reverend Welles’s face, bright with the thrill of this surprising turn of events, shouting his delight. She glanced at Tomorrow Morning, whose demeanor was polite and reserved. He was far too much the majestic figure to laugh at such an exhibition, but neither was he disapproving.

  Alma did not want to play haru raa puu, but nobody had conferred with her on this point. She was in the game before she knew it. She felt as though she was being attacked from all sides, but this was most likely because she was being attacked from all sides. Somebody thrust the ball into her hands and pushed her. It was Sister Etini.