The Signature of All Things (63 page)

“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. ‘Historian’ 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.”

“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.”