The Signature of All Things (69 page)

He made no commitment.

“You do read English, I assume?” she asked.

He raised one white eyebrow, as though to say,
Honestly, woman—show some respect
.

Before Alma passed the small package to her uncle, she reached for a pencil on his desk and asked, “May I?”

He nodded, and she wrote something on the outside of the parcel.

“This is the name and address of the hotel where I am currently staying, near the port. Take your time in reading this document, and let me know if you would like to speak to me again. If I have heard no word from you within a week, I shall return here, collect my thesis, bid you farewell, and go on about my way. After that, I promise, I shan’t bother you or anyone in the family again.”

As Alma was saying this, she watched her uncle spear another small triangle of
wentelteefje
on his fork. Rather than carry the fork to his mouth, though, he tilted sideways in his chair, slowly sliding one shoulder down, in order to offer the food to Roger the dog—even as he kept his eye on Alma, pretending to listen to her with complete absorption.

“Oh, do be careful . . .” Alma leaned over the table in concern. She was about to warn her uncle that this dog had a terrible habit of biting anyone who tried to feed him, but before she could speak, Roger had raised up his misshapen little head and—as delicately as a fine-mannered lady—removed the cinnamon toast from the tines of the fork.

“Well, I’ll be,” Alma marveled, backing off.

Her uncle had still made no overt mention of the dog, though, so Alma said nothing more on the matter.

She brushed off her skirts and collected herself. “It has been a most sincere pleasure to meet you,” she said. “This encounter has meant more to me, sir, than you could possibly suspect. I have never before had the pleasure of knowing an uncle, you see. I do hope you will enjoy my paper, and that it will not overly shock you. Good day, then.”

He responded with nothing more than a nod.

Alma started for the door. “Come, Roger,” she said, without turning to look behind her.

She waited, holding the door open, but the dog did not move.

“Roger,” she said more firmly, turning to look at him. “Come now.”

Still, the dog did not move from Uncle Dees’s feet.

“Go on, dog,” said Dees, not very convincingly, and without moving so much as an inch.

“Roger!” Alma demanded, bending down to see him more clearly under the table. “Come now, don’t be silly!”

She had never before needed to call for him; he had always simply
followed her. But Roger put back his ears and held his ground. He was not going to leave.

“He’s never behaved like this before,” she apologized. “I’ll carry him out.”

But her uncle put up a hand. “Perhaps the little fellow can stay here with me for a night or two,” he suggested casually, as though it meant nothing to him whatsoever, one way or the other. He did not even meet Alma’s eye as he said it. He looked—for just a moment—like a young boy, trying to persuade his mother to permit him to keep a stray.

Ah, Uncle Dees,
she thought. Now I can see you.

“Of course,” Alma said. “If you’re quite certain it’s not a bother?”

Dees shrugged, nonchalant as could be, and stabbed another piece of
wentelteefje.

“We will manage,” he said, and fed the dog again, straight from the fork.

A
lma walked briskly away from the Hortus Botanicus, in the general direction of the port. She did not wish to take a hackney cab; she felt far too animated to sit in a coach. She felt empty-handed and lighthearted and somewhat shaken and very much alive. And hungry. She kept turning her head and looking for Roger, out of force of habit, but he was not trailing behind her. Dear heavens, she had just left both her dog and her life’s work in that man’s office, after a mere fifteen-minute interview!

What an encounter! What a risk!

But it was a risk she had had to take, for this is where Alma wanted to be—if not at the Hortus, then here in Amsterdam, or at least in Europe. She had dearly missed the northern world during her time in the South Seas. She had missed the change of seasons, and the hard, bright, bracing sunlight of winter. She had missed the rigors of a cold climate, and the rigors of the mind, as well. She was simply not made for the tropics—neither in complexion nor in disposition. There were those who loved Tahiti because it felt to them like Eden—like the beginning of history—but Alma did not wish to live at the beginning of history; she wished to live within humanity’s most recent moment, at the cusp of invention and progress. She did not wish to inhabit a land of spirits and ghosts; she desired a world of telegraphs, trains, improvements, theories, and science, where things changed by the day. She longed to work again in a productive and serious environment, surrounded
by productive and serious people. She desired the comforts of crowded bookshelves, collection jars, papers that would not be lost to mold, and microscopes that would not go missing in the night. She longed for access to the latest scientific journals. She longed for peers.

More than anything, she longed for family—and the sort of family with whom she’d been raised: sharp, inquiring, challenging, and intelligent. She wanted to feel like a Whittaker again, surrounded by Whittakers. But since there were no more Whittakers left in the world (aside from Prudence Whittaker Dixon, who was busy with her school; and aside from whatever members of her father’s appalling and unknown clan had not yet died in English prisons) then she wanted to be around the van Devenders.

If they would have her.

But what if they would not have her? Well, that was the gamble. The van Devenders—whatever remained of
them
—might not long for her company quite as profoundly as she longed for theirs. They might not welcome her offered contributions to the Hortus. They might see her as nothing but an interloper, an amateur. It had been a precarious play for Alma to have left her treatise with her uncle Dees. His reaction to her work might be anything—from boredom (
the mosses of Philadelphia?
), to religious offense (
continuous creation?
), to scientific alarm (
a theory for the
entire
natural world?
). Alma knew that her paper ran the risk of making her look reckless, arrogant, naive, anarchistic, degenerate, and even a tiny bit French. Yet her paper was also—more than anything else—a portrait of her capacities, and she wished for her family to know her capacities, if they were to know her at all.

Should the van Devenders and the Hortus Botanicus turn Alma away, however, she resolved to square her shoulders and carry on. Perhaps she would take up residence in Amsterdam regardless, or perhaps she would return to Rotterdam, or perhaps she would move to Leiden and live near the university there. If not Holland, there was always France, always Germany. She could find a position elsewhere, perhaps even at another botanical garden. It was difficult for a woman, but not impossible—especially with her father’s name and Dick Yancey’s influence to lend her credibility. She knew of all the prominent professors of bryology in Europe; many had been her correspondents over the years. She could seek them out, and ask to become somebody’s assistant. Alternatively, she could always teach—not at the university level, but one could always find a position as a governess within an
affluent family somewhere. If not botany, she could teach languages. Heaven knows, she had enough of them in her head.

She walked the city for hours. She was not ready to return to the hotel. She could not imagine sleeping. She both missed Roger and felt liberated without him trailing along behind her. She did not yet have a grasp of Amsterdam’s geography, so she wandered, losing and finding herself, through the city’s curious shape—meandering all around its great half-drawn bow, with its five giant, curving canals. She crossed over waterways again and again, on dozens of bridges whose names she did not know. She strolled along Herengracht, admiring the handsome homes with their forked chimneys and jutting gables. She passed the Palace. She found the central post office. She found a café, where she was at last able to order a plate of her own
wentelteefjes
, which she ate with more pleasure than any meal she could remember—while at the same time reading an oldish copy of
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper
, which some kind British tourist had probably left behind.

Night fell, and she kept walking. She passed ancient churches and new theaters. She saw taverns and gin shops and arcades and worse. She saw old Puritans in short cloaks and neck ruffs, looking as if they had stepped out of the time of Charles I. She saw young women with their arms bared, beckoning men into darkened doorways. She saw—and smelled—the herring-packing concerns. She saw the houseboats along the canals, with their thrifty potted gardens and prowling cats. She walked through the Jewish quarter, and saw the workshops of the diamond cutters. She saw foundling hospitals and orphanages; she saw printing houses and banks and countinghouses; she saw the tremendous central flower market, shuttered for the night. All around her—even at this late hour—she sensed the hum of commerce.

Amsterdam—built on silt and stilts, protected and maintained by pumps, sluices, valves, dredging machines, and dikes—struck Alma not so much as a city, but as an
engine
, a triumph of human industriousness. It was the most contrived place one could ever imagine. It was the sum of human intelligence. It was perfect. She never wanted to leave.

It was long after midnight when she finally returned to her hotel. Her feet were blistering in their new shoes. The proprietress did not respond kindly to her late-night knock on the door.

“Where is your dog?” demanded the woman.

“I’ve left him with a friend.”

“Humph,” said the woman. She could not have looked more disapproving if Alma had said, “I’ve sold him to a gypsy.”

She handed Alma her key. “No men in your room tonight, remember.”

Not tonight, nor any other night, my dear, thought Alma. But thank you for even imagining it.

T
he next morning, Alma was awakened by a pounding on her door. It was her old friend, the peevish hotel proprietress.

“There’s a coach waiting for you, lady!” the woman yelled, in a voice as pure as tar.

Alma stumbled to the door. “I am not expecting a coach,” she said.

“Well, it’s expecting you,” yelled the woman. “Get dressed. The man says he ain’t leaving without you. Take your bags, he says. He paid your room already. I don’t know where these people get the idea that I am a messenger service.”

Alma, muzzy-headed, dressed and packed her two small bags. She took a little extra time to make her bed—perhaps conscientiously, or perhaps because she was stalling. What coach? Was she being arrested? Expatriated? Was this some sort of a flimflam, a trick played on tourists? But she wasn’t a tourist.

She came downstairs and found a liveried driver, waiting for her beside a modest private carriage.

“Good morning, Miss Whittaker,” he said, tipping his hat. He tossed her bags up by his seat in the front. She had the worst feeling she was about to be put on a train.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t believe I requested a coach.”

“Dr. van Devender sent me,” he said, opening the carriage door. “Up you go, now—he’s waiting, and anxious to see you.”

It took nearly an hour to wind through the city back to the botanical gardens. Alma thought it would have been far faster to walk. More soothing, too. She would have been less agitated, could she have walked. The driver delivered her at last, next to a fine brick house just behind the Hortus, on Plantage Parklaan.

“Go on,” he said over his shoulder, fussing with her bags. “Let yourself in—door’s open. He’s waiting for you, I say.”

It was somewhat unsettling for Alma to let herself in to a private home unannounced, but she did as directed. Then again, this home was not entirely foreign, either. If she was not mistaken, her mother had been born here.

She saw an open door just off the receiving hallway, and peeked inside. It was the parlor. She saw her uncle sitting on a divan, waiting for her.

The first thing she noticed was that Roger the dog—incredibly—was curled up on his lap.

The second thing she noticed was that Uncle Dees was holding her treatise in his right hand, resting it lightly on Roger’s back, as though the dog were a portable writing desk.

The third thing she noticed was that her uncle’s face was wet with tears. His shirt collar was also soaked. His beard appeared to be soaked, as well. His chin was trembling, and his eyes were alarmingly red. It looked as if he had been weeping for hours.

“Uncle Dees!” She rushed to his side. “Whatever is the matter?”

The old man swallowed and took her hand in his. His hand was hot and damp. For some time he could not speak at all. He clutched her fingers tightly. He would not let go of her.

At last, with his other hand, he held up her treatise.

“Oh, Alma,” he said, and he did not bother to brush away his tears. “May God bless you, child. You have your mother’s mind.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

F
our years passed.

They were happy years for Alma Whittaker, and why would they not have been? She had a home (her uncle had moved her straight into the van Devender household); she had a family (her uncle’s four sons, their lovely wives, and their broods of growing children); she was able to communicate regularly by mail with Prudence and Hanneke back in Philadelphia; and she held a position of considerable responsibility at the Hortus Botanicus. Her official title was Curator van Mossen—the Curator of Mosses. She was given her own office, on the second floor of a pleasant building only two doors down the street from the van Devender residence.

She sent for all her old books and notes from the carriage house back at White Acre, and for her herbarium, too. It was like a holiday for her, the week her shipment arrived; she spent days in nostalgic absorption, unpacking it all. She had missed every item and volume of it. She was blushingly amused to discover, buried in the bottoms of the trunks of books, all her old prurient reading material. She decided to keep the lot of it—though she was sure to keep it well hidden. For one thing, she did not know how to dispose of such scandalous texts respectably. For another thing, these books still had the power to stir her. Even at her advanced age, a stubborn tug of brazen desire lingered within her body, and still demanded her attention on certain nights, when, under the coverlet, she would revisit her familiar old quim, remembering once more the taste of Tomorrow Morning, the smell of Ambrose, the urgency of life’s most
stubborn and unrelenting urges. She did not even attempt to fight these urges anymore; by now, it was evident they were a part of her.