The Signature of All Things (54 page)

Alma repeated the word in her head:
fah-ray.
She committed it to
memory. She was exhausted, but even so, Alma Whittaker would have to be far more exhausted than this not to prick up her ears at a new and unfamiliar language. In the dim glow of moonlight, just up a slight slope from the beach, she could see the tiny
fare
hidden under a fretwork of palms. It was not much bigger than the smallest garden shed at White Acre, but it was pleasant enough to look at. If anything, it resembled an English seaside cottage, but much shrunken in scale. A crazy zigzagged path of crushed seashells led from the beach to the door.

“It is a queer path, I know, but the Tahitians made it,” said the Reverend Welles with a laugh. “They see nothing advantageous in making a straight path, for even the shortest distances! You will grow accustomed to such marvels as this! But it is good to be a bit off the beach. You are four yards above highest tide, you see.”

Four yards. It did not seem like much.

Alma and the Reverend Welles approached the cottage up the crooked path. Alma could see that the purpose of a door was answered by a simple screen of plaited palm fronds, which he pushed open easily. Clearly, there was no lock here—nor had there ever been one. Once inside, he lit the lamp. They stood together in the one small open room, beneath a simple thatched roof. Alma could just barely stand up without hitting her head on the lowest rafter. A lizard skittered across the wall. The floor was dried grass that rustled under Alma’s feet. There was a small rough wooden bench with no cushion, but at least it had a back and arms. There was a table with three chairs—one of which was broken and tipped over. It looked like a child’s table, in a poor nursery. Curtainless, glassless windows opened on all sides. The final bit of furniture was a small bed—barely bigger than the bench—with a thin pallet slung on top. The pallet appeared to be made from an old canvas sail, stuffed with something or other. The whole room, such as it was, seemed much more suitable to somebody of the Reverend Welles’s size than her own.

“Mr. Pike lived as the natives live,” he said, “which is to say—he lived in one room only. But if you want partitions, I suppose we could make partitions for you.”

Alma could not imagine where one would put a partition in this tiny place. How do you divide nothing into parts?

“You may wish at some point to move back to Papeete, Sister Whittaker. Most do. There is more civilization to be found there in the capital, I suppose. More vice, as well, and more evil. But there you could find a Chinaman to do your laundry, and that sort of thing. There are all manner of Portuguese and Russians there—all those sorts who fall off whaling boats and never leave. Not that Portuguese and Russians constitute a civilization, but it is more variety of mankind than you will find in our small settlement out here, you see!”

Alma nodded, but she knew she would not be leaving Matavai Bay. This had been Ambrose’s banishment; now it would be hers.

“You will find a spot to cook in the back, by the garden,” the Reverend Welles went on. “Do not expect much of your garden, although Mr. Pike tried nobly to cultivate it. Everyone tries, but once the pigs and goats have finished their forays, there are not many pumpkins left for us! We can get you a goat, if you would like fresh milk. You can ask Sister Manu.”

As though summoned by the sound of her name, Sister Manu appeared at the doorway. She must have been right on their heels. There was almost not enough room for her to enter, with Alma and the Reverend Welles already in the cottage. Alma wasn’t sure Sister Manu would even fit through the door, with that wide, flower-covered hat on her head. Somehow, though, they all squeezed in. Sister Manu opened a bundle of cloth and began to lay food out on the tiny table, using banana leaves as plates. It took all of Alma’s reserve not to dive into the meal immediately. Sister Manu handed Alma a length of bamboo with a stopper of cork.

“Water for you to
drink
!” Sister Manu said.

“Thank you,” said Alma. “You are kind.”

They all stared at each other for quite a while after this: Alma exhaustedly, Sister Manu guardedly, the Reverend Welles cheerfully.

Finally, the Reverend Welles bowed his head and said, “We thank you, Lord Jesus and God our Father, for the safe delivery of your servant Sister Whittaker. We ask that you hold her in your special favor. Amen.”

Then he and Sister Manu left at last, and Alma plunged into the food with both hands, swallowing it in such quick gulps that she did not pause even for a moment to determine what, exactly, it was.

S
he awoke in the middle of the night to the taste of warm iron in her mouth. She smelled blood and fur. There was an animal in her room. A
mammal. She identified this fact before she even remembered where she was. Her heart beat rapidly as she sought more information. She was not on the ship. She was not in Philadelphia. She was in Tahiti—there, she had oriented herself! She was in Tahiti in the cottage where Ambrose had stayed and where he had died. What was the word for her cottage?
Fare
. She was in her
fare
, and there was an animal in it with her.

She heard a whining noise, high and eerie. She sat up in the tiny, uncomfortable bed and looked around. Enough moonlight shone through the window that she could see it now—the dog who stood in the middle of her room. It was a small dog, maybe twenty pounds. Its ears were back and it was baring its teeth at her. Their eyes fastened on each other. The dog’s whine turned to a growl. Alma did not want to fight a dog. Not even a small dog. This thought came to her simply, even calmly. Next to the bed was the short length of bamboo that Sister Manu had given her, filled with fresh water. It was the only thing in reach that might serve as a weapon. She tried to determine whether she could reach for the bamboo without alarming the dog further. No, she most certainly did not want to have a fight with a dog, but if she must fight, she wanted it to be a fair match. She stretched her arm slowly down toward the floor, not taking her eyes off the creature. The dog barked and came nearer. She pulled back her arm. She tried again. The dog barked again, this time with increased anger. There would be no chance for her to find a weapon.

So be it. She was too tired to be afraid.

“What is your complaint with me?” she asked the dog, in a weary tone.

At the sound of her voice, the dog unleashed a great torrent of complaints, barking with such force that his whole body seemed to lift from the floor with every syllable. She stared at him dispassionately. It was the dead of night. She had no lock on her door. She had no pillow for her head. She had lost all her belongings and was sleeping in her filthy traveling dress, with its hems full of hidden coins—all the money she had left to her, now that her belongings had been stolen. She had nothing but a short length of bamboo with which to defend herself, and she could not even reach that. Her house was surrounded by crabs and infested with lizards. And now this: an angry Tahitian dog in her room. She was so exhausted, she nearly felt bored.

“Go away,” she told him.

The dog barked louder. She gave up. She turned her back to him, rolled over, and attempted, once more, to find a comfortable arrangement on the thin pallet. He barked and barked. His indignation had no limits. Attack me, then, she thought. She fell asleep to the sound of his outrage.

A few hours later Alma woke again. The light had changed. It was near dawn. Now there was a boy sitting cross-legged in the center of her floor, staring at her. She blinked, and suspected magic: What sorcerer had come and turned a little dog into a little child?
The boy had long hair and a solemn face. He looked to be approximately eight years old. He wore no shirt, but Alma was relieved to see that he possessed trousers—although one leg was ripped to a short length, as though he had pulled himself out of a trap and left the remainder of his clothing behind.

The boy jumped to his feet, as if he had been waiting for her to awaken. He approached the bed. She drew back in alarm, but then saw that he was holding something, and, what’s more, offering it to her. The object gleamed in the dim morning light, balanced on his palm. It was something slender and brass. He placed it on the edge of her bed. It was the eyepiece to her microscope.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. At the sound of her voice, the boy ran away. The flimsy object that called itself a door swung closed behind him without a sound.

Alma could not fall asleep again after that, but she did not immediately rise, either. She was every bit as weary now as she had been the night before. Who would come to her room next? What sort of a place was this? She must find a means to block the door somehow—but with what? She could move the little table in front of the door at night, but that could easily be shuffled aside. And with windows that were nothing but holes cut in the walls, what good would it do to block the door at all? She fingered the brass eyepiece in her hand with confusion and longing. Where was the rest of her beloved microscope? Who was that child? She should have chased him, to see where he was hiding everything else she owned.

She closed her eyes and listened to the unfamiliar sounds around her. She felt almost as though she could hear the dawn breaking. Most certainly, she could hear the waves just outside her door breaking. The surf sounded disquietingly close. She would prefer to be a bit farther away from the sea. Everything felt too close, too dangerous. A bird, perched on the roof directly
over her head, uttered a strange cry. Its call sounded something like: “
Think! Think! Think!
”

As though she ever did anything else!

Alma rose at last, resigned to wakefulness. She wondered where to find a privy, or a spot that might serve as a privy. Last night she had squatted behind the
fare
, but she hoped for a better arrangement nearby. She stepped out the front door and nearly tripped over something. She looked down and saw—sitting right on her doorstep, if one could call it a doorstep—Ambrose’s valise, waiting politely for her, unopened and tightly buckled as ever. She knelt down, undid the buckles, and threw it open, then quickly dug through the contents: all the pictures were still there.

Up and down the beach, as far as she could see in the dim morning light, there was not a sign of anyone—neither woman nor man, neither boy nor dog.

“
Think!
” shrieked the bird over her head. “
Think!
”

Chapter Twenty-three

B
ecause time does not object to passing—not even in the strangest and most unfamiliar situations—time passed for Alma in Matavai Bay. Slowly, haltingly, she began to comprehend her new world.

Just as she had in childhood, when first awaking to cognizance, Alma began by studying her house. This did not take long, for her minuscule Tahitian
fare
was not exactly White Acre. There was nothing but the one room, the halfhearted door, the three empty windows, the sticks of crude furniture, and the thatched roof full of lizards. That first morning, Alma searched the house quite thoroughly for some vestige of Ambrose, but nothing existed. She looked for signs of Ambrose even before she began the (completely fruitless) search for her own lost luggage. What had she hoped to find? A message to her, written on a wall? A cache of drawings? Maybe a packet of letters, or a diary that actually revealed something other than inscrutable mystical longings? But there was nothing of him here.

Resigned, she borrowed a broom from Sister Manu and swept clean the cobwebs from the walls. She replaced the old dried grass on the floor with new dried grass. She plumped her mattress and accepted the
fare
as her own. She also accepted, as instructed by the Reverend Welles, the frustrating reality that her belongings would either show up eventually or they would not, and that there was nothing—absolutely nothing—that could be done about it. Though this news was distressing, something about it felt
strangely apt, and even just. To be stripped of all that was precious made for a kind of immediate penance. It made her feel somehow closer to Ambrose; Tahiti was where they had both come to lose everything.

Wearing her one remaining dress, then, she continued to explore her environs.

Behind the house was something called a
himaa
, an open oven,
where she learned to boil water and cook a limited assortment of foods. Sister Manu taught her how to manage the local fruits and vegetables. Alma did not think the final product of her cooking was meant to taste quite as much like soot or sand as it did, but she persevered, and felt proud that she could feed herself, which—in her entire long life—she had never before had to do. (She was autotrophic, she thought with a rueful smile; how proud Retta Snow would have been!) There was a sorry patch of garden, but not much to be done about it; Ambrose had built his house upon the burning sand, so it was futile even to try. There was nothing to be done about the lizards, either, who scampered across the rafters all night. If anything, they helped to abate mosquitoes, so Alma tried not to mind them. She knew they meant her no harm, though she did wish they would not crawl over her while she slept. She was happy they were not snakes. Tahiti, mercifully, was not snake country.

It was, however, crab country, but Alma soon taught herself not to be bothered by the crabs of all sizes that scuttled around her feet on the beach. They, too, meant her no harm. As soon as they glimpsed her with their waving, stalked eyes, they skimmed off in the other direction in a quick, clicking panic. She took to walking barefoot as soon as she recognized how much safer it was. Tahiti was too hot, too wet, too sandy, and too slippery for shoes. Fortunately, the environs welcomed bare feet; the island did not have even a single thorned plant, and most of the paths were smooth rock or sand.

Alma learned the shape and character of the beach, and the general habits of the tide. She was not a swimmer, but she encouraged herself to wade into the slow, dark water of Matavai Bay a bit deeper every week. She was grateful for the reef, which kept the bay fairly calm.