The Signature of All Things (64 page)

“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.”

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.”

N
ow 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.