The Signature of All Things (65 page)

“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 she 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.

T
hey 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

T
omorrow 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 prettily 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.

“RUN!” she shouted.

Alma ran. She did not get far before she was knocked to the ground again. Somebody had struck her with an arm to the throat, and she was
flung on her back. She bit her tongue on the way down, and tasted blood. She considered simply staying down on the sand to avoid more severe injury, but she feared a trampling by the pitiless herd. She got to her feet. The crowd cheered again. She did not have time to think. She was pulled into a scrimmage of women and had no choice but to go where they were going. She had not the faintest notion of where the ball was. She could not imagine how anyone could know where the ball was. The next thing she knew, she was in the water. She was knocked down again. She came up gasping, salt water in her eyes and down her throat. Somebody pushed her farther out, deeper.

Now she began to feel truly alarmed. These women, like all Tahitians, had learned to swim before they could walk, but Alma had neither confidence nor proficiency in the water. Her skirts were soaked and heavy, which alarmed her more. The waves were not large, but nevertheless they were waves, and they swelled over her. The ball hit her in the ear; she did not see who had thrown it. Somebody called her a
poreito—
which, strictly translated, meant “shellfish,” but vernacularly was a quite rude term for the female genitalia. What had Alma done to deserve this insult of
poreito
?