The Signature of All Things

again. But I was a changed person. I avoided all the trees and all people whom I had seen tinted by God’s angry swissen during my episode. I longed for the hymns of the new religion I had witnessed, but I could not remember the words. Soon after that, I went off to the jungle. My family thought it was a mistake—that I would encounter madness there again, and that the solitude would harm my constitution.”
    “Did it?”
    “Perhaps. It is difficult to say. As I told you when first we met, I suffered fevers there. The fevers diminished my strength, but I also welcomed them. There were moments during fever when I believed I could nearly see God’s imprimaturagain, but only nearly. I could see that edicts and stipulations were written into the leaves and vines. I could see that the tree branches around me were bent into a disturbance of messages. There were signatures everywhere, lines of confluence everywhere, but I could not read them. I heard strains of the old familiar music, but I could not capture it. Nothing was revealed to me. When I was ill I sometimes saw glimpses of the angels hidden inside the orchids again—but only the edges of their raiment. The light had to be pure, and everything quite silent, even for that to occur. Yet it was not enough. It was not what I had seen before. Once one has seen angels, Alma, one is not satisfied with the edges of their raiment. After eighteen years, I knew that I would never again witness what I had seen once—not even in the deepest solitude of the jungle, not even in a state of deluded fever—and so I came home. But I suppose I will always long for something else.”
    “What do you long for, precisely?” Alma asked.
    “Purity,” he said, “and communion.”
    Alma, overcome with sadness—and also overcome by a jarring fear that something beautiful was being taken away from her—took all this in. She did not know how to bring Ambrose comfort, though he did not seem to be asking for it. Was he a madman? He did not seem a madman. In a way, shetold herself, she should feel honored he had entrusted her with such secrets. But such alarming secrets! What was one to make of them? She had never seen angels, or witnessed the hidden color of God’s true anger, or swung into the fire. She was not even entirely certain what that meant—to “swing into the fire.” How would one do it? Why would one do it?
    “What plans do you have now?” she asked. Even as she spoke these words, she cursed her plodding and corporeal mind, which could think only in terms of mundane strategies: A man has just spoken of angels, and you ask him his plans.
    But Ambrose smiled. “I wish for a restful life, though I am not convinced I have earned it. I am grateful that you have provided me with a place to live. I enjoy White Acre enormously. It is a sort of heaven for me—or as close as one can reach to heaven, I suppose, while still living. I am sated by the world, and wish for peace. I am fond of your father, who does not seem to condemn me, and who permits me to stay. I am grateful to have work to produce, which brings me occupation and satisfaction. I am most grateful for your companionship. I have felt lonely, I must confess, since 1828—since my friends first brought me out of the snowbank and back into the world. After what I have seen, and because of what I can no longer see, I am always somewhat lonely. But I find that I am less lonely in your company than I am at other times.”
    Alma nearly felt she would cry when she heard this. She considered how to respond. Ambrose had always given so freely of his confidences, and yet she had never shared her own. He was brave with his admissions. Although his admissions frightened her, she should return his bravery in kind.
    “You bring me respite from my loneliness, as well,” Alma said. This was difficult for her to confess. She could not bear to look at him as she said it, but at least her voice did not waver.
    “I would not have known that, dear Alma,” Ambrose said kindly. “You always appear so stalwart.”
    “None of us is stalwart,” Alma replied.
----
    T hey returned to White Acre, back to their normal and pleasant routine, but Alma remained distracted by what she had been told. Sometimes when Ambrose was busy working—drawing an orchid or preparing a stone forlithographic printing—she would watch him, looking for signs of a sickly or sinister mind. But she could see no evidence of it. If he was suffering from, or