The Signature of All Things

and now, but he was unconcerned with the crabs. He prattled along as he walked.
    “I am intrigued to see how you will find Tahiti, Sister Whittaker, from a botanical point of view, you see,” he said. “Many are disappointed by it. It is a lush climate, you see, but we are a small island, so you will find that there is more abundance here than variety. Sir Joseph Banks most certainly found Tahiti lacking—botanically, I mean. He felt the people were far more interesting than the plants. Perhaps he had a point! We have only two varieties of orchids—Mr. Pike was so sorry to hear of that, though he avidly searched for more of them—and once you learn the palms, which you will do in a snap, there is not much more to discover. There is a tree called apage , you see, which will remind you of a gum tree, and it rises to forty feet—but not very magnificent for a woman raised in the deep forests of Pennsylvania, I wager! Ha-ha-ha!”
    Alma did not have the energy to tell the Reverend Welles that she had not been raised in a deep forest.
    He went on: “There is a lovely sort of laurel called tamanu —useful, good. Your furniture is made of it. Impervious to insects, you see. Then a sort of a magnolia, called the hutu , which I sent to your good father in 1838. Hibiscus and mimosa are to be found everywhere by the seashore. You will like the mape chestnut—perhaps you saw it by the river? I find it the most beautiful tree on the island. The women make their clothing from the bark of a sort of paper-mulberry tree—they call it tapa— but now many of them prefer the cotton and calico that the sailors bring.”
    “I brought calico,” Alma murmured sadly. “For the women.”
    “Oh, they will appreciate that!” the Reverend Welles said breezily, as though he had already forgotten that Alma’s belongings had been stolen. “Did you bring paper? Books?”
    “I did,” Alma said, feeling more mournful by the moment.
    “Well, it is difficult here with paper, you will see. The wind, the sand, the salt, the rain, the insects—never was there a climate less conducive to books ! I have watched all my papers vanish before my eyes, you see!”
    As have I, just now , Alma nearly said. She did not think she had ever been this hungry in her life, or this tired.
    “I wish I had a Tahitian’s memory ,” the Reverend Welles went on. “Thenone would have no need for papers! What we keep in libraries, they keep in their minds. I feel such a half-wit, in comparison. The youngest fisherman here knows the names of two hundred stars! What the old ones here know, you could not imagine. I used to keep documents, but it was too discouraging to watch them be eaten away, even as I laid down the words. The ripening climate here produces fruit and flower in abundance, you see, but also mold and rot. It is not a land for scholars! But what is history to us, I ask? So brief is our stay in the world! Why make such a bother to record our flickering lives? If the mosquitoes trouble you too severely in the evenings, you may ask Sister Manu to show you how to burn dried pig dung by your door; it keeps them down a bit. You will find Sister Manu most useful. I used to preach the sermons here, but she enjoys it more than I do, and the natives prefer her sermons to mine, so now she is the preacher. She has no family, and so she tends to the pigs. She feeds them by hand, you see, to encourage them to stay near the settlement. She is wealthy, in her way. She can trade a single piglet for a month of fish and other treasures. The Tahitians value roasted piglet. They used to believe that the smell of flesh draws near the gods and spirits. Of course, some of them still believe that, despite being Christians, ha-ha-ha! In any case, Sister Manu is good to know. She has a fine singing voice. To a European ear, the music of Tahiti wants in every quality that would render it pleasurable, but you may learn to tolerate it with time.”
    So Sister Manu was not the Reverend Welles’s wife, Alma thought. Who was his wife, then? Where was his wife?
    He kept talking, tirelessly: “If you see lights out on the bay at night, do not be alarmed. It is only the men, gone fishing with lanterns. It is most picturesque. The flying fish are drawn to the light, and they land in the canoes. Some of the boys are able to catch them by hand. I tell you—whatever natural variety is lacking on the land in Tahiti, it is more than made up for by the abundance of wonders at sea!