The Signature of All Things

outside world. No letters came to her in Tahiti, although she frequently wrote home to Prudence and Hanneke, and sometimes even to George Hawkes. She diligently sent her letters away on whaling ships, knowing that the likelihood of their ever reachingPhiladelphia was slim. She had learned that sometimes the Reverend Welles did not hear from his wife and daughter in Cornwall for two years at a time. Sometimes, when letters did arrive, they were waterlogged and unreadable after the long voyage at sea. This felt more tragic to Alma than never hearing from one’s family at all, but her friend accepted it as he accepted all vexations: with calm repose.
    Alma was lonely, and the heat was insufferable—no cooler at night than during the day. Alma’s little house became an airless oven. She awoke one night with a man’s voice whispering straight into her ear, “ Listen! ” But when she sat up, no one was in the room—none of the Hiro contingent, and not Roger the dog, either. There was not even a trace of wind. She stepped outside, her heart beating strongly. Nobody was there. She saw that Matavai Bay had become, in the hushed and balmy night, as smooth as a mirror. The entire canopy of stars above her was reflected perfectly in the water, as though there were two heavens now: one above, one below. The silence and purity of this was formidable. The beach felt heavy with presences.
    Had Ambrose ever seen such a thing while he was here? Two heavens, in one night? Had he ever felt this dread and wonderment, this sense of both loneliness and presence? Was he the one who had just awoken her, with that voice in her ear? She tried to recall if it had sounded like Ambrose’s voice, but she could not say for sure. Would she even know Ambrose’s voice anymore, if she heard it?
    It would have been precisely like Ambrose, though, to wake her up and encourage her to listen . Certainly, yes. If ever a dead man would try to speak to the living, it would be Ambrose Pike—he, with all his lofty fancies of the metaphysical and the miraculous. He had even halfway convinced Alma herself of miracles, and she was not susceptible to such beliefs. Had they not seemed like sorcerers, that night in the binding closet—speaking to each other without words, speaking through the soles of their feet and the palms of their hands? He had wanted to sleep beside her, he’d said, so he could listen to her thoughts. She had wanted to sleep beside him so that she could fornicate at last, put a man’s member inside her mouth—but he had merely wanted to listen to her thoughts. Why could she not have allowed him to simply listen? Why could he not have allowed her to reach for him?
    Had he ever thought of her, even once, when he was here in Tahiti?
    Perhaps he was attempting to send messages to her now, but the breach was too wide. Maybe the words grew soggy and indecipherable across the great gulf between death and earth—just like those sad, ruined letters that the Reverend Welles sometimes received from his wife in England.
    “Who were you?” Alma asked Ambrose in the leaden night, looking across the silent, reflective bay. Her voice on the empty beach was so loud that it startled her. She listened for an answer until her ears ached, but she heard nothing. There was not so much as a tiny wave lapping the beach. The water might as well have been molten pewter, and the air, too.
    “Where are you now, Ambrose?” she asked, more quietly this time.
    Not a sound.
    “Show me where I can find The Boy,” she requested, in a low whisper.
    Ambrose did not answer.
    Matavai Bay did not answer.
    The sky did not answer.
    She was blowing on cold embers; nothing was here.
    Alma sat down and waited. She thought of the story the Reverend Welles had told her of Taroa, the original god of the Tahitians. Taroa, the creator. Taroa, born in a seashell. Taroa lay silently for countless ages as the only thing living in the universe. The world was so empty that when he called out across the darkness, there was not even an echo. He nearly died of loneliness. Out of that inestimable solitude and emptiness, Taroa brought forth our world.
    Alma lay back on the sand and shut her eyes. It was more comfortable out here than on her mattress in her stuffy fare . She did not mind the crabs, who tottered and skittered busily around her. They, inside their shells, were the only things moving on the beach, the only things alive in the universe. She waited on that small sliver of