The Signature of All Things

an audacious, self-possessed figure. An adage of Cicero’s came to her in its original, mighty Latin (the only language, she felt, that could stand up to the thundering groundswell of native eloquence she was right now witnessing): “Nemo umquam neque poeta neque orator fuit, qui quemquam meliorem quam se arbitraretur.”
    Never did there exist a poet or an orator who thought there was another better than himself.
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    T he day became only more fervid from there.
    Through the terrifically effective native telegraph system of Tahiti (fleet-footed boys with loud voices), word spread quickly that Tomorrow Morning had arrived, and the beach at Matavai Bay grew more crowded and exuberant by the hour. Alma wanted to find the Reverend Welles, to ask him many questions, but his tiny form kept disappearing into the mob, and she could only catch fleeting glimpses of him, his white hair flying in the breeze, beaming with happiness. She could not draw near Sister Manu, either, who was so electrified that she lost her giant flowered hat, and who was weeping like a schoolgirl in a crowd of chattering, euphoric women. The Hiro contingent was nowhere to be seen—or, rather, they were everywhere to be seen, but they moved far too quickly for Alma to catch and question them.
    The crowd on the beach—as though by unanimous decision—turned into a revel. Space was cleared for wrestling and boxing matches. Young men flung off their shirts, applied coconut oil, and began to tussle. Children galloped across the shoreline in spontaneous footraces. A ring appeared in the sand, and suddenly a cockfight was under way. As the day went on, musicians arrived, carrying everything from native drums and flutes to European horns and fiddles. On another part of the beach, men wereindustriously digging a fire pit and lining it with stones. They were planning a tremendous roast. Then Alma saw Sister Manu, quite out of nowhere, catch a pig, pin it down, and kill it—much to the consternation of the pig. Alma could not but feel a bit resentful at the sight of this. (How long had she been waiting for a taste of pork? All it took, apparently, was Tomorrow Morning’s arrival, and the deed was done.) With a long knife and a confident hand, Manu cheerfully took the pig apart. She pulled out the viscera, like a woman pulling taffy. She and a few of the stronger women held the pig’s carcass over the open flames of the fire pit to burn off the bristles. Then they wrapped it in leaves and lowered it onto the hot stones. More than a few chickens, helpless in this tidal surge of celebration, followed the pig to its death.
    Alma saw pretty Sister Etini rushing by, her arms filled with breadfruit. Alma lunged forward, touched Etini on the shoulder, and said, “Sister Etini—please tell me: who is Tomorrow Morning?”
    Etini turned with a wide smile. “He is the Reverend Welles’s son,” she said.
    “The Reverend Welles’s son ?” Alma repeated. The Reverend Welles had only daughters—and only one living daughter, at that. If Sister Etini’s English were not so nimble and fluent, Alma might have assumed the woman had misspoken.
    “His son by taio ,” Etini explained. “Tomorrow Morning is his son by adoption. He is my son, too, and Sister Manu’s. He is the son of all in this mission! We are all family by taio .”
    “But where does he come from?” Alma asked.
    “He comes from here,” Etini said, and she could not disguise her tremendous pride in that fact. “Tomorrow Morning is ours, you see.”
    “But where did he arrive from just today?”
    “He arrived from Raiatea, where he now lives. He has a mission of his own there. He has found great success in Raiatea, on an island that was once most hostile to the true God. The people he has brought along with him today, they are his converts—some of his converts, that is. To be sure, he has many more.”
    To be sure, Alma had many more questions, but Sister Etini was eager to attend to the feast, so Alma thanked her and sent her off. She went over to a guava bush by the river and sat down in its shade, to think. There was agreat deal to think about and piece together. Desperate to make sense out of all this astonishing new information, she harkened back to a conversation she’d had months ago with the Reverend Welles. She dimly remembered the Reverend Welles having told her of his three adopted sons—the three most exemplary products of the mission school at Matavai Bay—who now led