The Signature of All Things

There were grandmothers, too, but they also died.” He paused, considering something, and then continued, correcting himself: “No, I am mistaking the order of the deaths, Alma, please excuse me. It was the grandmothers who died first, as the weakest members of the family. So, yes, first it was my grandmothers who died, and then my father, and then so forth, as I have said. I, too, was sick for a spell, but I did not die—as you can see. But these are common stories in Tahiti. Surely you have heard them before?”
    Alma was not sure what to say, so she said nothing. While she knew of the ruinous death toll across Polynesia over the past fifty years, nobody had told her any stories of their personal losses.
    “You’ve seen the scars on Sister Manu’s forehead?” he asked. “Has anyone explained to you their origin?”
    She shook her head. She did not know what any of this had to do with Ambrose.
    “Those are grief scars,” he said. “When the women here in Tahiti mourn, they cut their heads with sharks’ teeth. It is gruesome, I know, to a European mind, but it is a means for a woman to both convey and unloose her sorrow. Sister Manu has more scars than most because she lost the entirety of her family, including several children. This is perhaps why she and I have always been so fond of each other.”
    Alma was struck by his use of the quiet word fond as a means of expressing the allegiance between a woman who had lost all her children and a boy who had lost all his mothers. It did not seem a forceful enough word.
    Then Alma thought of Sister Manu’s other physical anomaly. “What about her fingers?” she asked, holding up her own hands. “The missing tips?”
    “That is another legacy of loss. Sometimes people here will cut off their fingertips as an expression of grief. This became easier to do when the Europeans brought us iron and steel.” He smiled ruefully. Alma did not smile in return; it was too awful. He continued. “Now, as for my grandfather, whom I have not yet mentioned, he was a rauti. Do you know about the rauti ? The Reverend Welles has tried over the years to enlist my help in translating this word, but it’s difficult. My good father uses the word ‘haranguer,’ but that does not convey the dignity of the position. ‘Historian’ comes close, but it is not quite accurate, either. The task of the rauti is to run alongside men as they charge into battle, and to keep up their courage by reminding them of who they are. The rauti sings out the bloodlines and the lineage of each man, reminding the warriors of the glory of their family history. He ensures that they do not forget the heroism of their forefathers. The rauti knows the lineage of every man on this island, all the way back to the gods, and he chants out their courage for them. One could say it is a kind of sermon, but a violent one.”
    “What were the verses like?” Alma asked, reconciling herself to this long, incongruous story. He had brought her here for a reason, she supposed, and he must be telling her this for a reason.
    Tomorrow Morning turned his face toward the cave entrance, and thought for a moment. “In English? It does not have the same power, but it would be something along the lines of, ‘ Give forth all your vigilance until their will is severed! Hang upon them like lightning! You are Arava, the son of Hoani, the grandson of Paruto, who was born of Pariti, who sprang from Tapunui, who claimed the head of the mighty Anapa, the father of eels—you are that man! Break over them like the sea!’” Tomorrow Morning thundered out these words, and they reverberated across the stones, drowning out the waves. He turned back to Alma—who had gooseflesh up her arms now, and who could not imagine the impact this must have had in Tahitian, if it stirred her so greatly in English—and said in his conversational voice, “Women fought, too, at times.”
    “Thank you,” she said, though she could not have identified why she said it. “What became of your grandfather?”
    “He died with the rest of them. After my family died, I was a child alone. In Tahiti, this is not so grave a fate for a child as it might be, I suppose, in London or Philadelphia. Children here are given independence from a young age, and anyone who can climb a tree or cast a line can feed himself. Nobody here will freeze to death in the night. I was similar to the young boys you see on the beach at Matavai Bay, who are also without family,