The Signature of All Things

thesis, bid you farewell, and go on about my way. After that, I promise, I shan’t bother you or anyone in the family again.”
    As Alma was saying this, she watched her uncle spear another small triangle of wentelteefje on his fork. Rather than carry the fork to his mouth, though, he tilted sideways in his chair, slowly sliding one shoulder down, in order to offer the food to Roger the dog—even as he kept his eye on Alma, pretending to listen to her with complete absorption.
    “Oh, do be careful . . .” Alma leaned over the table in concern. She was about to warn her uncle that this dog had a terrible habit of biting anyone who tried to feed him, but before she could speak, Roger had raised up his misshapen little head and—as delicately as a fine-mannered lady—removed the cinnamon toast from the tines of the fork.
    “Well, I’ll be,” Alma marveled, backing off.
    Her uncle had still made no overt mention of the dog, though, so Alma said nothing more on the matter.
    She brushed off her skirts and collected herself. “It has been a most sincere pleasure to meet you,” she said. “This encounter has meant more to me, sir, than you could possibly suspect. I have never before had the pleasure of knowing an uncle, you see. I do hope you will enjoy my paper, and that it will not overly shock you. Good day, then.”
    He responded with nothing more than a nod.
    Alma started for the door. “Come, Roger,” she said, without turning to look behind her.
    She waited, holding the door open, but the dog did not move.
    “Roger,” she said more firmly, turning to look at him. “Come now.”
    Still, the dog did not move from Uncle Dees’s feet.
    “Go on, dog,” said Dees, not very convincingly, and without moving so much as an inch.
    “Roger!” Alma demanded, bending down to see him more clearly under the table. “Come now, don’t be silly!”
    She had never before needed to call for him; he had always simplyfollowed her. But Roger put back his ears and held his ground. He was not going to leave.
    “He’s never behaved like this before,” she apologized. “I’ll carry him out.”
    But her uncle put up a hand. “Perhaps the little fellow can stay here with me for a night or two,” he suggested casually, as though it meant nothing to him whatsoever, one way or the other. He did not even meet Alma’s eye as he said it. He looked—for just a moment—like a young boy, trying to persuade his mother to permit him to keep a stray.
    Ah, Uncle Dees,she thought. Now I can see you.
    “Of course,” Alma said. “If you’re quite certain it’s not a bother?”
    Dees shrugged, nonchalant as could be, and stabbed another piece of wentelteefje.
    “We will manage,” he said, and fed the dog again, straight from the fork.
----
    A lma walked briskly away from the Hortus Botanicus, in the general direction of the port. She did not wish to take a hackney cab; she felt far too animated to sit in a coach. She felt empty-handed and lighthearted and somewhat shaken and very much alive. And hungry. She kept turning her head and looking for Roger, out of force of habit, but he was not trailing behind her. Dear heavens, she had just left both her dog and her life’s work in that man’s office, after a mere fifteen-minute interview!
    What an encounter! What a risk!
    But it was a risk she had had to take, for this is where Alma wanted to be—if not at the Hortus, then here in Amsterdam, or at least in Europe. She had dearly missed the northern world during her time in the South Seas. She had missed the change of seasons, and the hard, bright, bracing sunlight of winter. She had missed the rigors of a cold climate, and the rigors of the mind, as well. She was simply not made for the tropics—neither in complexion nor in disposition. There were those who loved Tahiti because it felt to them like Eden—like the beginning of history—but Alma did not wish to live at the beginning of history; she wished to live within humanity’s most recent moment, at the cusp of invention and progress. She did not wish to inhabit a land of spirits and ghosts; she desired a world of telegraphs, trains, improvements, theories, and science, where things changed by the day. She longed to work again in a productive and serious environment, surroundedby productive and serious people. She desired the comforts of crowded bookshelves, collection jars, papers that would not be lost to mold, and microscopes that would not go missing in the