The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Alma took such pity on the poor pony who had to haul her luggage that she stepped out of the carriage and walked along beside it.

biped

magnate;

rancor

discommoded

dissonant

consternation.

now that her belongings had been stolen. She had nothing but a short length of bamboo with which to defend herself, and she could not even reach that.

cognizance,

She also accepted, as instructed by the Reverend Welles, the frustrating reality that her belongings would either show up eventually or they would not, and that there was nothing—absolutely nothing—that could be done about it.

environs.

(She was autotrophic, she thought with a rueful smile; how proud Retta Snow would have been!)

Alma tried not to mind them. She knew they meant her no harm, though she did wish they would not crawl over her while she slept.

indignation

It was as if the island itself were slowly coughing up portions of her swallowed luggage.

countenance.

One can never know the state of another man’s heart.”

The first time the Tahitians heard the clock strike, they fled in terror. The second time, they brought fruit to the clock and bowed before it in awed supplication. The third time, they stole it.

“It is difficult to convert anyone,” he said, “who is less intrigued about your god than he is about your scissors! Ha-ha-ha! But

Tahitian men and women had danced so obscenely and wildly around fires on this very beach that Henry Whittaker—young and unformed—had needed to turn his head away in alarm. Now it was all dullness. The missionaries, the French, and the whaling ships, with their sermons and bureaucracy and diseases, had driven the devil out of Tahiti. The mighty warriors had all died. Now there were just these lazy children napping in the shade, clanging on ax heads and barrel hoops as a barely sufficient means of diversion. What were the young to do with their wildness anymore? Alma continued to search for The Boy, taking

comely,

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.

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.

The five little boys turned into five otters, not merely undaunted by the wet, but delighted by it. All the indolence they had demonstrated during the hot and dry season of cravings was now washed away, replaced by vivid, sudden life.

ebullience

The mosses would always be there; she was looking for something more ephemeral, more urgent: a man.

libidinous

cavorting

fervid

consternation

I simply cannot see the harm in it,” he had once told Alma, who had begun to think of this oft-repeated phrase as a perfect motto for the Reverend Welles.)

mirth,

ribaldry

largesse.

His skin was dark and burnished, his smile a slow moonrise. When he gazed upon anyone, it was an act of generosity, of luminescence.

behemoths,

beleaguered

His eyelashes were so long, it was an absurdity. They seemed not only excessive, but almost confrontational—this spectacle of eyelashes, this needlessly luxuriant fringe. She felt irritation rising within her—nobody required eyelashes such as these.

It was held up by forty-six columns, hewn from the trunks of breadfruit trees, and sanded smooth with sharkskin.

catechism.

nefarious

repudiate.

“Allow me to tell you something about myself, for it might help you to speak more freely. Implanted in my very disposition—though I do not always consider it either a virtue or a blessing—is a desire to understand the nature of things.

assail

benevolent

glib

“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.

I understand from what Ambrose told me that you were your father’s favorite, as well—that Henry loved you even more, perhaps, than he loved his own wife?” Alma started. It was a shocking statement.

“It transfers to us a unique power, does it not? If the person of most consequence in the world has chosen to prefer us over all others, then we become accustomed to having what we wish for. Wasn’t that the case with you, as well? How can we not feel that we are strong—people like you and me?”

He had never allowed her to leave White Acre, not only because he had needed her, she suddenly realized, but also because he had loved her.