The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

She remembered her father’s saying, “To my mind, the homely one is worth ten of the pretty one.”

Her father—the sun, the center of it all—had called out across the universe, “Give the girl a place!” and had encouraged Alma to run. For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that it must have been he, Henry, who had thrust the torch into her hands that night, entrusting her with fire, releasing her as a Promethean comet across the lawn, and across the wide open world.

I believe that on these islands the news of the Creator and of Jesus Christ must be communicated not through gentleness and persuasion, but through power. That is why I have found success where others have failed.”

emissary.

The emissaries were neither of this world nor the next, but they moved between the two.”

“He was lonely on earth, Alma, for nobody was similar to him. He could find no home.”

I allowed him to draw those pictures of me—no, I encouraged him to draw those pictures of me—for I am vain. I told him to draw me as he would draw an orchid, in blameless nakedness. For what is the difference, in the eyes of God, between a naked man and a flower? This is what I told him. That is how I brought him near.”

You have explained that you are compelled by a desire for comprehension. Now let me give you to understand what sort of a person I am: I am a conqueror. I do not boast to say it. It is merely my nature. Perhaps you have never before met a conqueror, so it is difficult for you to understand.”

The women here know how to do this dreadful thing safely. They know precisely how deeply to cut themselves, such that they can bleed out their sorrows without causing dire harm. Afterward, they tend to the wound immediately.

All he had wanted was purity, and all she had wanted was pleasure.

“This should not surprise you, Alma. My father is kindness incarnate.”

“It appears that you do not quite understand what a conqueror is. It is not necessary for me to force things—once I am decided, the others have no choice.

Ambrose had permitted Tomorrow Morning to touch him, whereas he had only recoiled from her in abhorrence. It was possible this information made her feel worse than anything else she had yet learned today.

Tomorrow Morning looked at her with infinite tenderness. “So this is where we are different, you and I,” he said. “For you relented.”

She hadn’t known that he spoke French at all. What else did he have in that mind of his? She marveled at it. He had done well for an orphan boy.

The cave was not merely mossy; it throbbed with moss. It was not merely green; it was frantically green. It was so bright in its verdure that the color nearly spoke, as though—smashing through the world of sight—it wanted to migrate into the world of sound. The moss was a thick, living pelt, transforming every rock surface into a mythical, sleeping beast.

Her first reaction upon entering this miraculous place was to shut her eyes against the beauty.

The cave was so beautiful that it made her bones ache with longing. She had never before coveted anything as much as she coveted this glimmering spectacle of mosses. She wanted to be swallowed by it. Already—although she was standing right there—she began to miss this place. She knew she would miss it for the rest of her days.

She wanted to press straight through him and come out the other side—or, better still, be blotted out by him, absorbed into his guts, erased, negated.

Tomorrow Morning’s form was beautiful—but this was evident, unsurprising, beyond argument, and unimportant. Alma Whittaker’s form was not beautiful—but this, too, was evident, unsurprising, beyond argument, and unimportant.

She needed to touch him more intimately; he was the one person who had ever touched Ambrose.

almsgiving.

They denned down like brother foxes.

“Oh, that is simple to answer,” Tomorrow Morning said easily. “It is because they are all terrified of me.”

venerated

The people draped numberless strands of flowers around his neck; the flowers hung heavily upon him, like chains.

The moment the ball was in play, the women were transformed into creatures both formidable and frightening.

Watching the women attack the ball and each other, the Reverend Welles no longer looked like a harmless little elf; he more resembled a fearless little rat terrier.

Somebody called her a poreito—which, strictly translated, meant “shellfish,” but vernacularly was a quite rude term for the female genitalia.

Alma realized she was about to die. Shockingly, she relaxed. It was not so bad, she thought. It would be so easy, in fact. Death—so feared and so dodged—was, once you faced it, the simplest thing going. In order to die, one merely had to stop attempting to live.

With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory—most mercifully of all—would end.

Lastly, she knew one other thing, and this was the most important realization of all: she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died.

Then Alma let go, releasing her grip on Sister Manu’s neck. Without a moment’s hesitation, Manu howled back in Alma’s face a magnificent roar of approval.

She came striding out of the sea like she was born from it.

Her journey might have been both swifter and easier if she’d not had Roger the dog along with her. But she did have him, for when the time had come to leave Tahiti at last, she’d found herself morally incapable of leaving him behind.

She paid. She sliced open yet more hidden pockets in the hems of her traveling dresses, and pulled out yet more gold, one coin at a time. One must always have a bribe.

The natural world was a place of punishing brutality, where species large and small competed against each other in order to survive. In this struggle for existence, the strong endured; the weak were eliminated.

Tomorrow Morning was a pagan who had transmuted into a devout Christian—for he was cunning and self-preserving, and had seen the direction the world was taking. He had chosen the future over the past.

On the other hand, there was Ambrose Pike, a man whom God had blessed fourfold with genius, originality, beauty, and grace—but who simply did not have the gift of endurance. Ambrose had misread the world. He had wished for the world to be a paradise, when in fact it was a battlefield.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught but a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it—even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

She did not need a library; she was a library.

That whatever is true for mosses must be true for all living things.

“The victor shall win—but only until he no longer wins.”

ignominy

She did not feel that the fortune was rightfully hers. It struck her as a matter of utmost personal consequence that she—from this point forth—make her own way in the world.

She drew herself up to her most formidable height and, like a rauti, launched into an imposing recitation of her bloodline. “

Normally, when strangers stared at Roger, he would turn his back on them, hang his head, and sigh in misery. But suddenly Roger did the strangest thing. He left Alma’s side, walked under the table, and lay down with his chin upon Dr. van Devender’s feet.

Uncle Dees nodded, but did not offer condolence. This amused Alma; her mother would have responded the same way. Facts are facts. Death is death.

“A bryologist? But what on earth do you know about mosses?” Here Alma could not help but laugh. It was a marvelous thing, to laugh.

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.