Alma kept an eye on the Reverend Welles, who appeared simply charmed by all that he saw. Beside him sat Tomorrow Morning, poised with perfect posture, immaculately dressed like a London gentleman. Throughout the evening, people came to sit by his side, to press their noses against his nose, and to bring him salutations. He received everyone with a spirit of both finesse and largesse. Truly, Alma had to admit, she had never seen a more beautiful human being in all her life. Of course, beauty in the physical form was everywhere to be found in Tahiti, and one grew accustomed to it after a while. Men were beautiful here, women yet more beautiful, and children even more beautiful still. What a pale and spindle-armed group of hunchbacks most Europeans seemed by comparison to the extraordinary Tahitians! It had been said a thousand times, by a thousand awestruck foreigners. So, yes, beauty was in no short supply here, and Alma had seen much of it—but Tomorrow Morning was the most beautiful of all.
His skin was dark and burnished, his smile a slow moonrise. When he gazed upon anyone, it was an act of generosity, of luminescence. It was impossible not to stare at him. Notwithstanding his handsome countenance, his size alone commanded attention. He was truly prodigious in stature, an Achilles in the flesh. Most certainly, one would follow such a man into battle. The Reverend Welles had once told Alma that in the old days in the South Seas, when the islanders went to war against each other, the victors would pick through their opponents’ corpses, looking for the tallest and darkest bodies among the dead. Once they had found those slain behemoths, they would carve open their corpses and remove their bones, from which they made fishhooks, chisels, and weapons. The bones of the largest men, it was believed, were charged with tremendous power, and hence the tools and weapons carved from them would endow their holder with invincibility. As for Tomorrow Morning, Alma thought ghoulishly, they could have made an armory’s worth of weaponry out of him—if they could’ve managed to kill him in the first place.
Alma hovered around the outskirts of the firelight, to remain somewhat inconspicuous while she took in the situation. Nobody took notice of her, so consumed were they by their joy. The revelry went on long into the night. The fires burned high and bright, casting shadows so dark and so twisting that one almost feared to trip over them, or to be clutched by them and pulled down into the pô. The dancing grew wilder and the children behaved like spirits possessed. Alma might have assumed that a visit from a prominent Christian missionary would not have produced quite so much roistering and carousing—but then again, she was still new to Tahiti. None of it disturbed the Reverend Welles, who had never looked happier, never more buoyant.
Long after midnight, the Reverend Welles noticed Alma at last.
“Sister Whittaker!” he called out. “Where are my manners? You must meet my son!”
Alma approached the two men, who were sitting so near the fire that they appeared ablaze themselves. It was an awkward meeting, for Alma was standing and the men—as per local custom—remained seated. She was not about to sit. She was not about to press her nose to anyone else’s nose. But Tomorrow Morning reached up with his long arm and offered a polite handshake.
“Sister Whittaker,” said the Reverend Welles, “this is my son, of whom you have heard me speak. And my dear son, this is Sister Whittaker, you see, who visits us from the United States of America. She is a naturalist of some renown.”
“A naturalist!” said Tomorrow Morning in a fine British accent, nodding with interest. “As a child, I had quite a fondness for natural history. My friends thought me mad, to value that which no one else valued—leaves, insects, coral, and the like. But it was a pleasure and education. What a worthy life, to make so deep a study of the world. How fortunate you are in your vocation.”
Alma gazed down at him. To see his face so close at long last—this indelible face, this face that had so troubled and fascinated her for so long, this face that had brought her here from the other side of the globe, this face that had probed so stubbornly at her imagination, this face that had beleaguered her to the point of obsession—was simply staggering. His face had such a powerful effect upon her that it struck her as incredible that he, in turn, was not equally staggered by seeing her: How could she know him so intimately, and he know her not at all?
But why in heaven would he?
Placidly, he returned her gaze. 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 is a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
With statesmanlike grace, Tomorrow Morning insisted that, no, the pleasure was entirely his own. Then he released her hand, Alma excused herself, and Tomorrow Morning returned his attention to the Reverend Welles—to his happy, elfin, little white father.
He stayed at Matavai Bay a fortnight.
She rarely took her eyes off him, keen to learn—by observation and proximity—whatever she could. What she learned, and quite quickly, was that Tomorrow Morning was beloved. It was close to exasperating, in fact, how beloved he was. She wondered if it was ever exasperating for him. He was never given a moment to himself, although Alma kept watching for one, hoping for a private word with him. It seemed there would never be a chance for it; there were meals and meetings and gatherings and ceremonies all around him, at all hours. He slept in Sister Manu’s house, which buzzed with constant visitors. Queen ’Aimata Pōmare IV Vahine of Tahiti invited Tomorrow Morning for tea at her palace in Papeete. All wanted to hear—in English or Tahitian, or both—the story of Tomorrow Morning’s extraordinary success as a missionary on Raiatea.
Nobody wanted to hear about it more than Alma, and over the duration of Tomorrow Morning’s sojourn, she managed to piece together the entire story from various onlookers and admirers of the Great Man. Raiatea, she learned, was the cradle of Polynesian mythology, and thus a most unlikely place ever to have embraced Christianity. The island—large and rugged—was the birthplace and residence of Oro, the god of war, whose temples were honored by human sacrifice and littered with human skulls. Raiatea was a serious place (Sister Etini used the word weighty). Mount Temehani, in the center of the island, was considered to be the eternal residence of all the dead of Polynesia. A permanent shroud of fog hung over the tallest pinnacle of this mountain, it was said, for the dead did not like the sunlight. The Raiateans were not a laughing people; they were a firm people—a people of blood and grandeur. They were not the Tahitians. They had resisted the English. They had resisted the French. They had not resisted Tomorrow Morning. He had first arrived there six years earlier in a most spectacular manner: he came alone in a canoe, which he abandoned as he neared the island. He stripped naked and swam to shore, paddling easily over the thunderous breakers, holding his Bible over his head and chanting, “I sing the word of Jehovah, the one true God! I sing the word of Jehovah, the one true God!”
The Raiateans took notice.
Since then Tomorrow Morning had built an evangelizing empire. He had erected a church—just near Raiatea’s pagan mother temple—that might easily have been mistaken for a palace, had it not been a house of worship. It was now the largest structure in Polynesia. It was held up by forty-six columns, hewn from the trunks of breadfruit trees, and sanded smooth with sharkskin.