She thought over all that she had packed. What did she most desperately need? She could not ask for the valise filled with Ambrose’s sodomite drawings, though it was torture to have lost it, for it was her most important belonging.
“My microscope,” she said, faintly.
He nodded again. “That may be difficult, you see. A microscope would be an item of considerable novelty around here. Nobody will have ever seen one. I don’t believe I have ever seen one myself! Still, I shall start asking immediately. We can only hope, you see! As for tonight, we must find you lodging. Down the beach about a quarter of a mile is the small cottage we helped build for Mr. Pike, when he came to stay. It has been left much as it was when he passed away, may God rest him. I had thought that one of the natives might claim the place as his own home, but it seems nobody will go inside. It is tainted by death, you see—to their minds, I mean. These are a superstitious people, you see. But it is a pleasing cottage with comfortable furniture, and if you are not a superstitious person, you should be at ease there. You are not a superstitious person, are you, Sister Whittaker? You do not strike me as such. Shall we go look at it?”
Alma felt like crumpling to the ground. “Brother Welles,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. “Please forgive me. I have come a long way. I am far from all that is familiar to me. I am much shocked to have lost my belongings, which I managed to safeguard for fifteen thousand miles of travel, only to have it vanish just a moment ago! I have not had a bite to eat, with the exception of your kind communion, since my dinner on the whaling ship yesterday afternoon. All is new, and all is strange. I am much burdened and much distracted. I ask you to forgive me . . .” Alma stopped talking. She had lost track of the purpose of this speech. She did not know what she was asking forgiveness for.
He clapped his hands. “To eat! Certainly, you must eat! My apologies, Sister Whittaker! You see, I do not eat myself—or quite rarely. I forget that others must do so! My wife would lace me up and give me the evils, if she knew of my poor manners!”
Without another word, and without any supplemental explanation as to the subject of his wife, the Reverend Welles ran off and knocked on the door of the cottage closest to the church. The large Tahitian woman—the same one who had delivered the sermon earlier that evening—answered the door. They exchanged a few words. The woman glanced at Alma, and nodded. The Reverend Welles rushed back to Alma with his springy, bow-legged step.
Alma wondered, could that be the Reverend’s wife?
“Then it is done!” he said. “Sister Manu will provide for you. We eat simply here, but yes, at minimum you should eat! She will bring something to your cottage. I also asked her to bring you an ahu taoto—a sleeping shawl, which is all we use around here at night. I shall bring you a lamp, too. Now let us find our way. I cannot think of another thing you will possibly need.”
Alma could think of many things she needed, but the promise of food and sleep was enough to sustain her for the time being. She walked behind the Reverend Welles down the black sand beach. He walked at an impressive speed for one with such short, crooked legs. Even with her long strides, Alma had to rush to keep up with him. He swung a lantern beside him, but did not light it, for the moon had risen and was bright in the sky. Alma was startled by large, dark shapes scurrying across the sand in their path. She thought they were rats, but on closer look discovered they were crabs. They unsettled her. They were quite sizable, with one large pincer claw each, which they dragged beside them as they scuttled along, clicking awfully. They came too close to her feet. She might have preferred rats, she thought. She was grateful to be wearing shoes. The Reverend Welles had somehow lost his sandals between the church service and now, but he was unconcerned with the crabs. He prattled along as he walked.
“I am intrigued to see how you will find Tahiti, Sister Whittaker, from a botanical point of view, you see,” he said. “Many are disappointed by it. It is a lush climate, you see, but we are a small island, so you will find that there is more abundance here than variety. Sir Joseph Banks most certainly found Tahiti lacking—botanically, I mean. He felt the people were far more interesting than the plants. Perhaps he had a point! We have only two varieties of orchids—Mr. Pike was so sorry to hear of that, though he avidly searched for more of them—and once you learn the palms, which you will do in a snap, there is not much more to discover. There is a tree called apage, you see, which will remind you of a gum tree, and it rises to forty feet—but not very magnificent for a woman raised in the deep forests of Pennsylvania, I wager! Ha-ha-ha!”
Alma did not have the energy to tell the Reverend Welles that she had not been raised in a deep forest.
He went on: “There is a lovely sort of laurel called tamanu—useful, good. Your furniture is made of it. Impervious to insects, you see. Then a sort of a magnolia, called the hutu, which I sent to your good father in 1838. Hibiscus and mimosa are to be found everywhere by the seashore. You will like the mape chestnut—perhaps you saw it by the river? I find it the most beautiful tree on the island. The women make their clothing from the bark of a sort of paper-mulberry tree—they call it tapa—but now many of them prefer the cotton and calico that the sailors bring.”
“I brought calico,” Alma murmured sadly. “For the women.”
“Oh, they will appreciate that!” the Reverend Welles said breezily, as though he had already forgotten that Alma’s belongings had been stolen. “Did you bring paper? Books?”
“I did,” Alma said, feeling more mournful by the moment.
“Well, it is difficult here with paper, you will see. The wind, the sand, the salt, the rain, the insects—never was there a climate less conducive to books! I have watched all my papers vanish before my eyes, you see!”
As have I, just now, Alma nearly said. She did not think she had ever been this hungry in her life, or this tired.
“I wish I had a Tahitian’s memory,” the Reverend Welles went on. “Then one would have no need for papers! What we keep in libraries, they keep in their minds. I feel such a half-wit, in comparison. The youngest fisherman here knows the names of two hundred stars! What the old ones here know, you could not imagine. I used to keep documents, but it was too discouraging to watch them be eaten away, even as I laid down the words. The ripening climate here produces fruit and flower in abundance, you see, but also mold and rot. It is not a land for scholars! But what is history to us, I ask? So brief is our stay in the world! Why make such a bother to record our flickering lives? If the mosquitoes trouble you too severely in the evenings, you may ask Sister Manu to show you how to burn dried pig dung by your door; it keeps them down a bit. You will find Sister Manu most useful. I used to preach the sermons here, but she enjoys it more than I do, and the natives prefer her sermons to mine, so now she is the preacher. She has no family, and so she tends to the pigs. She feeds them by hand, you see, to encourage them to stay near the settlement. She is wealthy, in her way. She can trade a single piglet for a month of fish and other treasures. The Tahitians value roasted piglet. They used to believe that the smell of flesh draws near the gods and spirits. Of course, some of them still believe that, despite being Christians, ha-ha-ha! In any case, Sister Manu is good to know. She has a fine singing voice. To a European ear, the music of Tahiti wants in every quality that would render it pleasurable, but you may learn to tolerate it with time.”