The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Chapter Nineteen

Alma led Dick Yancey into her father’s study and closed the door behind them. She had never before been in a room alone with him. He had been a presence in her life since earliest memory, but he had always made her feel chilled and uneasy. His towering height, his corpse-white skin, his gleaming bald head, his icy gaze, the hatchet of his profile—all of it combined to create a figure of real menace. Even now, after nearly fifty years of acquaintance, Alma could not determine how old he was. He was eternal. This only added to his fearsomeness. The entire world was afraid of Dick Yancey, which was exactly how Henry Whittaker wanted it. Alma had never understood Yancey’s loyalty to Henry, or how Henry managed to control him, but one thing was clear: the Whittaker Company could not function without this terrifying man.

“Mr. Yancey,” Alma said, and gestured toward a chair. “I beg of you, make yourself at ease.”

He did not sit. He stood in the middle of the room and held Ambrose’s valise loosely in one hand. Alma tried not to stare at it—the only possession of her late husband. She did not sit, either. Evidently, they would not be making themselves at ease.

“Is there something you wished to speak with me about, Mr. Yancey? Or would you prefer to see my father? He has been unwell lately, as I know you are aware, but today is one of his better days and his head is clear. He can receive you in his bedchamber, if that would suit you.”

Still, Dick Yancey did not speak. This was a famous tactic of his: silence as a weapon. When Dick Yancey did not speak, those around him, nervous, filled the air with words. People said more than they meant to say. Dick Yancey would watch from behind his silent fortification as secrets flew. Then he would bring those secrets home to White Acre. This was a function of his power.

Alma resolved not to fall into his trap and speak without thinking. Thus, they stood in silence together for what must have been another two minutes. Then Alma couldn’t bear it. She spoke again: “I see you are carrying my late husband’s valise. I assume you have been to Tahiti, and have retrieved it there? Have you come to return it to me?”

He neither moved nor said a word.

Alma went on. “If you are wondering whether I would like to have that valise back, Mr. Yancey, the answer is yes—I would like it very much. My late husband was a man of few belongings, and it would mean a good deal to me to keep as a remembrance the one item that I know he himself valued enormously.”

Still, he did not speak. Was he going to make her beg for it? Was she meant to pay him? Did he want something in exchange? Or—the thought crossed her mind in an errant, illogical flash—was he hesitating for some reason? Could he be feeling uncertain? There was no telling with Dick Yancey. He could never be read. Alma began to feel both impatient and alarmed.

“I really must insist, Mr. Yancey,” she said, “that you explain yourself.”

Dick Yancey was not a man who ever explained himself. Alma knew this as well as anybody alive. He did not squander words on such petty uses as explanation. He did not squander words at all. From earliest childhood, in fact, Alma had rarely heard him speak more than three words in a row. As for this day, however, Dick Yancey was able to make his point clear in a mere two words, which he now growled from the corner of his mouth as he strode past Alma and out the door, thrusting the valise into her arms as he brushed by her.

“Burn it,” he said.

Alma sat alone with the valise in her father’s study for an hour, staring at the object as though trying to determine—through its worn and salt-stained leather exterior—what lurked within. Why on earth would Yancey have said such a thing? Why would he take the trouble to bring her this valise from the other side of the planet, only to instruct her now to burn it? Why had he not burned it himself, if it needed burning? And did he mean that she should burn it after opening it and reviewing its contents, or before? Why had he hesitated so long before handing it over?

Asking him any of these questions, of course, was quite outside the realm of possibility: he was long gone. Dick Yancey moved with improbable speed; he could be halfway to Argentina by now, for all she knew. Even if he had remained at White Acre, though, he would not have answered any further queries. She knew that. That sort of conversation would never be part of Dick Yancey’s service. All she knew was that Ambrose’s precious valise was in her possession now—and so was a dilemma.

She decided to take the thing out to her own study, in the carriage house, that she might contemplate it in privacy. She set it down upon the divan in the corner—where Retta used to chat with her so many years ago, where Ambrose used to sprawl out comfortably with his long legs dangling, and where Alma had slept in the dark months after Ambrose left. She studied the valise. It was about two feet long, a foot and a half wide, and six inches deep—a simple rectangle of cheap, honey-colored cowhide. It was scuffed and stained and humble. The handle had been repaired with wire and leather lacing several times. The hinges were corroded from sea air and age. One could barely make out, above the handle, the faintly embossed initials “A.P.” Two leather belts circled the valise, buckling it closed, like cinch straps around a horse’s belly.

There was no lock, which was entirely characteristic of Ambrose. His was such a trusting nature—or rather, it had been. Perhaps, had there been a lock on the valise, she would not have opened it. Perhaps all it would have taken was one faint sign of secretiveness, and she would have backed away. Or perhaps not. Alma was the sort of person who was born to investigate things regardless of the consequences, even if it meant breaking a lock.

She opened the valise with no difficulty. Folded inside was a brown corduroy jacket, instantly recognizable, which made her throat clench with feeling. She lifted it out and pressed it to her face, hoping to smell something of Ambrose in its fibers, but all she could detect was a trace of mildew. Underneath the jacket she found a thick stack of paper: sketches and drawings on wide, toothy paper the color of eggshell. The topmost drawing was a depiction of a tropical Pandanus tree, immediately recognizable by its helices of leaves and thick roots. Here was Ambrose’s virtuosic botanical hand at work, in typically perfect detail. It was a mere pencil sketch, but it was quite magnificent. Alma studied it, then set it aside. Underneath this drawing was another—a detail of a vanilla bloom, drawn in ink and delicately tinted, which seemed almost to flutter across the page.

Alma felt hope rising within her. The valise, then, contained Ambrose’s botanical impressions from the South Pacific. This was comforting on multiple counts. For one thing, it meant that Ambrose had taken solace in his craftsmanship while he was in Tahiti, and had not merely withered away in idle despair. For another, by taking possession of these pictures, Alma would have more of Ambrose now—something exquisite and tangible to remember him by. Not least, these drawings would be a window into his final years: she would be able to see what he had seen, as though looking straight through his eyes.

The third drawing was a coconut palm, simply and quickly sketched, unfinished. The fourth drawing, however, stopped her short. It was a face. This was a surprise, for Ambrose—to Alma’s knowledge—had never shown any interest in depicting the human form. Ambrose was no portraitist, and had never claimed to be. Yet here was a portrait, drawn in pen and ink in Ambrose’s exacting hand. It was the head of a young man in right profile. His features pointed to Polynesian ancestry. Broad cheekbones, flat nose, wide lips. Attractive and strong. Hair cut short, like a European’s.

Alma turned to the next sketch: another portrait of the same youth, in left profile. The next picture depicted a man’s arm. It was not Ambrose’s arm. The shoulder was wider than his, the forearm sturdier. Next came an intimate detail of a human eye. It was not Ambrose’s eye (Alma would have known Ambrose’s eye anywhere). It was someone else’s eye, distinctive for its feathery lashes.

Then came a full-length study of a young man, nude, from behind, seemingly walking away from the artist. His back was broad and muscled. Every vertebral knob had been meticulously rendered. Yet another nude showed the young man resting against a coconut palm. His face was already familiar to Alma—the same proud brow, the same wide lips, the same almond-shaped eyes. Here, he looked somewhat younger than in the other drawings—not much more than a boy. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old.

There were no more botanical studies. All of the remaining drawings, sketches, and watercolors in the valise were nudes. There must have been more than a hundred of them—all of the same young native with the short European hair. In some, he appeared to be sleeping. In others, he was running, or carrying a spear, or lifting a stone, or hauling a fishing net—not unlike the athletes or demi-gods on ancient Greek pottery. In none of the images did he wear a scrap of clothing—not so much as a shoe. In most of the studies, his penis was flaccid and relaxed. In others it was decidedly not. In these, the youth’s face turned toward the portraitist with frank, and perhaps even amused, candor.

“My God,” Alma heard herself say aloud. Then she realized she had been saying this all along, with every new and shocking picture.

My God, my God, my God.

Alma Whittaker was a woman of quick calculation, and far from a sensual innocent. The sole possible conclusion to be reached regarding the valise’s contents was this: Ambrose Pike—paragon of purity, the angel of Framingham—was a sodomite.

Her mind flew back to his first night at White Acre. Over dinner, he had dazzled them, Henry and Alma both, with his ideas about the hand-pollination of vanilla orchids in Tahiti. What was it he had said? It would be so easy, he’d promised: All you need is little boys with little fingers and little sticks. It had sounded so playful. Now, in echoing retrospect, it sounded perverse. But it also answered for much. Ambrose had been unable to consummate their marriage not because Alma was old, not because Alma was ugly, and not because he wanted to emulate the angels—but because he wanted little boys with little fingers and little sticks. Or big boys, by the looks of these drawings.

Dear God, what he had put her through! What lies he had told! What manipulations! What self-disgust he had made her feel for her own entirely natural longings. The way he had looked at her from the bathtub that afternoon when she had taken his fingers into her mouth—as though she were some sort of succubus, come to devour his flesh. She remembered a line from Montaigne, something she had read years ago, which had always stayed with her, and which now felt horribly pertinent: “These are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.”

She had been made a fool by Ambrose and his supercelestial thoughts, by his grand dreams, his false innocence, his pretense at godliness, his noble talk of communion with the divine—and look where he had ended up! In a louche paradise, with a willing catamite, and a fine upstanding cock!

“You duplicitous son of a whore,” she said aloud.

Another woman might have taken Dick Yancey’s counsel to burn the valise and everything inside it. Alma, however, was far too much the scientist to burn evidence of any kind. She put the valise under the divan in her study. Nobody would find it there. Nobody ever came into that room, in any case. Loath to have her work disturbed, she had never permitted anyone but herself to even clean her study. Nobody cared what an old spinster like Alma did inside her room full of silly microscopes and tedious books and vials of dried moss. She was a fool. Her life was a comedy—a terrible, sad comedy.

She went to dinner and paid no attention to her food.

Who else had known?

She had heard the worst gossip about Ambrose in the months after their marriage—or thought she had—but she didn’t recall anyone ever having accused him of being a Miss Molly. Had he buggered the stable boys, then? Or the young gardeners? Was that what he had been up to? But when would he have done it? Someone would have said something. They were always together, Alma and Ambrose, and secrets that salacious do not stay secrets long. Rumors are a precious currency that burn holes in the pocket and are always, eventually, spent. Yet no one had spoken a word.

Had Hanneke known? Alma wondered, looking at the old housekeeper. Was that why she had been opposed to Ambrose? We do not know him, she had said, so many times . . .

What about Daniel Tupper in Boston—Ambrose’s dearest friend? Had he been more than a friend? The telegram he had sent on the day of their wedding, WELL DONE PIKE—had it been some sort of cheeky code? But Daniel Tupper was a married man with a houseful of children, Alma remembered. Or so Ambrose had said. Not that it mattered. People could be many things, apparently, and all at once.

What about his mother? Had Mrs. Constance Pike known? Was this what she meant, when she had written, “Perhaps a decent marriage shall cure him of playing the moral truant”? Why had Alma not read that letter more carefully? Why had she not investigated?

How could she not have seen this?

After dinner, she paced her rooms. She felt bisected and dislocated. She felt awash in curiosity, polished bright by anger. Unable to stop herself, she walked back over to the carriage house. She went into the printing studio she had so carefully (and expensively) outfitted for Ambrose more than three years earlier. All the machinery rested beneath sheets now, and the furniture, too. She found Ambrose’s notebook once more in the top drawer of his desk. She opened to a random page, and found a sample of the familiar, mystical drivel:

Nothing exists but the MIND, and it is propelled by FORCE . . . To not darken the day, to not glitter in shift . . . Away with the outwardly, away with the outwardly!

She closed the book and made a rude noise. She could not bear another word of it. Why could the man never be clear?

She went back to her study and pulled the valise from under the divan. This time she looked more methodically at the contents. It was not a pleasant task, but she felt she must do it. She dug around the edges of the valise, seeking a hidden compartment, or anything she may have missed on her first examination. She combed through the pockets of Ambrose’s timeworn jacket, but found only a pencil stub.

Then she returned to the pictures again—the three adept drawings of plants, and the dozens of obscene drawings of the same beautiful young man. She wondered if, upon closer examination, she could arrive at some alternate conclusion, but no; the portraits were too blunt, too sensual, too intimate. There was no other interpretation for this. Alma turned over one of the nudes, and noticed something written on the back, in Ambrose’s lovely, graceful script. It was tucked into a corner, like a faint and modest signature. But it was not a signature. It was two words only, in lowercase letters: tomorrow morning.

Alma turned over another nude and saw, in the same lower right-hand corner, the same two words: tomorrow morning. One by one, she turned over every drawing. Each one said the same thing, in the same elegant, familiar handwriting: tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning . . .

What was this supposed to mean? Was everything a deuced code?

She took up a piece of paper and picked apart the letters of “tomorrow morning,” rearranging them into other words and phrases:

NO ROOM, TRIM WRONG

RING MOON, MR. ROOT

O GRIM—NO WORT, MORN!

None of it made sense. Nor did translating the words into French, Dutch, Latin, Greek, or German bring edification. Nor did reading them backward, nor assigning them numbers corresponding to their places in the alphabet. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t a code. Perhaps it was a deferral. Perhaps something was always going to happen with this boy tomorrow morning, or at least according to Ambrose. Well, that was very much like Ambrose, in any case: mysterious and off-putting. Perhaps he was simply delaying consummation with his handsome native muse: “I shall not bugger you now, young man, but I shall get around to it first thing tomorrow morning!” Perhaps this was how he had kept himself pure, in the face of temptation. Perhaps he had never touched the boy. Then why draw him naked in the first place?

Another thought occurred to Alma: Had these drawings been a commission? Had somebody—some other sodomite, perhaps, and a rich one—paid Ambrose to make pictures of this boy? But why would Ambrose have needed money, when Alma had seen to it that he was so well provided for? And why would he have accepted such a commission, when he was a person of such delicate sensibilities—or purported to be? If his morality was merely a pretense, then clearly he had kept up the performance even after leaving White Acre. His reputation in Tahiti had not been that of a degenerate, or else the Reverend Francis Welles would not have taken the trouble to eulogize Ambrose Pike as “a gentleman of highest morality and purest character.”

Why, then? Why this boy? Why a nude and aroused boy? Why such a handsome young companion with such a distinctive face? Why take so much effort to make so many pictures? Why not draw flowers instead? Ambrose had loved flowers, and Tahiti was overrun with flowers! Who was this muse? And why had Ambrose gone to his death constantly planning to do something with this boy—and to do it, forever and endlessly, tomorrow morning?