The Signature of All Things

Alma is interviewed by her uncle. He is wary of Alma, asking her about Beatrix and Hanneke, but he sneaks Roger treats under the desk. She tells him she would like to work in the garden and leaves him her treatise. She also leaves Roger, who has attached himself to Uncle Dees. As she walks around Amsterdam that night, Alma hopes she can find a way to stay in the city; it strikes her “not so much as a city, but as an engine, a triumph of human industriousness. It was the most contrived place one could ever imagine. It was the sum of human intelligence. It was perfect. She wanted never to leave” (459).

The next morning, her landlady pounds on Alma’s door. The waiting carriage takes her to her uncle’s home. She finds him holding her treatise, petting Roger, and weeping. “God bless you, child,” Uncle Dees says to Alma. “You have your mother’s mind” (461).

Four happy years follow. Alma lives with her uncle and enjoys his family. She is given a job at the botanical garden and a title: the Curator of Mosses. She sends for her books, even the scandalous ones, which still stir desire, but Alma “did not even attempt to fight these urges anymore; by now it was evident they were a part of her” (463). She creates a cave of mosses in the garden and cares for it diligently.

Uncle Dees presses her to publish her treatise, but Alma believes there is a hole in her theory. She cannot explain what she calls the Prudence Problem: “[I]f outcompeting one’s rivals was the key to dominance, adaptation, and endurance” (464), then how to explain people who make sacrifices, like Prudence? Her theory cannot explain why kindness and selflessness exist, and so Alma feels it cannot be complete. She similarly cannot explain Roger’s devotion to her uncle.

In the summer of 1858, Alma learns that Hanneke, Retta, and George Hawkes have died. Two weeks later, her uncle dies of a fever. In her grief, Alma misses the news that comes from the proceedings of the Linnean Society of London that July, but in December of next year, she learns of the publication of a book by Mr. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Alma obtains a copy of Darwin’s book, reads it, and is stunned and satisfied to hear the echo of her own ideas, for, “like two explorers seeking the same treasure trove from two different directions, she and Darwin had both stumbled on the identical chest of riches” (473). She feels both heartbroken and vindicated, yet she is also glad she had not published, for she feels this theory truly belongs to Darwin, who wrote of it so eloquently. She finishes the book and cries, knowing that “there was nothing else she could do, in the face of an achievement so splendid and so devastating, but weep” (475).

However, even Darwin has not solved the Prudence Problem because he avoids talking about humans in his book, and while debates rage among readers, no one else manages to solve the Prudence Problem, either. As she follows the debate, Alma learns that another scientist had also reached Darwin’s conclusions, and his ideas were presented at the same meeting; his name is Alfred Russel Wallace. Alma reads his work and learns what she can of him. That another man reached her conclusion and was also overshadowed by Darwin is a consolation to her.

Alma lives into her seventies, continuing her work with mosses. She never tells anyone about her theory, and she never finds an answer to the Prudence Problem. She observes the career of Alfred Russel Wallace, who becomes interested in the occult and supports radical politics. In 1882, Alma is 82, and Charles Darwin dies. Alma invites Wallace to visit the Hortus Botanicus, and he accepts.

Wallace arrives, and Alma enjoys visiting with him. She tells him of her time in the South Seas. On the last day of his visit, she shows him her cave of mosses, and he is enthralled. She tells him of her theory, and he asks to read her paper. She takes it from Ambrose’s leather valise, now quite worn and dusty. Wallace is excited by the thought that there were three of them who discovered this idea. Alma recalls when she and Prudence first met Retta, who said the same thing about there being three of them.

Alma tells Wallace that she did not publish because she could not find a “convincing evolutionary explanation for human altruism and self-sacrifice” (492). They agree that Darwin arrived at the idea of natural selection first, and it is fitting that he be recognized for it; Wallace calls him “our generation’s Virgil, taking us on a tour through heaven, hell, and purgatory. He was our divine guide” (492). Wallace says he believes in a spiritual dimension to humanity that accounts for unique human consciousness. Although Alma does not believe in a supreme intelligence in the universe, she enjoys her time with Wallace and tells him so. She reflects that all she ever wanted was to know the world, and she has added her bit of knowledge to the world’s library. She calls that a fortunate life.

That evening, still contemplating their discussion, Alma takes a walk and sits beneath a shellbark tree, a transplant from the Americas. She feels that her death will come soon, and she is not afraid, but she wants to keep living awhile longer.