The Custodian of Paradise

by Wayne Johnston

  Dear Mr. Herder: I am writing in response to Headmaster Reeves’ exhortation that those of us who are proud of Bishop Feild come out in its defence.

  Neither my wife nor I could agree more with what the man we call HMR said about the school we call B.F. (We are, by the way, every bit as proud of Bishop Spencer, which we refer to as B.S.) I am a resident of the part of St. John’s known fondly to us who live there as the Battery, and just as fondly to those who don’t as the –ittery, owing to there being not a home in the neighbourhood with indoor plumbing or an outhouse because of the impossibility of drilling through the granite on which our houses stand and from which, in a good gale, they sometimes slide straight into the sea.

  What my wife refers to as our nothing-to-be-ashamed-of is collected twice weekly by—yours truly. I collect in the Battery and other parts of town as well. But I am straying from the point, which is our fondness for B.F. and the exception we took to the remarks made about it in Monday’s Forgery.

  The degree to which B.F. is a source of civic pride to me and mine cannot be exaggerated. None of my eleven boys will ever go to Bishop Feild. None of my six girls will ever go to Bishop Spencer. But I do not resent these schools. It would make as much sense for me to resent all the other schools that have as yet been unattended by my offspring. What a bitter man, in that case, I would be, since none of my seventeen children has ever been enrolled in any school.

  Would we be more cheerful knowing that there was not a man, woman or child in this city who could read or write? (I am dictating this letter to a clergyman who each day is kind enough to read the newspaper aloud to my wife and me. He tells me that he is, as he puts it, doing his utmost with all the gifts that God gave him, to translate my “rough eloquence” into something that barely approximates comprehensibility. I have no idea what this means.) “Bless their hearts,” my wife says whenever we walk past either school. But especially B.F., whose boys, my wife points out, will, in their adulthood, oversee the welfare of our children, just as their fathers have overseen our own.

  My wife and I often speculate about what goes on in schools. We are told that children are taught to read and write, but all we know about those things is that they are two of what our clergyman refers to as “our long list of as yet unmastered skills.”

  “They teach them to count, I’m sure,” my wife will say. “Higher than anyone in our house can count.” Though what she means by “count higher” neither of us really knows.

  “Imagine young Harry dressed up like that boy there,” my wife will say, and the two of us will chuckle cheerfully. “Imagine young Rodney dressed up like that. Now wouldn’t that be something?” one of us will say. And before you know it we are laughing so hard that tears are running down our cheeks and it is necessary for me to keep my doubled-over stomach-clutching wife from falling to her knees.

  What a credit B.F. is to us. What delight we take in winter at the sight of the B.F. boys, their shodden feet and pox-free complexions, their bodies fully covered in what are known as “uniforms,” clothes that all look alike and have no holes or patches. As for HMR. What nitpickers we would be if we did not take pride in a man simply because he was once overheard saying that he would rather die screaming on the rack than admit one of our children to his school.

  Not everyone can make it to the top. It wouldn’t be the top if they did. The top would be the same as the bottom and then no one could make it to the top. Or the bottom. Or the middle. My clergyman just cautioned me against revealing what he calls “yet another of your unmastered skills.” He says he hopes that some of you will understand what he means.

  Though my name is Barnable, I am known as HWM (The Honeywagon Man). My clergyman tells me that these are my “initials” and that two of my “initials” are the same as HMR’s. Each of our initial initials are the same. He doesn’t have my second initial, but I have his. There is also an R and a W, but instead of sharing these we keep them to ourselves. I am honoured. And would be more so if HMR allowed me, even if only once, to collect his nothing-to-be-ashamed-of. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject of HMR, B.F. and B.S.

  Clergyman’s Confession: My labours on this letter were protracted and exhausting. I did not actually read Headmaster Reeves’ letter of protest to Mr. Barnable. I merely summarized its contents for him, though “merely” is a misleading word where any effort on behalf of Mr. Barnable is concerned, and especially so in this case since more than thirty summaries were necessary, the language of each more simplified than the previous one, before Mr. Barnable declared that, as he had still not got “the drift of it,” it was unlikely that he ever would.

  The truth is that I have not actually read anything to Mr. Barnable in quite some time. It was my practice, when I first began ministering to him and his family, to read at length to him. He would nod while I read, which I took to be a sign of comprehension until one day he told me that the nodding was his way of keeping time with what he called “the sound inside my head.” Though disappointed, I found the phrase quite charming, imagining this sound to be some simple folk melody or melodies with which he whiled away the time and which was a sign of how happily reconciled he was to his exacting circumstances.

  Over a period of years, it dawned on me gradually that this was not at all what he meant by “the sound inside his head,” that this sound, whatever it was, had neither words nor melody. Nor, even in the most figurative sense of the word, did it consist of “sound” of any kind.

  One day after I had paraphrased the births and deaths pages for him—I simply said that so-and-so had had a baby and that so-and-so was dead—I committed the sin of fabrication for the first time. I paraphrased for him what I said was called “The Feeling Poorly” page. A week later, it was the “Still Kicking” page, and after that the “Hanging on by a Thread” page. In other words, I found it more satisfying to lie to him than to endlessly reword the truth to no effect.

  Before long, everything I read to him was pure invention and worded in a way that he could understand. It was only for a brief time that I had the knack of making myself understood to him, a brief, strange, almost dreamlike time of which, in my memory, not the faintest trace remains.

  After what seemed like the lifting of a spell, I confessed my wrongdoing to my bishop in a manner that, though also lost to memory, inspired him to instruct me to ask myself the following question: Were I to sign the resignation letter that my bishop drafted for me, move to another country and there pursue some profession wholly unrelated to the church, is there even the remotest chance that by the time I am about to meet my maker, I will have ceased, even for one moment, my speculation about what the words “the sound inside his head” might mean?

  There being, to my mind, no such chance, I did not sign the letter. Instead, I continued, at a cost to myself that the reader should by this time be well qualified to estimate, to “read” to Mr. Barnable. His “reply” to Headmaster Reeves’ denunciation of the Forger, every word of which is mine, is as close as anyone could come to rendering in language what Mr. Barnable would think of the Forger were it possible to make him aware of her existence.

  Having said so, I must hereby make another confession: All the letters in protest of the Forger that were published in this paper, including the one bearing the name of Headmaster Reeves, were written by me. I tried, for so long, to read to Mr. Barnable, became so adept at paraphrasals and blatant falsehoods that, when I read the first column of the Forger, I could not resist the attempt to outdo her at her own game.

  The only real letter of protest of the Forger is that of Mr. Barnable. The idea that Headmaster Reeves has anything but the utmost respect for the Forger is pure fabrication, as are all the letters supposedly written at his exhortation—but in fact written by me, the Forging Clergyman.

  Editor’s Note: The name of the Forging Clergyman has been withheld for the sake of his church and his parishioners, and for his own, and at the request of the bishop, who assured me he does not write resign
ation letters for his charges and would never suggest that a man of the cloth, no matter how disturbed, forsake his church. What a sad story is that of the Forging Clergyman. How dismayed his parents back in Yorkshire, who must have had such high hopes for him, will be to hear how he has fared in the New World. It is said that they were greatly concerned when he first told them of his posting to Newfoundland. His father: “I would rather you were sent to Africa.” His mother: “I would rather you converted to Catholicism or admitted you were secretly a Jew.” But when the day of his departure came, he was heartened by their encouragement and optimism. But the moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on. There is, in spite of all, cause for celebration: All the Forger’s enemies are phantoms, all opposition to her imaginary. Her supposed nemesis, Headmaster Reeves, is in fact her staunchest supporter and awaits with much anticipation her next instalment.

  “A clergyman forging letters?” my father said. “Worse than the obscenities about boys’ britches in that other forgery. The shittery? As if leaving out the first two letters made it any less profane. Quoting the bishop? The bishop, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Everyone is against us,” Herder said, “and yet the Telegram subscription rate has nearly doubled since your Forgeries began.”

  “In that case,” I said, “you should pay me twice as much,” which he agreed to do.

  He was soon paying me even more because I agreed to write a column every day.

  My Dear God Almighty: I have some quibbles with the Bible.

  Adam and Eve. It’s hard to understand what deficiency in the life of an Omnipotent Being a naked man and woman were intended to correct.

  It’s hard to understand how an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator could think that no garden would be complete unless it contained the most evil agency in all the universe.

  For an all-powerful God, would a garden without the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil have been any more difficult to make?

  Five thousand years ago, a naked couple stole an apple from Your garden. In order that their punishment should fit the crime, You sentenced them, and every person who ever has been or ever will be born, to death. You told them that nothing but to have them obsequiously worship and apologize to You for all eternity could make up for Your disappointment in them for doing what You made them do.

  Previously never having heard of sex, birth or death but now unable to think of anything else, Your children are no longer welcome in Your garden.

  Cain and Abel. Imagine being told by God to be fruitful and multiply when the only woman in the world was your mother. That the human race had its origins in incest is not the worst explanation for history that I’ve ever heard. Then again, neither is the fact that a lot of people believe the human race began that way.

  The Ten Commandments. Moses ascends Mount Sinai and descends with tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. The Israelites have some difficulty understanding them. Take the Fifth commandment for instance:

  Man, hereinafter known as the Subject, shall not kill upon pain of death anyone who, in the opinion of God, doesn’t have it coming, His opinion being impossible to consult except ex post facto, the consequence of guessing it incorrectly being that the Subject shall be murdered in the same manner as his victim. God reserves to Himself the exclusive right to veto or revoke this “eye for an eye” commandment, and to slaughter, especially, but not exclusively, on a mass scale anyone who breaks any of the other commandments in what shall hereafter be referred to as the Document. This commandment shall supersede any subsequent commandment or commandments, agreements or covenants, and the Subject shall be held liable notwithstanding any paradox or contradiction, real, apparent or illusory, unless otherwise specified in codices to this agreement to which the Creator shall have exclusive access unless He waives such access within a period of time to be determined by him and not disclosed to the Subject.

  Noah’s Ark. You decide You must destroy the world by having it rain for forty days and forty nights, but You forewarn a man named Noah, instructing him to build a boat large enough to accommodate him and his family and one male and one female of every kind of animal on earth. Noah, never one to be mistaken for a skeptic, sets about the first task with the level of enthusiasm necessary to enable a non-shipwright to construct in a matter of days a boat nearly two thousand times the size of the largest one on earth. At the same time, he is surprised by the alacrity with which pairs of wild animals agree to be herded together from every corner of the globe and loaded onto an unprecedentedly capacious and hastily constructed watercraft for forty days and forty nights.

  Everyone on earth, having irked their omnipotent Creator by living sub-omnipotent lives, perishes in the Flood.

  Sodom and Gomorrah. You are now faced with the deviants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his family, forewarned by You, flee Sodom and Gomorrah just before You destroy the two iniquitous cities by fire. But Lot’s nameless wife turns to take one last look and You decide that the punishment that best fits her crime is to turn her into a pillar of salt, which must have been a chastening sight for her children.

  The Promised Land. The Israelites, led by Abraham, wander endlessly in search of the Promised Land. Some ask Abraham to ask You to give him a hint as to how long the search will last. When Abraham refuses they wonder if You really plan to make good on Your promise or if this is just another test to see how long it will take them to wise up to the fact that You are playing them for chumps again. “He could just tell Abraham where the Promised Land is, or draw him a map,” they say. There is some question over whether even an all-knowing, all-powerful God could design a map that Abraham could read. “Would you with your riddle-addled brain recognize the Promised Land,” they ask Abraham, “if it was standing right in front of you?” Abraham says it may be that, a thousand generations hence, the Chosen People will still be looking for the Promised Land, to which one of his followers replies that a career as a motivational speaker may not be in Abraham’s future. “I’ve been wondering about this whole ‘Chosen People’ thing,” he says. “Our descendants might have trouble making friends and allies if they tell people that whole civilizations have been built just so that the Israelites could be excluded from them.”

  Abraham and Isaac. You appear to Abraham and command him to kill his son Isaac as a demonstration of his love for his Creator. Abraham, who is far more sanguine about Your wisdom than is Isaac, binds Isaac to an altar made of stones. The Bible is silent on the question of Isaac’s level of reassurance when his father, holding a huge knife above his head with both hands, tells him not to be afraid. At the last second, You stay Abraham’s hand and ask him how he could have thought that You would let him kill his own son. The Israelites urge Abraham not to say anything in reply, especially nothing about having known all along that You would intervene and only raised the knife above his head to call Your bluff. Even worse would be to ask You how long You think it will be before Isaac gets a good night’s sleep.

  Your Faithful Servant,

  The Right Reverend Archbishop

  Cluney Aylward

  Every day, alone in that big house, I composed my columns after reading the newspapers that Herder’s printer’s devil brought by the armload to my door, copies of every paper in the city, by a quick perusal of which I kept myself informed about current events and the issues of the day—government corruption, church edicts, the progress of the far-away war, high-society gatherings and other functions.

  I wrote in my father’s study, at the desk he hadn’t used in years, the newspapers scattered about me on the floor, the curtains on the only window drawn so that, if not for the writing lamp, the room would have been dark. The dimly lit study reminded me of the rooms in my mother’s house in New York and also, of course, of my two lost children. Their names are David and Sarah. I would pause in my writing, take out the little note my mother had left for me on the pillow and stare at it, calculating how many days it was since they were born.

  B
ut I did not linger long in speculation about them. My six o’clock deadline made idleness an unaffordable luxury. I woke every day with a sense of urgent purpose, set to work almost instantly, often without bothering to go downstairs for breakfast, or to light the main fireplace in the front room. When I heard the six o’clock knock of the printer’s devil, I was still writing and was forced to contrive some abortive ending to my column.

  I went downstairs, still in my housecoat, and opened the door to find the little boy on the step, a raggedly dressed fellow with bright blue eyes and an ink-and-newsprint smudged face and hands as notched and filthy as a blacksmith’s. I had for weeks been tipping him a penny each day before I found out that, for some reason thinking it was for Herder, he folded the penny inside the pages of my column and slipped the whole lot under Herder’s door. Herder, taking the penny to be some good luck ritual of mine, kept it without a word either to me or the devil. When Herder, in a note delivered to me by the devil, mentioned “our lucky penny” one day, I discovered from the devil what was happening. Herder agreed when I told him to give the boy the eleven pennies he was owed.

  “Eleven cents, miss,” he said the next day, regarding me with a mixture of gratitude and suspicion.

  “Yes,” I said. “Eleven cents. What will you do with it?”

  “I got it hid some place,” he said. “Where me mother and father won’t find it.”

  I gave him another penny. “Here,” I said. “You better hide this one too then. It’s a good hiding place, is it?”

  “Oh yes, miss. No one knows.”

  It was now rare for me to go outside or even to see daylight, so immersed was I in work by day, so tired by six o’clock. I had no energy for anything but reading. I drank, some nights far too much. Time seemed, as it had in New York, like one interminable night, during which I alternated between wakefulness and sleep, as much according to whim as to the pressures of my deadline. Inasmuch as I even thought about the future, I imagined that I would live like this forever. And it was an appealing prospect.