The Custodian of Paradise

by Wayne Johnston

  Chapter Nine

  I AM FOREVER AFRAID, FOREVER HOPEFUL THAT, HERE IN Manhattan, I will encounter them by chance. My mother and my children. My children and Miss Long. Or, my fondest wish, my children and some nanny whom I have never met, who knows nothing of my existence and has no reason to doubt that the children are Mrs. Breen’s.

  I wonder if I would recognize my children. My own children flanking some stranger, holding her hands. I feel certain that I would. Though I have never seen them. Never. I would see myself in them, perhaps.

  Though I wouldn’t care if it was by their resemblance to my mother or my father or even to Prowse that I recognized them. As long as I didn’t do the unthinkable, and as oblivious to their proximity as they were to mine, pass them by.

  I don’t want to seek them out. Find their house, the house where I gave birth to them but have never seen, and spy on them. No. So much better if it seemed my children and I found each other.

  Day after day I stare at pairs of children who look like they might be twins, a boy and a girl dressed so alike they must be twins. Every day I spot at least one such pair, some days several of them. A boy and girl in sailor suits. In green-and-black plaid wearing tam-o’-shanters.

  I stare at them and realize that, for how long I have no idea, one of them has been staring back at me, quizzical, transfixed, sometimes looking on the verge of tears. I get concerned, suspicious looks from their guardians, their nannies, mothers, parents, and avert my eyes, hurry away, feeling as creepily intrusive as they must think I am, obsessive, furtive, set apart from the hordes of unhaunted people living their unhaunted, ordinary lives.

  I have yet to see a pair of children that I think might be them. But also yet to see a pair of children that, at first, I don’t think are them. At first glance, every set of twins in this city look like mine. But then I look into their eyes and know I am mistaken. Know instantly. What if my twins are sometimes taken separately for walks? Then any six-year-old of either gender might be mine.

  I will drive myself mad this way, scouring a city of millions for two children I have never seen. And what if my mother should see me? At any moment, as I walk these streets, I might be accosted by her or even Dr. Breen, who will demand to know what I am doing here. Or else, if they see me, they will make sure that I do not see them. For all I know, this has already happened. For all I know, they are waiting for the day that I turn up at their house, and praying that that day never comes.

  I imagine the Breens peering out from behind the curtains of their house, ever watchful for the woman who might ruin their lives. Imagine them warning Miss Long about me. The ever-loyal Miss Long keeping vigil. Perhaps they are making plans to move, or have already moved.

  I am freelancing for newspapers, under a new pseudonym, just in case some Newfoundlander here has heard of Harold Dexter.

  I am going to New York, Father. (Galoot of a girl. You will ruin me.) I am not going there because of them. (Then why not choose some other city?) Yet he left a note that read: “Goodbye, my D.D.” Darling Daughter. He used to call me that before she left. Not often. He wrote it once on a birthday card. “Happy Birthday D.D.” I think he believes I am never coming back.

  I did not tell him about Smallwood, whom he had taken to calling “the lesser of two devils, the greater being Smallwood’s father Charlie.”

  I am going to be a writer, Father.

  More Forgeries.

  I promise not to contact them. If they find out I’m there, it will be from someone else, or by accident.

  Often, in these first months in New York, I have thought of my Provider. I wonder where he is and if he knows where I am. Suspect that, somehow, he does.

  A “purveyor,” they would call him at Hotel Newfoundland, the boarding house where I live with a host of other Newfoundland expatriates, including Smallwood. Purveyors are easy to find in New York. I’m staying at Hotel Newfoundland partly because the place is teeming with them. Prohibition and its enforcers are flouted openly. That liquor is illicit merely makes its procurement and consumption that much more entertaining. The purveyors at Hotel Newfoundland sell to no one else but Newfoundlanders. I don’t have to risk being robbed or arrested in a city I am unfamiliar with. But whenever I complete a transaction, I think of my Provider. I read his letter every day, trying so hard to decipher it that I know it by heart. The sentences run unbidden through my mind.

  Twice-fathered has become a kind of mantra. Can you really think of no good reason why a woman would renounce her little girl?

  On a boat bound for the mainland, he said. He might be in New York. For him too, a man I have never seen, I search the streets, for a man as tall as the size of his hand would suggest, staring at me, approaching me.

  But all men stare at me. Because of my height. All people do. Not even here can I be inconspicuous. Even here I am a spectacle, gawked at, one of the exotic sights of New York. I am presumed to be a New Yorker, the sort of indigenous oddity that has made the city famous, that draws people to it from around the world.

  I try to play the part, to carry myself as if I belong here, so accustomed to being looked up at and pointed at that I no longer notice, try to look like I am flaunting my exoticism to shock the small-minded, provincial newcomers to New York.

  But I can’t think of this city as anything but their birthplace, the site of that house, that room where for six months I was confined. I feel as though I spent those six months asleep, oblivious to this apparently purposeful frenzy, the mass conveyance of humanity in all directions by all existing forms of transportation, the ceaseless clamour of demolition and construction.

  Not quite oblivious to it. It is vaguely familiar, in the manner of a landscape I once crossed while drowsing at the window of a train.

  I was in the city for weeks before I realized that it was the sounds that I remembered, that made their way into that house from the unseen city, that I grew accustomed to while I waited, while I slept and dreamt. Yes, I have been here before. I remember it; or rather, I feel as I do when I wake from an unremembered dream.

  All the Newfoundlanders know me. To them, I am Fielding the Forger, though what exactly this means few of them could say as they cannot read and have been away from home so long. They are surprised that I associate with Smallwood, whom they know was forced from Bishop Feild because of me. But there is a kind of understanding here that the past is temporarily on hold, that this city and the peculiar kind of homesickness it inspires convey on everyone a sort of amnesty.

  Not that Smallwood or I fit in here. Smallwood’s fate, it seems, is to be regarded as a kind of mascot no matter where he goes. I walk with him, follow him as he carries his chair about. A chair like all the other speakers have, like I have seen others lugging about the city or resting upside down on their laps in subway cars. A chair. The chair. That identifies you to all as one of them. Not just a socialist, not a communist, but a speaker, a stumper. That advertises to all that your destination is Union Square.

  Fondly regarded, so far at least. The other Newfoundlanders find it hilarious that he has come to New York to, as he puts it, “learn how to be a socialist.” The rest of them have come in search of work that cannot be found at home, which they would rather not have left and are forever planning or fantasizing their return to.

  They are incredulous that we are here by preference, that we quit the jobs we had back home that paid better than the ones we have here, which aren’t really jobs at all, just a kind of allowance given to us by the organizers of the Cause we are trying to advance.

  They assume that, like Smallwood, I am working for this Cause, but I’m not. It would be pointless to try to explain to them the distinction between his occupation and mine, to explain why I make more money by writing for profit-making papers but do far less work.

  I have no interest in the Cause. I spend time with those who do because Smallwood does. I am in New York for him and, ever increasingly, for them.

  It is different in Union Square than it
was on the waterfront in St. John’s. The audiences are much larger, but the speakers who compete for their attention far more numerous. It was a revelation to Smallwood that there are different schools of socialism.

  Each school has its champion who tries to woo the others’ audience away. Smallwood winds up preaching to the other speakers, imploring them, while he stands on his chair, and they stand on theirs, to unite behind him.

  The socialists alternately address each other and the audience so that each seems to be making two speeches at once, one to his chair-elevated colleagues, the other to the audience whose upraised faces never linger long on one speaker.

  I call our nightly visit to Union Square “The Hour of Babel.”

  In addition to socialist stumpers, there are preachers of major denominations and obscure religions, Baptists warning of hellfire and Pentecostalists of Armageddon. Pro-prohibitionists, anti-prohibitionists, suffragettes and anti-suffragettes. Champions of such arcane creeds and ideologies as The Living Light Crusade, Vanguardianism and something simply called Resplendence.

  Smallwood, as he departs the square with his chair beneath his arm, is infuriated, frustrated, incredulous, indignant.

  “Only legitimates should be allowed to speak,” he says.

  I bite my tongue, do not say that most of the audience comes out to be entertained, and as far as they are concerned, the “illegitimates” are far more entertaining.

  “They could have auditions,” I said, “but who would get to choose the judges?”

  “Any sober-minded person should be allowed to speak,” he said. “But all the cranks should be banned.”

  “Who would you trust to tell the two apart?”

  “I’m a speaker, not an organizer.”

  “It would be much easier if cranks were made to wear badges identifying them as such.”

  “Much easier.”

  “Likewise lunatics, imbeciles, bedlamites and crackpots. It is a common misconception that they are all the same. Your badge would identify you as A Voice of Reason. The Voice of Reason. Which would you prefer?”

  “One voice of reason in all that pandemonium. Who would even notice? The place is full of unlicensed stumpers. No one bothers to ask them for credentials. The police prefer it the way it is. Mayhem. That way, no one hears the socialists. Or if they do hear them, no one takes them seriously. They get lumped in with all the other cranks.”

  The other night, after we were told that, standing side by side, we looked like some sort of vaudeville act, Smallwood told me to mingle with the crowd and hand out leaflets. My absence was noted by the regulars, who told him that, if he sat on my shoulders, he was sure to get a bigger audience.

  I am one of only a few women at Hotel Newfoundland. The only one not staying here with her husband. It is officially forbidden for an unmarried woman, or a woman unaccompanied by her husband to live here. But I talked and bribed my way around that rule. I got strange looks and suggestive remarks from the other tenants at first.

  “What’s she doing here?” I heard a woman on the elevator whisper to another woman at a volume I was meant to overhear. “A bit grand for this place. If she’s half as grand as she thinks she is. And single too. They say she drinks.”

  “She does drink,” I said so loudly that both women jumped with fright. “She is single. And she doesn’t think she’s half as grand as you think she does. As for what I’m doing here, I’m keeping company with a platonic friend of mine. So far, he’s been as platonic as Socrates. And I see no sign that he’s about to change. Unfortunately. I may have to take matters into my own hands. Though there’s not much matter to him.”

  Now the suggestive remarks have stopped, as have the strange looks, if only because people have grown used to the sight of me.

  The other night, pretending to be drunker than I was, I asked Smallwood, “Isn’t it about time you made me a dishonest woman?” Perhaps believing that, by the next day, I would forget having asked the question, he said nothing.

  I said to a woman in the hallway who, as we passed, ignored me except to stand righteously erect, and with her chin uplifted, stare straight ahead: “I chased him here, but he remains chaste. Whereas I remain unchased and therefore chaste.”

  God knows what she thought I meant. I will not indulge them by defending myself against unspoken accusations, especially since I wish the accusations were true.

  About half the people at Hotel Newfoundland are from a small outport called Harbour Main. It is believed that they have an innately superior sense of balance, and they are therefore much sought after as construction workers, especially high-beam walkers.

  For generations, Harbour Mainiacs, as they are called, have been coming to New York. They are said to have helped build the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as some of the city’s tallest buildings.

  Although they stay at Hotel Newfoundland, they keep to themselves, perhaps because they are almost all related—fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews, all of whom are said to return to Newfoundland only often and long enough to impregnate their wives, Harbour Main being, for most of the year, populated solely by women and children.

  There is an unmistakable Harbour Mainiac look. Almost all have red hair and freckled faces, stand about five-six and are broadly built. Their proportions are said to give them a low centre of gravity.

  The third floor is theirs and theirs alone.

  They have an unerring ability to spot or uncover a sore point that they revel in, attacking in the slyest, most mean-witted way. Mere seconds after they have decided they dislike someone, they are attributing to their new enemy’s mother and sisters the most arcane forms of sexual deviance.

  Smallwood, who, in his first encounter with them, unwisely denounced them for some relatively mild innuendo about his mother, is one of their favourite targets.

  They tell him, in fewer words, that the only part of him big enough to satisfy me is his nose.

  They inferred, from the colour of Smallwood’s face one day when they teased him about doing “it” with me, that we have yet to do it.

  “What’re ya waitin’ for, Joey, your mommy to lend you a guiding hand?”

  “You should ignore them,” I said when we were in his room. “Talking back only makes it worse.”

  “I can hold my own with that crowd,” he said.

  “For God’s sake, Smallwood,” I said. “Don’t say anything to them about holding your own.”

  Collectively armed with what seemed to be an exclusively scatological wit, they have, in spite of their illiteracy, a rudimentary knack for salacious puns, any one of which would be easy to ignore, but there seems to be no end to them, each Harbour Mainiac building on another’s pun in a relentless bombardment that the most stoic of victims, let alone Smallwood, could not withstand in silence.

  “He’s a good man, Joey is. In spite of his short comings.”

  “You’re a disgusting bunch of scoundrels,” Smallwood said.

  “She’s a big one, Joey. You might need a map to find it. Now me, I wouldn’t need a map.”

  “No,” I said. “Not if it had words on it. But you would need a rope and a gun.”

  “I know my way around women.”

  “Yes. I see you go around them all the time.”

  “I can stand up for myself,” Smallwood all but shouted at me.

  “You’re a tightly knit group of men, aren’t you,” I said. “All from the same place. All look as much alike as your signatures. Besides ‘X,’ there are twenty-five other letters in the alphabet, you know. You can use them to make what are known as words, not all of which have four letters or end with ck. And if you learn enough words, you can write what is called a sentence. Like you, most sentences are simple. But some are compound and others complex.”

  They use the nearby Guaranteed Discreet Letter-Writing-and-Reading Service to communicate with their wives. They refer to it simply as “The Service” and go there furtively throughout the week.

  Their illiterac
y is a sore point with them, but even more so is their refusal to do what others at Hotel Newfoundland do and avail themselves of literate residents to communicate with their wives and families.

  “My friends at the Service tell me all is well back in Harbour Main,” I said. “And I feel that I understand all of you so much better too, now that I have read your letters to your wives and their replies to you.”

  They glared uncertainly at me.

  “Oh, I know the people at the Service can be trusted to keep what you tell them to themselves. But, you see, I work there part-time, and we all read one another’s letters. But otherwise we’re perfectly discreet.”

  Some of them looked at a man named Dalton, who, though not much older than the others, seemed to be regarded as their patriarch.

  “You don’t work for the Service,” he said, focusing an unblinking, menacing stare at me, blue eyes among freckles so numerous they all but coalesced into a single birthmark.

  “I’d be honoured if you hired me to write and read letters on your behalf. But it’s gratifying to hear about you from the others.”

  “Liar,” he said. “That’s what you’re famous back home for, telling lies. Fielding the Forger. I heard you got Smallwood here kicked out of school.”

  “Well,” I said, “you can’t believe everything you read—I mean, that someone reads to you.”

  Dalton looked at Smallwood.

  “Hiding behind a woman’s skirts,” he said. “Some man you are, mommy’s boy.”

  “Good news, Mr. Dalton. Your son has decided to do the honourable thing and marry your daughter.”

  “You shut your gob, before I shuts it with this.”

  “You have no need to be ashamed.”

  “I told you to shut your gob.”

  Smallwood took a step in his direction, but I held out my cane, pressing it against his chest.

  “It’s time to go inside,” I said, “and give these poor men some privacy. They have as much right as anyone to bawl their eyes out without being gaped at by the less sensitive and more stout-hearted.”