The Custodian of Paradise (29 page)

March 23, 1917

I went out one night in search of junibeer, in search of anything. P.D. (the Second) told me that something called “callabogus” (pronounced like Galapagos), a mixture of spruce beer, rum and molasses, was being sold in the west end late at night. He gave me an address on Patrick Street, a street corner that I should not visit until after midnight.

I walked westward on Water Street, tapping every lamp post with my cane, clearing my throat, coughing, letting bootleggers know that a customer was coming, hoping to be accosted, hoping for a voice from some dark doorway and then a quick transaction that would not involve me being raped or robbed or mistaken for a prostitute.

Patrick Street was dark, the lamps long since extinguished. I heard no footsteps but my own, no one’s breathing but my own. I did not smoke, lest I disguise the
telltale smell of someone else’s cigarette, but I smelled nothing. I decided I would stop and wait, just stand there in the street in the hope of enticing some juneshine maker and street-watcher from his house. Thinking it might be so dark “they” couldn’t see me, I struck a match and lit a cigarette, keeping the match lit for as long as possible, then drawing deeply on the cigarette to make it glow.

I heard the sound of a window opening on my left, slowly, carefully, bit by bit, opened thus many times before I guessed. I saw, approaching the window, that the curtain was tacked so tightly to the frame that it might have been a pull-down shade.

A great exhalation of breath from behind the curtain.

“How are you, tonight?” a man said. His voice deep and quavering as if he was about to cry.

“I’m fine,” I said. “How are
you
tonight?”

“It’s late,” he said. “Too late perhaps.”

“What do you mean?”

“Late. For a woman to be out all by herself. In the cold. And the snow.”

“I can’t sleep. I thought perhaps a walk would help.”

I wondered if, in spite of the darkness, he could see me through the curtain. I felt like pulling it aside.

“I can’t sleep either,” he said. “It’s an awful thing, the sealers. What those poor men must be going through. Is that what’s keeping
you
awake? You have someone out there, do you? Your husband—”

“No,” I said, thinking that the more desperate I sounded the more money he would ask for. Then I changed my tone. I might have happened onto a man keeping a silent vigil in the darkness for his brother or his son.

“Do you—?”

“No,” the voice said. “No one. I know where all my children are tonight.”

“That’s good,” I said. I felt suddenly ashamed, thinking of the women who each passing night were aging years waiting to hear about their sons, while my two children, whom I had never seen and had left with another woman, were in their beds.

“I know where all
my
children are as well,” I foolishly said, gulping down the last two words.

“Your children. Yes,” he said.

“It’s just an expression,” I said.

“Is it? Oh yes. I see what you mean. I’ve heard that expression.”

Which worried me more than if he had said that he thought it a curious thing to say. I wondered if I should elaborate or if that would only make things worse.

“The truth is that I’m thirsty,” I said.

“Yes.” Unsurprised.

“Whatever you have—” I half-shouted.

“Shhhhh—”

He named a price. “Just pass me the money and I’ll get something for that thirst of yours.” His voice quavering again.

I took the money from my purse and pushed it through the side of the curtain. Felt his fingers close momentarily about mine and hold them tightly, fingers so large I thought at first he was taking the money with both hands.

“I’ve waited for so long,” he said.

I withdrew my hand.

“Here. To help you sleep, my dear,” he said. A bottle like the ones P.D. had used for juneshine appeared on the windowsill, though I could not see his hands.

“Waited?” I said, but the window slowly closed. Looking to see if others were about, I pulled the bottle cork and smelled it. It was nothing I had had before. Presumably callabogus. I put the bottle under my coat, which I then tied tightly at the waist. I turned and walked east for half a
minute until, in a gap between the row of houses, I made my way uphill. My heart pounding in my chest.

Where are you, Smallwood?

“Out there,” they say. They might mean the known edge of the world. The darkness of the sea at night. Out there. They do not quite believe that it exists.

I keep going back to that window on Patrick Street, though I swore I would never go near it again. I stand in other streets at night, clearing my throat, coughing, smoking, as obvious about my intentions as I can be short of shouting them. No takers, though. Enough of a risk to sell to anyone, but to sell to a woman, a “girl” my age who even before Prohibition was not old enough to drink. No takers, though I light up and smoke until I am standing in a circle of stamped-out cigarette butts.

No takers. So I go by that window on Patrick Street again and again. And it is always like the first time. Waiting. Wondering if the window will ever open.

The sound of that window. Like the shutter in confession, I imagine. Sliding slowly. That voice behind the curtain. Like a priest behind the screen. Inviting disclosure. Your sins, my child. The promise of discretion. Those things he said. And the
way
he said them. As if he knew me.
Had
known me all my life. Never again, I swore, not after that remark I made about knowing where my children were. Not after hearing the tone of his voice. Tender, wistful. How unsurprised he seemed to hear me speak of children. But then “I’ve waited for so long.” As if he would rather have been paid in different currency. Except he did not
sound
like that.

But I must have my callabogus. I must have
something
, for without
something
I cannot get to sleep. A day without
something
and I feel as though, unless I steel myself against it,
I will lose control. I discover that my teeth and fists are clenched but have no idea how long they have been that way. There is a knot in my stomach that will not let me draw an easeful breath. I feel nervous, feel always that I will have to take some test, that some matter of suspense will soon be settled.

But there
is
no test. And there is no revelation or announcement that will put me out of my suspense. Every sound and movement startles me. The most commonplace events seem ominous.

No takers. And so, each night, or as many nights as I can afford, I go back to that window in the west end of the city. Hands shaking with dread, cold, unnameable things, I light up a cigarette, a Yellow Rag, and wait. He must like to make me wait. Seems not to mind that I stand there, so conspicuous, outside his house. A six-foot, three-inch woman known to everyone. A recurring sentinel mere feet from his window. No matter how long he makes me wait, no other customers come by.

He
must
have other customers. I go there later, thinking to shorten the wait, but the wait is always an hour, no matter when I get there. I think he sits there in the dark, the window and the curtain closed, watching the rise and fall of my cigarette and consulting his watch, waiting out the pointless passing of an hour. The house is about a half-mile from the car barn where the streetcars are repaired at night. I see the blue glow of a welder’s torch that I cannot hear on a distant patch of snow. About that distance, too, from the railyard where the locomotives and their trains are turned around. Riverhead Station. The end of the line for eastbound trains, the start of it for us. Sometimes I hear the engine of a late-arriving locomotive. For a while the streets are busy with carriages and cabs, passengers who just debarked heading home at last. Then silence again.

He knows how much I need what I can only get from him. What a relief to hear that window, the wooden frame sliding in the wooden groove. How long would I stand there before I gave up in despair and went back home? For as long as I could stand the cold. Until the first faint light of morning.

At first I thought he made me wait to discourage me from objecting to his asking price.
I have waited for so long
. For what? He said it as he held my hand in his. Mine felt like a child’s. How easily he could have crushed it. As if he were saying that he had waited all his life to touch me.
Me
. Not just any woman.

He may be nothing more than a man who knows of my father’s obsession and out of sheer mischief hopes to make it mine as well. I could ask others about him, but he might hear about it and never sell to me again. Who lives in that little house on Patrick Street? Number 43? Unthinkable. I am tempted to spy on it by day, but afraid, also. That he or someone he knows will see me. I must do nothing to jeopardize my supply until things are back to normal. But there are other jeopardies that, when things go back to normal, will remain.

That voice behind the shadelike curtain that never moves despite the wind.

“How are you, tonight, Miss Fielding?”

I tell myself that I should leave, that I am risking far too much, that I should wait out my craving as it would surely pass. But I am not convinced that it would pass. It feels as though something has entered my body, or been awakened in it that will
never
leave or sleep again.

“Cold,” I said. “Like you would be if you’d been standing out here for an hour like I have.”

“Yes. March is always cold. Or seems to be. But there has never been a March like this one, has there?”

Always there must be this pre-transaction conversation. It is for some reason necessary to pretend that the callabogus is incidental, that it is really to talk that we meet like this. A strange voice he has. A kind of faux genteel voice that he must know doesn’t fool anyone. The transparency of its affectedness seems intentional. The trace of an unfamiliar accent, a blending of accents perhaps, though none of them a Newfoundlander’s.

Who
are
you? I always feel like saying. Why do you never show your face? It’s not as though it would be hard to find you if, for some reason, I reported you. It’s not as though I don’t know where you live.

“It has been a very bad month,” I said. “But as for its being the worst of all time, I don’t know anyone old enough who can say for certain, do you?”

“Such a brazen young woman you are, Miss Fielding. But where has brazenness got you so far?” That he knows my name does not bother me so much as the way he
says
it. “And with so much to lose if you upset me.”

How he enjoys the upper hand. I sometimes think, what if I were to thrust both arms through that curtain or use my cane to beat my way inside. He must have some means of protection. He can’t be as vulnerable as he seems or he’d have been robbed long ago, forced out of the business by the sort of men I’ve seen in court who would warn his customers and suppliers not to deal with him again. Protection. A gun, no doubt. All I know about him is that he has large hands. A son, perhaps, upstairs sleeping, forever on call should his father need his help. There might be a whole family there who would be willing and able to pitch in.

“I’m not trying to upset you. It’s just that I’m freezing—”

“I was merely joking, Miss Fielding. What’s mine is yours no matter how much you upset me. You’re thirsty.
Yes. In spite of the cold. A woman so young with such a craving. But I know what it’s like. I know what you are going through. And not only because of the nature of the service I provide. I was like you, once. Worse than you. Far worse. But I—I simply stopped. When I was completely alone. A very bad way to stop, but I had no choice. No one to so much as lay a hand on my forehead.”

“A reformed drinker. Keeping the unreformed in booze. A man who understands his customers.”

“You are my only customer.”

“Why? Why me and no one else?”

“Who knows what might happen if you tried to buy from someone you mean nothing to.”

“What do I mean to you?”

“Everything.”

“I’ve got my money here.”

“Always in such a hurry. Tell me more about your children.”

Walk away and never come back, I told myself. There must be someone else that you can deal with. As indeed there is, but he’s right—only in parts of town where I would have to pay a different price.

“I told you that that was just an expression,” I said. “‘I know where all my children are.’ It means, I know the consequences of everything I’ve done.”

“I doubt that you do. But tell me more about your children.”

“Look, really, I have no children. You know my name. Ask anyone. Where would I be hiding them—”

“Calm down, Miss Fielding. I already know your story. I merely wanted to hear you tell it. I know you have no children in St. John’s. Remember the unsigned letter you received on the ship that night. I wrote it.”

Even as this caught me by surprise, I knew it was true.

“I have no idea what you mean.”
Their names are David and Sarah
. I half-expected him to say it. Was he still merely guessing, bluffing, hoping that I would give away my secret, blurt out an admission of some sort, plead with him to be discreet?

“You know exactly what I mean. As I know exactly how you feel. But I am still curious about some things. And curiosity is a craving that must sometimes go unsatisfied. Not like other cravings. We’ll talk again. But for now, it’s time for our exchange.”

Again, as I extended the money, he took my hand in his and held it, rubbed his thumb on the back of it, caressed it for a moment, then released it. Could it really be that
that
is all he wants? A woman.

“I’ve come here to buy callabogus,” I said. “Not to sell myself.”

A bottle appeared on the windowsill.