A ghost planet affronting its creator as Samuel’s children, when they left this island, must have galled the soul of Samuel.
Better not to think on such a scale. From that height David looks like all the others who have died.
I have never been to war. Never fought in one or been caught up in one like David, my Provider and his delegate. Never seen one. Mere children have seen what I have only read about, endured what I have not, died though my survival was assured.
No bombs have fallen on this city, no battles have been fought here in my lifetime or that of either of my fathers. I have never been a witness. I have no testimony. I have lost less than others who have never been to war.
A son whom I met but once. They have lost sons who before the war they spoke with every day. Whose childhoods they remember. Whom they hugged and kissed good night and told stories to at bedtime so few years ago that the manner of their deaths is inconceivable.
What if mine is but a flesh wound next to theirs? Grazed by sorrow. In which case their survival is a miracle, for I am still uncertain of my own.
Every night, overhead, I will hear the drone of bombers whose pilots know nothing of the course of history that they are trying to reverse.
When the squadron of bombers has passed and they head out across the ocean and rise up above the clouds, the young men in the cockpits will see nothing but the stars.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank his editor and publisher at Knopf Canada, Diane Martin, the executive publisher at Random House of Canada Limited, Louise Dennys, his publicist Sharon Klein, his agent Robert Lescher, his former agent Anne McDermid and also Deirdre Molina, managing editor at Knopf Canada.
Bestselling novelist WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in the St. John’s area of Newfoundland. The Custodian of Paradise is his seventh novel; among his previous works of fiction are The Divine Ryans and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. He is also the author of an award-winning and bestselling memoir, Baltimore’s Mansion. He lives in Toronto.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2007
Copyright © 2006 1310945 Ontario Inc.
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Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2006.
Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Johnston, Wayne, 1958–
The custodian of paradise / Wayne Johnston.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37544-5
I. Title.
PS8569.03918C87 2007 C813′.54 C2006-907037-7
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