The Breath of Night (28 page)
Read The Breath of Night Online
Authors: Michael Arditti
‘No, you are correct. There is also
pancit batal patong.
’
Squashed next to Hapynez on a low wooden bench, Philip watched while Joy and Maribel walked among their guests, ladling the aromatic stew on to banana leaf plates. ‘I’m sure it’s long-established practice and I shouldn’t comment,’ he said to Hapynez, ‘but it strikes me as insensitive, to say the least, for
the men to ignore the family all afternoon, while they sit here playing cards, and then gorge themselves on their food.’
‘No, you do not understand. This is very necessary. My sister is a poor woman. She could never afford to bury her daughter alone. You see this Demos.’ She pointed to a middle-aged man, with a lazy eye and a ducktail hairstyle. ‘He comes to every house where there is death and he sets up these games. He collects the money in these little pots. Each evening he gives the family half of all the money in the pots. Then when there is enough, they can pay for the funeral.’
‘How long does it take?’
‘This depends. Sometimes one week, sometimes two.’
‘The same players every day?’
‘Sometimes the same, sometimes different.’
‘And the priest – Father Elmo, isn’t it? – has no objections?’
‘Of course not. Sometimes he is playing with them.’
Noting that the gulf between East and West was never wider than when they were observing the same rites, Philip wondered whether he should offer to play, betting heavily in order to
expedite
the process.
‘How many more days do you reckon we’ll have to wait?’
‘None. Demos has informed me that they have now sufficient money. The funeral will take place tomorrow.’
‘That’s good,’ Philip replied, with a niggling sense of unease, before accepting a plate and tasting the stew: a mixture of pork, beans, eggs, vegetables and noodles, which was every bit as
delicious
as Maribel had claimed. Pausing to digest, he caught sight of Dennis who, sharing his enthusiasm with none of his
inhibitions
, was gulping it down as fast as his mother spooned it on to his plate. He felt angry on behalf of Maribel, who was too
diffident
to express – maybe even to feel – any grievance, that Joy should display such favouritism towards her son. It was not even a case of welcoming home the prodigal since, unlike her more worldly-wise sister, she believed him to have spent the past four years in Manila training to be a chef. Then, without warning,
she began to howl, beating the ladle against her breast. While Maribel and Dennis struggled to restrain her, Philip asked Hapynez to interpret.
‘She is blaming herself for Analyn’s death. She is saying that God has punished her for asking her to testify against Marvin – this is her husband. She is saying that the judge will rule that there can no longer be any evidence and he will set Marvin free to come back here. She is saying that there will be no one to protect her. Now Dennis is saying that he will protect her. Now she is saying that he is a selfish, good-for-nothing boy who could not protect his sister, so how can he protect her?’ Philip, his
suspicions
roused by a translation three times as long as the original, assumed that Hapynez was using the “critical thinking” rather than the “conversational fluency” aspect of her skills to voice her own sentiments rather than Joy’s. There was no such ambiguity about Dennis’s response, since he took out a large roll of notes and pressed it into his mother’s hand. The gesture had a dramatic effect, eliciting a spate of kisses from Joy, a round of applause from the bystanders and a look of dismay from Maribel, which Philip sought to deflect with his brightest smile. He was anxious to reassure her and, once the guests had left, he begged her to banish all thought of wrongdoing, maintaining that Dennis’s fellow dancers must have held a whip-round for him at the club.
He felt no such call to spare Dennis, tackling him about the money as soon as they were alone with Angel Boy in their room.
‘I wasn’t close enough to get a good look but, unless those notes were all 20 pesos, it was a hell of a bundle. So how did you come by it?’
‘Is my business.’
‘You mean it’s your concern or one of your crooked schemes?’
‘Is my business.’
‘Then why were you so desperate for my loan when you already had so much cash?’
‘Is my business. Now I go to sleep, yes?’ Dennis asked, betraying his unease at Philip’s silence. ‘You are sitting on your
fat
tumbong
, talking to sister, talking to aunt, when Dennis is driving all through day. Now Dennis is tiring.’
Philip watched while the two brothers lay top to toe on the sleeping mat. Angel Boy’s feet smelt so rank from across the room that he dreaded to think what they must be like up close. He felt new admiration for Dennis who not only did not shrink but tickled them, to the boy’s audible delight, before stroking his stunted ankle and shrivelled calf. The whispers and shrieks soon turned to snores, whose irregular rhythm alone would have been enough to keep Philip awake, even without the
humidity
and the moonlight streaming in through the uncurtained window. As he twisted and turned on the meagre mattress, he was further tormented by thoughts of Maribel who, although only a few yards away, might as well have been back in Manila, given the matronly guard around her.
He was woken from a nightmare, in which Maribel was squashed beside Analyn in the coffin, by frenzied barking. He turned to Dennis, his face so much younger in repose, who was clasping Angel Boy’s ankles against his neck. Climbing gingerly off the mattress, he took the single step across the room and shook him by the shoulder.
‘Can’t you hear the dogs?’ he asked, in response to the
stupefied
protest. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘What is wrong? Is hot, yes? Is not England. Here they are making noise because skin is too scratching.’
Dennis turned away, determined to snatch a few more minutes’ sleep, and Philip seized the chance to be first in the shower. He made his way through the kitchen, where the women were already hard at work, and for once he was grateful that the presence of her mother and aunt prevented Maribel from
greeting
him with anything more than a smile before he had scrubbed the sleep from his skin. The gelid water trickling out of the hosepipe came as a shock and after drying himself on Joy’s napkin-size towel, supplemented by his own dirty T-shirt, he made up for any shortcomings by dousing his chest, thighs
and groin in aftershave. Fresh – and smarting – he returned to the bedroom, where Maribel brought him a dish of syrupy tofu, while the two brothers went off to the bathroom, which echoed to the sound of Angel Boy’s gleeful screams.
An hour later Father Elmo, whose heartless advice to Joy still rankled with Philip, arrived to lead the cortège to the church. Dennis, his uncle and two friends lifted the coffin on to their shoulders and carried it to the road, where they were met by a crowd of friends and neighbours.
Philip walked alongside Hapynez in the procession, directly behind Maribel and her mother, and at an oblique angle to Angel Boy, who hobbled to and fro. Entering the lacklustre church, he lingered at the back of the nave, only to be ushered forward by Hapynez into the ranks of the family mourners. Promotion came at a price, since he found himself next to an arrangement of lilies with very powdery stamens. Stifling a sneeze, he concentrated on the service which, as in San Isidro, was largely in English. After the Commendation, the pallbearers carried the coffin out of the church and into the adjoining cemetery. Philip, recalling
Dennis’s
explanation of his family name, trusted that it would hold true for Analyn, at once the victim and the scapegoat of domestic violence. He followed the cortège down a winding path to an open wall grave, which confronted them like a gaping wound. As Father Elmo said a prayer and Analyn was eased into her final resting place, Joy slumped to the ground, to be raised up by Dennis and Maribel, while Angel Boy beat his crutch against the wall.
‘Do not worry about the expensive coffin,’ Hapynez said to Philip, ‘it is only on loan. This evening it will be returned.’
With the grave sealed, the mood of the mourners instantly lifted. Ducking behind the headstones, the women brought out plates of snacks and cold food, and the men crates of San Miguel and Sprite. Hapynez explained that it was bad luck to return home straight after a funeral and so the meal would be held here. All threat of the macabre vanished in a burst of activity, which put Philip in mind of the dead souls emerging from their tombs
in Stanley Spencer’s
Cookham Resurrection
. As family friend and benefactor, he found himself warmly welcomed – rather too warmly by Father Elmo, who had lined up his San Miguel bottles, downing the beer as if trying to drown his scruples. To Philip’s surprise, several people asked him about Julian, whose fame had spread after Jejomar’s crucifixion. He replied with a brief outline of the canonisation process, subtly embellishing his own role for an audience that might have been forgiven for
supposing
that he had the ear of the Pope.
After dispatching her sister to the better world in which she so fervently believed, Maribel sought out Philip, introducing him to her old friends, both male and female. With no flushed cheeks or flustered glances to indicate a childhood sweetheart, he was happy to bask in their goodwill, along with the
assumption
– or maybe the joke – that every Englishman was on David Beckham’s guest list. His unease returned when she introduced him to her best friend, Nina, who held a toddler by the hand, carried a baby in a sling and was heavily pregnant. Seeing the tenderness with which Maribel gazed at the children, he
wondered
whether he had the right to suggest that on his departure, rather than remaining in Manila ready for the next foreigner to whom her brother might introduce her, she should return home, marry and start a family. Aware that he was growing mawkish, he allowed himself to be cornered by Father Elmo, who launched into a long, inebriated account of the lot of a parish priest. Just when Philip was losing patience, Maribel rushed over in a panic about Dennis, who had gathered some of his old friends for a revenge attack on their uncle.
‘I am so frightened. He will be caught; he will be sent into prison. You must help him. You must promise!’
‘How?’ Philip asked, feeling her pain like a blade. ‘I’ll try; of course, I will. But you know better than anyone how headstrong he is.’
‘You must take him away. Yes, we must all go at once back to Manila.’
‘Don’t you want to stay a few days to help your mother?’
‘No. Yes. But first I must help Dennis.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Searching for a plausible excuse, he made his way towards Dennis, who stood with a group of friends as if posing for a tableau entitled “Conspiracy”. ‘I’m sorry to break up the party, but I’ve just had a text from Max. The Bishop of Baguio wants to see me tomorrow morning in Manila. We must leave within the hour.’
‘No, is not possible. I have business.’
‘It’s my business that pays for your business,’ Philip said with growing conviction. ‘You don’t have a choice.’
Dennis’s eyes blazed with a fury that was surprisingly
short-lived
. Philip wondered if, for all his posturing, he might be glad of a face-saving way out. ‘So, what must I be saying to men?’
‘You could tell them I’m preventing you committing a
reckless
act that will ruin your life.’
‘I am not telling them this.’
‘Or else that your selfish employer – so selfish, by the by, that he dropped everything he was doing to come up here with you – needs to hurry back to Manila, where he has hot water, air conditioning, curtains, pillows and all the other luxuries that red-blooded Filipinos can do without.’
‘Yes, this is good. I am telling them this.’
10 May 1983
Dear Greg,
I apologise for having to rush back here, but now that you’re moving to Whitlock I’m sure you’ll appreciate the shepherd and flock analogy. I apologise too for leaving you to deal with all the legal matters, but it comes so naturally to you (I mean that as a compliment). I did what I could at the funeral.
Since my return, I’ve been brooding on my relationship with Father. I can’t help imagining what it might have been like had he not been away for the first six years of my life. Mother admitted that she hadn’t even told him she was pregnant when he left, in case the strain of their parting caused her to miscarry. The first he knew of it was by letter in Singapore. It’s no wonder that when he came back to find both her and Whitlock so altered, he saw me as the obvious cause. Later, when I embarked on my journey to priesthood, he took it as a personal affront. Although he always refused to elaborate on what led to his loss of faith (and it must surely have gone beyond the brutality of the prison camp), he maintained that my vocation made a mockery of everything he had undergone. So what am I to think of his bequest? Either he meant it as a joke from beyond the grave – if so, it’s a very expensive one – or else it’s an endorsement, however oblique, however belated, of my chosen path.
I wish you and I found it easier to talk. When we were boys, our age gap inhibited intimacy and as adults we’ve drifted further apart. I suppose that’s inevitable when we learn from experience, and ours has been so different. You’ve followed the course that was laid out for you. You have a wonderful wife and three lovely daughters. And I’ve just heard from Isabel that in the autumn
you’ll be a grandfather. Many congratulations! I’m delighted for you – for us all – although I can’t help feeling sad that Father won’t be here to see it. Tradition and continuity were the lodestones of his life. You’ll have them everywhere around you at Whitlock. I looked for them in the Church; I might even have found them had I settled in an English parish, but I came – or, as I prefer to think, was called – to a country where hope lies in change.
Therein lies the nub of my quarrel with Hugh. I’m sorry that it caused you all such distress at what was already a
distressing
time, but I couldn’t stay silent while a man who purports to be proud of his long-standing connection with a country – a country from which, moreover, he derives a great deal of wealth – showed himself so indifferent to its people’s plight. It was in one of his mines or, as he deftly pointed out, one of the mines owned by the consortium in which his family has an
interest
, that the massacre took place, a massacre that would have appalled me even without the personal connection.
Remember that as well as everything else, the victims were my parishioners. For hundreds of years their ancestors have dug for gold in pocket mines on the Cordilleras. Then, at the turn of the century, Hugh’s grandfather and his associates built the first industrial mine. Until recently it had been content to leave well alone. After all, what match were the Ibaloi with their wooden hammers and wedges for the big boys with their heavy-duty drills? How could the few clods of earth they removed in
handwoven
baskets compete with the tons transported in giant trucks? But now, furnished with spurious title deeds, the company has fenced off large tracts of land and, when the tribesmen hacked through the wire, the security guards cold-bloodedly blasted one of their tunnels, killing four men and maiming several others. I’m not saying that Hugh himself authorised the massacre, but the guards were clearly acting on orders from above.
I realise that your loyalties are divided, but why did you have to side so wholeheartedly with Hugh? After living in the country for twelve years, I do have some insight into its affairs, but you
acted as though I had no right even to express an opinion. What is it that disqualifies me? Being a foreigner? Being a priest? Or simply being your little brother? A year ago your government went to war on behalf of islanders on the far side of the world (I’ll say no more, except that my faith in a woman prime
minister
proved to be sorely misplaced); am I, on the other hand, to ignore the suffering of my own parishioners?
I’m convinced that far from being incompatible with a priest’s role, political engagement stands at its heart. When you and I were boys, the mass readings were drawn entirely from the Gospels and St Paul, so it’s no surprise that we felt that clergy were exclusively concerned with our souls. Since Vatican II, however, the Old Testament has been given a place. And what is its overriding theme but the freeing of an oppressed people? Indeed, liberation leads to salvation as surely as the Old
Testament
leads to the New.
No doubt if I were the incumbent of Gaverton, I’d see my role rather differently, and now that Father Ambrose has announced his retirement, I trust that you’ll find a similarly devout and scholarly man to succeed him – although I’d like to think that he’ll offer at least veiled criticism of your government’s social policies. Here in Luzon, cruelty and corruption are too endemic to everyday life to allow me to confine my broadsides to the pulpit. To give you an example, let me tell you about Girlie, a young parishioner with whom I’ve had extensive dealings over the years and whose life has been particularly – although not uniquely – wretched. You may find it distasteful and you’re at liberty to skim, but I hope you’ll stick with it so that the next time you accuse me of rubbing your face in the dirt, you’ll remember that while you have the chance to wash the dirt off, people here have to endure it.
Girlie first came to my notice about ten years ago, when she was a young orphan living with her aunt. To relieve their
overstretched
budget, I found her a job as a maid with one of our richer families. At first all went well, but from the age of fourteen
she was repeatedly raped by the son of the house. The family offered her a cash payment which, against my advice, her aunt accepted, insisting that Girlie remain with her employers. To her violator she was now fair game and when a few years later she fell pregnant, I arranged with a local convent for her
confinement
and the adoption of her child. This time there was no
question
of her returning to her job or even to the parish where she had become an object of shame. So I appealed to the Regional of our Order, who secured her a position as a household help to a banker in Manila.
I received occasional news of her from her younger sister, Tanya, who, hearing nothing for six months, grew anxious, as did I when she revealed that Girlie had left Manila and was working as a maid in Angeles City. Prostitution is as much the lifeblood of Angeles as quarrying is – or was – of Gaverton. And please forget any image you may have of dingy Soho
backstreets
or cryptic cards in newsagents’ windows. The entire city is a shop window for its sordid trade. It’s reputed to be home to around 80,000 prostitutes, although Heaven knows how they count them. From my own – admittedly limited – experience I’d say that they constitute nine out of ten of the women on the streets. Meanwhile, nine out of ten of the men come from the neighbouring Clark Air Base, enjoying a well-earned break from stemming the tide of Communism and safeguarding the American way of life. Things may look different in Whitlock and Westminster, but from where I stand the American way of life represents the greater threat. Five-year-old girls – that’s FIVE in case you can’t read my writing – are walking around with
gonorrhoea
, which I assure you they haven’t picked up from Maoist rebels. Surely freedom means more than a choice between twenty-five brands of cornflakes?
The day I heard from Tanya, I wrote to Hendrik van Leyden, a friend from the Roosendaal seminary, who’s been working with the women and children of Angeles – indeed, whenever I feel daunted by the scale of my task, I steel myself with thoughts
of his. I sent him Girlie’s address and asked him to visit her, but when he tried, he found that the building had been
ransacked
and boarded up by the police, and Girlie and her fellow lodgers had been evicted. Having been given a couple of leads by the neighbours, he suggested that I join him to investigate. No sooner had we fixed a date than I received the news about Father. Rescheduling the trip on my return, I took the bus to Pampanga, where the pleasure of seeing my old friend swiftly faded in the squalor of the search.
As I suspected, both the addresses that Hendrik had been given were of go-go bars. The first was called
Bloomers
, which seemed tame in a row that comprised
Caligula’s Den
,
Whiplash
and
Sin City
, but Hendrik insisted that its nursery naughtiness was a deliberate ploy. The bouncer, a bald man with a strangely shaped moustache, which framed his mouth like displaced sideburns, recognised Hendrik at once. I was afraid that we’d be banned – or worse – but on the contrary, he led us straight to the manager, an elegant woman with jade drop earrings, the spitting image of your teenage pin-up, Anna Mae Wong. She greeted us fulsomely, offering us drinks, which Hendrik urged me under his breath to accept or risk losing her goodwill. It was that goodwill which made me so uneasy. I failed to understand why she should want to help a man who’d publicly expressed a desire to see her locked up, unless it were out of spite. If so, she quickly revealed her true colours when, having failed to identify Girlie’s photograph, she laughed wantonly at her name. ‘Girlie? Don’t worry, mister, we have plenty of those,’ she said, pointing to the end of the bar where dancers, who I prayed were merely dressed as schoolgirls, were stripping off their uniforms to the beery whoops of the crowd.
I intend no criticism of Hendrik – quite the reverse – but, while I realise that he needed to gain her trust, I was disturbed by their apparent complicity. Thankfully, we remained incognito at our second port of call,
The Yellow Ribbon
. The atmosphere in the packed, low-ceilinged room was as smoky and swampy as at
Bloomers
, but with a harder edge. Clean-cut young men, bereft of both compassion and shame. were sitting with their – what? prizes? prey? – on their knees. Their hands greedily colonised the girls’ flesh, squeezing waists as brittle as wishbones. Hendrik left me at a table while he passed round Girlie’s photograph on the pretext of wanting to book her for a repeat session.
Desperate
for a drink, I edged towards the bar, but it was impossible to push through the men staring up at the three half-naked girls who were twirling on top of it, or to make my voice heard above the raucous cries of ‘Off, off, off!’. Eventually the dancers obliged, peeling off their pants just as I succeeded in placing my order. Not knowing where to look, I gazed down at the counter, only to find that its mirrored surface offered a graphic view of their genitals.
I elbowed my way towards Hendrik, who was talking to a scrawny girl in a skimpy bikini. She immediately turned to me and asked if I wanted to go up to the prayer room. I sensed the desperation beneath the smile and, while at a loss as to why she hadn’t asked Hendrik, I agreed, at which she told me that it would cost 40 pesos. My shock greatly amused Hendrik, who explained that the prayer room was a euphemism and then detailed the sexual act from which it derived. For the first time in years I wished that I were wearing a cassock. ‘I’m a priest,’ I managed to spit out. ‘Oh,’ she said calmly, ‘then you will wish for a boy.’
Having run out of leads, Hendrik suggested that we visit
The Pit
, which he described as ‘the last chance saloon’ for both performers and clientele. Warning that it was not for the
faint-hearted
, he ushered me up a rickety staircase above a
sari sari
store. I found myself in a miasma of tobacco and sweat, facing a makeshift boxing ring in which two girls were pummelling one another with gloves the size of their torsos, while all around men shrieked ‘Kill the bitch!’, ‘Murder her!’ and other
unspeakable
commands. After a couple of minutes a fat Filipino with a badly burnt cheek (and may God forgive me for hoping that
he’d suffered!) rang a bell and the two ‘fighters’ retreated to their corners where, instead of giving them drinks, their seconds threw pails of water over them, ensuring that their T-shirts clung to their chests, to the rapturous cheers of the spectators. The referee rang the bell again and, in a gesture I shall
remember
to my dying day, one of the girls kissed her crucifix before shuffling back. It wasn’t enough to protect her from the savage punch that moments later her opponent landed on her nose. As blood streamed down her chin and the spectators grew frenzied, I could bear it no longer and leapt up to intervene, but Hendrik grabbed my arm and shook his head. I turned away and was violently sick. Nobody noticed, and in any case the stench was swiftly subsumed in the metallic smell of the blood and the vegetal smell of the crowd.
A few years ago the entire Philippines, with the exception of me, rejoiced when Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali held their world title contest in Manila. But that felt like one of Granny Courtenay’s tea parties compared with this. What is it that drove those young men, their mothers’ pride and joy, the apples of their sweethearts’ eyes, men who I’ve no doubt would risk their lives to save a wounded kitten, let alone a friend, to ogle two malnourished girls battering one another? Have they been so brutalised by all the blood they’ve seen spilt in action that they can only relax by watching it spilt in play?
Refusing to relax his hold, Hendrik steered me to the far corner of the bar where a group of girls, some looking bored, some scared and some vacant, waited for the bout to end and for the men, now at fever pitch, to point to the numbers on their chests and take them upstairs. After buying the requisite drinks, we handed round Girlie’s photograph which, to my relief, one of the group recognised, having worked with her at another bar. She gave us an address and Hendrik led me there, through a web of alleyways with neon signs winking at every turn. He urged me not to raise my hopes since life in Angeles was transient and, at best, we might be directed elsewhere, but he was wrong; Girlie
hadn’t moved or, rather, she hadn’t been able to, as her landlady volubly explained while ushering us into a minuscule alcove screened by ragged towels, where Girlie lay on a stained mat next to a guttering candle.