The Breath of Night (12 page)
Read The Breath of Night Online
Authors: Michael Arditti
I suspect that by now you’ll be reading this alone, Mother, after Father has retreated to the smoking room, wondering, as so often, what he did to deserve such a son. Cora’s quirks, whether sabotaging the hunt or disrupting the harvest supper, could always be excused by her condition. I have nothing but my faith to excuse mine. If, on the other hand, you’ve stuck it out this far, you might want to give up here. Things don’t get any jollier.
Sexual violence isn’t confined to Angeles City; I’m dealing with it in my own parish. I can’t remember if I mentioned it, but a couple of years ago I found a job as a maid in the
Romualdez
household for Girlie, a twelve-year-old orphan. Everything seemed to be going well. Doña Teresa expressed satisfaction with her; Girlie enjoyed her work and helped to support her sisters and brother. Last spring, however, I noticed a change in her: she became sullen and strained, which I put down to a combination of growing pains and the fact that doña Teresa’s public displays of charity aren’t always matched in private. Then, during
confession
, she told me that the Romualdez son, Joey, had raped her. Don’t worry, I’m not breaking any rule since I persuaded her to speak to her aunt Leonora who, much to my surprise, marched straight up to the house to confront Joey, who made no attempt to deny the charge. You may think that the admission does him credit, but having talked to him myself, I see it less as a sign of contrition than of contempt: for the girl, for her family and, indeed, for the law.
I offered to drive Girlie and her aunt to the police station, but Leonora preferred to handle the matter alone. I welcomed her newfound confidence until I discovered that, far from
pressing
charges, she’d brokered a backstairs deal with don Enrico, which not only denied Girlie restitution – except in the crudest
financial sense – but left her vulnerable to fresh assaults. All my arguments were in vain. I assumed she was afraid the
publicity
of a trial would damage Girlie’s reputation, but Benito, with a candour bordering on cynicism, explained that, in the right circumstances, rape could be the making of a poor girl in the Philippines.
I’m learning what a loaded word justice is. While doña Teresa primly assured me that she would bear Girlie no grudges (‘It’s our cross to be the object of envy and spite’), don Enrico was defiant. He summoned me to see him and, having kept me waiting for an hour, received me on the lavatory. I noted with alarm that there were two adjacent seats and wondered whether he expected me to join him. To my relief, he left me hovering by the door while he explained, with unconcealed disdain, that after four years I had failed to understand the way things were done here. ‘We’re all equal before the law,’ I said. ‘Which law?’ he asked. ‘Man’s law? Martial Law? Marcos’s law?’ ‘God’s law,’ I replied, ‘which transcends all the rest.’ ‘But who pays for it?’ he asked. ‘Who maintains the altar on which you celebrate mass, the pulpit from which you preach?’ To my horror, I realised it was a serious question. He believed that, by dint of making the greatest contribution, he had the right to the greatest respect. So much for the widow’s mite!
Before signing off, I must mention an extraordinary event that took place at the requiem for Gener, one of the young men murdered after the basketball match, which has brought me a lot of unwelcome attention. I was halfway through the Dies Irae when I felt a mysterious lightness come over me. It’s impossible to describe and I’d have attributed it to the heat in the packed church and the emotion of the service if several people hadn’t seen – I’m loath to put it into words even without picturing your response – me levitate. Like you, I’m inclined to scepticism. These are people who regularly report seeing Christ’s face
materialise
on doorknobs or watching Him dance in the paddy fields. Perhaps it was a trick of the light: a sunbeam hitting my feet
that made me appear to rise? On the other hand, I know what I felt in myself and the loud gasp from the nave was entirely spontaneous. One of the altar boys brought me down to earth (not literally!) when, with that distinctive blend of the sacred and secular, he whispered that he hoped I’d use my magic leap in our next match.
I thought you’d rather hear the story from me than at second hand. It’s amazing how quickly rumours spread. We’ve already had to fend off reporters from Manila. I don’t expect you to credit it but you might try to keep open minds. That said, I can picture you looking concerned, Greg roaring with laughter and Agnes pursing her lips. Cora, however, will understand.
Your loving son,
Julian
The owner of the black BMW summoned so regularly to the lobby took control of the rented silver Honda. He made such minute adjustments to the driving seat, mirrors and air conditioning – the latter without
consulting
his passenger – that Philip half expected him to remove a DENNIS sticker from his bag and attach it to the windscreen. His frustration was understandable. Having finally found himself behind the wheel, he was stuck in a massive bottleneck in Caloocan City. Philip refrained from pointing out that, had he picked him up at seven o’clock as planned, and not ninety minutes later with the risible excuse that his rooming house had burnt down, they would have avoided the worst of the traffic. Instead, he turned to the back of his newspaper, catching up with the daily antics of long defunct British cartoon characters, and tried to ignore the
insistent
tattoo being drummed on the dashboard, the fitful flapping of half-broken wipers that redistributed dirt across the glass and the violent curses, thankfully in Tagalog, that greeted anyone who attempted to overtake.
After further delays and prolonged blasts on the car horn, they finally arrived at the North Luzon Expressway. The urban sprawl gradually gave way to open country, in which a vibrant
patchwork
of rice, maize and melon fields extended back to a
spectacular
range of blue-tinged, cloud-capped mountains. Dennis increased his speed, at the same time turning up the radio.
Deafened
by the screech of Filipino hip hop, Philip searched in vain for a way to ask him to switch it down that would not sound
peremptory
. So, making no comment, he gazed out of the window, where his attention was caught by a series of billboards featuring a craggily handsome middle-aged senator with a grin so broad that he at first appeared to be advertising toothpaste but, on closer inspection, was claiming credit for the
Asphalt Overlay on
Two New Traffic Lanes
. Intrigued, he questioned Dennis, who was singing along with a lyric decrying ‘four hundred years of tears for the brown man’.
‘No surprise he has big smile,’ Dennis replied testily. ‘Is known he is buying 8,000 hectares of land after reforms and now he is needing way to reach it. You look at all new road in this country and is ending at some rich man’s gate.’
They turned off the expressway and down a side road, whose pitted surface made Philip think more kindly of the senator’s construction project, however venal. Even Dennis was
compelled
to reduce speed in order to negotiate the bumps,
potholes
and, at one point, a large pile of boulders. Nevertheless, Philip feared for the chickens strolling nonchalantly across the road, as though for no other reason than to lend substance to the hoary riddle. After driving for miles without spotting a single car, house or person, they arrived at a small group of shacks where Dennis stopped, saying: ‘Now we must make piss, yes?’ Philip followed him warily into the scrub, choosing a spot where he stood alone but not aloof. As he zipped up his trousers, he was grateful to find that the locals, alerted to their arrival, were watching them with an air of benign apathy, which rapidly changed to expectation when Dennis called out ‘Now we must eat something, yes?’
Avoiding the shack which offered
Live Goat Meat for Sale
, Philip joined Dennis at a food stall. ‘What is it?’ he asked,
gesturing
to the tureen.
‘
Pagkaon
,’ the stallholder replied, leaving him none the wiser.
Pangs of hunger overwhelming his qualms, Philip nodded his acceptance. She served him a paper plate of rice mixed with brown bits, which he preferred to chew than to identify. After eating his fill, he followed Dennis to a stall stacked with
hundreds
of lychee-like fruits.
‘Is
lanzones
. Is very good, yes?’
‘Then let’s buy some,’ Philip said, anxious to expunge the memory of the
pagkaon
, only to change his mind when the
stallholder made straight for a pile infested with ants. ‘Is it Poison A Foreigner week?’
‘Is best. Is because they know is sweetest,’ Dennis replied, brushing off Philip’s objections as casually as the woman brushed off the ants. ‘Insects more clever than English.’
Philip watched Dennis gorge himself on the
lanzones
. No amount of water could satisfy his craving for the succulent, if putrid, flesh. Back in the car, he contemplated the remaining journey with increasing irritation and after Dennis extolled the fruit for the fourth time (‘Is sweet like my
burat
’) he snapped off the radio.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t hear myself think.’
‘Is not for thinking; is for listening,’ Dennis replied, with an offended air, which made Philip feel even more mean-spirited. To his relief they came to a crossroads, where a sign reading forty kilometres to Baguio showed that they were finally approaching their destination. As if on cue, the traffic grew heavier, with lines of cars, lorries and even a local jeepney, so packed that six of its passengers were sitting on the roof. The sight of them clinging on precariously as they rattled down the unmade road felt like a symbol for the balancing act that was their daily life: a symbol reinforced when Dennis drove past at excessive speed, covering them in dust.
At 4.30 they arrived in the centre of La Trinidad, the small town between Baguio and San Isidro where Philip had elected to stay. They found their hotel, a white concrete building with a row of posts jutting from the roof as if supporting a phantom storey, and pulled up beside a sign reading
No Stopping At Any Time, Parking Only
. Its three stars would have inspired greater confidence if more than one had been lit.
Even a single star struck Philip as generous once his eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the lobby. He dared not
envisage
the domestic arrangements of the guidebook writer who had described it as ‘the sort of place where you instantly feel at home’. On one side two bamboo banquettes with blue foam
rubber cushions constituted the lounge area and on the other three dark wooden tables, with chequered vinyl cloths and a motley assortment of chairs, comprised the restaurant. In the centre a plywood partition, plastered with tourist-board posters, doubled as the reception desk and bar. The golden beaches, azure seas, verdant rice terraces and picturesque fishing villages might have been expressly designed to tantalise the unwary visitor with the delights to be found elsewhere.
Philip walked up to the desk and thumped the bell, which emitted a derisory ping. An attractive woman in her mid-
thirties
with a cast in her left eye emerged from a back room to greet him, answering all questions about his reservations with the single phrase ‘It is correct’. Philip would have felt happier had she been able to dispel his reservations about the hotel. After handing him a registration form which, to his
bemusement,
requested details of his weight and distinguishing
characteristics
(‘the only 6’1” sandy-haired Caucasian in town’?), the woman, who introduced herself as Lerma, spoke a few words of Tagalog to Dennis; Philip trusted that it was the language that made the welcome sound warmer. She gave Dennis a
different
form, which he deliberately withheld from Philip’s view. With both forms completed, Lerma summoned Armin, a slight, rubbery man, who was watching them from across the lobby. Handing him Philip’s key, she pointed to his case – a small grip that Armin picked up as cautiously as a trunk – and asked him to show their guest to his room.
Philip followed the plodding porter up the rickety stairs, down a drab corridor and into an airless room, which filled him with dismay. The bed frame stood six inches from the floor as if in an awkward compromise between Western and Eastern
practice.
The single pillow sagged like an empty mailbag. The
lighting
was as dim as in the lobby and there was no reading lamp. Armin switched on the electric fan, proving that the guidebook description of
fan-cooled rooms
contained a modicum of truth, although its loud whir would make it impossible to use at night.
He then proceeded to demonstrate the room’s other amenities, opening drawers and drawing curtains, only to be caught out when the wardrobe’s sliding door slid out of its groove. Urging Philip ‘No use to worry; I fix’, he propped it against the wall, where it served to conceal a large damp patch, and led the way into the bathroom, whose cracked tiles and frayed matting finally gave Philip a reason to welcome the gloom. When Armin picked up a red plastic bucket and mimed flushing the loo, Philip was doubly grateful to have forgone the
lanzones
. He felt an urgent need to wash his hands and, with the hot water tap running dry, looked expectantly at Armin.
‘Sometimes no hot water,’ Armin said, turning the cold water on fully as if to compensate.
‘How often?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘How long does it last?’
‘Sometimes six weeks,’ Armin replied, smiling so broadly that Philip felt certain he must have misunderstood.
He dismissed Armin and unpacked his case. He then took a freezing cold shower and, bracing himself with the thought of all the backpacking privations he had missed by spending his gap year in Rome, lowered himself on to the bed, where he fell fast asleep. He woke shortly before eight with a crick in his neck and a fierce, if unverifiable, conviction that someone had been spying on him while he slept. He dressed and went downstairs, to find that one of the tables had been laid with spoons, forks, paper napkins and four bottles of sauce: barbecue; soy; sweet chilli; and banana ketchup. It was hard to believe that the
previous
evening he had dined in the filigree elegance of the Manila Hotel Champagne Room. The gulf between the capital and the provinces, which Julian had observed forty years ago, did not appear to have narrowed. True, there was now electric light, but it was barely strong enough for him to read the menu; which turned out to be no great loss since it was as notional as the hot water. At Lerma’s prompting, he opted for the chicken adobo.