The Breath of Night (15 page)

Philip mused on what might have occurred to alienate
Consolacion
from the Church and sully her memory of Julian. Why was the former keeper of the flame now prepared to see it
extinguished
? Given the women’s intransigence, it was clear that he would have to solve the mystery alone. Meanwhile, after
accepting
an invitation from Jocelyn Alvarez, the dentist’s mother, to meet Benigna Vaollota the following afternoon, he said his goodbyes and went to fetch Dennis who, having run down the battery on his Walkman, sat staring blankly into space. He was doubly reluctant to ask directions from a woman, but Philip, refusing to take any chances, dispatched him inside to consult Felicitas. His foresight was vindicated when they found
themselves
in a web of unnamed streets, as they drove to visit Rodel Jimenez and Rey Sison, Julian’s two surviving cell mates.

After passing a makeshift sports pitch, on which six young men, three a side, were playing a strange hybrid of football and volleyball, featuring high leaps, swooping kicks and the
occasional
flying somersault, they turned down a dirt track, lined with small wooden shacks, one of which, with its open hatch,
San Miguel
sign and three small tables, proved to be their
destination
. The only customers were two elderly men, who stood up as they approached. Introductions were effected, with Dennis showing a morbid interest in the bulbous, tongueless Rodel. At Philip’s request, he fetched four bottles of beer and handed them
around the group, before taking his cue from Philip’s ‘Now we must get down to business’, one of the few directives that he was guaranteed to respect, and moving to the adjoining table where he sat vacantly.

While addressing his questions to Rey, Philip made sure to include Rodel who, although speechless, was not silent. As Rey described how Julian had opened their eyes to the truths of the Bible, Rodel scribbled on his slate, holding it up to read
You must not exploit a poor and needy wage-earner
. Philip thanked him heartily and made great play of copying it in his notebook. Rey, clearly more accustomed to his friend’s practice, ignored it and continued with an impassioned account of the founding of the BCCs, the battles with the
haciendos
, Quesada’s death, their own imprisonment, and the murder of their two friends and colleagues, all of which chimed with Julian’s letters. Throughout their conversation Rodel chalked biblical quotations on his slate, which Philip duly took down.

Rey broke off as a man walked past, his demeanour at once swaggering and shifty. He stopped to stare at them before
spitting
, sufficiently close to his own feet to forestall retaliation, and continuing down the road.

‘Who was that?’ Philip asked.

‘Albert Alias,’ Rey replied. ‘He used to be the hit man for the Mayor. He killed many, many good people. Now the Mayor is in prison, he is on his own.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous for him? Aren’t there relatives of the victims out to exact revenge?’

‘They too have to take care. Everyone knows that the Mayor will not be locked up for long. Already he has been let out several times. In the autumn it was for the marriage of his daughter. There were pictures in the papers. So many smiles.’

‘And the authorities didn’t intervene?’

‘He is too useful for them. At the last election he delivered to the government a thousand votes in a
barangay
where there were five hundred people. We should be very proud of our long-lived
town. It is said that half the people on the electoral roll are more than a hundred years old.’

Rodel scribbled
Methuselah lived for nine hundred and
sixty-nine
years
on his slate, only to rub it off in fury.

‘So you would endorse what I’ve heard elsewhere,’ Philip asked, unnerved by the one’s tone and the other’s gesture, ‘that nothing much has changed since Father Julian’s day?’

‘We have changed,’ Rey said, banging his bottle on the table. ‘We have changed. That must change something.’

Dennis looked up on hearing the noise, at which Philip caught his eye and waved his own bottle meaningfully.
Scowling
, Dennis stood and fetched them a second round. Rey took a long swig and resumed on a new note.

‘This beer was first brewed by the friars. The Augustinians in Manila. Did you know that?’

‘If I did, I’d forgotten.’

‘I suppose this is one good thing we can thank them for.’

Rodel scribbled
Let him drink and forget his misfortune, and remember his misery no more
on his slate.

‘Did you also know that when the friars first came here they held long debates to decide if the Filipinos – “these uncivilised natives” – could be considered fully human?’

‘That’s monstrous!’

‘Is it?’ Rey asked. ‘What are we? No more than slaves. Look at him!’ He pointed to Rodel. ‘No, not at his face.’ He thrust his hand at Rodel’s crotch. ‘There is nothing there.’ Philip stared at the ground. ‘At least he has an excuse. What can you say for the rest of us?’ He began to weep. Rodel gently clasped his shoulder. Dennis watched, transfixed.

‘Only that Julian had faith in you. His life, not to mention his death, was governed by his love and respect for the Filipino people. If Rome endorses his miracles, St Julian of Benguet may be an inspiration to generations to come.’

‘Is that what this country needs? Another saint? More
processions
and music and ribbons and
lechon
? I know one man who
would not agree. Father Julian said that what we needed was knowledge and action. No more saints, unless they are leading armies like St George!’ He took another long swig of his beer. ‘No, of course he should be a saint. He was a good man, a great man, a miracle worker. Give the people what they want. If he can make them happy, is that not a miracle? You should go now. We have told you all we can.’

Philip stood up, knocking the table and spilling one of the bottles. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

‘It is of no importance. It is beer, not blood.’

Rodel scratched something on his slate but, before he could hold it up, Rey grabbed it and flung it to the ground. Rodel stared at it impassively.

‘You should go!’

Returning to the hotel, Philip went straight up to his room, switched on his laptop and began to transcribe the testimonies. He was midway through Felicitas’s account of the requiem when the light went out and the fan whirred to a halt. After waiting a minute for his eyes to adjust, he edged gingerly round the
sharp-angled
bed and into the corridor, following the contours of the walls to the stairs and down to the lobby which, to his
consternation
, was pitch-black, without a glimmer of illumination from the street. His hollow ‘hello’ was greeted by an unruffled ‘We are here, Mr Seward’ from Lerma and a loud guffaw from Dennis.

‘I am coming to help,’ Dennis said. ‘I am man; I am fearing nothing in dark.’

‘Neither, you’ll be pleased to hear, am I. But I am afraid of breaking my leg. What’s happened? Has the hotel’s fuse box blown?’

‘No, it is not here,’ Lerma replied. ‘It is all the town, maybe all the province.’ She lit a candle and placed it on the hatch.

‘Has there been a massive power cut?’

‘No,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘It is the Governor. He tells his men to switch off the light.’

‘The Governor’s ordered the black-out of his own province?’

‘It is correct,’ she replied placidly. ‘He is a director of
companies
who ask for a big grant to build a new plant with coal. So one or two times in each month he makes sure there is no energy, to show the people the need for more supply. Even when we all know there is enough from the hydro-energet… how do you say it?’

‘Hydroelectric power.’

‘It is correct.’

With no functioning stove, Lerma proposed a dinner of dried cuttlefish, which Philip politely declined. He did, however, accept the candle, which seemed to be the only one in the hotel, and, clutching it tightly, picked his way back to his room. Sparing both his eyes and his iPod, he opted for an early night, waking after an uninterrupted ten hours feeling fully refreshed. Which was more than could be said for Dennis, who stumbled down to breakfast with hooded eyes and haystack hair, looking as if he had barely slept. Giving him time for only a single bowl of rice, Philip insisted that they leave for San Isidro and his
appointment
with Regina Romualdez.

Regina, alone of the town’s ruling families, had agreed to see him. Although Julian had barely mentioned her in his letters, the hostility he had shown towards her father and the opprobrium he had heaped on her brother made Philip anxious about his
reception
. In the event, he was pleasantly surprised. Dennis drove through the open gates of the
hacienda
, past a now unmanned sentry box, and down a long avenue of typhoon-twisted trees to the cracked portico of the big house. An elderly maid met him at the door and led him into a large salon, whose mildewed walls and faded grey-green curtains mirrored the gentle
dilapidation
of the façade. While she went to fetch her mistress, he tried out an eccentrically shaped chair with vastly elongated arms, leaning forward until his bottom was suspended in the air, at which moment he was simultaneously seized by cramp and greeted by Regina.

‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable here?’ she asked,
pointing
to a battered leather sofa.

‘Thank you,’ he replied, dislodging himself with difficulty. Despite his embarrassment, his mishap seemed to have eased her, and her voice was far friendlier than it had been on the phone. She spoke perfect English with a mid-Atlantic twang and, after the usual small talk while the maid served iced green tea and savouries, he took out his notepad and asked for her impressions of Julian.

‘What sort of impressions?’

‘Whatever springs to mind.’

‘Deceit,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m sorry, is that not what you were expecting?’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘At first all the families were happy to see him. We knew that he was one of us. We thought that he would be an ally, but we were wrong. It felt as if he wanted to attack the world he had been born into, but he could not do that in England, so he came here, where the people are easily led, where they listen to the promises of a kind man with an educated voice and, of course, a white face. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly. Please go on.’

‘A priest should make promises, of course, but they should be about the next world not this one. He should not
interfere
in politics. According to him, whenever my father wasn’t exploiting his tenants, he was busy trying to buy their loyalty. But didn’t he do the same? The people loved him not because of the sermons he preached, which they were too ignorant to understand, but because of the money he gave for their medical fees and classroom equipment, and even some farming projects. And where did it come from? His family, who were no different from us, only thousands of miles out of sight. And for this they want to make him a saint? Shouldn’t a saint look in the mirror? Or would that be vain?’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve no wish to reopen old wounds.’

‘They have never closed; they will never close. Your saint did not understand how we live here. He failed to appreciate the
links between my family and my tenants’ families, which have been forged over many generations. You met Tanya, my maid, now the only maid for this whole house. Her sister was a maid for my mother but she had to leave. It was very sad. Perhaps there was wrong on both sides. But we have put it behind us. Tanya has been with me for more than twenty-five years. That is our way.’

‘I think that’s what Julian objected to. He didn’t want a world that was split into masters and servants.’

‘No, he and his friends wanted revolution. They were
terrorists
, even if they had no guns – and, believe me, there are many who swear that they did. Suppose they’d succeeded, what then? They get rid of Marcos and end up with Mao or Pol Pot. Do you think that the people would have been happier with that?’

‘With respect, you ended up with Cory Aquino.’

‘Ah yes, the plain, simple lady, beloved in the West, who smiled and spoke softly and didn’t spend money on shoes. What precisely did she do for the peasants? She brought in land reform, which hit small estates like ours while great ones like hers were exempted. Our tenants – our former tenants – can’t afford to run their own farms and we can’t afford to help them. So now we are all worse off.’

‘It may surprise you to learn that Julian was equally
disillusioned
by the Aquino government.’

‘Forgive me, but I am not interested. What happened to the
hacienda
broke my father’s heart. I say this as a fact. He felt a pain in his shoulder during lunch and two hours later he was dead. I have been left to take over, to run things as best I can, never knowing if we will still be here from one harvest to the next.’

‘Don’t you have a brother?’

‘He is no longer in the country,’ she replied curtly. ‘I am sorry; I cannot help you. For me, Father Julian is no saint – not at all. There is injustice in the world, along with cruelty and
suffering
, but they count for nothing in the face of eternity. It is the
priest’s job to keep our minds on the justice and peace to come. You remember Jesus’s words when Judas condemned Mary for pouring the precious oil on His feet: “You will always have the poor among you.” I like to think that they have a particular
significance
in the Philippines.’

‘Elsewhere He spoke very differently. “Blessed are the poor”, for a start.’

‘
Blessed
, exactly! He did not say
rich
or
happy
or even
well-fed
. There is an order on earth and there is an order in heaven, and it is our job to respect the first and to prepare for the second. I love and honour all the saints. Father Teodoro, our priest before Father Julian, called them the rungs on the ladder to God. I treasure that phrase. As a girl, I used to dress the
santos
for the feasts, until Father Julian forbade it.’ She screwed up her eyes as if in pain. ‘Whatever the Bishop decides – whatever the
Congregation
in Rome decides – I refuse to believe that in ten or twenty or even one hundred years’ time – another little girl will be dressing the statue of St Julian.’