The Breath of Night (26 page)
Read The Breath of Night Online
Authors: Michael Arditti
‘The Philippines have always been an anomaly in the Society’s operation, but after the expulsion of the friars the Pope called on Western missionaries to come to the aid of the Church here and we’ve stayed on ever since. Like Julian, I soon found my niche. Despite working in such different worlds, we felt the same need to join the struggle for justice.’
‘Maybe in years to come (not too soon, I trust!), another bishop not a million miles from here will be putting together another
Positio
?’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Hendrik said, pointing to the sampler. ‘You’ve read the writing on the wall.’ Philip glanced at it again, as the cat leapt on to his lap. Startled, he attempted to stroke her head while balancing his notepad on her knobbly back. ‘I invited Julian to stay with me in Angeles. He had boasted – no, that’s not fair,
enthused
– about all the progress he was making in the parish: the Bible study groups and agricultural projects and health education classes he’d set up. His life was as
straightforward
as mine had been in Pakistan. I wanted him to appreciate what it was like for those of us who were fighting a more
insidious
enemy, not economic oppression but human desire.’
‘Surely the danger occurs when the two come together?
Sex-starved
soldiers with dollars to spare. Julian was appalled by what he saw in Angeles and in a letter home (no doubt
censored
) he laid the blame squarely on the shoulders – and the pockets – of the US military.’
‘He was right. The Filipinos tell a joke to make light of their long history of Spanish and American occupation: “We spent three hundred years in a convent and fifty in Hollywood.” But they’ve picked the wrong myth. It wasn’t Hollywood so much as the Wild West. And the sheriffs were just as corrupt as the gunmen. They polluted the whole environment. There were even monkeys around the airbase who became addicted to American Wonder Bread.’
‘Is that a metaphor?’
‘No, it’s a fact. They soon learnt that a few simple tricks would earn them their daily crusts. The girls – or LBFMs as they were known – weren’t so lucky.’
‘LBFMs?’
‘Little Brown Fucking Machines.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘They had to perform more and more sophisticated tricks, as the men’s appetites grew more and more jaded. After all, when you’ve had a different eighteen-year-old every night for a week, you’re happy to pay a dollar or two extra for a sixteen-year-old
and then a fourteen-year-old and then a twelve-year-old. Need I go on?’
‘I get the picture.’
‘But they did go on. On and on right down to children of five or six. Baby Brown Fucking Machines.’
‘Julian was full of praise for your efforts to rescue them, despite all the threats from the pimps and bar owners.’
‘And the Mayor who claimed that I was jeopardising
commerce
and the military chiefs who claimed that I was
jeopardising
morale. And the mothers – don’t forget the mothers, since they were usually the ones who sold the girls.’
‘But not at five or six?’
‘How does a prostitute live when she’s too old or sick to attract custom? Either she earns a few pesos doing laundry for her younger colleagues, or else she prostitutes her own children. Some combine the two, sprinkling soap powder in the girls’ drinking water to keep them from infection.’
‘It’s unbearable, even at a distance, yet you worked there for – how long?’
‘Thirty-four years.’
‘How did you ward off despair?’
‘I’m a priest, Mr Seward,’ Hendrik said.
‘Of course,’ Philip replied, uncertain if he had been given an answer or a rebuke.
‘At the end of the day – at the end of a life – the most any of us can hope for is that our actions result in more good than bad.’
‘Isn’t that rather pessimistic for a priest?’
‘I’d prefer to think of it as realistic. I’m not a monk praying in a cloister; I’m out in the world. And this – this you can write in your pad –’ Philip realised with a jolt that he had been so engrossed in the conversation that he had stopped taking notes. ‘I’m convinced that even in his far-flung parish Julian felt the same.’
‘I’ve always understood that to a Christian, motives mattered as much as – if not more than – results.’
‘Which is why I need to redress the balance,’ Hendrik said, staring at him hollow-eyed.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘And I hope that you never will. I have fought many enemies over the years, but the most powerful, the most persistent has been myself.’ Philip’s stomach clenched as Hendrik’s words presaged a confession. ‘In a world where priests are held to be guilty of every sin that they condemn, let me make one thing absolutely clear: I never laid a finger on any of those girls, never touched them with more than a handkerchief to dry their tears or a flannel to wipe off the dirt. But I had thoughts. And in thirty-four years the thoughts built up until they became the secret story of my life.’
‘Was there no one you could talk to?’
‘Yes, Julian. I went to visit him in San Isidro and I talked to him more candidly than I have talked to anyone before or since. I told him of the toll that the work was having on me, body and soul: how I saw the wraithlike children, not yet come into the fullness of their sin, and I was overwhelmed with love for them. But it was not the love that Our Lord instructed us to feel for “these little ones”; it was longing. I told him that I saw the bruised and broken girls in the refuge and, even as I bathed their wounds, I was stifling the urge to inflict more. I was sure that it was only my horror at the effects of other men’s lusts that saved me from succumbing to my own. I told him that I had resolved to write to the Regional and ask to be sent somewhere there were fewer temptations – somewhere like San Isidro,’ he said sourly.
‘But the Regional didn’t listen?’
‘I didn’t write. Julian talked me out of it. Not having known him, you can have no idea of his powers of persuasion. He charged me to remember that God had sent me here for a purpose. He was testing me, and I had no right to run away. He – Julian, not God’ – Hendrik laughed – ‘told me that I must turn my weakness into strength, my vice into virtue, and that, having
recognised the offence in myself, I would be better able to fight it in others and that, by fighting it in others, I would defeat it in myself.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘No, it grew ever more consuming: awake, asleep and, most painfully of all, at prayer, until I stared at my crucifix and saw not salvation but sin.’
‘Did you speak of it again to Julian?’
‘He spoke of it to me; he wrote to me; he even sent me a cheque for the refuge, a mark of faith that felt more like a mockery. He returned to Angeles some years later in search of a missing parishioner. And that was the last time I saw him. I realise that he was shocked, not just by the depravity of the bars but by my detachment. No matter that I needed to mix with the owners for the sake of the girls; I had failed his test, which I sometimes think was more exacting than God’s. There was certainly more of Moses in him than of Christ.’
‘So I take it that you don’t regard him as a saint?’
‘Did I say that? It depends how you define “saint”. For me, a saint has to be full of humanity and not just of God. He has to have blood as well as chrism in his veins. He has to
understand
the corruption that we lesser mortals find in ourselves and so enable us to rise above it. Whereas Julian had none of that. He was somebody who never touched pitch – who never even caught a whiff of its fumes – his entire life.’
3 March 1981
My dear Mother and Father,
Forgive me if this is shorter than usual, but what with catching up in the parish and the visit of the Holy Father I’ve been run ragged since my return. It struck me halfway through
yesterday’s
mass (that’s how bad it’s been) that I’d promised to let you know I was back. I apologise for the delay, although I trust that Father’s typically frank reminder that you’d hear soon enough if there were a problem reassured you, Mother.
Apart from bringing me back in one piece, the flight had little to recommend it. I was sitting beside a well-groomed man in his thirties with the attention span of a gnat (although, given the tenacity of gnats in the
convento
, I’m maligning them). On hearing that I was a priest, he lectured me – at length – on the iniquities of organised religion. Thankfully, he fell asleep
somewhere
above the Alps, giving me the chance to reflect on the trip. It’s a truism to note how the month sped by. After the initial adjustments (sorry about the beard; I thought I’d warned you), we’d barely resumed our old rhythm when we were plunged into the excitement of the wedding. Then, a week later I was
preparing
to fly back. In spite – or, indeed, because – of all the letters we’d exchanged, there was so much ground for us to cover. Do you suppose that anybody has the luxury of picking up where they left off? Perhaps Cora? But then I suspect that she has a fairy-tale sense of time.
I was delighted to find you both looking so well: a few creaks perhaps, but then that’s only to be expected. The diet’s working wonders, Mother, and while I admit that Agnes might have exempted the wedding cake, please try to stick to it. Agnes
hasn’t changed a bit, I’m happy to say, nor for that matter has Greg, except around the middle. Success evidently agrees with him. Alice was the one who looked drawn. It may have been the strain of the wedding, but I do hope that Greg isn’t taking her for granted. Forty-eight is a difficult age for a woman. With Isabel married, Sophie working for Greg and Vicky at college, she must feel lonely. She told me that she’s spending more and more time in Suffolk. It’s a lovely garden, but it isn’t Eden.
On a brighter note, you and Alice and the orchestra and the florists and the caterers and everyone concerned should congratulate yourselves on a splendid occasion. Isabel looked radiant (I know I’m prejudiced) and Hugh looked suave (ditto). It’s not for me to criticise the guest list, but I fail to see why Greg felt the need to invite quite so many government colleagues. He might as well have hung blue rosettes on the marquee. And who were all those braying young men? Exile may have skewed my perspective, but it strikes me that in the ten years I’ve been away the country has grown heartless. Even in sleepy Gaverton people are more self-serving – the Jenny Henshaw I left behind would never have put her mother in a home so that she could work part-time at the co-op or the Simon Freeman have left the police because he could earn more dealing in second-hand cars.
I promise that it won’t be another ten years before I return, although not for the reason you suggest, Father. At this rate you’ll live to be a hundred! Nonetheless, the longer I stayed in England, the more I realised that the Philippines is now my home. When I stepped on to the tarmac in Manila I was filled with a warmth that went far beyond the weather. I wish you’d taken the chance to visit when I first came out here. The
landscape
may be beautiful, but it’s the people who make it special. Perhaps I can best explain by quoting one of their creation myths (they have A LOT), which Mark, Consolacion’s youngest grandson, told me only the other day. His grandmother scolded him, but I was enchanted. In the beginning, God created human beings from clay – so far so Genesis! But here’s the twist; He
put them in a kiln to bake. He left the first batch in for too long; they came out burnt and were the ancestors of the black race. He tried a second batch, which He removed too soon. They were only half-baked and were the ancestors of the white race. So He took particular care over the third batch. They came out a perfect shade of brown and were the ancestors of the Filipinos.
Boastful and naïve it may be, but there’s a grain of truth in it as I found when, the week after I returned, I conducted a very
different
wedding. I’d love to have seen the Leveringtons’ faces, let alone those of Greg’s high-powered friends, if, instead of a tastefully embossed card, they’d received a slice of pork wrapped in a bamboo leaf. That’s the traditional Ibaloi invitation, which was delivered to me at the
convento
by the bridegroom’s youngest brother. The next day I drove up to the mountains, where I was greeted by the whole village, in their best beads and feathers. I didn’t officiate alone but shared the honours with the
mambunong
, their tribal priest. After years of agonising over their dual loyalties, I’ve grown reconciled to their worship of two supreme beings: their own
Kavuniyan
and the Christian
Shivus
whom, unsurprisingly given their history, they see as the more powerful. So, at ceremonies where both gods are invoked, ours takes precedence.
I found the hybrid service deeply affecting. At the end, the bride and groom were escorted through the village to the new hut that the community had built for them (no parental deposits and twenty-five-year mortgages here). The thick smell of
barbecued
boar, at once intimate and ominous, filled the air, as the couple presided at the wedding feast. I drank so much
tafey
, a lethally potent rice wine, that the details of the celebration elude me, but I do recall being dragged out to join in a dance, which couldn’t have been further removed from my sedate foxtrot with cousin Nancy at Whitlock. I was given a strip of cloth to hold in the air and induced to take a few steps around the floor while one of the older girls, also holding a cloth, twirled in front of me. A trio of women played on bamboo pipes and their male counterparts beat gongs in what seemed like ever-increasing
delirium, although that may well have been the effect of the wine. I staggered back to my seat, where one of the elders explained to general amusement that it was a courtship dance. My partner was mercilessly teased.
Even as I’ve been contemplating the richness of the
indigenous
religion, the country has been revelling in the full panoply of papal power. In February, the Philippines welcomed the most important visitor to its shores since Magellan. For months the entire population has been in a state of frenzy, which reached its height when President Marcos, who has been counting on the Holy Father’s visit both to prop up his popularity at home and enhance his prestige overseas, was persuaded to lift Martial Law. For the first time in more than eight years, workers are free to associate and even to strike, the military is subject (at least on paper) to the courts and opposition supporters can no longer be imprisoned without trial. Those of us who cling to the
possibility
of peaceful reform feel new hope. Others (no names, no pack drill but, if you’ve followed me this far, you’ll know whom I mean), maintain that it’s too late for such cosmetic gestures and that only through bloodletting will the country be cleansed.
Time alone will tell which of us is right, but what can’t be denied is that the visit has given a tremendous boost to the nation’s morale. I took part in two open-air masses, in Manila and Baguio, and I was overwhelmed by the euphoria and
reverence
of the vast crowds, many of whom had been camping in the sweltering heat for days. To see the forest of outstretched hands passing the sanctified wafers from one to another was truly to feel in the presence of Christ. The most moving service of all was the Pope’s beatification of Lorenzo Ruiz, a seventeenth-century clerk who travelled with three Dominicans to Japan, where he chose to be tortured to death rather than renounce his faith (I don’t need to tell you, Father, about Japanese cruelty, but this was particularly barbaric). In a country so devoted to the saints that you stumble on ornate shrines in the most obscure places, this first domestic canonisation is long overdue.
At the same time the visit was a definite coup for the
President
, not least in the propaganda opportunities of the Manila mass, where he sat on a dais directly beneath the Pope and insisted that he and his family should be the first to receive
communion
. Imelda, too, basked in reflected glory, criss-crossing the country in her private jet, so that wherever the Holy Father touched down, be it in Cebu, Mindanao or here in Baguio, she was waiting to greet him, always in a different outfit but with the same broad smile. On the other hand the Pope failed to give the regime the unequivocal backing it wanted. In Manila he elected to stay with the papal nuncio rather than in the lavish palace Imelda had built for him – entirely out of coconut: the wood, that is, not the shells. And, while a huge clean-up operation ensured that he was spared the sight of the usual rubbish on the city’s streets, the government was unable to keep him away from the slums when he came up to Baguio. Above all, in a sermon on the island of Negros, he roundly attacked the oppression of the poor and appealed for universal brotherhood.
On the other hand – is that too many hands? Perhaps not for such an adroit pope – his visit was less reassuring for those of us who wish that as well as assuming his immediate predecessors’ names, he shared their radical zeal. At a mass for 5,000 clergy in Manila he informed us that our role was purely spiritual and that we must on no account involve ourselves in politics. Yet isn’t that what we’ve always done, especially in the Philippines? Señores Arriola, Pineda and Romualdez would undoubtedly endorse a viewpoint that turns us into little more than
government
stooges, stalwarts of the status quo. But are we to leave others to fight for justice, while we stay safely behind the lines like army padres? Is the Blessed Sacrament to be nothing more than a placebo?
As I sit in the gathering dusk on the veranda, drawing this letter to a close before my lamp attracts an army of moths, I’m conscious of a deep stillness hanging over the
poblacion
. Will it last the night or will I be woken by the sound of gunshots or
distant screams? For a moment I find it hard not to envy Father Ambrose with his gentle round of daily offices and pastoral visits, his spotless church and spacious presbytery, his
intellectual
conundrums and doctrinal dilemmas. But then I think of those hands, lovingly passing our Saviour through the crowd, and I know that the path I’ve chosen, however rocky and
tortuous
, however dimly lit, is the right one.
Your loving son,
Julian
The news of Analyn’s death put all Philip’s plans on hold. She had been shot by a masked gunman on her way home from mass and the identity of the perpetrator was not in doubt. With his demands rejected, her uncle had carried out his threat. Philip, who was used to resolving disputes by negotiation, struggled to comprehend the crime. Did the man despair of his brother receiving justice in a case that might drag on for decades? Did he regard domestic violence as a minor offence compared to perjury? Was he defending family honour or merely male
prerogative
? On the other hand, was there some scrap of humanity, some shred of compassion, in his choosing a moment when, to Catholic eyes, Analyn was at her closest to God?
Cultural differences aside, Philip was bewildered by Maribel’s and Dennis’s responses. After an initial bout of weeping, Maribel acted as if she had been bereaved of a distant cousin, shunning the emotional displays of her soap opera heroines in favour of a fatalism akin to Consolacion’s ‘
Bahala na ang Diyos
’, while Dennis swore vengeance on his uncle with a passion worthy of Orestes. Rather than heading home to comfort their mother, as Philip had expected, they returned to work. Maribel could at least hide behind her script. Dennis was more exposed, dancing into the early hours at the club and then driving to the hotel the next morning with a bleariness that owed as much to
shabu
as to grief. He refused to take time off, as though it were only through relentless exertion that he was able both to endure his loss and punish himself for his inadequacy.
While anxious not to intrude, Philip offered to accompany them to Cauayan: an offer which was accepted gratefully by Maribel and grudgingly by Dennis, who made it clear that his sole inducement was the car. On the day of departure he arrived at the hotel, sporting the same bright red T-shirt he had done
at their first meeting, reassuring Philip, who had feared that Max’s claim that a T-shirt and jeans were acceptable funeral attire betrayed both his own slovenliness and a disregard for Filipino sensibilities. Maribel, too, showed no sign of mourning, wearing a pink smock and leopard-print leggings and, as ever, carrying her lotus blossom parasol. The only person sombrely dressed was their aunt, whose olive-green blouse and
charcoalgrey
skirt seemed to reflect her temperament as much as the occasion. Dennis greeted her with the traditional
mano po
, lifting her right hand to his bowed head, a gesture of respect which, judging by her frown, had little effect. After a nudge from Maribel, he introduced Philip.
‘I am Hapynez,’ she announced. ‘With one “p” and a “z”. It is a most original spelling.’
‘For a most original lady, I’m sure. We meet at last! I’ve heard so much about you. From Dennis, that is.’
‘It is an honour for me to meet such a distinguished gentleman.’
‘If I may say so, your English is excellent.’
‘I have a certificate in conversational fluency, critical
thinking
and confidence building from the American Institute for English Proficiency.’
To his consternation, Philip discovered that Hapynez was not waving them off but travelling with them, a fact of which neither her nephew nor her niece had seen fit to inform him. His heart sank still further as she headed for the back seat, depriving him of the proximity to Maribel, which alone would make the
ten-hour
journey bearable.