Read The Breath of Night Online
Authors: Michael Arditti
The Breath of Night (29 page)
My one consolation was that she appeared oblivious to the suppurating sores on her forehead and arms. I crouched by her side, breathing in the fumes of the sepsis and stroking her hands. I whispered her name and she turned her face slowly towards me. Her filmy eyes were unable to focus, but she recognised my voice. ‘Father?’ she said. ‘Yes, Girlie,’ I replied, ‘I’ve found you.’ ‘No,’ she said with a quaver, ‘it isn’t me.’ ‘It isn’t me,’ she kept repeating, until she gradually fell calm. I promised to take her to the hospital, whereupon she assured me with the ghost of a smile (although it may have been the flicker of the candle) that now that I’d arrived, she could die in peace. She asked me to hear her confession, which I did, struggling to make out the words through the sobs and the gulps and the shame. No sooner had I absolved her than she exclaimed: ‘Now I will die, Father.’ I
suggested
that we said the Rosary together, but her breathing took on the unmistakable rhythm of a death rattle. I gave her the last rites and, just as she’d predicted, she died.
Having informed the police, who showed as little concern as if we were reporting a stolen camera, and an undertaker, who agreed to embalm the body overnight, we returned the next morning to transport it home. We strapped the painfully light coffin on to Hendrik’s roof rack and with a lachrymose farewell from the landlady we set off. Despite our unorthodox cargo, we ran into trouble only once, when the guards at a checkpoint outside San Fernando, refusing to accept the bona fides of a pair of dirty, dishevelled and informally dressed priests, insisted on searching the coffin for arms. Three days later I conducted Girlie’s simple funeral in the presence of her sisters, brother and grief-stricken aunt. I notified the family for whom she’d worked and at whose hands she’d suffered so greatly. Needless to say, they didn’t send so much as a flower.
Meanwhile, my enemies are closing in. While I was in Angeles there was an arson attack on the
convento
and, had it not been for my housekeeper’s quick thinking, we’d have lost everything. Of course I didn’t tell Mother, but in an unguarded moment at Whitlock I let slip that we were having building work done, so if she should ask, the official line is that we’re putting up an extension. Then, someone – someone rich enough to afford meat – poisoned Grump, my dog. Never can a name have been less fitting. He’d been with us for more than ten years. I find it hard to write a sermon without him lying in his customary place at – not to say, on top of – my feet; although I grant that I may be looking for an excuse.
I shan’t pretend that I’m not at risk. The lifting of Martial Law may have curbed some of the military’s excesses, but it’s been accompanied by a steep rise in the activities of the various vigilante groups. One with a particular animus against radical clerics has even adopted the slogan: ‘Be a patriot and kill a priest!’ My name appears on a list of NPA sympathisers, or ‘roll of honour’ according to my friend and colleague, Father Benito. I’m described as Ka Julian (that’s short for Kasama or Comrade), ‘the Communist lapdog’. A letter sent to the Bishop (by a man who, to my certain knowledge, can neither read nor write) claims that I spend my free time in the mountains
training
rebels: I who had to struggle to keep up with the corps at school.
The result of all this is that I’ve been inspired to take a more active role in the liberation struggle. I was in two minds whether to mention it, but I need you to understand my position; although I know that your views are bound to be coloured by your
government’s
campaign against the IRA. I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of the Irish situation, but I assure you that, in the Philippines, they’re clear-cut. Moreover, I’m convinced that the axiom that today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s statesman will be particularly pertinent here. Don’t be alarmed! I haven’t started toting a machine gun, but I have forged links with an NPA unit,
first conveying information and more recently giving practical help. On the night after Girlie’s funeral, I was woken by a young NPA operative of my acquaintance, whose wife had been badly wounded in a shoot-out with the constabulary. He begged me to lend him my car to drive her to a well-disposed doctor in Baguio. I’ve received similar requests in the past and always refused, but this time, whether because of the individuals concerned or the change in my own attitude, I not only agreed but offered to drive her myself, since I was less likely to arouse suspicion.
Never have I felt more ashamed of my old jalopy than when we jounced over the unlit, potholed road. Glaiza’s heart-rending groans as she rolled on the back seat, blood seeping from her
ill-dressed
wounds, still echo in my ears. My apprehension proved to be justified since, no sooner had we left the
poblacion
than we were stopped by a military patrol, who instructed us to step outside the vehicle and show our papers. Not only was Glaiza in no fit state to move, but she’d grown delirious and was making remarks that alarmed me. Forced to extemporise, I remembered Girlie and a previous mercy dash to Baguio. I explained that my passenger was a pregnant parishioner whom I was taking to the doctor. The guard, shining his torch on her, spotted the blood. ‘She’s had a miscarriage,’ I said coolly, ‘which is why there’s no time to waste.’ ‘If it’s urgent, why not find a doctor nearer home?’ the guard asked. ‘I can’t,’ I said, floundering. ‘It’s delicate. Her husband…’ ‘Of course,’ he said, slapping me on the back, ‘I
understand.
Your little secret.’ It only dawned on me as he sent me on my way with a pumpkin-sized grin that he took us for lovers. When I returned the following day, after the doctor, a covert NPA
supporter
, had pronounced the operation a success and promised to hide Glaiza until she was well enough to go back to the camp, I found that rumours of my indiscretion had spread throughout the constabulary and that everyone, from its humblest officer to its sinister commander, regarded me with newfound respect.
I take no pride in celibacy. Indeed, I sometimes fear that the fact that it comes so easily to me, when so many of my fellow
priests face a lifelong battle to suppress their desires, points to a deficiency in my nature. But since my visit to Angeles I’ve seen the discipline in a more positive light. So it’s doubly ironic that on my first NPA mission my illusory liaison should have kept me safe.
There you have a fairly exhaustive account of my activities since my return and one which, with Hendrik offering to post it when he goes to Holland next week, I know I can dispatch without fear of its falling into the wrong hands. You asked me, during one of our snatched conversations at Whitlock, on what authority I based my support for the rebels, given that it runs contrary to both the traditional teaching of the Church and the direct instructions of the Pope. The answer, which as so often eluded me at the time, became clear on reflection. I follow my conscience; which is not the same as having an opinion. To listen to one’s conscience is to hear the authentic voice of God.
Your loving brother,
Julian
‘Over there, look! Payatas, first turning on the left.’ Philip pointed to the sign, which a long line of refuse trucks made redundant.
‘Why must you wish to see only dirty parts of my country?’ Dennis asked, blasting his horn at an unsuspecting tricyclist. ‘We go to Boracay, yes? I am best tour guide to this island:
beautiful
sands; beautiful girls.’
‘It’s not a pleasure trip,’ Philip said, with a pang of sympathy for a man whose only contact with the golden beaches had been a tourist board brochure. ‘I’ve come to interview the priest who was Father Julian’s closest associate. After this, my work’s done.’
‘Then you go back to London?’
‘Yes. Max is booking me a flight for the end of next week. If I still have to finish my report, I can do it at home.’
‘And what about sister? She has been giving you sex. Many times sex.’
‘She hasn’t been “giving me sex”,’ Philip said sharply. ‘We’ve had sex. Or rather, made love, if that isn’t too innocent for you.’
Depressed by the exchange, Philip stared out at the landscape, which was equally cheerless. Tumbledown shacks, which
themselves
seemed to be made of refuse, lined the road to the dump. The usual Manila smog had thickened into something more toxic. Dennis pulled up at a
pagpag
stand, where two naked
toddlers
were paddling in an oil pool.
‘Is this it?’ Philip asked.
‘No more cars allowed,’ Dennis said. ‘I go back to QC. You text me when you are over.’
Philip, who was under strict instructions from Max not to take any valuables, patted his pocket to check on his phone and stepped out of the car into an acrid stench, part industrial waste, part human decay. For a moment he was afraid that he might choke, but he caught sight of the toddlers gazing up at
him and struggled to twist his grimace into a smile. Taking shallow breaths, he walked past the queue of trucks to the site entrance, where people had gathered like refugees in a transit camp, although one couple, exhausted or demoralised or both, sat listlessly on their haunches, as if waiting for the scavengers to break them down to their constituent parts.
He made his way to the barrier, where he was stopped by a guard. ‘You cannot enter here, sir,’ he said, as peremptorily as if he were manning the gates of the presidential palace.
‘I have an appointment with Benito Bertubin of the Payatas Scavengers Association,’ Philip replied.
The guard, eager to exploit to the full the authority eking away from him, made great play of examining his clipboard, before directing Philip to the office at the far end of a row of corrugated-iron huts. He walked down a path made of impacted waste at various stages of decomposition and, to judge by the roaches under his feet, degustation. He found himself at the base of a garbage mountain whose peak, a patchwork of plastic sacks, glistened like a blanket of snow in the sun.
He entered the cramped office, to be greeted by a bright-eyed young woman, who sported such an outsize crucifix that he was tempted to ask for Benito by his former title. ‘Ben’s expecting you,’ she said, forestalling him. ‘I’ll give him a buzz as soon as he’s finished on the phone.’
To Philip’s relief she turned back to her work, attempting neither to engage him in conversation nor ply him with snacks. He took his allotted seat and affected interest in the wall charts. ‘Philip Seward?’ He spun round to face a small man with a shiny bald head, bulging eyes and a large scar splitting his left cheek. It looked like a knife wound, and he wondered whether it had been inflicted before he met Julian, during their association, or after his death. He could not recollect Julian mentioning it, although that proved nothing, since his overriding concern had always been for the inner man.
‘Thank you so much for seeing me. I know that you’re very busy.’
‘And you’re very persistent.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ Benito shrugged. ‘This place is quite extraordinary. I’d no idea it would be so vast!’
‘Yes, the tourist board’s missing a trick; they should market it to climbers. Instead of the usual challenges, they’d face typhus and tetanus and HIV.’ He hesitated. ‘We should go next door. We’re keeping Carolyn from her work.’ He led Philip into a small room whose austerity suggested that he had not thrown off all traces of the priesthood. ‘Please take a seat,’ he said, pointing to a rickety rattan chair. ‘That was found in the refuse.’
‘Really?’ Philip said, resisting the impulse to scratch. ‘How long has the dump been open?’
‘Since 1973, although to be accurate, it’s no longer a dump.’
‘Really? I thought…’ Philip looked blank.
‘An easy mistake. But it’s been reclassified as a “controlled disposal facility”. Just as the squatters are now to be known as “informal settlers”. The authorities maintain that it gives people back their dignity. I can think of better ways: like decent homes, decent healthcare, decent education and decent jobs; like honest government, impartial justice and fair wages.’
‘Maybe the change of name’s the first step?’
‘Maybe.’
Philip, wary of trying Benito’s patience, was keen to turn the conversation to Julian without appearing to dismiss the
problems
of the settlers. He was grateful for the distraction
provided
by the phone, only to sit in uneasy silence while Benito harangued the caller in Tagalog.
‘City Hall!’ Benito said, slamming down the receiver, as though that explained everything. ‘Let’s take a walk. I need to clear my head.’
‘Sure,’ Philip said, bracing himself for another blast of noxious air. They passed a line of makeshift dwellings, some of them no more than canvas sheets stretched out on poles. In one, a mother was feeding her baby from a breast as dry and dusty as the earth around her, while in another, a young girl squatted
beside a recumbent old man, dipping her finger into a can of water and then into his mouth. Philip felt the tears pricking his eyes, as Benito, filled with more practical compassion, strode ahead.
‘I’m not quite sure what you do here,’ Philip said. ‘Are you some kind of social worker?’
‘Social worker; aid worker; activist; legal adviser; volunteer coordinator; anything and everything that’s needed. One day – today, as it happens – I’ll be fighting City Hall, who are blocking our proposals to buy land we can use to build a school and a
birthing
clinic. Another, I’ll be liaising with one of the humanitarian agencies who are setting up craft workshops, or a group of
overseas
students who’ve come here to help. Or maybe I’ll be trying to persuade our gang masters to allow fairer access to the refuse because, believe me, corruption and intimidation are as rife here as everywhere else. “Fairer access to the refuse”: can you believe I said that?’ He turned to Philip with his eyes blazing. ‘Thirty years ago – twenty even – I could have told you exactly what I was doing. But now we’ve had our EDSA revolution; we’ve overthrown the dictator; and this is the result.’ They walked past a brazier where two men and a boy were burning scrap wood to make charcoal. ‘The tragedy is that when Julian and I and thousands like us fought – and I do mean, fought – for a fairer distribution of land, we never imagined that this would be the land people ended up with: that tenants forced off their farms would come to the city and find an even crueller, more unjust system in force, that
children
would grow up surrounded by pylons instead of palm trees, playing in fields of cardboard and plastic and broken glass.’