The Breath of Night (30 page)

‘Things must improve. It’s just a matter of time.’

‘You sound like our president telling us that there are no quick solutions. The trouble is that there seem to be no slow ones either. Let’s go back inside. You’ve come to talk about Julian, not to listen to my moans.’

‘I suspect that if he were here now, he’d be making them just as strongly.’

‘There are moments – two-o’clock-in-the-morning moments – when I think he was lucky to die when he did. Look around you! Is it any wonder I left the priesthood? We’re living in one of the most Catholic countries in the world – perhaps
the
most Catholic after the Vatican – but for the people of Payatas
Christmas
is the most miserable time of the year. And you know why?’

‘Because they don’t have the money to buy gifts for their children?’

‘Because they don’t have the money to feed them! Over the holidays the refuse collections in the city stop. No garbage: no food! Welcome to capitalism Philippine-style.’

They returned to the office where, after a brief word with Carolyn, Benito led Philip into his room.

‘So what do you want to ask me about Julian? I can’t see my testimony carrying much weight in Baguio, let alone Rome.’

‘I’m trying to put together as full a picture as possible of the man and his work – anything that might bolster the
Positio
. You knew him better than anyone. It’s clear from his letters how much he respected you.’

‘You should read mine! I first met him when the oil of
priesthood
was fresh on my hands. We worked together for more than twelve years. We gave the Church back to the people. And, as you know, we paid the price.’

‘Consolacion, his housekeeper… do you remember her?’ Benito nodded. ‘Credits you – though “blames” might be more accurate – for his involvement in politics.’

‘Consolacion never liked me. She believed that like Our Lord Himself the best priests were white.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That’s why she was so fond of Julian. She disapproved of me for my race as much as my ideas.’

‘Yet now she goes to the Philippine Independent Church.’

‘Yes. I’m afraid we must have wounded her deeply.’

‘We?’

‘Julian, by embracing the liberating gospel of Christ. Which was all the more remarkable when you think of where he came
from. He had so much to lose. I’m not talking materially, you understand, but up here.’ He tapped his skull.

‘He had to adjust to a new set of circumstances,’ Philip said. ‘At home we prefer our priests to remain above politics – like the Queen, except without the perks. Whereas, from what I gather, the Church was the only effective opposition under Marcos.’

‘That’s certainly what it would like you to think. And if you’re talking about individual clerics – priests, nuns, even the odd bishop – it’s true. But for the Church as a whole, the case is rather different. Under the leadership of Cardinal Sin –’

‘I’m sorry, but the name always makes me smile.’

‘He played on it. That is, he made so many puns on it, you suspected it was a double bluff. Under Sin, the Church adopted a policy of “critical collaboration”, although to many of us there was too little of the first and too much of the second. True, he endorsed the EDSA revolution, but only when it became clear that if he prevaricated any longer he wouldn’t just have a stain on his conscience but blood on his hands.’

‘Is that why you wanted out?’

‘I stayed in the Church as long as I could – far longer, perhaps, than I should have, until the gap between faith and practice grew into a chasm. I could no longer reconcile the Christ who taught that He came not to be served but to serve, with a Church that rolled up its sleeves on Holy Thursday, and the rest of the year trimmed them with lace and gold thread. I refused to be part of an institution that prayed with the poor on Sundays and preyed on them the other six days of the week. Who needs Martial Law when we have the mass?’

Philip was taken aback by the strength of Benito’s anger. ‘Did Julian know of your objections? Did he endorse them? If he were alive today, do you think he’d still be a priest?’

‘That’s not a question I can answer. His journey wasn’t my journey, despite everything we shared along the way. What I can say, without hesitation, is that whether inside the Church or not, he would be fighting to bring about Christ’s kingdom on earth.’

‘Am I right in thinking you never saw each other again once you both left prison?’

‘Yes, he went back to England and I was posted to Negros. The Bishop thought it would keep me out of trouble.’ Benito smiled.

‘So when Julian was given permission to return here, you made no plans to meet?’

‘By then I was spending all my waking hours – and many that should have been sleeping – organising the sugar workers. Julian, too, was busy in his new parish. But we corresponded regularly. And before you ask, the letters – at least, his to me – have long disappeared.’

‘So you didn’t blame him for abandoning you and returning home?’

‘Blame him? Why should you think that? Blame him? On the contrary, I never admired him more than during that year – a whole year, remember – we spent in prison. You can’t imagine what the conditions were like. Yet of all of us – myself included – he was the only one who never complained. Indeed, I
sometimes
think…’

‘What?’

‘No matter. All right then, I sometimes think that he
welcomed
the privations. They gave him a chance to show how far he had escaped from his past. He was no longer Julian Tremayne or, should I say, the Honourable Julian Tremayne. He was Ka Julian, a true revolutionary.’

‘He was proud of that reputation,’ Philip said. ‘It’s impossible to say how much he left out of his letters home. But he did boast to his brother of being on a list of NPA sympathisers.’

‘You’re quite wrong to suggest that he abandoned us. From the moment we were arrested, he was under huge pressure to do a deal with the authorities. But he wouldn’t cooperate. He refused any chance to clear his name that might incriminate others. He even refused to distance himself from the NPA.’

‘Yet in the end he accepted the presidential pardon.’

‘Not for his own sake, but for his mother’s. She was terminally
ill and desperate to see him before she died.’ Philip winced, as he recalled Julian’s final letter to his brother. ‘Even so, he believed he’d secured cast-iron guarantees for the rest of us. After all those years he still expected the government to keep its word!’

‘Is that when…?’

‘Yes,’ Benito replied with a lopsided grin. ‘I was released and within four days I was captured – or rather, rearrested – by what was later described as an unidentified gang of vigilantes. But they were vigilantes wearing constabulary uniforms. I was used as a punch-bag and an ashtray and a urinal. I was suffocated and drowned and kicked and clubbed and burnt. Finally, I was left with this permanent souvenir.’

‘Julian never spoke of it.’

‘I never told him. Wounds heal, but guilt festers: I had no desire to add to his.’ Benito stood up. ‘I think we should stop there. I’ve told you all I know and you must be exhausted from taking so many notes.’

‘I’ve one last question, then I promise I’ll leave you in peace,’ Philip said.

‘Very well,’ Benito said, resuming his seat.

‘Julian wrote to his mother that he was sustained by the
conviction
of his innocence. But he also mentioned supplying
information
to the NPA and driving a wounded fighter – or at least one of their wives – to a doctor in Baguio. Consolacion admitted that he wasn’t even at home on the night of the murder. Do you think he might have crossed the line?’

‘That supposes I think there was a line to cross. If you know the slightest thing about Julian, you’ll know that he believed it was as much a priest’s job to fight for justice in this world as to promise justice in the next.’

‘You mean “fight” as in work day and night for the cause?’

‘I mean “fight” as in take up arms, like David and Joshua and Samson.’

‘And Christ?’

‘Above all, Christ: Christ who came to bring not peace but
a sword. It may not please the Bishop, who’ll want him to be sanitised as well as sanctified, but Julian was first and foremost a liberator.’

‘Rather than a saint?’

‘That’s a term I no longer recognise. It’s forty years since I divided people into saints and sinners.’

‘What about miracles? Or have they also been excised from your vocabulary?’

‘Not exactly, but I see them as changes of consciousness, rather than of matter.’

‘Yet we have sworn statements from dozens of people who witnessed Julian levitate.’

‘Would you want to be the only person in the church that day to have missed out: to have been denied the sign of God’s favour?’

‘I wasn’t there, of course, but I was in Pampanga last month for the crucifixions. I saw the prisoner, Jejomar, stepping down from the cross without a scar’ – Philip flinched – ‘without a mark on his hands.’

‘Well, I wasn’t there either, but I have attended two sessions of psychic surgery –’

‘Which is what?’

‘Faith healing taken to extremes. Unless I was hypnotised or hallucinating (and I’d swear on my life that I was neither), the healer opened up the patients’ bodies, removed the diseased tissue, then closed up the wounds, all with a few strokes of his finger.’

‘Without using any instruments?’

‘None that I could see.’

‘How do you explain it?’

‘I don’t. So-called primitive people have powers that have been lost – or not yet revealed – to the rest of us.’

‘So even though you’ve left the Church, you haven’t renounced all forms of mysticism?’

‘I try to keep an open mind. Just as I do about Julian. And in
my view, in spite of all the miracles and testimonies, he’s more likely to have been martyred
by
the Church than
for
it.’

‘I’m not sure that I follow,’ Philip said, fearing that he was being drawn into a private vendetta.

‘Ever since the Bishop of Baguio announced his investigation last year, I’ve received dozens of letters from a prisoner in Bilibid who maintains that Julian wasn’t murdered by the NPA, but on the direct orders of a group of pro-Marcos clerics.’

‘That’s absurd!’

‘No, simply far-fetched. Although no more so than the
official
line that he was ambushed by a gang of insurgents in the Sierra Madre mountains. For one thing, the NPA very rarely targeted foreigners and for another, unless they’d shot him on sight, they’d soon have learnt who he was and honoured him as a comrade.’

‘So was this prisoner part of the plot?’

‘Apparently not, but he claims to have shared a cell with one of the assassins. It was common practice when we were in Baguio for powerful men with scores to settle to bribe the guards (and even the governor) to let a prisoner out for the day to commit a murder. After all, that would give him a cast-iron alibi.’

‘What’s in it for the prisoner?’

‘Any number of things: dropped charges; intimidated judges; cash for himself and his family; a taste of freedom; or maybe pure bloodlust.’

‘Does your informant have a name?’

‘Certainly. It’s no anonymous tip-off.’

‘Do you think it might be possible for me to meet him?’

‘I doubt that the Bishop would be too keen.’

‘Perhaps not, but I can’t allow the opportunity to slip through my fingers. I’ve come this far. I need to find out the truth for myself, even if not for the
Positio
.’

‘I can give you his name and address, that’s no problem. Here.’ Benito moved to a filing cabinet and took out a folder, copying the details as he spoke. ‘The bigger problem might be getting in
to see him. If the Vicar General was as reluctant as you suggest to put you in touch with me, I hardly think he’s going to ease your path with the Bilibid authorities.’

‘Don’t worry. If bribery can get a murderer out of jail, it can surely get me in.’

‘I wish you luck. Here.’ He handed a scrap of paper with a name, prison and block number on it to Philip, who was struck by the copperplate script. ‘Let me know if you discover anything.’

‘Of course.’

Philip took his leave of Benito and made his way down to the gate, in the wake of a particularly putrid delivery. After texting Dennis to collect him, he waited beside the busy
pagpag
stall where two teenage boys, one with his teeth bared in a broad grin, the other with his teeth permanently exposed by a cleft lip,
practised
the ultimate form of recycling: selling scraps of chicken bone, burger patty, and pizza crust salvaged from the dustbins of McDonald’s and Jollibee, shaken to dislodge the maggots, fried to kill the larvae, and swamped in tomato sauce to enhance – or conceal – the flavour. Feeling uncomfortable, he crossed the road where he was grateful for Dennis’s prompt arrival.

‘I have need of 10,000 pesos before six o’clock this night,’ Dennis said, while Philip fastened his seat belt.

‘Any special reason?’ Philip asked, in no mood to humour him.

‘Is for lotto. I am already knowing these numbers.’

‘Don’t tell me: you have a friend!’

‘Yes. How are you knowing this?’ Dennis sounded genuinely surprised.

‘An inspired guess! Sorry but no can do.’

‘Please, you must help. I have problem, big problem.’

‘No, you’re in a fix, a temporary bind, and you’ll wriggle out of it as per usual. I’ve spent the morning among people with real problems, who live on rubbish: who build their homes on it, feed their families on it and, in the final obscenity, eat it. It’s a reminder to the rest of us to count our blessings.’

In defiance, Dennis tuned the radio to his favourite station, raucously accompanying the rapper who told his ‘one true momma’ that ‘I’ll cut out your heart, so we’ll never be apart’. Biting his lip, Philip endured the punishing journey back to the hotel.

‘I won’t be needing you this afternoon,’ he said, when they reached the forecourt, ‘but I’d like you back here at seven o’clock sharp – and I do mean
sharp
– to drive Max and me to Ray Lim’s house in Forbes Park.’