I should have played. At least they’d have had no need to geld me. I’m sorry; that was a remark in execrable taste. Horses are gelded; men are impotent; priests are set apart. But you’ll understand my bitterness when I tell you that I was the one left to console their parents and preach forgiveness; I was the one left to consign their corpses to the earth.
The conflict, as ever, centres on land: who owns it; who works it; and who covets it. It affects the whole parish, from the farmers to the Ibaloi. Don’t bother racking your brains; I haven’t mentioned them before, at any rate not by name. For four years I’ve been calling them the Igorot, a blanket term coined by the Spanish for all the Mountain People, and they’ve been too polite to correct me. Can you imagine Alasdair McLeod or Ewan Dalgliesh showing similar forbearance if a blundering Filipino had described them as English? It was only when I was studying some legal documents that I realised my mistake. The Ibaloi have lived in the Cordilleras since antiquity. Unlike more recent settlers, they have no property deeds since they hold that land comes from God – a view that you’d think would find favour in an ostensibly Christian country. You’d be wrong. The President has earmarked the Ibaloi territory to recompense his cronies. So first, he passed a law designating all land with a slope of more than 18 degrees – which pretty much covers the entire area – as a forestry reserve on which no one is permitted to live, farm or hunt. Then, he gave the logging concession to Miguel Arriola, don Bernardo’s cousin.
Arriola, who’s been felling trees so fast that he’s already caused several landslides, needs a reliable road to transport the wood. Don Bernardo has offered to build one through his estate. I’ve no wish to impugn what may be genuine family feeling, but I can’t help thinking that the huge government subsidies for the future national highway have played a part. What do you suppose the IMF and the other international agencies who are funding the project would say if they knew that it would result in hundreds of people being thrown off the land? Would they display the same chilling indifference as when they demanded the institution of Martial Law in the first place, or would they start to question the nature of their aid? The only good to have emerged from this sorry story is that it has prompted the Ibaloi and the lowlanders to set aside their long-standing antagonism and make common cause.
So, when don Bernardo brought in bulldozers to raze the crops and demolish houses, the Ibaloi came down from the mountains to join the farmers in forming a human barricade as, for that matter, did I, Father Benito, the Daughters of St Paul, and hundreds of members of BCCs from across the province. Not that it made any difference. The following day he called in the constabulary, who more than repaid his favours on the basketball court as they dispersed the protesters at gunpoint. For a moment I feared that there might be a massacre, especially when some of our more hot-headed youths started to stone the soldiers in a bid to avenge their friends and teammates, but Benito and I succeeded in calming them. At the end of the day, the physical wounds were light but, as people contemplated the devastation of their homes and livelihoods, the emotional scars ran deep. Don Bernardo has offered compensation but, so far, it’s amounted to nothing more than a few sacks of rice.
Benito and I drove to Baguio to solicit help from the Bishop who, while assuring us of his concern and promising to speak to don Bernardo, was at pains to emphasise the danger of his taking too public a stance. He played his usual trick of hinting that he was constantly grappling with forces beyond our ken and that it was only by the most adroit balancing act that he kept the entire diocese from plunging into chaos. Benito, who despises the Bishop’s fawning on his political masters, maintained that his real fear is of losing the friendship of the haciendos, with their invitations to lunch, golf and weekends on their private yachts. I prefer to think that his motives are pure, as was borne out when he authorised us to brief church lawyers on behalf of the dispossessed farmers and tribesmen. They’ve lodged papers with the judge, but it may yet be months before the preliminary hearing and years before the case is resolved. This doesn’t stem from any Jarndyce v Jarndyce-like tangle but from the relentless pressures on the courts.
Don Bernardo resents our involvement, which he regards as particularly unjust since he’s one of the few landowners to have embraced the spirit of reform and turned his shared tenancies into leaseholds. The trouble, as he well knows, is that this doesn’t necessarily work to the farmers’ advantage. Indeed, it’s a moot point as to which system is the more inequitous (don’t reach for your dictionary; I realise as I write that I’ve hit on a handy amalgam of inequitable and iniquitous). The share tenant is vulnerable to the proportion of his harvest due to the landlord, and the leasehold tenant to a fixed rent that takes no account of the all too frequent crop failures. Meanwhile, American agronomists have been pressing for the introduction of high-yield rice hybrids, which make far more sense on paper than on the ground. The additional expenditure on pesticides and fertilisers leaves the small farmers in even greater debt.
Whatever their lasting benefits, the pesticides and fertilisers have had a devastating short-term impact. Not only have they killed off many of the rodents and crustaceans that families forage to supplement their diet, but they’ve led to the deaths of several babies. I don’t know if it’s a practice unique to Luzon or if it even occurs in darkest Durham, but for centuries mothers here have weaned their children by rubbing soil on their nipples and well, you can fill in the rest. The BCCs are struggling to educate women about the dangers of herbicides, but the lesson has come too late for Maricel Solito and Joel Quizon.
How does one honour the death of a child in the midst of such high infant mortality? I feel like a chaplain on the Somme, feebly reiterating that the value of a life bears no relation to its length. Was Granny Tremayne a worthier person than Granny Courtenay because she outlived her by two decades? Of course not. Just as some of us are tall and some short, some fat and some thin, some black and some white (I’ve omitted ‘some rich and some poor’, which I no longer regard as part of the natural order), so some die young and others live to a ripe old age. And the grieving parents listen respectfully while I spout my platitudes. Do you think that may be why priests are required to be celibate, not because of compromised loyalties, let alone the need to safeguard church property, but to shield us from everyday emotion? It takes a measure of inhumanity to interpret the will of God.
I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m lonely. These people aren’t just my parishioners but my friends. Nevertheless, there are moments when I long to be with someone who shares my background as well as my beliefs. So I welcomed the chance to spend a few days last month with Hendrik. After his success in Cabanatuan, he has been rewarded – if that’s the right word – with a new parish in Angeles City, which he was eager for me to visit. I can only suppose that he was trying to test my resilience. In which case, I failed dismally. You’ve heard of wool towns and mining villages? Well, this is a sex city. That’s its entire raison d’être. We walked through streets that resembled the corridors of a giant brothel. Every depravity – that’s no exaggeration – was on offer, the one variable being the price. After fifteen minutes I began to think more kindly of the haciendos. They at least only steal their tenants’ livelihoods; they allow them to keep their souls.
Hendrik remains undaunted. He brushes off the regular death threats he receives from pimps and bar owners as if he were one of the Ibaloi trusting in talismans. He’s befriended several of the prostitutes, helping them to obtain medical checks and treatment, and even, in a few cases, to rebuild their lives, but he concedes that it’s a Sisyphean task. For every woman who leaves the streets, two more arrive to take her place. His main concern is to provide a refuge for the children, some no older than five or six: children who should be playing in the fields, not flaunting themselves in doorways. What kind of men take pleasure in such perversion? What force of collective amnesia allows them to bury their own innocence? As I watched little girls hitch up their skirts at the first
glimpse of trouser, I understood what led revolutionaries to take up arms.
Righteous indignation is all too easy at one remove, so I’ll stick to asking questions. Is it any accident that Angeles City with its 80,000 prostitutes (no, I haven’t added a nought for effect) sprang up on the perimeter of one of the two largest US bases in the country? What do you suppose Uncle Sam would say if he knew how his favourite nephews were spending their well-earned Rest and Relaxation? Would that fierce-looking white-haired man raise one of his bushy eyebrows at the nightly rape of women and children by his servicemen, or would he turn a blind eye to the regrettable fallout from saving the free world?
The Philippines has, of course, borne the brunt of US imperialism throughout the twentieth century. I’m aware that I’m treading on delicate ground here and that you, Father, have every reason to be grateful for the American presence in the Pacific in 1945. But we’ve moved on, at least on the face of it. Please bear in mind that I never adopted the blanket anti-Americanism of my contemporaries. I was in Roosendaal at the time of Grosvenor Square but, even had I been in London, I wouldn’t have marched. Shameful as it is to admit, I supported the war in Vietnam. Now, after three years in the Philippines, I see Communism less as a universal threat than as a secular version of the gospel. What’s more, I’ve discovered the true story of the American invasion of the Philippines: how they freed the country from the Spanish only to annex it for themselves, reneging on their promises and killing 600,000 Filipinos along the way. Is it any wonder that Benito refers to it as the first Vietnam and berates his countrymen for celebrating independence from Spain every 12 June and then following it with Filipino-American Friendship Day every 4 July?
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 bi
g 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.
The Breath of Night Page 10
