The Breath of Night

by Michael Arditti

  ‘No. Yes. But first I must help Dennis.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’ Searching for a plausible excuse, he made his way towards Dennis, who stood with a group of friends as if posing for a tableau entitled “Conspiracy”. ‘I’m sorry to break up the party, but I’ve just had a text from Max. The Bishop of Baguio wants to see me tomorrow morning in Manila. We must leave within the hour.’

  ‘No, is not possible. I have business.’

  ‘It’s my business that pays for your business,’ Philip said with growing conviction. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  Dennis’s eyes blazed with a fury that was surprisingly short-lived. Philip wondered if, for all his posturing, he might be glad of a face-saving way out. ‘So, what must I be saying to men?’

  ‘You could tell them I’m preventing you committing a reckless act that will ruin your life.’

  ‘I am not telling them this.’

  ‘Or else that your selfish employer – so selfish, by the by, that he dropped everything he was doing to come up here with you – needs to hurry back to Manila, where he has hot water, air conditioning, curtains, pillows and all the other luxuries that red-blooded Filipinos can do without.’

  ‘Yes, this is good. I am telling them this.’

  Nine

  10 May 1983

  Dear Greg,

  I apologise for having to rush back here, but now that you’re moving to Whitlock I’m sure you’ll appreciate the shepherd and flock analogy. I apologise too for leaving you to deal with all the legal matters, but it comes so naturally to you (I mean that as a compliment). I did what I could at the funeral.

  Since my return, I’ve been brooding on my relationship with Father. I can’t help imagining what it might have been like had he not been away for the first six years of my life. Mother admitted that she hadn’t even told him she was pregnant when he left, in case the strain of their parting caused her to miscarry. The first he knew of it was by letter in Singapore. It’s no wonder that when he came back to find both her and Whitlock so altered, he saw me as the obvious cause. Later, when I embarked on my journey to priesthood, he took it as a personal affront. Although he always refused to elaborate on what led to his loss of faith (and it must surely have gone beyond the brutality of the prison camp), he maintained that my vocation made a mockery of everything he had undergone. So what am I to think of his bequest? Either he meant it as a joke from beyond the grave – if so, it’s a very expensive one – or else it’s an endorsement, however oblique, however belated, of my chosen path.

  I wish you and I found it easier to talk. When we were boys, our age gap inhibited intimacy and as adults we’ve drifted further apart. I suppose that’s inevitable when we learn from experience, and ours has been so different. You’ve followed the course that was laid out for you. You have a wonderful wife and three lovely daughters. And I’ve just heard from Isabel that in the autumn you’ll be a grandfather. Many congratulations! I’m delighted for you – for us all – although I can’t help feeling sad that Father won’t be here to see it. Tradition and continuity were the lodestones of his life. You’ll have them everywhere around you at Whitlock. I looked for them in the Church; I might even have found them had I settled in an English parish, but I came – or, as I prefer to think, was called – to a country where hope lies in change.

  Therein lies the nub of my quarrel with Hugh. I’m sorry that it caused you all such distress at what was already a distressing time, but I couldn’t stay silent while a man who purports to be proud of his long-standing connection with a country – a country from which, moreover, he derives a great deal of wealth – showed himself so indifferent to its people’s plight. It was in one of his mines or, as he deftly pointed out, one of the mines owned by the consortium in which his family has an interest, that the massacre took place, a massacre that would have appalled me even without the personal connection.

  Remember that as well as everything else, the victims were my parishioners. For hundreds of years their ancestors have dug for gold in pocket mines on the Cordilleras. Then, at the turn of the century, Hugh’s grandfather and his associates built the first industrial mine. Until recently it had been content to leave well alone. After all, what match were the Ibaloi with their wooden hammers and wedges for the big boys with their heavy-duty drills? How could the few clods of earth they removed in handwoven baskets compete with the tons transported in giant trucks? But now, furnished with spurious title deeds, the company has fenced off large tracts of land and, when the tribesmen hacked through the wire, the security guards cold-bloodedly blasted one of their tunnels, killing four men and maiming several others. I’m not saying that Hugh himself authorised the massacre, but the guards were clearly acting on orders from above.

  I realise that your loyalties are divided, but why did you have to side so wholeheartedly with Hugh? After living in the country for twelve years, I do have some insight into its affairs, but you acted as though I had no right even to express an opinion. What is it that disqualifies me? Being a foreigner? Being a priest? Or simply being your little brother? A year ago your government went to war on behalf of islanders on the far side of the world (I’ll say no more, except that my faith in a woman prime minister proved to be sorely misplaced); am I, on the other hand, to ignore the suffering of my own parishioners?

  I’m convinced that far from being incompatible with a priest’s role, political engagement stands at its heart. When you and I were boys, the mass readings were drawn entirely from the Gospels and St Paul, so it’s no surprise that we felt that clergy were exclusively concerned with our souls. Since Vatican II, however, the Old Testament has been given a place. And what is its overriding theme but the freeing of an oppressed people? Indeed, liberation leads to salvation as surely as the Old Testament leads to the New.

  No doubt if I were the incumbent of Gaverton, I’d see my role rather differently, and now that Father Ambrose has announced his retirement, I trust that you’ll find a similarly devout and scholarly man to succeed him – although I’d like to think that he’ll offer at least veiled criticism of your government’s social policies. Here in Luzon, cruelty and corruption are too endemic to everyday life to allow me to confine my broadsides to the pulpit. To give you an example, let me tell you about Girlie, a young parishioner with whom I’ve had extensive dealings over the years and whose life has been particularly – although not uniquely – wretched. You may find it distasteful and you’re at liberty to skim, but I hope you’ll stick with it so that the next time you accuse me of rubbing your face in the dirt, you’ll remember that while you have the chance to wash the dirt off, people here have to endure it.

  Girlie first came to my notice about ten years ago, when she was a young orphan living with her aunt. To relieve their overstretched budget, I found her a job as a maid with one of our richer families. At first all went well, but from the age of fourteen she was repeatedly raped by the son of the house. The family offered her a cash payment which, against my advice, her aunt accepted, insisting that Girlie remain with her employers. To her violator she was now fair game and when a few years later she fell pregnant, I arranged with a local convent for her confinement and the adoption of her child. This time there was no question of her returning to her job or even to the parish where she had become an object of shame. So I appealed to the Regional of our Order, who secured her a position as a household help to a banker in Manila.

  I received occasional news of her from her younger sister, Tanya, who, hearing nothing for six months, grew anxious, as did I when she revealed that Girlie had left Manila and was working as a maid in Angeles City. Prostitution is as much the lifeblood of Angeles as quarrying is – or was – of Gaverton. And please forget any image you may have of dingy Soho backstreets or cryptic cards in newsagents’ windows. The entire city is a shop window for its sordid trade. It’s reputed to be home to around 80,000 prostitutes, although Heaven knows how they count them. From my own – admittedly limited – experience I’d s
ay that they constitute nine out of ten of the women on the streets. Meanwhile, nine out of ten of the men come from the neighbouring Clark Air Base, enjoying a well-earned break from stemming the tide of Communism and safeguarding the American way of life. Things may look different in Whitlock and Westminster, but from where I stand the American way of life represents the greater threat. Five-year-old girls – that’s FIVE in case you can’t read my writing – are walking around with gonorrhoea, which I assure you they haven’t picked up from Maoist rebels. Surely freedom means more than a choice between twenty-five brands of cornflakes?

  The day I heard from Tanya, I wrote to Hendrik van Leyden, a friend from the Roosendaal seminary, who’s been working with the women and children of Angeles – indeed, whenever I feel daunted by the scale of my task, I steel myself with thoughts of his. I sent him Girlie’s address and asked him to visit her, but when he tried, he found that the building had been ransacked and boarded up by the police, and Girlie and her fellow lodgers had been evicted. Having been given a couple of leads by the neighbours, he suggested that I join him to investigate. No sooner had we fixed a date than I received the news about Father. Rescheduling the trip on my return, I took the bus to Pampanga, where the pleasure of seeing my old friend swiftly faded in the squalor of the search.

  As I suspected, both the addresses that Hendrik had been given were of go-go bars. The first was called Bloomers, which seemed tame in a row that comprised Caligula’s Den, Whiplash and Sin City, but Hendrik insisted that its nursery naughtiness was a deliberate ploy. The bouncer, a bald man with a strangely shaped moustache, which framed his mouth like displaced sideburns, recognised Hendrik at once. I was afraid that we’d be banned – or worse – but on the contrary, he led us straight to the manager, an elegant woman with jade drop earrings, the spitting image of your teenage pin-up, Anna Mae Wong. She greeted us fulsomely, offering us drinks, which Hendrik urged me under his breath to accept or risk losing her goodwill. It was that goodwill which made me so uneasy. I failed to understand why she should want to help a man who’d publicly expressed a desire to see her locked up, unless it were out of spite. If so, she quickly revealed her true colours when, having failed to identify Girlie’s photograph, she laughed wantonly at her name. ‘Girlie? Don’t worry, mister, we have plenty of those,’ she said, pointing to the end of the bar where dancers, who I prayed were merely dressed as schoolgirls, were stripping off their uniforms to the beery whoops of the crowd.

  I intend no criticism of Hendrik – quite the reverse – but, while I realise that he needed to gain her trust, I was disturbed by their apparent complicity. Thankfully, we remained incognito at our second port of call, The Yellow Ribbon. The atmosphere in the packed, low-ceilinged room was as smoky and swampy as at Bloomers, but with a harder edge. Clean-cut young men, bereft of both compassion and shame. were sitting with their – what? prizes? prey? – on their knees. Their hands greedily colonised the girls’ flesh, squeezing waists as brittle as wishbones. Hendrik left me at a table while he passed round Girlie’s photograph on the pretext of wanting to book her for a repeat session. Desperate for a drink, I edged towards the bar, but it was impossible to push through the men staring up at the three half-naked girls who were twirling on top of it, or to make my voice heard above the raucous cries of ‘Off, off, off!’. Eventually the dancers obliged, peeling off their pants just as I succeeded in placing my order. Not knowing where to look, I gazed down at the counter, only to find that its mirrored surface offered a graphic view of their genitals.

  I elbowed my way towards Hendrik, who was talking to a scrawny girl in a skimpy bikini. She immediately turned to me and asked if I wanted to go up to the prayer room. I sensed the desperation beneath the smile and, while at a loss as to why she hadn’t asked Hendrik, I agreed, at which she told me that it would cost 40 pesos. My shock greatly amused Hendrik, who explained that the prayer room was a euphemism and then detailed the sexual act from which it derived. For the first time in years I wished that I were wearing a cassock. ‘I’m a priest,’ I managed to spit out. ‘Oh,’ she said calmly, ‘then you will wish for a boy.’

  Having run out of leads, Hendrik suggested that we visit The Pit, which he described as ‘the last chance saloon’ for both performers and clientele. Warning that it was not for the faint-hearted, he ushered me up a rickety staircase above a sari sari store. I found myself in a miasma of tobacco and sweat, facing a makeshift boxing ring in which two girls were pummelling one another with gloves the size of their torsos, while all around men shrieked ‘Kill the bitch!’, ‘Murder her!’ and other unspeakable commands. After a couple of minutes a fat Filipino with a badly burnt cheek (and may God forgive me for hoping that he’d suffered!) rang a bell and the two ‘fighters’ retreated to their corners where, instead of giving them drinks, their seconds threw pails of water over them, ensuring that their T-shirts clung to their chests, to the rapturous cheers of the spectators. The referee rang the bell again and, in a gesture I shall remember to my dying day, one of the girls kissed her crucifix before shuffling back. It wasn’t enough to protect her from the savage punch that moments later her opponent landed on her nose. As blood streamed down her chin and the spectators grew frenzied, I could bear it no longer and leapt up to intervene, but Hendrik grabbed my arm and shook his head. I turned away and was violently sick. Nobody noticed, and in any case the stench was swiftly subsumed in the metallic smell of the blood and the vegetal smell of the crowd.

  A few years ago the entire Philippines, with the exception of me, rejoiced when Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali held their world title contest in Manila. But that felt like one of Granny Courtenay’s tea parties compared with this. What is it that drove those young men, their mothers’ pride and joy, the apples of their sweethearts’ eyes, men who I’ve no doubt would risk their lives to save a wounded kitten, let alone a friend, to ogle two malnourished girls battering one another? Have they been so brutalised by all the blood they’ve seen spilt in action that they can only relax by watching it spilt in play?

  Refusing to relax his hold, Hendrik steered me to the far corner of the bar where a group of girls, some looking bored, some scared and some vacant, waited for the bout to end and for the men, now at fever pitch, to point to the numbers on their chests and take them upstairs. After buying the requisite drinks, we handed round Girlie’s photograph which, to my relief, one of the group recognised, having worked with her at another bar. She gave us an address and Hendrik led me there, through a web of alleyways with neon signs winking at every turn. He urged me not to raise my hopes since life in Angeles was transient and, at best, we might be directed elsewhere, but he was wrong; Girlie hadn’t moved or, rather, she hadn’t been able to, as her landlady volubly explained while ushering us into a minuscule alcove screened by ragged towels, where Girlie lay on a stained mat next to a guttering candle.

  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.