‘But that’s no use! I have to go back to Manila tomorrow. Besides, surely his address is on the electoral roll? It’s in the public domain, if only I knew where to look.’
‘Very well,’ Noah said, relenting. ‘If you wish to come back after lunchtime, I will try to find out for you then.’
‘That’s really kind. Thank you. But how about I wait in the corridor? It’s far too wet to walk around town. Then, if you have your answer sooner, I’ll be on hand.’
The presence of a bedraggled Englishman, beaming broadly at everyone who passed, concentrated the bureaucratic mind and an hour later Noah came out to say that he had not only been authorised to give Philip the address but told to take him there in person.
‘That’s very kind,’ Philip said, weighing his antipathy to the man against the expediency of his offer, ‘but there’s really no need. I can get a cab.’
‘This is not Manila.’
‘Then a tricycle. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘It is not trouble; this is what I have been told.’
‘Well, so long as you’re sure.’
To his surprise, Noah led him to a small motorcycle and, neither putting on a helmet nor offering one to his passenger, told Philip to sit behind him before setting off. Philip felt as if he had stepped into a late Turner landscape, as the familiar shapes of buildings and trees and fields and mountains all dissolved in a shimmering haze. To his relief, Noah kept on course, even when the unpaved road turned into a sea of mud. All at once he screeched to a halt.
‘Now you must go on alone.’
‘What?’ Philip asked. ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘The bike will not proceed any more. It is too dangerous. You must go on your feet.’
‘But where is it? I’ve no idea where we are.’
‘The farm is only a few hundred metres up this road,’ Noah said with a gesture that disappeared into the mist.
‘And how will I get back? I’ll be trapped.’
‘This man whom you wish to see so much, he will bring you.’
‘What if I’ve made a mistake?’
‘Then you have made a mistake.’
Without another word, Noah laboriously turned his bike round and headed back into town, leaving Philip feeling more alone than at any time since his arrival in the Philippines. Shocked by Noah’s negligence, he wondered whether he had taken against something he said or simply harboured a blanket hatred of the English. He sniffed and shuddered, uncertain how much of the moisture in his eyes and nose came from himself and how much from the atmosphere. Trying not to picture all the half-drowned reptiles and rodents that might be swept along the tide and up his trouser legs, he took several squelchy steps forwards. Suddenly, he collided with something that he took first for a gatepost and then for a scarecrow, until it pointed a rifle at his neck.
‘Don’t shoot,’ he screamed, ‘I’m English!’
Two more figures emerged from the mist, one carrying a rifle and the other, who was a head taller than his companions, unarmed. Refusing to believe that he was the victim of a second ambush or that the Vicar General’s writ would extend so far, Philip assumed that he must be imagining them – the monsoon equivalent of a desert mirage – but the cold steel on his carotid artery felt all too real.
‘Who are you?’ he shouted, as the tall figure moved to within a foot of him and removed the scarf that muffled his face. Reason disappeared as Philip stared at the man who had haunted his imagination for so long.
‘No, it isn’t possible,’ he said, tumbling backwards. ‘Not you!’
Twelve
6 May 1989
Dear Greg,
I’m sorry for the delay in replying, but your letter reached me by a roundabout route. I’ve left Sariaya and am staying in a small hut in the Sierra Madre, a mountain range in the north-east of the province. It’s vast and spectacular and sparsely populated and pure. The hermit in me has come into its own. It’s the perfect place to reflect and pray and try to sort out all the clutter and confusion in my head. Nanny P would have talked of blowing away the cobwebs, but that’s far too gentle an image for the despair that’s gripped me ever since my return to the Philippines. I can think of nowhere more conducive to clarity of thought than here – and not just on account of its beauty. There’s a reason that Moses and Elijah and Jesus all went up into the mountains to see the face of God.
I trust that by the time you read this your fears will have been allayed and Mother be fully recovered. Isn’t a heart murmur a common effect of ageing? Something to do with thickening valves? Granted I’m no expert, but to my ears the phrase itself sounds reassuring. After all, it’s not a heart shriek or a heart roar. I’m touched to know that she’s asked for me and in the past I’d have done everything I could to oblige, but I think you’ll agree that I’ve earned the right to be sceptical. My diagnosis – and, I repeat, I’m no expert – is that with Father dead and nurses now looking after Cora, she has too much time on her hands. She has forgotten how to express her own needs – that’s if she ever knew – and her only recourse is to be ill.
I shall write to her, reaffirming my promise to attend her eightieth next March and explaining that I won’t be able to make it before then. I think we should leave it at that, don’t you? You’re my brother and I love you, but I find it hard to forgive the subterfuge by which you lured me back last time. Without your claim that Mother was at death’s door and I must return at once to have any hope of seeing her, I should never have done a deal with the Philippine government. Besides, I’d have been more convinced by your talk of a dramatic recovery if I’d seen the slightest indication that she had been ill. I suppose I should be grateful for your bid to secure my release. But at what a cost! I accepted a pardon, Greg. A pardon is not an acquittal. A pardon comes courtesy of the President; it’s a token of his clemency, not my innocence. Besides which, it offers no protection to those who don’t have British passports, let alone brothers in high places. Benito, thank the Lord, is safe. The Bishop gave him leave to go to Negros; but of the four lay leaders only Rey Sison has resumed a normal life. Julius Morales, together with his wife and three children, were killed in a blaze, which was officially blamed on a stray firecracker; Rodel Jimenez had both his tongue and his testicles cut off by a group of vigilantes (presumably to stop him either spreading or spawning rebellion); Juan Clemente was hacked to death by Quesada’s twelve-year-old son, who was then arrested by members of his father’s old unit, from whom he escaped on the way to jail. Despite an extensive search he has yet to be found.
I trust that putting inverted commas around escaped would be superfluous.
My return has not been painless. When the Aquino government finally restored my visa and the Regional agreed to take me back, his one stipulation was that I shouldn’t expect to be reinstated in San Isidro. Hard as that was, I was bound to obey. Besides, the parish has long since had a new priest, Father Marlon Davidas, the son of the Arriola encargado, so it’s safe to assume that normal service, and services, have been resumed: the fiesta is back in the hands of the haciendos, whose daughters will once again dress the santos, while they dispense largesse to a deferential crowd. The Regional placed no bar, however, on my visiting the parish and I took the first opportunity to go up there. Wherever I went, I was greeted with such warmth, such a mixture of tears and smiles, that only someone who knew the people as well as I did could detect the hidden resentment: the ubiquitous, unspoken accusation that I’d abandoned them in order to save my own skin. ‘How is your mother, Father?’ Felicitas Clemente asked, when I called on her to offer my condolences. ‘She’s very well,’ I said, ‘remarkable, really, for a woman of seventy-eight.’ She looked at me through glazed eyes. ‘That’s good,’ she replied. ‘Juan was fifty-five.’
I owe you an apology. In the past I accused you of wilfully ignoring the iniquities of the Marcos government; I’ve seen for myself how hard it is to obtain a true picture of a country from the outside. During m
y two years at St Columba’s, when I sat in the common room poring over every newspaper report from the Philippines, I was swept up on a tide of false optimism. It was as though I, along with people all over the world – not to mention the Filipinos themselves – had invested so much faith in regime change that we refused to acknowledge how little had been achieved. I was barely off the plane – in fact, talking to the taxi driver on the way from the airport – before I learnt how the elation of the EDSA revolution had evaporated. True, we have a new president: a shy, bespectacled woman whose very humility promises hope, but the same powers are lined up behind her. American soldiers strut through the streets; American advisers occupy the ministries; American dollars fill the banks. When Secretary of State Schultz came to Manila two years ago to offer aid, he had a Cory Aquino doll pinned to his lapel. Could he have made their relationship any clearer?
Aquino has not disappointed her US masters. Despite a huge balance of payments deficit, she has promised to honour all Marcos’s overseas contracts, quite literally putting returns to foreign investors before food for the poor. Her much vaunted election pledge to break up the great estates and redistribute the land to the tenant farmers has been undermined by a rigged assessment process. Meanwhile, such land as has been transferred has plunged its new owners into even worse debt, since its value has increased, making them liable to capital gains tax, which they can’t afford to pay. So what do they do? Sell it back to the old owners at a discount. And who has been a major beneficiary of this chicanery? You’ve guessed it! One C. Aquino, whose family owns some of the country’s largest estates.
Just as the haciendos have held on to their land, so the politicians have held on to their jobs. The most notorious Marcos ministers have been removed, but by and large the faces in both the Senate and the House of Representatives remain identical. The army has been granted immunity for all its crimes during the State of Emergency – and, believe me, they were legion. At the same time church leaders, trade unionists and human rights workers still regularly disappear. Am I alone in seeing a parallel with post-war Germany, where the US and its allies kept hundreds of former Nazis in power in order to counter the Soviet threat? I can’t help wondering if, here too, a new generation of activists will rise up to fight the corruption. If so, will they carry the country with them, or will their protest degenerate, as in Germany, into random, self-defeating violence?
So, there you have a taste of the many questions that preoccupy me as I sit, both literally and figuratively, above the fray. The Bishop has given me indefinite leave and since I’ve forged fewer bonds in the nine months I’ve been in Sariaya than I did in my first nine days in San Isidro, I feel no guilt at abandoning my flock. I trust that by the next time I write I’ll have found at least some of the answers. Meanwhile, should you need to contact me, please do so care of the Society’s house in Manila. I’ll be sure to keep them informed of my whereabouts.
With every blessing to you and Alice,
Your loving brother,
Julian
Colours so vivid and images so sharp flooded his vision that Philip felt as if he had had a bandage removed after surgery, rather than a hood pulled off after the long climb to the camp. The mountains were carpeted in more varied shades of green than he had seen even in a Rousseau jungle. Two giant butterflies fluttered past: one an iridescent blue with yellow and white speckles; the other striped red and purple and bordered in black, like a stained-glass window. Overhead, two birds with crimson breasts and turquoise tails soared high, either courting or fighting. The view was so resplendent that for a moment he forgot that his ankles had been lashed by creepers and scratched by thorns, his arms and legs devoured by mosquitoes, his shoulders wrenched by unceremonious hands, and his feet reduced to bloody and suppurating blisters by the six-day hike.
Eight bamboo and cogon-grass huts were dotted about the clearing, the kind of ramshackle structures he had passed on the road to Cauayan with a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God sigh (he did not want to think of God for the moment). Felix and Jayson, his abductors, led him to the one that had been assigned to him. It stood a short distance from the others, and its heavy lock and musty smell suggested it had served a similar purpose before. Inside, he was able to make out a blanket and pillow, a pitcher of water with a palm-leaf cover (a token of concern that he wished had extended to a mat for the roach-infested floor), a coconut-shell cup, and a rusty slop bucket, which set the seal on his privations. The two men went out, locking the door and plunging the room into darkness, which was slowly lifted by light filtering through the cracks in the bamboo. He took it as a sign of hope, until a ray fell on a red-and-black beetle with inch-long feelers crawling towards his foot.
The following morning Felix and Jayson introduced him to the remaining seven members of the platoon: Dante, Lester, Juriz, Rommel, Irene, Allen and Nina. “Platoon” was an odd word to apply to a group who, deprived of their guns, would resemble a commune of ageing hippies, but Philip’s perilous position forced him to take them at their own estimate. All appeared friendly, apart from Nina, who stood out as much on account of her permanent scowl as of the colour of her skin. Later in the day he learnt from Irene that Nina’s mother had been a prostitute in Olongapo City, working in a street that catered exclusively for black servicemen. Doubly stigmatised by having a mixed-race child, she had pimped her between the ages of five and fifteen, when Nina had escaped to join the NPA, who taught her to read and write and channel her hatred. ‘There are very many girls like this,’ Irene said, her flat tones at odds with her blazing eyes. ‘The daughters of American fathers who must survive by sleeping with American sons.’
Philip remained perplexed by Julian’s disappearance. Having been hooded throughout the gruelling journey (a precaution which, given the vastness of the terrain and the inaccessibility of the trail, seemed more symbolic than real), he had been sensitive to every sound: leaves rustling; birds singing; insects humming; frogs croaking; cicadas chirping; monkeys howling; not to mention the murmurs and hisses that were all the more menacing for being mysterious. On the first day there had been three voices and sets of footsteps and then, without warning, one had vanished, and neither Felix nor Jayson, whom he knew simply as the softly-spoken and the heavy-handed man, would say where he had gone.
While discussion of Julian remained off-limits, the group gradually opened up to Philip, so much so that he wondered whether, despite the lock on his door, he might be their first hostage. After two days they allowed him to sit outside his hut, and after two more they unbound his hands and feet, enabling him to roam freely around the camp. That freedom, however, was severely restricted. The walls might be wider and the ceilings higher, but he felt as much a prisoner as Gerron in Bilibid or Julian in Baguio. The tortuous path through the trees, the treacherous bogs and briars, the poisonous frogs and snakes were as effective constraints as the toughest iron bars. Acutely aware that his life was in his captors’ hands, he set about winning them over, treading a fine line between curiosity and ingratiation as he familiarised himself with their daily routines: the cooking which, for all their talk of equality, was left to the two women; the care of the chickens and goats, whose meagre yield had been declared counter-revolutionary; the long ideological debates which, either as a point of principle or else to exclude him, were conducted in Tagalog.
Despite their apparent friendliness, none of his captors ever approached him unarmed. Indeed, for a camp lacking so many basic facilities, it was remarkably well stocked with weapons. The morning after his arrival he had woken to the sound of gunfire which, with his heart pounding as loudly as the shots, he had taken for an attempt to rescue him until Irene, in her first display of goodwill, had come to explain that they were trying out a new batch of rifles that Felix and Jayson had brought back.
‘Where do they get them?’ Philip asked. Irene cast him a suspicious glance, which she quickly relaxed, showing either that she trusted him or, more ominously, that it made no difference since he would not
live to tell the tale.
‘They are coming from the local military.’
‘You mean you steal them from their bases?’
‘No, we buy them with cash.’
‘Now I’m really confused!’
‘But it is easy! The government is not paying the soldiers enough wages for them to live. So they sell us their weapons – like this M16 gun.’ She held out the rifle for him to inspect the way his mother might have held out a freshly baked cake. ‘For 20,000 pesos. They tell their chief that it was lost and buy a new one for 8,000 pesos. Then they can keep the difference.’
‘But surely the officers must be wise to it?’
‘Of course. They are the ones who are selling us the ammunition. Five pesos a round. They send – how do you say? – a middleman, with a military escorting.’
‘So they sell you the bullets that you’ll be firing at them?’
‘They are making the judgement that we will not be firing at them. Or, if we do, that they have more bullets than we do.’
‘It’s insanity.’
‘Of course. This is capitalism. This is what we are fighting against.’
For all his aversion to their methods, Philip felt considerable sympathy for the group’s green agenda and would have felt even more had it not led directly to his present plight. The NPA was spearheading the resistance to the Laiban Dam, a massive engineering project, which entailed diverting two rivers, destroying eight villages and displacing thousands of tribespeople, in order to build a reservoir to relieve the water shortage in Manila. The project had met with widespread opposition, and the government sent in the army both to intimidate the protesters and to protect the site. Alongside it came a host of US advisers to safeguard the international investment. Noah, a local activist, had taken Philip for just such a man. Under the guise of consulting his superiors, he had alerted Felix who, suspecting that Philip’s arrival marked the start of a covert offensive, had both arranged for his abduction and instructed the platoon to move their command centre back up to the mountains.
The Breath of Night Page 34
