Smaller and Smaller Circles

by F. H. Batacan

  Toyang steps back, waving her hands, squid ball stick in one. “No, no, Ate. It was nothing. Really, it was no trouble at all.”

  “No, Toyang, I insist. You always pull through for me.”

  Toyang blushes a deep red. “Ate naman, you don’t need to pay me.”

  The other woman takes her hand and presses the bill into it. “Buy her a pretty dress. Tell her it’s from Ninang.”

  Toyangs nods, whispers her thanks. Watches the woman walk down the line of stalls and disappear into the crowd.

  Ciony is taking a break from the morning’s work, sitting in a quiet corner of the University of the Philippines’ registrar’s office with a soft drink and two suman. A phone rings in another part of the large office, and she hears the slap-slap of someone’s slipper-shod feet as they approach her.

  “Manang Cion, you’ve got a phone call.”

  Ciony is surprised. “Eh? Who could that be?”

  “Don’t know; she wouldn’t say.”

  Ciony leaves her snack on the table and ambles over to the phone on her desk. “Hello?”

  The voice at the other end of the line is familiar to her. “Manang Cion. How are you doing today?”

  “Oh, it’s you. I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Manang. How is Manong Jess? Has he retired already?”

  “No, next year. He says he wants to go back to Pangasinan. I keep telling him his friends are all here and he’ll be bored silly over there.”

  A chuckle at the other end. “Ah, let him try it and see if he likes it. I know him. Pretty soon he’ll want to be where the action is.” Ciony’s husband, Jess, works for the university police force. He never went to college, but is nevertheless an intelligent man, sensible, decent.

  “I hope you’re right. Besides, his doctor is here. Anyway. What can I do for you?”

  Ciony listens for a minute, takes a pen from the holder on her desk and scribbles some notes on a pad. She says “yes” several times, then “Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” before launching into a detailed account of her most recent bout of rheumatism and her granddaughter’s recovery from chicken pox.

  The following Monday, the phone rings in Saenz’s faculty office. “That should be Ben’s boys,” Saenz says.

  Jerome nods and answers the call. “Yes?”

  “Hey, Father Lucero. Is the joint jumping?”

  “Ah.” It occurs to him that the reporter’s voice sounds very like a drag queen’s. Perhaps she smokes a lot. “Joanna.” He glances up at Saenz, and the other priest immediately comes close. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure? You sound like you have a sore throat. Do you smoke a lot?”

  A chuckle at the other end, as though she has heard this question many times before. “Haven’t touched the stuff in years, Father. Guess that makes me a drag queen, eh?”

  Jerome almost drops the receiver. “Gus is here; hang on a second,” he says hurriedly and hands the instrument over to the older priest as though it carries an electrical charge.

  Saenz takes the phone from him with a puzzled smile. “Joanna, comment vas-tu? Ah, vraiment?” Jerome rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Listen, Joanna. Jerome is here, and his French is very bad. Shall I put you on speakerphone? I would like him to hear this.”

  Saenz presses a button on the phone and replaces the handset. Immediately the sound of the woman’s deep, gravelly voice fills the room.

  “I’m faxing you some information I dug up on Alex Carlos.”

  The two priests look at each other. Already? Jerome mouths silently to Saenz.

  “Relax, Father,” she drawls, as though she has heard him. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine. The long and short of it is, you have one fairly smart suspect on your hands. Comes from a poor family, but he’s been granted scholarships almost throughout his entire academic life, culminating in a dentistry degree from the University of the Philippines. He has no immediate family in Manila; his parents moved to Bulacan soon after his graduation from college—apparently they have relatives there. Their address is on the documents I’m faxing you.”

  Jerome is shaking his head. “How did you get all this?”

  “Contacts, Father Lucero,” the woman says, in a tone of good-natured jest. “Do you realize the civil service is a huge untapped information resource? And it doesn’t respond very well to NBI agents throwing their weight around either.”

  Saenz takes a deep breath, a tad peeved yet hugely grateful at the same time. “Joanna, you are a gem.”

  “That’s your diplomatic way of telling me I can scratch the hardest surfaces, eh, Father?” She laughs softly. “You know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?”

  Saenz chuckles. “Of course. When this whole matter is settled.”

  The woman hangs up.

  In a few minutes, the papers begin coming through: birth and baptismal certificates, school records, newspaper clippings. Saenz takes the documents off the machine, one by one, and hands them over to Jerome.

  Jerome shakes his head, half in admiration and half in amazement. “A one-woman NBI,” he says as he pores over the faxes. After a few minutes, he waves a piece of paper at Saenz. “Guess where he finished secondary school.”

  Saenz looks above the upper rims of his glasses. “Payatas High?”

  Jerome nods. “Favorite son.” He pauses to think. “Bulacan. That’s not far. Could be worth a day trip. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Ben can get the local NBI office to interview them.”

  Jerome’s nose crinkles, as though there’s a foul smell in the room. “I’m not sure how much help that would be, to be honest.”

  “I see what you mean.” Saenz knows Jerome doesn’t have a very high regard for the interviewing skills of most NBI agents. “Can you spare the time?”

  “I think I can move things around and free up most of tomorrow.”

  “All right, then. But you’ll need a good story. Something that won’t alarm them.”

  Jerome smiles. “I thought you said I had a gift for this sort of thing.”

  39

  Jerome drops by the laboratory very early the next morning, before his drive to Bulacan. Saenz meets him outside.

  “All set?”

  “Pretty much. If I’m able to find and speak with the parents, I should be back this afternoon.”

  “And your story?”

  “I’m Alex’s spiritual advisor, and I’ve been concerned because I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

  “That’s a good one. You don’t have to hide who you are, and you don’t have to fabricate too much.”

  Without another word, Jerome gets into his car. The window on his side is rolled down, and Saenz pats him on the shoulder, giving voice to the anxiety they’re both feeling. “Get back as soon as you can.”

  The laboratory is quiet when Saenz returns. He is feeling a bit bleak at the moment; he spent three or four hours tossing and turning last night, unable to sleep. He eventually gave up, got out of bed and began going over his notes on the killings.

  It is almost 9 a.m., and the sun is high in the sky outdoors. Saenz does not turn on the lights and draws the blinds. Now the lab and its adjoining rooms—the reception area, the office, the photo lab—are as cool and dark and quiet as he likes for thinking.

  He settles into the swivel chair behind his desk, stretching out his long legs to put his feet up on the desk, and picks up the remote for the CD player. The faint strains of the andante from Bach’s Partita in C Minor—let’s see, this is Sergey Schepkin on the piano here—fill the room.

  Saenz imagines the notes to be tiny birds, no bigger than the tip of his little finger, spreading their miniscule wings, gliding from this room to the others, flying up toward the high laboratory ceiling or seeking ou
t the dim, quiet spaces.

  Quiet spaces.

  The thought comes to him, clear and whole.

  He needs a quiet space.

  He swings his legs from the desk, reaches for the phone, dials a number, and then waits.

  “Hello, Alice. Gus Saenz here. Yes, thank you. Listen, Alice, I need to know something. You said the driver of the mobile clinic has complete access to it at any time. But could anyone else get the keys and take the vehicle out without anyone else finding out? Or is there a duplicate set of keys?”

  He waits a few seconds for the answer, and when it comes, he takes a deep breath. “That’s what I thought. Thanks a lot, Alice.” He hangs up and then dials another number.

  “Director Valdes? Father Saenz here. Yes, thank you.”

  On Saenz’s desk, dwarfed by pen caddy, tape dispenser, and diskette storage box, is a plaster figurine of St. Ignatius of Loyola, no more than three inches tall. The saint is depicted wearing armor—a coat of mail and breastplate—and carrying a sword. Saenz has had it for so long that the faux gilding on the armor has almost completely faded. He’s brought it with him every place he’s ever worked, every country he’s ever lived in for longer than a week. Absently, instinctively, he reaches out to touch it and then cradles it in the palm of his hand.

  “I have a name for you.”

  When the brief conversation is over, he replaces the receiver in its cradle, leans back in the seat, stretches out his very long legs and closes his eyes, St. Ignatius still nestled within his hand.

  He wakes up with a start and immediately senses that he is not alone in the darkened room.

  “How long have you been sitting there?” he asks in Tagalog.

  “Not long,” the woman says, hands clasped together. She has been watching him sleep, unsure if she should wake him; he looks awfully tired. She stands and approaches his desk hesitantly, then stops. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  Saenz rubs his eyes, then shakes his head. “It’s okay. Did Susan send you here?”

  “Susan?”

  “My secretary.”

  “No, Father, I just asked around.”

  He notices that he’s still holding on to the figurine of St. Ignatius and sets it back in its old place beside the pen caddy. He stands up, bends his torso from side to side, easing out the kinks in his back from falling asleep in his chair. Then he walks slowly toward the door to turn on the lights. He blinks hard when they come on, and so does she.

  Short and round-faced, she is dressed in black stirrup leggings and a blue printed shirt. Cheap, flat canvas kung-fu shoes, caked with mud. Dry, brown skin on feet and hands, years of ironing and washing and cooking.

  Saenz doesn’t know who she is, but he knows why she is here. Several such women—someone’s wife or mother or sister—have come to see him in the past, in this same room, for more or less the same reasons.

  Powerless and angry at this moment, he feels a strong urge to break something.

  “Which one was he?”

  “Vicente,” she answers quietly. “Enteng.”

  He nods in understanding.

  “He got into a bit of trouble the last two years. You know how boys can be. Fell in with the wrong crowd. Hardly said a word to me the last few months before—before . . .” She chokes up, falls quiet. Then, briskly, “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.”

  Turning away now, in a hurry all of a sudden, words tumbling out of her mouth: “I know you must have a lot of things to do. You’re famous. Sometimes I see you on the news when I watch TV at my neighbor Gloria’s house. Usually we just watch telenovelas.”

  She picks up her things from the floor; a black shoulder bag with the mock leather cracked and peeling in places, a brown canvas carryall with a bank’s logo, dingy from years of use. A package rolled up in a red-and-white-striped plastic bag.

  “I’ll tell Gloria I met you. She won’t believe it. She thinks you look like an artista.” Talking a mile a minute, then abruptly thrusting the package out toward him. “There. That’s what I came here for. I cooked them only about an hour ago. I rode a jeep and the traffic was bad, but they’re still warm.” Waving it almost in his face, though not meaning to be rude.

  “I know what you did for my boy.” Her voice cracks, but she recovers fast. “Take it; it’s good. I make it everyday, sold out by five o’clock. People who’ve had it say it’s the best they’ve ever tasted. Go on, take it.”

  The priest reaches out to take the package, which is warm in his hands. He opens it up. The smells of caramelized sugar and ripe, sweet jackfruit. When he looks at her again, her face is wet. He moves toward her, but too late. She is rushing to the door on her short legs, bags tucked under her arm, mud-caked soles slapping on the floor.

  “Well, I’ll let you get on with your work now,” she says, words flung quickly, carelessly over her shoulder. “It will be a busy day for me too. I made those, but I have to make another batch for selling when I get home.”

  “Mrs. Bansuy,” is all he can say.

  Halfway out the door now, talking, talking still. “I’m going now. You eat that while it’s still warm, you hear? Best you’ll ever taste. I have to go. It looks like it’s going to rain, and I forgot my umbrella.” She leaves the door ajar.

  Alone again in the room, Saenz sinks into his chair slowly. He bends his head and stares into his bag of turon for what seems to him like a very long time.

  They’re coming to get me. Coming on their big, quiet feet they’re coming.

  I want my mother. I want my father.

  40

  “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you much. We haven’t heard from Alex in over a year.” Flora Carlos is looking at a photograph of a thin, small, wide-eyed boy, hair neatly combed and parted in the middle. “You probably know more about what’s going on in his life right now than we do.”

  Jerome pinches his forearm to reassure himself he isn’t dreaming. The boy in the photograph has the same thin, small-boned frame as the killer’s victims.

  “How old was Alex when that picture was taken?”

  “Oh, about thirteen, fourteen. He was small for his age. We didn’t have very much then. Not that we do now.”

  Mrs. Carlos is a small woman, with thin wrists and arms and a neck lined with pale green veins; they web delicately from her jawline down to her protruding collarbones. She is seated on a discolored, threadbare sofa, wearing a lavender cotton housedress with purple flowers. The dress has been washed so many times that the flowers are only a shade or two darker than their background, mended so many times that the fabric is fraying beneath the stitches.

  When Jerome introduced himself at the door, the first thing he noticed about Mrs. Carlos was how guarded she was. But as he speaks to her, he’s struck by how talking about her son seems to be a strain on her; she halts every once in a while, as though afraid somebody else is listening.

  “He didn’t tell me very much about his childhood,” Jerome says. “Was he ever in trouble when he was a child? Any disciplinary problems in school?”

  “No. He was a good boy, very smart.” She cranes her neck slightly and points to a series of frames on the wall behind her. “Look at those. Those are all his awards.”

  Jerome stands and steps carefully over his backpack, which he set down on the floor earlier. The walls are a curious shade of yellow in this tiny, two-bedroom house; the windows are small squares cut high in the walls, close to the ceiling. Inside the house, it is hot and muggy; the air is still, lying thick and warm and sticky on his skin.

  Thirst, heat, claustrophobia—Jerome is feeling all three in equal measure. He wipes his brow and moves toward the wall to get a closer look.

  There are awards for good conduct, first or second honors, loyalty awards from the Payatas High School. It is the same school some of the victims had attended.

 
There are interschool Quiz Bee awards, “Best in English and Science” awards, certificates for annual scholarships from the city mayor’s office all the way to second year high school.

  Here was Alex, overwhelmed by a barong Tagalog at least two sizes too big for him, shaking the mayor’s hand. Alex in his white school uniform speaking in front of a live television audience; on the wall behind him, the words national quiz bee finals spelled out in large styrofoam letters covered in gold foil. Alex with a broad smile on his face, waving his grade six diploma in the air.

  An exceptional young boy.

  Jerome wonders if he was ever athletic; the absence of PE or athletic awards, or any picture of Alex in high school citizens’ army training, puzzles him.

  He remembers his own CAT experiences. At fifteen or sixteen, most kids want nothing more than to be popular, to belong. And CAT is one of several ways a teenager can gain recognition in his or her peer group. Most teenagers he knows—students of his or the sons or daughters of friends—have a treasured bunch of CAT pictures; they may have hated the course, but they love the trappings: the uniforms, the polished shoes, the gleaming belt buckles and shiny swords, the heavy Garands, the black berets, the symbols of rank and the authority over others.

  “Did Alex like PE? Sports?”

  From the corner of his eye, he sees Mrs. Carlos turn slowly to look at him. Something in her posture changes, an almost undetectable stiffness creeping up from the tiny waist to the back and shoulders, to the neck and arms and the hands that hold her son’s photograph.

  “No.” Jerome thinks her voice sounds odd, far away and alert at the same time.

  “How about CAT?”

  “He was a medic.”

  A medic. Jerome himself had been a medic in high school; because of his limp, he had been advised by doctors against engaging in too-strenuous physical activity.

  A medic. The dead end of CAT. They wouldn’t have let you march for fear of heat exhaustion. They wouldn’t have given you shiny spangles on your uniform; they wouldn’t have drilled you for Parade and Review. The most they would have let you do was to hand out water and ammonia-laced cotton balls.