The Breath of Night

by Michael Arditti

  I was delighted to find you both looking so well: a few creaks perhaps, but then that’s only to be expected. The diet’s working wonders, Mother, and while I admit that Agnes might have exempted the wedding cake, please try to stick to it. Agnes hasn’t changed a bit, I’m happy to say, nor for that matter has Greg, except around the middle. Success evidently agrees with him. Alice was the one who looked drawn. It may have been the strain of the wedding, but I do hope that Greg isn’t taking her for granted. Forty-eight is a difficult age for a woman. With Isabel married, Sophie working for Greg and Vicky at college, she must feel lonely. She told me that she’s spending more and more time in Suffolk. It’s a lovely garden, but it isn’t Eden.

  On a brighter note, you and Alice and the orchestra and the florists and the caterers and everyone concerned should congratulate yourselves on a splendid occasion. Isabel looked radiant (I know I’m prejudiced) and Hugh looked suave (ditto). It’s not for me to criticise the guest list, but I fail to see why Greg felt the need to invite quite so many government colleagues. He might as well have hung blue rosettes on the marquee. And who were all those braying young men? Exile may have skewed my perspective, but it strikes me that in the ten years I’ve been away the country has grown heartless. Even in sleepy Gaverton people are more self-serving – the Jenny Henshaw I left behind would never have put her mother in a home so that she could work part-time at the co-op or the Simon Freeman have left the police because he could earn more dealing in second-hand cars.

  I promise that it won’t be another ten years before I return, although not for the reason you suggest, Father. At this rate you’ll live to be a hundred! Nonetheless, the longer I stayed in England, the more I realised that the Philippines is now my home. When I stepped on to the tarmac in Manila I was filled with a warmth that went far beyond the weather. I wish you’d taken the chance to visit when I first came out here. The landscape may be beautiful, but it’s the people who make it special. Perhaps I can best explain by quoting one of their creation myths (they have A LOT), which Mark, Consolacion’s youngest grandson, told me only the other day. His grandmother scolded him, but I was enchanted. In the beginning, God created human beings from clay – so far so Genesis! But here’s the twist; He put them in a kiln to bake. He left the first batch in for too long; they came out burnt and were the ancestors of the black race. He tried a second batch, which He removed too soon. They were only half-baked and were the ancestors of the white race. So He took particular care over the third batch. They came out a perfect shade of brown and were the ancestors of the Filipinos.

  Boastful and naïve it may be, but there’s a grain of truth in it as I found when, the week after I returned, I conducted a very different wedding. I’d love to have seen the Leveringtons’ faces, let alone those of Greg’s high-powered friends, if, instead of a tastefully embossed card, they’d received a slice of pork wrapped in a bamboo leaf. That’s the traditional Ibaloi invitation, which was delivered to me at the convento by the bridegroom’s youngest brother. The next day I drove up to the mountains, where I was greeted by the whole village, in their best beads and feathers. I didn’t officiate alone but shared the honours with the mambunong, their tribal priest. After years of agonising over their dual loyalties, I’ve grown reconciled to their worship of two supreme beings: their own Kavuniyan and the Christian Shivus whom, unsurprisingly given their history, they see as the more powerful. So, at ceremonies where both gods are invoked, ours takes precedence.

  I found the hybrid service deeply affecting. At the end, the bride and groom were escorted through the village to the new hut that the community had built for them (no parental deposits and twenty-five-year mortgages here). The thick smell of barbecued boar, at once intimate and ominous, filled the air, as the couple presided at the wedding feast. I drank so much tafey, a lethally potent rice wine, that the details of the celebration elude me, but I do recall being dragged out to join in a dance, which couldn’t have been further removed from my sedate foxtrot with cousin Nancy at Whitlock. I was given a strip of cloth to hold in the air and induced to take a few steps around the floor while one of the older girls, also holding a cloth, twirled in front of me. A trio of women played on bamboo pipes and their male counterparts beat gongs in what seemed like ever-increasing delirium, although that may well have been the effect of the wine. I staggered back to my seat, where one of the elders explained to general amusement that it was a courtship dance. My partner was mercilessly teased.

  Even as I’ve been contemplating the richness of the indigenous religion, the country has been revelling in the full panoply of papal power. In February, the Philippines welcomed the most important visitor to its shores since Magellan. For months the entire population has been in a state of frenzy, which reached its height when President Marcos, who has been counting on the Holy Father’s visit both to prop up his popularity at home and enhance his prestige overseas, was persuaded to lift Martial Law. For the first time in more than eight years, workers are free to associate and even to strike, the military is subject (at least on paper) to the courts and opposition supporters can no longer be imprisoned without trial. Those of us who cling to the possibility of peaceful reform feel new hope. Others (no names, no pack drill but, if you’ve followed me this far, you’ll know whom I mean), maintain that it’s too late for such cosmetic gestures and that only through bloodletting will the country be cleansed.

  Time alone will tell which of us is right, but what can’t be denied is that the visit has given a tremendous boost to the nation’s morale. I took part in two open-air masses, in Manila and Baguio, and I was overwhelmed by the euphoria and reverence of the vast crowds, many of whom had been camping in the sweltering heat for days. To see the forest of outstretched hands passing the sanctified wafers from one to another was truly to feel in the presence of Christ. The most moving service of all was the Pope’s beatification of Lorenzo Ruiz, a seventeenth-century clerk who travelled with three Dominicans to Japan, where he chose to be tortured to death rather than renounce his faith (I don’t need to tell you, Father, about Japanese cruelty, but this was particularly barbaric). In a country so devoted to the saints that you stumble on ornate shrines in the most obscure places, this first domestic canonisation is long overdue.

  At the same time the visit was a definite coup for the President, not least in the propaganda opportunities of the Manila mass, where he sat on a dais directly beneath the Pope and insisted that he and his family should be the first to receive communion. Imelda, too, basked in reflected glory, criss-crossing the country in her private jet, so that wherever the Holy Father touched down, be it in Cebu, Mindanao or here in Baguio, she was waiting to greet him, always in a different outfit but with the same broad smile. On the other hand the Pope failed to give the regime the unequivocal backing it wanted. In Manila he elected to stay with the papal nuncio rather than in the lavish palace Imelda had built for him – entirely out of coconut: the wood, that is, not the shells. And, while a huge clean-up operation ensured that he was spared the sight of the usual rubbish on the city’s streets, the government was unable to keep him away from the slums when he came up to Baguio. Above all, in a sermon on the island of Negros, he roundly attacked the oppression of the poor and appealed for universal brotherhood.

  On the other hand – is that too many hands? Perhaps not for such an adroit pope – his visit was less reassuring for those of us who wish that as well as assuming his immediate predecessors’ names, he shared their radical zeal. At a mass for 5,000 clergy in Manila he informed us that our role was purely spiritual and that we must on no account involve ourselves in politics. Yet isn’t that what we’ve always done, especially in the Philippines? Señores Arriola, Pineda and Romualdez would undoubtedly endorse a viewpoint that turns us into little more than government stooges, stalwarts of the status quo. But are we to leave others to fight for justice, while we stay safely behind the lines like army padres? Is the Blessed Sacrament to be nothing more than a placebo?

&n
bsp; As I sit in the gathering dusk on the veranda, drawing this letter to a close before my lamp attracts an army of moths, I’m conscious of a deep stillness hanging over the poblacion. Will it last the night or will I be woken by the sound of gunshots or distant screams? For a moment I find it hard not to envy Father Ambrose with his gentle round of daily offices and pastoral visits, his spotless church and spacious presbytery, his intellectual conundrums and doctrinal dilemmas. But then I think of those hands, lovingly passing our Saviour through the crowd, and I know that the path I’ve chosen, however rocky and tortuous, however dimly lit, is the right one.

  Your loving son,

  Julian

  The news of Analyn’s death put all Philip’s plans on hold. She had been shot by a masked gunman on her way home from mass and the identity of the perpetrator was not in doubt. With his demands rejected, her uncle had carried out his threat. Philip, who was used to resolving disputes by negotiation, struggled to comprehend the crime. Did the man despair of his brother receiving justice in a case that might drag on for decades? Did he regard domestic violence as a minor offence compared to perjury? Was he defending family honour or merely male prerogative? On the other hand, was there some scrap of humanity, some shred of compassion, in his choosing a moment when, to Catholic eyes, Analyn was at her closest to God?

  Cultural differences aside, Philip was bewildered by Maribel’s and Dennis’s responses. After an initial bout of weeping, Maribel acted as if she had been bereaved of a distant cousin, shunning the emotional displays of her soap opera heroines in favour of a fatalism akin to Consolacion’s ‘Bahala na ang Diyos’, while Dennis swore vengeance on his uncle with a passion worthy of Orestes. Rather than heading home to comfort their mother, as Philip had expected, they returned to work. Maribel could at least hide behind her script. Dennis was more exposed, dancing into the early hours at the club and then driving to the hotel the next morning with a bleariness that owed as much to shabu as to grief. He refused to take time off, as though it were only through relentless exertion that he was able both to endure his loss and punish himself for his inadequacy.

  While anxious not to intrude, Philip offered to accompany them to Cauayan: an offer which was accepted gratefully by Maribel and grudgingly by Dennis, who made it clear that his sole inducement was the car. On the day of departure he arrived at the hotel, sporting the same bright red T-shirt he had done at their first meeting, reassuring Philip, who had feared that Max’s claim that a T-shirt and jeans were acceptable funeral attire betrayed both his own slovenliness and a disregard for Filipino sensibilities. Maribel, too, showed no sign of mourning, wearing a pink smock and leopard-print leggings and, as ever, carrying her lotus blossom parasol. The only person sombrely dressed was their aunt, whose olive-green blouse and charcoalgrey skirt seemed to reflect her temperament as much as the occasion. Dennis greeted her with the traditional mano po, lifting her right hand to his bowed head, a gesture of respect which, judging by her frown, had little effect. After a nudge from Maribel, he introduced Philip.

  ‘I am Hapynez,’ she announced. ‘With one “p” and a “z”. It is a most original spelling.’

  ‘For a most original lady, I’m sure. We meet at last! I’ve heard so much about you. From Dennis, that is.’

  ‘It is an honour for me to meet such a distinguished gentleman.’

  ‘If I may say so, your English is excellent.’

  ‘I have a certificate in conversational fluency, critical thinking and confidence building from the American Institute for English Proficiency.’

  To his consternation, Philip discovered that Hapynez was not waving them off but travelling with them, a fact of which neither her nephew nor her niece had seen fit to inform him. His heart sank still further as she headed for the back seat, depriving him of the proximity to Maribel, which alone would make the ten-hour journey bearable.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in the front?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Look at your legs!’

  Resigned to the separation, Philip steeled himself for the long drive along the North Luzon Expressway. In sudden panic, he opened the glove compartment and rummaged inside.

  ‘What do you look for?’ Dennis asked.

  ‘A map,’ Philip replied, relieved to find nothing metallic.

  ‘We do not need map. I am knowing this way like bird.’

  ‘Great,’ Philip said, trusting that Dennis’s homing instinct was still alive after four years. If not, there was his hawk-eyed aunt, currently denouncing the pouting lips on a giant toothpaste poster, to keep him on track.

  Two hours and several denunciations later, they left the expressway to find themselves the only car rattling along a rutted side road through a vast sweep of rice fields. The road stretched beyond the horizon, broken at intervals by unmanned checkpoints with signs reading: Please bear with us. Your safety is our prime concern. Philip wondered whether the lack of guards meant that the danger had passed or the concern had waned. The landscape was uncannily empty, with even the occasional farmer looking like a scarecrow, his face muffled to protect him from the heat and dust.

  At one o’clock, they stopped for lunch in a town which, for all Hendrik’s caveats, might well have been twinned with Hollywood. The poblacion square itself housed the Bread Pitt bakery, which Philip thought it wiser not to draw to Dennis’s attention; the Way We Wear dress shop, boasting a wide range of ‘preloved clothes’; and the Petal Attraction florist’s, where his offer to buy Maribel a bouquet of roses was vetoed by her aunt. He began to tire of her constant carping at Dennis and was relieved when they settled in a small café opposite a church, whose narrow spires, green-tiled roof and whitewashed façade instantly identified it as Iglesia ni Christo, enabling her to direct her scorn at a sect whose Disneyland architecture belied its apocalyptic views.

  ‘They believe that Jesus Christ will soon be coming again to take them up to Heaven in a cloud of smoke. Pouf!’

  ‘What? All ten million of them?’ Philip asked.

  ‘But only if they are inside of the church.’

  ‘What if they can’t make it there in time: they’re ill in bed, say, or stuck in traffic?’

  ‘Then they will be left here to face the Tribulation with the rest of us,’ Hapynez said, cheerfully spooning up her pork adobo. ‘But you must not worry. These people have very backwards beliefs. They are not Catholics.’

  After lunch, Philip proposed taking a short walk (‘to stretch my legs,’ he said pointedly to Hapynez), before resuming the drive. Maribel volunteered to join him.

  ‘You must go too, Dennis,’ Hapynez said.

  ‘They do not want me,’ he replied sullenly.

  ‘Of course they want you. Maribel is your sister,’ she said in a voice that brooked no contradiction.

  Hollywood was replaced by the Bible Belt when Philip and Maribel, with Dennis dragging his heels behind them, strolled past the church to face a giant billboard featuring a maimed baby caught in blazing headlights, which had themselves been doctored to resemble demonic eyes, beneath the slogan: Abortion is a choice that kills.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Philip said.

  ‘Is just doll,’ Dennis replied.

  A derelict wall displayed the usual hodgepodge of flyers. The University of Perpetual Help announced that it was no longer taking applicants and the Superhero bar that it was temporarily closed due to staff sickness. An estate agent offered a house for sale ‘fully furnaced’, and a photographer proposed to ‘shoot you and your loved ones while you wait’. Philip was charmed by the advert for a ‘child-friendly’ school, but the notice that most intrigued him was for a clinic providing Immunisation, Computerised Eye Examination, Ear-Piercing and Circumcision.

  ‘Is there really so much call for circumcision in this town?’ he asked Maribel, who busily twirled her parasol.

  ‘In all towns!’ Dennis interjected. ‘Filipinos are very healthy people. We are most circumcised country after Arabs and Jews. But is
no need for clinic. Clinic is for wussies. I have it done from OJ Murro. He is barangay barber, top man with razor.’

  ‘Come off it!’ Philip said. ‘How can you know? You were a baby.’

  ‘I was thirteen years,’ Dennis replied, affronted. ‘I was becoming man. All barangay has been watching.’

  ‘All the boys,’ Maribel said.

  ‘All boys, is true! This is not right place for girls. He is making me lie down on bench in front of river. He is putting this piece of wood beneath my burat and giving me guava leaves to chew in my mouth. Then he cuts.’ He swept his hand through the air; Maribel shuddered. ‘And I do not make squeal. I do not make one squeal!’

  ‘It was funny,’ Maribel said. ‘You have had to wear a skirt for three weeks.’

  ‘This was not skirt! This was cloth while wound is healing. You are girl; you know nothing!’

  ‘You are correct,’ Maribel replied, chastened. ‘It was like a bandage. I am sorry.’

  ‘Bandage, yes,’ Dennis said with a grin. ‘After which I am becoming man. This is not being true for everyone,’ he added, staring at Philip.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Philip blushed, refusing to believe that Maribel would discuss such intimacies with her brother.

  ‘I look when we make piss,’ Dennis replied, unabashed.

  ‘That must have been fun for you! Then perhaps you’ll explain the connection between circumcision and masculinity?’

  ‘They are silly boys,’ Maribel said. ‘They think that it is not possible for a girl to have babies if you still have your… I do not know this word.’ She giggled.

  ‘Foreskin,’ Philip said. ‘You might need it one day for your medical transcription. But surely that would be a good reason for them keeping themselves intact?’

  Maribel looked at him, as if he had shattered her most treasured dream.

  They returned to the café to collect Hapynez and continue their journey. Six hours later, after a brief stop at a garage, whose blazoned boast that ‘We’ve got the magic touch’ was belied by the dishevelled man, T-shirt riding over his paunch, listlessly patching a threadbare tyre in the forecourt, they arrived in Cauayan, a larger and more cosmopolitan town than Philip had imagined. The urban trappings slid away as soon as they left the centre and by the time they reached the outlying Villaflor barangay pigs and hens were ambling down the road as boldly as cows in India; although their safety was ensured by inertia rather than reverence. Maribel pointed out various childhood landmarks, her excitement undercut by Dennis’s grunts, before falling silent when they turned a corner and pulled up outside a breeze-block bungalow with black-grilled windows set in a dusty garden, dominated by the palm tree that had loomed so large in her reminiscences. Philip gazed at the weather-worn sign on the tumbledown fence: No Tresspissing. If you tresspiss, you will be bitten by the dog.