The Breath of Night

by Michael Arditti

  ‘I am making this,’ Dennis said proudly.

  ‘There is no dog,’ Hapynez said.

  ‘He does not know this.’

  ‘Everybody knows.’

  Philip hung back as Maribel led the way into the house, rushing straight to her mother, a slight woman in a floral print dress who sat fanning herself to one side of the crowded room. No sooner had she spotted their arrival than she plunged into a paroxysm of weeping, flinging down her fan and beating her breast, despite a friend’s attempt to wrench her hand away. The transition was so abrupt that it transcended the usual distinctions of truth and artifice, attesting to her urgent need to convey the intensity of her grief. Philip watched as she hugged her daughter and sister before falling into the arms of the son whom she had not seen for so long, tracing the contours of his face and running her fingers through his hair, as if struggling to convince herself that he was real. The strength of her emotion allowed Dennis to express his, and they clung to each other in a welter of kisses and tears.

  The reunion was interrupted by a teenager, who tottered into the room on a home-made crutch and threw himself at Dennis’s back. ‘This is Angel Boy,’ Hapynez whispered to Philip. Dennis greeted his brother with uncharacteristic warmth, tapping his cheek, rubbing his head and pressing it against his shoulder.

  ‘He has been growing up as fast as bamboo,’ Maribel said, joining in the embrace.

  ‘He is becoming as big as me,’ Dennis said, with a pride Philip suspected would have been tempered had Angel Boy’s withered leg not removed any threat to his own supremacy.

  While Dennis and Maribel hugged their brother, Hapynez introduced Philip to her sister. ‘I regret that she is ignorant,’ she said. ‘She is not speaking English like me.’

  ‘Please offer her my deepest condolences,’ Philip said, as he shook Joy’s hand.

  ‘She says that she is most honoured that you have come and she is most grateful that you have brought us in your fine car, even if you have been putting too much aircon into the back.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Philip said, mortified. ‘You should have told me. I’ll adjust it on the way back.’

  ‘It is a matter of trivial importance. What?’ Hapynez turned impatiently to Joy. ‘She says also that she is most grateful for everything you have been doing for Dennis. You are most welcome in her house.’

  Her mention of Dennis rather than Maribel made Philip feel like a photographer praised for his sensitive studies of mixed-race couples when his true interest lay in their contrasting skin tones. His unease grew when Joy gathered them together to see Analyn.

  ‘Is the body in the house?’ Philip asked Hapynez.

  ‘No, she is in the garden.’

  Joy led the group through a small kitchen, dominated by the precious fridge, humming loudly as if to advertise its presence, and into the back garden, which was packed with men playing cards. In the middle, a highly polished white coffin stood on trestles, with wreaths of lilies and floating candles on the lid. At the family’s appearance, the players broke off their games, greeting them with varying degrees of effusiveness. To Philip’s relief, he was ignored, apart from a few polite nods and bashful smiles. One man, however, lingered beside him as if waiting for an introduction.

  ‘Is my uncle,’ Dennis said. ‘He is giving me money to go to Manila. See, here is this money.’ He took a surprisingly thick wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off several hundred pesos for his uncle, who accepted them without demur. Despite the impropriety, Philip recognised that for Dennis it was necessary not just to pay his debts but to have the transaction witnessed. That done, he took his place alongside his mother, sister and aunt at Analyn’s coffin where, after an appropriate pause, Philip joined them.

  Having survived the shock of Julia’s disfigurement, he had rashly assumed that death could hold no further terrors for him. Max had warned him that Analyn’s corpse would be embalmed, but, while he was prepared for the waxen artificiality of her skin, he was unprepared for her resemblance to Maribel. He suppressed the urge to scream, which would have been doubly shameful in the face of the family’s silence, focusing instead on incidentals, such as why there was a chicken perched on Analyn’s pillow.

  ‘Is that her pet chicken?’ he whispered to Maribel.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘No. We put this there when some person is murdered because it is helping to make the punishment for the killer quicker.’ Then, as if prompted by her own words, she burst into tears. With a shriek, Joy dragged her away from the coffin.

  ‘Must she be that rough?’ Philip asked Hapynez.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘If someone is crying on to the corpse, it will slow down her journey into the next world.’

  The family went back indoors, leaving the men to resume their games. Philip could not dismiss the feeling that they were treating the death in their midst with insufficient gravity, more like hospital visitors passing the time until a friend emerged from a coma than mourners at a wake. Uncertain whether to stay outside or return to the house, he must have conveyed his confusion to Dennis’s uncle, who walked over and asked him shyly if he would like to play a hand of sakla.

  ‘That’s very kind, but I don’t know the rules.’

  ‘Is possible to show you.’

  ‘I’ve had a long journey; I ought to go in. Maybe later?’

  Back inside, Philip grappled with the sleeping arrangements, which had been exercising him ever since their arrival. Despite the nightmare of San Trinidad, he had insisted that he would be happy to stay in a hotel. Maribel, ever mindful of the proprieties, explained that her mother would be insulted if he stayed with anyone but them. He had assumed, therefore, that there would be more than the one bedroom, which he was to share with Dennis and Angel Boy, while Maribel, her mother and aunt made do with the sitting room. He felt wretched, even though Hapynez assured him that it was no hardship since they would be keeping a night-long vigil by Analyn’s coffin. To make matters worse, the cramped bedroom meant that he was allotted the only mattress, while Dennis and Angel Boy were to share a sleeping mat on the floor. Angel Boy was thrilled by any chance to be close to his newly returned brother, but Dennis had other concerns. ‘If you touch him, I will kill you,’ he warned Philip.

  ‘You are joking? Do you seriously think I’m the sort of man who’d hit on his girlfriend’s younger brother at their sister’s funeral?’ he asked, staggered by a degree of cynicism rare even for Dennis.

  ‘You are Englishman. You are in Philippines. Of course.’

  Knocking tentatively at the door, Maribel summoned them into the garden to eat. ‘It is pancit cabagan. You will not have tasted this dish in Manila,’ she told Philip proudly. ‘It is a most delicious speciality of Isabela province.’

  ‘It’s not the only one,’ Philip said, eager to banish the memory of Dennis’s suspicions.

  ‘No, you are correct. There is also pancit batal patong.’

  Squashed next to Hapynez on a low wooden bench, Philip watched while Joy and Maribel walked among their guests, ladling the aromatic stew on to banana leaf plates. ‘I’m sure it’s long-established practice and I shouldn’t comment,’ he said to Hapynez, ‘but it strikes me as insensitive, to say the least, for the men to ignore the family all afternoon, while they sit here playing cards, and then gorge themselves on their food.’

  ‘No, you do not understand. This is very necessary. My sister is a poor woman. She could never afford to bury her daughter alone. You see this Demos.’ She pointed to a middle-aged man, with a lazy eye and a ducktail hairstyle. ‘He comes to every house where there is death and he sets up these games. He collects the money in these little pots. Each evening he gives the family half of all the money in the pots. Then when there is enough, they can pay for the funeral.’

  ‘How long does it take?’

  ‘This depends. Sometimes one week, sometimes two.’

  ‘The same players every day?’

  ‘Sometimes the same, sometimes different.’<
br />
  ‘And the priest – Father Elmo, isn’t it? – has no objections?’

  ‘Of course not. Sometimes he is playing with them.’

  Noting that the gulf between East and West was never wider than when they were observing the same rites, Philip wondered whether he should offer to play, betting heavily in order to expedite the process.

  ‘How many more days do you reckon we’ll have to wait?’

  ‘None. Demos has informed me that they have now sufficient money. The funeral will take place tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Philip replied, with a niggling sense of unease, before accepting a plate and tasting the stew: a mixture of pork, beans, eggs, vegetables and noodles, which was every bit as delicious as Maribel had claimed. Pausing to digest, he caught sight of Dennis who, sharing his enthusiasm with none of his inhibitions, was gulping it down as fast as his mother spooned it on to his plate. He felt angry on behalf of Maribel, who was too diffident to express – maybe even to feel – any grievance, that Joy should display such favouritism towards her son. It was not even a case of welcoming home the prodigal since, unlike her more worldly-wise sister, she believed him to have spent the past four years in Manila training to be a chef. Then, without warning, she began to howl, beating the ladle against her breast. While Maribel and Dennis struggled to restrain her, Philip asked Hapynez to interpret.

  ‘She is blaming herself for Analyn’s death. She is saying that God has punished her for asking her to testify against Marvin – this is her husband. She is saying that the judge will rule that there can no longer be any evidence and he will set Marvin free to come back here. She is saying that there will be no one to protect her. Now Dennis is saying that he will protect her. Now she is saying that he is a selfish, good-for-nothing boy who could not protect his sister, so how can he protect her?’ Philip, his suspicions roused by a translation three times as long as the original, assumed that Hapynez was using the “critical thinking” rather than the “conversational fluency” aspect of her skills to voice her own sentiments rather than Joy’s. There was no such ambiguity about Dennis’s response, since he took out a large roll of notes and pressed it into his mother’s hand. The gesture had a dramatic effect, eliciting a spate of kisses from Joy, a round of applause from the bystanders and a look of dismay from Maribel, which Philip sought to deflect with his brightest smile. He was anxious to reassure her and, once the guests had left, he begged her to banish all thought of wrongdoing, maintaining that Dennis’s fellow dancers must have held a whip-round for him at the club.

  He felt no such call to spare Dennis, tackling him about the money as soon as they were alone with Angel Boy in their room.

  ‘I wasn’t close enough to get a good look but, unless those notes were all 20 pesos, it was a hell of a bundle. So how did you come by it?’

  ‘Is my business.’

  ‘You mean it’s your concern or one of your crooked schemes?’

  ‘Is my business.’

  ‘Then why were you so desperate for my loan when you already had so much cash?’

  ‘Is my business. Now I go to sleep, yes?’ Dennis asked, betraying his unease at Philip’s silence. ‘You are sitting on your fat tumbong, talking to sister, talking to aunt, when Dennis is driving all through day. Now Dennis is tiring.’

  Philip watched while the two brothers lay top to toe on the sleeping mat. Angel Boy’s feet smelt so rank from across the room that he dreaded to think what they must be like up close. He felt new admiration for Dennis who not only did not shrink but tickled them, to the boy’s audible delight, before stroking his stunted ankle and shrivelled calf. The whispers and shrieks soon turned to snores, whose irregular rhythm alone would have been enough to keep Philip awake, even without the humidity and the moonlight streaming in through the uncurtained window. As he twisted and turned on the meagre mattress, he was further tormented by thoughts of Maribel who, although only a few yards away, might as well have been back in Manila, given the matronly guard around her.

  He was woken from a nightmare, in which Maribel was squashed beside Analyn in the coffin, by frenzied barking. He turned to Dennis, his face so much younger in repose, who was clasping Angel Boy’s ankles against his neck. Climbing gingerly off the mattress, he took the single step across the room and shook him by the shoulder.

  ‘Can’t you hear the dogs?’ he asked, in response to the stupefied protest. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘What is wrong? Is hot, yes? Is not England. Here they are making noise because skin is too scratching.’

  Dennis turned away, determined to snatch a few more minutes’ sleep, and Philip seized the chance to be first in the shower. He made his way through the kitchen, where the women were already hard at work, and for once he was grateful that the presence of her mother and aunt prevented Maribel from greeting him with anything more than a smile before he had scrubbed the sleep from his skin. The gelid water trickling out of the hosepipe came as a shock and after drying himself on Joy’s napkin-size towel, supplemented by his own dirty T-shirt, he made up for any shortcomings by dousing his chest, thighs and groin in aftershave. Fresh – and smarting – he returned to the bedroom, where Maribel brought him a dish of syrupy tofu, while the two brothers went off to the bathroom, which echoed to the sound of Angel Boy’s gleeful screams.

  An hour later Father Elmo, whose heartless advice to Joy still rankled with Philip, arrived to lead the cortège to the church. Dennis, his uncle and two friends lifted the coffin on to their shoulders and carried it to the road, where they were met by a crowd of friends and neighbours.

  Philip walked alongside Hapynez in the procession, directly behind Maribel and her mother, and at an oblique angle to Angel Boy, who hobbled to and fro. Entering the lacklustre church, he lingered at the back of the nave, only to be ushered forward by Hapynez into the ranks of the family mourners. Promotion came at a price, since he found himself next to an arrangement of lilies with very powdery stamens. Stifling a sneeze, he concentrated on the service which, as in San Isidro, was largely in English. After the Commendation, the pallbearers carried the coffin out of the church and into the adjoining cemetery. Philip, recalling Dennis’s explanation of his family name, trusted that it would hold true for Analyn, at once the victim and the scapegoat of domestic violence. He followed the cortège down a winding path to an open wall grave, which confronted them like a gaping wound. As Father Elmo said a prayer and Analyn was eased into her final resting place, Joy slumped to the ground, to be raised up by Dennis and Maribel, while Angel Boy beat his crutch against the wall.

  ‘Do not worry about the expensive coffin,’ Hapynez said to Philip, ‘it is only on loan. This evening it will be returned.’

  With the grave sealed, the mood of the mourners instantly lifted. Ducking behind the headstones, the women brought out plates of snacks and cold food, and the men crates of San Miguel and Sprite. Hapynez explained that it was bad luck to return home straight after a funeral and so the meal would be held here. All threat of the macabre vanished in a burst of activity, which put Philip in mind of the dead souls emerging from their tombs in Stanley Spencer’s Cookham Resurrection. As family friend and benefactor, he found himself warmly welcomed – rather too warmly by Father Elmo, who had lined up his San Miguel bottles, downing the beer as if trying to drown his scruples. To Philip’s surprise, several people asked him about Julian, whose fame had spread after Jejomar’s crucifixion. He replied with a brief outline of the canonisation process, subtly embellishing his own role for an audience that might have been forgiven for supposing that he had the ear of the Pope.

  After dispatching her sister to the better world in which she so fervently believed, Maribel sought out Philip, introducing him to her old friends, both male and female. With no flushed cheeks or flustered glances to indicate a childhood sweetheart, he was happy to bask in their goodwill, along with the assumption – or maybe the joke – that every Englishman was on David Beckham’s guest list. His unease returned when she intr
oduced him to her best friend, Nina, who held a toddler by the hand, carried a baby in a sling and was heavily pregnant. Seeing the tenderness with which Maribel gazed at the children, he wondered whether he had the right to suggest that on his departure, rather than remaining in Manila ready for the next foreigner to whom her brother might introduce her, she should return home, marry and start a family. Aware that he was growing mawkish, he allowed himself to be cornered by Father Elmo, who launched into a long, inebriated account of the lot of a parish priest. Just when Philip was losing patience, Maribel rushed over in a panic about Dennis, who had gathered some of his old friends for a revenge attack on their uncle.

  ‘I am so frightened. He will be caught; he will be sent into prison. You must help him. You must promise!’

  ‘How?’ Philip asked, feeling her pain like a blade. ‘I’ll try; of course, I will. But you know better than anyone how headstrong he is.’

  ‘You must take him away. Yes, we must all go at once back to Manila.’

  ‘Don’t you want to stay a few days to help your mother?’