The Breath of Night

by Michael Arditti

  He stood in front of the least intimidating herbalist, whose stall resembled a window box, lined with plants, grasses, seeds and stones. ‘Do you have any makabuhay?’ he asked. She flashed him a suspicious look and addressed him in speech so slurred that it would have been impenetrable even in English. He passed her the paper on which Maribel had written the name. ‘Makabuhay,’ he repeated. She pointed to a vine and held up three fingers of a maimed hand. ‘Three hundred pesos?’ Philip asked uneasily, in case the missing fourth finger were to be included in the calculation. She nodded, at which he took out his wallet and counted the notes. Just as he was giving them to her, a heavy blow from behind felled him to the ground, causing him to crack his shoulder on the edge of the stall.

  His first thought was that he had been mugged, but seeing his wallet still in his hand he wondered whether a bomb had exploded, and the terrorist threat that had stalked him since the Wanted posters in the airport had finally materialised. But there was no blast, no smoke, no screams; the disturbance was centred on him. He made to rise, whereupon his arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists handcuffed, sending a further wave of pain to his shoulder. Someone was shouting at him, but the voice was at once too high-pitched and too garbled to comprehend. He pressed his body into the ground, using the logic of dreams to escape from the nightmare, but found himself dragged to his feet and frogmarched away by two men whose faces were outside his field of vision. The crowd around him parted with ominous compliance. ‘What’s happening?’ he cried, but any answer was drowned by the thump of his heart. He was led through the square to a white police car with the words Manila’s Finest stencilled like a sick joke on the door. He ducked, just in time to avoid banging his head on the roof as he was bundled on to the back seat.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he repeated, as he struggled to sit up straight without the use of his hands. ‘There’s been a terrible mistake,’ he said to the officer who sat down beside him. The studied silence forced him to adopt a different approach. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked, sounding like his mother hectoring an obdurate tradesman. The officer ignored him and spoke briskly to his colleague. ‘Are you arresting me? On what charge? Don’t you have to read me my rights? Or don’t foreigners have any rights in the Philippines?’ His attempt at irony foundered on the memory of Julian. ‘How do I know you’re a genuine police officer?’ he added, although, as he glimpsed the man’s gun poking out of its holster, the alternative was too terrifying to contemplate. ‘I demand to know where you’re taking me!’ he said. ‘I’m a British citizen. You have a duty to contact the Embassy at once.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ the officer next to him said, in a voice far friendlier than his manner. ‘You will have your chance to speak at the station.’

  Any hope that this would mark the start of a dialogue was dashed. Philip sat back in confusion as the car, which was granted no special privileges, crawled through the streets. His senses were numbed apart from smell, which had grown more acute. He retched at the officers’ body odour before realising, with disgust, that the stench stemmed from him.

  Twenty minutes later – although precise calculations belonged to the world before his arrest – he was ushered out of the car and into a police station. The self-protecting haze in which he had been moving lifted, allowing him to take stock of his surroundings. A large sign above the door declared it to be A People-Friendly Police Station, a claim that appeared to be borne out by the docile crowd milling around the reception area. To the left a row of three metal tables was set with heavy, old-fashioned computers, at one of which an officer was eating a pot noodle. The two arresting officers conducted Philip to the front desk, where the lengthy admissions procedure was interrupted when a fresh-faced young officer dragged in two brawling women. Far from rushing to his aid, his colleagues watched in amusement as he struggled to keep them apart. Finally, the desk officer strolled over and slapped both women hard across the head, at which they abruptly fell silent, leaving the hapless neophyte to lead them to one of the tables and take their statements.

  The brief reprieve from his own predicament ended when the desk officer asked Philip for his name, address and passport.

  ‘My name is Philip Blaise Redding Seward,’ he replied sonorously. ‘I’m staying at the Manila Hotel. I’m a British citizen and I demand to know what this is all about.’

  ‘Passport?’

  ‘I don’t have a passport – that is, not on me.’

  ‘Passport?’

  ‘I don’t have a passport! I wasn’t expecting to leave the country today. Won’t somebody please tell me what’s happening?’ he asked, unable to keep his voice from cracking.

  ‘You have been arrested for buying a plant designed to bring abortion. This is a crime punishable in the Philippines by between one month and twenty years imprisonment.’

  ‘Twenty years?’ The sentence seemed at once to stretch into infinity and to dwindle to the length of a condemned man’s final walk.

  ‘Between one month and twenty years.’

  ‘There’s been a serious misunderstanding. I went there to buy this makabuhay for my girlfriend’s stomach cramps… menstrual pains. I wanted her to go to the chemist.’

  ‘This is a bad plant, a very bad plant.’

  ‘I’m a foreigner, a guest in your country. I’m a friend of the Bishop of Baguio.’ The episcopal name fell flat. ‘Surely I have the right to ring a lawyer? Not that I know any lawyers here. Why should I? I’m not a criminal. I need to contact the British Embassy. Will you please call them for me? This whole mess will be cleared up at once.’

  ‘First, you must speak to my sergeant,’ the desk officer said. He logged Philip’s property, confiscating his watch, wallet and mobile, before asking one of the arresting officers to lock him up. As they walked through the lobby, Philip stared in dread at the pen packed with prisoners, which looked less like the holding cell in a TV detective series than the overcrowded cattle truck in a war film. A dozen or so men were leaning against the bars or squatting on the floor, since there were no chairs or benches. Many were shirtless, the symbols on their torsos a disturbing echo of the graffiti on the walls. A full clothes line hung above their heads, suggesting that several of them had been detained there for days. A couple jeered, but most watched indifferently as the officer thrust him against the whitewashed wall and, making him hold up a name card, photographed him both full face and in left and right profile.

  The officer took his fingerprints and, on an impulse that appalled him even as he yielded to it, Philip smeared the inky residue down his cheeks. The officer said nothing but guided him through a door marked Exit into the bowels of the building. His relief at not being placed among the prisoners in the pen turned to panic at the recollection of Benito’s scar. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked. The officer remained silent, pushing him into a small, stark room and locking the door. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that, surprisingly for such a functional space, the walls were painted crimson, which intensified his fears of torture. He huddled on one of the two metal chairs, which along with the plain wooden desk made up the room’s only furniture and gazed at its one picture, a framed heart in which Christ and the Virgin Mary were entwined like Valentine’s Day lovers. The air smelt of sweat, which instead of inducing the usual repugnance felt oddly reassuring.

  Time concertinaed around him, as he waited for the police to make the next move. Finally, a large officer with a sleeveful of badges entered and barely giving him a second glance, drew the remaining chair up to the desk. He opened a file and made a note, after which he turned to face Philip, whose resolve not to speak first was strengthened by his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Good afternoon. I am Sergeant Joel Labuguen,’ he said, with a show of affability. ‘And you are Philip Seward?’

  ‘Am I? I’m beginning to doubt it.’

  ‘What?’ the Sergeant asked, his expression clouding. Philip, recalling that to policemen questions of identity were
purely practical, changed tack.

  ‘I mean: how can I be sure of anything when I go out in good faith to buy a herb for my girlfriend’s stomach cramps and find myself arrested for assisting an abortion?’

  ‘The makabuhay vine has many uses. Some people, they use it for diarrhoea and indigestion, but these people who go to Quiapo, they buy it for one use only. This is well known.’

  ‘Not by me. I’m a foreigner. The only thing I know about Quiapo is that the church contains the Black Nazarene icon. How can anyone buy proscribed herbs in such a sacred spot?’

  ‘Who is to say? Perhaps they take them and then confess?’ The Sergeant’s laughter seemed to swill around his belly.

  ‘In any case, my girlfriend isn’t pregnant.’ Philip felt a flicker of unease at the assertion. ‘You can check up whenever you like.’

  ‘Thank you, we will. What is this young person’s name please?’

  ‘Why do you say “young”? I never said she was young. She might be fifty for all you know.’

  ‘Is this young person aged fifty?’

  ‘No,’ Philip said wretchedly. ‘She is nineteen, nearly twenty.’

  ‘You are sure about this?’

  ‘As far as I can be sure about anything. She told me she was nineteen. She had no reason to lie.’ He felt a further flicker of unease.

  ‘It is unfortunate – even cruel – that while there is such a small difference in looks between seventeen and nineteen, there is such a big difference in law.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Are you accusing me of something else? May I please call my friend in Manila? He’ll find me a lawyer. I don’t know how things work here, but in England an interrogation has no validity unless you follow the correct procedures.’

  ‘Is this an interrogation? I am sad that you think like this. I am hoping that you will see this more as a friendly head to head to clear up any misunderstanding.’

  ‘You’re the ones who’ve misunderstood; I’m an innocent victim!’ Philip struggled to quell his indignation. ‘My girlfriend’s name is Maribel May Santos. I don’t have her address; I’ve never been there. But her number is on my mobile, the one you’ve impounded.’

  ‘How did you meet this young person?’

  ‘She’s the sister of my driver, Dennis Santos.’

  ‘Very well,’ the Sergeant said, sounding mollified. ‘We will make our investigations and we will see what we will find. In the meanwhile, I hope you will not object to waiting here a little longer. We will do all we can do to make you feel comfortable. If you wish for anything to eat or to drink, I will instruct one of my officers to provide it. At our expense,’ he added expansively.

  ‘Just some water,’ Philip said, feeling the moisture that had drained from his body trickling down his back.

  ‘Of course. There will be nothing easier,’ the Sergeant said, gathering his file and standing up.

  ‘Before you go, may I please make a phone call? Just one call!’

  ‘You must not concern yourself. I have taken the liberty of ringing someone on your behalf.’

  ‘Who?’ Philip asked as the Sergeant moved to the door. ‘Who?’ he repeated as the door slammed shut.

  The silence in the room grew cavernous. What had first seemed like confusion now seemed like conspiracy. How had the police known where to find him? Had they used Maribel as a decoy? Had they threatened Dennis, who in turn threatened her? That would at least mitigate the treachery. He would lose his liberty but not his faith in human nature. On the other hand, might she have betrayed him of her own accord? Was it her revenge on him for his imminent departure? Impossible! That was not the doting, tender-hearted Maribel he knew. But how well did he actually know her? Had she led him on from the start? How many of the ‘famous persons’ who had refused his massage had Dennis introduced to her? What was the real reason she had never invited him back to meet her aunt?

  A thought ran through him like an electric shock. What if Maribel were indeed pregnant and the charge against him were true? What if, having decided on an abortion, she had been seeking not to punish him but to involve him in the process by asking him to buy the herb? Or what if her motives were more cynical and, aware that the police would submit her to a medical examination, she had manipulated him in a bid to obtain the kind of out-of-court settlement that Leonora Veloso had obtained for Girlie? Worse still, what if the Sergeant were right and she had lied about her age in order to trap him. Sex, however consensual, with a girl under eighteen was held to be rape, leaving him with the prospect of not twenty years but a lifetime in jail. Julian had endured captivity in the knowledge of the worldwide campaign for his release. Who would organise a similar campaign for him? His parents? His brothers? Isabel and Hugh? Would they trust in his innocence or suspect him of being a paedophile? Just as he was wondering how well he knew Maribel, would they be wondering the same about him?

  Philip felt like a fly caught between two panes of glass. The door opened, and after a moment of uncertainty he recognised the slight figure of the Vicar General. Reeling with relief, he asked him to sit down and apologised for his appearance. Only then did he think to ask how he had known where to find him.

  ‘We had a call,’ the Vicar General said airily.

  ‘Yes, but who from?’ Philip asked, his relief ebbing away.

  ‘What does it matter? What matters is that you’ve been arrested on a very serious charge.’

  ‘But I thought… Maribel asked me… she said that she needed the herb – vine, whatever you call it – for period pains.’

  The Vicar General flinched. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as strange that she should ask you – a man and a foreigner – for something so intimate?’

  ‘But we are intimate. We’ve been intimate for the past six weeks.’

  ‘So I gather. That may result in an even more serious charge.’

  ‘She’s nineteen! How often do I have to say it? She’s nineteen!’

  ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her birth certificate, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Quite. In some of our outlying provinces, even today, the registration of births and deaths is lamentably lax. Sometimes it can be two or three years out of date.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Philip asked, feeling the muscles in his chest contract. ‘That officially she might be seventeen or even sixteen?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘But you could explain things – set people straight.’

  ‘I could, so long as the Bishop agreed,’ the Vicar General replied smoothly.

  ‘Why on earth wouldn’t he?’

  ‘At the very least he would require certain guarantees in return.’

  ‘I swear on the Bible, on my mother’s life, on everything I hold dear, that I was buying the makabuhay quite innocently and that Maribel is – to the best of my knowledge – over eighteen.’

  ‘No, not those sort of guarantees. Guarantees about Father Julian.’

  ‘Are you trying to bargain with me?’

  ‘Let’s say, to find common ground. It has been intimated to us – is that the right word? Sometimes I forget my English.’

  ‘I won’t know until I hear the rest of the sentence,’ Philip said sourly.

  ‘Of course,’ the Vicar General replied with a thin smile. ‘It was intimated to us that you have been exceeding your brief, contacting people with no love – indeed, quite the opposite – for the Church.’

  ‘I take it you mean Benito Bertubin?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I wish I knew what you have against him. He may have left the Church, but he’s still doing Christ’s work.’

  ‘Is that so?’ the Vicar General asked, his eyes ablaze. ‘Is it Christ’s work to give the people hope that their lives can be fulfilled here on earth: hope that will inevitably turn to despair, the one sin which, as we know, will keep them from the perfect bliss of God’s heavenly kingdom?’

  ‘Do you really believe that God woul
d be so vindictive?’

  ‘It’s not what I believe but what the Church teaches.’

  ‘Then shouldn’t the Church base its teaching and, more to the point, its practice on the truth?’ Philip asked, momentarily distracted from his own plight. ‘Although Benito said nothing about the Constabulary Commander’s murder, he confirmed my suspicion that Julian was ready to fight – literally – for his beliefs. If the miracles are genuine, as you claim, then it must mean that God endorsed his position. And since the Church opposed it – that is opposed those who took up arms against the Marcos regime – it must also mean that He endorsed the priest against the Church.’

  ‘That’s quite impossible. A priest derives his authority wholly from the Church.’

  ‘What if he chooses to cut out the middleman?’

  ‘If that were so – and I don’t for one moment accept that it is, either for Father Julian or anyone else – what would be the result? Anarchy! There would be no saint with the power to regenerate the community, but an empty personality cult. You say that the Church should base itself on the truth. Yes, of course, but it is the Church’s role to interpret that truth, as it has done for the past two thousand years And if that means ignoring – even excising – things that would cause confusion, so be it.’

  ‘That isn’t interpretation; it’s distortion.’

  ‘I know you’re a Protestant, Mr Seward, but did you discuss these views with the Olliphants before they employed you?’

  ‘No. Although, to be honest, I didn’t hold them. Coming here, seeing the Church’s grip on every aspect of national life, has changed me radically.’

  ‘And changed you into a radical?’

  ‘I realise that I’m doing myself no favours by speaking out like this.’