‘No one can put pressure on Amel. He’s a law unto himself.’
‘So I saw. And it’s the law of the jungle! Are we going to let him get away with it?’
‘Away with what? Didn’t Dennis tell the doctor that he was the one who’d spilt the acid?’
‘That’s what I mean! The poor guy’s terrified.’
‘Just like everyone else. Including yours truly.’
‘Well, I’m not!’
‘So what do you intend to do? Report him to the police? Haven’t you had your fill of them by now?’ Max asked, unwittingly confirming Philip’s suspicions. ‘Besides, Amel has them all paid off. Don’t suppose that drugs and macho dancers are the sum total of his business interests. Believe me, he has far bigger fish to fry.’
Max’s cynicism, along with Amel’s crimes and the authorities’ collusion, preoccupied Philip all evening. Just as no one in the club had challenged the manager’s explanation of Dennis’s collapse, so no one in the wider world was prepared to stand up to Amel and his associates. Outraged by their savagery, Philip felt a renewed desire to visit Gerron Casiscas. No matter that he had already sent in his report, which was as vapid as the Church authorities could have wished, he owed it to himself to unravel the final threads in the web of corruption. The Vicar General might well have informants within the prison, but short of arranging to eliminate him as his fellow clerics had Julian – a conjecture that Philip was increasingly disposed to take as a fact – there was nothing he could do. Even so, he realised that he should not venture into the prison alone. Having no idea whether Gerron spoke any English, he rang the one Tagalog speaker he could trust and, to his delight, Benito agreed to accompany him the next day.
‘It’s Sunday, so I do not have to work. And after all his letters, I’ll be interested to hear what Casiscas has to say. But there’s one condition. I cannot be drawn into any further correspondence. We must tell him simply that I am your translator.’
‘That’s fine by me. But do you have authorisation?’
‘I have cash.’
At eleven the next morning Philip met Benito as planned outside New Bilibid Prison. Although built in the 1930s, the white crenellated towers showed a strong Iberian influence, as if justice had remained equated with colonial power for decades after the Spanish were expelled. Philip glanced at Benito to see whether it brought back memories of his own incarceration, but his face gave nothing away. For himself, he felt a new sense of purpose, as though, by entering its walls, he were not only back on the path from which the Vicar General had deflected him, but in some indefinable way both reaching closer to Julian, who had spent a year in just such a jail, and making amends for the blandness of his report.
A guard escorted them to the reception area, where another guard, mopping his brow after every sentence, inspected their passes. Philip handed him the email from the governor’s office and Benito an envelope, which he pocketed unopened. After stamping the visitors’ wrists, he sent them to a third guard, who conducted a cursory body search and an equally brief examination of the bag of cigarettes, chocolates and fizzy drinks that Philip had brought for Gerron. He then ushered them down a long corridor lined with a Soviet-style mural of rural life and through a vast yard in which several prisoners were playing basketball. Greeting their shouts and whistles with a friendly wave, Philip felt a twinge of unease at the thought that he was trapped among some of the most dangerous men in the Philippines with only token protection.
Even that was withdrawn when the guard led them to one of the squat concrete blocks around the yard and, after summoning a trusty to unlock the gate, walked away.
‘Where’s he going?’ Philip asked Benito.
‘Who knows? The guards never enter the blocks. The prisoners run them themselves through their elected mayors.’
‘You mean gang leaders?’
‘Exactly. Perfect training for the outside world.’
‘But will we be safe?’
‘In my experience we’re far safer in the hands of the prisoners than the guards,’ Benito said grimly. ‘We represent their most precious commodity: hope.’
As he gazed at the toothless grins and tattooed biceps of the prisoners who came out to watch them, Philip trusted that Benito was right. ‘Hello, I’m Philip. Good to meet you,’ he said, affecting a carefree smile. ‘No one’s speaking,’ he whispered to Benito.
‘No, as I told you, visitors are precious. Only the host has the right to say if his visitor can be shared.’
In an offer of assistance that brooked no refusal, the trusty grabbed Philip’s bag of gifts and led him into the block. Praying that the stamps on his arm would withstand the sweat, he made his way down a corridor, which was even dimmer than the alcove at the Mr Universe, the brightest light coming from the flicker of a television at the far end. Through an open cell door, he glimpsed two men stirring a pot on a paraffin stove, its cloying smell mingling with the faecal stench from a slop bucket. The trusty steered the visitors into a cramped cell containing four bunk beds, lit by a small, heavily barred window. With a commanding gesture he instructed them to sit on the two lower bunks, placed the untouched bag of gifts at Philip’s feet and went out.
‘What now?’
‘We wait. This is how it must be. Remember, it is you who have asked to see him.’
Five minutes later the trusty returned with two prisoners, one thickset and bald, sporting an elaborate tattoo of Christ flanked by a pair of green mambas, as if paradise had been lost and regained on a single torso, and the other pustular and scrawny, with crudely inked signatures on every visible inch of skin and several disappearing ominously under his shorts, turning him into a human plaster cast.
Philip stood up to greet them, banging his head on the upper bunk and prompting the scrawny prisoner to laugh wildly until his companion kicked him in the shin.
‘You Philip?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Me Gerron.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Philip said, shaking his calloused palm. ‘And you are?’ He smiled at the scrawny prisoner.
‘He JJ,’ Gerron said. ‘He no use. He no speak English. He no speak Filipino.’
‘This is my friend –’
‘Ricardo,’ Benito interposed so fast that Philip wondered if the name were a random choice or held a deeper significance.
‘He’ll translate, if it’s easier for you to speak Tagalog.’
‘Easy, yes. Thanking you.’
Philip handed Gerron the bag of gifts, which he scrupulously appraised, finding new notes of appreciation for each cigarette packet and chocolate bar.
‘He says that he will be sharing them with his friends in the cell.’
‘What about JJ here?’
‘I doubt it. It’s obvious he’s his janitor.’
‘Janitor?’
‘Prison slang for slave.’
Gerron had registered the term. ‘Janitor yes. Me very good to him. Me making money for him. You wish name, yes? Me good price.’
‘Is he suggesting what I think he is?’ Philip asked Benito.
‘Yes,’ Benito said, after a brief clarification. ‘The normal price is five hundred pesos per tattoo. But for us, he’ll do it for two.’
‘See, names,’ Gerron said, spinning JJ around to reveal the signatures on his back, thighs and calves. ‘See, names.’ He pulled down JJ’s shorts to display his inky buttocks. ‘See, names.’
‘Enough, thank you,’ Philip said, putting up his hand. ‘What’s the appeal?’ he asked Benito. ‘Is it the only way left to them to make their mark? It’s forbidden to write on walls but permissible on flesh?’
‘Names, see. Good price for English.’
‘Does the price vary according to length or size or position? Is a buttock cheaper than an elbow or a thigh?’
‘Do you really want me to ask?’ Benito said.
‘No, I want you to ask about Julian.’
‘Julian, here?’ Gerron said, tracing a line ac
ross JJ’s cheek.
‘No, Father Julian. You wrote to Benito Bertubin that you had evidence of a murder plot against him.’ He turned to Benito. ‘Translate please.’
Gerron’s response was to ignore the question and offer them snacks. Asking Benito to refuse on his behalf, Philip wondered whether Gerron were dragging out the meeting to gain status from his visitors or playing for time because he had nothing to say. At last he sent JJ away and, in a halting exchange, which Benito both conducted and translated, recalled events from twenty years before. He had been sharing a cell in Nueva Ecija jail with one Alvin Japos, who had boasted how he had been recruited by a group of high-ranking priests to kill an English missionary, whom they accused of betraying the Church. When the priests failed either to pay him his fee or to have the charges against him dropped, Alvin had joined an NPA unit active in the jail and later, during a mass breakout, fled to one of their mountain training camps in the Sierra Madre.
Despite his own recent experience of clerical intrigue, Philip recognised that the evidence Gerron presented was thin. ‘So the last time he saw him was in this provincial prison in the early nineties?’ he asked Benito, who put the question to Gerron.
‘No. He claims that he met him three years ago, shortly before he was arrested and sent here. He – Alvin that is, not Gerron – grows onions outside Bongabon, a small town in the east of Nueva Ecija. Presumably, his knowledge of the territory was why the priests chose him for the job. Not –’ he added in an undertone – ‘that I believe for one moment they did.’
‘But he said that this guy Alvin was a member of the NPA.’
‘NPA, yes!’ Gerron interjected.
‘So how can he be growing onions?’ Philip asked, directing his question to a space midway between Benito and Gerron.
‘That part’s credible enough,’ Benito replied. ‘You can be a farmer and a member of the NPA, or a doctor and a member of the NPA, or even a priest and a member of the NPA.’ He smiled. ‘They do not sit around in their uniforms all day, like firemen waiting to put out a fire.’
‘But isn’t it dangerous? If the government is determined to track them down. The first things I saw at the airport were the Wanted posters for NPA terrorists.’
‘These are the leaders and of course it is dangerous for them. But, for the rest, it is quite different. They grow crops in the lowlands alongside the regular farmers, who know when not to ask questions. In some places they even mix with the military, who are willing to turn a blind eye provided peace is maintained.’
‘And when it’s not?’
‘Then the rebels retreat to their camps high in the mountains, which are hard to reach even by foot.’
‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Maybe not to a European. Now, do you wish to ask him anything else? I think that he has told us all he knows.’
Having established that he had no more precise address for Alvin than the name of the town, Philip and Benito took their leave of Gerron, who led them out into the compound where several prisoners were sunning themselves. JJ was sitting a few yards apart and, as they waited for the trusty to unlock the gate, Gerron called him over and casually pulled down his lower lip.
‘Look!’ he said to Philip, pointing at the six blue letters bathed in spit beside a row of broken and decaying teeth. ‘My name. Is secret. Look!’
After quitting the prison Philip and Benito headed for the bus that would take them back to the city centre.
‘I hope you found what you were looking for,’ Benito said.
‘Nothing short of a signed confession from the guilty priests could have done that. But it was good to hear his story. It would be even better to hear it at first hand.’
‘From Alvin Japos?’ Benito asked. Philip nodded. ‘To what end?’
‘To discover the truth, which is a pretty elusive commodity around here. I’ve been hovering on the fringes of this conspiracy for too long. It’s time to reach the heart.’
‘What if it has no heart? Just more and more skins, like one of Japos’s onions.’
‘It’s still worth a try. Do you know how far Bongabon is from here?’
‘Not offhand, why? You’re not seriously thinking of going there?’
‘Why not?’
‘And how do you propose to find Japos? There are hundreds of onion growers in the region. It’s the onion capital of the Philippines! And if, by some remote chance –’
‘Some miracle?’
‘You do find him, how will you gain his trust? That is, even supposing you’re able to communicate. Or do you have someone else to go there with you to translate?’
‘Don’t you want to know what the Church is capable of?’
‘I was a priest for thirty years; I know what the Church is capable of! I also know what the army is capable of and the NPA is capable of. And, for that matter, what the landscape is capable of. We’re talking of very rough and inhospitable terrain.’
‘Then why did the Bishop allow Julian to go on retreat there? Given the terrorist activity, it’s the perfect place to commit a murder and escape scot-free. But you’re right,’ he said, afraid that Benito would come up with further objections. ‘It’s impractical and pointless. I only have three more days in Manila. I should lounge by the pool and work on my tan.’
After thanking Benito for his help, Philip returned to the hotel, where he asked the receptionist to make arrangements for his immediate departure to Bongabon. As he went up to his room to prepare, he had a strong premonition that however slim his chances might be of meeting Alvin, he would nevertheless learn something of consequence about Julian.
‘You’ve been here too long,’ he said, as he stared at himself in the mirror. ‘Time to go home for a shot of English rationalism.’
The receptionist rang to tell him that there was a four o’clock bus from the Victory terminal in Cubao to Cabanatuan City, from where it was a thirty minute jeepney ride to Bongabon. The only hotels in the district were in Cabanatuan although, she added primly, they were not necessarily ones that she would recommend. With no time to lose, Philip asked her to book him a room at whichever was the most central. Explaining that he would return to Manila on Tuesday, he appealed for her discretion should anyone enquire about his whereabouts, to be met with an affronted: ‘We never give out personal information on any of our guests, sir’. Duly admonished, he took a cab to Cubao and, in what he saw as a propitious sign, boarded the bus just as it was about to pull out. He occupied the three-hour journey by working on the preface to his novel, in which his protagonist, Philip (to be renamed in a later draft), was sent out to the Philippines. Arriving in Cabanatuan, he drove through the twilit streets to the La Panilla Hotel which, for all the receptionist’s qualms, turned out to be clean, comfortable and fully air-conditioned. After a quick shower and a modest dinner, he fell exhausted into bed.
The downpour the next morning was so heavy that he feared the road to Bongabon would be impassable, but the manageress, as helpful as she was attractive, not only assured him that it would remain open but escorted him to the jeepney. For once he was grateful for the crush of passengers, whose composure heartened him as they drove through a landscape both mountainous and submerged. Alighting in the town square, he sheltered under the awning of a pawnshop, while three tricycles, oblivious to the rain, vied for his custom. Selecting the most sturdy, he instructed the driver to take him to the Town Hall. His words meeting nothing but a grizzled smile, he tried “City Hall”, “Municipal Headquarters”, “Mayor’s Office” and “Town Council” in quick succession, all to no avail. He was about to give up when, in desperation, he threw out “Tax”, at which the smile broadened and the driver set off, juddering over ruts and puddles, to deposit Philip outside a long green building, fronted by a row of palms so badly buckled by the storm that they seemed to be clinging to each other for support.
Shaking himself like a dog, he made his way inside, where he spoke to three officials whose grasp of English seemed to stop at the
recognition of that word, before coming to a bespectacled young man, who identified himself, felicitously, as Noah.
‘How am I best able to help you, sir?’ he asked.
‘I’m trying to contact someone who lives in your municipality: Alvin Japos.’
‘Why, if I may ask this question, are you wishing to contact this person?’
‘I was at university with his sister. We became great friends and then lost touch. You know how it is.’ Noah, who looked as though he could recite the addresses, including postcodes, of every one of his friends, did not reply. ‘She often mentioned her brother. He grows onions. They were very close.’
‘And the sister of this onion grower has been going to university in England?’ Noah asked incredulously.
‘She was a post-graduate. On a special scholarship – I think it was from the UN. She was very bright.’
Making no reply, Noah typed a sentence into his computer. A moment later he looked up with such a furrowed brow that Philip was afraid there might be a special administrative code for suspected members of the NPA.
‘Why are you wishing to see this man?’
‘I told you, he’s my friend’s brother.’
‘It cannot be the same person. This man is fifty-seven years. He has his children and grandchildren living in the same house with him.’
‘Maybe she made a mistake?’ Philip said, floundering. ‘Do Filipinos easily confuse the English for “uncle” and “brother”?’
‘Not the ones who are given special scholarships from the UN,’ Noah replied coldly.
‘Then the mistake must be mine. Now I think of it, I’m sure she said “uncle”. Why did I say “brother”? Must be because I have two brothers of my own. If you’ll give me his address, I can go and see.’
Noah’s reluctance to comply was compounded by Philip’s inability to produce his passport. In the nick of time he thought to show him a crumpled letter from the Bishop of Baguio, adding that it was proof not just of his identity but of his good faith. Noah studied the letter, even holding it up to the light as if inspecting a watermark, before declaring that he would consult his superiors and give Philip an answer the next morning.
The Breath of Night Page 33