Back
in his office, the mayor’s secretary told Boy Deo that three women purporting
to be his lost mother wanted to see him. He instructed the secretary to send
the three to the City Legal Officer with a note that a determination of facts
be established and, if necessary, charges for misrepresentation be leveled
against impostors.
The mayor further
instructed the secretary that henceforth, all visitors with the same agenda
should first be vetted by the legal officer.
Next caller was
Reg Makatigbas. Although he lost in his presidential bid, he kept his job as
senator. Half of his six-year senatorial term remained unspent that he could
revert to. Boy Deo’s senate appearance had wedged a gap between him and the
senator, but now that the heat of election-related tussles seemed to have
cooled off, relations could be heading back to normal for the hawk and his
protégé.
Makatigbas and Sir
Dikomo also appeared to have reconciled. The former mayor had confided to his
rival for the presidency that he might be able to locate the birth clinic where
Boy Deo was supposed to have been born and thereby help untangle his successor
from the identity mess he was in. Almost everybody understood that Boy Deo had
nothing to do with that mess, but he was being pilloried for it.
Boy Deo thanked
Makatigbas for the latter’s courtesy visit. He also suggested a plan for all
concerned—Makatigbas, Sir Dikomo, General Dimas Uy, Lt. Joey Ty and wife
Olivia, Judge Vida De Gracia and David, her nephew, Sylvia Monir, Father Andoy,
Teresa, Katalina, among others—to come together and celebrate his electoral
victory. Makatigbas knew there was another agenda—to help Boy Deo sort of fill
in his parentage vacuum—which he himself proposed.
At Boy Deo’s New
Manila home, people gathered in what truly was a victory party. It was a food
fest. Red wine, tequila, and Filipino beer flowed freely. Everybody was
present—including the frail Judge Vida—and were having a good time. It was a
night of fun… and a night of serious talk. There were surprises as well,
especially for those who were seeing each other for the first time, such as
Makatigbas and Katalina.
Also, it was an
open secret among guests that Vida remained at odds with Sir Dikomo. “I have
forgiven you and asked God’s mercy for our peace of mind,” she replied when Sir
Dikomo approached her for a handshake, repeating his apology.
To help set a
happy tone for everyone, Boy Deo broke the news that he had an idea of who his
father was, but could not disclose names until he was a hundred percent sure of
his information’s veracity. He suggested that nothing less than what his
missing mother could substantiate was needed to erase all doubts.
Makatigbas and Sir
Dikomo agreed that finding the way that would lead to Boy Deo’s mother was next
on their agenda. They may have felt humiliated by their loss in the last
election, but they lived, so to speak, to fight another day. And Manila’s Boy
Wonder could be an ally in the future that no one would wish to oppose.
There was
something even more compelling for both Makatigbas and Sir Dikomo. If helping
Junie had become a personal mission for Joey, helping Boy Deo had also become a
personal mission for Sir Dikomo, largely because of Vida, and for Makatigbas,
all because of Teresa, and to some extent because of Junie and Joey.
Makatigbas felt he
had not done enough to compensate the Biradayons for what happened to Osang.
During the election campaign for the presidency, he made it a point to visit
the Biradayons in Biringan. He arranged the visit to make it appear private,
lest the media dig dirt and make a controversy out of it, but public enough to
satisfy the need for recognition that his hosts expected. Careful not to offend
the sensitivity of Teresa’s family, Makatigbas offered financial help not as a
philanthropic gesture, much less a handout, but in the nature of mutual help.
When Boy Deo appeared in the senate and introduced himself, Makatigbas asked
him if he was related to the Biradayons in Biringan. Boy Deo told him he knew
one Biradayon—Teresa—who adopted him when he was five years old.
For her part,
Judge Vida pledged her support for the rectification of all legal documents
related to the mayor’s identity. She could not stay long for the rest of the
night, though. She soon asked herself to be excused. Father Andoy also left.
Buoyed by drinks,
talk wandered on the misadventures of their youth. Boy Deo volunteered some of
his thoughts. “Those were the days when intervening factors bigger than us got
in the way to change the course of history, I suppose.”
As he himself
expected, Boy Deo didn’t quite make himself clear. Makatigbas wondered if the
mayor was referring to his Biringan adventures. Sir Dikomo thought Boy Deo
could be referring to allegations of his links to kidnappers.
Dimas Uy joined
in; he reminisced about his field exploits in Mindesaba. He said he always
liked to brag about the professionalism of his men. He mentioned Makatigbas was
one of his more trusted lieutenants, whose idealism he could now see in Joey.
“I was there when Reg started as a field trooper. Being caught taking missteps
in their personal lives is a risk that troopers like him are exposed to. The
field manuals help us navigate through enemy territories, but they hardly
shield us from storms that batter our personal lives. That is not an excuse, of
course, for whatever indiscretions that we, like anyone else, make.”
Minutes later,
Teresa and Katalina also asked to be excused. Boy Deo ushered them out, leaving
the military icons to themselves momentarily.
Joey seldom
talked; he was visibly in awe of his superiors. This time he found his voice,
addressing General Uy. “Sir, you are as popular as anyone out there. Why have
you not joined politics?”
The question
deserved to be responded to with equal daring. “I really don’t think joining
politics is necessary. The military can always grab power from the civilian
government any time it wants to.”
Everyone thought
the revered general was having fun. He was taking liberties at all kinds of
jokes he could crack. This one included, “I suppose the likes of Reg and Dikomo
join politics simply for the funds of it.”
He was not done.
“Come to think of
it, maybe there is even no need for the military to grab power because civilian
government bows to the military anyway. Why attract screaming headlines when a
little body language is enough to get what you want?”
Sir Dikomo felt
obliged to respond in any way; after all, anything that made noise, as the
saying went, was satisfactory to a crowd. He opened up as Boy Deo rejoined
them. “General, if your theory is correct, then why don’t Joey’s communist
friends just send their young recruits to the military academy? These recruits
could be generals someday. Then communists could launch their revolution from
within government, like Trojan horses?”
Boy Deo, whose
association with Joey through his wife Olivia and Teresa had been attributed
to, felt slighted. “I think we already have Trojans in OXD, if the gossips are
something to go by.”
Boy Deo had
stunned the military men with his senate testimony. He just did it again,
probably prompting them to ask, what else does he not know?
Being the most
senior, experience and age-wise, General Uy felt obliged to defuse the
simmering tension among his friends. “I think Dikomo’s idea had been tried
before. But it has yet to succeed. There have been one or two who received the
rank of a general. You see, the point here is it takes more than that number of
warm bodies to command a following big enough to ensure a successful revolution
with the necessary support from an insider. And I think there is one frontier
in the human being that remains beyond the reach of ideology, and even of
technology.
“Conscience.”
General Uy paused,
took a deep breath, paused again, then continued, “From the perspective of an
organization, a group (and that may include crime syndicates), a nation (and
that may include its police or military organizations), or a group of nations,
man can rationalize, even justify, the murder of his fellow man.
“That is why we
tend to dismiss the transgressions committed by fellow men and women in
uniform, because we know that while we have weapons and the license to kill
people, we do so to keep the government, and the State it represents, alive.
“But on the
individual level, a murderer must go through the wringer of what his own
conscience asks. Not many can bear the noise of the silent soul. Often, a man’s
heart is too weak for that. And that explains why the communist infiltration of
the military did not work. Same thing with OXD, if ever that one exists at all.
“The violence that
persists today is no longer about ideology. It is hardly even about money. It
is about conscience driven by anger. It is about revenge. Military men who lost
friends and family decades ago continue to hunt the rebels, on the pretext that
military actions are all sanctioned by government. Rebels—communists or Muslim
separatists—who lost friends and family decades ago continue to hunt state
troopers, on the pretext that this is what their cause demands.
“At the end of the
day, there is a need for our country to have a leader whose vision and
representation our people can believe in. One who can break this self-inflicted
cycle of anger and violence among our people. And I am looking at our friend
and host here, Mayor Boy Deo, who evidently is charismatic, idealistic, and
competent. It would do us well if we rally our support for him, now and in the
future.”
No one dared question General Uy’s monologue.
SIR
DIKOMO REMEMBERED Tho Monir having told him the latter had possession of
Sylvia’s documents. He tracked Monir in Malate where he was renting an office.
He asked Monir to locate the old Sylvia documents.
Earlier, Sir
Dikomo sought Sylvia for information when controversy over Boy Deo’s identity
broke out. Sylvia told him she also tried to determine the parents of the
abandoned child before she sold him to Trudie and Jovy. She said there might
have been clues in the documents she left with Tho Monir but added the two of
them were no longer seeing eye to eye. She further said she could not fully
recall but suggested there might be contact details of the birthing clinic
where the child was born. She hoped Tho was able to safekeep the documents.
At the top shelf
of the storeroom where Tho kept his old files, he found Sylvia’s
twenty-five-year-old-something folder. He gave it to Sir Dikomo.
Sir Dikomo scanned
every paper in the folder. He did not find anything of consequence, except
probably a one-fourth sheet of bond paper with notes that roughly indicated the
address of a birthing clinic in San Miguel, Manila.
At the birthing
clinic, the former mayor surprised everyone when he told them he was looking
for old records. The clinic staff were more than happy to help him. After an
hour of searching, they were able to locate the file of a patient that
delivered a baby on April 16, 1985. The name of the patient was Katleya Ramos.
Her address was in a compound in Aguila Street, near Mendiola. They called Sir
Dikomo on his cellphone to tell him they had found something.
Sir Dikomo did not
lose a minute looking for the address. When he reached the address, he found
that a townhouse had replaced the compound in which Katleya was supposed to
have rented an apartment. On further investigation, Sir Dikomo was referred to
old residents at the corner of the street where they might have had information
about renters in the old compound.
Somebody told him
he knew of someone named Meldie De Masinloc who worked with Katleya. His
informer said Katleya helped organize antigovernment rallies in Mendiola
involving students and labor union members, adding the compound was once raided
by the Metrocom because of her.
De Masinloc once
lived across Aguila Street. Her former neighbors informed Sir Dikomo she had
transferred to a condominium unit in Sagrario. When Sir Dikomo finally found De
Masinloc in a condominium in Sagrario, he found out that she was living all by
herself. He surmised that De Masinloc was a lesbian. From De Masinloc he also
learned that Katleya was arrested by the police five days after she gave birth
to a son.
“As she was
frisked away by the police, she asked me to take care of the child,” De
Masinloc said. “But she knew I go to the United States every six months, hence
it was impossible for me to babysit the child. I guess she understood my
predicament when I shook my head. Then she hastily added—‘can you find a way
for one of the priests in Quiapo Church to take custody of him?’ So, one day in
April—I think it was in 1985, if I am not mistaken—I dropped him in Quiapo in
the middle of the night. I marked the box he was in with big black letters
‘Please send this boy to a priest in Quiapo Church.’
“A week later, I
visited Katleya in Camp Crame. She was not there. Somebody in Camp Crame told
me she went Sisa (a character in Jose Rizal’s Noli
Me Tangere who snapped and lost her mind when she lost her two
sons); they sent her to the mental hospital. I feared she might have been
summarily executed. So, I went to the mental hospital in Ocaranza just to make
sure. I found her there, but there were intervals when she did not recognize me
at all. You can go there yourself and check if she is still there.”
Sir Dikomo lost no
time informing Boy Deo. He dialed the mayor’s cell phone number. He asked the
mayor if he could come over. Just to make sure that there would be no
surprises, Sir Dikomo told Boy Deo what he had just found. He advised Boy Deo
to hear first what De Masinloc had to say. He added, “Try not to disclose that
the boy she dropped in Quiapo is now the mayor of Manila so that she will have
no reason to alter her story in any way.”
By instinct and by
a habit developed by his military training, Sir Dikomo scanned his network that
he thought would enable him to access more information. He dialed Reg
Makatigbas to update him on his lead.
“Does the name
Katleya Ramos ring a bell to you? She is alleged to have led some student
organizations that staged antigovernment rallies at the time when you
supervised Oplan GMRC, if I am not mistaken.”
Makatigbas froze
for the second time in his military life. Never had he felt this numb,
immobile, and speechless during his early years as a government trooper,
ducking live bullets in the Ispratly and Cubacabana war zones.
The first time he
experienced this kind of feeling was when Teresa confronted him about Osang,
and the daughter he had with her that Teresa told him had been renamed Katleya
Ramos.
Minutes later, the
lobby of the condominium teemed with people. Some of them were carrying TV
cameras. It was rare for a place like this one to be visited by a mayor; in
this case, the visitor was not only the mayor but also accompanied by the
former mayor of the city, along with a senator.
De Masinloc could
not hide her excitement when she saw Boy Deo, Sir Dikomo, and Makatigbas. Sir
Dikomo asked De Masinloc to tell the present mayor what she had narrated to the
former mayor. De Masinloc repeated her tale with gusto.
The thought that
she was unable to help Katleya in her time of desperation had been a burden she
needed to unload, De Masinloc confessed. For two decades she had suffered the
fate of being a prisoner of her own conscience. Truth be told, she had shared Katleya’s
story with acquaintances several times before. She didn’t feel relieved then.
It was totally different talking to Boy Deo and company about Katleya. In her
excitement, she could not help but ask Boy Deo what his birth date was. Boy Deo
smiled but said nothing.
De Masinloc tried
again. “By the way, how old are you, Mayor?”
Boy Deo joked that
his age was half her age. De Masinloc thought how foolish it was for her not to
think about Katleya when the much-publicized identity crisis hit the mayor
several months ago. On the spur of the moment, she rushed inside her room. When
she re-emerged, she gave Boy Deo a picture of a mother and her child.
“That one is
Katleya.” De Masinloc pointed at the mother in the picture. Boy Deo thanked
her. He pushed the picture inside the left pocket of his jacket.
When Boy Deo, Sir
Dikomo, and Makatigbas left for the mental hospital in Ocaranza, the TV camera
crews and tens of reporters followed them.
Boy Deo did not
show any emotion the first time he saw Katleya. If De Masinloc’s story was
true, then all the pain he suffered as a child and as a teen was nothing
compared to what Katleya had gone through. For her part, Katleya was
noncommittal, behaving as if nothing unusual was happening to her surroundings,
despite the sudden surge of onlookers. She did not look different from the
wretched and homeless women he saw every day when he was a child grinding it
out in Quiapo.
Boy Deo asked the
permission of hospital management for him to bring Katleya home, saying she was
a member of his family. The hospital had no record of her family members, so
the staff considered it a breakthrough that somebody as famous as the Manila Mayor
would come forward to claim her as one of his own.
Boy Deo was
turning 30. He surmised that if Katleya was her mother, she must have been sick,
deprived of family and of liberty for 30 years also. He doubted if sane people
would have the emotional capacity to survive such an agonizing stretch, one that
spanned his own lifetime. He remembered the other day’s gospel.
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was
naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and
you came to me.”
He rationalized that
one did not need to be literal about everything; but how he wished he could
commit more time to visit people who are serving time in jail and recovering
from sickness in health wards, family relations or not.
The mental
hospital staff suggested that Katleya be transported in a separate vehicle. But
Boy Deo insisted that she sit beside him. A hospital doctor and a nurse
accompanied them.
On board the
ambulance, Makatigbas whispered to Boy Deo if it was ok for the nurse to get
him a blood sample of Katleya, to which Boy Deo did not object.
Katleya remained
expressionless the whole time she sat beside Boy Deo in the vehicle. When the
convoy of vehicles arrived at his New Manila home, Boy Deo studied Katleya’s
poise. She answered questions thrown at her, even from among the press. Often,
she sounded sensible to him.
He decided not to
ask her about anything for as long as he did not feel confident enough to kind
of break the ice with her. The doctor explained to him her condition, diagnosed
as psychosis with severe dysfunction caused by depression and schizophrenia, adding
that a family environment could help her recover her sanity.
Boy Deo next
dialed Father Andoy. He asked the priest if it was possible for him and
somebody he referred to as “a guest” to see Father Revo at the hospital. It was
Friday the thirteenth in June of 2014, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua,
patron saint of lost items.
Father Andoy
cheerfully granted Boy Deo’s request. Minutes later, Father Andoy ushered Boy
Deo and Katleya into Father Revo’s room. It was the first time the four of them
saw each other together.
Boy Deo could tell
from Father Revo’s facial expression that the priest had recognized Katleya.
But her own usual noncommittal behavior did not encourage the ailing priest to
offer any gesture of greeting or salutation. Boy Deo did everything under the
circumstances to help Katleya feel relaxed. He turned an electric fan on and helped
her take a seat opposite Father Revo. Boy Deo also sat down next to the priest.
Boy Deo understood
what kept the surprise meeting awkward. He offered Father Revo an explanation.
“She is Katleya Ramos. We just fetched her from the mental hospital.”
When Father Andoy
and the hospital doctor left the three of them alone, Boy Deo pulled the
picture out of his pocket and showed it to Katleya from a distance of about
seven feet. Boy Deo and Father Revo could see every muscle that moved in her
face. For the first few seconds she did not show any interest in the picture.
But Boy Deo kept showing it in front of her. Then she stared at it, initially
with hesitation, until she got so engrossed with the picture that she seemed to
be oblivious to anything and anyone else. Then tears started to roll down from
her eyes.
Boy Deo could no
longer take it. He got up and hugged Katleya. She sobbed in his chest.
Before the three
of them left, Father Revo gave the Leo Benedicto ring to Boy Deo. "Hope
you keep it. I hope that one day you will be able to accept me as your
father."
Boy Deo replied:
"I will keep it. Thank you... Dad."
Then they headed
for the exit door.
After a few
reluctant steps, Boy Deo stopped. He glanced back toward his father. "If
it was up to me to forgive you, and if there was anything for which you need
forgiveness, as you asked the other day, you are forgiven."