Chapter 25: Son of an orphan

A month later, there was jubilation as Boy Deo announced to the media that his name had been changed legally from Deodatu Biradayon to Leandro Francisco Deodatu Ramos Calasanz. He adopted Father Revo’s family name.

“Call me Deo!” he said.        

The media had another bountiful season. Heaps upon heaps of stories about Deo’s life, now dovetailed to those of Katleya, Father Revo, Sylvia Monir, Father Andoy, Judge Vida, Teresa, Katalina, among others, headlined TV, radio, and print media broadcasts. There was a picture of Mayor Deo beaming proudly with his mother, savagely captioned “Basilio, Sisa’s Pride.” There was another picture of Mayor Deo flanked by Senator Makatigbas and General Uy to his right and Sir Dikomo to his left, captioned “The Leader We Need, Says General Uy.” A reporter who highlighted his being an abandoned child had called him the “New Moses,” not fished from a river but picked up from the dump.

Media people scoured traces of where Katleya came from and soon found out from the Theresiana Sisters in La Profesa that Katleya was once called “Elodia,” and in one photo that showed mother and son, the caption read: “Elodia, orphan of war, Deo, son of an orphan.” It was, hands down, the shot of the day. 

Equally captivating was the one that showed Deo flashing a boyish smile beside Makatigbas, captioned “The General’s Grandson.”

Two weeks ago, Makatigbas had returned from Singapore where he got his own and Katleya’s blood samples tested for DNA. The samples matched. 

For the remainder of his term as Manila mayor, Deo lived in relative peace. His detractors retreated to neutral corners, disarmed of weapons with which to attack him. His administration had been cited not only for being corrupt-free but also for its innovative approaches, bannered by the Citizen’s Congress. This governance model started to excite international organizations. A globally acclaimed author suggested that Citizen’s Congress can be used to recreate the constituency of the United Nations.

OnePenoy evolved to become OneManila. Data from the Commission on Elections, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the City Social Welfare and Development Office, the Department of Health, the Land Transportation Office, among other government and non-government agencies, not only became handy to verify the qualification of city residents as legislators and policy makers, but they also promoted transparency and accountability in city government operations. Artificial intelligence (AI) data, with real-time satellite imagery interpretation, helped the city government respond more quickly to criminality and disasters such as flooding, vehicular traffic congestion, and carbon concentration. Property tax invoices were issued to individual accounts in OneManila, supported by satellite imagery of locations of property and valuations based on AI generated data from real estate advertisements. The portal featured video tutorials that were intended to provide the best possible taxpayer experience for property owners in the city.

Tax compliance rates, revenue levels, and constituency satisfaction indices shot up in Manila, making the city a model not only for the entire country but for other countries as well.      

At the domestic front, Katleya had not returned to the mental hospital. Deo hired two private mental care specialists who alternated on attending to his mother. Her father also arranged for a schedule where she had to undergo regular medical checkup at the military hospital.

Deo also offered to hire Meldie as Katleya’s personal consultant. Meldie expressed elation at the opportunity to help her former live-in partner, but she refused to accept remuneration. In private, Meldie blamed herself for what happened to Katleya. She felt helping Katleya get her mental health back was the least she could do to lessen her own guilt.

It was through Meldie that both Deo and Reg Makatigbas learned some snippets of Katleya’s early life both in remote La Profesa and in the city. Now 51—30 years of which she spent at the mental hospital—Katleya was 17 years old when she enrolled at the state university in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines.

She took a course in agricultural engineering; she had hopes of giving back to the farmers in Biringan which (as she learned from the Theresiana Sisters in the orphanage of La Profesa) was where her roots came from. It was this same orphanage that nurtured and raised her from toddler to elementary grader. After graduation from elementary school, the orphanage would normally send the children to foster parents where a family environment could be further developed for them. But the Theresiana Sisters made an exception for Katleya, who had shown early that she had a flair for teaching. So the orphanage kept her until her graduation from high school. During free time, Katleya simulated kinder classes for toddlers in the orphanage.

Katleya took and passed the admission test for a full scholarship in the state university before she graduated from high school and soon, she had to leave the orphanage.    

Being a stranger to the bustle of the city, she felt lost, and for the first time in her life she missed the Theresiana Sisters badly. Fortunately for her, she had a classmate—named Paloma—with whom she built a solid friendship. Their mutual trust and respect were initially built on their academic aptitude. Later, they discovered they had the same passion for civic duty—e.g., coastal clean-up, earth hour, election watchdog volunteering, etc.

By the second semester, they shared a common dormitory room. They also joined the student council and got involved in organizing protest actions.

A week before the first year of her school days at the state university ended, she was devastated when she heard the news that Paloma—who had already gone home to the nearby province for the school break—had been raped and murdered. The primary suspect, the media reported, was the mayor of a town in Paloma’s home province.

Katleya positioned herself in the front and center of mass actions denouncing the heinous crime. She was out in the streets almost every day during the school break. Soon national media took notice of her, with newscasts of primetime television showing some footage of her fiery speeches over the megaphone. Her network of alliances in student activism went from local to national. It was at this point when she met Meldie, a treasurer of an allied student organization and providing logistical support to many protest actions within Metro Manila, especially around the Mendiola and Tepeyac areas surrounding the vicinity of Malacañang Palace.

Meldie was a scion of a large political family that used to be an influential kingmaker of sort but had lately been victimized by a nasty power play within the government. Her grandfather, the patriarch, was charged with tax evasion. One could tell that, in a way, Meldie’s interest in protest actions was to help antigovernment forces destabilize a system that marginalized her family.

Among Meldie’s prized possession was her American passport; her parents were American citizens. But she preferred to be mostly independent from the flow of the family’s grain. She lived alone, hopping from one apartment to another. On the matter of sexual orientation, she was attracted to girls and women. In fact, it did not take long for Katleya to notice that Meldie was more interested in her than in the street protests that at this point seemed to consume Katleya’s full attention.

By the time she reached the second year at the state university, Katleya barely met her academic requirements to maintain her scholarship due to the growing amount of time she spent networking with fellow activists. By the time she turned 19, just weeks after she enrolled for the third year, she dropped her subjects.

The decision to leave university was partly on account of egging by Meldie, and largely on account of a growing threat from what appeared to her as hired goons that tailed her inside the campus. Katleya suspected that the people behind the killing of Paloma were out either to silence or murder her as well.

Totally dependent on Meldie for her daily needs, Katleya agreed to Meldie’s proposal to relocate to the United States with the hope of rebuilding a life together in that foreign land. They needed proof of marriage so that Meldie could legally tag Katleya along with her. Katleya suggested to see a priest in Quiapo; to Meldie’s reluctant consent, Katleya also proposed to get impregnated by the same priest so that, as Katleya planned, a family they could call their own may grow as soon as they got settled down in the United States.

Katleya did get pregnant from an injection of the priest’s semen, but the relocation to the United States did not happen when government finance authorities tagged their properties in the United States as ill-gotten.

Three days after Katleya gave birth to a boy, policemen swooped down on their apartment. They were looking for one Katleya Ramos who they said was a member of the terrorist-tagged communist party. Physically exhausted, rattled, and unsure of what to do, she hid the baby and motioned to Meldie to look after him while she was away. Deep in her heart, she knew that the charge against her was so serious she thought she may no longer see her baby again.            

In just a few days, Deo could tell that Katleya was on her way to gaining complete control of her senses. He could also tell that Meldie had helped his mother in ways no one else could probably do—like responding to jokes that they assumably shared in their youth—as she went through her recovery process.   

Even Father Revo seemed to feel the vibe. He had been discharged from the hospital. Unfortunately, he had to be confined again in December of that year. The first of his morning callers was Senator Reg Makatigbas. The general-turned-senator was in his jogging outfit. mostly likely he drove directly from a round of gold with the aging but highly respected Dimas Uy.

Father Revo made the motion to stand up to extend his hand, but Deo, who was seated across the room, and a nurse who was attending to the patient, both howled in protest, imploring Father Revo to be still.  

“You are almost as lively as 31 years ago, Father Mel,” Makatigbas greeted the priest. It obviously was an encouragement more than an honest compliment or anything else.

Makatigbas learned that Father Revo was Deo’s father even before he learned that Katleya, Deo’s mother, was his daughter. How strange fate could be, Makatigbas could hear telling himself. He and the priest were of the same age, and their careers started in the same place—Guinhikaptan. He was fresh from graduation at the military academy when he was sent to his first assignment in that part of Ispratly Island, to contain—his marching orders indicated—the communist rebels. Both strangers to the place, Ispratly was where both of them got their baptism of fire.

But what surprised Makatigbas the most was that the moniker “Revo” had survived 31 years after he suggested it himself in Guinhikaptan.

They built some kind of connection the first time Makatigbas and his troops saw Father Revo at the house loaned to the latter by a well off parishioner. That house served as the chapel’s rectory. When one of Makatigbas’ men knocked on the rectory’s door, the priest welcomed the troopers as if he had been expecting them for ages. Like he always did to his visitors—acquaintances or strangers alike—he invited them for a cup of coffee. Before he stepped inside, Makatigbas quickly scanned the neighbors (mostly at a distance of more than twenty-five meters) and saw some of them peeking through their windows.

“Good noon, Father. I am Lieutenant Reg Makatigbas and these are my companions. We are members of the Philippine Army.” The young lieutenant meant to shake the demeanor of the young priest, and he saw that the priest was not showing any bit of discomfort. The priest’s body language was consistent with what he had been told about their host. Makatigbas interpreted Father Revo’s gait as that of a genuine invitation for the government troopers to touch base with him. Makatigbas had prior intelligence information that the priest entertained armed rebels in his domicile.

 “Good noon, Lieutenant Reg.” It was Father Revo’s turn to greet the commanding officer. “My name is Melquiades. Melquiades Calasanz. I am a man of the cloth, as they say. A Catholic priest. You can call me Mel.”

As soon as they got themselves seated, Makatigbas could not help but tease Father Mel with his imagined communist links. Half-chuckling, he asked the priest why there were two large thermoses (used to store hot water for quick serving of coffee) in the dining table when he had no wife and children. Father Revo’s repartee “people call me father—so I am supposed to have a table full of children” pleased Makatigbas. The latter interpreted it as openness on the part of the priest.

Indeed, it was hard not to say something when people were gathered taking sips of coffee. In this part of the globe where trees hovered abundantly over man-made structures, creating canopies that ensured a relatively cool temperature for much of the surrounding areas, hot coffee enriched joviality even when the sun was up.

Father Revo acknowledged the serious tone in the military man’s banter by explaining that a platoon of communist rebels, often as many as today’s visitors, passed by his abode once a week.

“For goodwill’s sake, I offer them coffee whenever they see me,” Father Revo said. “It is not an invitation for them to come back often, but I must say talking to them gives me opportunity to hear their grievances.”

“I volunteered to be assigned to this place because my grandpa said his ancestors came from this place,” Makatigbas sounded as if he wanted to change the topic. “They must be a rebellious lot, judging from the way they defied the Spanish king’s decree to change family names with Spanish-sounding names.

“How about you, Father Mel, what brought you to this place? Are you a native of Ispratly?”

“No, I am not from this place. I just wanted for the first two years of my priestly life to immerse myself in a community where poverty leaves our people oppressed. As you know, this place is one of the provinces in the country with the highest poverty incidence rates. I wanted to know the dynamics—how social systems affect the resolution of conflicts that lead to marginalization of some of our brothers.”

Makatigbas took time to comprehend the nature of the man before him. Here was one who opted to live among strangers in the middle of armed conflict and abject want. Was he nuts? Makatigbas could not be sure of what to think. But one thing he could say with certainty was that this man of the cloth had courage.

Father Revo saw that Makatigbas was contented with being a listener, sometimes shooting glances at him when he talked. Then, addressing the military man’s first question: “That’s why I bought two thermoses because they come in bunches,” referring to the rebels.

As Makatigbas made a gesture to leave, thanking Father Mel for his hospitality and candor, he launched yet another attack.

“For being a friend to the rebels, maybe I can call you Father Rebo, or Father Revo?” Makatigbas—still half-jesting—said. “And, just in case your friends ask in what direction we are heading, tell them we are going north.”   

(It was probably a tribute to Father Mel that no bloody encounter between troopers and rebels happened in Guinhikaptan in the two years that he was there, unlike in many neighboring barrios where shootouts were commonplace.)  

About ten to eleven kilometers to the north of Guinhikaptan was where the sparsely populated Barrio Bukāran located. There he eventually met Osang and with whom he sired Katleya.

Back at the hospital, Deo was surprised to hear for the first time his father being called “Father Mel”. He wondered if the surprises surrounding the identity of his family would never end.

There was so much to catch up on between the two. Their idealism may have been dampened by time, but their drive and ambitions for a better life—not for themselves but for those who were dear to them—remained evident.

After about thirty minutes, Makatigbas asked if there was any thermos inside the room, without any hint of playing the role of a joker. Father Revo’s face lit up, the smile authentic, and the wit has not been dulled by time when he retorted: “I dropped the habit of serving coffee when I learned from a scientific study that caffeine helped limit the testosterone levels in men.”

If Makatigbas ribbed Father Revo for being a rebel, Father Revo kidded Makatigbas for being a womanizer. This was just the second time that they talked to each other at length—the first time being that in Guinhikaptan—but it seemed to Deo they had been brothers all their lives. There was one brief encounter that happened in between both occasions. They were back in Manila--Makatigbas, who had risen relatively fast to become a general in the Philippine Army, had intervened for the release from detention of Father Revo who the police had earlier charged for defying authority when he led protesters in an urban poor community whose dwellings the court had ordered demolished. Both came out of it feeling humbled and untrue to their calling. Makatigbas knew he was out of the book; he just couldn’t help himself rushing to the aid of his Guinhikaptan friend when he saw Father Revo’s photo on the front page of a broadsheet. “The rebel in him has not changed,” he told himself. On Father Revo’s part, he too was repentant for being a party to the general’s breach of conduct, although he wished to thank the latter for sparing him the hassles of incarceration.

When Makatigbas finally left, Deo stared at his father, as if saying so many things have been left unsaid, and would be happy to hear some of them.

“Like all of us, he has his flaws. But he is driven by his convictions. He knew what he needed to do as a professional soldier with a mission to maintain security. He only started to behave strangely when he became a politician. So yes, I like him more as a military man than a politician. In fact, it is because of him that I have full respect for men in uniform.”

From Father Revo’s hospital room Makatigbas proceeded to visit Katleya, who was having her psychotherapy sessions at the military hospital. Makatigbas arranged these sessions with Deo, who fully appreciated his support for promoting the wellbeing of his mother. It was easy to see why Makatigbas was interested in helping Katleya gather complete control of her senses. It was not only because he wished to hasten the process of rebuilding their lives together as a family. It was not also only because he felt he needed to do more to compensate for his omissions with respect to helping her mother’s family in Birigan. Another reason—perhaps for vanity--was that he anticipated Katleya’s sensible narration of how her love story with Father Revo came to be. With the latter’s openness, Makatigbas knew he could hear his version of that story, but he felt that Katleya’s context would be more compelling.

Doctors found it hard to diagnose what specific ailment or deficiency she was suffering from. Her records at the mental hospital showed that, aside from her paranoia and anxieties, she went into a trance, which at times lapsed into a coma, during New Year’s Eve. It turned out she was deathly afraid of the sound of gunfire.

It would have been probably helpful if somebody knew how the baby—who would be called “Elodia”—rattled by the raucous soldier’s gunfire, assured herself of her mother’s protection by sucking her mother’s milk. That milk would soon be mixed with blood dripping from her mother’s wounded neck. Instinct told Katleya that gunfire was what caused her mother to grow cold.