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.