Isabel sat on the stool in front of her mother, a bag of books pressed close to her chest. There’d been a book stall at the park, selling discarded library books from American high schools at only twenty pesos each. “Mama,” Isabel began, but couldn’t go on.
Señora Fabella glanced at her daughter, then at the bulging bag. “Oh Isabel,” she began, before falling silent. Isabel waited. Then Señora Fabella took a deep breath and repeated what her husband had said to her an hour before: “We will not speak of this again.”
Isabel went to their secret cave later that day, sneaking out at siesta time — and the next day, and for days after that. It was Elias who had found the hole in the banyan tree behind the city hall, when he moved the rock covering it. It was big and deep enough for a small person to hide in. Here she left Elias sardine cans, only one or two a week, to avoid suspicion. She was ecstatic to find the cans gone every time she returned, and she went to bed knowing that Elias was safe in their secret cave, where he made his home every night. Isabel was convinced that if she found Elias, she would take him back home and confess the truth. But of what use was her confession if Elias wasn’t there to be exonerated?
For six months she faithfully left him his sardines until, one morning, a box of imported Spam was delivered to the house. Señora Fabella rewarded the workers with bonus gifts of Spam each time they reaped a windfall at the plantation. That morning, Isabel slipped a can into her schoolbag and left it in the tree on her way home. The next day, after school, as she crossed the plaza to go to the tree with the hole, she saw a ragged old man sitting on the grass, clutching the can of imported Spam. He flashed her a toothless grin.
Soon, the words The Datu, scrawled over the zigzag figure of a crocodile, began to dominate Davao City’s graffiti. The Datu’s rise to street gang leadership was easy and quick. Cell phone snatching, not breaking-and-entering, was his specialty. But the Davao Death Squad’s mission was to rid the city of vermin like him, either by extermination or recruitment. The Datu had all the makings of an excellent young recruit.
The Philippine Center for Human Rights Research is a nongovernmental organization that monitors violations of human rights in the Philippines. It is committed to producing material that is well informed and objective. I am writing to solicit your views for our research on the pattern of execution-style killings of suspected petty criminals and street children.
Isabel glances up from her laptop to mull over the next sentence of her letter. Only then does she realize that the café in the Intramuros Hotel is now filled with people. She had been the only customer an hour ago, after strolling back from the Casa Manila. Next to her, there are two other people hunched over their laptops. Three ebony-haired elderly ladies are at another table, conversing softly. The quiet is unusual for a café these days, when such places have become the favorite venue for conducting job interviews or presenting sales pitches, interrupted only by the noise of motorcycle engines outside and the occasional backfire.
Isabel leans back in her chair and wishes, at this moment, that she had a more normal job than writing up reports on human rights violations. She’s been stonewalled by enough government officials in her own hometown to delude herself that bureaucrats in Manila would be any more forthright when she interviews them. Death squads? she can almost hear them say in the patronizing tone that she’s learned to tune out. You mean like in the backwater barrios down south? Nah, tell your boss there are no human rights violations here. Just your ordinary run-of-the-mill crimes. We’ve got the peace-and-order situation here under tight control.
Isabel fantasizes that Elias is sipping cappuccino with her in this café, and she’s interviewing him instead. Is it true there are death squad training camps here, now, in Manila? Were you sent here to run them? Or are you in hiding from them yourself? Do you ever regret joining the DDS? Do you ever regret killing my father?
And there he is, on the other side of the café’s glass wall, gazing at her. “Elias!” she blurts out, and realizes that her voice rings out above the other customers’ hushed voices, because they have all stopped to stare. She gestures at him to wait, then hurries outside.
“Uy,” she says, and gives his arm a light slap. “Must na, ’dong?”
“Maayo man, ’day.” Elias starts to smile, but the somber expression remains. The shiny scar across his left eyebrow is almost imperceptible. “You’re still following me.”
Isabel keeps an eye on her laptop through the café’s window.
“Don’t worry, no one will take it.”
“You sound so sure.”
Elias finally breaks into a smile. “You’re safe with me. I’m DDS, remember?”
“Was.”
He doesn’t respond but asks her instead if she wants a special tour of Intramuros.
“Now? It’s after dark.”
“The best time of day, if you want to see the real Intramuros.”
She goes back into the café to retrieve her laptop and deposit it in her room. She decides to leave her bag behind and pocket whatever she needs, so her hands will be free of any encumbrance. A camera, too, would be unwise.
“What? No map?” Elias asks when he sees her empty-handed, making Isabel laugh. “Barrio Santa Lucia has an ancient well at the very heart of it,” he says. “Legend has it that nuns threw their aborted fetuses into the well. Would you like to see it?”
Isabel nods.
At the barrio, lightbulbs strung above the narrow alley can be turned on and off by anyone who knows where the switches are. Very convenient for anyone living a fugitive life. “Do you live here?” she asks.
“No,” he replies without elaborating further.
She wants to ask if he has a family — and if so, where they are — but she doesn’t.
Beneath the Intramuros of contrived nostalgia and simulated refinement is a maze of underground tunnels that neither guidebook, tour guide, nor map hint at. The night guards at every building Elias and Isabel go to are his friends. They all speak Visaya, the language of Davao, and they are very pleased to know that Isabel speaks their language too. They let the two wander around on their own. Elias takes Isabel first to a boys’ school that had once been a convent. The guard on duty insists on lending them two flashlights when Elias tells him he wants to show his friend the tunnel. As Elias and Isabel walk through it, they can hear the muffled sound of tricycles mixing with that of horses’ hooves and calesa wheels grating against the pavement above. They exit the tunnel into the basement of a bank that had once been a monastery. A friendly guard greets Elias there too, calling him “sir.”
Isabel wonders aloud if anyone has ever tried a bank heist via the tunnel, and Elias says, “We could do it together. Like Bonnie and Clyde.”
Breaking-and-entering was never his thing, Isabel remembers. Elias had gone directly from snatching cell phones to “salvaging” people.
There are three more tunnels underneath former monasteries and convents, and more friendly Visayan security guards in each one. Elias then takes her to the abandoned shell of the largest building of all — a bombed-out cathedral. It is in an out-of-the-way place, obviously a section of Intramuros that the local officials haven’t gotten around to making over yet. Promenaders dare not venture there, and not a single tricycle nor calesa passes them on the street.