Free Ghosts of Manila by James Hamilton-Paterson

evening commuter traffic. One could never judge the edges of things in foreign places. The demarcations of everything – of town and country, as of male and female – lay differently across the landscape. Of crime and punishment, too, come to that. Where she came from, ideas of punishment tended to blot out notions of redress. Wasn’t this also true of the United States?
    ‘Crispa’s home province is Marinduque,’ explained Sharon. They were eating rice and torta made of tiny fish fry flattened into a pancake, the black seeds of their eyes still visible. ‘Here’s a story. A girl from her home village goes to stay with her uncle outside Lucena City,in Quezon Province. That’s on the mainland opposite. He was the captain of his barangay there, sort of a village headman. One morning he comes into her room. It’s about four-thirty and they’re alone in the house since the aunt’s gone off early to market, taking the servant. The uncle wakes his niece by punching her hard in the stomach so that she’s winded and can’t cry out. Then he rapes her. He’s a man of sixty, she’s a girl of fourteen. He’s the village boss. He’s her uncle. When he’s gone away she climbs out of the window and neighbours take her to some friends who own a private clinic in town. She’s bleeding badly. They find semen, do a smear, carefully list the damage, treat her and write up a report which certifies her as a rape victim. The police are called. “That’s a very vague charge,” says the policeman, who’s not only a drinking buddy of the uncle but buys his fighting cocks and helped buy his last election, too. “A serious allegation. Better think it over.” The neighbours and a percentage of the village support her to the extent that the uncle’s eventually obliged to come to her with an offer of fifty thousand pesos to drop the charges. In those days that was one hell of a lot of money, I don’t know – two, three thousand dollars? In a place like Marinduque someone with two or three thousand dollars was king. Hectares of coconuts, a fishing boat, a cement block house, you name it. You could run for Mayor on that. So this girl thinks of her wretched family back there and she thinks what the hell and she takes the money and goes home.’
    ‘End of story?’
    ‘Well, no. Beginning of a small but respectable family fortune. Lots of copra, lots of hogs, good fishing. Buy a jeep to take the produce to markets with higher prices than the local ones. Eventually buy a house and a lot near UP.’
    ‘He was arrested, though?’ Ysabella addressed this to Crispa, who smiled.
    ‘On what charge?’ she asked. ‘Here there are only three or four crimes the police take seriously. Homicide, drugs, major robbery. You can expand those to include obvious things like terrorism against the state and kidnapping. Anyhow, rape’s nowhere on the list because it’s considered a private matter between individuals. It’s up to the victim to file charges. If there’s what they call an amicable settlement nobody can do anything about it. All charges dropped. Case closed. Did I do the wrong thing? I was fourteen.’
    ‘But what happened to him?’
    ‘He died a couple of years ago. Very old. A stroke, I think. We none of us went to the funeral.’
    ‘No, I mean… something must have happened. Somebody must have done something? Sacked from his post? Spat at in the street? I don’t know.’
    ‘I believe he filed for leave of absence for two months and a deputy captain took over. It was a terrific scandal in the village, of course. He had his cronies and supporters, some of whom no doubt thought he was no end of a stud. Sixty, hey? Not bad. The majority thought he’d brought shame on the village and that he ought to resign and leave the area. But he stuck it out, sitting in his house with the shutters closed, and when nothing happened re-filed for another two months’ extension of his leave of absence. Eventually it all blew over. A minor