Towards a Distant Sea

By John Bartlett

'Towards a Distant Sea' is a coming-of-age story with a difference. It is a dramatic personal account of a young Australian man against the backdrop of Philippine society.
Paul, a young Australian, arrives in the Philippines in 1971 as martial Law is proclaimed by President Marcos.
His idealism exposes him to first-hand experiences of violence and corruption, to injustice and above all to the heroism of Filipinos during this extraordinary period of their history.
The narrative confronts issues still critical to contemporary society - sexuality and religion, the struggle for human rights, the misuse of power and violence, the search for identity and the triumph of the spirit.
Australian High Court Judge Michael Kirby describes this novel as 'a story...about the impact of repression on the human spirit - and the way, despite all odds, humanity struggles endlessly against worldy authority.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Bartlett
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465933676

John Bartlett

John Bartlett is the author of three novels and All Mortal Flesh, a collection of his short stories. His published non-fiction was collated in an ebook, A Tiny and Brilliant Light, in 2017. In 2019, Melbourne Poets Union published his first chapbook, The Arms of Men, and his second, Songs of the Godforsaken, was released by Picaro Poets in June 2020. His reviews, interviews and podcasts can be found at https://beyondtheestuary.com/ He lives on the southern coast of Australia.

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TOWARDS A DISTANT SEA

John A. Bartlett

© John Bartlett 2005

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Originally published by Indra Publishing

PO Box 7, Briar Hill, Victoria, 3088, Australia

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Part one

1. Breaking the Ice

2. Manila

3. The Madonna

4. On the Island

5. Isidro

6. White Island

7. A Soldier and his Gun

8. A Candle for San Roque

9. The Volcano

10. Angel’s Wings on Fire

11. The Woman in the White Dress

Part two

12. National Insecurity

13. Harmless Information

14. The Baby in the Box

15. Dama de Noche

16. Departure

17. Love Letters

Epilogue

Glossary

Biographical note

John Bartlett worked as a Catholic priest in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines from 1971 until 1980.

He returned to Australia and left the priesthood, working in a variety of jobs for the next 20 years before returning to his first love — writing.

John’s features and short stories have been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines and he works now as a freelance writer, editor and teacher.

John lives on the southern coast of Australia.

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Acknowledgements

This book was begun almost twenty-five years ago and so there are many who have given encouragement along the way.

From the beginning, my brother Michaell with Khryssoula helped me believe I could write and kept encouraging me ever since, and in the end, it was the support and love of Stephen that gave me the opportunity to make this dream come true.

Poem in Ch 7 originally published as ‘Some God’ in ‘Love & Fear’: A Poetry Anthology, by Artary Project Space, Melbourne, 2003.

An earlier version of the chapter ‘The Volcano’, published in ‘Esque’, Small Press Publishing 2000, Gordon Institute of TAFE, Geelong, 2000.

Introduction to Part One taken from ‘The Tombs of Atuan’ by Ursula Le Guin (Hamish Hamilton 1997) used with permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

Introduction to Part Two taken from the 1860 edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’ by Walt Whitman.

Although this novel is based on real people and events, no characters portrayed here are intended to resemble real persons.

For Isidro, Eugenio, Corazon and Eking

and all those still searching after justice

Prologue

The Canticle

'Yahweh I know you are near, standing always at my side. You guard me from the foe and lead me in ways everlasting.'

He woke in the late night, during those dangerous hours when even the guarding angels seemed to have fallen into their own troubled sleep. He would have to fend for himself. Something had wakened him and now he could hear dogs barking further up the street and the sound of drunken voices gradually coming closer.

Then suddenly the pop-pop-popping noise of gunfire; drunken soldiers on their way home after a night of celebrating, firing off a few rounds from their armalites just for fun.

He knew these bullets could slash through the thin nipa of the houses and splinter the paper-thin walls — just for fun. The voices were coming closer now and he could hear the men laughing. A small worm of fear nibbled in his stomach reminding him it was there. He must find a safer place to wait.

Wearing only his underwear, he wrapped the thin malong around his shoulders and crawled along the floor toward the back steps. There was another round of gunfire and laughter. These guys didn’t have a clue what they were doing, probably drugged out of their brains too. He imagined families in the houses around him covering their children's bodies with their own trembling skin and bones and the statues of the saints too would be tottering on rocky altars in the dark corners as their occupants rushed to the rooms farthest from the road.

When were saints able to protect anyone against these bastards?

He reached the back steps and hoped the soldiers were far enough away not to notice him slip and bump his way to the bottom. There was still a glow of moonlight, sufficient for him to be noticed as it cast its blue searchlight over the sea of nipa roofs below him and there was a dull glint against water in the distant rice paddies. He could hear the soldiers laughing as they came, a sort of high-pitched cackle. They had no idea themselves how dangerous it was to be firing their weapons like this and that was the scary part. They don't know what the hell they are doing. His heart was thumping and his throat was contracting as if he were about to vomit.

There was more firing. He fell the last couple of steps to the concrete and jarred his shoulder. He scuttled across the muddy yard to the banyo like an oversized crab, dragging the door ajar and crawling inside. He hugged himself into a corner and waited in the darkness like the foetus he had become. Then he noticed the dampness. He had pissed in his underwear without noticing. So is this what he was reduced to, cowering in the dark in his own piss, quaking in the stinking shadows, waiting for them to pass. There were some more volleys opposite his house or were they further down the road? It was hard to tell in here. Then there was silence for a few minutes, although he thought he could hear a child sobbing in the house next door. Perhaps they had passed by. Then he heard their laughter further down the road near the track that led to the military camp.

Sitting upright, he fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed he was a child again, hiding in the garden and burrowed into that warm safe nest in the middle of the conifers, smelling once again the damp freshness of those clumps of spreading violets. He was peering out into the garden waiting for his mother to call him in to his tea.

His neighbour, Constanza almost tripped over his sleeping body later when she came to the banyo to wash even before the roosters had hinted at the approaching light.

PART ONE

‘What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it.’

– Le Guin, Ursula, The Tombs of Atuan, Victor Gollancz Ltd., London, 1972., p. 154

Chapter 1

BREAKING THE ICE

When Paul was thirteen, Brother Kerr had forced him to climb to the high-board of the swimming pool and walk right to the end of the springing plank, his legs trembling above the cold green water below. It was his punishment for not performing an accurate vault in the gymnasium that day and although Paul had been terrified that he might fall, he had also felt a growing excitement around the edges of his terror. What would it be like, he wondered to feel himself falling unsupported through the air, then plunging and slicing through the soft yielding water, feeling it opening and closing around him as he fell? Part of him wanted to surrender to that terror. He feels that same excitement now, the night before he is to leave Australia. Once again there is fear mixed with a sense of bouncing on the high-board above the unknown, and the excitement of plunging into new and wonderful experiences.

He stays at the seminary in Sydney that night but sleeps fitfully, listening to the mournful cackle of the nightjar echo across the oval where he had tried to play Rugby League as a student, the game that was so unfamiliar to him as a boy from South Australia. Later, he could still recall his dream and the unsettling call of the bird.

I am a patient in a psychiatrist's waiting room. I'm not sure whether to wait for him or not as I'm running out of time and have to leave soon. There is a woman ahead of me and she is in a state of collapse. They carry her into a special room.

I leave the waiting room and walk towards home when I have a sense of impending doom. I see aeroplanes above me, beginning to drop bombs and some buildings are already burning. I arrive at the house where Mum and Dad are waiting with my younger brother and sisters. We gather up a few personal belongings as the bombs explode around us. Panicking people flee by in small groups while enemy forces roam the countryside with guns looking for people to slaughter. We creep out of the house; I am carrying my baby sister in my arms and Mum drags one of my other sisters by the hand. Dad seems to have disappeared. Gabriel and my other sisters must be with him. It is up to me to bring the rest of the family to safety.

Sometimes we hide in the long grass and at one stage we get to a river and I think we can't possibly cross. Somehow, though, we do jump into the river and the current sweeps us toward the opposite bank. My little sister grips me round the neck. I have to protect her. Finally, we get to the other side. Perhaps we have passed through enemy territory. We are in a green valley with running water. It is peaceful her, and there is a feeling of safety, of having escaped from men who would destroy and pervert nature. Then suddenly I am in a church, saying the Stations of the Cross. I am doing them in reverse and it's a bit like Jesus coming down from the cross and going back to remonstrate with Pilate and asking him for a lighter sentence.

When he wakes, still feeling exhausted, Paul wonders whether the dream is a message from his God, warning him about what lies ahead, but it is too late now to change his plans.

Paul's family has come to Sydney to farewell him, his mother and father and Gabriel of course, all standing on Circular Quay in growing darkness. Miriam too has come to say goodbye. Good old Miriam, his faithful visitor to the seminary for the past two years, like a sister really. Sometimes he wonders if there is something more to her visits but she knows about the celibacy thing, knows what to expect, and anyway, it’s a bit late now with him leaving on his first assignment overseas. He notices too that everyone is talking louder now, chattering and trying to delay his departure by finding more things to say, to stuff more and more words into holes growing bigger with a sense of sadness.

'Eventually you just have to let go', says Miriam, chatting about everything and yet nothing at the same time.

She spreads her arms wide for emphasis, as if trying to hide the black bulk behind her, the 34-ton ship, the S.S. Hermes, about to take Paul away from her.

There's band music from the ship floating over the little groups gathered on the wharf and Sydney murmurs gently in the background like another orchestra tuning up for a concert.

'Lucky thing, getting to go overseas, I hope I can, someday' says Miriam.

'Anyway, as I was saying, what you should use are women's stockings … much more efficient. Not paper streamers, they break too quickly.'

Paul wouldn't be surprised if Miriam suddenly demands that all the women on the quay give up their stockings on the spot so she can prove her point. She's getting a bit bossy lately. She's just started a job in advertising and might be floating a few of her newfound pet theories to provoke a reaction.

'They start to burn your hands if you don't let go — the stockings that is.'

Her conversation ploughs on, like a ship dragging its anchor but trying to sail on regardless, the sort of conversation where one person chatters on and then discovers that nobody else is saying anything or listening. More silences appear now in the finely woven rush of words.

Paul's father is here too but he’s recovering from his recent stroke. The flesh at his neck seems a bit too loose and his hat now too big for his head, but somehow he makes a joke out of that as well. He's always finding something to joke about; that's how he's always been.

Gabriel's like his Dad too, a joker, making light of things. Now he's trying to make them laugh by giving a demonstration of what Paul will look like trying to turn over in the tiny bunk in his cabin. Gabriel's story even distracts Miriam from her streamer theory.

Paul's mother is silent, smiling a brave smile and folding and refolding her small handkerchief until it's almost the size of a matchbox. It's making them all a bit nervous. If only life could be so neatly folded and controlled Paul thinks. This departure is a slow torture for her; every small farewell always forecasting that larger loss, lurking in the background. This separation is really just a rerun of the past seven years, which has been crammed with farewells and reunions, all that to-ing and fro-ing to the Adelaide railway station year after year. A to-ing and fro-ing of her feelings too. This must be God's will after all and God knows she'd had plenty of practice for this moment.

Looking at her now, Paul remembers her mixed reaction when he announced that he was joining a church order, one that sent its members overseas to work in ‘the missions’. She was proud that God had called her son to do this work but sometimes, just sometimes, she caught herself thinking; why couldn't He have chosen someone else and left them all alone? This wasn't the first time she had felt so singled out by God.

'The time has come the walrus said.'

This is her stock phrase when something nasty has to be faced, Paul remembers, a sort of hidden code for dealing with a difficult situation. It’s easier than expressing what she really feels.

Here's Gabriel talking more quickly now as 'goodbye' comes closer. He points out to them the huge cranes of the Opera House still visible against the violet sky of twilight. He's in his second year of engineering and he needs to bring them up to date on the progress of the building.

'It'll be spectacular, as big a landmark as the Harbour Bridge they say. Etcetera, etcetera.'

Keep the conversation afloat. When will we see you again? Will we see you again? Unspoken words seem louder than their own conversation. Paul's mother has brought paper streamers. Blue. Yellow. Red. Perhaps she can keep him attached for as long as possible with these paper umbilical chords.

Paul notices the sadness hanging in the air but the smell of adventure is palpable too and he's soaking up the atmosphere of the departure, memorising information like the statistics of the ship, its tonnage, the name of the captain and then wondering whether he's on first or second sitting for dinner that night?

Two hours later, Paul stands at the railing and looks back at the lights of Sydney.

His eyes have been trying to retain the tiny white waving hands of his family growing smaller and smaller until they are reduced to minute images in the retina. He needs that memory to sustain him until he arrives on land again. It's solid land that gives him certainty and confidence, not this undulating world of foam and wave, where you're at the mercy of tide and wind.

Paul has entered a different and unpredictable world with none of the recognisable signposts of history and the passing of time. On land, history has a craggy face, displays its ruins of ancient civilisations, the remains of fossils, links to a past millions of years old. But Paul has entrusted himself to the ocean and what lies beyond it, entering a world of infinity and timelessness.

This is an ageless world belonging to people such as the Vikings, ancient mariners and explorers who once they had left land behind, truly cast themselves adrift in a sea of disappearing horizons. Paul too is at the mercy of winds and currents but as yet does not feel its pull.

The ship though moves against the swell coming through The Heads. They’re leaving behind the familiar at last and city lights gradually slide