When this stark black-and-white environment forms the backdrop of a narrative about the investigation of a serial murderer, the dark moral crevices and fissures in the society under the microscope come to light, bearing especially the bad.
In F.H. Batacan’s novel “Smaller and Smaller Circles,” the specter of observing a country’s moral blind spots is nothing short of cruel just for having done it in a book of fiction. But if Prince Hamlet believed he had to be cruel only to be kind, then F.H. Batacan’s literary portrait of some of the worst of everyday life for the downtrodden in the Philippines makes a powerful and revelatory impression on the reader.
Batacan composes an intelligent and perceptive whodunit that is considered to be the first crime novel written in the Philippines. What is surprising about Batacan’s composition is that there are two priests who have been tasked to investigate the killings—the heinous killings of preadolescent boys—taking place in Manila’s indigent Payatas quarter. But the two clerics of the Roman Catholic Church have special qualifications for the case: Father Gus Saenz is only one of three forensic anthropologists in the Philippines while his apprentice, Father Jerome Lucero, is a trained psychologist.
The two clergymen/detectives know from the outset that they probably won’t get much help from the police. Batacan informs the reader that “little police effort, if any, is expended toward following up on the [murder] cases” with an important exception: “unless, of course, the victims are wealthy or influential.”
“Smaller and Smaller” could not be a more worthy novel in terms of reflecting the suffocating hold on wealth and power that the upper classes and/or the well-connected have in the Philippines. In essence, the country has historically been an exploited treasure trove and a monopolistically political stronghold for the rich and powerful. As a consequence, they have felt minimum need to engage with the dispossessed and deprived classes of society, the classes that form the vast majority of the population.
No one is more aware of this historical liability better than Batacan’s Father Saenz character. As the author sympathetically writes about Saenz, “Even though he’s done this many times before—tried to understand the complex interactions between power, poverty and crime in this country—in the end, none of it makes any sense.”
Saenz may be perplexed about the Philippines’ socio-economic and socio-political dynamics, but housed within him is a rare combination of grace, intellect, and empathy. This view is reinforced by how severely Saenz’s religious faith is put to the test by the horrific killings being wreaked upon the young denizens of Payatas. As a testament to their faith in the face of human misery, the portrayal of both Father Saenz and his junior investigative partner Father Lucero successfully captures how Christianity has spiritually animated and fortified its holy pastors as well as its lay followers against the execrable features of human behavior.
In parallel with the novel’s obvious relationship to Christian faith, “Smaller and Smaller” encompasses a competing belief system if you will. That “belief system” is scientific inquiry. More specifically, it entails a criminological approach based on reason and empirical thinking. Utilizing attuned sleuthing methods and techniques that would have made Sherlock Holmes proud, Fathers Saenz and Lucero set up sound analytical procedures to find the killer.
(Batacan’s two detective priests evoke in me memories of Umberto Eco’s marvelous 1980 novel “The Name of the Rose.” Eco’s protagonist here is one William of Baskerville, a medieval Fransciscan monk who is called to a remote abbey to use his scientifically-grounded investigative powers to solve a series of murders taking place there.)
However, Saenz is obstructed for much of the story by hindrances that are all-too familiar in the Philippines: corrupt law enforcement, public administrative pitfalls, and a shortage of means. Saenz finds himself up against two well-entrenched and enduring Philippine institutions: the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Roman Catholic Church.
The NBI—the basic equivalent of the FBI in the United States— is, as Batacan informs the reader, “understaffed, underfunded, and in dire need of upgrades to its facilities, equipment and human resources.” But most of all, the agency “suffers trust and integrity issues going all the way back to the dark days of the [Marcos] dictatorship.”
As for the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, the hard-pressed Father Saenz harbors serious reservations about the corruption, surreptitiousness, and the self-referentialism that has pierced the integrity of the institution.
Ironically, it is the novel’s NBI director who refuses along with Saenz to remain oblivious to the church’s disreputable actions, actions that are incongruous to its spiritual undertaking. The director makes clear to Saenz his disquiet over “where the Church is going.” The director questions “whether [the Church] still has the needs of the flock at the center of its mission. About whether it is operating within the framework of the law.” He adds for good measure that the Church “in this great Catholic country of ours is the last great, unexamined mystery.”
“Smaller and Smaller” is an uncompromising indictment of a society wracked by a succession of public and private malfeasance, ill-intent, human hardship, and waning faith in once-trustworthy institutions. Reading Batacan’s novel is an intimate and often disturbing canvas of a country that is struggling to maintain its dignity and integrity undeterred by the pathologies of Philippine history, politics, and culture.
ALLEN GABORRO
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