What You Have Heard Is True

by Carolyn Forche

  “I was supposed to stick with hammocks,” he said softly. “They really hated me for these cots, probably more than for anything else I have done.”

  He seemed to be talking to himself.

  “Hated you? Who hated you?”

  “Let’s go out. We probably shouldn’t have come inside. This place belongs to the campesinos who work here.”

  I hurried after him. “Who hated you?”

  “Oh, the other coffee farmers, growers in the area—they accused me of setting a precedent, those were their words. Can you imagine? Being threatened by mattresses?”

  On the other side of the building, men standing at an outdoor workbench smiled as we approached, and there was a bit of back-and-forth and joking before one of them bent over a scrap of metal and fired up a blowtorch.

  “I’ll show you what we’re doing here. Follow me. It’s interesting.”

  “I don’t understand about the mattresses.”

  “I wanted the workers on this farm to sleep on real beds when they were here. That’s all. I wasn’t supposed to provide for them real beds. This was almost worse than paying them at a higher wage. Those goddamn beds represented something, I don’t know what. It’s crazy when you think about it.”

  We had come to a stand of trees called pepetos. People were watering them with hoses attached to odd-looking metal backpacks. There were valves on the hoses hooked up to these packs for turning the water on and off. Leonel knelt to examine one of the seedlings planted beneath these taller trees.

  “This is how coffee was traditionally grown, under the protection of forest shade.”

  He stood up, brushing his palms on his thighs.

  “If you’re going to grow coffee in full sun, without this canopy, you have to use fertilizer, which is not only expensive but also damaging to the soil and the water table.”

  Again, he sounded professorial, walking among the trees and talking to himself.

  “Of course, you get higher yields with sun and fertilizer, but you get better coffee this way, and without damage to the environment, except of course for the water use.”

  He suddenly turned to face me, coming out of a reverie. “Well, what do you think?”

  Not sure what he was asking, I waited to answer, knowing that if I was quiet, he would resume his monologue.

  “The problem is finding a way to get water to these seedlings, lots of water, without having to carry it in the traditional way, which, by the way, compresses the vertebrae in the spine. Those cántaros they carry on their heads? They are heavier than you might think. I call this low technology. No bank credits required. No debt, no service contracts, no electric utilities, and,” he added, “no problems with vertebrae.”

  Women, mostly, were moving among the trees with the metal packs, nodding as they passed, but intent on the task at hand. Their children hid behind the trees.

  “The staff is talented. We were talking one day and together came up with this idea. We made a few drawings and the next thing I knew, we had these packs. I got the metal at a salvage yard. Wait until you see how the water is drawn from the earth. Come, I’ll show you another of our low technologies.”

  As with the dwellings along the roadside, when I looked now among the coffee trees and buildings, I saw that there were many people moving about, hard at work.

  “We have turned this into an experimental farm,” Leonel was saying, “it is soon to be organic. We’re growing a special coffee here. The soil, the altitude, the climate, the amount of moisture in the air, all make this coffee possible, but the people I have working here make the difference between failure and success.

  “Here,” he said, “here is what I wanted to show you.”

  A boy was riding an old bicycle on the edge of the seedling field. The bike seemed to be stationary and had a crank that turned as he pedaled, lowering an oil drum into an opening in the ground and lifting it out again, heavy with water, yet the boy didn’t seem to exert himself while pedaling. The metal backpacks were then filled with water from a hose fastened to the drum. The cyclist grinned at me. Other boys had formed a line behind him, jostling each other for a turn on the bike.

  “Let the girls have a chance,” Leonel said. The girls laughed with their hands over their mouths.

  “We needed a way to operate the well without electricity. I have power here, of course, but we’re working on systems that most people would be able to use, including the kids. This bicycle contraption could be set up in every village if we had enough bicycles. And oil drums,” he added.

  “May I try?”

  The boys looked at each other, but the one pedaling dismounted and let me take the seat. The pedals turned almost by themselves, and if I closed my eyes, I could well have been riding slightly downhill toward my own house. I felt a tap on my shoulder. Leonel was signaling me to stop. The oil drum was high out of the well, and it was time to distribute the water.

  That afternoon he had one more thing, he said, to show me. We drove a short distance from the farm, then pulled onto a dirt road that wound through some avocado trees. There was a bit of chaos to the place: two modest houses and a flock of hens. We circled to the back and a much larger building came into view that seemed to be attached to the larger of the two houses. It was a cross between a small factory and a barn, with columns of sunlit dust dropping from the high windows inside, where a strange machine with chutes, funnels, and a motor such as might come from an old car or washing machine. Valves and wheels for opening and shutting the chutes and conveyors took up half the floor and rose two stories to the lámina roof.

  A man came out from somewhere behind it, greeting Leonel with “Hermano!”

  They talked for a while, pointing at the machine. The motor was running, so I couldn’t hear anything. Leonel motioned for me to join them and, after introducing us, announced that I was going to see something that I, no doubt, had never seen, as practically no one had, and at that moment, he sounded like a much younger man, almost a boy, as he shouted over the din. The campesino beside him was quieter, but I could see that he was also proud of whatever this was.

  “Wait! He’s going to demonstrate for you. It’s like something Rube Goldberg would design.”

  “Who?” I shouted, but a louder motor roared over my voice and the machine began to move its gears and pulleys and shake as coffee beans flowed through the chutes, spilling into other chutes, coursing through the machine that shook until the walls were also shaking, and the metal roof banged into itself with the sound of metal garbage pails struck by baseball bats, and the house to which the machine was attached rattled as if in a strong wind.

  “It is dancing with the house!” Leonel shouted.

  “What is it?” I yelled back through the coffee-bean dust, just as the other man began to shut it down, and so my voice was louder than it should have been, with one after another part of the machine slowing to a stop and the house itself settling back into place.

  “Another original invention, my dear! This contraption is a coffee processor. It removes the husks from the beans. This one can be made with parts that lie around any scrapyard. We made it ourselves, so anyone can do it. Cooperatives growing coffee could process their own beans and save a hell of a lot of money, not to mention avoiding dependency on the crooked processing companies.”

  The campesino was running around the machine now, adjusting valves and shaking the chutes to empty them of beans as Leonel nodded proudly.

  “It still needs to be perfected, of course. But if we get it to work . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “Then this machine will make them even angrier than the mattresses did.”

  “You mentioned someone—Rube Goldberg?”

  “You don’t know who Rube Goldberg is? What kind of education do they give you in the United States? Goldberg was a great artist and cartoonist. One of the characters in h
is cartoons was Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, who drew plans for inventions and machines that would accomplish something simple through complicated means, like our machine here. Haven’t you ever seen the movie Soup to Nuts? The Three Stooges! That was written by Rube Goldberg. You need to work on your cultural formation, my dear. Poets should know these things.”

  Later I would read about Goldberg and discover, among other things, a drawing of a machine for bringing a diner’s spoon to his mouth. It involved a parrot, a clock, a duster, and a small rocket. The diner in the drawing looked a lot like Leonel: black haired, mustached, staring in disbelief at the spoonful of soup rising to his lips.

  “And that is what we must do here in this moment, but in reverse. Accomplish complicated things by simple means. Next, we have to figure out how to make a portable bridge that will bear the weight of a jeep or a small truck. I have to find someone who can make that. And also, you said something about your brother’s being an engineer . . .”

  “He’s an engineer, yes. Electrical.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m looking for someone who can make a small listening device. It should be no bigger than a piece of chocolate.”

  The sudden mention of my brother in this context jolted me. For some reason, it seemed important to keep this “work,” if that is what it was, separate from the rest of my life. “My brother can’t do that. That’s not what my brother does. Why would you want such a thing?”

  The house with its dancing contraption had disappeared behind us in a cloud of road.

  * * *

  Leonel slapped a manila folder down on Blanca’s breakfast table in the dictator’s former kitchen.

  “Here, Papu, is the report from the congressman’s trip. The official version hasn’t been approved for release, so this is the unofficial version. You can read it to me on the way because we have to go.”

  As usual, we were getting an early start and as usual, I had no idea where we were going.

  “Well,” I began, holding the pages tightly in the wind, and flipping them over their stapled left corner, “it says that the congressman’s group spent their first night at the Catholic seminary, meeting with prominent churchmen, parish priests, and Jesuits to discuss religious persecution and the terrors inflicted by the paramilitary group ORDEN—isn’t that the group Chele Medrano founded?”

  “That’s the group. He founded that with American help, you know.”

  “Then there was a concelebrated Mass in the cathedral, followed by meetings with families of the disappeared. The report notes that the testimonies were tape-recorded. The next day they met with the American ambassador and his staff to be briefed on social and economic conditions, followed by lunch at the ambassador’s residence.”

  “Chicken,” Leonel interrupted, “white meat, no skin, piece of lettuce.”

  “The report says that the embassy showed the greatest possible willingness to cooperate in every way, but the ambassador urged an attitude of patience and understanding toward the problems of the current government and expressed his concern over the personal safety of the investigators.”

  “A threat,” he said. “Intimidation. Those sons of bitches! So lesson number three is this: Here, if someone expresses concerns about your safety in a certain way, they are giving you a warning or something worse.”

  “I don’t think this is meant that way.”

  “And what do you base that judgment upon, your considerable experience?”

  Then after a pause he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. But patience? Understanding? How many times have we heard this?”

  “It says they accompanied the Franciscan missionaries on a walking tour of the slums, and next the group met with leaders of the opposition parties, where the conversation turned toward electoral fraud. They also had a meeting with campesinos who brought to their attention twenty-one cases of human rights violations: murders committed by the National Guard and by ORDEN, including rape involving a girl of ten.”

  “They took a big risk,” he said. “Those campesinos talked only because a trusted priest was with them and because they thought the congressman would do something to help. But this congressman, kind as he is, cannot protect them. And who knows what he’s going to do with the information? Maybe something. Maybe it will just become part of some report in a file drawer.”

  “So you’re saying that they shouldn’t have talked to him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they shouldn’t have. We’ll see what happens now that the congressman has left.”

  “It says they next met with President Carlos Romero, and these discussions were frank, but no evident progress was made toward any solution to the problems of the political and religious exiles, nor that of the desaparecidos. They also met with Vice President Julio Ernesto Astacio, and in that meeting, it was suggested that a dialogue be opened between President Romero and Archbishop Oscar Romero. The vice president responded by urging the Church to become more conciliatory and make greater concessions, but as far as the government was concerned the vice president said, ‘we are doing the best we can.’”

  “I see.”

  “It says that late that night the group went to Aguilares for a meeting—”

  “After dark?”

  “It says.”

  “During a state of siege?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “For the roads alone, I wouldn’t have advised it.”

  “It says they met at an isolated farmhouse.”

  “Assholes.”

  “More than fifty campesinos spoke of the atrocities committed . . .”

  “Fifty maybe soon-to-be-dead campesinos.”

  “And a priest said a Mass with them at 1:00 a.m. And in the morning, they met with labor leaders who testified that five hundred unionists have been imprisoned, and only two strikes have been allowed them since 1952. They quote one of the labor leaders as saying the United States must send out a signal that it believes in democracy in the whole world.”

  “And what signal would that be?”

  I read on: “Quote: ‘There was a final gathering at the ambassador’s residence. The report notes that the Church is under significant pressure, its clergy and its people live in fear in a climate of severe repression, as do workers and peasants, and that through control of the press and the university and the stifling of every independent voice, the government has attempted to create a closed society in which all dissent ceases and the voice of the military government alone is heard.’ End quote,” I said, as the pages of the report flapped in the wind no matter how tightly I held them. Reading in vehicles always made me feel queasy.

  “In the end, the report requests that exiled labor leaders and priests be allowed to return, that missing persons’ whereabouts be disclosed, and the Public Order Law terminated. Such signs would indicate that General Romero’s promise of reform was more than mere rhetoric. Until such indications occur El Salvador must, unfortunately, be declared to be in violation of human rights and its own constitutional guarantees.”

  I lowered the papers into my lap and put my head down between my legs as I had been taught to do as a child. I could never manage to read in moving vehicles without getting carsick.

  Leonel’s hand came to rest on my back. “Breathe. Take deep breaths.”

  He withdrew his hand to shift gears, and I breathed, but when I sat up again, he was whispering “Oh God, oh shit,” and I saw what he was seeing: two bodies lying on the shoulder of the road, a turkey buzzard alighting on one, and as we coasted to a stop, the buzzard lifted and settled, lifted and flapped into the bushes.

  “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  He took the gun from the well near the gearshift and got out of the jeep, walking on the shoulder toward the bodies. I don’t remember where this was precisely. I remember the light on the road ahead like a swarm of fish, as if th
e tarmac were water, and a buzzing in my ears, or a rush of air. Leonel had reached the bodies and was now on one knee. The buzzing rose and subsided, rose again, coming from the fields surrounding us.

  When he returned to the jeep, he was pale and the back of his shirt was soaked. He started the jeep and drove slowly past them: two men, lying facedown, or rather a man and a boy, both with their hands tied behind them, both barefoot, and on the boy there was a large blotch of dark blood, almost black, where the vulture had been. Leonel didn’t tell me to look away. He didn’t say anything. When we reached the swarm of light, the fish had swum away, leaving blue-black road that no longer resembled water.

  “They haven’t been dead long. We have to get out of here.”

  “But what are we going to do? We can’t just leave them.”

  There was a look on his face I hadn’t seen before, and the gun was now in his lap.

  “We have to leave them. I cannot lift them up, or at least, not by myself,” he said, giving me a meaningful look. “Corpses are heavy, Papu. They don’t help you when you lift them up.”

  Another swarm of light appeared, and there was a ticking sound against the undercarriage. Leonel turned the radio to white noise, then to an incomprehensible voice.

  “There’s a priest I know who works not far from here. We’re going to find him. And as I said, they haven’t been dead long, so whoever killed them cannot be far away, and I hope to God we don’t encounter these killers, but if we do, listen to me, if we do, are you listening? Don’t say anything, let me talk. And if we’re fired upon, if a lot of lead starts flying around, I want you to get down and stay down and don’t make any noise. Can you do that?”

  I nodded, yes, but I had no experience to base this yes upon, and so the yes didn’t mean anything.

  We found the priest friend in a village not far away, just as he’d said we would. At our news, the priest covered his face with his hands, then sent the boy beside him on an errand, and shortly after that, women arrived, one sinking to the ground, rocking back and forth, the other hovering over her. I couldn’t sit in the jeep anymore and do nothing, and why? Had it just become a habit of his to leave me behind? But when I reached his side, he didn’t seem surprised. He patted my shoulder and introduced me as a poet from the United States.