What You Have Heard Is True

by Carolyn Forche

  By the time we arrived, the sun had already gone behind the city, and I remember worrying about the hour as it would mean having to drive back in the dark. When I mentioned this, Luisa nodded that yes, she agreed it would be dangerous to return at night.

  “But what can we do?” she asked, then after a moment added: “We can probably sleep here.”

  “But I didn’t bring anything.”

  “What do you need? You don’t need anything to sleep. You close your eyes. Besides, it is better for the work if I have more time.” She turned to face me, looking into my eyes for a long moment. I couldn’t remember when the people around me had started to refer to “the work” or “working.”

  “You must be careful in this house, do you understand? We are just two women visiting a friend, something light and social. We are going to talk about unimportant things. Some men are going to come and then we will go upstairs and V will stay with the men. When they leave, if all goes well, we sleep.”

  “Does Leonel know we’re here?”

  “No. He just knows you’re with me.”

  She reached under the driver’s seat for a portable tape recorder, took the wrapper off a fresh cassette, inserted it, then pressed RECORD and PLAY.

  “Habla Colibrí. Habla Colibrí,” she whispered.

  Hummingbird is speaking.

  A maid opened the door and stood behind it to let us pass, as if to use the door as a shield, and then V came from somewhere, rushing toward Luisa, the women kissing on both cheeks, V reaching for me and kissing me too.

  “Welcome, welcome.”

  She wore slender pants, high heels, bangle bracelets. Her dark blond hair fell in loose curls down her back. Her long nails were lacquered the color of the bougainvillea.

  “Would you like something?”

  Luisa said no, so I also said no.

  V led us to the dining-room table. Clean ashtray. Bowl of fruit.

  “Sit down, sit down. Please.”

  V’s voice flitted like a delicate bat from this to that, something about friends they had in common, something about the beach, then laughter, a flame rising from her silver lighter. Luisa did seem to be V’s friend, but was nothing like her. Luisa wore no makeup, her hair was pulled into a chignon, and she must once have been a dancer as she had a ballerina’s carriage and floating walk. Luisa was calm and reserved while V seemed excited about everything. Everything was precioso. Yet there was something else going on, something I had learned to perceive here in the interactions between people. On the surface, they seemed lighthearted, but there were meaningful looks exchanged, whole sentences spoken through the eyes, and quick whispers having to do with other things. It was as if they were performing, for someone, but for whom? The truer conversation flowed in rivers of fear and caution beneath the music of what could openly be said.

  V checked her watch, stubbed out her cigarette, and just then a buzzer sounded. Luisa caught my eye to say Now, to say Be careful, and I could tell that she was afraid but of what? The same little fountain of V’s laughter and greetings splashed into the front hall, and the men Luisa had told me about came hurriedly into the dining room, one of them grabbing V affectionately around the waist and pulling her onto his lap. They set their guns on the table and asked the maid to bring them beer. I was introduced to each of them and I followed Luisa’s lead, which was to smile the entire time and look pleased to meet them. These men weren’t like campesinos, nor were they like the wealthy oligarchs. They were not thin, wore no straw hats, and didn’t carry machetes on their belts, nor did they wear expensive suits and soft Italian shoes. Instead, they tucked guns into their waistbands, smiled with gold-rimmed teeth, wore their hair combed and wet, and smelled of aftershave.

  One of them suddenly asked if I was an American, and what I was doing here. Luisa rushed to answer that I was from Miami and I had come to visit her. Isn’t that wonderful? Tomorrow we were going on holiday to Playa El Tunco, the black sand beach. This seemed to satisfy him.

  We said our good nights, and as instructed, I followed Luisa up the stairs, leaving V behind with the men, the one in whose lap she was sitting and the two others. In the upstairs room, Luisa motioned for me to lie down with her in the space on the floor between two single beds. She held her finger to her lips, and took the tape recorder out of her bag, then stretched out and with the tape recorder held close to her mouth, she pressed her ear to the gray tile floor to listen to the muffled conversation of the men.

  The voices grew beer loud, then low, and every few minutes Luisa whispered what she heard into the machine. The voices were laced with V’s laughter and then the voices died. A door closed.

  V climbed the stairs to the bedroom door and Luisa went to her. They held each other for a moment, then broke away, nodding to each other that everything was all right. When V went back downstairs, Luisa patted the bed I was to sleep on and she lay down on the other one, turning toward me.

  “D’Aubuisson’s men,” she whispered into the dark air. “Roberto D’Aubuisson.”

  I had heard him referred to as Blowtorch Bob because he used a blowtorch during torture sessions. They also called him Chele for his light skin.

  “Was that man really V’s boyfriend?” I whispered.

  “No, but he wants to be. V helps us. You must never tell anyone what you saw here tonight.”

  * * *

  Now whenever Leonel pulled to the curb in front of a house where I’d spent a night, I would toss my rucksack in the back and climb in, no longer asking where we were going, as I thought I was now prepared for whatever might happen. He would hand me a weapon to hold for him, rolled into a magazine: usually a .357 Magnum or 9mm Smith and Wesson. Sometimes he would hand me another to cover with my sweater, and if, with a glance, I questioned him, his eyes would say Wait. We’d drive to the din of radio or wind, never the same route, never talking until we reached the open road. On this day, he said we were going to a special place. There was something he had long wanted to show me, but it had to wait until he felt that I understood how life was for most people in the campo, and until I had firmly in mind the fierce cold of night, the meager diet of salted tortillas and beans, the stench of waste in the ditches, the little sleep.

  “This is something different,” he said, “something possible.”

  Don’t ask, I thought. Put your feet on the dashboard and don’t ask. Eventually, he will talk. This “something possible” was, as it turned out, a long way from San Salvador. We were going to drive almost all the way to the coast, to a region where there weren’t many roads.

  Yes, I had my toilet paper, yes my flashlight, yes insect repellent, yes a change of clothes, a sweater, a poncho, a notebook. And he had his weapons, which, he insisted, wouldn’t be needed once we were there, and he had his roll of white butcher paper, his drawing pencils, his pipe.

  Not long before this journey to “something possible,” he had begun taking me along with him some nights to the meetings of a rural labor union, usually held in a church assembly or a school, always in a room with a table and folding chairs, an easel with a large tablet of white paper, sometimes a chalkboard. The men arrived in guayaberas, trousers, and sandals, most of them holding or wearing straw hats, machetes dangling at their sides, and they sat waiting or stood along the back wall as opening speeches were made. When it was Leonel’s turn, he would begin by pacing back and forth at the front, as if he were talking only to himself, turning to ask questions of the assembled without expecting answers in return. He asked: So how has it come to this? And What do you think this means? And then he would pick up a piece of chalk or a black-marker pen and begin to draw, just as he had at my kitchen table.

  Apparently, some years ago, an official group from the United States had been expelled from the country for interfering in the affairs of a rural labor union, and this same group was now in the process of attempting, once again, to secure some cont
rol of the union by hiring one of its members as an “adviser” in exchange for a modest salary. But who among the union members should be selected for this somewhat lucrative position? And why should the union permit this? What, after all, would this mean? Two men were vying for the job, but other union members saw the danger in allowing anyone to work for an entity outside the membership. What to do?

  Quickly, he drew at least twenty small figures on the white tablet, some wearing straw hats, others not, all standing together in a row, and on the other side of the paper, a single figure holding a bag with a dollar sign. He circled the group of twenty, talked a bit more, and sketched an arrow pointing at the stick figure holding the money.

  “This is not how a cooperative works,” he said. “The gringos know this. They want to control your leadership. Think about what it means to be controlled from the outside.”

  Leonel’s illustrated lectures, followed by question-and-answer sessions, lasted into the nights until such time as it became too dangerous to leave any such meeting at a late hour, even in a large group.

  The following day, he intended to make a similar presentation, he said, in this very “possible” place, and although the matter up for discussion was different, there would be ink drawings, speeches, and disagreement.

  It was a long way to the “possible” place, and quite hot, as I remember, most of it along slow dirt roads, sometimes passing mule carts or men bent under the weight of bundles tied to their backs. Now it was Victor Jara’s voice coming from the dashboard as we rocked in the deep holes and were knocked from side to side by the boulders just under the surface of the road—Victor Jara, the Chilean who had now been dead for five years but was still singing. Leonel was going over something aloud in his mind and I can see this in my memory, his laughter, the cold pipe held by the same hand that held the wheel, and I see myself too beside him, young, laughing at something he said, gripping the sidebar to steady myself. We are both relaxed. This is a part of the country where nothing has happened yet.

  * * *

  “This parcel of land was in the family, but nothing had been done with it for a long time. As you can see, my dear, there are very few roads, and they are impassable in the rainy season, and therefore it isn’t easy to make this land productive. So, my brother, he let me, shall we say, do something with this land. He never asked me what it was that I did.”

  We had stopped in front of a tree growing in the middle of the road, surrounded by a low wall of hand-stacked stones forming a protective ring around the tree. Leonel knelt, appearing to inspect the stones, and then rose to his feet and dusted himself off, laughing and shaking his head.

  “What is it?”

  “This road wasn’t here last year.”

  “What do you mean wasn’t here?”

  “The people built this road by hand. With shovels and hand tools. And when they came to this tree, instead of cutting it down, they left it. But someone was thinking. Someone knew that a tree in the middle of the road would need protection. Wait until you see what I’m going to show you.”

  As we approached what I would have described as a caserío, children began running alongside us and then their mothers came out, holding other children, and soon there were men too, walking toward the road, one or two of them waving, and then they were calling out and Leonel was calling back to them. When he climbed from the Hiace they gathered around him and pulled him along toward a cluster of houses, and when I climbed down, they did the same with me.

  “This is my friend, Papu. She’s an American,” he announced to the gathering, and a few of the women came toward me and the kids ran a little way off to study me from a safe distance.

  That day we were taken from house to house, and in each we sat on low stools and talked while being given a sweet corn drink, some sorghum coffee, a small plate of black beans. There was much to report, it seemed, since Leonel’s last visit. These houses were different from the others I had seen. Their mud walls had been whitewashed and someone had painted murals of flowers, birds, and trees on some of them. The artist might have been a child—everything bright and open.

  The people wanted to show Leonel the playground they had built. There was also a school and a small clinic, but he had seen those before on other trips. From what I could gather, he visited this place only once a year, but he came without fail, and this time he brought me.

  “Let them show you around,” he said. “I have some business to do. It won’t take long.”

  So we walked or, rather, I was pulled along, and finally wound up in someone’s house in a hammock being rocked by children who took turns running off and returning with things to show me: a little sand pail and shovel, a drawing of a horse with five children on its back, a blond-haired doll without clothes. When Leonel returned from whatever business he was doing, I didn’t want to leave, but of course “we had work to do” and “didn’t have much time” to do it.

  * * *

  —

  After we said our many good-byes, we climbed into the Hiace and set off down the road again, around the protected tree and into what seemed a shore cloud of road dust.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  That village was like none of the others I had seen, and this had less to do with murals and playgrounds and more to do with the children’s wanting to show off their things, with each house’s opening itself, with little touches like stones stacked against trees and a swing set next to the school. I realized that I hadn’t smoked in a few hours. I had forgotten to smoke.

  “Let me give you a little history. Several years ago, some campesinos came to me and wanted to farm this land, which, as I have said, had been abandoned for lack of infrastructure in the area. Who wants to grow crops when there is no way to get them to market? So I said yes, and we settled on the percentage I would be paid. Fine. At the end of each harvest I would visit, make arrangements to collect my rent, and it went on like that. Soon, there were a number of families farming the land. One year, the crops failed. I don’t know why. Maybe blight or drought or some such fucking thing—”

  “You were charging people to farm your land?”

  “This is the system here, but wait. That year, when I visited, I decided to cancel their debt because of the failure. Remember—I was learning something too. I told them that if they formed a cooperative, I would charge half what I had been charging. If they opted to stay on their own, the price would remain the same. The next year, I went back, and guess what? All but three had formed a cooperative. So I made good and charged the cooperative members half. The next year, everyone was a member. At that year’s meeting, I suggested that they might want to do something for the children. I didn’t say what. You decide, I said—but do something. That is how the school appeared. And as each year passed, the people became more secure. If the cooperative continued, it was always half price, if the crops failed, no charge, and each year when I visited, there was something else to show me: the clinic, the playground, the new road, and they then began to paint the houses. I realized that the one factor, the one difference, and maybe the only difference was this: The people felt secure. They made decisions together, they took risks together, they shared the risk, and, very important, they knew I wasn’t going to kick them off the land.”

  The engine heaved and pulled and the sun bore down on us. We were off the dirt road now and onto the paved highway that led toward the coast. There was salt in the air. I was smoking again and drinking from the warm canteen.

  “What?”

  “That all sounds fine,” I said, “but—” The water was almost hot.

  “But what?”

  “It’s your land. You are the one who visits. You are the one who makes suggestions, and you are the one who collects the money. You make the rules. Why don’t you just give them the land? They are the ones doing all the work.” I crushed the butt into the ashtray and leaned back, folding my arms across
myself. “That’s what I think.”

  We drove, listening again to the engine.

  “I can’t give them the land.”

  “Why not? Of course you can. You’re the padrino! This is paternalism, Leonel, pure and simple. You’re the jefe. Well, good for you!”

  I pressed my bare feet into the dash, leaned back, and closed my eyes. “Maybe that was a little harsh. I liked your village. But it’s yours.”

  This sounded smug and self-righteous and I knew it, but I didn’t know how to save the moment. The wind in the Hiace buffeted us because of how fast we were going on the paved road.

  “I can’t give it to them,” he said again, flatly. “They have to take it from me.”

  That day, we ended our trip at the coast. It was the first time I saw the famous black sand beaches, the blond, foreign surfers bobbing in the water, the wooden fishing boats overturned, and this place, with its fluttering tablecloths protected by white paper upon which Leonel was certain to make drawings. He ordered gambas a la plancha for both of us: sweet white shrimp the size of a fist, turned twice over a fire, and he was in such a lighthearted mood that he even accepted the beer that the proprietor offered him. If I hadn’t known better, this would have seemed like a rustic tropical resort, with hammocks strung between palms and drinks served in coconut shells.

  “They have to take the land from me because if I give it to them it will not really be theirs.”

  “I don’t understand. How would they take it?”

  “For example,” he said between mouthfuls of shrimp, “one year when I come they could refuse to pay me.”

  “Oh, right—they would never dare to do that.”

  “Well, they have to dare to do it.”

  “You are manipulating them.”