What You Have Heard Is True

by Carolyn Forche

  “She’s a friend,” he said pointedly.

  The priest nodded and said to the women, “We don’t know yet, we must wait and trust in God.”

  Leonel drew with his forefinger in his palm to indicate where the bodies had been seen. An old white pickup truck pulled in beside us, driven by a wizened man in a straw hat. He seemed to know both Leonel and the priest. Two men stood on the bed of the truck holding on to the cab roof. Leonel said something to the driver, slapping the hood lightly as the truck drove away. One of the women held a cloth apron to her face. The priest was consoling her.

  “Our business here is finished,” Leonel said. “We have to get going. We have to get out of here—now.”

  * * *

  He rested his hand always lightly on the shift knob, watching cars parked against clay walls or nosing out of alleys, any truck with its hood raised, any van that appeared empty but might not be. He knew what to look for: panel trucks, with their sliding doors cracked open, and later, black, smoke-windowed Jeep Cherokees. I didn’t understand what was happening, why we were driving all over the country, stopping here and there to talk to people, all kinds of people, many of them greeting him with open arms, while others held back and, on more than one occasion, with palpable hostility. Sometimes his visit seemed expected, and other times people appeared surprised to see him. I would be introduced as a poet from the United States, or else nothing would be said about who I was, to the point of awkwardness. Usually we were invited inside—into a house, a shop, a clinic, a rectory, even once a tobacco shed—and sometimes we were offered coffee and food. In the countryside, the offering was almost always beans with a dry tortilla, and on the outskirts of the cities, pupusas wrapped in paper, and among the affluent, we might be given almost anything. In restaurants, Leonel was partial to grilled shrimp.

  In the beginning, I thought that these meetings and conversations with others were randomly undertaken, but as time went on, I noticed that after visiting a village with no running water or electricity, talking by the light of a cook fire, finding my way in the dark to the latrine and back among the braying animals and clucking hens, he would next bring me to an elegant house owned by a coffee grower or cotton farmer, or someone in the shrimping business, and we would be served by maids, and while the men talked, I would be led by the lady of the house onto terraces overlooking gardens and be told the names of the trees, and how pleased she was that her European species were now thriving among the date palms and bottlebrushes. We would talk about her children, away at school in Switzerland or the United States, and then we would run out of things to say.

  There was nothing random about the meetings. Each seemed a puzzle piece to be locked into place so as to reveal a picture he imagined he was showing me.

  * * *

  —

  “Let me read you something, Papu. This is not written by some kumbaya. This is from Major Arthur Harris, U.S. military attaché to the War Department, December 22, 1931. You’ll find it in your National Archives and I quote: ‘About the first thing one observes when he goes to San Salvador is the number of expensive automobiles on the streets. . . . There are a few low-priced cars, but these are mostly taxis for hire. There appears to be nothing between these high-priced cars and the ox cart with its barefoot attendant. There is practically no middle class. . . . Thirty or forty families own nearly everything in the country. They live in almost regal style. . . . The rest of the population has practically nothing. These poor people work for a few cents a day and exist as best they can.’ End quote.

  “Nothing has changed, not a goddamn thing. This is how it was the year before the last uprising and this is how it still is, so is war coming? What do you think?”

  * * *

  “It’s just breakfast,” Leonel said, “but be careful. This man is the legal adviser to ORDEN, still the largest paramilitary group in the country.”

  “I don’t want to meet him. I have no interest.”

  “Oh, but you do. You don’t have much choice in the matter. His name is Ricardo. He’s also a poet, by the way—which may interest you, and this meeting is being held at the colonel’s request.”

  “Which colonel?”

  “Never mind which colonel. You should know by now that there are things you can learn from these people, and there are also people to whom you cannot say no without arousing suspicion and making problems for yourself, not to mention for me. You should be saying, ‘A sus órdenes, comandante!’”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? Are you making a pun? Orden, órdenes?”

  “No, I was not. This is serious. You are now going to see how crazy these people are.”

  But the man we met for breakfast, Señor Suárez, was suave, elegantly dressed in a tailored suit, perfectly groomed, and charming. He held my chair for me, something Leonel never did, and, after seating himself, hiked his crisp white sleeve and with a gold pen sketched on the Sheraton place mat a diagram of his country’s troubles, a map of the region with arrows drawn from Cuba, Nicaragua, and the ocean, all of them pointing at El Salvador.

  “You see, they come from all sides, the Communists. Look at what they are doing to Somoza! But we are ready for them.”

  He pulled from his inside breast pocket a superhero, anti-Communist comic book that his organization had begun distributing to “the peasants.” The cartoon Communists were depicted raping women, shooting children, and torching the packing-crate huts of the poor. Over a delicately folded omelet, Suárez told me with modest pride that he was a poet himself and, as proof, presented me with his book Tarcos, a leather-bound volume of poems dedicated to the fatherland, along with another titled Meropis, his prose meditation on the ancient history of Central America, indebted to “Generalissimo Franco.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I look forward to reading these.”

  “And there is one more. This one came to me in a dream,” he said, setting a newer book titled One State Under the Sun near my water glass.

  “It was a fantastic dream,” he went on, “surely prophetic. The dream was not very clear, you understand, but the consequences were of utmost clarity. In the dream we ship El Salvador’s campesinos permanently to the jungles of northern Brazil, and then a Great Lord emerges, born of the Salvadoran military to preside over the country, spreading his ideas like the nectar of hope. This leader, on the first day, would be seated at a big desk, with civilians, the military, and the diplomatic corps all surrounding him, all that corresponds to a real revolutionary government.”

  He sat back, blotted his lips with a white napkin, and went on: “In the dream the Great Lord would be called Anostos, which is also the name of a prehistoric volcano that erupted before the time of Christ. This eruption created Lake Ilopango, by the way.” Then, leaning forward, he said in a low voice: “This is also the secret name for El Salvador itself.”

  “Mr. Suárez, do you believe in democracy?” I asked him.

  Leonel made a face that only I could see, both surprised and amused.

  “Señorita, señorita, of course I believe in democracy. We all believe in this. But unlike in the United States, we can only have a little democracy here. Just a little. We are a small country and most of our people are illiterate and live as the animals do. We have to take very small steps. If we had a lot of democracy here, you see, the peasants would win elections, and we cannot have that happening. The peasants vastly outnumber us. Surely you understand this?”

  “Yes, I think I do understand.”

  “Anostos,” he continued, picking up where he had left off, “is the name of the fatherland but is also its savior. The lost Mayans are like the Valkyries, celebrated by the great composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner. You have certainly heard his music? It was played loudly from the helicopters during a particularly brilliant sequence in the film Apocalypse Now. Surely you have seen this film?”

  I couldn’t look at Leonel, who was busy stabb
ing his breakfast with a fork.

  “So it is my hope,” Suárez said, “that you are going to write beautiful things about my country when you return to the U.S.”

  I told him that I, too, wished that this would be possible.

  “We could pay you, of course. We have incredible resources. You could name your price. In fact, our resources are unlimited.”

  I tried to kick Leonel under the table but he was too far away. His egg slipped from his fork. Nodding to the waiter that yes, I would like more coffee, I assured Mr. Suárez that professional ethics precluded me from accepting his generous offer, but I would promise to write honestly about his country.

  “The truth,” he said, “you must write the truth.”

  He reached across to show me the ring he wore, a gold band crested with an eagle or a condor.

  “This is a secret ring,” he whispered, “which a Gypsy gave to me, a man with secret knowledge. I wear it because I am of the society of virtuous men. I founded our very own party here when I was still a student. We called it the Pyramid Party. We believe that the Great Pyramids of Egypt were not built by Egyptians at all but by people from Atlantis, which you will find on certain maps as the early name for the Americas. Well, but I am saying too much. Perhaps you aren’t so interested in these esoteric matters?”

  I told him I found it fascinating, and for the first time, Leonel’s face seemed entirely readable.

  “Let me autograph this for you,” Suárez offered, stroking his illegible signature across the title page of Tarcos. Later, opening to the page, I saw that his book had been dedicated to the Salvadoran military, whose great capacity for combat, he had said, goes back to the Mayans and Olmecs.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long after we saw the dead man and boy that Leonel decided I would be staying from now on at another house, with his friend Margarita, her husband, and their three daughters. They lived in one of the better colonias. The husband seemed, these days, always to be away on business, he said, and Margarita had a guest room, and she had agreed to this arrangement.

  “But she doesn’t like North Americans much at the moment, so watch yourself.”

  It was a relief to know that I would be staying in one place, in a woman’s house, and with a room. Up until now, he had been leaving me at places where his friends worked, sometimes for hours, sometimes days. I never knew when he would return. I didn’t know anyone with whom I was left.

  I have to go to see someone, he would say, or I have to go do something and it would be better if you didn’t come. Let me, I’d plead, I’ll be fine. I’ll wait in the truck. Mirá, he’d answer, I don’t know how long this is going to take. And it might be dangerous. And I cannot afford to have something happen.

  Initially I believed him, as it was becoming obvious that the war he had been anticipating “in three to five years” might have already begun, as many wars do begin, he said, not with a major event reported in the news but with sufferings barely noticed: an unjust law, a murder, a peaceful protest march attacked by police. It begins, according to Leonel, with poverty endured by many and corruption benefiting the few, with crimes unpunished, a hardening of positions, the failure of peaceful means of appeal and redress. People were disappearing now every day, taken from the streets, from their vehicles and houses, at night and in the middle of the day. Yes, I thought, he’s right, it’s dangerous, but nevertheless I wanted not to be left behind, and I stopped believing that protecting me was his sole reason.

  “I don’t want to be left anymore,” I said, “I’m not good at waiting.”

  He promised to bring me along more often, “when it’s possible,” he said, but there are some things, and there always will be, that he would have to do alone.

  By then I had realized that most of these things seemed to happen at night. Where did he go? I wondered. And where does he live?

  Margarita and I met for the first time not at her house but at a café that might have been near La UCA, the Catholic university, where she spent a lot of her time. She and Leonel kissed on the cheek, and a light scent wafted from her as she sat back down, nodding at me with a small, gracious, but perfunctory smile, and she began telling him something about a meeting she had just attended. They talked for a good while about the meeting, but Leonel was, finally, a bit dismissive of it, and this seemed to infuriate her, which was apparent by the way she tapped the ash from her cigarette. I thought she was beautiful, with her short-cropped hair and expressive green eyes that were perfectly made up, her lids powdered olive green, her eyelashes thick and black. She wore a close-fitting dress of the same green and she smoked elegantly, holding the cigarette aloft and slightly away from us.

  “Tell Margarita what you have been doing since you got here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I felt self-conscious as my attention had wandered while they talked. Margarita looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I could tell that she would just as soon I wasn’t here.

  “Tell her where you’ve gone and who you’ve met. I think she’d be interested in your impressions.”

  Her expression belied this, but she leaned back and studied me.

  “Forgive me, but this will have to be in English.”

  “Go ahead, I’ll translate.”

  So, a few sentences at a time, I worked my way back to my arrival at Ilopango International Airport and the dinner at Benihana on a night that now seemed long ago, but was actually three weeks, my nights with Blanca and alone in the dictator’s former house, the morning meeting with General Chele Medrano—

  And before Leonel could translate this last, she blurted “¿La llevaste allí?”

  “Yes, I took her there.”

  “Pero ¿por qué?”

  “Just listen to what she’s telling you, Margarita.”

  She gave him a meaningful look but what did it mean?

  “Continue,” Leonel said to me, and to her, “tené cuidado.”

  “—we asked about the whereabouts of Ronald Richardson, and then we went to the campo.”

  “¿Dónde en el campo?”

  “Jesus Christ, Margarita, what difference does it make? I showed her a little of how people live, that’s all. She’s got to see for herself.”

  He was speaking in Spanish, but this is what I understood him to be saying. She turned her attention toward me again, and so I continued with something about Josita and the missing boy, the trip to Chalatenango, our daylong search for information about the boy, the arrival of the congressman and our disappointment—.

  Leonel signaled me to stop so he could translate, but before he could do this she had a question of her own. “¿Vos la presentaste a los jesuitas?”

  “No, Margarita, she met only one Jesuit. Briefly. The American. May I?”

  “Por supuesto.”

  Why was he asking me to tell her these things? But Leonel continued to translate as I hurried through our trip to the farm, the metal backpacks, the bicycle and oil drum, and finally the bodies on the roadside and a little of what happened after that. Okay, I thought, I’m finished.

  “¿Qué está haciendo aquí, Carolyn?” she asked. What are you doing here? “Dígame.” Tell me. “¿Está estudiando nuestro país? ¿Es ésta su laboratorio?”

  “No,” I said, “no. I’m not studying your country. This isn’t my laboratory.” But I didn’t know what else to say in that moment, and I must have looked to Leonel for help because she said to me sternly, “No mire fijamente! Hable por sí misma,” and then, in thickly accented English for the first time, and to avoid his translation: “Don’t look at him. Speak for yourself.”

  “Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m here to learn, I hope.”

  “¡Bueno!” She dropped her pack of cigarettes into her purse and snapped it shut. “I have to go and pick up my girls from school. It was nice to meet you.”


  “Margarita,” Leonel said, with more than a little irritation in his voice.

  “Nos vemos más tarde, Leonel,” she said, “I will see you later.” And then I thought I heard her say in quick Spanish something like, “I’m not interested in this little project of yours.”

  At times, when alone, I thought that accepting Leonel’s invitation might have been a mistake. I would think about that summer in Spain, and things that I didn’t understand at the time began to reveal their meanings. I often waited for Maya in Mallorca, listening to flowering vines rattle against the wall, and wishing, somewhat to my surprise, that I hadn’t come.

  In Spain, I would wish this more often than I would have imagined: on the edge of the circle of exiled writers gathered at C’an Blau, Claribel’s house, listening as well as I could to their variously accented Spanishes; as I walked mornings to the panadería for bread; sitting alone in the café drinking espresso with my buttered roll as the waiter Jordi swept up cigarette butts and paper napkins from the previous night, and his widowed grandmother sat in her corner peeling vegetables into a bowl on her lap. I wished at night, too, that I hadn’t come, as I lay in abuelita’s bed, where Claribel’s mother slept when she visited, in what had once been her room in C’an Blau, watching the moonrise over the sea between Mallorca and Gibraltar. I felt out of place here, despite how warmly I had been received, unable to share in the festive mood of Deià in the summer.

  During my first waking hours, I began poems and abandoned them, erased what I had written the previous day, then held the pen to paper again, hoping it would begin to move on its own, as if the paper were a Ouija board and the pen a magical planchette. When the pen failed to move in this way, I would turn to one of Claribel’s books and read in Spanish aloud to myself, hoping by such recitation the poem would yield its sense. On the days when I gave up on all of this, I wrote letters or worked on little messages for the postcards I would later buy and send to family and friends. In these letters and cards, Deià’s ocher houses held fast to the hills and appeared shuttered against the light, and Maya and I were making “great progress” with the translations, and there were “too many interesting discussions to recount, so forgive the brevity,” I would write, attempting a hurried nonchalance, and “I send you besos y abrazos,” as I had learned to say. “Mil besos.”