“He’s taking that cow to graze. Do you want me to tell you a story about a cow? No, really, this is interesting. Several years ago, a small coffee farmer made arrangements for six campesinos from a nearby village to have a meeting with some businessmen in the capital. Well, okay, it was me. I was that coffee farmer. I thought it would be good for them to talk. On the morning we were supposed to go, the campesinos were late. I thought they had become nervous and had changed their minds. Finally, they arrived, all in clean shirts, their best clothes, but they were unusually quiet. One rode with me, the others in the back of my pickup. It happened that I knew their village needed a milk cow. On the way, I explained to the one riding with me that we would listen to what the businessmen had to say about their future plans for the economy and how these plans would affect campesinos. The businessmen were going to talk about farming cooperatives, new industries, and the improvement of roads, hospitals, and schools. I proposed that we listen to everything they said, and afterward the campesinos should ask the businessmen for a cow.
“We can do that?”
“Yes. Just ask them for a cow.”
“Okay, so we go into this carpeted conference room where graphs and charts have been set up. The businessmen were more nervous than the peasants, but finally we got started. After the presentation, the campesinos asked some questions, but the businessmen directed their answers at me rather than at the campesinos. It was almost like they wanted me to translate for them. They said tell the men this and tell the men that. Then the campesino who had ridden with me thanked the businessmen on behalf of the others and said: ‘What we really need at this time is a cow. We need milk for our village.’ The businessmen looked at one another, then at me. ‘A cow?’ one of them said. ‘We cannot give these people a cow.’ I asked why not. ‘You know why not,’ he said to me. ‘If we give them a cow—we can’t be setting that kind of precedent.’
“So you see? Not even a goddamn cow.”
“What did the campesinos think?”
“I didn’t ask them what they thought. But I think they understood perfectly.”
* * *
—
We pulled off the road and stopped.
“We have to walk from here.”
“Where are we?” He was already getting out of the jeep.
The sun bore down, but it was a beautiful day, dry and hot, and I remember listening to the hum of insects as I walked, and feeling the stones beneath my sandals, which were not right for this path. Leonel wore sturdy hiking boots, as he always did on terrain such as this. If I drew close enough behind him, I could hear the water sloshing in his canteen.
“How far?” I asked, catching up.
“Oh, I don’t know. It depends on how you measure distance.”
“Can I have some water?”
“Actually, I think we have to walk for just a few more kilometers, but we don’t measure distance by kilometers here, we measure by time. A man will say it is a day’s walk, or a day and night. But it’s not far.”
He stopped, unscrewed the cap, and handed me the canteen.
“We have to get you some better shoes.”
I was winded and my sandals were cutting into my heels.
“Don’t drink too much at once.”
I thought about taking the sandals off and going barefoot, but maybe that would be worse. I wished he had told me we were going to hike, but he hadn’t. For him this was a short way.
“You brought your other clothes with you? The ones Margarita gave you?”
I turned to show him my rucksack, which included the dress and shoes that I didn’t want to leave in the jeep.
“Good. You might need them later.”
A man was coming toward us on the road, wiry and wearing a straw hat, as all the men in the campo wore. He greeted Leonel by taking off the hat, and the two stood, talking, the man nodding, smiling a little, looking off into the distance and back at Leonel. I tried to hear but couldn’t. The man looked over at me, then back. Vale, I thought I heard him say. Pues. Bien.
I didn’t come closer. I thought I heard hens clucking but didn’t see any hens. When I looked up the man was gone, and Leonel was motioning me to follow him through some trees. In the clearing there were four houses, and yes, there were hens pecking the ground. One of the houses had a veranda, or its main room was open to the air, where a woman sat on a stool with a metal tub at her feet. I couldn’t tell what was in the tub. Leonel was talking with her, jokingly, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. He spoke differently with campesinos, a different Spanish, softer and lighter, with less swearing. The syllables were swallowed at the ends of the words.
“Okay,” he said suddenly in English. “You’re going to stay here tonight. Fina is a good woman, an old friend. She’s been through a lot. That was her husband we saw on the road. Manuel. They have, I don’t know, about six kids. The grandmother lives here too and I don’t know who else, maybe a donkey. I told them you are a Catholic.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know yet. Tomorrow. And don’t wander off.”
And then he patted me on the arm.
“You’ll be okay. You can learn a lot from them, much more than you could from me. And if anything happens, just do what they do. Follow them. I’ll find you later.”
He handed me his canteen.
“Maybe it’s better that you drink from this while you’re here. I don’t want you coming down with some rare tropical disease. Ask Fina to tell you about her life.”
“Buenas,” she said, nodding to me, “bienvenida.”
Her eyes lit up her kind face. She motioned me to sit on the stool beside hers, and bent again over the tub, stirring the pale corn slurry with her hands. There were children darting among the palms, running off when I saw them, to reappear one behind the other, hiding from me near the wall. A dog with small teats hanging from her underside ran past, head down, not wanting to be seen. Where we were sitting began to seem like an outdoor room: There was a rough gray stone for grinding corn and a wooden box filled with corn ears. The two stools and a table had once been blue, but now the blue was worn mostly to bare wood. A few pans and bowls, of white enamel and of plastic, hung on the front outdoor wall. The earth had been swept smooth.
Did I want water?
“No, gracias,” I said, holding up Leonel’s canteen.
Fina nodded, stood up, and carried the slurry to the table, then disappeared through the open doorway. She didn’t come out for a good while. I smelled smoke then, the sweet smoke of a cook fire, and I wanted to go inside the hut too but dared not, so I sat in the hum of insects. This is what I did most of the afternoon as I was of no use here, and Fina had her work to do, and the children, too, had work it seemed, because I saw a small child carrying a bucket not far off, the water sloshing as he walked, and as I didn’t know where I was to urinate, I went in among the trees and hurriedly squatted there, then returned as if I hadn’t been gone. I sat with my notebook in my lap, pen in hand, the page blank, until I heard voices through the trees, and Fina emerged, wiping her hands on her apron, and the man we’d seen on the road appeared again.
It went like that, no talking, no wind, a cowbell, voices, Fina rubbing and rubbing a soft dough along the stone, then nightfall, lighting a stub of candle, and two thick tortillas were placed in front of me on an enameled metal plate, along with some black beans. I had been given the chair at the small table, and the others had taken the bench nearby, so I had the saucer of light from the candle, but in the half dark I watched them cross themselves before scooping a bit of beans to their mouths with a tortilla. I crossed myself too, as I hadn’t since childhood, and ate as they ate while the candle flame flattened and rose.
Fina asked me if I wanted to sleep and motioned for me to follow her into the hut. I ducked under the lintel and followed her. It was now dark, but
I could see that there was an open cook pit against one wall, its embers still rimmed with light and, against another, feed sacks of some kind piled, and beside them, a wooden pallet covered by a woven blanket, and it was to this that Fina led me, patting the pallet to show me that this was where I would sleep. Another woven blanket was folded at the end of the pallet. I sat there. Then she was spreading another blanket on the floor and the children, who were whispering even in their laughter, arranged themselves for the night.
As the embers died, the house grew pitch dark. I had no idea how I would see if I had to get up in the night. It seemed that Fina had anticipated this. In the dark, she took my hand and touched it to a metal can, making it somehow clear that I was to relieve myself in this if the need came. Then she left, and for a while I heard hushed voices outside, Fina’s and the man’s, and maybe another voice too, I couldn’t tell. There was nothing to do but lie down and pull the other blanket over me.
With the darkness came the cold, and because of that I dreamed that my grandmother Anna was taking me with her through the blue snow as far as the boundary line of wintering poplars. She dragged a sack behind her and when she reached the rusted metal drum, she emptied the sack, stuffing its contents deeper into the drum with a stick. She lit several wooden matches until a fire began to waver and then roar through the debris, some of the paper escaping as ashen sheets framed in firelight. Sparks rose into the stars and hissed out. Anna’s face was lit. She wasn’t wearing her teeth. I was so cold that my hands went from rosy to white. Never mind the cold, she said.
* * *
—
In only a few hours, the roosters began crowing into the last stars and there were wild birds and braying donkeys or burros. The air was stiff and tinged with smoke. Men began calling out to one another beyond the cluster of huts. Only a few hours had passed since the candle had been blown out, and the moon still hung in a thin scythe over the palms, but the adults of the village were not only awake but already moving about, so I crawled from the pallet and went out to see that the women were headed toward a spigot and trough. There were no men with them. They stripped to the waist, shielding themselves with cotton cloths, soaping, splashing in the icy water from the spigot. I didn’t have such a cloth. It was too cold to strip, so without knowing what else to do I cupped water to my face. It seemed wrong to be here among them, and to see them this way, passing soap hand to hand. I was used to a hot shower, towels, toothpaste, and shampoo, but absent these things I was at a loss, and so I opened my blouse and pretended to be washing myself. When one of the women caught my eye, she smiled and nodded, then turned away. Later I would tell Leonel that I had been embarrassed at the spigot.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know what to do.”
“Just do as they do. Wash.”
“But I didn’t know how,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “think about that.”
* * *
Fina spent the morning grinding corn on the metate while I sat on the stool making notes, then I followed her around as she bathed children, fed hens, slapped clothing on wet rocks, scrubbed pots and plates, gathered dead branches, and swept the dirt floor. I was grateful when she gave me some small thing to do, and when she slowed her Spanish for me to point at objects and give me the word for them. She had no English, and didn’t want any. Light poured into the hut through chinks in the lámina and wattle. In the midday, even the animals fell silent, but Fina didn’t stop her work. That night it was the same: beans, tortillas, candlelight, only this night Fina said that someone was coming. We would not sleep yet.
The candle remained lit. Others arrived, quietly taking their places on benches near the table, the men taking off their straw hats as they sat, the women together, smoothing their aprons. I heard Fina say that I was a friend of Leonel’s, that I was a poet. We waited in the dark, around a candle that cast light the size of a supper plate.
All stood when a young man in a moonlit shirt ducked under the porch roof. He greeted each individually. I thought I heard Fina whisper to him when asked about me, Monja católica estadounidense. American Catholic nun. At this, he nodded and opened the Bible he was carrying.
“Hermanos y hermanas,” he whispered, “you are children of God sent to transform the world. From the Book of Isaiah, chapter 61, verses 1 and 2. ‘The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.’ What is the message of this verse?” he asked. “Hermanos y hermanas, what do you think? Who are the meek? Who are the captives? Who is bound? Who is in mourning?”
They answered in hushed voices: la gente, los pobres, the people, the poor, the flame rising, then guttering until another candle was lit from its stump, and in the light of this new candle, every face shone in the dark. The group held hands at the end.
“Sister?”
I had gone to a clearing to look at the stars and didn’t hear him at first because I’m not a sister.
“Sister, may I speak with you?”
English.
“My name is Inocencio. Well, that is my name in this moment. You can say Chencho. I want to thank you for being here with us, in our community. Do you want to talk for a while? I would be grateful to practice English.”
We sat on the bench talking and time passed until the last stars were visible. The roosters were awakening when he disappeared into a thick stand of jacaranda, and we had smoked almost a pack, and I had learned that he had been a seminarian but had decided not to become a priest. Instead, he’d become a catechist who traveled from village to village, bringing “The Word” to campesinos on nights such as this. The place I had been staying was a Christian base community, he’d said. A few of its members had already been killed and found dismembered near the farms where they worked. Others had come upon them and gathered their remains. After that happened, they were willing to die for one another, and for those who were already dead.
He told me that some of the men had begun sleeping in the mountains so as not to be captured in the night. It was enough, he said, to belong to a Bible-study group to be taken, and especially catechists and priests were in danger. And also nuns, he said.
I told him I wasn’t a nun, and that I didn’t understand why people thought this.
“Maybe it’s because you smoke?” He smiled. “There are foreign nuns here, and some of them smoke, and they don’t wear traditional religious habits like Salvadoran nuns do. You dress like them. And why else would a North American woman be here?” He paused for a moment, considering his own question.
“So if you don’t mind me to ask, why are you here? Are you—working?”
Later I would learn that here “working” meant being part of the resistance to oppression, but at that time I thought he was asking if my job had brought me to El Salvador, and I said no, of course, as there was no job in that sense, and I must have mentioned the fellowship and the invitation because he began to appear bewildered, for which I couldn’t blame him. For some reason, I didn’t simply say that I was a poet, as I should have, because that answer would have made more sense to him than anything else. Salvadorans would expect to see poets anywhere.
“¿Y por qué? Invited why?”
“You know, I’m not sure. I was told it was because . . .”
He was listening more intently now. Was it all right to talk this way?
“Because war is coming.”
“Who told you this?”
For some reason, I sensed that I shouldn’t say Leonel.
“I would rather not say,” I said.
“And what does this war that is coming have to do with you?”
“Nothing, but my friend a
sked me to come here to learn as much as I could about the country so that when the war began I could . . .”
“Could what?”
“Explain the reasons for the war to the North Americans, because my friend tells me that this will be important, that the real reasons be known, so that the people of the United States understand.”
He seemed still to be listening, but a bit warily. I realized how it sounded, what I was saying, because it sounded that way to me too.
“This—this amigo of yours, why does he care so much what the norteamericanos think?”
“I don’t know, but he does. He thinks the U.S. might enter the war on the side of the military. He thinks that this would be a mistake, so he’s hoping to prevent it from happening.”
This last seemed to interest him, but the questions stopped.
“Listen to me, hermana,” he said. “We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and Christ is moving through the world now, through us. He is acting through us in the struggle against injustice, poverty, and oppression. To be with God now is to choose the fate of the poor, to be with them, to see through their eyes and feel through their hearts, and if this means torture and death, we accept. We are already in the grave.”
A song of insects rose in the underbrush, cicadas or crickets, a whirring through leaves that swelled as it rose in pitch. It must have been there before but only now did I hear it, as if I’d been away and had suddenly returned to be standing before this catechist who had grown visibly younger as he spoke. I handed him the crumpled pack with two remaining cigarettes and we shook hands.
“I hope I will see you again,” I said. “Take care.”
“You too,” he said, “y vaya con Dios.”
His white shirt tacked this way and that among the trees until he disappeared into the darkness or, rather, I could no longer see him. I went back to the pallet to sleep, but lay awake.
* * *
What You Have Heard Is True Page 15