“Yes, my dear, and so what? Remember, I have been learning too, all along. This has been a process for me too. Do you think any other small landholder in this fucking country would say to you what I just said? Do you know how long it took me to break through to this place? It all seems obvious now maybe, but there was a time when it wasn’t so obvious.”
“Do you think they’ll demand the land from you? Ever?”
“Yes. They are getting close—next year or the year after that. They’ll be nice about it, I think, but I hope they’ll be firm. Several of them are emerging as leaders in the community and that interests me too. How is it that leaders emerge? What is the process of their formation? How is it that people begin to trust them enough to follow their lead? I’m interested in this because we’ll have to begin replacing all the dead leaders in other parts of the country.”
I pushed my chair a little away from the table.
“I’m glad you got a little angry with me back there,” he said. “You were right.”
“Well, I’m sorry I did. Who am I to accuse you of anything? I’m a gringa.”
“Papu, listen to me. You have to be able to see the world as it is, to see how it is put together, and you have to be able to say what you see. And get angry.”
* * *
—
At the time, I thought Leonel knew everything. He could shoot a coconut open as it dropped to the ground. He could hear a faint whisper pass through a cinder-block wall. He was bulletproof, and because I was with him, nothing would happen to him or me. At the time that I thought this, he was thirty-seven years old.
The colonels and lieutenant colonels continued to ask to meet with me. One such meeting was to take place in the National Palace, in the offices of the ministry of defense. The building was next to the Metropolitan Cathedral, on one side of the Plaza Cívica. It was painted an ivory color that turned to gold when lit up at night. There were special ceremonial rooms within it, a red room, a yellow room, lit by chandeliers and as ornately decorated as some of the rooms at Versailles.
“I don’t want you to go there,” Margarita said flatly. “For what possible reason should you go alone into a place like that?”
“Some colonel Leonel wants me to meet with—I’m not sure. But there’s always a reason.”
“Well, if you are going to do it—and I don’t think you should—I am going to go with you.”
“You would do that? But, Margarita—”
“Yes,” she said, always pronouncing it Jess.
By this time, I knew something of who she really was and something of what she was doing. I knew things that I don’t think even Leonel knew, such as: One of the voices of the Church’s radio station, YSAX, was a woman, and the death squads apparently thought this voice belonged to a nun. They were determined to find and kill her.
“And as long as they keep looking for a nun, I am safe,” Margarita had said.
We were in her bedroom now, and she was dressing, tossing clothes and shoes on the bed for me to try on.
“When you do this work, you must always look like a bourgeois,” she said, leaning close to her mirror to line her eyes with kohl. When I had chosen something, she turned me to face her and adjusted the dress.
“Don’t be shy to show a little of your womanhood,” she said, and then she handed me a different pair of shoes with a higher heel.
“So, we’ll go then. You’ll have this meeting or whatever it is, and then we will go to La UCA.”
Margarita looked elegant. I looked like a stranger to myself. While I was with the colonel, she paced the corridor. This particular colonel was not at all friendly, and seemed not to know much more than I did about why we were meeting together. One could even say that he appeared to be nervous about it. He spoke in a clipped, insistent voice about the threat of communism’s coming from all sides and expressed a barely concealed contempt for U.S. policy, particularly the withholding of military aid pending human rights certification. It occurred to me that I was here in order to be seen to be here. The colonel ended our meeting by warning me to be careful, in a voice that did not show concern for my safety or well-being.
One afternoon, while Margarita did some work at La UCA, I talked for a few hours with her friend Ricardo Stein, who was working to establish a “documentation center” there. Ricardo spoke mostly about the organized left but was conversant on a range of subjects. He explained things to me that Leonel hadn’t bothered to explain, having to do with single-crop economies, fluctuations in commodity prices, the crisis within the plutocracy that was now split between those who thought it wise to industrialize and those who wished to remain agrarian. He also talked at length about the guerrilla factions and the differences among them.
For a short while, I also saw Father Ellacuría, who seemed rested and relaxed this time, which Margarita said was unusual, but he had just returned from a trip to his native country, Spain, so he had been able to breathe, she said, for a time. On that day, Ellacuría wanted to talk about “the unfolding of reality,” and the ways in which individuals and societies inherit from the past, and bequeath to the future, in a continual unfolding into greater complexity. He introduced me to the word “praxis,” which I understood to mean “human action to change reality” making possible “the liberation of liberty.” I tried to follow his thought through the labyrinth of phenomenology and Marxist analysis and, most important, the thought of his greatest influence, the Basque philosopher Xavier Zubiri, who was interested in bridging epistemology and metaphysics, the distinction between the process of knowing and the object of knowing.
It was growing dark by the time we left the grounds, but we felt lighthearted as we walked to the car. Margarita playfully teased me about what I had understood and not understood about Ellacuría’s ideas.
“He is a genius,” she said. “No one understands him.”
“Does Leonel know where we are?” I remember asking, but I don’t remember what her answer was. I remember that she rolled the window down, lit two cigarettes, and handed one to me. Her lipstick was on the filter. We now felt that we were practically sisters.
That evening we’d planned to meet with some of Margarita’s friends and a few European journalists who had arrived in the country several weeks earlier. We would listen to reports of what they had seen and we would tell them what we knew. There would be Coca-Cola and potato chips. We were still in the clothes we had chosen that morning, so yes, we did look bourgeois, but I would never have been able to run in those shoes. I could barely walk in them. Margarita pulled out of the parking lot onto what I would call a slip road—narrow and unlit, a road that wound around La UCA.
She was still laughing and teasing me when suddenly, and in a grave voice, she said my name, and the car was flooded with light. She pressed the accelerator to the floor. The vehicle behind us was following so closely that a person could have leaped from one roof to the other. Margarita sped into a tunnel of darkness ahead and the vehicle behind us sped too.
“Escuadrón de la muerte,” she said, “it is the death squad, Carolyn. They are going to capture us—”
I turned around to watch the other car but couldn’t see it for the light.
“Margarita,” I remember calling out, “can you go faster?”
“No, Carolyn, I cannot. This is as fast as I can go. And I think I am lost.”
“There’s the city ahead of us. Drive toward the lights.”
We sped. The other car sped too. This was going to be it, I thought, now when it wasn’t expected, after a day of talking about philosophy and God and the practice of liberation. I wanted to be brave. I did not feel brave. I had no weapon; it would not have helped. There was no last chance to do anything over again. Are you afraid, Margarita? Jess.
They were still behind us when we reached a heavier-trafficked road, behind us when we got to the roundabout, and that was where the honking be
gan, other cars whose drivers saw what was happening, other cars pulling into the roundabout, slowing down, blocking the way of those who followed us, and all the while horns honking and even some cars stopping and people getting out of the cars and then there was an opening and we took it. All the way to the house of the friends of Margarita we didn’t breathe and then the door was opening, and we ran through it from the front of the house to the garden in the back where the journalists were standing around in the dark.
* * *
I sank to the floor, pressing my back against the wall while trying to catch my breath. There was a bird of paradise growing there, where the terrace ended and the wet lawn began.
“Would you like to drink some water?” a woman asked. Everyone else was standing off to the side when she knelt and gave me the cold glass that slipped through my hands to the tiles and fell to pieces. Margarita lifted her arms in the air in a gesture of asking everyone to please leave us alone for just a minute. Just a minute while we catch our breath.
“They want to know what happened,” she whispered, “tell them nothing happened. You can tell them this because nothing did. We are all right.”
I nodded my head yes and tried to get to my feet without cutting myself. A young man came over and pulled me up and we were inside the house, now crowded with strangers. I think the journalists were from the Netherlands, one in denim overalls, I remember that. He had long hair and was a large man. Maybe some of the others were religious, I didn’t know, but Margarita was comfortable with them and so I was too. Would I like some chips? No. Coke? Yes. Too much attention was being paid to us, too much kindness. These people knew that something had happened. They didn’t know what. They could see plainly, however, that Margarita and I had been terrified out of our minds by something. Had I followed the rules that Leonel had set down? Most. But it was night, we were driving on an unlit road, and that was the rule I broke.
The group turned toward me expectantly. Margarita had apparently just told them that I had been in the campo with Leonel that week.
“Tell them what you saw,” she said, “this is what is important.”
WRITTEN IN PENCIL:
On both sides of the road there was smoke it was blue and still rising when we passed although the fields were already black from being burned everything was burned they had shot the cattle yes even them and the pigs they had also shot so they were lying there already bloated and there was a smell of meat as well as death and a howling that couldn’t actually have been heard but it was there the wattle in the houses was burned and the corn in the cribs we didn’t stop we slowed down the turkey vultures were above us many also already on the ground they don’t sing they hiss some things we saw through the field glasses some with naked eyes we couldn’t tell how many people we didn’t know how long it had been that’s all I told them.
Leonel had driven as slowly as he could through the smoke.
“Look, Papu. Look at this. Remember this. Try to see.”
WRITTEN IN PENCIL:
This is the village abandoned a pitted road stretches between burned shacks in the mud there is a saint’s picture decorated with foil stars there is no smoke rising from cook fires where women would have turned the family’s daily tortillas nor any from the fires that chewed through this village during a “search-and-destroy” operation the people returned here briefly and held orange rinds wrapped in cloth over their mouths as they gathered the dead listing their names and where this was possible sex and approximate age they poured lime over the assembled remains until the bodies seemed covered with hoarfrost a woman who had hid in the branches of a tree worked her skirt into knots as she told the story of what happened but she had so rubbed her eyes from grief that all she had seen could be seen in them in a different village a man told the story of having pretended to be dead in place of the cries of children for their parents a light rain ticks against the corrugated roofs that have slipped into the wet palms of the ravine. In Salvador, death still patrols, wrote Pablo Neruda in a poem. The blood of dead peasants has not dried.
Yes,” Leonel said, “but Pablo Neruda also wrote The poet gives us a gallery full of ghosts shaken by the fire and darkness of his time.”
I was lying in the dark when the telephone rang. We had developed a signal to let each other know when all was well: two rings followed by silence. Now, after three rings, I picked up. He didn’t say hello. He spoke as he had on the day he called to say that Colonel Chacón was dead.
“Remember Texas, Carolyn? Well, ha habido un golpe. You have your coup d’état.”
Without a good-bye, the line went dead, the room dead. The apertura had been made.
WRITTEN IN PENCIL:
At first it was thought that the younger officers had taken control but there was too much shuffling within the military some officers could be cashiered yes but not others and there should be assurances that no senior officer would be prosecuted for his crimes however a blanket amnesty would mean that the butchers would remain in control and the kickbacks would continue and even though yes there could be a few civilians on the junta those civilians would have to resign for moral and political reasons to be replaced by others who were let us say more practical and so over the months the crack in the wall was repaired until it was almost impossible to see that an opening had ever appeared and yet use could be made of the fact that it had and so in hindsight all manner of explanations could be proffered as to how it happened and why it happened but rather than buying time for reforms from within rather than preventing all-out civil war rather than showing that change could come about through these means it was shown that the coming war was inevitable and this was the lesson taken from it.
WRITTEN IN PENCIL:
It is summer we are driving along a highway that turns into a mirage of water ahead of us there are now two weapons one of a caliber strong enough to stop a vehicle he had taken me finally to the coffee finca where he showed me how to breathe while shooting how to brace the weapon in both hands a bottle set upon the rock in the distance finally shattering and then it was time to take apart the weapon with eyes closed then put it back together rain ticking on the banana leaves and above the shimmery highway the birds almost too heavy to fly rising and falling from something on the side of the road it was a man lying facedown but the birds were also interested in something on the other side of the road and as we slowed we drove over what appeared to be a water hose but it was the man’s entrails stretched out across the road maybe carried across by the carrion birds and I think I cried out stop but we couldn’t stop he said not anymore and there was nothing we could do for that man and other things happened like that it was the time of the death squads the time of the devil’s door where the bodies were dumped the time of “the beach” where they lay sprawled, skulls half-stripped flesh half-eaten torn clothes and nearly in each other’s arms they lay the stench hanging there the ground giving off the whine of flies so we covered our mouths it was no use they are unrecognizable it is no use this is how the end will come if you are taken do not be taken make your own decisions Margarita said what he is doing is dangerous and he knows it and you should know too and learning to shoot won’t help you are a poet there is the sound of gunfire at night near the garrison we can hear it as we lie on the floor talking between the beds a skirmish they said the guerrillas are training now in the mountains using sticks for rifles they have had enough do you know why it has come to this do you understand how innately cautious these people are what would get them to fight am I afraid yes will I continue yes will I die it is likely so tell me what better gift to give than one’s life?
WRITTEN IN PENCIL:
Leonel has brought me to El Playon. We park and walk it is early morning and no one is here before stopping he had made sure there were no other vehicles we are alone but as he always cautioned: don’t be too sure a loud hum of flies rose pulsing in the hot air Leonel passes a handkerchief to me take this take it turkey vultures hopped f
rom corpse to corpse grunting and hissing they don’t sing he said they lack vocal cords they have no predators they pull flesh in long strips from the corpses a ribbon of intestine hangs from a beak they are so fat with flesh they are unable to fly their name comes from the Latin vulturius for “tearer” it is almost a play on words isn’t it and it is easier don’t you think to talk about birds? the stench soaks the handkerchief but still I hold it to my mouth and almost trip on a broken bottle of Flor de Caña El Playon is a lava bed a skirt of black spongelike stone in the lap of the volcano there is a graveyard beside it El Playon “the beach” is a rock strewn with refuse and sea wrack a body a tin spoon bottle glass purple from the sun a paint can a skull with hair a shoelace trousers more bodies flocks of vultures fattening themselves on the ground a stripped spine a broken plate a palm open to the rain. El Playon is a body dump. “Yo lo vi,” Goya wrote beside his sketches. “I saw it, and this, and also this.”
I awoke lying on a bed of ice like a fish or a corpse, the window flickering day, then night, then day. A few turkey vultures curled their talons around the bed rails, one of them hopping onto my stomach and even though I recognized their red masks and their hissing I knew they weren’t actually there, these belching, oil-colored birds. They could not be. Saline dripped through a tube from a glass bottle inverted over the bed. Silver. My arm was taped to a splint, a spot of blood on the tape. My other wrist was fastened with gauze to the opposite bed rail. I had pulled the needle out more than once, as even I could remember. I had been delirante or whatever it was, crazy, unable to make myself understood, and I had nothing left, I knew that. Everything I had was in the toilet or in the basins but the fever was not out. My bones were still on fire and the fire was also in my head, burning behind my eyes. I couldn’t think, and there was some confusion about who was in the room and who wasn’t, how long it had been and why. In the darkness, Leonel had talked to me again about jaguars: Why there is a jaguar on my woven bag, why he had given me a small weaving of a jaguar on a torn piece of cloth. He sometimes also called them wildcats. “You are a wildcat, Papu,” he said, “you just don’t know it yet. That is why I gave you these things. The wildcat can camouflage itself. It can hide anywhere. It doesn’t roar like the other great cats. It is solitary and nocturnal and can adapt to many environments. The Mayans call it b’alam. Certain humans have jaguar characteristics. They help with communication between the living and the dead. They are said to be extinct in El Salvador but they are not. Someday you will understand why I’m telling you this.” A nurse laid a cold washcloth over my eyes. She put something else in the tube, something to help me sleep, she said, something for the pain, just lie quietly. Just rest. Again in my thoughts we run over the man’s entrails with the car until there isn’t anything left to think about. My dreams are a coffin with a small window cut into the lid over a girl’s face. It is not my own. Someone had written on the glass I will not forget you. Many times I asked Leonel how it all began for him and finally he told me that when he was a young boy he had come upon a foreman beating a campesino. He went into the house, took his father’s shotgun, aimed it at the foreman, and shouted Strike him once more and I’ll blow your balls off. The foreman stopped beating the man. “And that is when I learned that something could be done,” he said, “that there was not nothing we could do.” It was quiet. A chance to ask him about the red horse. “It’s really quite simple,” he said. “The man you met in Guatemala told me several years ago that there would soon be war, and that I would have a lot of work to do, but I would not have to do it alone. Someone was coming who would help. A young person with a red horse. And I thought ‘horse’? Puchica, I have no need of a goddamn horse. The young person who is coming will have to leave the horse behind—which, as it happened, you did.” And then he asked if I could hear him. I nodded my head yes and the wet cloth slipped from my eyes. “It seems you have dengue fever, Papu, and also dysentery. You’ll be here for a while.” On the ground in front of me there is a skull with the lower half of the jaw missing and beside it an empty jug that once held cooking oil. There is a picked-clean skeleton splayed flat as if it were dancing with the ground. A shoe filled with blood. He’s going to ask me if I know where I am. Yes, I do know. This is where they throw the bodies.
What You Have Heard Is True Page 27