navel marked the birth canal opening. She had worked long enough to feel that it was acceptable to ignore her own cervical cancer, and hard enough in Salvador to view her inevitable death as the least of her concerns. I was taken to the homes of landowners, with their pools set like aquamarines in the clipped grass, to the afternoon games of canasta over quaint local pupusas (hors d’oeuvres) and tea, where parrots hung by their feet among the bougainvillia and everything was imported, if only from Miami or New Orleans. One evening I dined with a military officer who toasted America, private enterprise, Las Vegas, and the “father- land. ...” The Colonel What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray o f coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were imbedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings as there are in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell on the table fo r calling the maid. The maid brought green mangos, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had, become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack as is .used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired o ffooling around, he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and raised the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. El Salvador, May 1978 I he following day I was let into * Ahuachapan prison (now an army cuartel [garrison]). We had been driving back from a meeting with Salvadorean feminists when Ricardo swung the truck into a climb through a tube of dust toward the rundown fortification. I was thirsty, infested with intestinal parasites, fatigued from 20 days of ricocheting between extremes of poverty and wealth. I was horrified, impatient, suspicious of almost everyone, paralyzed by sympathy and revulsion. I kept thinking of the kindly, silver-haired American political officer who informed me that in Salvador, “there were always five versions of the truth.” From this I was presumably to conclude that the truth could not therefore be known. Ricardo seemed to be a pedagogical genius of considerable vision and patience. As we walked toward the gate, he palmed the air to slow our pace. “This is a criminal penitentiary^ You will have 30 minutes inside. Realize please at all times where you are and, whatever you see here, The colonel returned with a sack as is used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. 1 am tired of fool* ing around, he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. understand that for political prisoners it is always much worse. Okay.” We shook hands with the chief guard and a few subordinates, cleanshaven youths armed with G-3s. There was first the stench: rotting blood, excrement, buckets of urine and corn-slop. A man in his thirties came toward us, dragging a swollen green leg, his pants ripped to the thigh to accommodate the swelling. He was introduced as “Miguel” and I as “a friend.” The two men shook hands a long time, standing together in the filth, a firm knot of warmth between them. Miguel was asked to give me "a tour,” and he agreed, first taking a coin from his pocket and slipping it into the guard station soda machine. He handed me an orange Nehi, urging me somewhat insistently to take it, and we began a slow walk into the first hall. The prison was a four-square with an open court in the center. There were bunk rooms where the cots were stacked three deep and some were hung with newsprint “for privacy.” The men squatted on the ground or along the walls, some stirring small coal fires, others ducking under urine-soaked tents of newspaper. It was supper, and they were cooking their dry tortillas. I used the soda as a relief from the stench, like a hose of oxygen. There were maybe 400 men packed into Ahuachapan, and it was an odd sight, an American woman, but there was no heckling. “Did you hear the shots when we first pulled up?” Ricardo asked, “those were warnings —a visitor, behave.” Miguel showed me through the workrooms and latrines, finishing his sentences with his eyes; a necessary skill under repressive regimes, highly developed in Salvador. With the guards’ attention diverted, he gestured toward a black open doorway and suggested that I might wander through it, stay a few moments and come back out “as if I had seen nothing.” I did as he asked, my eyes adjusting to the darkness of that shit-smeared room with its single chink of light in the concrete. There were wooden boxes stacked against one wall, each a meter by a meter with barred openings the size of a book, and within them there was breathing, raspy and half-conscious. It was a few moments before I realized that men were kept in those cages, their movement so SAVOY TRUFFLE HAS EVERYTHING FOR YOUR PICNIC SEASON East West % mi. east of Mt. Tabor % mi. east of Washington Square 7901 SE Stark 10120 SW Hall 253-9436 244-9728 ............. SECRETS C IR Q U E Jann McCauley and Company April 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17 8 pm reservations $5 227-3840 CIRQUE 716 SW 16th, Portland Clinton St. Quarterly 39
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz