Savage Coast (12 page)

Toni was at the window, calling Helen. She leaned out. He was an old friend, his face was immensely, touchingly familiar, the purple lips darkening in the half-light, his gay dark eyes. He wanted her to come to dinner, she was with the Olympics, the town was standing them all dinner.

“Go ahead, I'll see you later,” she promised.

Peapack was behind her, pulling her arm.

She turned to the older woman, the whitened harassed face, sunken with fear.

“Don't leave me, Helen,” she demanded, “don't leave me alone. It sounds like war, I can't bear it, we'll never get out of this, don't go, only don't go!”

Evening was coming down. The radio was very loud.

                 
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact, within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.

—The Communist Manifesto
⁷⁷

T
he crowds had drawn away; only a few small boys were left, concealed and whistling in the yellow trees. The armed guard stood in front of the station house, speaking to the mayor, whose band of mourning could scarcely be seen on his lapel in the increasing dark. A faint gabble of roosters came from the oblique row of houses.

As soon as the station was deserted, the passengers began to revive. The Catalans gathered their children, and pulled out the long loaves of bread. Even the Englishwoman brightened. Poor Mme. Porcelan, who was so anxious about her husband, stared at the Swiss across from her in the compartment, and wondered if his heavy, pitted head, thrown back against the antimacassar, would ever wake. The Hungarians leapt down from one car suddenly, laughing and cracking jokes, and disappeared into the town.

It was a signal. The whole train, a string of pale faces pressed against the windows of first-class, a scramble of shoulders and heads blocked out in third, assumed vigor. A few Spanish families flocked on the platform, not speaking, moving into the town.

A radio roared a sentence, shocking the train into full attention; and then digressed into a soft tango, the notes played sliding and loose, the jar and ripple of music reassuring everyone.

Helen sat in Peapack's compartment, tracing the letters in the lace border that repeated
M-Z-A-M-Z-A
. Peapack's face, white and still fearful, stirred.

“All right,” she said. “I don't feel so upset any more. I feel hungry now. Could we eat?”

It was a very good idea.

“Oh, but wait,” said Peapack in alarm, “supposing the train starts to move, and we're in the town?”

“We'll be called,” invented Helen.

Peapack was comforted.

“The café is very close.”

The English couple, with their easy walk, was crossing the little square beside the station. The woman with them was shorter than they, who drooped over her slightly. Her dark hair was clawed with gray and fitted to her head, her eyes were deep in shadow. As she spoke, her mouth, russet-colored and startling, moved distinct and separate, drawing attention to itself so that it took a small additional effort to listen to her.

“There is no need,” she was explaining, with a strained note in her voice, as though her throat had been struck and was still ringing. “The Spanish gentleman will call us the moment the engineer says yes.”

“The engineer?” interrupted Helen, just behind them—“Is there any activity? Is the train going to move?”

The woman turned. Her face did move with her smile, brightened as the small white teeth showed. The radio finished its tango in a shiver of high notes, and a wide final chord.

“Nobody knows, if the General Strike is to last a day or indefinitely. But we have a gentleman—a diplomat, a Spaniard—with us,
who has gone to speak with the mayor, and to see whether anything can be done—even a cable would be a lot,” she added.

“Weren't you on the London train? Didn't we see each other on the Channel?” The fair English girl dropped back to speak to Helen.

Peapack hurried ahead, she snatched at the girl's husband.

Yes, said the English girl to Helen, they were all going to dinner. They weren't sure yet where they'd go. The five went up the street to the café.

It was the only place open in Moncada. All down the Calle Mayor, there were boarded-shut doorways and shy children in their corners, chain curtains that tingled under the breeze, pale thin dogs running across the street.

The sidewalk was jammed. The five strangers broke into a file and crocodiled between the tables. Every chair was taken, every table was surrounded with chairs.

The big radio announced its Barcelona stations.

The lady from South America stopped, her hand up. Helen and the English looked at her.

“That's why everybody's here,” the lady finally commented. “It's the radio. That was an order from the government at Barcelona, advising the people to stand by. As long as the radio goes, the government is in power. The Fascists have attacked the radio station several times today. There must have been terrible fighting in town,” she added.

The broadcast had stopped for a moment. There was the click and whine of a victrola being set up in the station, and another dance tune began.

They pushed forward to the marble counter. The lady from South America asked for a table.

“We'll have to wait forever for the sidewalk,” she relayed the answer, “but we can go inside, immediately.”

The small inner room to the side subdued the radio by putting the wall between them. “This is splendid,” said the Englishman. His collar was open; it was a first concession to necessity. His face was very young and clear, and the long mustache only served to soften it further. “What shall we have?” he asked gaily. “Wine? Would you please ask for wine—you'd like wine, dear, wouldn't you?” he swung to his wife, gathering the others in his eagerness.

“And bread.”

“And Vichy.”

“Oh, come,” said the lady, scarcely moving her lips, “we'll have all of that—but something else: spaghetti, or omelettes perhaps?”

They watched the lady as she ordered, as if she were qualifying for some distinguished position. She smiled at them, brilliantly, an actress's smile.

“You're not thinking,” she objected, “I've lived in South America and Spain for a good part of my life.”

Helen was curious.

“But you're not Spanish, are you?”

“Both of my parents were English,” the lady answered. “My mother and son are in Geneva, and I'm going home to my sister's flat in Barcelona—not very rapidly, it's true.”

The dark wine and soda water were set before them. The soda water was in a bottle tinged blue, as if ink had escaped faintly into the glass. Helen pressed the little handle, and the water hissed into their glasses. They had not known how thirsty they were.

“Here's to a quick journey,” said the Englishman, his long eyes narrowing with a smile, “although blast it all, I did hope we could get to Palma by tomorrow night.”

“Are you going to Mallorca?” asked Peapack. “I've heard Mallorca's lovely.”

“It's our first trip—it will be, that is, if we ever get there,” he said. He went on, turning to Helen, “—You were in Cook's bus in Paris, weren't you? Of course. Well, Cook put us through, too and
their man should have known better. He could have told us—why, I asked whether everything would be perfectly safe, and he said certainly it would—”

“I
do
think he should have known, don't you?” asked his wife.

Helen laughed at them. The lady laughed. Peapack looked grave.

“Very well,” continued the Englishman, a little weakly. “When we get to Barcelona I'm going to tell the man at Cook's a thing or two.”

The omelettes were brought in, the little yellow rolls deliciously streaked with brown, and a long loaf of bread. The waiter set them down, and the lady said something cheerful to him in Spanish. The remark made him look at them all, for the first time. He said to the lady, “There are two gentlemen seated behind you, two brothers, who have walked in from Barcelona.”

“Doesn't he look like a brute,” whispered the English girl. Helen looked at the table next to theirs. Two men sat facing each other over its small top. The larger of the two had a broad heavy back, turned to them, and when he lifted his head, his furry, close-cut hair took the light. His head came up at every mouthful to face his brother. Smaller, compact, the other man sat eating steadily, never looking up, baring the plate methodically from rim to rim. His hair fell in shreds, dark and jagged on his forehead, and his upper left sleeve was torn. White cloth showed under the rent, and the arm hung loose.

The lady from South America, opposite Helen, put her hand out gently and touched the shoulder of the large man.

The lady's head was thrown back at him so that the jawbone stretched the skin white and brittle, and her cheek made one delicate plane away from it. The attitude was suggestive of ritual, the position of the head was very familiar. For a moment Helen could not remember; and then she saw vividly again the beautiful woman in London, the long cheek marbled with one pale vein, turn her
head so against her shoulder, to look back and up at the wooden Buddha in its stance of disclosure, bright with its oily gilting.

The two were talking. In a moment the lady turned back. “Yes, she said, breathless, “there's been a terrible battle in Barcelona today, starting this morning. Over two thousand dead, in the streets of the city, and these men have walked all the way.”

She turned back to hear more.

Behind her, the Americans were entering the restaurant—Peter and Olive, and the two school teachers. Helen said
Barcelona
noiselessly, with her lips, looking at the little table.

“But who
is
the man?” the Englishman was asking.

“He says he's a bus-driver in town,” answered the lady. “Everything is stopped there, in the General Strike, nothing's running, nothing's open but the chemists' shops, and all doctors are on emergency duty.”

“And the battle?” he asked eagerly, half-smiling in excitement.

The man was explaining, friendly, comfortable. He turned so that he could see while she translated, screwing himself around the chair, the creases in his shirt spiraling over his shoulder.

“He says it is impossible to say very accurately, now; but that the government had a smashing victory, starting with the defense of the Telephone Building, and has captured and broken up two rebel troops. They're completely disorganized—they'll be escaping through these hills to the frontier—”

“Through here!” Peapack's face rearranged itself, agitated.

“Of course through here,” retorted the lady in a hard voice. “We're on the direct route, aren't we? And they've been fighting in the big plazas” she said quietly, as if recollecting—“they always fight in the four big squares. He says the dead, and the horses and mules, have had to be left where they fell.”

The man added something briefly.

The lady from South America told them what he was saying about the United Front. They were strong, everything had been
foreseen, all night for two nights men had been meeting, collecting weapons, checking on the African news. The whole of Catalonia, according to the bus-driver, was in the United Front: only the church, the generals and the wealthy had rebelled. “And,” added the lady, “he says everyone is with the Anarchists this time—the Front is really strong.”

The radio yowled suddenly as a record was skidded off. An announcement followed. The lady from South America looked up from her omelette. Her face was taut in fatigue and nausea. The whole restaurant was straining for the sound. The bus-driver's head pulled up; his brother glanced at him and went on eating.

“What is it? Tell me!” said Peapack frantically.

“Sh—General Goded
⁷⁸
—captured, going to speak,” the lady answered under her breath.

There was a blank of silence, and then a harsh, broken voice came through.

“La suerte me ha sido adversa y yo he quedado prisionero. Por lo tanto, si queréis evitar el derramamiento de sangre, los soldados que me acompañábais quedáis libre de todo compromiso.”

A burst of noise poured from the other room, cheering, laughter.

The American table was very excited. Peter rushed over.

The lady drew her eyebrows tight. “How
can
he?” she said, contemptuously. “He says that he has fallen prisoner, and advises his soldiers to stop fighting, actually. He says to stop the flow of blood, he releases them from their duty. They must have held him to the microphone. A general!” she exclaimed.

Peter said, “My father spoke in that desperate voice all through 1930
. . .
”

The voice had changed.

“Ciudadanos: Sólo unas palabras porque estos momentos lo son de hechos y no de palabras . . .”

“Acts, not words—that's Companys!” said the waiter, arriving. He stopped at the table, listening.

“. . . Acabáis de oír al general Goded que dirigía la insurrección y que pide se evite el derramamiento de sangre.

“La rebelión ha sido sofocada. La insurrección está dominada. Precisa que todos continuéis a las órdenes del Gobierno de las Generalidad, ateniéndos a las consignas.

“No quiero acabar sin hacer un fervoroso elogio de las fuerzas que con bravura y heroísmo han luchado por la legalidad republicana, apoyando a la autoridad civil. ¡Viva Cataluña! ¡Viva la República!”

They came to their feet in the burst of cheering. “
Visca Companys
!” they shouted.