Savage Coast (32 page)

“It's altogether different from our strikes,” answered the Welshman, going with his jagged walk beside Peter and Olive and Helen. “We have the miners, surprised to be in daylight, and all the black . . .”

“Where are you from?” Olive asked him.

“South Wales,” he said, “the grimmest country: its life is nothing like this—” with a reaping gesture of his great length of arm.

Helen saw over the harbor to the curve, where the black circle had stamped the ground around it with scorches. “What was burned there?” Helen asked.

They looked over. “It must have been the yacht club,” said the Welshman. “There were tons of ammunition discovered there; it exploded as they set fire, the soldier told me.”

The boats that were warped in were very quiet. One sailboat stood idle at the edge. Peter glanced at Olive and Helen. The man on the boat was swinging an end of rope, whistling. Under his foot as he leaned on the rail, were the words
JEFE-PALMA
.

“Come on,” said Peter, “there's our man.”

He crossed the stream of people passing in the other direction. The three others stood to watch. The Welshman with his long head on one side, his throat crooked and long, grinned against the sun, talking gaily. Olive and Helen smiling, the contagion completely caught.

Peter stood with his foot up on the edge. The boatman kept his position, moving only his head, so that his forehead wrinkled like a monkey's as he looked up.

“
Buenos días, compañero
,” said Peter in a little rush, and slowed to equip himself with the words. “Is the boat sailing for Mallorca?” He turned to the others. “We'll get to Palma, yet,” he prophesied cheerfully.

The man grinned back, dangling his rope.

“
Nada, compañero
,” he said. “
No hoy
.”

Peter's voice went weak. “You're right,” he said to Olive. “The boats won't move today.” He took his foot down, and stepped back, and then, remembering something, he went on hopefully: “¿
Mañana
?” he asked the man.

“
No mañana
.” The man spoke as though he had been repeating the answer all day. “
Huelga General
,” he said, lifting his fist. The rope was released farther by his hand's motion. It struck the water, breaking it in circles.

“
Viva
,” said Peter. “Where are the French boats?” The man pointed and explained.

They thanked him; and went on. They were almost there. The port buildings, Inspection, Health Inspection, Police, were between the docks. “No Palma, no streetcar, no glamour,” said Olive.

“I wonder what happened to the Drews,” Peter said sharply. “They'll never get to Mallorca, they won't be able to cable for more vacation—”

“They're probably walking in from Moncada,” said Olive. “The Drews and the other couple, the men on the outside, helping the ladies over the barricades, carrying their country with them.”

They reached the second dock at an intersection like a public square, jammed with lines of people hurrying on the docks, crossing, returning. The cars with their triple horns were covered with baggage. A big car painted
CONSULADO FRANCÉS
, its hood covered with bunting, was cutting a road with its horn. Children crowded out of its way. The three Gypsies dancing on the dock, in red and flame-pink crossed the track of the car, lifted their clenched fists in greeting, and went back to their dance.

“Gypsies!” said Helen, with a little gay laugh. “The Gypsy Soviet!”

“That's something to work on,” said Peter gravely. The sun caught all the Gypsy's jewels as she danced in a rain of pesetas. The
French were digging in their pockets for their last Spanish money, dropping it, throwing it; it whirled, ringing on the dock.

The French were lined three-deep at all the rails of the first white boat. Athletes ran over the upper decks, sat on spars like rows of strange animals, identical and high, their feet dangling, shouting and waving to the crowds on the dock, staring into the sun at them. The
Djeube
was the first of the two, and it was full already. The only passengers still going aboard were the officials and the men carrying extra baggage, going in loaded with suitcases and returning to the heap of trunks and suitcases on the dock. The main stream, however, was passing the first boat, continuing to the second, which was already half-full.

They stopped at the gangplank of the
Djeube
. The noise had changed; there was little conversation now. It had been replaced by quiet against a background of dock movements, the shouts and ticking of pulleys, the strain of the gangplank as each man at the top of the line stopped to show his passport. But there was no sound of talking, none of the thorough tone of the enlivened waterfront.

Helen became quiet as they turned onto the dock; and Olive and Peter looked at her suspiciously, as they looked with suspicion at the French, moving wordlessly up the gangplank. Suddenly she started; a man with a gray beard was waving directly at her from the main deck.

Peter followed her eyes. “That's the French delegate!” he said, excited. “He's waving!”

She had seem him clearly. “No,” she said. “It's the beard, it's a twin beard.”

Olive, tentatively: “You could have been on that boat, Helen.”

“Could you have!” exclaimed the Welshman.

“But the Games!” Helen protested.

“I take it back,” said Peter in a little boy's voice.

Helen felt a beat of sickness at the scene: the tangle of errands
on the pier, the refugees sitting on their baggage waiting their turn, the men behind the slat of the public urinal, who turned as each car shouted One-Two-Three behind them, the false, suspicious excitement of the foreigners who were to stay. All along the pier, among their baggage, the familiar faces struck her sight with a quick bullet-slap: the French boy who had run laughing like a ballet dancer down the steps of the stadium; the tired, weak smile of Mme. Porcelan, standing delicate beside the tall husband she had at last been able to find; the sturdy, irritable German family with their two children. One of the little boys moved obliquely behind the other, his fingers outstretched, preparing to pinch the soft flesh behind his brother's armpit. The Swiss team stood, looking provincial among the French, who were so entirely at ease boarding their own boats— the close mechanical crisp in the yodeler's hair was very fashionable, very out of place in the confusion.

Olive wanted to say goodbye to the Swiss.

As they moved down the pier, they could see, behind the two white boats, the great flat destroyer.

The Welshman threw his arm up to shade his eyes.

“It's the Union Jack!” he was shouting in amazement. “They must have called a destroyer up from Gib. By God, will they be shoving us on a boat after the French?”

“That's bad,” Peter said in a low voice, “all the foreign boats are coming in.”

One of the Swiss heard that, and turned. “There are a German boat and two Italians outside the harbor now,” he said. “The sailors don't like the look of things—it's what they said all along,” he added after a moment. “Everything's all right, all through Catalonia, the government's strong; the only thing now is to hope the rest of Europe won't step in.”

The yodeler turned, too. “—The rest of Europe!” he repeated contemptuously. “Do you think Mussolini will let the government
win? If there are Italian boats out there, or German either, I'll wager they've got guns on board, and money too, for any of the rebels they can reach.”

“Or they're hoping for stray bullets—anything they can make an incident out of,” said Peter.

“But there's a British boat!” the Welshman was saying. “Why should there be a British boat?” He pulled Helen's elbow. “Let's get to the end of the pier, where we can see it better!”

“Why shouldn't there be!” answered the yodeler, with his trick of repeating phrases. “Do you think England's going to sit back, with Italy and Germany in on this?”

The Welshman came back a step to face him. “You aren't lining
England
up with the Fascists, are you?” The words were a threat. “Because you're making a frightful error if you are,” he went on. “England's got rotten faults, but she's liberal—God, the country
cares
about freedom and democracy. It couldn't stand for—” he made a stiff hurling gesture at the open sea.

Behind his spread fingers lay the destroyer. Officers barked on the low deck, their uniforms pasted white against the fierce sky. Some drill or inspection had lined up a row of white sailors, who broke ranks as they watched, scattering over the boat.

The Swiss were being called to the gangplank. As the last one said goodbye to Helen, he put his hand into an inner pocket, smiling. He pulled out the postcard she had written at the Moncada station.

“This was never delivered,” he said. “Did you find the man? I couldn't reach him—he's been out on the streets, fighting.”

“He's been fighting every time I've asked, too,” she answered. The dark Swiss smiled, as at a delicious and complicated joke.

“Good trip!” she called after him.

He put up his clenched fist.

The Welshman was halfway to the end of the dock, thrusting
his knees out, staring still as if he could not bring himself to believe the destroyer.

There were a few other Englishmen at the end of the pier, leaning against the bulkheads and arguing. Four boys swam naked off the end. The strip of water between the dock and the boys was rotten with oil; the corrupt beautiful colors lay as though they would never float away.

One of the Englishmen, a stranger, rushed up to where the Welshman stood, and started to speak rapidly, pointing at the boat, pronouncing his words with a strong Cockney accent so that the Welshman craned his neck sidelong and down, amused.

“See that? She sailed in there three hours ago, without a by-your-leave, and the navvies have been kept polishing brass ever since, all the time, except for the drill just now, and do you know what the blasted lieutenant had the cheek to say, over and over again? He's drilling the men in full view of this victorious city, on that flat lizard of a gunboat, and he has the cheek to keep on yapping out at them: ‘Left; Left; Left;'”

Peter roared. “What's the destroyer here for?”

“She may very well have come for the
express
purpose of polishing the brass,” went on the little Englishman. “But if the balance of power . . .”

He was cut short by an immense blast, as the
Djeube
's siren cut loose, the great painful sound speeding in circles that shook around them. The French were leaving.

“I didn't think they'd really go,” said Helen. She was trembling. “Let's go back. I want to see them.”

The four boys had turned, heading for the pier. They swam close, striking the oil, distorting all the color, reaching the shadow of the bulwark, treading water to watch. The Welshman was lost in discussion with the English.

“Come on then,” said Peter in a low sad voice.

He and Olive and Helen started down the pier.

Behind them, the dock had changed. All the confusion had been resolved, the refugees cleared, passengers and baggage heaped on the boats, the crowd thinned out, leaving nobody but the rows of spectators on the dock. They all turned toward the boat, with all the faces up at one angle.

From the high bow, the French sailors waved their caps, the long ribbons swinging against their lifted arms. The decks were crowded, the boat was filled to triple its capacity, and the relieved faces crammed at the rails on the shore side, like an overcrowded travel poster advertising a luxury cruise.

The three Americans stood in the light, looking up with blank indeterminate faces. Olive held up her arm to wave, but pulled it down and waited helplessly. She spoke without any object, “It is true that they are safe now.” Peter glanced at her, and did not answer. There was no answer, no proof available; only some earthquake occurrence could prove to these crowds what they were. The dock was waiting for that. The French, leaving before the Games had been celebrated, remained undefined, their Popular Front, the mountains between the two countries, became equivocal, unknown values, stranger signatures.

The dock looked up, their faces set at one tilt.

The boat pulled slowly out, forcing itself under weight. The churned water boiled up, livid over the white side. Engines strained in the starting-effort. It was like the attempt of a heavy bird to take off from the ground, with awkward runs and a pitiful flapping.

At Helen's side a little girl cried, while her family comforted her, and on deck her aunt waved and blew kisses. The water widened slightly between the dock and the boat. Families shouted warnings and messages. But, as the strip of water settled to wider and wider blue, over the boat the handwaving stopped. The single messages were sung out into a deep quiet. Helen looked through the crowd on the dock, looking around at the faces near her to discover a
reason for the change, at the tremor that moved gently over the dock, the beginning of some act, the will in the air; and, as she turned from the silent tilted faces, the motion spread from their few clenched fists and became general. With a tremendous crisis, those thousand arms went up, as if the boat itself were taking flight. The rows of raised fists ran solid and white before the rows of faces, like cries issued from the mouth, and the sound of that cry came at last, in a victory, from the French boat:

POPULAR FRONT

And, in one motion, to meet the words, the crowds left on the dock pressed forward, the loiterers advancing from the walls, those in the middle following with the same steps to the water's edge, their clenched fists all up; and along the boat, along the quieting water, hurried the sound of music, choking the watchers with its meaning, caught with new impact after the days of war, as the boat ran out to sea. The words came through, the dock taking them up, until both sides were singing the “Internationale” together, the harbor was shaken by the music, and a second longer cry came from the French, repeated and narrowing on the wide water: