Savage Coast (37 page)

“Yes, I want to,” she said.

He was looking up front, too, at the sweatshirts of the athletes. He fell out of step, and she looked questioningly at his face.

“I shouldn't be walking here, perhaps,” he said tentatively. “The American team.”

“None of us are in the team,” Helen showed him the train people,
the social workers, two other Americans who were attaching themselves, who had come out of the crowd to join the march. “But we could walk somewhere else, if you'd rather,” she said, thinking, Shall I be cut off entirely, and, If we can be together through this thing . . . and, How romantic I am!

“So long as we are together,” he answered, answering her, and stepped in line firmly. They were passing the Shirley Temple Club, still hanging torn and shattered, and entering the Plaza de Cataluña again.

Peter leaned over from the row ahead. “Do you know the line of march?” he asked.

“Around the plaza once, and then down the Rambla a block or so to wait for the army.” Hans told him how the Palacio had heard the arrangements: the army was starting from mobilization headquarters, swinging up toward the plaza, and around to fall in with the Olympic people.

Peter spoke to the two bitches, walking with him and Olive, and they changed places with Helen and Hans. The four of them made a line now.

The street opened out into the square. Cars raced down, the guns finding them, the salutes up. A brand-new open car squealed, tires on paving, as the brakes jammed on beside them. It was marked, in white lettering that staggered from over the rear fender across the doors:
POPULAR FRONT
. It escorted them through the open square.

Many pushed back, crowding to the sidewalks to watch them. Cheer after cheer arose, gathering sound, rising to a peak at the sight of the Americans, fist up to greet the city, arms lifted with the mourning bands trembling. The line swung around the park in the center, swerved in a ripple of mass to avoid the body of a horse, head extended, lying forward from the long neck on the curb.

“Oh, Jesus,” Olive said, blankly. She was staring up.

Planes!

They followed her look. Not into the sky, but lower, at the upper-story windows of a corner building. At the window hung the long drooping American flag, extended on its pole.

The consulate.

Hanging from the window, crowding the window, the staff of the consulate, and at the front, answering to a cry of consul, the important face of the man fading into nothing, for, with the logic of a film, the action, the necessary move, his hand came up clenched. He held it there. The crowd shouted up to him. The team shook their flag joyously, madly. The American fists, strangely national, stamped with the eagle for the second, came up.

“Jesus,” said Olive, singing out the words, “I never thought I'd live to see the day!”

Peter laughed. The Americans, red-faced, were smiling, amazed and open. “What I'd give for a picture of that!” he swore, smacking his fist down on his open palm.

“Go ahead, take it,” Olive was pulling at his camera.

But at the window, they were turning, formally retreating now, as the line passed, as the black thin lines on the arms went into the Rambla.

                                 
LAS VÍCTIMAS DE LA TRAGEDIA

                                 
Partial list of identified

                                 
bodies and of those wounded

                                 
in the insurrection:

                                 
Grau Martinez, Juan Parisis, Celestino

                                 
Criado y Aguilar, Juan Pecus y Torelló,

                                 
Francisco Herrera y Santiago.

                                 
Antonio Agulló Santiago, Domingo Capuja,

                                 
Germinal Vidal, Ramón Jover Brufau,

                                 
Luciano Padua Jornet.

                                 
Pedro Ros Brugués, Juan Pragas Susagna,

                                 
Catalina Benedicto, Enrique Manzano

                                 
Carretero.

                                 
José Fernández, Diego Serrés Borrás,

                                 
Angel García, Benito Calvo, Francisco

                                 
Truñón, Jaime Teruel Puerto.

                                 
Florián Federico Pastor, José Villegas,

                                 
Juan Matas, Rafael Bellors, Abilio

                                 
Prado, Roque González, Enrique Fontbernat

                                 
y Verdaguer.

                                 
Captain Miguel Montesinos, Baltasar

                                 
Barrio, Modesto Moya, Pascual Asensio

                                 
Pradas, Vicente Picó Quiles, Antonio

                                 
Martínes González . . .

The Rambla was spick, the sun cleaned everything, the debris of burned cars and broken wood was scarcely seen behind the trees, the marching people; the white truce-flags hanging from the fine apartment houses were gay, twinkling against the fretted iron of balconies. Behind some of the flags the curious turned, watching the parade; three girls leaned from a high window, there a couple stood, the woman in the curve of the man's arm, standing against the window-frame.

The black-streaked arms came up, always saluting.

A man with a mourning band remained immobile at the march's edge, his eyes did not change, his arm stayed up, his head only nodded at the flags.

Two women ran behind the first line of watchers, following someone in the march—and here, behind them, a woman with a blond northern face fell in with the Norwegians.

They reached an intersection two blocks below the plaza. Already the first ranks were breaking at a signal. The march broke,
split about its leaders, and gathered, circular, around the tall Welshman, hoisted to the shoulders of the Irish weight-thrower. The teams grouped, waiting for a word, a slogan, and the people following them and lining the inner walks crowded through. To one side of the Welshman the poster glared:

BÉNÉDICTINE

El Mejor

de los licores

behind him, the five-lamp streetlight stood, freak lily, and the striped awnings, the pale house, the twinkling trees about his head, the
ABELLO
sign he leaned on.

Gathered at his knee, the remnants of the faces first seen at the Olympic Hotel were recognizable among the Catalans and the Spanish athletes pressed close: the purple lips of Toni, and the printer, the team manager in his straw hat; the beautiful Dutch-English boy with the darker, stockier others of the Dutch team; the Belgians, the man who had walked from Antwerp, lost in the Pyrenees, the thin scholastic face of the boy who had complained against the French; the Norwegians, latest arrived; the whole English team, long fair Derek, the captain, the Jewish sportgirl with her famished look; and the Americans, the Negro boxer, the blond head of Johnson, the dark partner, Johnny, the Negro girl; the German woman in the trench coat who had been in thirty years of revolution; the guide of the Olympic roof; a hero-seeming man with heavy light eyebrows who had stood in the hall of the Olympic as the foreigners came.

“Olympic athletes, friends of the
Olimpiada
!” the Welshman was saying. “The committee of the
Olimpiada
wishes to speak for us to the people of Barcelona.”

The crowd pushed closer. A Catalan was repeating to them, to applause.

He was explaining that the Olympics would be held in October, that the athletes were here to demonstrate with the victorious army of free Catalonia . . .

                                 
. . . Felisa Alonso, José Aragonés y

                                 
Sardá, Juan Altisench y Prats,

                                 
Rafael Aguilar y Padilia, Raul

                                 
Anglada y Taavedra, Gerónimo

                                 
Auret Sanvicente . . .

. . . that the French had left in the interests of the United Front, which now extended across the Pyrenees.

The clamor.

The waves of joy, black ribbons, signs, noise which overbore the ears with cheering.

And the Dutch boy up, to tell of hope, confidence in this war, wish from a neutral country for quick victory.

The English picture of a land at the point of wedge, the key of the arch, that would be swung to the side of Spain, because its people could swing it.

Gunboats, illusion, cheers.

The American, bringing greetings from the farthest off, wishes of trade union groups to a country now governed by those speaking for such groups. Victory. Peace. Solidarity.

And, here, the dark boy, pushing his hair back with a slow, meditative gesture, flinging the thrown-back hand up and out in an explosion of will, as if a ball could rise up to the sun, so thrown, crying for his country, among the bursts of love and backing, clusters of cheers,

listen, he cries,

for the Italian people,

who are with you and will show it at their first moment, their second of first speech again.

The crying applause, forever, tidal.

Sensation.

But far, now, far, the vibration, no sound, nothing in sight but the Italian boy pushing his hand back over his head and pitching it up to the sun,

but the vibration,

but the unheard clock,

the approach.

THEY WERE WAITING
through the speech now.

The approach.

They fell back to the sides, under the sparkle of trees, the lamps, until the twinkling white caught their eyes. Truce.

The white traffic markings down the streets drew boundaries here. The march stayed well within, its officers calling the pace, songs, snatches of songs, beginning to rise, the march slowing, dissipating off into the two linings of the road as the column was broken into two long lines within which the army might pass.

The car,
POPULAR FRONT
, slowed alongside and came to a stop.

Its driver shouldered up in his seat, twisted around to watch for the approach.

An armored car, a truck with heavy metal plates nailed hurriedly in place, marked large
C.N.T
., rolled past, grinding its gears, filled with uniformed men.

                                 
. . . Silverio Malo, Eloy Jiménez Martínez,

                                 
Francisco Arromolo Garrido, Francisco

                                 
González Arteche.

                                 
Francisco Caparrós García, Alfonso Colón

                                 
Queral, Juliana Vara Cerezuela, Blas

                                 
Zannuy Centeno, Jaime Roselló Aznar,

                                 
Agustín Tomás Navarro, José Cemalias,

                                 
Diego Caparrós, Gregorio Estorche, Buenaventura

                                 
Zofre Lozano y Juan Castellano.

                                 
El diputado del Parlamento de Cataluña

                                 
Amadeo Colldeforns y su padre . . .

Hans cried out, “Here they come!” he spoke swiftly, under his breath, to Helen, “I'll tell the other Germans that I'm here with them, and come right back.”

THEY COULD NOT
be seen, they could not yet be heard; it was the cry advancing with them, its front advancing as their front rank came up, that made them known: a great female animal cry, the victorious wail of spectators, the city acclaim of those on the edge and sympathetic, who still have throats to cheer, while those silent fighters pass between their lines.

And now the “Internationale” sprang up, strange, in foreign inflections, as the Norwegians began to sing, changing the wordfall, the sound, almost the song itself.

The Dutch, and the Hungarians; picked it up, unfamiliar, only the form carrying it through, the marching tune.

The French were missing.