Savage Coast (43 page)

Rattle of machine guns, in the town, all night.

The soldiers reappeared, as loyal troops. Civil Guard, for the
government, patrolling the train, their yellow straps shining dark in the light from the platform.

In the morning a car came—not for the Hollywood men, who are shouting by now, but for the little Spanish doctor, who is needed in Barcelona. It goes off in that direction, the purple-faced director staring.

Now a curious panic begins on the train. Rumor has followed rumor, and now we hear that the looting has begun. “Rape,” says one of the Rodney Hudson blondes, and the shoe salesman comforts her.

Down the street of houses belonging to absentee landlords, and facing the train, a methodical process, perfectly visible to the passengers. A group of young men—rather like the young men who went off in an open truck the first night to fight in Barcelona, no two firearms alike—go from door to door. Systematically, one opens the big heavy door with its black knocker in the shape of an iron hand dropped to sound on the door. If his key does not work, he forces the lock. Two young men go in, and after a moment, they can be seen with two or three religious prints and a hunting rifle and a pistol, perhaps. This goes on; the scene repeats. Suddenly, a boy of five or so ducks under the arm of the leader and disappears for a minute. Still running, he comes out with a heap of towels and cuts down the street. We all watch. “Spanish looting,” says Ernie.

Halfway down the block, his mother catches him, walks in the sight of all to the young leader, returns the towels and makes her short speech.

Far off, among the olive trees on the hill, a man can be seen. He is running too. Shouts hurrah on the slopes. A plane flies far to one side, but one pulls one's head in. Everything is visible to the naked eyes, one feels.

At this moment the trucks arrive. There are two of them, open, with railings and stakes. They are for the teams and for anyone else who wants to try the ride. A car precedes them, a Communist
Party car. The Americans wonder about being saved by the Communist Party, each with his own feelings before that prospect. Two American school teachers, who have been reading pamphlets on
The Problems of the Spanish Revolution
. The two teams; Otto and I; Ernie and Rose; some of the others in the second truck. There is actually a united front now in Catalonia, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, all backing the government.

The valises are set up around the sides of the truck for fortification. The Swiss team amazes the town with a burst of yodeling, part of our thanks. A machine-gun truck goes down the road; we are to follow in two minutes.

Sudden spasm of nerves and laughing. Ernie, in the voice of Groucho Marx—“Of course they know this means war!” A tiny boy in his shirt, holding his penis. Ernie—“Vive le sport!” And the truck starts off to Barcelona.

THE ROAD HAS
fortifications, thrown-up bales of hay, later there are barricades of paving stones flying the red flag for unity. There are machine-gun nests, dead horses, dead mules, terrible spots that I cannot identify at several crossroads. A Ford sign on the way into the city.

As we reach Barcelona, the white flags are at all windows—towels, sheets, tablecloths hung over the windowsills for peace. Shooting is heard again and again—not cannons or machine guns (except once), but guns. My teeth feel the shots, and everything else, too; a nerve in my leg jumps. Ahead of us, a man falls, and our truck swerves and turns, taking a detour as some street-corner battle opens.

We are taking another road to the Hotel Olympic—immense building requisitioned for the athletes.

In the streets, there are no cars that are not armed and painted with initials or titles.
VISCA
(that's Viva)
CATALUNYA
.

Overturned cars, dead animals, coils and spires of smoke rising
from burning churches. The coils of color climbing the architectural heart of the city, Gaudí's marvelous church, untouched by harm. The Chinese Quarter, money-set.

FROM THE ROOF
of the hotel, the city is laid out before you, the wide avenues to the port, the Rambla, and there Columbus on a gilded ball and the water beyond. The heights over the city, Tibidabo, are very beautiful, the squares are illuminated, and the bullring, Monumental y Arena across the way, still a perfect place for snipers.

Look down, you can see the teams arriving still. Cars are overturned, here in the Plaza España, one of the two centers of the fighting. Guards stream into the building, and girls with rifles take their places in the cars.

In the dark, we set out for dinner at the stadium, with M. de Paiche (whose stomach has been badly upset by the diet of beans and soda) and his secretary. The windshield of the car we drive in is spangled by bullets, and there is blood on the cushion behind me. I sit upright; but the car goes up a winding road, and I can't help learning back.

Two thousand foreigners, thrown on the city as civil war began, are to be lodged and fed here.

The stadium is filled with athletes and stranded nationals. We eat beans; they are delicious. News goes around. We meet the English team, and at last the American team. Block parties have been held for months, and tryouts at Randall's Island—and here they are: Dr. Smith and George Gordon Battle in charge, and Al Chakin, boxing and wrestling; Irving Jenkins, boxing; Frank Payton, Eddie Kraus, Dorothy Tucker, Harry Engle, Myron Dickes, all track; Bernie Danchik, gymnast; Julian Raul, cycling; Charles Burley, William Chamberlain and Frank Adams Hanson.

In the meetings that night, the decisions are made to leave—the French, whose M. de Paiche says, “We have much to learn from
Spain”—and many others, to take the burden of thousands (some say twenty thousand) of foreigners off the government at this crucial and bloody moment. The French leave the next day on the
Chellé
and
Djeube
; we all see them off, waving from the dock. Even the gypsies, in red and pink, salute with clenched fists up. At the last moment, as on the deck the arms all rise together, the ship we watch appears to lift up on the sea.

The American and British athletes decide to stay, and ask us to come with them, to clear the Olympic building of as many people as possibly can go. The British are wonderful, brave, droll—they are feeling particularly humiliated, for they have had to lie down on the tennis courts while they were shot at—
lie down on the courts
! We go with them into the narrow streets, with barricades thrown breast high, paving torn up, the crowds in lyric late nighttime Catalan—to the Hotel Madrid in the Calle de Boqueria. Here, on the street, in the hotel and the two restaurants, the Condal and our own, we have the next days. We send our cables; the Telefònica, run by American business, is proud of a continued service.

At the American consulate, Drew Franklin tells us that Companys has asked him to supervise our leaving. There is no safe conduct, the consul tells us, don't try to go to the border by car. An art professor and a correspondent are there; the men should leave off their jackets, the women should not wear jewelry—“They will think you are proletarians.” The hysterical reports have begun to register. Our three Hollywood men have reached the frontier, and have told reporters that they saw wild scenes of looting from the train, that they suffered deprivations and saw horrors.

Some of the athletes are talking of joining the fighting forces, which now include many members of the Assault Troops in their blue uniforms, the Civil Guard, and men and women who a week ago had been civilians.

We walk, going back always to the Madrid, talking with Otto, with the English athletes, smoking
Bisontes
(the Spanish relative of
Camels) and drinking wine. There was a moment outside a house in Moncada, when they taught me the double-spouted drinking; I learned laughing how to bite off the free-pouring drink. My practice drink was water, not wine, and they were shooting at the house— real practice conditions. We went in the house, and I learned. Now we drank from glasses, and from the pouring too; we came to our decisions in these days. It cleared and deepened between us; it was certain for Otto. He had found his chance to fight fascism, and a profound quiet, amounting to joy, was there; it was the German chance, in or out of Germany.

We talked with the athletes about what might happen. It was a matter of doing what we did
entire
, with our whole selves committed. What about King Edward, said the English. There was a rumor that something was happening so that his life was at last coherent, politically and erotically; it had something to do with the American woman, Mrs. Simpson, but there was a lot more besides.

Who would help the government and the people of Spain against the generals and the officers, the Fascist revolt backed by Germany and Italy? The checks and guns had been found in the Fascist strongholds. News of all this was published in the papers, which were coming out whole after the first days in which front-page stories were torn out, and sometimes hardly anything but the lists of the dead and wounded appeared. The death of the dancer La Argentina, whom I had loved to watch, was noted in a tiny paragraph.

But who would help? Not England, we thought. The English interests in cork, wine, many valuables, were visible. Her leaders liked Mussolini—“gentle,” Churchill called him—and thought Hitler would improve. But the French were naturally and politically friendly. And America would surely be the friend of the Republic. “We can count on you,” the poet Aribau had said.

The army begins to go. “A Zaragoza,” is the word.

The city is under martial law. We are called to a meeting of the
Olympic people remaining, in a smaller square. The Norwegian speaks, briefly, and the Italian representative of his team. The Catalan speaks, in the language that is beginning to break open to us, glints like French, flashes like Spanish:

“This is what the Games stand for,” not only to work against what is about to happen in Berlin, what is happening in Germany and through Hitler, but the true feelings of the Games, their finality:
‘Amor i fraternitat entre els homes de tot el món i de totes les races
.'”

And Martín, the organizer of the Games, has the last word. He speaks to us as foreigners, as ourselves. He is speaking to me directly, at least that is how I hear his open words:

“The athletes came to attend the People's Olympiad, but have been privileged to stay to see the beautiful and great victory of the people in Catalonia and Spain.

“You have come for the Games, but you have remained for the greater Front, in battle and in triumph.

“Now you will leave, you will go to your own countries, but you will carry to them . . . the tense sunlit square, Martín about to start for Saragossa, the people in the streets, the train, the teams, the curious new loving friendship, the song of the
Jocs
:

No és per odi, no és per guerra

Que venim a lliutar de cada terra

“. . . you will carry to your own countries, some of them still oppressed and under fascism and military terror, to the working people of the world, the story of what you see now in Spain.”

Afterword

Now, a lifetime later, I think of all that followed. The British team had invited us to go out with them, but when the ship—
H.M.S. London
—arrived “from Gib,” her officers would allow only British to board. So the Belgians, saying they were grateful for what the Americans had done to help them during World War I, took us on
the
Ciudad de Ibiza
, taking almost twice the number she was supposed to carry.

The Catalan government told us we were welcome to stay, the men if they would fight, the women if we had experience in nursing or child care. I had none of that; work in a bookshop, in a theatre office, proofreading the Mu books, research (if that was what it was), and a first book of poems.

Otto, on the dock, looked deep into me. “You will do what you can in America,” he said, “and I in Spain.” He smiled, with his own happiness. He was not going to run in the Games. He had joined the militia, and he was going off to Saragossa. . . . We spoke of my coming back to Spain, but it was not very real. These days were all we could look at. “Gifts of the revolution,” he said. He had been waiting to fight against fascism since Hitler came to power.

I waved to him from the deck. Ernie and Rose were there, the American team, the Belgians—the man who had walked over the Pyrenees—and the Hungarian team from France. The ship pulled away from the harbor, with Columbus standing on his black pillar.

All night toward France. We stayed on the dark crowded deck and talked. The Hungarian printer from Paris said to me, “And in all this—where is the place for poetry?”

“Ladis,” I answered, “I know some of it now, but it will take me a lifetime to find it.” We talked all night. With the morning light we saw the Cape of Agde, and then went into the harbor of Sète, to the canal, all at peace, and the houses with their red tile roofs and yellow deep cadmium awnings, and the swallows flying.

They took us in, and stamped our papers with police passes. There was dancing in the streets that night; I danced with Jo Gasco, who later left his shop and fought in Spain for six months of every year.

There were rumors that the People's Olympics might be held in October.

Sète produces vermouth and Valéry. It was at peace, a curious
distant peace. I rented a little kayak and, after I paddled about two hundred yards out, let it drift and cried at last. I did not want to go on, but they came for me, and I paddled to the
plage.

A week later, at the Berlin Olympics, Hitler refused to recognize the victory of Jesse Owens, the black American who won the hundred-meter race. The Berlin officials said the Negro had “a following wind” that helped him. He won three other events, however.

Everybody knows who won the war in Spain.

I COULD NOT
get back; nobody would send me. You had to belong to a party or an organization or something, or have a press card. Nobody would give me a press card.