Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  “I’ll let you know in a minute,” she called back, moving toward third.

  Her single suitcase was chalked immediately.

  She was at the end of a long line waiting in front of two scribbling officers.

  They stopped each passenger before the waiting room.

  As she moved up to them and stood before the long table, they looked up with an ironic detective look. They took her name and added it to the list.

  “Extraordinary!” said the Englishman.

  She passed into the waiting room.

  The French express was completely broken up. Its passengers were standing in little knots, waiting for the Spanish train for Barcelona.

  She recognized one or two of the other passengers, but many new ones had been added.

  There were two groups traveling on collective passports, wearing Olimpiada buttons, breaking into little athletic runs every now and then.

  Three black-cheeked, well-dressed men, talking tough Americans, stood at the turnstile. One had a copy of Variety under his arm, and grinned at her when she stared at the headlines.

  Peapack was getting on the train, four cars ahead, as it backed slowly into the station.

  It was a smaller train, of eight cars, three third-class, three first-class, one Pullman, and one dining-car.

  The teams and Spaniards scrambled up the third-class steps. Variety vanished in the direction of the Pullman.

  Peapack’s head came out of the first-class window, looking vaguely resentful.

  Helen was liking the Spaniards.

  She went up the third-class steps.

  The porter found a single seat on one of the wooden benches, and slung the bag overhead.

  With a great grinding, the train started.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Junction or terminus—here we alight

  —C. Day Lewis65

  The train had not yet reached its speed.

  The wooden compartment was a clatter of Catalan, the six dark women filled it, packed it tight with words. They had been sitting back against the boards when the train started, in the shadow of the station, pushing back to wait for Helen’s fat black pebbled-leather suitcase to be thrown on the rack, and the blue coat and large black hat over it; staring. The black and the hot sun crossed their faces then; drawing out of the station, the train pulled into the miraculous heat and light; the wheels turned. Drowned under their talk.

  All sound was wiped out.

  They were leaning forward, screaming in argument, friendly, shrill, at the top of the voice, yelling across Helen, filling the room with fists, round and shaking before each other’s faces.

  The fashionable one, sitting at the window, would lean back for a moment in her starched clothes, a quiver of earrings, sighing; and, renewed, lean shrieking into the center of the compartment.

  A large, placid young girl with a long jaw came to stand against the partition and grin; one of the little boys scrambled over the woman’s knees; two soldiers walked through the crowd in the aisle, in a blur of olive and black and yellow; the noise continued, whipping around the wooden box, a henhouse madness of argument.

  They stopped off a moment to look at Helen. She pulled out the guidebook, looking for phrases. One of the women smiled across to her. She smiled back as she looked up. The fashionable one thrust a provocative word into the face, flat and Celtic, of the peasant woman next to Helen; and the “Buenos días” was lost.

  They descended on the instigator. The earrings shook

  Pushing through the tangle of noise, Helen could get words, one or two word-roots came through the Catalan.

  The flat-faced older woman threw “monàrquica, monàrquica” at the fashionable one, who streamed wrath and contempt now.66

  All the others flared up, obscuring everything, compartments, windows, hills of shaken silver, dark points of cypress, little rivers. All the others punctuated, “comunista, república, anarquista,” sometimes, “socialista,” and often, with hatred, “Feixista.” It was possible to comb out some coherence; then the shrieking blotted out all but vehemence.

  Something quiet was moving down the aisle, bringing quiet. It reached the next compartment. Here it was, a guard taking tickets. Helen pulled out her book of tickets as he punched the women’s slips; they stared as he ruffled through the book to find the last page. “Barcelona?” the flat-faced one asked her as the guard passed through.

  “Sí. Olimpiada,” she answered.

  They all turned on her, opened, friendly, with O and greeting, questions, appraisals. They thought she was French.

  She showed them the letter from London to the committee chairman at Barcelona. The woman on the other side of her took it, nodding at the address, passing it across, all nodding, recognizing, friendly.

  “English?” they asked. She told them no; American.

  She could catch, in the rush of comment, the words for Olympic, American, committee, week. Everything else was lost. The barrier had sprung up immense in a moment; here were friends, and she could not reach over. She thumbed at the list of words.

  Lawyer, learn, leave, leave behind.

  “Left?” she asked, (straight on, strap, street, string) “strong in Spain?”

  They looked, puzzled, quieted. She passed the book. The flat-faced woman pushed it away, and the fashionable one put her hand out for it. She looked at the close columns, and shook her head, smiling, making no sense of it. She said something to the others, and they all smiled at Helen.

  “¡Viva Olimpiada!” said the fashionable one. “Visca Olimpíada!”

  The train was slowing, noon-hot, hotter than any noon, as its motion’s wind died, and it came to a stop.

  All the women got up.

  Children scrambling, clothes arranged, the pushing hips, the noise, the flourish of good byes.

  The compartment emptied in a moment.

  Helen moved to the window, and put her head out into the full sun, seeing in one broad view the pale town, lines of washing hung, dark clear hills, the six women walking up a little road, the children at their hands.

  She pulled her head in, struck by the blaze.

  The compartment was a thin crate of heat, tranced by the sun. The excitement of the Catalan women had kept it alive; now it became stale, filled with dense noon and silent.

  The train waited.

  Helen crossed again to the window, and went head and shoulders into the sun.

  The short blue man stood opposite the car, pointing a rifle at the steps, in readiness, alert bristling, dark.

  A gun!

  Guns, patrols! she thought.

  His rifle moved like a camera, covering the train panoramically. Soldiers! she thought, the soldiers on the train! Where are they?

  The six Catalan women were receding from the station moving down a small hillslope. One of them waved, minutely outlined against a wavering silver tree.

  Helen answered the woman. The gun swung round to her, pointed, hesitated, returned. Watching, panicky at a glance, she saw it aimed at two gun-barrels held by the soldiers, guarding the steps.

  They were very neat and amazing. Their musical-comedy uniforms, olive cloth, strapped with yellow leather, their reversed patent-leather hats, sideburns, chic.

  Their guns.

  At the front of the train, the engineer was leaning far out of his cab, gesturing at a group of armed men.

  The automobile horn blew ferociously, in a quick triple blast, One-Two-Three, up the road.

  From all the third-class windows, heads developed. A dark boy nodded at the man with the gun and smiled. He was pointing to his lapel.

  “¡Olimpiada Popular!” he shouted.

  The man shook his gun high over head in greeting.

  The boy’s dark head turned, looking up the train toward first class. Most of the heads were pulled in already. It was too hot.

  He swung around toward Helen, brilliant, dark and smiling; waving to her to come through, as she answered him, “¡Olimpiada!”

  He
was speaking, waving his arm pointing inside his compartment, describing. She could not understand what he was saying.

  The train whistle slit the valley in an atrocious blast.

  “¡Olimpiada!” repeated the boy, like a signature. He put his hand up, with the gesture of an acrobat who calls his audience to attention for the next turn.

  He shouted a word to the man holding the long gun, who replied with a come-on motion.

  Leaping down the steps, hurrying up these, he was in the next car, he was hurrying through, he was at the door.

  The boy was very gay, dark, his mouth was almost purple in the young, intense face, the smile was a dim archaic smile. Remembered, in Renaissance paintings, the purple curved lips, the youth, this grace intensity. His white shirt and light flannels were ordinary; his coat was marked with the button of the Games.

  “Are you Spanish?” he asked, in Spanish.

  She told him, repeating what she had told the women, feeling very strongly the oddness of repetition; for a moment, feeling the oddness of recognition in a dream.

  He clapped his forehead.

  Real, it was entirely real.

  “You don’t speak Spanish?” She nodded no. “French, perhaps? Oh, well, that’s fine then, that’s better yet, we’ll get on in French.” He sat down beside her.

  “You in the Olympics?” He was not much taller than she, he could not be much older. She felt self-conscious because she was not athletic, she was not to be in the Games, and it was stupid to be watching, always; the nerve in the leg pulled with a memory of past games, past sidelines, answers.

  “Just going to see them,” she said.

  “American!” the exclamation startled; a scream pointed it, the engine screaming up the track. “You came all this way?” He didn’t let her answer. “Is the American team on this train?”

  More repetition; she told him her position, her ride from London, the speed, the flight across France, asked him his country. “French?”

  “No, I’m Hungarian,” he said. “The team’s in the next car. Hungarians from Paris67—we’ve all lived there, in the colony there. Antifascist sport club. Vaterpolo.”

  She could not understand, even when he repeated. Va-ter-po-lo, he was saying, turning his purple mouth around the word. An American sportword.

  The train was wrenched suddenly, they fell forward abruptly from the edge of the bench, Helen’s black hat settled in place on the rack. They were laughing; she saw; the train began to move. They passed the armed man. He brandished his gun at their car, joyously. The flat pale houses ran by in a moment.

  “Oh,” she said. “Water-polo.”

  Outside, the long fields began to take the attention, stripes of blond wheat, purple (thistles, flowers?), walls with long sheaves, long branches laid against them, glimpses of sea that had no color but the light it held, the hot white light, and the little fair brooks that ran blue under the tracks, the pools.

  He was talking about swimming, about American athletes, American men who lived with their feet up on desks, high buildings, the Empire State, movies, would many Americans be at the Games, how was the antifascist movement in the United States, the union movement, the students’ movement. His father, a jeweler in Budapest, had lived in Brooklyn for seven years while he stayed in Hungary, had taken out citizenship papers, did she know Brooklyn? What games did she like best? Diving, was diving like the American elevators he had heard so much about (his dark mouth curling, laughing over all the words, how do you pronounce Hollywood?), did Americans get news more quickly than other people, had she heard the news about Africa that they heard at the border, a revolt of troops in Morocco, something to do with generals, all very vague, but when they had stopped at Port Bou yesterday to go swimming, the Hungarian team had heard stories, the Spaniards seemed to know all about the revolt. But the papers carried small paragraphs about that piece of news, if they mentioned it at all.

  Revolt in Morocco!68

  But all quiet in Barcelona.

  All quiet in Spain.

  Had she seen the revolutionary slogans on the train? Chalked on the train?

  What slogans?

  THE TRAIN STOPPED for the first time. Helen got up, crossed a man in a tight, flashy suit who was pushing into the compartment, and went on to the platform.

  In big, white-faced scrawl on the red, the words stood: Viva República España—Viva República Catalunya.

  Guns.

  She climbed the next car, dodged through the thick groups in the aisles, crossed over into first as the train got in motion again.

  The windows here were larger, the benches were upholstered in pale gray, the white faces turned without interest to the windows were clear and stony against the lace rests. One to a compartment, two here, a group of four, an empty room. She was suddenly completely class-conscious about the fact of the split train, the noise and herding of the wooden cars, the guns. Slogans.

  Here, Peapack.

  The woman rose as Helen rolled back the door. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she was saying, beginning another of her long, trickling speeches. “I was getting so sick of being in here by myself, watching those fields. It makes me miss my husband. I never thought we’d be separated on this trip; but he’ll be waiting for me in Berlin, and I’m to wire him as soon as we get into Barcelona. You’d like him; he’s good to talk to, and he always knows people, where he is. He gets things done, too. Wouldn’t he be sore to be on a train that takes so long! We must be stopping at every little way-station. I thought this was an express!” She opened her pocketbook, and felt about in it for a lace-edged handkerchief. “And it’s so hot . . . I get awfully thirsty in this heat. I’ve just been up to the diner, and it’s not open; it closed just as I got there. There are a couple of Americans; they were drinking coffee. And that young couple, with the beautiful Spanish-looking woman. You know, the ones in the second dinner last night. She is beautiful, that woman, even if she’s such a snob. Wouldn’t say a word!”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “Oh, just something about the weather. But she wasn’t very cordial. Have you met anybody?”

  Helen told her about the crowd. And the Hungarian.

  “I forgot,” said Peapack, “of course, your Games. You probably have to see those people. But I wish you’d move in here. Nobody would mind, and I hate sitting alone when you could be here. Why don’t you go back and get your suitcase?”

  The suburban encroachments, Helen thought. Two hours more of it! It seemed foolish, surrounded by another race. But she said she would go and see about moving her things up.

  “You’d better keep an eye on your suitcase, anyway,” Peapack warned her. “How could you leave it like that, even to come up here?”

  THE COMPARTMENT WAS full again when she returned, except for her place at the window. The Hungarian boy was talking to the man she had passed on the way out, who was jammed in between the boy and the family with a wicker basket. On the other bench, two young men in white were explaining something to two girls, who shook their heads quietly, silenced by their failure to understand what the men were saying. The four young people had the look of picnics and tennis-parties, and the family across, centered in the old woman, dressed in black, stared openly at their smartness.

  The two soldiers were standing in the aisle just outside.

  As Helen crossed their knees, the Hungarian boy started to introduce her to his friend. The man’s suit creased sharply over his stomach and sides; his legs burst roundly out from the cheap cloth, every muscle detailed and full. He might be a salesman . . .

  “This is our manager,” the boy was saying. “He’s got the whole team on his hands, and what a team, mon copain, yes?”

  The man cut him short, his hand up in modesty. “Toni’s been telling me about you, mademoiselle,” he said. “Let’s all have dinner together this evening, and see a bit of Barcelona.”

  “Toni thought we might look for headquarters together when we arrived,” Helen told him.


  “We won’t have to look,” the manager interrupted, grinning broadly, and pushing his straw hat back on his head. “They’ll be down at the station to welcome us. And tonight is the torchlight procession. They’ll be there with banners!” he said, sparkling. He wiped his forehead.

  “I wonder about the American team . . .” Helen thought, fine; everything is arranged.

  “Oh, they’ve gone through, they’ve been there three days. I saw them in Paris early this week, and they were just about to leave,” the manager told her.

  The train was slowing again.

  It was drawing to a full stop.

  “We must be coming to a station,” the manager said, getting up. He stumbled over the four young people. “I’d better be getting back to the team. No hurry, Toni.” He wiped his forehead again.

  “He’s a wonderful fellow,” Toni looked after him. “Goes everywhere. I saw him in Paris last spring, and we mentioned the Games. He agreed to be manager, and left that night for Venice. Three weeks ago, when we all had given up—including his brother, who’s a printer by trade; you’ll meet him with the team—he turned up at dinner—same café, same suit, same dinner—he’d just come back from Marseilles, and were we in training?” He saw she wasn’t listening. The young man in white at the other window was leaning out, looking down the tracks.

  They were not stopping at a station. There was only a grade crossing, guarded by a small boy and a dog with a signal-flag in his mouth; but two armed men climbed up beside the engineer before the train started again.

  They were reaching a walled city. Pale yellow battlements, the high pale towers of Gerona stood delicately up over the deep hills. And at every crossing an armed peasant held his gun up.

  With the familiar grinding, the train stopped at the station platform, and the four young people got off.

  The family moved over to the bench opposite, and the two soldiers came in and sat down, facing each other, at the end.

  Next to the window, the old woman with the wicker basket, all in careful rusty black, pulled out some almonds and handed them to the young boy. He looked about twelve years old, tall and finely made, his iodine-colored eyes startling behind the clear-oil yellow of his skin, and his fair hair, cropped short and stiff as a blond field. He kept looking for approval to the dark, stout man sitting between them, whose fleshy, deep-grooved face could not have been farther removed from his own. The furrows ran vertically and double between his eyebrows and from his fleshy nostrils around the full, kind mouth. Only the arched nose was a point of resemblance and the smooth curve of his eyebrows, which was identical over the grandmother eyes of the old woman.