Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  “I wonder if they speak French,” Toni whispered. “I wish I knew how far we are from the city.”

  “It would be fine if they did. We could find out if they are olive-trees, and why the slogans are up.”

  The train was edging along now, never reaching its speed, stopping at every crossing.

  “There’s a castle!” cried Toni.

  GRANOLLERS WAS PAST, and the train hardly moved. The heat hooked on to every board, it seemed, rippling over the window-panes, seizing cloth and flesh.

  “I really ought to go back to see the American woman,” Helen said, struggling to rise through the torpor, through the weight of air.

  “Let her wait, if she’s what you say,” Toni objected, smiling his purple smile, looking at her sidelong. “And we must be almost there, anyway; we’ve been riding almost three hours.”

  The old woman spoke, suddenly with a flash, speaking French. “We’re not more than halfway between the frontier and Barcelona.” Helen and Toni leaned forward together; they could speak, here was a break made!

  “But it’s a three-hour ride!” Toni exclaimed.

  “Yes?” The old woman’s humor was noiseless and gentle, her wrinkled, lovely face very kind. The Sibylline face, grandmother. The young boy looked a question at her.

  “We’ve never been here before,” Helen said, feeling like a little child before the old woman.

  “We live there,” she answered. “I’ve just been with the grandson to spend a week on the coast, and my son here just came to take us home.” The boy said something in Catalan to his grandmother.

  “Yes,” she answered, and turned again to them. “It’s a beautiful coast. Just over those hills—I wish we could see it from the train.”

  They followed her finger as she pointed. The hills, the fierce hills, on either side.

  “We’re going in for the Olimpiada,” Toni explained.

  The man began talking then, in French with a strong Spanish accent. “Then you won’t be like the tourists at the beach about the rumors,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell us something about Morocco.” The soldiers looked over sharply. He sat back. “I suppose it’s all rumors,” he said.

  “Better not to say anything,” the old woman spoke slowly, and laid her hand on his arm. “Some on one side, some on the other.” She turned to Helen. “I know about rumors,” she told her, nodding. “First in France, where I come from, and then for forty-eight years here in Spain. And the rev—” she stopped short.

  Helen opened her pocketbook, and took out the cigarette case which she had filled in London the morning before. She offered one to the large son, who looked at the gold stamp before he took it. The soldiers waved their hands, grinning. One was young, with tender sideburns, and kept glancing at the other, whose green eyes and creased cheeks reassured him. He wanted a cigarette.

  “English cigarettes,” the father told them.

  “Ah, English,” said the soldier in authority, and bent his head with the suggestion of a bow, accepting. The other one took his, and they lit them; after a second they took their guns and left the compartment. They could be heard whistling near the end of the car.

  “Better not to talk at all before soldiers,” the father echoed the old woman. “But my mother has strong ideas.”

  “Only about order,” she said. “The revolutions here bring a new government in, and we have order for four months, and then we have another revolution.”

  “Like Mexico,” Helen put in.

  “In some ways like Mexico,” said the grandmother. “The church here!” She threw her head back. “Just let there be a revolution that will hold what it does for a long time and prove itself.” The eyes grew brilliant in her face, enlarged in the small skull, whose skin was still soft, like fruit which was wrinkled only in certain places. “The government changed last night,” she informed them. “With too much—” she looked at her son.

  “Yes,” he said. “Too much right wing to it. And I hear another government went in this morning. We’ll know when we get to Barcelona,” he said. A trail of sweat started down his temple. “In the meantime, it’s fine country, isn’t it?”

  “I wish I knew what cork-trees look like,” Helen said illogically, and in English, forgetting language. Toni raised his eyebrows. She started to repeat in French. She had lost the word for cork. “What goes in the neck of the bottle,” she described. Toni was still blank. The heavy man nodded.

  “I know, certainly,” he said. “Vino.”

  The illustration was easy. “Oh that,” the man shook with laughter, “not so important, perhaps. There they are, leaning against the house there, the branches of cork, waiting to be cut.” He pointed, but across the line of his finger stood the crossroads figure, the man with the gun.

  THE TRAIN WAS stopping now every few minutes, at roads or at arbitrary points, where nothing but a near house broke the fields. They kept their heads out the window, Helen on one side, the young boy at the other, half in his grandmother’s lap.

  They were reaching a station platform, talking about Madrid, the Scottsboro case,69 New York skyscrapers, the Berlin Olympics, the tawny cliffs of the coast just beyond their vision, the slow trains traditional to Spain. Their talk slowed as the train slowed. The train stopped.

  A whistle-blast shot with finality through the cars.

  There was some disturbance in the first-class section. Helen started through again to Peapack. “I’ll leave the suitcase,” she told Toni.

  “You’d better,” he said. “We must be almost in. What town is this?” He asked the heavy man.

  “It must be Moncada,” he said. The old woman nodded.

  “Yes, Moncada. A very small town,” she told Helen.

  “It’s a pity we can’t see the shore from this train. I was so sorry to leave the sea.”

  Her son ran his hand over his cheek, brushing the streak of sweat down the dark stubble. The boy watched everything he did very closely, his face flickered at every action. He moved a little closer to the man as the train-whistle yelled again.

  “It’s too bad they had to come home so soon,” the man said, of his mother and son. “They were spending the vacation with so much pleasure. It’s very beautiful all along here—” he pointed out at nothing but the line of hills—“Costa Brava, it’s called: Savage Coast.”

  “Savage Coast!” Toni repeated.

  The noise in first class was growing louder. The old woman sat listening, her lined face turning intent and critical. “Moncada,” she whispered to herself.

  Helen started up the aisle.

  THE ENTRANCE TO first class was crowded shut by tourists. She shouldered past the anxious surprised faces, and came to the center of the group.

  A girl in a cotton dress stood at the door of one of the compartments with her back to the aisle and to the two armed boys who followed her, holding their carbines ready. She was talking to three men who sat with their hands in the air. The girl frowned at them, explaining; but they were terrified, and would not listen.

  The fever sense of dream, dream unreal, spoke in her head. Dream, she thought, as if she had said it aloud; and, acting as she would in a dream, said “Excuse me” to the first boy, and started to push by his gun. He brought it up chest-high, barring her way, and spoke a word to the girl. She swung around. Her face was broad, active, angry.

  “Fotografies?” she demanded.

  A man behind Helen muttered in rapid French. “Ils détruisent des photographies,” he said. “Répondez non.”

  “Nada,” answered Helen. And, lamely, “tercera.”

  The girl’s face cleared. She turned back to the three tourists. “Aparat fotogràfic?” He motioned to one of the boys. As he went forward to open the suitcase, Helen passed. She saw him, with the tail of her eye: he was thumbing through the baggage, while the girl held his gun.

  Peapack sat, alone and shaking, in the next compartment, her face gone to pudding. The laxness in her flesh had softened still further with fear; the white sk
in, which had been groomed and creamy when she got on the train at Paris, was dismal, floury now; her voice shook with an incongruous shiver, menaced and cold in the great heat.

  “The bandits!” she said. “They’re raiding the train!”

  Helen went to her, and put her hand on the woman’s soft, cowering arm. Where have I seen a sheep, she wondered, sick and afraid? For herself, she thought; should I be afraid? Examining. There was a sweep of sensation, in the heat, the new country, the peculiar danger, but no fear. Not now.

  “Did they bother you?” she asked the woman, touching her arm with an effort, trying to remove the pasty violet-white look from her. “Did they search here?”

  The woman moved out of her corner with a soft shuffle of her hips, pulling away from a black box behind her. She drew back her lips in a pale grin of pride. “An Englishman came running through just before them,” she said, “the coach was in an uproar. I put my movie camera here, and sat against it. But they went through my suitcase.”

  “Well, then,” said Helen, “put it away. Put it in your suitcase, and change some clothes to the case . . .”

  “The Reds!” Peapack was going on. “They must be Reds, violating property that way. I wish to God my husband could be here now, he’d put an end to that sort of thing. Searching innocent people, stealing cameras.”

  “They didn’t take anything, did they?” asked Helen.

  “They might have,” Peapack retorted, “anything might happen if they’re going through the train. Listen to that!”

  There was a noise of voices on the platform outside. It was the first time they had realized they were in a station. Helen put her head out of the window, and saw the concrete walk, lined with rows of yellow blossoming trees, the brick station house, the wall around the restrooms marked “Caballeros” and “Señoras.” At the end of the coach a few passengers grouped around the searchers. The girl was holding a large camera in her hands, snapping back the hinged flap, and unloading film. She handed the exposed strip to one of the armed boys, clamped the lid into place, and gave the camera back to its owner, a tall German-looking man. He nodded to the girl formally as he took the black case.

  “Why in the world should they do a thing like that?” Peapack whined, sinking back on the gray seat. “I’m so upset; are you upset, Helen?” she started. “I wish you didn’t look so calm; I take things so hard. We’ve got to stick together, that’s all; and we’ve got to find the other Americans on the train. I know there are some, I told you, you know, about the diner; but I think they’re traveling third—and you’ve got to move in here with me; I can’t stand it if things like this happen. It’s only for another hour; when we get to Barcelona, Felipe can take care of us, if there’s any trouble.”

  “Why don’t you come to third, then?” Helen was thinking of Toni and his manager; they would certainly be better than any newspaperman who might be Peapack’s friend.

  “But my suitcase! I’ve got five suitcases, and who’s going to carry them for me? No, you go back, and bring yours here . . . Look,” said Peapack, “just look at the pictures of the children once more.” Her fingers were trembling at the stiff lock on the rawhide suitcase, at the expensive shirring of the pocket, at the leather case. She was twisting the halftones of the knobby children. She showed Helen the pictures she had brought out last night, rushing through France; the boy in the garden, his infantile knees and stiff hair, the little girl’s starched dress standing wide about her legs, making her look narrow and pathetic. “Do go back,” said Peapack; “get your things and bring them in; I can’t stand these stops.”

  ALL THE PASSENGERS in third were filling the aisle now, crowding out the open windows, talking to the groups whose heads could be seen, banked thick against the sides of the train, standing on both sides of the station platform. Helen pushed back through the swarming cars, through the holiday knots, laughter, gossip. An arm reached out and seized her wrist. It was the tight-skinned Hungarian, the manager.

  “Have you heard the rumors?” he shouted, over the laughter and talk. “All sorts of rumors, already. The English are saying that the Communists have bombed the tracks and that we can’t go farther; and I heard the Frenchman say that the engineer has gone on strike, and won’t move the train until he gets some kind of extravagant promise.” He fanned himself with the straw hat. “But come in and meet our team, anyway.” The Hungarians were standing, politeness and warmth ran around their compartment. The fine-faced printer was introduced. “It looks like something real,” he said. “But obviously nobody knows what. You probably ought to find the other Americans.”

  “I know one of them,” said Helen. “I wish you’d go down and reassure her. She’s on her way to the bullfights, and she turned into jelly when they searched the train.”

  “They were absolutely correct to search the train,” the printer answered. “They destroyed some snapshots we were taking, too. Last spring, they said, the Fascists caught a lot of photographs of armed civilians, and anyone whose face was clear got his. They’re not taking any chances.”

  “But if you’ve been talking with them—” Helen cried, her face darkening with excitement. “What do they say is happening?”

  “They only said that,” the printer told her. He was a young student, from his look, his earnest clear glance, but the marks about his mouth and his darkened, blunt fingers showed how long he had spent at work; he looked straightforward at Helen now, obviously telling all he knew. “They were ordered to go through the train; for all they knew, the girl said, it’s just an examination, and we’ll go right on through to Barcelona.”

  “Yes, certainly,” the manager put in. “They’re waiting for us now in Barcelona; at the station!”

  “I’ll go through and tell Toni,” said Helen.

  In the compartment, the heavy man was taking down a bundle from the rack. Toni looked up quickly as Helen came in. “What’s up?” he asked, flashing, his face concentrating.

  “Did they search the car?”

  “Oh, they came through,” said the grandmother, “but they wouldn’t bother us in third; what would we be doing with cameras? We’re not tourists, to take pictures of our countrymen, if they’re having troubles.” She smiled very gently at Helen; “Will you have some sausage with us?” she invited.

  “I have a camera in the suitcase,” Helen said.

  “All right, let it stay there,” the grandmother stopped her; “you haven’t been making a fool of yourself, you’re all right.” She was opening the bundle that her son gave her, opening layers and layers of newspaper.

  “What’s up Helen?” Toni was repeating.

  “Your team doesn’t know, and they’ve been speaking to that girl—she’s certainly been scaring the people in first.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the grandmother. “Such people get scared if anyone asks them a question.”

  “The soldiers left the train the minute we stopped here,” her son remarked. “They’re not likely to show up again, either.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Helen. “Have they run away?”

  “You can’t tell about soldiers,” answered the grandmother. “All the generals are the wealthy, here, and all the soldiers belong to the generals. And the generals in Spain are with the church, for the money, for power, for keeping their heel on the land.”

  “They can do it too,” interrupted her son, bitterly. “Seventy-five million pesetas to the church a year from the government, and if I have two chickens, I am taxed; and an army that belongs to the officers, not to the state! And this Civil Guard, a handful, what good is that to the government, even when it is Left?” He had his open hand out, shaking; the young boy was looking at it. The father caught his eye. “What place is that to bring a boy into?” he spoke the words out bitterly, his hand still held out, shaking. His mother looked at him with a narrowed, proud look of knowledge, and held her hand out, too.

  “Give me a knife to cut the sausage,” she said.

  He quieted. The
y looked at one another.

  Toni broke it. “Let’s eat in town,” he said. “I’ll get the team, and we’ll find something.”

  “No, you cannot,” said the grandmother. “We have sausage, and almonds, and wine. It is nothing. Stay with us.”

  Her son was holding the sausage in the crook of his elbow, sawing at it with his knife, saying nothing, sawing angrily at the meat. He looked up. “Yes, stay,” he said to them, and smiled. “We have enough for all.”

  “I’ll get a cup for the wine,” Toni sprang up, and was going down the train. “Thank you!”

  “Let me get something, too,” Helen said. “Fruit—would you like fruit?” The young boy’s face flickered; he knew a few words of French.

  “Oh, we have a great deal,” said the grandmother.

  “Fruit would be nice,” the big man told her. “And they’ll very likely come through with bread. And when your husband brings the cup—”

  “Oh, no,” Helen shook her head quickly. “He’s not my husband. He’s with the Hungarian team . . .”

  “Then you’d better stay with us,” said the grandmother, with her kind voice of age and patience. “We may go stay in the town.”

  “The town!” Helen echoed vaguely. She looked out the window. The platform was covered now with townspeople, walking idly up and down, staring in through the large windows, as if the train were some tremendous sideshow. She could see a blond pregnant woman going slowly through the crowd, little boys in twos and threes, crowding into the yellow trees, dodging under the train-wheels, running up and through the train-doors, whistling; the men, the boys with bicycles, the grave, white-haired man sitting at the station bench, the gray-haired official with a black band in his coat lapel; the whole town, promenading, with a strange intense sound of talk in the air. Not the relaxed gossip of fairgrounds, but breaths of danger, importance, secrecy.