Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  “—small sum collected on the train, for the care of the wounded and mutilated in today’s battle—”

  “Oh, no,” said Helen. “If we can’t sympathize, we can at least give them money for their own uses.”

  “OK” said Peter. “Collected on the train for the town to use as it sees fit.”

  “Yes,” said the school teachers. “That’s it, if anyone will sign it.”

  “No signatures,” the Swiss declared, waving his hand before his marked face.

  “OK. What’ll we do, go right through?”

  “Well, it should wait until morning, we ought to give it as we pull out,” said the school teacher.

  Helen said, “We can give it then, if you want, but we ought to see how the train feels about it now.”

  “Yes,” said Olive. “You go with Peter, Helen.” The school teacher agreed.

  “We’ll report to the rest of this committee on the way back,” said Helen. Peter interrupted. “We’ll start the collection here.”

  The Swiss drew out his wallet, thumbed through it, and laid a fifty-peseta note in Peter’s beret.

  They were startled. “Oh, no,” said Peter, flustered.

  “Never mind.” The Swiss’s face did not move.

  “THE SWISS IS good,” said Helen, “He gets more and more like the lion for the Swiss Guards.”

  “He does!” said Peter. “But those two bitches are beginning to get me.

  “I don’t know,” said Helen. “The picture of the green one reading Problems of the Spanish Revolution was worth a lot of annoyance. How do you want to do this?” She was very glad of the activity.

  “Let’s split them for language, and then you take men and I’ll take women. I’m all right at meetings; I’m not sure about trains.” He laughed.

  There were three men in the next compartment, busy reading Gringoire.* Helen tried in French. They talked among themselves a minute, and Peter shook his beret. One of them slapped down two duros.

  “That’s as close to fascism as we can afford to get,” said Peter, outside.

  “Oh, no,” said Helen. “You’ve been talking to leftists. They’ll go on reading Gringoire, but they’re human.”

  “You’ve been in England,” Peter retorted.

  “Let’s ask the English,” she said suddenly. “They are decent, and they’ve got the League of Nations man with them.”

  The Belgian woman was just leaving the English compartment.

  “I’m better now,” she answered Helen. “I’ll be all right, I think. It’s only the big guns.” She hurried down the train, blowing her nose softly.

  Peter opened the door and leaned against it. The Spaniard’s long face looked up mildly. “Good evening?” His graying sideburns added meekness and courtesy to his expression.

  “We have a letter to the town, from the train—” Peter began.

  “Yes, we hope’d you’d translate it for us, if you approve. We’re going through the train with it.”

  “Through the train!” repeated Drew.

  The lady from South America smiled at Helen. “Perfectly groomed,” Peter had said. Her mouth moved. “Oh, yes,” she said. “But give it to them tonight; at least they’ll know we’re not against them. I’ll sleep better. She held her wrist against her temple, and the light caught her bracelet.

  “Do give it to them tonight, by all means,” the Spaniard advised gently. “It is a very polite gesture; it will be our . . . guarantee for the night.” He waved at the open window. “We are perfectly exposed here, you realize.”

  Helen spoke aside to young Mrs. Drew. “Is he really from the League of Nations?”

  The Spaniard looked up before she could answer.

  “What an idea!” he said. “No! League of Nations! I am a professor at the University of Madrid.”

  “If I were from the League, I might be able to put a call through,” he remarked wistfully. “As it is, my family is waiting for me to come for them . . . But this,” he said, tapping the sheet of paper, “this is a very politic gesture. It will at least insure us a quiet night.”

  “We’ll have guards—” Drew looked at the professor for confirmation.

  “Indeed yes,” the professor granted. “The mayor has promised.”

  “They’ll be armed peasants, of course, who’ve never handled a gun before,” Drew said. “But they’re probably the best persons to have on the platform. It’s really decent of them to be so considerate—the letter’s right—whether the consideration means anything or not.” He was very hopeless looking. His silk mustache was stuck on to the face of a young, worried boy.

  The professor was translating rapidly, writing in pencil under the English letter.

  “There!” he said, finishing, with approval, as if it were an examination paper. He pulled coins out of his pocket. “Let us know what happens, won’t you.”

  Drew nodded. “Good luck,” he said. “D’you think sleeping will be all right? We’ve got our candles.”

  His wife had swimming blue eyes; she was nervous. She laughed. “We’ll hope to wake up in Barcelona.”

  They went on to the chorus’ two compartments. One of the girls saw Peter reflected in the window-mirror. She paused, holding her eyebrow pencil an inch away from her face. “Maybe he knows!” she said eagerly.

  The three perfectly-tinted silvery heads came up. “Have you seen our phonograph?”

  “Did you see any of those men in sandals carrying a case away?”

  Peter said no, showed them the letter, explained about the diplomacy of the move. They drew eyebrows, agreed, contributed.

  They went through the first class, speaking to the rest of the chorus, a little dark Spaniard, a Spanish family which sat apart, the mother stony and tragic, the father with his arm about a weeping daughter. The daughter wept; the father motioned them away.

  They turned, going down toward third. Many were asleep already, the timid light from the bulbs strung in the corridor did not disturb them, even when it lay on their faces. The Catalans slept on the wooden benches.

  Peter and Helen passed the open compartments where there were sleeping children. A group who were still awake, collected money among themselves, nodding and asking about the battle. They had been eating on the train when General Goded’s broadcast came through, and were delighted to hear of the victory.

  Others groups gave and approved the message; their intense colorless eyes watched Peter and Helen read it, they scraped together céntimos and reals, they asked for news. At the end of the second car the Swiss and Hungarian teams occupied several compartments; the Swiss were singing softly, led by a tall, academically handsome athlete whose tightly curled hair caught the weak light.

  As they reached the teams, Toni stood in the corridor. His dark mouth smiled, the lips appearing almost black, his female dark eyes softened by the shadow. “We looked for you,” he said gently, reproachfully, to Helen. “I tried to find you. Did you eat?”

  “I went off with the English.”

  “The mayor gave us dinner,” Toni said proudly. “Big dinners in a restaurante, for both teams. But there will be more fighting tonight. Did you hear the cannon a few minutes ago? And the mayor has sent camiones into the hills tonight to capture rebels. Now that the fascists are in retreat, these hills are important.

  “Did he say how the United Front was?”

  “Everybody is either Anarchist or very proud of the Anarchists,” he answered, “and this may mean a free Catalonia.”

  “Are you all Hungarians?” asked Peter.

  Toni came along with them into the next car. He was very impressed by Peter’s Hungarian.

  They continued up the next car. It was in complete darkness. The first compartment belonged to an Italian, taking care of his old father. “Such a day!” he breathed. “And God only knows what is happening at Barcelona and all over Spain tonight.”

  “Haven’t you any light?” Helen asked. He picked at the switch. It clicked blank.

  “There hasn’t
been any light all evening,” he said. “The cars must be connected on separate batteries,” Peter said to him. “The English have candles. Would you like one?”

  “Oh, thank you, no,” the Italian protested. “I would like it if my father would get a little rest: the dark is benigna—gentle.”

  More than half of the darkened compartments here held sleeping figures, the drawn-up legs and cramped restless shoulders half-seen through the glass, or guessed-at behind the blinds. One woman stood out in the corridor, leaning on a bar, her head stiffened and listening.

  The radio was going again, full blast, opposite the locomotive.

  “Do you speak English?” she asked. “If I only knew what they are shouting.”

  “They were celebrating a victory a little while ago,” Helen said. She had not seen the woman before. She supposed they had overlooked others on the train, anonymous fellow-travelers. She wished she had the Spanish family to talk to, for a minute she missed them keenly, the old generous grandmother, the heavy man’s warmth, the fine beauty of the boy.

  The speech stopped abruptly. The woman sighed as she contributed, “That’s some sort of workingmen’s restaurant,” she said, “they have an excellent radio. I wish I knew what it was saying.” She lowered her head as a sheep might.

  In the next compartment, a man with a gray beard lay on his bench, already asleep, looking comfortable; but his companion, a sallow Frenchman, jumped up and came into the corridor to praise the letter and pay his French money. The beret hung down in a heavy point. It was almost full of French, Italian, and Spanish coins. Toni admired the fifty-peseta note.

  Peter said, “The note helped a lot.”

  The English couple in the last compartment wondered about it. “It’s real,” Peter said, controlling his voice, edging toward mockery.

  “I’m afraid I can’t match it,” said the Englishman. He turned with a long uxorious drink of a look to his tall wife. She acknowledged him with a lip-motion, repressed and formal. “And I do think it’s a little steep for tonight’s lodging.”

  “No. It isn’t like that,” said Helen.

  “They’ve all given only if they wanted to and what they could,” Peter was saying incoherently.

  “I suppose English money’s acceptable?” the man asked, eyeing the mixed pile and sticking two fingers in his vestpocket, cutting the conversation off.

  “Don’t put anything in until you’ve heard the letter.” Helen read it to him quickly. She could feel him stiffen at the phrasing.

  His tall wife turned her square modern face to the window in a deadly gesture of exhaustion. The man fished out a half-crown. He spoke directly to Helen, avoiding Peter. “It should hire a quiet night, but it does go a little against the grain,” he began.

  “Oh, but don’t give anything if you don’t think—” she said.

  “Sorry—I didn’t mean it that way.” He put it in the beret, and hunched his shoulder in an awkward self-conscious spasm. His whole body apologized. His wife watched him now, aroused.

  The entrance to the Pullman was locked.

  “Never mind,” said Peter, “we’ll go around. We won’t pass these birds up. The Hollywood trio must be in here.”

  “Hollywood?” asked Helen. The flash of Variety headlines she had caught at Port Bou station recurred under her eyelids.

  “Our magnates; I looked for you with them, before we found each other.”

  “How do you say that word?” Toni asked. “Hollywood. I had an argument over that in Paris.”

  They went outside. The radio was on again. A wind sprang up in the Pyrenees, washing down over the valley.

  Toni made a face. “The refuse is heaped under the train. Bad smell,” he said. “In the sun, it would be very very bad.”

  The outside door of the Pullman was locked.

  Peter rapped against the metal side of the car directly under a lit window.

  The man had blue-shaven cheeks and a candy-colored shirt.

  “Do you speak English?” Peter asked, following the formula they had used throughout the train.

  The man shook his head.

  “You don’t speak English?” Peter asked, confounded.

  “Non,” said the man. The other two appeared at the window.

  “Kesker say?” the first man demanded, with a strong New York thickness in his words.

  Peter was disgusted. He explained very shortly. Helen took up recital. They read the letter in French, feeling fools. The men grinned, and gave them French money.

  The dining-car carried its NOT RUNNING sign, and the waiters and the engineer were asleep in the baggage room.

  They could see the Workers’ Café. There was a full sidewalk in front, where thirty men were listening to the radio.

  THEY SHOWED OLIVE the beret. It held about 140 pesetas and some foreign money.

  “But the Swiss has to take back his,” Peter said. “There’s no proportion, this way. And ask him to come with us to the mayor.”

  He came, lowering his bulk gently down the laddersteps. He became the leader of the group as soon as he saw a knot of boys standing in the street behind the station.

  They crossed the cement-paved court.

  The Swiss walked ahead; his broad shadow increased on the ground. He spoke to the boys in Catalan.

  “Wouldn’t the mayor be at the radio?” A burst of shouting expanded, issuing from the Workers’ Café.

  “They say we can find him at the farmacia.” The Swiss was authoritative.

  The boys swirled around them, curious and polite. They all turned down the Calle Mayor. The night, a new element, entered the street. Houses were distorted by it, their clearness discolored, their angles thrown out of joint, each block and tile focused. The darkness changed shapes like wind, like an organism deranged by fearful wind the town changed shape.

  The farmacia still had lights on. One burned raw behind the gold plait over the window: Centro de Específicos, another lit the rows of surgical scissors and labeled jars and bottles.

  Peter stepped forward. “We are from the train—” he said.

  The Swiss put up a great conclusive hand. “We have a document from the train for the mayor,” he declared, in Catalan. “And a small collection for the town.”

  The chemist was profuse; his sideburns were agitated by his apologies. He was glad to inform them that the mayor was certainly at his home now, he had left the shop not more than ten minutes since; he, the chemist, was afflicted that he had detained them with his disquisition; he would be honored to accompany them, but he had sworn to keep the farmacia open all night and to remain on these premises. In case of emergency, they comprehended; they foresaw emergencies during the madrugada.

  He took them to the door, and thanked them for their good wishes.

  They beheld the silent street.

  Crisis at night, or at dawn!

  The Swiss had metal plates reinforcing the heels of his shoes. They rang on the pavement, a high, wild sound, recurring like a sweet stammering flute, bells, ritual music. The wind blew down, the cooled air falling from the mountains.

  Beside these, there were no sounds.

  The mayor’s house was past the restaurant, across from it. The Swiss dropped the knocker. A young girl opened the door a crack, showing her pale forehead and two wings of gleaming hair. She said she would call her father, and twisted her fine throat, calling on two notes. The mayor appeared at the crack, and threw the door open. His coat with the mourning band on the lapel was off, and he looked younger and more tired. The Swiss started to explain the train-message.

  Helen watched the mayor’s face lighten with sympathy as the Swiss spoke.

  “Good night, vuestra merced,” the Swiss said, finally.

  “¡Compañeros!” acknowledged the mayor. The shift of level hit them hard. An excitement passed through the group. The faces changed slightly; the light fell as the door shut.

  “What did the mayor say?” she asked Peter.

  His face had lost its loo
k of knowledge. He was very startled. “The mayor thought it was too important for him to accept. He sent us to the secretary.”

  “What secretary?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  It was a low modern building, banded broadly with chalk-green and white stripes. It was the only building whose door was lit.

  The Swiss led them past the guards and up the high steps. At the head of the stairs was a balcony, with offices branching from it. An armed workman stopped them.

  “The mayor sent us,” said the Swiss, in Catalan.

  The workman opened a door.

  It was a high, hot room, lit with naked bulbs whose white unbearable dazzle made them narrow their eyes. The walls were ranged with straight wooden chairs. At the far side, behind a square dark desk, the secretary got to his feet.

  “You are from the train, they tell me?”

  The Swiss explained that they brought a message from the passengers; as he spoke, the secretary signaled with a nod to four of the men in the anteroom. They came in and closed the door behind them softly.

  The secretary motioned for them all to sit down. He spoke a few words to the Catalans, and came back to the Swiss. “Tell them what you have told me,” he said.

  The Swiss repeated their mission. The four men sat there, not answering with any motion. The Swiss handed the letter to the secretary, and Peter emptied the beret carefully on the glossy desk.

  THE SECRETARY READ the document. Even sitting, bent over paper, his body had dignity, and his long face, the cheeks crossed and braided by lines, dominated the room. He leaned over the desk, stretching the paper towards the nearest committee-member.

  The two lines of people faced each other—the four dark Cata lans sat opposite the Swiss, Peter, Helen, and Toni. The secretary turned his engine-eyes on them. The first man passed the paper on to the second. With a long hooked gesture, the secretary pulled a light steel table to him, spooled a sheet out of the typewriter, settled a new page, and began to type lightly and rapidly.

  No one said a word. Helen leaned over to Peter with a full, rich gesture, bending forward from the breast to ask him a question. She was looking at a large photograph framed on the wall over the secretary’s desk. The Catalan who had just finished the letter followed her eyes.