Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  Gap. The door of the compartment, opening.

  Frenchman. Polite. Interruption. Pardons.

  They sat for a moment, looking out the window, at the blank distinct brick wall. The station, and the militant tread down the platform. Soldiers. The attack!

  The radio spoke one loud tremendous sentence from the Workers’ Café. The heavy iron-soled tread climbed the car. Slid doors back, steel on steel. Reached them.

  The jaundice light oiled the shine on patent leather hat, olive shoulders, bright yellow straps.

  “Guardia Civil. Good night. All quiet.”

  And night restored, black and imperative night.

  THE RADIO SPOKE again, rising through seas of night.

  But he was delicate wood, brown wood, white wood, struck by the pale night-light, behind shades, from the station, not speaking, only subtle, delicate, only strong.

  She looked up as the radio stopped, turned her head up and backward, seeing at the end of the arc the blond small blossoms on the flowering trees. And coming back, his clear power, the imminent grace, discoverer, victor.

  Under her cheek, she knew his heartbeat, the grave pulse and delicate after-tremble. She meant to lift her head to speak to him; but, a little ruefully, thought how clumsy her French must be, how she could not bear to tell him in an over-simplified jargon that he was more reassurance to her than anything had ever been. She lay relaxed, remembering city, hypnotic conversations, the strained and wordy love. Beneath her face, beneath her flung arm, was his fine peace, soft and vivid.

  Very gradually, she became conscious of place. There was a thin light in the compartment, raising in the night the lace design of the antimacassars, and the firm muscles of his ribs and belly. She lifted her face to the brilliance pouring through the sky; a thread of cloud reached under the heavy moon. His forehead caught the light on its surface, and his cheeks and wide lips, like a new country. She hung over his face, learning it; and the thought of the plane flew over her, hanging on the hills in the turning afternoon. All the fierceness and implication of mastery in the thought of the plane had passed out; she shifted on the narrow seat, returning down, seeking to find her former position. Then she saw that his eyes were open.

  He lay there still, breathing in the same rhythm. His hand went gently and luxuriously across her long back. “Ah,” he said softly, as his breath went out, “you are so much life!” He smiled, but his eyes held, gripped on her face. The smile quieted; she could feel his recurring motion; he put his head far back, the long neck-muscles stretched.

  “The pure life!” he said, and all his energy lay concentrated behind the words.

  With a simple liquid motion, he turned his whole body, like a white rush of waterfall.

  AND EUROPE AND America swung, swung, an active sea, marked with convulsive waves, as if supernatural horses stamped through the night; a scarred country, that lies waiting for the armies to meet again. The upraised fists, the broadcasting station, shake in the air, complaining, bragging, threatening, raised from the surface like final signs of those who drown and, instead of the grasping frantic gesture, raise their fists in the last assertion.

  Here is your sea, sailor! Floundering with life, prophetic with rising land, peopled.

  We are all swallowed in it.

  Only, when we are cast up, it must be on firm land, we must not have lost ourselves. Because then we are going to be asked to rise and walk away.

  HE PUT HIS hand out and it closed on her arm. After a little while she lifted his hand and kissed it. A long ripple went over him. “What is your name, my love?” he said.

  “Helen,” she answered.

  “Hel-len,” he pronounced, slowly. “Helena, Helena.”

  She lay in the darkness, across the narrow space. Her name sounded foreign, classical as he spoke it.

  “Mine is Hans, Hans Sachs,” he offered quickly, not wishing her to have to ask him.

  She said nothing, letting herself go quite drunk at the sound of the two names, their soft aspirate rush going through her nerves.

  Then her curiosity roused. “Where do you live?” she asked him.

  There was no answer.

  “Where do you live, Hans?” she repeated, her head dropping sideways toward him.

  He spoke in a blurred, swollen voice. “My mother is still in Bavaria,” he answered. She thought it was no answer, but she did not press him.

  “I live in New York,” she said. “I have been staying in London.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  From far off, the radio shouted a few sentences, and then ceased.

  “What will you do in the Games?” she wanted to know, she was most anxious to know now what he did.

  “I am in the races—the hundred-meter—on Thursday,” he said softly.

  A runner! she thought, exulting, and put her free hand on her hip. It was quiet now, the pain was all down.

  “You will be there,” he was saying, so softly she could only guess at the words, to himself.

  She was half-asleep, with the faint breeze over her skin. Then he stood over her, tremendous in height.

  “My love—my love—me dar-ling—” he said, attempting English.

  Words from a poem chased through her head, coming into place:

  Über allen . . . in allen . . .

  Warte nur, balde

  Ruhest du auch.87

  As his face enlarged close, the words rang loudly and evenly, in triumph.

  She shut her eyes. She did not care that she heard a heavy boot on the train-step. Secure, she recognized the tread of the Guardia Civil.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The knocks were beginning again. This blind, stubborn patience could only be that of a prisoner; and such care, such concentration on the manner of knocking could not be those of a lunatic . . . And meanwhile every noise in the prison was becoming like a distant knock . . .

  —André Malraux88

  The light struck past the shade in a steady pale vibration, milky still, early. Helen woke with Hans’s hand on her: his face was whitened and clear. The outlines would never be soft, all the planes were hard, the muscles were held, the jaw had clamped tight for years; but the day, and its light in the small compartment quieted all hardness, in the same way that sleep had rested the strain.

  “Morning and so soon,” he said, and looked down at her mouth before he smiled. The lines drawn down were thin and distinctly Chinese over his cheeks.

  She was waking slowly, in the blur of daylight and his words. She reached her arm over his heavy shoulders, around the ring of brown, edging in white where his sweater ended.

  And even as he kissed her, repeating the ritual tenderness, light visibly grew, working through the still air.

  “I think the truck went during the night,” he told her.

  “Oh no! You should have been—”

  “It’s better here,” he said. “My love.”

  His hands were brightened now, she saw them in daylight for the first time, square, tan and fine-grained. He reached up to the rack for his sweater. He pulled it over his head with a white, fluent motion. He was in perfect dominance over himself, trained, disciplined, active. Day: so soon!

  “I’ll go over to the schoolhouse,” he was saying, “I’ll see about the trucks. I thought I heard only one; perhaps it was a scouting party from the town.”

  “I’ll come after you.”

  HE STOOD IN the doorway as she yawned and stretched. “Stay, and sleep,” he said gently. “I won’t be gone long.” The door unlocked with a snap.

  “Red Front!” he said, smiling, and was gone.

  Shutting her eyes again, she lay quiet on the gray bench. But could not sleep.

  In a few minutes she got up and dressed in the sweater and dark skirt. She went down the brightening corridor, out onto the platform.

  Somnambulist daybreak. The clock said 4:45 a.m., as on that other morning, when the bomb broke. But now there was no noise, the platform was empty, all the sleepers need not be s
hocked awake today. The train, moved up the track, did not lie along the station: the engine was almost at the crossing now, and the cars faced the row of heavy square houses on the near side. Light touched the molding and the carved birds which bracketed one, the grillwork on another. There were no shadows, light fell evenly.

  Up the walk, alongside the locomotive, Peter was standing, talking to the engineer. He saw Helen come down the car steps, and waved. He walked up a way to meet her.

  “This is what I meant,” he said. “A morning like this. This is when I want a child.”

  They walked up to the engineer together. He was eating a sandwich, and a tin of coffee sat beside him at the big door of the cab. He said good morning as they passed, nodding at Helen.

  Peter suggested they go to the school immediately. “The engineer says that a truck went off,” he said, as they went down the white walk, touched with a faint color. “Early, in the dark. He wants to get in, too—they can stop that rumor—he’s got a wife and four children in Barcelona, and they live near a big square.” He stopped to point out the Swiss, who was sitting before the schoolhouse.

  “He must have been there all night, in that position,” said Helen. “He looks like the lion on the monument.”

  Peter told that to the Swiss as he came up to the door. The kind pockmarked face relaxed, he smiled his gentle reassurance. It was true, then; the truck had gone.

  “During the night!” exclaimed Peter. “Or while we were at dinner! And what about you, Helen? We thought you’d come back.”

  “I found a place,” said Helen.

  Hans was in the hall of the school, shiny with scrubbing, a small towel over his arm. He nodded to Helen. “They did leave,” he said. “But they know that there are more to go in. There’s wonderful cold water upstairs.” He was gay, Helen understood, it infected Peter. She ran up the long stairs in one long run. She could feel the stilled, breathing morning completely about her, a marvel of light, a morning belonging to Hans, ending one kind of reality in this renewal. He called from behind her, at the foot, looking up, the towel raised to her.

  Hans flung the towel; it spread and flew up the staircase into her hand, like a dream-object in its obedience. She laughed delightedly; she was completely stilled and released. As she heard herself laugh, she remembered a winter afternoon when she had watched a golden little boy dance in the middle of the floor, spreading his arms, spinning erratically as the towel spun, and how she had sat with a desperate smile and envied him for spreading his arms. She stretched her hand to Hans, half for love, half for the proof that she could move in ease; and he laughed back at her from the stairpit.

  When she came out, Hans had gone, and Peter stood where he had been, looking up at her with almost the same smile. The dreamworld continued in this washed, still morning, moving and braiding the currents, changing love for love, truth for truth. She descended to him.

  “How you smile this morning!” he said to her in wonder. “They spoke about your triumphant bearing on the train at once; but you gleam, you smile beyond that, even.”

  She watched his sensitive shaded mouth. She was proved in happiness, hearing him, it confirmed her, it bound her to him also.

  He wanted to walk, and they went out. The sun was raised now, the pink sheen on the hills was dissolving before it, and the cocks stopped crowing. Only, faintly, one sang out from a long distance, its softened cries issuing like four words of a slogan, reaching them small and distinct; and a quadruple blare of response followed from the village before quiet returned.

  Nothing moved as they crossed the lot. The Swiss had gone away. Only colors moved, the high stain spread the sky, the olive hill took green and gayer silver as the mist wavered up in a fantasy.

  The street they entered began with a nougat-green house. The windowsills being lake blue and polished, the vivid tiles collected light as the light grew.

  Peter spoke quietly. “I like, too, the way you put your hand out to the tiles,” he said. “I thought, for a moment, they would extend to meet you.”

  “The color is so clear,” she answered. “All these pure, warm lights—it is all perfect—the marvelous brightness, in daytime, and the dark fleshy night. I’ve been wanting a country like this for a long time; I thought perhaps there was none.”

  They seemed not to move down the street. The early coolness had not dissipated, although warmth was beginning. A knocker was dark iron against a pale-green door, holding a round fruit in the curved fingers, dropped from the frilled wrist to fall against the door. They stopped to look: it was the only decoration beside the tile and flowers.

  But, as the street receded around them, they were again looking at the knocker: the charming hand, falling with its fruit against the door.

  “The same one!” Peter exclaimed, looking back. The knockers were identical.

  They looked down the street, filled with milky light, translucent and lovely upon the housefronts, the colored walls in the impossible morning.

  On all the doors fell hands. Reproduced in a dream of sameness, a row of soft iron hands, holding fruit.

  THREE WOMEN WERE at the street corner, at the end of the doors. Two sat on the wide step before the corner house, and the other leaned against the door. As she spoke to them, Helen recognized her. She was the girl who had searched the train for cameras.

  “How is the train?” she was saying. “We heard about the money and letter you gave the town. Nobody knew you people felt like that.”

  “You certainly frightened a lot of the tourists,” Peter told her. They all laughed together, the girl first in astonishment and disbelief, and then in a kind of pleasure. She had a soft full face, very strong.

  “Did you hear that?” she said, laughing, to the other women. “I frightened”—she said, laughing—“all those dressed-up—” laughing, “tourists.” She looked solemnly at Peter and Helen. “They should have known how I felt,” she said, and ducked her head forward with a little giggle.

  “How’s the fighting?” asked Helen.

  “Oh, it’s coming,” the girl answered, “the hills are getting cleaner every hour. But the town! It’s got to stop soon, or we’ll need help with food, and we can’t ask: all the towns will be having that.”

  “And you let us buy provisions,” Helen said slowly.

  “We’re not like you,” the girl said, kindly, “we’ve got our houses. How is that train to sleep in, hein?”

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Peter put in quickly. They all laughed. The other two women said something gaily to the girl. She bobbed her head in the direction of the train.

  “What a smell to sleep with!” she said. “These two were saying the same thing; and the first thing this town will do after the war is have one big laundering. We haven’t had anything washed since the fighting started.” She pulled out her handkerchief, and made a face. “Full of egg!” she said. “There was a little business of egg-throwing in the beginning.”

  Helen got out her handkerchief and offered it, but it wasn’t much better. The girl refused. “We’ll have a washing soon,” she said. “This will be over very soon in Catalonia. The people know how soon.”

  “Many dead?” Peter asked.

  “Very many,” she said. “About twenty from the town yesterday. There has never been anything like this.”

  It was full morning now.

  “Well, good luck on the train,” they said.

  “Good luck in the town.”

  “Long live the Catalonian Republic,” they said.

  The women moved off together down the street, into the beginning blaze. Peter and Helen stood looking after them, their swinging loose hips, their easy shoulders, the gentle back that had frightened the tourists. They turned down the corner, stopping to stare up the brightened olive-hill that was now perfectly quiet, looking over the garden walls, pointing out cactus, unfamiliar trees, clambering plants, a hutch of fat-skinned white rabbits with sensitive spinster lips and dark reflective eyes.

  “Their eyes
should be ruby, shouldn’t they?” Helen asked.

  “Not necessarily. Why?”

  “I thought—” she laughed at herself. “Someone once told me, and it hurt me, too, that I acted in the country as if I were in a museum.”

  “No,” said Peter. “You are very much at home, here. And the train is so definitely home, now. In the tired moment I imagine flying high over the Atlantic; so high that all of America and Spain could be seen in the same coasting view. Nothing could be more familiar now than the train and the people on it.”

  “I have that, too.” She was still very rested, covered with the languid flushed dawn, but set square and alert at the same time, ready. Now it was easy, she dared think; even if she were shot, she let herself think, it was all happy for a moment; she was beginning to have a place here.

  They walked down. Little trees hung over the low walls, and from one, clusters of rosettes leaned at the wall’s edge. Peter reached across and broke one off. The intricate pink buds were as hard as fruit. He held it by the black stem, thrusting it through the loose weave of Helen’s sweater, at the breast. She looked down at the close group of curious roses against the limp wool that had been lived in, and at Peter’s hand that set it there, fine and white behind the sumptuous rose color.

  Shadow washed on them as they reached the underpass, having swung back to the tracks. Over them, they saw through ties the rods and wheels of the last car, a barred Venetian blind of light.

  A triple horn. Blowing.

  It started them wide awake; as the full car roared down the street, full of men, equipped, thorny with guns. The car blared up the underpass, slowed, stopped opposite them in the faint shadow. A gun pointed directly at the cluster of roses. Helen could feel the channel of flesh behind it, running through her body, shrinking from the gun-bore. Through the open car she was suddenly conscious of a green-and-purple poster glued against the far wall of the underpass: a lurid advertising portrait—Jimmy Cagney, grinning in green-and-purple, both hands full, the pistols pointed at the car, pointing at her. And the men’s hands on the rifles.