Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  He faced her. “Did we tell you about Carcassonne?” he asked gently. He was playing for time. “We’ve just come from Carcassonne. Legendary. The old town is still there, inhabited, the old stones, preserved. Museum life.”

  “Are the towers crenellated?” she asked dully. She had no wit.

  “No one shoots from them,” he answered, and his voice snapped. “Do you suppose the train has gone off?—and all I could think of among those rocks—” He broke off. He ate several olives very quickly, popping them into his mouth and chewing on the tiny stones. “I’ll go and see—”

  He went down the street.

  The radio was playing:

  —you could hurt me,

  when I needed you—oh you—

  You’re driving me cra-zy—

  They all came slowly down the middle of the street. A dog yapped at Peter’s fingers. They were talking cheerfully to each other.

  Olive and Peter came in and ordered more salad. “Catch the train?” asked Helen, keeping it up.

  “At the next station,” said Olive, and her face relaxed. “They shunted it over to the other track. Sanitary measure. The mayor came over to look at the station, and didn’t like the conditions under the cars.”

  “And the train’s not moving?”

  “It’s done its work for the day.”

  The French girl was explaining sadly to her friend, with delicate little gestures. The café sank back, as the radio let out one final saxophone-wrench, and the record was heard scratching in Barcelona. Somebody lifted the needle, and it stopped.

  “Tell Helen stories,” said Olive. “Tell anything. Tell the story about the French cop.”

  “Go ahead.” He selected a leaf of endive.

  “No, you,” said Olive. “It’s his story, Helen—after the thousandth time, it’s his.”

  “It has to do with a gendarme who was walking down a street behind a gentleman who was for one or two reasons attracting attention. So the gendarme walks up to him and says, ‘Il ne faut pas uriner ici.’ The gentleman apologizes and assures the gendarme that he won’t. But the gendarme having nothing better to do, walks on behind him and soon notices him again. ‘Mais, monseiur,’ he says, angry this time, ‘Il Ne Faut Pas Uriner Ici.’ ‘All right,’ says the gentleman, outraged, ‘nobody intends to.’ ‘Oh, excuse me, sir,’ says the gendarme, with great relief, and he throws his fist up in salute, ‘Vive le Sport !’”

  “Provocateur’s story,” said Helen.

  “Well, not for the committee-meeting.” Olive was enlarging on political humor. A car came speeding down the street, blowing its horn in staccato puffs, bursting the street-air with sound. It carried the big mounted machine gun.

  This time Helen got up. “It’s no good,” she said. “We can’t change the train. The train’s done for. Let’s do something.” They looked at her. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “It won’t help,” Peter said thickly. “Let’s get tight.”

  “All right,” said Helen. “Let’s get tight. Let’s go for a little walk and then get tight.”

  They were speaking with difficulty, as if they had been drinking for a long time. As they paid for the food, little coins rolled and fell, and they slapped their hands on the money drunkenly to keep it still. They were surprised at the shifting darkness in the dim room, the immense rolling distance from the table to the door, the faces (like weird fish shining deep-seas down) of the girls.

  In the street, the elastic waves of sunlight arrived in a flood, shocking them, beating at the temples, insistent.

  They looked up toward the church. Butcher’s, closed; fruit store, closed; grocer’s closed; a block away, though, a crowd had gathered, filling the street corner.

  “Probably opening houses,” said Olive.

  Helen wanted to go up. She remembered their retreat from the church the night before. All these houses must be opened now, she thought. “They must have started this section, last night,” she reminded Olive. “The boys were ramming in the door.”

  They passed the door on their way up. It was broken, half-open, lettered C.N.T., F.A.I. Through one smashed shutter they could see the overturned tables, ransacked shelves, broken crucifixes of the parochial school.

  The crowd was standing still. It was not carrying guns. Only two men at the corner, and one who stood in the middle of the crossing, had rifles in their hands.

  Across the street, a long robin’s-egg-blue bus stood surrounded by people who put their hands on the bullet-scratches, traced the long roads cut in the enamel with their fingers. Two boys with a can of white paint were daubing large letters on the snub hood and on the rear of the bus.

  GOBIERNO.

  “That must be the government bus for the Swiss,” said Helen. There was a spick round hole in the windshield. The heavy glass caught sunlight in the hole-rim; bright stripes of light ran outward in a sunburst.

  Peter followed her startle, calculating. “That couldn’t have missed the driver,” he remarked.

  The boys went soberly ahead with their lettering, and the crowd, pressing about the truck, commented, told stories about the road, crossed and re-crossed, shouting to women leaning from windows.

  Helen looked at her hand. On it was printed, in a violent afterimage, the bullet hole and glassy light.

  But the crowd was backing up to clear the street. A car cruised down and guns stood out from every window.

  The man in the road raised his clenched fist.

  He wore a red band around his arm.

  The driver’s fist was already held out of the window, his elbow resting on the windowframe. And all the other men, in the car and on the streetcorner, raised clenched fists.

  In a wonder, as if the car had come to save them, as if this were her dream that she was dreaming now, Helen raised her arm and shut her fist.

  “The first we’ve seen!” said Olive. The tears rose to Helen’s eyes, sprung; and stopped.

  “Long live Soviet Spain,” Peter answered, completing her thought, all his wish clear in the words.

  Order, like a steady finger, covered the street. The crowd looped back, remaining on the sidewalk. The second car came, lettered P.C.—Partit Comunista—and the shouts and fists up as it passed. The long black car was full of men, and the driver and a woman sat in front, smiling and holding their tight hands to the people.

  Helen turned to Peter. “How beautiful it is now!” she said. She looked as if she had just slept. She found the same safety in his face.

  “Now it’s all right,” he answered, and took her arm and Olive’s. They walked to the edge of the crowd, and cars kept passing like shouts, with lifted fists. Another man stood on the curb, stopping the cars for passwords. The last one started in second, clashing its gear, hurrying down the road. He stepped back and smiled at the Americans. His eyes were the absolute of black, night tunnels of distance. They smiled.

  Peter stopped. “Comunistas hoy?” he asked.

  The man’s eyes slid smiling. “Sí, compañero,” his proud singing voice rose. “Today and Tomorrow.”

  “It’s later than we think,” Peter quoted.

  Helen’s face flared. “I want to go back,” she insisted. “I want to tell Hans.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “This is all right.”

  “Now I’d like to get to Barcelona,” Helen pushed out. “This is what it meant. I’d like to see a city like that.”

  “It’s not like France, is it, Peter? You know,” said Olive, abruptly, “It’s the first time this has seemed at all real to me. It’s the only thing I’ve felt, really—except for that moment when they shut the door this morning.”

  The hurrah of gunfire started in the hills, and ran for a minute.

  One of the bitches, the sickly one, ran up the station street wagging her hand in the other direction.

  “Down there,” she panted, wagging. “The Swiss are leaving—”

  They started to run down the street. Peter was alongside the bitch, he could see the sad, bruise
d eyes were swollen, the wrinkles were almost erased.

  “Upset?” Peter ran alongside.

  “Well,” she said, and the fret and suffering obscured her voice, “it’s the Swiss—they’re getting out of this hellhole.”

  Helen slowed down with them. The words fell icy on her, she had moved so far from that state. Now, with a shock, she saw the sick, pathetic woman plain, and behind her a whole intelligible world she melted into, like a weak animal protectively colored. And with a counter-shock, Helen remembered her own impatience, a tourist spasm, when the train had for the first time stood interminably long in the way stations. The words had wiped that frantic itch for comfort away. But she was, in mood at least, prepared for General Strike, and it could change her effectively at once. The bad leg was all that stood of the past now. There was no time for it. It was later than that. Nothing but the knot of Swiss, waiting on the corner, their battered suitcases and knapsacks heaped ready.

  The bitch was being scolded.

  Townswomen came to the corner, drawn down from the other end of the street, where the guard blocked the road. They stood near the Swiss, marveling at the little Alpine hats, the stiff tiny feather that dissolved in tufts, the crisped handsome leader.

  The sallow secretary and Mme. Porcelan walked up from the tracks. Hans was with them.

  As Helen crossed to meet him, she could hear hysteria, political, unnecessary.

  He put his hand out to Helen. “You were right not to go back to the train.” The large, tight hands moved impatiently. “They’ve all gone wild, down there. I came up as they got their committee together, and I guess I’ve been looking for you since then.”

  She told him about the road.

  “Yes,” he said, “in a flash, the level’s changed. But it was like that. In the morning, while they opened the houses. While you were playing word-games,” he added. She felt the blood move at her eyes. “I went into the street. A committee did that. They have truly a Workers’ War Committee.”

  He moved his arm, and stood with her in it. The Swiss were afraid that the bus would not come through. The young runner came over. He patted his pocket.

  “I’ve got your card. If we get through, he’ll get it.” He cocked his head, his gay voice shifting. “—and if anything comes through to take us in, we’re going in stat.”

  He was tapped on the shoulder. “I’m afraid we have our obligations to the town,” he said, formally, and wheeled around.

  Windows opened, children ran out, the sun-filled cars stopped to look at the circle. Six of them stood in a ring, their heads together over it, and just outside the leader waited. He shook his head, and all the little waves glittered like water.

  The deep music started, a bass beating the pulse—and then the yodeler, standing apart, threw back his admired head, the tune rang loudly, cracking into treble, and the icy outland sound climbed and changed and broke back into tenor, rising high, fine again against the rub-a-dub bass, splitting, outclimbing birds, and with a final slide, a clean ski-track, closing.

  Bursts of applause. Sensation.

  The black-and-coffee women flashed in the sun, the hot ice-cream colored houses opened blinds and sprouted children, the town turned out big eyed as if a glacier had slid halfway through their street.

  The horns went One-Two-Three in rapture, the notes went blinding high, a white delirium caught the town, the children hugged themselves, the gods were quieted.

  Nobody seemed to turn in time to see the French delegate run unsteadily toward the corner, crying, “Come! But fast! The autos!”

  Then, a moment after, the street was still, emptying fast. The Swiss ran in an erratic line, shouting good byes, and disappeared around a corner.

  “Shall we see them go?” Hans asked Helen.

  “I’ve see them leave once today,” she smiled. She stopped, caught by a woman’s necklace. “What a contradiction!” she started to say. “Look, she’s wearing her religious medallion—”

  But the delegate was still at the foot of the street, and his arms thrashed. He was still shouting.

  “Come! All!”

  They broke into a stampede, the cry smashing through. Helen’s leg buckled under her. She stopped again in the wild fear of physical impediment—she could not run, she knew in that moment that the one thing she was there for, the one thing she had ever been alive for, was to push through this to its center, to the place where she would be named—as an individual, and an anonymous member, as a job assigned. That was all there was in the world: the great struggle around her whose outlines were springing clearly out against a fantastic voyage, her need to push to a conclusion, the leg’s refusal, the clenched fists. Hans.

  He was watching her eyes.

  “Don’t, love!” he said. “Walk, I’ll get your valise—” He was running, incredibly fast, down the platform.

  She followed.

  The train was full of people staring from compartments, hanging out of windows. Moved to the far track, it was exposed and solitary.

  The lady from South America met her at the steps. “It’s not true, my dear! There’s only a car for the chorus, nothing for us, there’s not a thing for us!” she said melodiously.

  Peter was down the steps already. Olive handed him a knapsack.

  “She says no, Peter—” repeated Helen.

  “We’ll look. We’ll be ready—”

  Helen climbed up. Hans had her bag and coat, and the big hat. She took the clothes he gave her, and followed.

  The truck was ready, full of Swiss, backed to the station, engine running. The automobiles were lined up. The chorus filled one and left room in the other for the French delegate and his secretary. Another open truck stood empty.

  A tall yellow-faced man stood beside it. “This is for anyone connected with the Olympics, and then for anyone who cares to try the drive with us,” he said, in French and English. His long face was like intellectual metal, yellow and refined sharp; and further lengthened by the high V of baldness which ate into the fair hair, baring the skull ridges.

  “Who is coming?” he asked. The truck began to fill. Olive was on its floor as the suitcases were thrown in. “Is there much danger?”

  The tall man looked up. “There is steady fighting; but we have a guard.” A thin boy with a white handkerchief around his head climbed in. He smiled with all his teeth, he patted his rifle. Olive made room for him, and he took his place at the front of the truck, leaning on the roof over the driver.

  “Then it can’t be like this,” she said, and called to Peter and Hans to stop loading.

  Helen climbed in. She pulled the suitcases over from the center of the floor.

  Olive was busy. She was sure now. She up-ended all the bags.

  “Stack them around the outside,” said Olive, setting them straight and close. “We’ve got to have some walls. We’ve got to have some order.” Her face was clear and active at last.

  They built a wall of baggage for the truck on both sides. In front, valises and the driver’s box reached breast high. Olive was in charge, she moved everywhere, quickly, with Helen.

  “All right,” she said. The tall man nodded, and helped the others in. The bitches came running. Mme. Porcelan, attended by the pock-marked Swiss, brought baggage. They climbed in.

  “Ready?” asked the tall man in a father’s voice.

  The driver was ready. Another guard climbed into the seat, holding his gun out the window. From the truck, the muzzle could be seen, and the oily gleam of the barrel.

  “Slowly, through the town,” the tall man said.

  Hans and Helen were beside the guard. He reached out behind the guard and took her hand for a moment.

  The boy smiled and looked at his gun. “Everyone is safe,” he said. He was very handsome.

  Peter and Olive were crushed against them. Helen was glad to feel their weight. They are very good friends to have, she thought. The space left between the walls of suitcases was narrow.

  The truck started, blowing
its horn. And it turned down the main street, Helen could see the women who had listened to the yodeling, standing in the same place. Hans’s fist was up, saluting the town. She clenched her fist, and the women in the street replied. There was a flash of vivas, and the little tunnel blacked out the street.

  Their truck led the way to the top of the hill. Halfway up, at a sharp curve, the town petered out in a ravel of old houses and meat-stores. The truck made a half-turn, backed, and stopped.

  “God!” said Peter fiercely, “what’s the matter?”

  “He’s just turning,” Olive suggested.

  “He could make the turn—” said Helen.

  The street was barred by children; they leaned against the walls, dodged across the road, sat on the curb. Their streaked faces were full of curiosity, and all their heads turned together like newsreel heads of tennis-match spectators, as horns began to blow. The two cars and the other truck pulled up the hill.

  “We probably all have to start together,” said Peter.

  The yellow man got out and called the drivers together.

  His face was the most disciplined face Helen had ever seen, one end of civilization. Down one temple the skin was thin, as if an old burn had left it fragile, and the blood showed dark beneath. He was speaking to the drivers in an extreme of conviction.

  Peter pulled her elbow. His face had knotted with the delay, and he was contagiously wound tight. The three of them felt undercut and excited by the same shock of drunkenness they had felt in the café.

  “Look at the baby,” he said, as if he were telling a joke.

  She followed his finger. The little boy was no more than two years old, and was sitting on the curb. He was staring at the trucks and masturbating absentmindedly.

  “Infantile—Infantile—”

  “Auto-eroticism,” Helen supplied.

  “Not at all,” he said gravely. “Vive le sport!”

  Olive howled and the athletes turned in surprise. The yellow man looked up as he finished speaking to the drivers; he crossed to the space in front of the trucks, and held up his hand. The thin lavender mark was streaked, distinct on his temple.