“We are starting now,” he said in a direct, high voice. “We know we can rely on you to work with us, so that everything will go well. From our reports, the road should be well-guarded and quiet now; but you must remember to watch constantly for snipers, and to duck if the truck is fired at.
“Above all, we count on you to maintain with us discipline and proletarian order. If there is too much trouble, we will stop on the way; but, whatever happens, the strictest order must be kept. The guards are not to fire until it is necessary; until they see” —he pointed to his own—“the whites of their eyes.” He looked at the passengers, and raised his fist.
“To Barcelona!” He was in his car, leading the way down the cryptic road.
Their fists came up. Peter danced from one foot to the other in an anguish of excitement. He laughed and exclaimed, pompously and dramatically, in the voice of Groucho Marx: “Of course they know this means War!” Olive and Helen laughed with him in one long shriek. The other truck was starting.
Everyone stopped laughing and looked down the road. The red hill stood above them, the pylons marched over it; it was a different view of the cliff, and the profile of the red sand-cut was clear for the first time. The hill looked entirely new. This was unknown country. The truck got underway, shifting into high gear immediately, racing full-speed and roaring into the open road.
CHAPTER TEN
The sum of force attracts; . . . man is attracted; he suffers education or growth; he is the sum of the forces that attract him; his body and his thought are alike their product; the movement of the forces controls the progress of his mind, since he can know nothing but the motions which impinge on his senses, whose sum makes education.
—Henry Adams91
Far down the hill the tracks extended, minute and vulnerable. The train stood grotesque, stiff, the only motion being the thin black fume above the waiting engine. The fume rose straight and sacrificial in the still air.
But up here, faces were whipped by wind, beaten with the speed of flying. The open truck ran out into wide country. The high significant hills stood: the farms waited: only the truck raced checkless on the roads.
To those faces, upon those eyes, it was the land racing, the world, high, visionary, unknown.
They were tense, held high, the eyes seemed wider set, like the abstract wide eyes of dancers. All the faces looked up the road.
On either side, the long grass, the wide farm-swathes, the walls of farmhouses.
The truck stopped where a car was headed across the road. The driver showed his pass-slip to the guard, a woman in overalls and rope sandals. A band about his forehead meant a suffering wound or a badge or a means to keep the hair back, it matched the band that was around the head of the young guard standing in the truck.
Then they knew they had not reached their full speed. That barrier marked the town limits; now they were entering contested country.
The guard sitting with the driver leaned out and shouted up a word of encouragement. Then they let the motor out. The illusion of great speed was partly the product of a fierce dream, standing on the leaping floor, holding to each other and the walls, receiving the iced wind on skin used to the stagnant heat of the trains.
But the truck itself was moving fast.
At the right, the blue-and-white Ford sign was a grotesque. And here, along the farmwalls, bales of hay, stacked solid for protection.
The overturned wagon at the door, its front near wheel still spinning.
The black bush on the hill.
Barricades.
And all these rushing past, the speed of fear, the hands in the doorway, the fists on the hill all raised, clenched, saluting.
Put on coats, they thought, the cold will strike you dead! Watch the road, the black eyes are wild concern, the fingers loose the trigger to point to the wild eyes, crying with that pointed gesture: watch for guns!
On exposed rides, passing the pale houses, the tiled roofs, red now, now darker, shadowdark against the low sun, fear passes, the faces clear and become fresh and happy, filled with this youth that speed gives, the windy excitement of fear, the exploration opening new worlds with a lifted arm.
A quarter of a mile down the road, they saw the men waiting for them.
And all the sky drawn colored toward the sun.
The men grew larger.
Racing down the stretch, the fields slanted away from them, precious and quickly lost, the pastures gleamed under rich lights like grass-green jewels, the house stood lovely and forbidden.
The floor of Europe leaped shaking beneath their feet.
The men stood before them, signaling. Guards.
“Slowly, now. Watch closely.”
Air relented on the cheeks. Everything was displayed clearly and minutely, even during speed, standing so high; and now, the dust on the roadgrass, the purple-flowered fields, farmhouses, mules, were rotated past methodically. The railway tracks slanted across their view again, and the ominous culvert reared above them, broad and solid stone.
The guard raised his gun to his shoulder. He pushed the handkerchief tight around his head.
Darkness ran over the truck safely. They were on the other side, where the road was fenced with steep sandslides.
The flaring trees at the top. The deathly bushes, yard-fences, a man sliding down, his legs braced stiff, come down to take the pass.
And another clear run, the road straight, the country-side changing, farm giving way to smaller gardens, large estates replaced by factories, closed and empty, but well-kept and waiting, as on holidays.
So many windows.
Watched the walls as they had watched the bushes. Each thought: guns! There is no way to watch, raking a wall of windows, for a narrow bore. Instinct, the pure ruler quality, wipes away remembrance, the countryside of the mind replaced from a moving car. In a shock of speed.
They watched; waited for city.
A nightmare gun-bore stood black and round in the brain.
They had expected city.
They saw nothing but street: a passage, impossibly long, bending from country road, where the barriers were far placed and long dashes could be made, to an avenue through glimpsed suburbs, and now this, which must be city, if the mind were free to look, but which seemed only street, broken by barricades at which the truck stopped, and the fringes could not be noticed, the faces, the piled chairs, corpses of horses. Then a spurt of speed, wind, and tight hands; and immediately, a gap in the road, blind; after that second, recognized.
At such moments, the sides of the road may be discerned.
The sidewalks, the rows of houses, blocks of low-lying buildings.
And ahead? A wall.
The passengers drew in their breath as the men before it turned, the levers held in their hands, and the man with the gun came forward. For the levers chopped the street. The street was lifted to make this wall. The cobblestones were built high.
On the barricade, the red flag.
Again, as the guard stopped them with his fist, their fists came up.
From then on, the fists remained high.
The streets were those of an outlying district. Every man on them raised his fist, timed to come up as the truck passed.
The guard kept his gun up.
Now, from the windows, white patches flew, hanging truce flags of white, lining this street which was taller as they raced deeper into the city.
The barricades were up.
The barricades, recurring every hundred yards. Here, a young soldier, helmeted, behind a machine gun, trained on the highway.
Speed, two minutes, blindness, the road.
Another stop; another wall, a glimpse of street corners.
And the children who played, the families who passed walking, all their fists lifted. The movie house on one side; the sudden heat blown from the church burning on a square. The piles of firewood heightened in flame: vestments, statues, gaudy cloth, images to be carried head-high.
The truck swung
down a wide avenue, and far to one side, the quadruple black-and-white spires of the Sagrada Familia rose intact.
Stores, promenades, evening.
And everywhere, the million white, the flags pendant from the windowsills, the walker in the street who lifts his hand.
The hands lifted from the truck, held tight and unfamiliar in perpetual sign.
They lost themselves, travelers exposed in this way, totally unforeseen, strange. This was a city they had read on pages in libraries and quiet rooms, leaving the books to find a hard street, bitter faces, closed silent lips at home.
But there the boy stood, his face raised in recognition, his hand, like all theirs raised.
The car swung ahead.
The bullet cracked.
From the confusion as they all bent, head and shoulders low in a reflex of dread, Helen looked up to Hans’s unmoved head, either risen immediately or never changed.
The truck wheeled sharp, on two wheels, to the left, and they caught at arms and hands in confusion, straightening now, recovered.
Avenues opened wider and wider, the plane-trees, the oranges, the palms. Cars passed them now, and each time they blew, One-Two-Three, stopping to race the cars loaded with guns, spiked with guns. Each car carried the white letters of its organization: U.G.T., C.N.T., F.A.I.
The chopping of paving stones was loud at the street corners.
And now, down the long Rambla, past riddled barracks, shell-torn carnivals, bomb-pocked hotels. The dead cafés, their chairs piled on the sidewalk, before the drawn steel curtains.
Wind, fast wind increasing; the long view of a brick-orange fortress, impregnable and high. The high column, the long blue strip of sea.
And the truck turning.
Avenues opened into a great circle, a public square, mastered by two tall pillars, holding subway stations, statues, overturned wrecks of cars, candy-colored posters, full-rounded walls, cafés, the guarded front of an immense building out of which streamed warmth and talk, files of young people streaming.
The truck circled, slowing.
It stopped at the building’s entrance.
The travelers jumped one by one.
Hans dropped cat-quick down, and swung his arms up for Helen. She placed her hands on his cabled wrists, and jumped. It was then that the four pains in the right palm were noticeable, and, looking down, the four blood-dark crescents were seen, the mark of the clenched fist, clutched during the voyage.
A guard in a blue uniform, rifle slung at his back, was standing with them.
He smiled at the hand.
They answered.
She asked, “and this?”
The building was large. It streamed warmth.
He looked at the travelers.
“Hotel Olimpiada.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olimpíada Popular
Comitè d’Honor
President: Lluís Companys
Ventura Gassol, Joan Lluhí, Josep M. Espanya,
Pere Mestres, Martí Barrera, Joan Casanovas,
C. Pi Sunyer, J. Serra Húnter, Comandant Pérez Farràs,
Josep A. Trabal, Pere Aznar, Joan Fronjosà, Miquel Valdés
Manifesto
In recent years, and especially since the World War, sport has developed into one of the most important social and cultural factors in the life of nations. The industrialization which, in most countries of the world, took complete mechanization of the methods of work which has not yet ceased, along with the notoriously low living standard of the working masses in the majority of countries, have exercised their pernicious influences over the daily life of the working peoples.
The working masses intend to counteract the harmful effect of their hard toil by sporting activities and now with the exception of a few countries the world recognizes the vital importance of sport to the health and cultures of the broad masses.
It is shameful that in the present-day society there are elements who abuse sport, exploiting it for their militaristic and warlike ends. Taking advantage of the eagerness and enthusiasm for sport, they lead the youth along the road to war. Under the pretense of strengthening their bodies and adding happiness to their lives, they systematically subject the youth to a strict military discipline and a thorough technical and ideological preparation for future wars.
It is especially in the Fascist countries such as Germany and Italy, and also in various other countries where fascist tendencies exist that sport is being abused for militarist purposes and where, almost openly, recruits are being trained for the fascist gangs and fascisized armies.
Fascism changes the true spirit and meaning of sport, turning a progressive movement for peace and brotherhood between peoples into a cog in the machinery of war.
The Olympiad, founded thousands of years ago and reborn in our own times, has heretofore maintained its character as a symbol of fraternity between men and races, but now it is losing this significance. The Olympic Games now being organized in Berlin are unquestionably a disgraceful sham, a mockery of the Olympic ideal. In a country where millions of sportsmen are forbidden to continue their social activities, where thousands of the best sportsmen are suffering in prisons and concentration camps, where the greater part of the working masses are persecuted for their opinions or for their religion, where a whole race has been outlawed, it is impossible to find the real spirit of the Olympic Games.
The People’s Olympiad of Barcelona revives the original spirit of the games and accomplishes this great task under the banner of the brotherhood of men and races. The People’s Olympiad not only brings together in friendly competition the leading amateur sportsmen of Spain, Catalonia, and Biscay with those of other countries, but also promotes the general development of popular sport; at the same time giving an opportunity for enthusiasts in the more modest categories to try their strength against sportsmen from other districts and countries.
The People’s Olympiad of Barcelona must show the sports-loving masses that it is neither chauvinistic nor commercialized, with the production of sensational publicity for stars as its objective, but rather a popular movement, which springs from the activity of the toiling masses and which gives impetus to progress and culture.
Catalonia and its capital Barcelona must be the country and the city chosen for the celebration of this magnificent demonstration. The working people of Catalonia have struggled heroically for centuries against social and national oppression. This people, which has known and still knows how to fight for its liberty, will fraternally welcome the representatives of the toilers of other countries and unite with them in a solemn undertaking to always maintain the true Olympic spirit, fighting for the brotherhood of men and of peoples, for progress, freedom, and peace.
—From the Spanish-English-German program of the People’s Olympiad
The big entrance was filled with athletes. Streaming past the information desk at the far end, crossing to the stairs, breaking up to watch the truckloads arriving. Tall boys in sweatshirts ran out to the trucks to help carry the baggage into the waiting room. A tall man with heavy yellow eyebrows watched the athletes arrive and a stocky fair Spaniard with an official badge, Serveis Generals, stood at the door, acting as a guide, ushering the strangers to the right.
In the waiting room, they lined up before the brilliant-faced guard, to have their passports and credentials examined. From the center of the line, Helen saw the French delegate and his secretary present their letters. A service man showed them out, and the guard went on with the examination. He was separating them according to one classification: those who were accredited participants in the People’s Olympiad, or in any way connected with the Games, were sent through; the rest remained in the waiting room.
Helen took out the letter to Tudor and presented it with her passport. The guard recognized it.
“Comitè Organitzador,” he said and smiled electrically. “There’s a problem.”
“If I could reach Tudor—” she attempted.
“Nobody
can reach Tudor,” his brilliant smile apologized for the publicity director. “He is out on the streets, fighting.” He put his head around the door, calling. The official who had been acting as a guide came through.
“Assign mademoiselle to a place with the representatives of organizations. Here is her letter to Tudor,” he said.
The guide looked down at the letter. “He is going to be a hard one to find. He has been on the barricades, since Sunday morning.” He had a strongly cleft face, tanned and Teutonic, and was slightly shorter than Helen, compact. He crossed the room for her suitcase. The latest arrivals were sitting on their baggage. Helen turned frantically, searching for Hans. “Tell Hans I’m looking for him, and show all your credentials,” she said as she passed Peter and Olive. The guide was already at the door.
She followed him through the wide glass doors behind the desk. When he shut them, the sudden quiet was too quick; it was a violence done to the nerves, releasing her abruptly. He put down her suitcase, and spoke to the French delegate and his secretary, in the middle of a bare room whose walls, covered with circus-colored posters of the Games, had the clean naive look of a kindergarten. The guide bowed to the delegate.
“Have they done anything about hotel reservations?”
The Frenchman turned to Helen, his eyes pointed with humor. “What a revolutionary order they have established here!” he exclaimed, rising slightly on his toes. “They ask about our accommodations!” He clapped the guide on the shoulder. “René,” he said gently to the sallow secretary, “go find out about hotel rooms for all of us.” He waved an inclusive hand.
Peter and Olive appeared through the glass doors.
“Greetings!” said the delegate, “we shall have a veritable train reunion. Another room, René!”
“Yes, Mr. Corniche,” answered the secretary, sliding behind Peter.
“But are you official?” asked M. Corniche. “Are we all official, we Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante tourists, hein?” He chuckled, delighted, he caressed his beard.
Peter explained, shuffling the papers in his hand. “We thought we should be representing our organization at such a time.”
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