Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  “It is a historic fact, this week,” said the delegate. He looked up at the posters. “Whatever becomes of it—” The bright pictures advertised a week of Folk Lore, a week of Sports, there were the high colors of tilted skirts, gypsy colors swirling out over the arena, the foreshortened perfect legs of a poster pole-vaulter, the block printing of dates and days and games . . .

  THE SECRETARY WAS standing helplessly near the desk, shouldered aside by athletes asking the way to their rooms. Helen saw a familiar head. “Toni.”

  He spun on his heel. He was laughing, gay, one could hardly notice the bruise-color circles at his eyes.

  “We heard you were lost!”

  “As good as lost,” he agreed. “We were fired on, and we spent the night in a cinema palace. Imagine!”

  “Or in a train!”

  “Or here!” he finished. “Have you your mattress?”

  She echoed him, stupidly.

  “There are two thousand athletes here, sleeping on mattresses or on the floor,” he mourned. “And we’re in training! You’ll eat bread along with us—or beans, but probably bread.”

  “You should have taken the mayor along to feed you,” Helen laughed.

  “God, why didn’t I think of that?” he agreed. He looked past her. “Oh, the Swiss are in, with you! Who else?” he asked. “The seven-language lawyer? The bitches? The lady from South America?”

  “Not the lady,” she said. She started to tell him about the crack-up of the train.

  A line of soldiers, walking four abreast, informally, broke between them. The night shift was going on guard duty. It was quite black outside. They were all as young as the athletes, and carried blue-and-white Olimpiada pennants in their hands or tied to their bayonets. “V’la les drapeaux!” one of the Swiss called to Helen.

  “Una banderola para usted,” the guard said with a flourish of courtesy, handing her the little stick. He was with a girl dressed in the blue shirt and trousers of the guard, a dark, exquisite girl whose long bayonet reached high over her back.

  Toni was carried back to her on another wave of athletes. The torrent of foreigners filled the hall.

  THEY MOVED INTO the little space before the waiting room. Olive was sitting there, on a mattress in the corner. Her mulatto face was distorted and darkened with fatigue. Mme. Porcelan leaned against the wall, her head thrown back and passive. “She’s waiting for her husband,” Olive commented. “Sit down. Hello, Toni.”

  “Peter?” Helen asked.

  “Seeing about rooms,” she answered.

  Their sentences had become as economical as possible; it was with a stiff effort that they moved their lips at all. They both looked with wonder and unbelief at the hall. It was filling with an international warmth; the conversation ran so easily. Toni was at home in the immense building; Helen watched, but could not relax; Olive was paralyzed in the remoteness which was thrown over her, a sheet of distance under which she slept, her dark face withdrawn and still.

  The sickly bitch thrust her head around the waiting room door. “There you are!” she said in an ugly voice. “You got there, and we’re still stuck in here. We’ll probably have to sleep here,” bitterly.

  “Credentials,” said Helen.

  “Yes, letters,” added Olive.

  “We have letters, too,” said the bitch.

  “Show them with your passport,” Helen explained.

  “Nobody told us to show anything.” The bitch was close to tears. Someone called to her from within the room.

  “Nor us,” said Helen.

  Guards were running to the door. The broad sidewalk before the Olympic was full of guards. Quite close, the dulled fall was heard. Helen’s face came up.

  “A bomb,” she said.

  “When?” Olive asked.

  Toni leaned out the window.

  “Just then. And there!” Helen’s white face took on the signs of relief, in tired recognition.

  “You can tell now,” Olive admired.

  “I know the difference between a bomb and a cannon,” Helen said.

  “Confusing.” Olive leaned her head against the wall. Mme. Porcelan cried softly in the corner. She did not want to be comforted; it was better to leave her alone. Two guards and the guide who had met them came over.

  “Still coming,” the guard said. “All day long. Let the foreigners see our revolutionary order, viva los extranjeros, viva la república.”

  The guide smiled. “You won’t be frightened by the bombs, will you?” he asked the women gently.

  “You were right,” said Olive to Helen.

  “They were close,” whispered Mme. Porcelan.

  “They were our bombs,” said the guide. “We’re laying a line of them—to frighten the Fascists.”

  “Yes,” said Olive. She got up. “I want Peter,” she said vaguely, and wandered off. The guards watched Mme. Porcelan.

  “Perhaps you could help me,” she ventured, and began to describe her husband. A great crowd of athletes hesitated at the door. They all held yellow booklets.

  The guide followed Helen’s eyes. “Food tickets,” he explained, and ran away, returning with one. He pressed it into her hand.

  “The passport man,” he smiled, “told me you were from New York, that this is your first visit to Spain.”

  She nodded.

  “This is a first impression that must be very difficult to swallow,” he said, looking down at her with his northern, analytic look. He had changed character; how different he is in authority! she thought. He seemed taller alone.

  “Impossible to swallow,” she answered. “More brilliant than anything in the world. I’ve heard people talk theory a little. To see it suddenly sets it all in a drowning flash.” She was waking now, coming back. The ride in the truck was really over.

  “If only I were not outside,” she said, looking at him with her peculiar timidity after saying something she felt deeply.

  But this was a different life. There was nothing, no result of expression, to fear. He was talking.

  “Not so far outside, because you care so much,” he said. “But you still talk like an outsider, if you say brilliant—we have had the waste and the blood and the fighting. We hang on; it will take time for us to see the brilliance, what there is.”

  He looked around the hall. The crowds were thinning, they were going to dinner. A team of Norwegians stood inside the door, examining the rifles of the guard. But there was not the whirlpool of languages there had been; things were easing down.

  I can get away for a few minutes,” he said to her, with a certain excitement in his speech. “You speak of brilliance. Come up on the roof, and I’ll show you—you’ve never seen Barcelona by night.”

  SHE WAS MOVED by the love in his voice.

  They went to the big staircase and up the empty stairs. The flight rang with their steps. Turning at each landing, she could see the mattresses thrown on the floors, the signs tacked up, the many passageways. On the third floor, regular footbeats frightened her until the guard appeared to salute them.

  “Compañeros. There is a guard posted at every outlet.”

  “Good,” said her guide. He explained to her, “There is a degree of danger. We are in one of the most partisan of buildings. The Fascists have been infuriated at the thought that this city is to be used for a People’s Olympiad.”

  “This is a good time to be partisan,” Helen answered, surprised by the finality of the phrase, coming from her. My God, college! the level liberal days. How far have I come? She thought, going up flight after flight of stairs, a tower of stairs. Never mind, she followed. I know where I am.

  He opened a door, and the cool purple air flew against their faces across the square roof. She was facing a machine gun, set opposite the door, pointing like a telescope to the harbor.

  They walked to the railing. They might have driven over a mountain. About the building lay Barcelona, clear in the shining dark night, half-lit as every other streetlight burned.

  �
�It has always been like standing in a jewel,” the man said lovingly. As she watched, growing accustomed to cool and the night color, the air burned purple, she saw, dilating like a flame. Across the water, the wide harbor flamed white, the water burning itself white under a high piercing moon. A black spike struck up across the shine.

  “The statue of Colón,” he said. “The Fascists set up a machine gun beneath the feet.” He stared. “Let the man turn,” he said vehemently, “let them discover us. This is a new city. It belongs to a new people.”

  The wide avenues, the Ramblas, branched away from them, and directly across the plaza the two towers of the exposition marked a great black swathe. “The park,” he said. It made a monster blackness. He led her over to the second side.

  The circle before them had painted its shadow, elliptical and fantastic, on the ground, and there was no clue to this lunar landscape. A crescent of moon-colored ground filled out the shadow, but the pieces would not conform. She could not understand. The wide ring rose around its distortion of shadow and the pale segment, swinging around as her sight swam, turning grotesque cartwheel circles in the irrational lighting.

  “Bullring,” he said; and it fell into its shape, built up in violent lighting and shadow. “And beyond,” he said, pointing up the length of another Rambla, “the Plaza de Cataluña, scene of heroic battles, the largest in Spain. He turned her half about, until she faced the cliff and the range. “Did you see the fortress as you rode in?” he asked. She nodded. “Up there is the Tibidabo; you see where the lights run straight, in parallels. That’s the new city, all modern buildings, supplementing the old city.”

  “And there” he continued, softly, “the harbor and the red-light district, the ‘Chinese Quarter,’ where the entertainers are men who effeminize themselves and wear breasts, the great hotels that are fired on now, the cathedrals that burn over the city—see! there, and there,” he showed four flaws of smoke that rose coiling through the cool air, “and there, the Sagrada Familia, our church, people’s property, which will not be touched.”

  He leaned on the wall. “New city!” he said, his night-pale face turned down. “Here is the new city. There are our monuments: do you see the car overturned there, that has been burned? Five fascists tried to fire on our guards from it this afternoon. And over there, the subway station, where citizens were killed as they came up to the ground—and in the streets where they burn the dead horses, and there, that broken statue, under whose arm died ten civilians, two of them women; and in the burial office, where tonight they are filling out the records.”

  They turned back, facing the roof, noticing the mattresses thrown down even here.

  “And this building!” he said. “We have a city that has been alive since Sunday; and we know its landmarks already, they are scars on our bodies so soon!”

  WHEN THEY REACHED the bottom, the hall was empty. The man at the desk said that the last group had already gone to dinner. Peter and Olive with them. But the guide, saying he would look for the French delegate, was disappearing into the office. Helen turned sharply at the sound of English spoken at the door. A fair, tall boy had just come in, saying good night to the guard.

  “American?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m with the English team—tennis. Derek’s my name. Are you American? Oh, your friends were looking for you, I think.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’m looking for them.”

  “They’ve gone.”

  “Yes,” she said. “What do you make of it all?”

  “Of course,” he stood, considering, “I’m tennis, and prejudiced, I expect, but there’s not a court that’s properly marked, and I don’t suppose we’d have had balls if we hadn’t brought our own. The queerest trip for tennis!”

  The French delegate and his secretary were coming out, with the tall man who had greeted them, and the other.

  “Ah!” said M. Corniche. “And now, dinner!”

  They went out into the Plaza de España. It was a soft night, even in the square, and warmer than the roof had been. A black heavy car was waiting before the Olympic. The driver held the front door open for the man with the gun, who got in, brushed the glass splinters away, and primed his gun, pointing it out the window and ahead. It was not until Helen came quite close to the car that she could see the gashes in the paint, and the windows, spangled with bullet-holes. It was not until she was inside that she saw the long dark blood-stain on the upholstered back, and the two bullet-holes clean through the rear glass, behind her neck.

  “The car has seen service,” observed one of the Frenchmen.

  “Sorry, M. le délégat,” said the tall man, who wore an official Service Committee badge, deferentially. “I couldn’t get one with whole windows.”

  He screwed up the pane as he spoke. “Put on all the lights,” he said. M. Corniche, sitting beside Helen on the back seat, leaned over his secretary and snapped on the center light above him.

  “Not that one, the rear ones,” the man ordered. M. Corniche turned the center one out, and lit the two corner lights. All five heads stood out clearly, built up by the pale frosty rays, reflected against the night outside.

  “Better that they should see us,” the official added.

  Helen could not speak, but cringed away from the stain behind her, the flesh pulling and wrenching in a passion of dread. “Lean back,” said M. Corniche to her kindly. “It is better that the outline of your head be distinct.” She leaned back, with a strong conscious set of the muscles.

  “All right, driver,” said the official. “To the stadium.”

  The car started smoothly around the great monument in the center of the plaza. Helen could see a swarm of young people advancing across the open space, moving irregularly, vast contortions of light changing up the mass-fringe before it entered the shadowy square. As they circled, her heart clenched with terror, the light caught the lettered sweatshirts of the front line. It was the first group returning from the stadium.

  The car passed between the pillars at the entrance of the park. It was possible to piece together the shapes of trees, the tall hedges, the blur of shadows that meant colored patches of flowers.

  It was a good hiding place.

  “They’ve picked off quite a few in here,” the official said.

  “It is a beautiful garden,” answered M. Corniche with great politeness. “It is very celebrated. I have heard it described with praise many times.”

  “Yes,” said the official. “There are many rare botanical specimens—many sub-tropical plants—in these gardens.”

  Helen could not speak. Her shoulder-blades crawled against that stain. The official and M. Corniche were discussing the war.

  “It is a very educative experience, for the French,” M. Corniche was saying. “We are learning a lot from you in Spain.”

  “There is not enough organization,” said the official with abrupt bitterness.

  “It is out of these times that organization comes, comrade,” answered M. Corniche gently. “These times do not derive from organization.” He paused. “We have seen some very fine things in the last few days.”

  “Such things do not happen in France,” exclaimed the sallow secretary, half-turning in his seat.

  “Sit still,” said the guide. The car took the turn rapidly, skidding a bit.

  “NO,” CONTINUED M. Corniche. “In France, nothing has changed very much. But we had there, you understand, something in the nature of a coup. Not a life was lost—not a life; with one exception,” and he laughed, “there was one hot-head who ran amok and killed his employer. But that was all. That does not make a revolution.”

  “Slowly here,” the official raised his voice to the driver. He spoke in his natural tone to the passengers. “We are coming to a bad place.”

  He looked very tired.

  The car came abreast of the screen of poplars, seemed to hang on the curve, and, with a swing that pushed the grove and the road, pivoted around it. They could see the S
tadium, at the end of a formal wide approach.

  As M. Corniche got out of the car, a young French boy came laughing down the steps, his hand out to the older man, who stopped, speaking to him affectionately. More of the French team ran down the broad flight. The steps were crowded with the French, running down to the base in a motion like the entrance of a ballet, standing around to listen to the delegate.

  The official handed Helen out of the car. She still did not trust herself to speak.

  “I hope you won’t have any more rides like that one,” he laughed, looking down at her with his slanting look.

  “No,” she said—“it is you—you Spaniards—who go through—” she did not finish.

  They entered the stadium. Entering the immense wing, they could hear the soft sound of many people eating in a large place. The hall had been transformed into a giant refectory. Cooks in wide aprons stood in the arches, watching the last groups finish. Boys ran between the long tables with pitchers; dark steaming platters were carried up the aisles. The whispers and assents rose in a strong uneven noise.

  They sat down at the table. At the end of the hall, the early tables were beginning to clear. Little groups stood at the wall, waiting to collect fifty, so that it would be safer to walk.

  One of the platters was brought up to them, and brown fuming beans were heaped on their plates. The boy ran around, and poured water for all.

  “Could we not have, for example, a little wine?” asked M. Corniche, sadly.

  The boy shrugged his shoulder. “Sorry, compañero,” he said, apologizing, “No wine.”

  M. Corniche looked at him. “I will be glad to buy some wine,” he suggested, a little hope in his voice.

  The boy stood there. “No wine,” he repeated.

  The secretary looked at the official.

  “I think he’s in earnest,” said the official.

  “Fortunes of war,” said M. Corniche, twinkling. “Vin du pays. Your health,” he pledged, raising his glass of water to Helen. “What do you intend to do?” he asked her.

  His secretary was looking at the water as though it had insulted him. M. Corniche nudged him. “Drink it,” he advised. “Good for you.”