Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  On the second floor, the door held the big eagled seal. They went in. Helen’s leg was beginning to hurt. The first room held two tables of American magazines and a few straight chairs. In the second, three young men stood behind a long blotter at the L-shaped desk. One of them, a man of about thirty, with an adolescent face and a crew haircut, was trying to placate three dark Americans. Their backs looked familiar.

  “Christ!” said Peter, “the Pullman!”

  “You’ve got to get us out,” the largest man was demanding, “and we must get in touch with Hollywood. You can’t conceive how important it is for us to get out of the country. The studio will arrange for everything, we can pay for whatever services we get. We’ll get a car”—The adolescent shook his head, sorrowfully— “we’ll charter a bus, we’ll buy a bus, only we must get to the border.”

  The adolescent sucked his teeth and drew a circle on his blotter.

  The Hollywood man went on. His assistants nodded as he finished each sentence. “It’s incredible, monstrous,” he said, “that this should be allowed to happen in a civilized country. You can’t conceive—it’s unbelievable, the guns that have been distributed to just anybody on the streets. Sixty thousand guns given away, to the scum of the earth, with orders to shoot fascists, and no questions asked. And a fascist is anybody who hasn’t got dirty fingernails.”

  The adolescent looked up sympathetically. “The consulate is aware—” he began.

  “I don’t like this,” said Peter.

  “Wait a minute,” Helen said. She had been listening to a white-haired, florid man, with intricate purple veins in his cheeks, who was talking to someone with a Panama suit, a clipped mustache, a businessman’s gestures. “I want to talk to that man.”

  “We’ll just file our names,” said Olive.

  Another clerk, a towheaded young man with white eyelashes, asked what he could do for them. He wanted first to tell them that Lluís Companys, the president of Catalonia, had advised the American consul that he would not be in a position to guarantee the lives of any foreigners. The consul was asking all Americans to leave as soon as possible, and would give them safe conduct to the border. Boats? No, no boats were sailing. No, he could not supply transportation to the border. And the safe conduct? Why, no, of course it meant something, it was a sort of—well, a sort of pledge—

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Olive, “let’s go find the team, Peter.”

  Their names? Well, of course, if they’d like to leave their names, the consulate could take them. And the consul was making arrangements with the British consulate and one of the banks to have the bank open for an hour later in the day to change foreign money and traveler’s checks.

  Peter listed the Americans who had come in: Olive, Helen, the bitches, himself, and the one left on the train—Peapack. The Hollywood people had proclaimed themselves.

  In the other corner, the businesslike man was saying to the flabby one: “And you can tell your paper that I was in the Hotel Colón when it happened, early Sunday morning.” He looked over at Helen and Olive and said, vaguely, “that’s where it all started, you know.” He went on, “I got up and they were shooting from the street, and their fire was returned from directly beneath me. I got dressed right away, and all the hotel guests were put in the dining room at the back of the hotel. But the bombing began—you could see the lamps shake—and they sent us all down into the American bar. That was probably as safe as an air-raid cellar, dug deep in, you know. You can imagine, though, how I felt when I got upstairs and found my bureau all shot to hell and my mattress up in front of the window. Fortification!—my mattress!”

  He was working himself up to it. The florid flabby man had his notebook out now and scribbled fast.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” he said, his voice rising steeply. “The vandalism is what we must protest. They’ve destroyed works of art that whole civilizations cannot replace—on Sunday, they burned the Chapel of Santa Lucía, which dates from almost 1300—and some decoration in other churches went back to the seventeenth century. All destroyed! And God only knows what’s happening in Seville and Toledo. What haven’t they razed to the ground? What’s happened to the Escorial?” He was drawn up, his hands out, his shaking voice pitched high. “What is there in this city that isn’t burned?”

  Peter turned sharply to him. “The Cathedral of the Holy Family hasn’t been touched.” The brick-red flush swept up his jaw and cheek. “And there’s a guarantee that it won’t be: it’s people’s property, and hasn’t been standing on their necks since the seventh century, or the year 1300.”

  The flabby man put up his hand pacifically. It was bloodless and blown up. The businessman was enraged. “The people!” he spat the sound. “A lot of trigger-loose savages riding wild through the streets, so you don’t know whether you’ll be killed by cars or bullets!”

  “They returned the fire from the Hotel Colón, didn’t they?” asked Peter. “Who held your mattress as a shield?”

  Helen suddenly turned and left the room.

  “Come on out,” Olive insisted, and put her hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Helen has misery. She ought to do something about it.” They looked down at her. She sat next to the litter of magazines.

  “I’m all right. I’m all right. I’m healthy,” she said. “It’s those people. All the art of Europe—we care, too. Priests hid Fascists in the churches—they told me in Moncada. There’s no sense arguing with them, Peter.”

  “You let them go on and on,” he accused angrily. “I don’t feel that way. I don’t want to hear what they say.” He picked up a copy of the Boston Chamber of Commerce Journal and riffled the pages.

  “It’s what the papers will say—it’s what all the New York headlines must be saying today.”

  “And Mr. Rockefeller—”

  “Yes,” said Olive. “Mr. Rockefeller will feel better about Rivera because a man in a Panama suit in a consulate in Barcelona thinks the people here should let themselves be fired on from the churches without shooting back.”

  They sat there for a minute. Helen wanted to lie down, and they asked for a couch. An attendant took them into an inner office full of files marked TO BE DESTROYED. “Nice secret agent situation,” Olive whispered. The office irritated them all very much; they went back to the waiting room. The florid man came through, smiling.

  “You mustn’t mind him,” he said. “He’s just had a great disappointment.”

  “Your friend, the businessman?”

  “He’s neither—he’s an art professor here to do some work on Spanish architecture, and he’s heartbroken. Most of his thesis has been shot away from in front of him, and I don’t think he’s got the nerve to go out and see whether the rest is still standing. What he cares about now is getting a news story out, and maybe a little publicity at home.” He winked.

  “What paper are you?” asked Helen.

  “Oh—sorry. I’m Spanner—Barcelona correspondent for the Paris Herald-Trib,” he said, “and this has been keeping me pretty lively. Where did you come from—been here long?”

  “Just since last night,” answered Peter. “The Communists brought us in from Moncada—our train stopped there.”

  “Hm. Well,” said Spanner. “The Communists! Is it true that the tracks have been ripped up between stations? How did they treat you?”

  “They were fine to us,” said Helen. “There was a guard on the train, and the Olympic teams were fed by the town. We didn’t see the tracks.”

  “Are you with the Olympics?” Spanner asked. He looked at them narrowly.

  “Came to see them.” Peter wondered where the man stood.

  “Oh, well, then,” he said heavily, in his uncle’s voice, “you’re all right. You just stick with the American team—have you looked them up yet? It’s very funny,” he said, troubled. “They seem to have drag with the government; they say they’re sent by something called the International Ladies’ Garment Workers of the World. You just stick to them.”
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br />   Olive nudged Peter. Helen was still talking to him. “How do things strike you?”

  “Oh,” he said, “it’ll be all right, if they don’t kill each other off. I’ve lived here for nine years and I’ve seen a lot leading up to it. As for me, I’m all right—everybody here knows me, they know I’m a newspaperman, they know I don’t give a damn one way or the other, who wins.” He laughed and looked down at himself like a little child. “These days, I walk around without a coat, and they think I’m a worker. And when the cars come by I give them the fist with the rest of the boys.”

  They all laughed with him. He told them how to find the American team, all the hotels are together down there, they’re with the English, he said. Was there anything he could do for them?

  “Yes,” said Helen, “one thing. When you go out, and when we pass barricades, they point at their eyes and say ‘Watch for guns.’ How can you, in a street?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Spanner. “You can’t. But there is a pretty sure sign. When everything’s noisy and going on as usual, you’re likely to be safe—but when the street quiets down quicklike, and you look around and everybody’s gone, and the cars are out in front maneuvering for position, then you pick yourself a good deep doorway and stay there until the shooting’s over.”

  She thanked him.

  “No,” he refused, “even that’s not practical, and it can’t be. No advice can be given. You’ll move instinctively, and so will the people fighting. No rules of war—civilian warfare isn’t like that. Your nerves go and your house may be shelled, and nobody can shoot any better than you could if you were given a gun. It isn’t like going to war as part of an army, into trenches—not at all. Come and have a drink with me.”

  They got out of it. They had to find the American team. Spanner left them at the bullet-pocked door, and hurried off down the Rambla, round, white, cheerfully waving as he disappeared in the crowd.

  “There’s your fourth estate,” Olive looked after him. “He’ll never get shot, because both sides know he doesn’t give a damn.”

  Peter laughed uncontrollably. People turned to stare. A car full of boys, spiked with guns, stopped as he laughed. “International Ladies’ Garment Workers of the World!” he gasped, bursting.

  THE PASSEIG DE GRÀCIA, leading away from the square, and the great Plaza de Cataluña itself, were full of people, swarming coatless, many with guns, lifting their fists each time an auto went screaming One-Two-Three by. Whole families spread across the promenade; children played, calling and dodging through the crowds to find their parents; the kiosks were open, half shattered by bullets. The wide passeig flew banners, wore gala, was celebrating General Strike. Flags of the trade unions flew, and the white squares of neutrality; and at intervals, the red-and-yellow stripes of Catalonia, the red-yellow-and-violet of Spain, and the Anarchist flag, halved in black, were flown.

  They walked once around the plaza, seeing the fractured lampposts, the heaped bodies of horses, overturned cars, and the exploded walls of the Hotel Colón, before they entered the passeig. The plaza was so immense that they could not feel the crowds; once in the avenue, they received the impact.

  The streets were fuller than on any holiday, fuller and more alive—for the crowds were exhilarated with a kind of laughter that ran over their heads for blocks, a triumph and rest in the middle of battle. Quick as water, they responded to every impulse; and in the same way that the expressions of the guards at the Olympic the night before, in their stress and waiting, became romantic and ardent, these faces, in triumph and preparation, were seeming of happiness and rest. On cruder, stonier faces, the rigor might remain apparent. But these faces, so many of them fully alive and beautiful, softened the look of shock. And these were, as yet, not the army. There were the working people in a storm and celebration of loyalty; they had not as yet been called to fight.

  “Should they all be out, before the streets are safe?” Olive watched the armed cars keenly. They slowed into a traffic snarl.

  “It’s the thing to do—everybody out during General Strike,” said Peter. “You know: out on the streets May first.”

  “I’d like to see a May Day that looked like this.”

  “This is May Day,” Peter answered. “This is what we rehearse.”

  They saw, cutting the lines of other flags that shook and glittered over the street, the red flags. The crowd cried “¡Viva!” as it passed, gaily and thankfully. The first story of the wide stone building was boarded up and marked with bullet holes, but over the second floor flew the huge flag, gold printed:

  WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

  The windows were thrown open, red velvet chairs bordered with gold were pulled to the narrow balcony. In these immense soft thrones, their tired faces refined with effort, the crowd recognized the party men who sat, fists raised, saluting the street of people. And, standing beside a chair, his fist up and unmoved, his yellow intellectual face turned to them, they recognized the leader who had brought them from Moncada.

  Beside the men stood their rifles, flying the little red pennants.

  “Look, it’s the man!” said Olive, saluting.

  Their fists were up. They felt the same warmth of safety that had reached them in the moment he spoke to the armed trucks in Moncada, magnified infinitely, until from that balcony, those flags, it filled the street, touching their faces with the same rest and laughter that had puzzled them on the faces of the Spaniards.

  As they continued down the street, consulting the corner signs for their address, they saw that, every two blocks the paving stones were being pried up. People with picks and levers were working over them, tearing up the streets, rearranging, building new barricades.

  THEY WONDERED IF they had been given the right address. The street was no wider than a hallway; it carried the NO HORSES PERMITTED TO ENTER sign. It was jammed tight with signs that dovetailed and were hidden, receding in one shadow and blinding metallic on the other side: PELUQUERÍA, BISUTERÍA, HOTEL CONDAL, HOTEL EUROPA, HOTEL INGLATERRA, FARMACIA, HOTEL MADRID.

  “The Europa sounds right,” said Peter, “wait a minute and I’ll see.” He came back with a dark, grinning boy in a blue sweatshirt with OLYMPIAD sewn in white letters on it.

  “Johnny!” cried Olive.

  “Hello!” he sang out. “Red Front!”

  “When did you get here, Johnny?” asked Olive. “This is Helen, a fine woman to be on a train with for three days anytime; this is Peter, whom I married; and I suppose you’re in charge of the American team and not clerking at a law office anymore?”

  “Not for a whole month now,” he answered. “We got here last Wednesday, so we got to know the town pretty well before anything happened.”

  “You were here for the beginning?”

  “Damn right. There were all kinds of meetings Saturday—everybody knew it was coming—and Sunday morning early, the whole city cracked open. The boys thought it was backfire.”

  “How did they like it?”

  “They like it fine—the town, the girls, the way they handle things, the unions. And the town likes us. You should have seen the demonstration we put on for them yesterday! Bagpipes—the Scotch played all the way to the stadium—they got the biggest hand of anybody except us. Funny, too, when our team was the smallest,” he said, reflectively.

  “You’re not very developed politically,” said Olive with contempt.

  “Never mind that,” Johnny answered. “We got a big hand anyway. But they wouldn’t let us march home, because the demonstration was fired on—some went by car, and the rest of us dodged around doorways. Some of the practice was fired on, too. We were glad to get it, though—we’re all out of training.”

  “Have you been eating beans?”

  “Not here,” he said. “Why don’t you stay in this street?” he went on, when Peter said they wanted rooms. “This one’s full, but the English are in a bigger hotel, and the section’s full of them. Come on over and see the English anyway—they’re having
a meeting about Games.”

  “When will there be Games?” Helen asked. He sounded very confident.

  “Oh, tomorrow or Friday at the latest. They’ll have to catch up with themselves, too—the whole U.S. team wants to start today. All the teams are meeting at noon to talk this over.”

  They went into the dim corridor of the Condal, across the street. It was lined with wicker chairs. In the far corner, facing the door, sat a brisk, tanned, obviously English man, about forty years old, who got up as they came in.

  Johnny spoke to him. He answered in an annoyed voice, “They’re all out, except the ones who have been meeting upstairs. I told them not to leave the hotel. I’ve been sitting here all the time.” He turned to Helen. “One of the French team has been shot, you know.”

  “Shot!” she echoed, stupidly.

  “Badly,” the Englishman said, “He was told not to go walking at six o’clock last night. It’s all very well to say it was a stray bullet,” he said irreverently, as if he were trying to answer himself, “but the demonstration was fired on—and I wouldn’t like to tell anybody’s family that their son was shot, he’d been warned not to go on the street.”

  “Now you do sound like a manager,” said Johnny.

  There were no rooms in the Condal, either, but they knew of a Hindu down the block who was trying to change all his money. He was afraid of the government’s not being able to keep money stable, they said, and was guarding against a drop in the peseta. But the government was perfectly reliable, had issued rulings fixing the value of money, regulating prices, threatening prosecution of any war profiteers, and the street of foreigners was using the Hindu only until the banks opened. Johnny and Peter went down to find him. As they left, the tall tennis-player, Derek, came in the door.

  “Hello, captain! Hello!” he said to Helen. “Left the Olympic?”

  “They want anyone to go who can possibly,” she told him. “Fresh batch of athletes expected from the country.”

  “Well, they’ll be disappointed, too.” He was making a statement to the press, saying a few words for Paramount, jumping over the net to congratulate the loser while all the cameras turned. “Whatever this trip is,” he said, repeating himself from the evening before, “it’s a washout for tennis. The courts aren’t marked, and there isn’t a tennis ball in all Spain.”