The hall was empty; there were no knapsacks. In the corner stood two suitcases, with Mehring’s Karl Marx95 lying open across them. Olive turned the cover, and looked at the name in the book. “I knew it! The bitches, they’ve left their baggage, too; we’ll never be able to carry it all.”
Hans walked over to the table where Helen was sitting. It was the one before which they had filed to show their passports. The guide was suggesting that they get a car, he thought he could manage one of the cars marked Extranjeros; he left for the Palacio to get an official pass. Peter and Olive started for the fourth floor; they nodded to Helen, they would bring her suitcase.
“Bad leg?” asked Hans.
She nodded. “But not so much that; I hate to hear them talk about coming back. It seems impossible to leave now.”
“You feel that, too?”
“I love your knowledge,” she said. “You know so clearly. It was so rare on the train, and the train was very small; here, with all of us disturbed and undecided, you are the strong one still.”
“My choice is very limited, I go toward what I most want. You. This war, which is my World War. The French athlete died, and a Spanish athlete, too; and they can prove already that guns from Italy and Germany were behind all of it. So soon! The guns were in the country before the war. That means too much. But you see what it does for me, it gives me a country.”
“It becomes my fight, quickly. You know,” she said, in a voice of wonder, remembering long distances, histories, “I came in as a tourist, with tourist eyes and wishes.”
“You were started. Think of Peapack.” He laughed shortly. “And how we kept them going in the restaurant with wine and sailors’ stories about this city. You have been moving all along.”
“There must be some way to stay.”
“They are thinking, there must be some way to get out.”
“I know,” she said. “Every time they speak of it, I see you. They talked to a man about sailing to Mallorca, at the docks. It’s the only times I’m not their friend.”
“We can’t be children,” he said, and kissed her. “What about your leg?”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, mechanically, in the tone she had used at the consulate. She saw sharply again the shiny photos in the trade journal she had held. “I’ll be fine.”
“You know,” he told her, going back to the thought in both their minds, the growth that was surprising her constantly, as his coming had surprised her, breaking in on her life with unforeseen conditions, the sum of what she had wished for in people, action and grace and security of thought, “I had no political party; so many of these people have been set for a long time. In Bavaria, I was a Rotfrontkämpfer96 before Hitler and during the early period, before the exiles; and then I went to Italy, did some professional running, some furniture designing, other designing to make my living, among all the organizing. And, after that, I was in France a while, arrested there for activity, lost my passport . . .”
“You can’t go to France?” All the ways were being cut off, slowly and scientifically.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “There is always now only one thing to do.”
The guide was coming back. “Stay inside, stay inside!” he shouted. “Are the others still here?”
“What is it?” Hans asked. “We’re all here.”
“Fighting in the plaza . . . There! Hear it? Automobile fighting, again, just outside the door. There’s still a lot of that going on; evenings,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “I wish we had enough cars.”
“But you’ve got the plants here,” said Helen.
“We’ll probably take control tomorrow,” he answered. “All these cars requisitioned from dealers. But if the fighting gets worse tonight, we’ll need more, and we’ll take over Ford and General Motors. The same thing will happen there that’s been going on in other factories: owners closed them down, and the workers have been forced to open themselves, and take over. The strike should be over by tomorrow or the next day.”
Olive and Peter were coming down the stairs. The guide ran up to take the black suitcase from Peter, and Olive slung the knapsacks down. “We’ll stay in a few minutes more,” the guide said, “listen; the sounds are pretty far away now. Our car will be along as soon as it gets back.”
They stood at the doorway, looking out into the blue plaza, at the few cars turning around the circle. The city was intense blue now; and, as they watched, the street-lights bloomed, every other one lit, but hardly penetrating the color in the air.
“Come to the hotel, Hans.”
“Helena!” he said. “I can’t. The other Germans are all going to the Palacio; a few more came in today, and there’s to be a meeting.”
“At any rate,” said Olive, “you’ll be coming along to the party the English are giving at the Condal.”
He looked at Helen. “I’ll see you there,” she said.
A car was parking at the inner drive. Its horn blew three times, and the driver waved.
“All right!” said the guide. “I’ll come with you, I have the pass.”
“Let’s take the bitches’ baggage, Helen,” said Olive. She laughed. “And the literature!”
They piled the suitcases into the compartment and on the floor of the car. “It won’t fit,” Peter was pushing the last suitcase into position. It could not stand on the floor; the driver’s rear view would be cut off. “Come on,” said the guide. “It’s getting dark. It’s better to make the two trips and keep moving than to stay still on the street for any length of time.”
Peter waved them on. “Go ahead,” he told the guide. “I’ll wait here for you to come back. It’s not more than a ten-minute drive.”
“Oh no,” Olive was pushing at the last large suitcase, “there must be some way . . .”
“There isn’t,” said the guide imperatively. “We must go now, and we’ll be right back. Be sure to wait.” He nodded to the driver. He bent to release the break, and the car started.
OLIVE TURNED ONCE to Peter, who stood vaguely at the edge of the inner curb, looking after the full automobile.
Helen was pinned by the bitches’ large suitcase. She could not move. She looked into the little mirror over the driver, trying to find Hans in the road behind them. He had disappeared in the evening, blueness after obscurity of blue cutting him off as he hurried toward the Palacio.
The car passed into the traffic in the circle of the plaza. The driver snapped his headlights on. They made watery marks of brightness on the ground before the car. It was not yet dark enough; he turned them off.
As they came to the outlet of the circle, an armed worker doing police duty jumped on the running board and asked for their pass. The guide saluted as he showed it; hardly slowing down, the car was let by and entered the avenue. The driver nodded; cars were coming up in the opposite direction; the two men thrust their fists out, holding their arms braced on the car doors. “All of us,” the guide advised, and the women followed.
He did not turn his head to talk to them. “Almost all the fighting is cut down to this suicidal automobile warfare,” he was saying. “And the sniping. Although there are rumors of planes. Seville and Madrid have been radioing about bombardments, and Saragossa is threatened. The plane and the radio will fight this war with the soldier, in the cities, at any rate. The sniping should be over in a day or two. Nobody should be allowed on the streets at night,” he said in a low planning voice.
“I’m glad they’re going back for Peter,” Olive said in English to Helen. “Hans should be all right; he only had to walk one block.” She looked narrowly at Helen, caught in her vise behind the suitcase.
“Don’t worry about him; he’ll be fine,” she said.
They were the only car on the avenue now. The quiet was unnatural; they slid forward in silence. On the sidewalks, people seemed pressed back against the houses, near doorways and arches; and the blank facing of steel curtains closed the wall of the street.
At the next
corner, five men stood waiting for them, guns up, signaling with a white flag. They leveled their guns at the car while the pass was taken, and the man with the flag spoke a rapid sentence to the guide before he allowed the car through. Helen looked at Olive. They waited for the guide to speak, but he sat there, his neck tense, controlling his head, his eyes and mouth. The driver moved quickly, turning the headlight on full, looking from side to side. Finally he said a word to the guide, and jerked his head back toward the women. The guide turned around in his seat, stretching his arm along the back of the upholstery.
“I must tell you,” he said, softly and paternally, emphasizing nothing, “the comrade at the crossing warned us about a Fascist car somewhere on the streets that has just killed four policemen.” He hesitated a moment. “The warning went out a little while ago. They may have shot it down by now.”
Stronger than sleep, than love, than even fear, the horror returned to Olive’s face. “Peter,” she muttered to herself, and took Helen’s hand, her eyes swimming with a violent nausea. It was true: she was at her most beautiful when she was most deeply moved, in acute fear, in horror, in despair. She muttered “Peter,” but in a moment her life came back, and she was angry. “Those bitches!” she exclaimed, “he would have been here now if these bitches hadn’t expected service. And we gave them service,” she added loudly, mystifying the guide, “I’d like to get my hands on them for this.”
“Murder?” asked Helen, smiling roundly. Hans! she thought.
“Why, yes,” Olive answered. The car was going very fast now, blowing the horn One-Two-Three as the barricades on the side streets flickered by like hedges, careening around the Plaza de Cataluña, chasing up the paseo toward their street.
“You’re safe, you and Hans,” Olive said suddenly. “You decided quickly, and you really were clear all the way through.” It was the first time she had shown any recognition. Helen did not speak, but let her go on, holding her hand, looking at the parting crowds of people, splitting before them in the window, behind them in the mirror above the driver. Memory and imagination, she thought, and returned to Olive’s words. “Clear,” she was saying, “I feel near it now, we will all end at different places after this. I know you want to stay here. But how can—”
The car swerved, skidding around a corner on two wheels, seeming for a moment to be headed directly into the lines on the curb waiting to cross the street.
“The woman!” Olive screamed. Just before the wheels the woman stood with the baby blanketed in her arms and asleep. The evening threw violet on her, whitening her blouse and casting her face in shadow. But they were close enough to see her eyes for one second as the car swung round, touching her skirt. They realized as they found her look that the doors were lettered for the government, that their fists were out and the guide was ready with a gun; for in her look and in her posture of trust as she stood regarding the car was no feeling of harm, but presages of safety. Reckless! thought Helen for a moment, not knowing what she meant, or whom she accused. But the look of trust was stamped on them as they passed the woman with baby. The car crossed the avenue, swung into the Calle Boqueria, and pulled up before the black door of the Madrid.
“Anything we can do?” asked the guide, hurrying the suitcase and knapsacks into the darkness of the hallway.
“Only go back quickly,” Olive’s voice was begging. She leaned against the door a moment, her head next to the black knocker, the larger duplicate of the row in Moncada, the delicate large hand, the iron fruit; she watched the car vanish into the night, down the compressed street.
“HE’LL COME, HE’LL be here any minute now,” Helen said, standing over the wide brass bed. Olive looked up, and moved her hand toward the window.
“Oh, God; he should have been here fifteen minutes ago.” She threw her arms over her eyes. “Those bitches,” she said, all rancor gone out of her voice, nothing but the tone of mourning left, “reading Karl Marx and risking other people’s lives without a word.” She sprang up suddenly and ran to the balcony. “Wasn’t that a horn?” she asked eagerly, as children ask after a parade. But the triple beat retreated; she came in, and shut the windows. “I’m not going to look again,” she promised, throwing herself on the bed, “I’m going to let him come up the stairs, and open the door, and then I’m going to see if I can be angry at him.”
Helen laughed at her, “You’re behaving like a mother with a lost child,” she said, although of course it was real, she thought, the warning, the four policemen, the darkness in the streets, “and when the child comes in with his ice-cream cone, he’ll get his thrashing.”
Olive rolled over on her back, her head falling at the side of the bed, the tight curls off her face. “It would be nice to have some ice-cream,” she said, smiling. “Lovely.”
“Or even ice-water,” Helen answered, sitting down. “Ice-water to drink, and swim in, and keep at the bedside.”
“We’re probably all like that,” Olive said. “Let the English yell for tea . . .”
“Never mind,” Helen went on (Peter, she thought, hurry), “we probably could get some cold wine.”
“I’d be tight if it were wine,” said Olive.
“I’d be tight if I looked at it.”
“I’ve always hated to drink,” Olive said suddenly, “I dread getting tight so much: it makes me feel as if I lost my center, myself. It’s that; it gets me so angry.”
“Do you have to?” Helen was surprised.
“Why yes, if you’re drunk.” They were explaining very naively now, like two little girls—“yes,” she said, “you’re all exposed, betrayed.”
“How can you?” asked Helen, “you can’t open yourself up that way, not as much as we have, living on the train.”
Olive looked up at her. “Or that woman,” she remembered, “the one with the infant, who was almost run over. I would have resented anybody who exposed me to a thing like that: I would have screamed in the street the way I did in the car. But she didn’t, did she? She trusted them completely. I’d give anything to be like that woman,” she said, “and I never felt like this before. And the baby, did you see? It slept through that entire shock, we took it like an earthquake.” She threw her arm over her eyes again. “God, I wish Peter would come.”
She sat up. “I’m going to get the bitches to take their baggage,” she said positively, “and if he isn’t here by the time they come for it . . .”
“I’ll help you,” said Helen. “That’s a promise.” She had an errand; the letter for Peapack; the postcard for the lady from South America. They were in her pocket, and the postcard was crumpled and a little blurred already. “I’ve got to mail them somewhere,” she said. “Peter will be here when we get back.”
THE POTTED PALMS in the lobby concealed nothing: the wicker chairs ranged around, the chessboard, the big hotel register, were all obvious in the tall room. Dinner was being served, and nobody came until she had rung several times. The little manager could tell Helen nothing about the mails; all he knew was that it was impossible to walk to the lady’s address.
“There’s a mailbox at the next corner to the right,” he directed. “Nobody knows when the mails will be collected again—when anything will be running smoothly—” he threw his hands up, and clapped them in mid-air—“but drop it in, drop it in, and see what happens.”
The smell in the street was dinner, and the high windows were lit. But the stores were dark, the street was all shadowed, and the far blasts of horns sounded ominous and unreal. Helen turned into the lane that cut her street. Narrower still, it could not permit the passage of even one automobile; hardly four people could walk abreast here. It ended immediately, however, and the new street opened at a view of a small burned church, whose flames seemed to have been lit for an hour, and then killed; the facade was burned to its substructure, and only one sign was left, beneath the broken statue of some saint:
FRIEND OF ANIMALS
At the corner, the mailbox carried no mark of delayed or arreste
d services; the hours of delivery had been charted, and the bulletin remained; but, dropping her card and letter into the slot, Helen heard the soft taffeta sound. The box was almost full; there had been no postal system for days. She wondered what had become of the lady, Peapack, the rest of the train. There was nothing to think about them. What if they did reach Barcelona? What then?
Hans. Hans had reached Barcelona, she thought. It means always learning to accept a position deeper in a group, deeper in a society of one sort or another, she speculated, looking again at the ruined church-front: think—the compartment, the Catalan family, the Olympic people, the Americans, the train, the truck, Hotel Olympic.
Peter. He must be there!
She turned, hurrying up the narrowest lane. Light in the street caught her eye. Stopping to lean over the gutter, she saw what it was. Crushed, battered, still metallic, but distorted as if it had been violently jerked and kicked, a crumpled splendid helmet lay, crammed deep into a sewer, only the silver crest showing, the lines of chased metal, the suggestion of a plume, forced almost down the drain.
Gun-fire, across the city. More horns. Streets, haunted by horns.
He must be there by now.
She went into the room. Olive was standing by the window. “He hasn’t come,” she said dully.
“Did you take the book back to the bitches?” Helen asked, avoiding her look.
“Yes. I didn’t have the heart to give them hell.”
A car passed in the empty street, not stopping.
Steps on the stair. At the door. It flung open.
Olive turned to Peter, a fierce look of triumph on her. “What did you do, walk?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “I guess I’m late.”
“Didn’t you know about the four policemen?” she went on, delicately, sadly.
“Yes. I was talking to some people. It’s a nice walk in the evening. Did you hear?” he demanded, “they’re all filled with rumors about the front—is it true that they’ve threatened to bomb Saragossa?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Savage Coast Page 25
