Savage Coast

by Muriel Rukeyser

  ¿Será bombardeada Zaragoza?

  —El Diluvio headline, July 22

  What is ’ot baby?” asked the boy at the end of the table.

  The American social worker who had come in that afternoon looked up as Helen came in.

  “There!” they told him. “She’ll explain: enfant chaud, heisses Kind, niña caliente.”

  “Ah,” she said, sitting down beside him in her place, “that’s not fair, just because I’m late to dinner—what have they been saying to you?”

  Peter looked over the table at her. “But, then, he’s been telling us fine things, too,” he said, smiling, and introducing them. “He’s Belgian, and he recommends Antwerp—a beach, a workers’ camp, thirty francs to the dollar, books for fifteen and twenty francs— sound investment, that country, for Americans.”

  Helen’s throat contracted. They were talking about leaving! She stared at Peter and Olive, wondering if her fear showed in her eyes and mouth. The Belgian waited for her to answer. His face was brilliant white, narrow, keen as some highly civilized rodent’s might appear. Blue softness marked the hollows of his cheeks, but the eager health in his eyes contradicted the color and the pallor.

  She said gaily to them. “I think Antwerp has crowded Palma out.”

  “Tell me,” he insisted, “what is ’ot baby’? Nobody will help me with my English.”

  “Won’t the English help you?”

  “They won’t help me,” the Belgian answered, passing the olives, “and they won’t be allowed to help you.”

  She did not know what he meant.

  “They’re meeting tomorrow with their consul, and they’ve said they’d like the Americans to sail with them. Wait and see the consul refuse.”

  Again: leaving! She passed it off. “They probably won’t sail, from what they say,” she answered. “Did you see the French off?”

  He spoke with great passion, the brilliance whitened in his face. “I wouldn’t go, I couldn’t bear it. They let us down, they stopped the Games from taking place! Not that it was their fault”—he cut meat viciously—“they were misled, openly misled, betrayed over their own majority vote!”

  “But the United Front—”

  “Their Popular Front, that allows them to leave: when they had the most athletes—one thousand of them!—the most to contribute; when their government calls itself Front Populaire.”

  Helen tried to tell him about the afternoon, the songs, the leave-taking’s giant birdflight.

  He laughed. “They should have gone off to France shouting ‘A Zaragoza!’ That would have been consistent.”

  “Why that?”

  “Didn’t you know—that’s to be the slogan from now on. We had the whole thing explained to us this afternoon—one of the Spanish comrades from the radio bureau lectured to a few of the teams.”

  He went on eating, explaining rapidly.

  “Madrid and Barcelona are both all right,” he said. “The government was successful the first day, and Catalonia’s strongly with the government—always has been, and for its own, the minute this takes hold; it’s actually independent now, under Companys nominally, really under the Workers’ War Committee. The two cities are the industrial centers, but that doesn’t mean too much: the largest plants are foreign-owned, and most of the workers in Barcelona are women in the textile factories. It’s feudal, feudal, all the way through, except for these centers; and the Fascists have other key positions: Saragossa, Valladolid, Seville. Their strength is in their money, their help in wealth and guns from Italy and probably Germany, and their mercenaries from Africa. But these are their weaknesses: the people anywhere, as they see them uncovered, are bound to turn more strongly to the Frente Popular. The thing to do now is to keep a complete line of communication from being set up by the Fascists. Did you see the mobilization station?”

  Helen nodded.

  “The column will send out its first people now, he told us. And the city is joining—women from the factories and the farm women, and the young boys, and the old men over military age, with the others. In the south, they must fight against a stream sent out of Africa—Morocco is the key, watch what happens there—and here, Catalonia is free now and must be free. The columns will rise from Madrid and cross from Barcelona, and there will be the rest of the war which has only begun. And it’s a natural war. In the midst of all countries, here,” he said passionately, “I see Europe break apart; Spain, from being a growth adhering to the Continent, like some vestigial organ, is the center again. And, if we feel swallowed up, as every foreigner I’ve talked to does, that is a short feeling. I think that will leave when we leave the country, and see that this is not a monster thing, that this is our lives catching up with us, the life of the world catching Spain and us.”

  “I didn’t know war,” he said, “I remember running through a field of upturned divots when I was three, and the bombs crashed like an enormous grown-up booming over my bed. I would tie myself over a gun to keep it from shooting. But this has reason, this is the fight we face now, from German concentration camps— the nameless Italian jails—the belfries here—the coalfires in Belgium—the single fight.”

  “I’ve seen the Borinage film Ivens made,” she told him.97 But he was finished, he was eating nimbly and fast. The others had stopped talking and looked at him, the vehement white face, quick hands.

  “You tell me Mae West stories,” the Belgian had changed as they watched him, “and I’ll talk about the Borinage.” He attacked his dinner. “I have to improve my English.”

  The smell of burning had curled into the room and a thick trail of smoke seeped past the shutters. The waiter ran cursing up the black and white floor as dinner began to break up. There was an obvious smell of burning horseflesh in the room by the time the waiter could shut the window. “It’s only refuse,” he pleaded, blocking couples as they tried to leave.

  “Let’s go out. It’s late.”

  “Too late for the party?”

  “Hours, Helen. The Condal people said they’d begin at dinnertime.”

  “—and the coal miners came out of their leaky crazy shacks, carrying pictures of Karl Marx down the road.”

  “God,” said Olive, “let’s go out for a minute, and get past that horse.”

  The stairs were black, and the ornate door swung slowly in. The street was jagged black at night, steep with shadows. A gust of “Mama Inez,” scratched on a cheap phonograph, repeated incessantly, blew down at them from a tall window.

  In the street corner, one streetlight lit a square poster newly glued to a wall. Far down the way under the next light, the same square was blanked out. Two of the American team stood under it, puzzled.

  “They’ve just put up a bulletin,” he said. “Come help us translate.”

  El Comité de las Milicias Antifascistas

  A committee of antifascist troops of Catalonia has been organized and has ruled unanimously the following, compulsory for all citizens:

  First—To establish revolutionary order, for the maintenance of which all the organizations included in the committee are pledged.

  Second—For control and vigilance, the committee has numbered all vehicles necessary for the accomplishment of orders issued by the same. To this object, cars will be considered seditious and will suffer sanctions determined by the committee.

  Fourth—Cars moving by night will be especially rigorous against those breaking revolutionary order.

  Fifth—From one to five in the morning, circulation will continue limited to the following elements:

  A) To all accredited members of any of the organizations which constitute the committee.

  B) Persons who pass accompanied by any of those elements and who assure their moral responsibility.

  “Not quite that,” interpolated Peter, who was translating slowly, “it says ‘su solvencia moral.’ Moral solvency!—There’s a tag we could use.” He went on:

  C) Those who are justified in case of great necessity which obliges them to
go out.

  Sixth—With the object of recruiting elements for the antifascist militia, the organizations which constitute the committee have ordered corresponding centers for enlisting and training opened.

  The conditions of enlistment will be detailed in an interior regulation.

  Seventh—The committee hopes that, given the necessity of constituting revolutionary order to build an effective front against the Fascist nuclei, it will not be necessary to resort to disciplinary measure to effect obedience of the order.

  El Comité:

  E.R. de C.: Artemio Aqueadé, Jaime Miravitlles y J. Pons

  Partidos “Acció Catalana” o Izquierda Republicana: Tomás Fábregas

  “Unió de Rabassaires”: José Torrens

  Partidos Marxistas: José Miret Musté y José Rovira Canals

  C.N.T.: José Acea, Buenaventura Durruti y J. García Oliver

  F.A.I.: Aurelio Fernández y D.A. de Santillán

  U.G.T.: José del Barrio, Salvador González y Antonio López

  “It’s martial law,” said the blond American.

  “It’s all going ahead!” said Peter. “Now the committee should assume control of the Government.”

  “But do they want a soviet?” asked another American behind Helen. He turned to her. “The German’s been looking for you. He had to go off with a couple of Hungarians, and wanted you to know.”

  Helen thanked him. She was shutting her mind to what he was doing; she knew his will was direct. She felt only his greatness, and the bulletin on the wall.

  The young soldier leaned out of his corner window. “Allo!” he called. “They’re putting ‘bans’ all over town—but I,” he thumped his chest, “Antonio Carrano y Torres, am finished with the committee work, I shall see Saragossa by Sunday.” He kissed his fingers, struck a pose, and quieted immediately. “No, but amigos,” he continued, “all the antifascists in the street wish me to tell you they are glad you feel with us, they are happy to know the strangers also see their suffering and love the people’s cause.”

  The American team was swarming from the hotel to hear him. They crossed as he spoke, reaching up to take his hand, firing questions at him, moved by his fervor.

  THE THREE WALKED away from the group. The others were still staring at the poster on the wall. From the Condal, where the English were having a party, the victrola was repeating “Mama Inzez,” and one of the team took it up, whistling. Helen looked at the Condal, wondering if Hans were there. She saw the desolate walls. There was nothing in the street but one light over the bulletin, and a lamp high up, in a window. At the end, after the narrowness, the passeig looked lit and busy. Peter started down toward it.

  “Come on,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Oh, God,” said Olive. “That’s what happened to the Frenchman.”

  “It’s better than sitting still,” said Peter. “Come on. Helen, you come, too—and here’s the Belgian, Olive, try to think of some Mae West stories.”

  The passeig was crowded. Families sat on the benches, walked up and down the promenade in the center of the avenue. The city was quite still, there was no firing. Every few minutes the One-Two-Three of an automobile horn sounded like mallet-strokes. Rarely, an armed car passed, rattling over the holes where paving stones had been pried up for barricades. The people on the benches did not speak very much.

  They turned up the passeig.

  Passing the darkened Communist Party Headquarters, they stopped to salute the guard, and met four of the Hungarian team. The boys were stopping at the Palacio. They laughed when they said so. “But in splendor!” said the beautiful one. Toni crossed over to Helen. “How’s it going?” he asked. “Where are you staying? What do the Americans intend to do?”

  They stood for a few minutes, talking about the English-American meeting called for the morning. They found them selves in a little knot, grouped bulky on the sidewalk as the crowd streamed past. “Goodbye!” called the Hungarians. “A Zaragoza!”

  Peter and Helen walked ahead of the others.

  “Olive was right,” he said. “But it’s quiet now, it’s safe. Look!” he said at the filled seats. “It’s a workers’ city. All we have to fear is stray bullets—the trigger-loose savages!” he mocked.

  The Fascists.

  A little farther on, a sign stood in a second-story window, advertising the Berlin games.

  They stood under it for a moment, repelled. A girl laughed from a dark bench.

  At the end of the passeig, fronting the Plaza de Cataluña, stood the splintered kiosk. CHILDREN! it said, and there was a wide gap . . . BE SURE TO JOIN THE CLUB SHIRLEY TEMPLE . . . over the wreckage and rags. The strip of print hung, fractured in the center, and the shutter over the counter had been extracted by shot.

  All the kiosks were an ironic confusion of headlines, ads, wrecked woodwork.

  “Let’s find seats,” said Peter.

  They sat down near the plaza.

  “General Strike!” he said, musing. “All the muscles and the shouting of the cartoons, missing, and the whole city so real and quiet. And if we fill the streets, with them, who’s going to know us apart?—The strikes we’ve talked about! Remember the first day of the New York elevator strike? The prostitutes’ strike in Mexico City?”

  Helen nodded.

  “Did you sit around with people and do slogans for that one?”

  “And what was the best one?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, absent, not paying attention. A man was walking down the street, a shadow intersecting many shadows passing, gun over his shoulders, a large stained bandage on his arm.

  “I remember ours,” said Peter fondly. “It followed all the rules. It would have won a war.”

  “What was it?” Helen asked.

  “Go Fuck Yourself.”

  They laughed. Her laugh was sharp, cut short.

  The street seemed too quiet.

  “If we could only hear some music,” she said.

  “Come hear our records when we get back,” he answered. “We play Brahms, Sunday evenings—he would be right, now, or ‘Fire Bird.’ Or poetry,” he added. “When we get back, I’ll write a poem for you. And maybe you’ll say one now,” he ended, tentatively.

  She smiled obscurely, and did not answer—a line of sound was coming down the passeig, drawing closer, a rush of Vivas following down. One of the big buses, filled with guns and waving men rolled down along the promenade and turned into the plaza. Olive and the Belgian, on the side nearer the sound, turned their heads. “People coming!” said Olive.

  “It’s part of the army, then!’ exclaimed the Belgian. His thin face grew brilliant, the shadows under the skin were dissolved.

  The battalion advanced down the promenade. From little metal seats under the trees, from black windows receding in the street, the cheering seethed, expanded into open shouting. People stood, clapped, called “¡Viva!” and “A Zaragoza! “They were all four on their feet. Helen heard her throat go, fantastically, “Viva . . .” and then lock.

  They filed past, line by line their faces showed plain under some light, young, important, with their knotted throats and tense cheeks. They did not march in step, and their rope sandals made hardly any sound. Some carried soft red blankets over their shoulder, shrugging them up into position as they walked, many rested their hands on cartridge belts, one or two wore metal helmets, one or two were women. Many had red strips bound around their hair, and red brassards. They did not say anything. They lifted their fists in acknowledgment. The shouting rose to a roar of praise after them.

  There were not more than two hundred in this group.

  They were past in a moment.

  She had to sit down, her knees had gone rotten. Her eyes burned dry. For a moment, she had a hundred lives, all marching by. She knew that she would not be able to recognize three of these faces if she ever saw them again.

  Another bus full of soldiers clattered past.

  “I hate it, it’s hateful,
it’s death,” said Olive.

  They started back to the hotel. The calle was very dark, as narrow as the hall through which she had gone to bed when she was little, Helen thought. Her hip was beginning again, she could hardly walk, when they came to the group of Americans still standing in the street, she could not walk anymore. Johnson, the blond American, called to her.

  “You go on up,” she said. Peter and Olive went to the hotel, slowly, talking as if persuading themselves of something. The light caught Olive’s cheek. She looked profoundly mulatto in the half-dark, in her sadness.

  Johnson said, “It looks as though we might sail with the English. They’ve got a majority against going, but the consul says no.”

  “And our consul?”

  “Says nothing—nothing—at—all. The English have asked us, and the English have the boats. We may have to go with them. The government’s talking about evacuating all foreigners.”

  “But the meeting tomorrow,” she protested.

  “Yes—with the consuls,” he said. “Things are moving fast. See him?” pointing among the group he had broken away from. “That’s the C.I. man, and the whole United Front line may be changed, he says, depending on what happens in Spain in the next day or two.”

  “The notice—it’s martial law now, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Just about.”

  “That’s workers’ army, already—”

  “Yes, and now would be the time to follow it up. If a soviet is to be built, now—” he moved aside for two women who came slowly up the calle. One had her arm around the shorter one, who wept. The Belgian came back.

  “Her husband’s gone to Saragossa,” he said.

  They looked after the pair. The street was narrow; they had retreated into darkness already. One note returned as the woman wept.

  “Two of the Belgians volunteered today,” said the Belgian. “They wouldn’t take one—he’s got a wife and child in Antwerp.”

  “And the other?” asked Helen fearfully, her drawn breath whistling against her teeth.

  “He’s going with the rest tomorrow,” answered the boy, the Belgian.

  A light went out. The thin slit of sky over the street was buzzing with stars. Everyone was impossibly sleepy. The Welshman came out of the Condal, singing in a low voice. The English party was almost over. Helen remembered the bed, and her room; sleep. She was fighting her hip’s pain, pain of remembering.