Savage Coast (25 page)

Then, a moment after, the street was still, emptying fast. The Swiss ran in an erratic line, shouting good byes, and disappeared around a corner.

“Shall we see them go?” Hans asked Helen.

“I've see them leave once today,” she smiled. She stopped, caught by a woman's necklace. “What a contradiction!” she started to say. “Look, she's wearing her religious medallion—”

But the delegate was still at the foot of the street, and his arms thrashed. He was still shouting.

“Come! All!”

They broke into a stampede, the cry smashing through. Helen's leg buckled under her. She stopped again in the wild fear of physical impediment—she could not run, she knew in that moment that the one thing she was there for, the one thing she had ever been alive for, was to push through this to its center, to the place
where she would be named—as an individual, and an anonymous member, as a job assigned. That was all there was in the world: the great struggle around her whose outlines were springing clearly out against a fantastic voyage, her need to push to a conclusion, the leg's refusal, the clenched fists. Hans.

He was watching her eyes.

“Don't, love!” he said. “Walk, I'll get your valise—” He was running, incredibly fast, down the platform.

She followed.

The train was full of people staring from compartments, hanging out of windows. Moved to the far track, it was exposed and solitary.

The lady from South America met her at the steps. “It's not true, my dear! There's only a car for the chorus, nothing for us, there's not a thing for us!” she said melodiously.

Peter was down the steps already. Olive handed him a knapsack.

“She says no, Peter—” repeated Helen.

“We'll look. We'll be ready—”

Helen climbed up. Hans had her bag and coat, and the big hat. She took the clothes he gave her, and followed.

The truck was ready, full of Swiss, backed to the station, engine running. The automobiles were lined up. The chorus filled one and left room in the other for the French delegate and his secretary. Another open truck stood empty.

A tall yellow-faced man stood beside it. “This is for anyone connected with the Olympics, and then for anyone who cares to try the drive with us,” he said, in French and English. His long face was like intellectual metal, yellow and refined sharp; and further lengthened by the high V of baldness which ate into the fair hair, baring the skull ridges.

“Who is coming?” he asked. The truck began to fill. Olive was on its floor as the suitcases were thrown in. “Is there much danger?”

The tall man looked up. “There is steady fighting; but we have
a guard.” A thin boy with a white handkerchief around his head climbed in. He smiled with all his teeth, he patted his rifle. Olive made room for him, and he took his place at the front of the truck, leaning on the roof over the driver.

“Then it can't be like this,” she said, and called to Peter and Hans to stop loading.

Helen climbed in. She pulled the suitcases over from the center of the floor.

Olive was busy. She was sure now. She up-ended all the bags.

“Stack them around the outside,” said Olive, setting them straight and close. “We've got to have some walls. We've got to have some order.” Her face was clear and active at last.

They built a wall of baggage for the truck on both sides. In front, valises and the driver's box reached breast high. Olive was in charge, she moved everywhere, quickly, with Helen.

“All right,” she said. The tall man nodded, and helped the others in. The bitches came running. Mme. Porcelan, attended by the pock-marked Swiss, brought baggage. They climbed in.

“Ready?” asked the tall man in a father's voice.

The driver was ready. Another guard climbed into the seat, holding his gun out the window. From the truck, the muzzle could be seen, and the oily gleam of the barrel.

“Slowly, through the town,” the tall man said.

Hans and Helen were beside the guard. He reached out behind the guard and took her hand for a moment.

The boy smiled and looked at his gun. “Everyone is safe,” he said. He was very handsome.

Peter and Olive were crushed against them. Helen was glad to feel their weight. They are very good friends to have, she thought. The space left between the walls of suitcases was narrow.

The truck started, blowing its horn. And it turned down the main street, Helen could see the women who had listened to the yodeling, standing in the same place. Hans's fist was up, salut
ing the town. She clenched her fist, and the women in the street replied. There was a flash of
vivas
, and the little tunnel blacked out the street.

Their truck led the way to the top of the hill. Halfway up, at a sharp curve, the town petered out in a ravel of old houses and meat-stores. The truck made a half-turn, backed, and stopped.

“God!” said Peter fiercely, “what's the matter?”

“He's just turning,” Olive suggested.

“He could make the turn—” said Helen.

The street was barred by children; they leaned against the walls, dodged across the road, sat on the curb. Their streaked faces were full of curiosity, and all their heads turned together like newsreel heads of tennis-match spectators, as horns began to blow. The two cars and the other truck pulled up the hill.

“We probably all have to start together,” said Peter.

The yellow man got out and called the drivers together.

His face was the most disciplined face Helen had ever seen, one end of civilization. Down one temple the skin was thin, as if an old burn had left it fragile, and the blood showed dark beneath. He was speaking to the drivers in an extreme of conviction.

Peter pulled her elbow. His face had knotted with the delay, and he was contagiously wound tight. The three of them felt undercut and excited by the same shock of drunkenness they had felt in the café.

“Look at the baby,” he said, as if he were telling a joke.

She followed his finger. The little boy was no more than two years old, and was sitting on the curb. He was staring at the trucks and masturbating absentmindedly.

“Infantile—Infantile—”

“Auto-eroticism,” Helen supplied.

“Not at all,” he said gravely. “
Vive le sport
!”

Olive howled and the athletes turned in surprise. The yellow man looked up as he finished speaking to the drivers; he crossed
to the space in front of the trucks, and held up his hand. The thin lavender mark was streaked, distinct on his temple.

“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.

                 
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 Adams
⁹¹

F
ar 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.