Savage Coast (26 page)

Now, from the windows, white patches flew, hanging truce flags of white, lining this street which was taller as they raced deeper into the city.

The barricades were up.

The barricades, recurring every hundred yards. Here, a young soldier, helmeted, behind a machine gun, trained on the highway.

Speed, two minutes, blindness, the road.

Another stop; another wall, a glimpse of street corners.

And the children who played, the families who passed walking, all their fists lifted. The movie house on one side; the sudden heat blown from the church burning on a square. The piles of firewood heightened in flame: vestments, statues, gaudy cloth, images to be carried head-high.

The truck swung down a wide avenue, and far to one side, the quadruple black-and-white spires of the Sagrada Familia rose intact.

Stores, promenades, evening.

And everywhere, the million white, the flags pendant from the windowsills, the walker in the street who lifts his hand.

The hands lifted from the truck, held tight and unfamiliar in perpetual sign.

They lost themselves, travelers exposed in this way, totally unforeseen, strange. This was a city they had read on pages in libraries and quiet rooms, leaving the books to find a hard street, bitter faces, closed silent lips at home.

But there the boy stood, his face raised in recognition, his hand, like all theirs raised.

The car swung ahead.

The bullet cracked.

From the confusion as they all bent, head and shoulders low in a reflex of dread, Helen looked up to Hans's unmoved head, either risen immediately or never changed.

The truck wheeled sharp, on two wheels, to the left, and they caught at arms and hands in confusion, straightening now, recovered.

Avenues opened wider and wider, the plane-trees, the oranges, the palms. Cars passed them now, and each time they blew, One-Two-Three, stopping to race the cars loaded with guns, spiked with guns. Each car carried the white letters of its organization: U.G.T., C.N.T., F.A.I.

The chopping of paving stones was loud at the street corners.

And now, down the long Rambla, past riddled barracks, shell-torn carnivals, bomb-pocked hotels. The dead cafés, their chairs piled on the sidewalk, before the drawn steel curtains.

Wind, fast wind increasing; the long view of a brick-orange fortress, impregnable and high. The high column, the long blue strip of sea.

And the truck turning.

Avenues opened into a great circle, a public square, mastered by two tall pillars, holding subway stations, statues, overturned wrecks of cars, candy-colored posters, full-rounded walls, cafés, the guarded front of an immense building out of which streamed warmth and talk, files of young people streaming.

The truck circled, slowing.

It stopped at the building's entrance.

The travelers jumped one by one.

Hans dropped cat-quick down, and swung his arms up for Helen. She placed her hands on his cabled wrists, and jumped. It was then that the four pains in the right palm were noticeable, and, looking down, the four blood-dark crescents were seen, the mark of the clenched fist, clutched during the voyage.

A guard in a blue uniform, rifle slung at his back, was standing with them.

He smiled at the hand.

They answered.

She asked, “and this?”

The building was large. It streamed warmth.

He looked at the travelers.

“Hotel Olimpiada.”

Olimpíada Popular
Comitè d'Honor
President: Lluís Companys
Ventura Gassol, Joan Lluhí, Josep M. Espanya,
Pere Mestres, Martí Barrera, Joan Casanovas,
C. Pi Sunyer, J. Serra Húnter, Comandant Pérez Farràs,
Josep A. Trabal, Pere Aznar, Joan Fronjosà, Miquel Valdés

Manifesto

                 
In recent years, and especially since the World War, sport has developed into one of the most important social and cultural factors in the life of nations. The industrialization which, in most countries of the world, took complete mechanization of the methods of work which has not yet ceased, along with the notoriously low living standard of the working masses in the majority of countries, have exercised their pernicious influences over the daily life of the working peoples.

                       
The working masses intend to counteract the harmful effect of their hard toil by sporting activities and now with the exception of a few countries the world recognizes the vital importance of sport to the health and cultures of the broad masses.

                       
It is shameful that in the present-day society there are elements who abuse sport, exploiting it for their militaristic and warlike ends. Taking advantage of the eagerness and enthusiasm for sport, they lead the youth along the road to war. Under the pretense of strengthening
their bodies and adding happiness to their lives, they systematically subject the youth to a strict military discipline and a thorough technical and ideological preparation for future wars.

                       
It is especially in the Fascist countries such as Germany and Italy, and also in various other countries where fascist tendencies exist that sport is being abused for militarist purposes and where, almost openly, recruits are being trained for the fascist gangs and fascisized armies.

                       
Fascism changes the true spirit and meaning of sport, turning a progressive movement for peace and brotherhood between peoples into a cog in the machinery of war.

                       
The Olympiad, founded thousands of years ago and reborn in our own times, has heretofore maintained its character as a symbol of fraternity between men and races, but now it is losing this significance. The Olympic Games now being organized in Berlin are unquestionably a disgraceful sham, a mockery of the Olympic ideal. In a country where millions of sportsmen are forbidden to continue their social activities, where thousands of the best sportsmen are suffering in prisons and concentration camps, where the greater part of the working masses are persecuted for their opinions or for their religion, where a whole race has been outlawed, it is impossible to find the real spirit of the Olympic Games.

                       
The People's Olympiad of Barcelona revives the original spirit of the games and accomplishes this great task under the banner of the brotherhood of men and races. The People's Olympiad not only brings together in friendly competition the leading amateur sportsmen of Spain, Catalonia, and Biscay with those of other countries, but also promotes the general development of popular sport; at the same time giving an opportunity for enthusiasts in
the more modest categories to try their strength against sportsmen from other districts and countries.

                       
The People's Olympiad of Barcelona must show the sports-loving masses that it is neither chauvinistic nor commercialized, with the production of sensational publicity for stars as its objective, but rather a popular movement, which springs from the activity of the toiling masses and which gives impetus to progress and culture.

                       
Catalonia and its capital Barcelona must be the country and the city chosen for the celebration of this magnificent demonstration. The working people of Catalonia have struggled heroically for centuries against social and national oppression. This people, which has known and still knows how to fight for its liberty, will fraternally welcome the representatives of the toilers of other countries and unite with them in a solemn undertaking to always maintain the true Olympic spirit, fighting for the brotherhood of men and of peoples, for progress, freedom, and peace.

—From the Spanish-English-German program of the People's Olympiad

T
he big entrance was filled with athletes. Streaming past the information desk at the far end, crossing to the stairs, breaking up to watch the truckloads arriving. Tall boys in sweatshirts ran out to the trucks to help carry the baggage into the waiting room. A tall man with heavy yellow eyebrows watched the athletes arrive and a stocky fair Spaniard with an official badge,
Serveis Generals
, stood at the door, acting as a guide, ushering the strangers to the right.

In the waiting room, they lined up before the brilliant-faced guard, to have their passports and credentials examined. From the center of the line, Helen saw the French delegate and his secretary
present their letters. A service man showed them out, and the guard went on with the examination. He was separating them according to one classification: those who were accredited participants in the People's Olympiad, or in any way connected with the Games, were sent through; the rest remained in the waiting room.

Helen took out the letter to Tudor and presented it with her passport. The guard recognized it.

“
Comitè Organitzador
,” he said and smiled electrically. “There's a problem.”

“If I could reach Tudor—” she attempted.

“Nobody can reach Tudor,” his brilliant smile apologized for the publicity director. “He is out on the streets, fighting.” He put his head around the door, calling. The official who had been acting as a guide came through.

“Assign mademoiselle to a place with the representatives of organizations. Here is her letter to Tudor,” he said.

The guide looked down at the letter. “He is going to be a hard one to find. He has been on the barricades, since Sunday morning.” He had a strongly cleft face, tanned and Teutonic, and was slightly shorter than Helen, compact. He crossed the room for her suitcase. The latest arrivals were sitting on their baggage. Helen turned frantically, searching for Hans. “Tell Hans I'm looking for him, and show all your credentials,” she said as she passed Peter and Olive. The guide was already at the door.

She followed him through the wide glass doors behind the desk. When he shut them, the sudden quiet was too quick; it was a violence done to the nerves, releasing her abruptly. He put down her suitcase, and spoke to the French delegate and his secretary, in the middle of a bare room whose walls, covered with circus-colored posters of the Games, had the clean naive look of a kindergarten. The guide bowed to the delegate.

“Have they done anything about hotel reservations?”

The Frenchman turned to Helen, his eyes pointed with humor.
“What a revolutionary order they have established here!” he exclaimed, rising slightly on his toes. “They ask about our accommodations!” He clapped the guide on the shoulder. “René,” he said gently to the sallow secretary, “go find out about hotel rooms for all of us.” He waved an inclusive hand.

Peter and Olive appeared through the glass doors.

“Greetings!” said the delegate, “we shall have a veritable train reunion. Another room, René!”

“Yes, Mr. Corniche,” answered the secretary, sliding behind Peter.

“But are you official?” asked M. Corniche. “Are we all official, we Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante tourists,
hein
?” He chuckled, delighted, he caressed his beard.

Peter explained, shuffling the papers in his hand. “We thought we should be representing our organization at such a time.”

“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.”