Departure (2 page)

It was seven o'clock in the sunny morning when we arrived at Barcelona, and for some strange reason our arrival there is confused in my mind with all the old newsreel pictures I have seen before then and since of troops coming home by ship and departing too; but really I don't suppose it was too much like that. But there were people on the dock, and I heard afterwards that Negrin was there. I don't remember him, but I remember André Marty; it was the first time I had seen him, and the guys pointed him out.

They had let us up on deck with the sunrise. A submarine was escorting us, and after I saw it, I felt a lot better. I don't remember us talking about anything else but the submarine, even when we entered the bomb-wracked harbor and saw the sunken ships. And the bigness of Barcelona was different from the loveliness of Valencia. We hold Barcelona, so I told it to the nameless girl who had walked past me with such a lissome stride. We hold Barcelona, and, by God, we will hurl the fascist back into the hills of Portugal, and there will be a victory parade in Madrid, and as I march down the Avenue, I will see her and she will recognize me.

You remember well, and you remember badly?

It's that way, I'm sorry, some little things you remember and some big things you forget. I remember a melon rind floating in the water.

By eight o'clock we were all of us disembarked. The trucks for us were drawn right up to the docks, and we climbed into them. They took us to the barracks, which were on top of a hill outside of Barcelona. I don't know what the hill was called, or what was the name of the barracks, but it was a barracks in the old Spanish style, foursquare, with a compound in the center, and there were balconies all around four or five stories high, a place big enough to hold all of us, and we were thousands. There were all the Internationals who were left; there were the men of the nations. Someone—I don't know who it was—but someone said to me:

“Put it in your memory, kid, put it in your heart.”

“My heart is full,” I said, speaking in Spanish. “My heart is full and flowing over. I don't want to go home. I have no home, I am the homeless one.” You say things in another tongue, and they do not sound foolish, as they would in English. Whoever he was, he answered so softly, “
Vamos juntos, vamos juntos
—” And I thought of the thousand and one times I had wanted to go home, whimpered to go home, pleaded to go home, wept to go home, a frightened kid and no soldier, but now I was a soldier and no land to fight for, no people to give me arms and say: Stand here, stand and no further.

They called us out and we filled the balconies and listened to Marty speak. Then Negrin spoke. Then the whole place broke into the “Internationale,” in fifteen tongues, and that is a memory, for when had it happened before and when would it happen again? And we were going away; we were leaving Spain, who is like a beautiful woman you love, and we were going away.

It could have only been a day or two later when the thing happened. The fascists had reached Barcelona, you understand, and we had moved up to a place called Cassa d'la Selva. It was the way out; it was the end already, and there were only the Cubans and the Mexicans with us, and we had stayed too long; we were guests departed but lingering, and we had given away to the Spaniards left behind our guns, our leather belts, our boots, and whatever else was of value. We ate and we slept and we waited, and rumors filled the air; but the strongest of all the rumors was to the effect of Barcelona being handed over to the enemy, the pig with a voice, the dog without even a dog's soul, the fascist; given up and no struggle; handed over and no struggle; a gift for the devil. I lay in the sun, and my love lay beside me. I told someone then that I was in love. With whom? With a Spanish girl whose eyes are like black olives and whose lips are like poppies. They would have been fools to believe me, but we believed anything then. It was my first love and my last.

You remember what you want to remember; a man's past is part of all the past, and everywhere little gates are carefully closed. Only when it is all finished, our way, will we open all the gates. It was two or three or four days after we were there that the big meeting was called in the one theater the town boasted. Seven or eight hundred of us crowded in there, full and overfilled and cloudy with the smoke of our brown-paper cigarettes.

This is it, kid, someone who knew and was on the inside.

He spoke in Spanish, “You men of the Internationals,
amigo de corazon,
you men of the Internationals who are my comrades, my brothers-in-arms, listen to me! We will defend Barcelona to the death! We go back!”

That is also a memory. I cried again; I put my hands over my face and wept, but I haven't wept since then. Through all the rest, I was dry-eyed. No more clowning, and the kid was not a kid any more. Sitting and listening to the speakers, one after another, telling how Barcelona could be held and made a bridgehead for all free men, I made a disposition of myself. Then we went outside into the dry sunlight of Spain.

The people from our land, America of the lovely name, the free land over the mountains and over the sea, went to a carpentry shop, and there some volunteered and others said they would go home. The volunteers would not go home any more. They stayed together, talking and making arrangements for the battery; I didn't have anything to say, and someone asked me:

“What is it, kid, worried?”

“No.”

“Take it easy, kid. Nobody is brave.”

“I'm not brave,” I said. My childhood was over, youth and adolescence and the sprouting of the weed as juices run through its stem, and the wonderful, beautiful conviction that you will live forever while all other mortals die; manhood is a benediction as well as a curse, and the calm inside of me was life's repayment. It was a fair exchange. “I'm not brave,” I said. “I want to stay here.”

You see, it was to defend Barcelona to the death, if necessary, and most likely necessary, and you made your own choice. The great bulk of the Internationals were gone, but you had stayed with the leave-taking. You had overstayed; then sleep, and tomorrow we will break bread again.

What else do you remember?

Well, then, I also remember these things: the children who played in the streets, they the inheritors, and I was grown now and saw them as children. The fresh-baked bread we had for our dinner—oh, honored guests. We shared our bread with the children, who made us at home as you do when a guest is no longer a stranger. There were also things to be done, arrangements for the new guns, which were coming down from France, arrangements for officers and for a table of organization, arrangements into the sunset, the sweet, cool night. I was bedded with a cobbler's family, and we sat before bed with a glass of wine and a piece of sausage.

Partake, oh cousin, and tell us about how it goes in the South. Is there death in the South? Will there be victory or defeat? Will the fascists be driven back?

A su tiempo.

Cunning words from an old fighter. You are one of the new ones, a machine gunner?

An artilleryman.

Drink the wine and don't spare the sausage. When will Spain see better men? A glass of wine makes the couch easy.

And then I slept until a whistle wakened me, and this was it, was it not? We formed into ranks and then onto the train, and nobody really knew except—rumors; but after a while we understood. The train was going north, not south. Barcelona would not be held; the last of the Internationals were going away. This was a night train for the border, salute and farewell. Somewhere, men were afraid; somewhere men lost heart and hope, and they had opened the doors and said: Take this maiden for yourself, she with the lips as red as poppies and the lissome stride. I had only hatred and contempt for those whose eyes were wet now.

“What is it, kid?”

“To hell with you! To hell with you!”

And when the train stopped in the morning, we were in France.

The Old Wagon

O
N THE SEAT
of the wagon, as it drove into the little town, were a man and woman, and a child of six. The man drove two jaded horses; the child, sitting between the man and woman, twisted his head from left to right with never flagging interest. The woman, who was small, sat primly in the seat, as if she knew what a poor impression the wagon made, and desired to counteract it.

The old wagon was piled high with household goods, with pots and pans and chests and chairs and quilts, with much that was no better than junk. Over all, a patched canvas cover was drawn. Roped onto the side were two water barrels. And in back, with bare, dusty legs hanging over the tailboard, were two more children, a boy of eleven, a girl of nine.

The horses were tired, and they walked into the town slowly. The man was tired, and he slouched over his reins, a long, rawboned man with a stubble of beard on his face. Only the woman seemed as fresh as if she had just got out of bed and washed and dressed. She was a little woman, and she sat primly, with her hands folded in her lap. She wore a plain blue cotton dress that fell to her ankles, a duller blue than the color of her eyes, which were large and round and warm. The eyes were the one prominent feature in her small plain face. Her black hair was drawn back tightly under a black bonnet.

It was a few hours past midday, hot, sunny, when they drove into the town. The town consisted of one long street, carpeted with dust, and at this hour it was empty, except for a dozen or so horses standing in front of two saloons.

Briefly, the woman glanced at the town, at the flat house fronts, at the saloons and the horses, after which she folded her hands again a little more firmly in her lap. Her lips compressed, and a click of her tongue told her husband she didn't like the town.

“Don't like it much myself,” he admitted. “Got a name for being bad.”

“Just shiftless, looks to me,” she said. “Now don't stop, but go right through.”

“Now, Martha,” he complained, “I got to rest the horses.”

“Rest them plenty tonight.”

He pointed ahead to where the single street of the village lost itself in flat land that was brown and yellow, hot and baked. “How do I know there's water out along there, Martha?”

“You don't know. But if we're a goin' to live there, there's water. That's all.”

The child said: “Maw, I'm thirsty.”

“See,” the man said. “Ain't no reason why the little shaver shouldn't have a nice cool cup of water.”

“No reason except that a saloon's the place you'll look for it.”

“Martha, there's a trough out there, an' you can't drive dry, tired horses past water without giving them to drink.”

“All right,” she nodded.

The team scented the water and quickened their pace. They found the trough themselves and plunged their dusty heads into it. The man sighed. The woman clicked her tongue and looked straight ahead of her. The boy began to climb down from the seat.

“You stay here,” she ordered.

“Maw, I want a drink.”

“Stay here.”

“Suppose I get the little shaver a cup of cool water,” the man suggested.

“We ain't got money to throw away.”

“Now, Martha, why talk that way. I took a pledge nine month past, an' I ain't broken it.”

She looked at him a moment. “Guess I shouldn't a said that, Jim.”

Awkwardly, stretching his cramped legs, the man climbed down from the wagon. He drew himself up to his full height, worked his neck. Then he ambled behind the wagon and ordered the boy and girl to stay where they were. He came back and patted the horses, and the woman looked at him fondly. He grinned at her, and said:

“Maybe this here's where our luck turns, Martha. Seems we had just about enough bad luck to last folks a lifetime.”

“You go get that water.”

As he turned to the saloon, the door opened, and two men came out—one short, bowlegged, small of face, wearing blue jeans, booted; the other larger, heavier, better dressed. Both were armed. Both grinned as they looked at the heavily loaded wagon. They came down the steps and stood by the water trough, grinning.

The shorter one said: “Mister, that's a fine load you're packing there.”

The other one: “Mister, you buying junk or selling it?”

The woman stared straight ahead of her. If any change came over her face, it was a tightening of her lips, a finer etching of the little lines of pain, of hope, of anxiety about her mouth.

From the shorter one: “Mister, them nags of yours had just about enough water, wouldn't you say? You don't want them to drink the trough dry.”

“Jim—” She left off her words and still looked straight ahead of her.

“I never yet been begrudged water,” he muttered, shifting uneasily from foot to foot, conscious of the old, patched wagon, conscious of his dirty brown overalls.

“Maybe we begrudge a lot of things to your kind,” the taller man said. “Maybe we don't like your kind nice enough to be perlite. Maybe this is cattle country an' not for groundscrapers.”

She saw the stiffening of her husband's body, and she said, quickly: “Jim, we got to get goin'.”

“I'll get the shaver a drink of water,” he said softly. Then he walked up the wooden steps into the saloon. The two men glanced after him, turned slowly, and followed.

She waited, and it seemed to her that she waited a long time, but actually it couldn't have been more than four or five minutes. Further up the street and across from her was a sign which said CLOVER CITY EXPRESS. It hung over the front of a store, and now, as she watched, a man stepped into the street, and stood under the sign, mopping his brow, a short, stout man in his vest and shirt sleeves. He looked up the street, and then down at the wagon. He met her eyes and nodded.

She felt cold, in spite of the heat. She felt an ominous uncertainty, as before a thunderstorm.

“I'm thirsty,” the boy said again.