Savage Coast (14 page)

The radio was going again, full blast, opposite the locomotive.

“Do you speak English?” she asked. “If I only knew what they are shouting.”

“They were celebrating a victory a little while ago,” Helen said. She had not seen the woman before. She supposed they had overlooked others on the train, anonymous fellow-travelers. She wished she had the Spanish family to talk to, for a minute she missed them keenly, the old generous grandmother, the heavy man's warmth, the fine beauty of the boy.

The speech stopped abruptly. The woman sighed as she contributed, “That's some sort of workingmen's restaurant,” she said, “they have an excellent radio. I wish I knew what it was saying.” She lowered her head as a sheep might.

In the next compartment, a man with a gray beard lay on his bench, already asleep, looking comfortable; but his companion, a sallow Frenchman, jumped up and came into the corridor to praise the letter and pay his French money. The beret hung down in a heavy point. It was almost full of French, Italian, and Spanish coins. Toni admired the fifty-peseta note.

Peter said, “The note helped a lot.”

The English couple in the last compartment wondered about it. “It's real,” Peter said, controlling his voice, edging toward mockery.

“I'm afraid I can't match it,” said the Englishman. He turned with a long uxorious drink of a look to his tall wife. She acknowledged him with a lip-motion, repressed and formal. “And I do think it's a little steep for tonight's lodging.”

“No. It isn't like that,” said Helen.

“They've all given only if they wanted to and what they could,” Peter was saying incoherently.

“I suppose English money's acceptable?” the man asked, eyeing the mixed pile and sticking two fingers in his vestpocket, cutting the conversation off.

“Don't put anything in until you've heard the letter.” Helen read it to him quickly. She could feel him stiffen at the phrasing.

His tall wife turned her square modern face to the window in a deadly gesture of exhaustion. The man fished out a half-crown.
He spoke directly to Helen, avoiding Peter. “It should hire a quiet night, but it does go a little against the grain,” he began.

“Oh, but don't give anything if you don't think—” she said.

“Sorry—I didn't mean it that way.” He put it in the beret, and hunched his shoulder in an awkward self-conscious spasm. His whole body apologized. His wife watched him now, aroused.

The entrance to the Pullman was locked.

“Never mind,” said Peter, “we'll go around. We won't pass these birds up. The Hollywood trio must be in here.”

“Hollywood?” asked Helen. The flash of
Variety
headlines she had caught at Port Bou station recurred under her eyelids.

“Our magnates; I looked for you with them, before we found each other.”

“How do you say that word?” Toni asked. “
Hollywood
. I had an argument over that in Paris.”

They went outside. The radio was on again. A wind sprang up in the Pyrenees, washing down over the valley.

Toni made a face. “The refuse is heaped under the train. Bad smell,” he said. “In the sun, it would be very very bad.”

The outside door of the Pullman was locked.

Peter rapped against the metal side of the car directly under a lit window.

The man had blue-shaven cheeks and a candy-colored shirt.

“Do you speak English?” Peter asked, following the formula they had used throughout the train.

The man shook his head.

“You don't speak English?” Peter asked, confounded.

“
Non
,” said the man. The other two appeared at the window.

“
Kesker say
?” the first man demanded, with a strong New York thickness in his words.

Peter was disgusted. He explained very shortly. Helen took up recital. They read the letter in French, feeling fools. The men grinned, and gave them French money.

The dining-car carried its
NOT RUNNING
sign, and the waiters and the engineer were asleep in the baggage room.

They could see the Workers' Café. There was a full sidewalk in front, where thirty men were listening to the radio.

THEY SHOWED OLIVE
the beret. It held about 140 pesetas and some foreign money.

“But the Swiss has to take back his,” Peter said. “There's no proportion, this way. And ask him to come with us to the mayor.”

He came, lowering his bulk gently down the laddersteps. He became the leader of the group as soon as he saw a knot of boys standing in the street behind the station.

They crossed the cement-paved court.

The Swiss walked ahead; his broad shadow increased on the ground. He spoke to the boys in Catalan.

“Wouldn't the mayor be at the radio?” A burst of shouting expanded, issuing from the Workers' Café.

“They say we can find him at the
farmacia
.” The Swiss was authoritative.

The boys swirled around them, curious and polite. They all turned down the Calle Mayor. The night, a new element, entered the street. Houses were distorted by it, their clearness discolored, their angles thrown out of joint, each block and tile focused. The darkness changed shapes like wind, like an organism deranged by fearful wind the town changed shape.

The
farmacia
still had lights on. One burned raw behind the gold plait over the window:
Centro de Específicos
, another lit the rows of surgical scissors and labeled jars and bottles.

Peter stepped forward. “We are from the train—” he said.

The Swiss put up a great conclusive hand. “We have a document from the train for the mayor,” he declared, in Catalan. “And a small collection for the town.”

The chemist was profuse; his sideburns were agitated by his apologies. He was glad to inform them that the mayor was certainly at his home now, he had left the shop not more than ten minutes since; he, the chemist, was afflicted that he had detained them with his disquisition; he would be honored to accompany them, but he had sworn to keep the
farmacia
open all night and to remain on these premises. In case of emergency, they comprehended; they foresaw emergencies during the
madrugada.

He took them to the door, and thanked them for their good wishes.

They beheld the silent street.

Crisis at night, or at dawn!

The Swiss had metal plates reinforcing the heels of his shoes. They rang on the pavement, a high, wild sound, recurring like a sweet stammering flute, bells, ritual music. The wind blew down, the cooled air falling from the mountains.

Beside these, there were no sounds.

The mayor's house was past the restaurant, across from it. The Swiss dropped the knocker. A young girl opened the door a crack, showing her pale forehead and two wings of gleaming hair. She said she would call her father, and twisted her fine throat, calling on two notes. The mayor appeared at the crack, and threw the door open. His coat with the mourning band on the lapel was off, and he looked younger and more tired. The Swiss started to explain the train-message.

Helen watched the mayor's face lighten with sympathy as the Swiss spoke.

“Good night,
vuestra merced
,” the Swiss said, finally.

“¡
Compañeros
!” acknowledged the mayor. The shift of level hit them hard. An excitement passed through the group. The faces changed slightly; the light fell as the door shut.

“What did the mayor say?” she asked Peter.

His face had lost its look of knowledge. He was very startled. “The mayor thought it was too important for him to accept. He sent us to the secretary.”

“What secretary?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

It was a low modern building, banded broadly with chalk-green and white stripes. It was the only building whose door was lit.

The Swiss led them past the guards and up the high steps. At the head of the stairs was a balcony, with offices branching from it. An armed workman stopped them.

“The mayor sent us,” said the Swiss, in Catalan.

The workman opened a door.

It was a high, hot room, lit with naked bulbs whose white unbearable dazzle made them narrow their eyes. The walls were ranged with straight wooden chairs. At the far side, behind a square dark desk, the secretary got to his feet.

“You are from the train, they tell me?”

The Swiss explained that they brought a message from the passengers; as he spoke, the secretary signaled with a nod to four of the men in the anteroom. They came in and closed the door behind them softly.

The secretary motioned for them all to sit down. He spoke a few words to the Catalans, and came back to the Swiss. “Tell them what you have told me,” he said.

The Swiss repeated their mission. The four men sat there, not answering with any motion. The Swiss handed the letter to the secretary, and Peter emptied the beret carefully on the glossy desk.

THE SECRETARY READ
the document. Even sitting, bent over paper, his body had dignity, and his long face, the cheeks crossed and braided by lines, dominated the room. He leaned over the desk, stretching the paper towards the nearest committee-member.

The two lines of people faced each other—the four dark Cata
lans sat opposite the Swiss, Peter, Helen, and Toni. The secretary turned his engine-eyes on them. The first man passed the paper on to the second. With a long hooked gesture, the secretary pulled a light steel table to him, spooled a sheet out of the typewriter, settled a new page, and began to type lightly and rapidly.

No one said a word. Helen leaned over to Peter with a full, rich gesture, bending forward from the breast to ask him a question. She was looking at a large photograph framed on the wall over the secretary's desk. The Catalan who had just finished the letter followed her eyes.

“Who is he?”

Peter shrugged slightly, and asked the Swiss, they had dropped into whispers. Peter put his mouth near her ear.

“Lluís Companys, President of Catalonia.”

The committee-man nodded.

The secretary finished the lines he was typing. His lips tightened, the deep sharp groove down his lone upper lip became lighter, and his lined forehead cleared. He reached over his desk and inked a seal. The room was quiet, now that his machine had stopped. The stamps of rubber seal on paper had a final, military note.

The secretary stood up, and began to read in a flat voice.

“The Workers' Committee of Catalonia hereby thanks the passengers of the train of the Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante line, now detained in the Moncada station, for the expression of their recognition of the position in which Catalonia and all of Spain has been placed. The committee wishes to assure the passengers that every effort will be made to continue to provide for their comfort and complete safety.
Por el Comité Trabajador de Cataluña
.”

The secretary sat down and drew a telephone toward him. Peter and Helen stared, fevered with the sign. The secretary was speaking softly. Then the lines were up, the people held the communications. The brightness of the room, the heat, the promise that the telephone meant!

The secretary turned his typed sheet over to the Swiss.

“Say that some of us have our sympathies in theirs,” whispered Helen. “We can tell him, at least!”

“Yes,” Peter said the Swiss. “Tell him!”

The Swiss had a settled face, pitted and firm. It shifted, entrenching further in solidity. “No,” he answered. “We have no place in their politics.”

“Foreign nationals.”

It seemed impossible to continue without any indication, without making any sign or giving a partisan clue.

The secretary folded his hands. “Is that all?”

They stood. Everybody stood. The door opened.

The Swiss moved forward to shake the secretary's hand. He turned then to the committee.

Each of them did the same. The two files met, grasped hands, and passed. They shook hands with a smiling curious intensity, trying to find language in that touch. It was, again, a humiliation to Helen not to be able to speak. But there was no constraint: they shook each others' hands: they could count on the transmission: they were sure.

Foreign nationals.

“It was like that on Bastille Day,” Peter whispered. Heavily, they moved down the sharp steps.

A man with a long gun hurried down with them, at Helen's back. She could feel the gun pointed at her, feel a passage bored through her back, a tube leaving a cold fear through.

They walked, a little apart, down the street. The man with the gun was running in the other direction, and then he was gone.

Secret, furious, the night grew. The street rested, but the black air was alert, waiting for its game to start, its sun to approach, its act of will to resolve this war.

Peter and Helen walked slowly. “The night,” she said.

“Vivid and black.”

“Those people are, somehow, historic facts.”

“Realer than any, more strong than any, more the clue?”

“No,” she said. “We romanticize.”

A cold flaw ran over their faces. They reached the station. They said good night to Toni and the Swiss. They all were bound to each other insolubly, it was a grief to part, the good night protracted.

Peter and Helen walked down the platform. The yellow trees swung on the low wind, yellow, perfume of lilac. The small lit blossoms were clear; perfect and blond in the night.

“Mimosa?” she asked. They stood under the bright tree, the yellow light fell over their faces. He peered with a scientist's squint into the tree; she turned white and quiet. Her dark hair was tinted with light.

“I never knew,” he said. “Maybe. The words came again.”

“They came up once today, stronger than ever before, creating what they said.”

“General Strike?” he asked

PEAPACK WANTED TO
go to sleep. She asked Olive to come in with her and Helen. They were better off than on the wooden benches of third. The gray cushions were heavy, but upholstered. Helen's leg jumped; sleep, she thought.