Savage Coast (17 page)

                 
Look on the world, my comrades! It's aflame! fire-tongues in the sky, new sword-blades at its core, cutting the dry dead harvest that it bore a generation gone, in all the lands of earth.

—Edwin Rolfe
⁸³

T
here must be a way to reach action.

Helen turned back to the Lawrence book.
⁸⁴
Perhaps, after trying for it so hard, she could find what she was looking for here. This might carry her deeper in. Lawrence could do that, striking for the heart, penetrating, on a dark journey.

The flies came in as she read, settling on everything, cucumber cream, remnants of food, the gray cushions.

                                 
The book, to produce an equation,

                                 
To bring an answer.

“But won't they
act
?” cried Josephine.

“Act?” said Aaron. “How, act?”

“Why, defy the government, and take things in their own hands,” said Josephine.

“They might, some time,” said Aaron, rather indifferent.

“I wish they would!” cried Josephine. “My, wouldn't I love it if they'd make a bloody revolution.”

They were all looking now at her. Her black brows were twitching, in her black and silver dress she looked like a symbol of young disaster.”
*

                                 
But on the window little yellow trees

                                 
and the hand claps of rifle bullets and

                                 
behind the book scenes her head produced

                                 
scenes of faces ranged to mock at all of

                                 
this and the mouths that mocked were those

                                 
that cried most loudly War: streets of

                                 
stone, streets of stone, dark rooms, no

                                 
rest, no sleep, mockery

She looked farther down the page.

“But, Josephine,” said Robert, “don't you think we've had enough of that sort of thing in the war? Don't you think it all works out rather stupid and unsatisfying?”

“Ah, but a civil war would be different. I've no interest in fighting Germans. But a civil war would be different.”

“That's a fact, it would,” said Jim.

“Only rather worse,” said Robert.

“No, I don't agree,” cried Josephine. “You'd feel you were doing something, in a civil war.”

“Pulling the house down,” said Lilly.

“Yes,” she cried. “Don't you hate it, the house we live in—London—England—America! Don't you hate them?”

“I don't like them. But I can't get much fire in my hatred. They pall on me rather,” said Lilly.

“Ay!” said Aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair.

Lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition.

“Still,” said Tanny, “There's got to be a clearance some day or other.”
*

                                 
A wagon marked
LLET
going down a

                                 
small pale street followed by a

                                 
machine gun mounted in a produce truck,

                                 
a shot spat against a stucco wall,

                                 
a handful of almonds whose shells

                                 
are rubbed off between the fingers

                                 
five slit throats and a red-bound wound

                                 
a red-bound book on a stopped train

                                 
with the track All Clear Ahead

She clapped the book shut.

The Hungarian printer appeared at the door.

“
Olimpiada
credentials?”

Helen nodded.

“Get ready. The truck is coming for us. How many pieces have you?”

“One,” said Helen.

“Good,” answered the Hungarian. “Then you're ready now.”

He looked around the compartment. “I'll be back for you in five minutes, when the team is together.”

Helen took down her hat and coat.

A few compartments down, she could hear the chorus. “O lord here's the gramophone under the bags.” Laughter came through.

Peapack was standing on the threshold.

“What's up?” she was asking. “What's all the excitement?”

“The truck is coming for the Olympiad people,” Helen said.

“And you—you're getting out of here!” Peapack cried. “Oh, Helen, get me out—you've got to get me out!” She was weeping. Her face was swollen dark.

She hauled down the first of the rawhide bags. There was nothing to do.

Helen raised all the questions: the lack of credentials, the necessity of sticking to a story—of saying they were traveling together— the movie camera, the fourteen hats. Peapack wept.

At the height of the confusion, when the compartment was fully littered with hats and the five valises, Toni appeared, smiling beautifully.

TONI LABORED BESIDE
her with the suitcase. As they passed the last first-class car, the lady from South America descended, and walked along with Helen. Toni pushed ahead, bent over the thick black bag.

It was impossible that the lady's helmet of gray-black hair should lie so smoothly.

“That was a curious thing you did this morning,” she said, with the peculiar provocative motion of her lips.

Helen was puzzled.

“About the letter, I mean,” the lady continued.

“Oh, you should have said yes,” Helen answered. “You might, still, you know.” They both looked at Toni, halfway to the schoolhouse with the bag.

“It's very curious,” said the lady, in her accented, violin way. “Things you never dream people will do . . . If only there were a bathroom in town . . .”

“The school's not as bad as the station,” said Helen. “—And I don't believe there's going to be a lorry for the team,” said the lady. “But if there is, and you reach Barcelona, will you take a message?”

Helen produced a postcard. The lady from South America scribed across it—“This is brought by a companion in misery who has proved very kind. Try to get word through to Geneva that everything is all right. Will be in Barcelona as soon as possible.” She addressed it to herself. “You'll find the place,” she said. “It's in the residential section—anyone can tell you. There—that's my name: Mme. de Trébilhan—Mrs. Trevelyan, I suppose, in English,” she added, smiling. The black eyes dilated, the rims were very dark.

Helen made her way through the crowd in front of the schoolhouse door. The whole train was standing there, looking at the two teams who were ready to go. Slicked down as shiny as possible, the athletes were revived and optimistic. The others were getting tired, breaking a bit. Some looked in envy at the naive Hungarians, who
were repeating their detailed instructions. Toni stood over her suitcase, with Peter. She went over to thank him.

“Hello!” said Peter. “Going out?”

She was embarrassed. “They said to come,” she explained, diffidently. “It's the letter I have to Tudor, the Olympiad man.”

“Stop confessing,” said Peter. “Is Peapack going?”

“She says she's coming.
And
the five valises.”

“To Barcelona! But how? Did she dump herself on you?”

“She's to be traveling with me, she says.”

There was Peapack and the Catalan, heavy-laden. The rawhide had an expensive look.

“If you said something friendly but critical—” Helen suggested to Peter.

He grinned, and crossed the lot to Peapack.

Toni turned around. His lips were almost purple. “Dirty-face!” he said, mockingly.

“Where?” she asked, humbled, like a child, but gratified to be commanded to do anything simple, like washing.

He showed her the smudged place, and she started upstairs. My pleasures! she thought. There was running water.

Reaching the door as she came down, she heard one of the sickly bitches explaining to the Englishman with the tall wife: “—But only four million are organized in America, out of twenty-four million workingmen eligible for such organization, and, no matter how conservative English trade unions are, they've covered more ground than . . .”

Peter and Peapack were standing together. She was being convinced. Helen jerked her head back at the school teacher, “Those are the figures I should know.”

“Trade union figures?” asked Peter.

Peapack put up her muddled face. It shifted, like stirred pudding. “I've been thinking,” she announced. “It's an awful responsibility,
and the roads are probably not as safe, even, as the train. And, then, I'd have to lie.”

“Whatever you say,” retorted Helen, and walked away. She was sick of the whole thing. The hills were losing light gradually, standing out in detail as the sun left them. The jagged hill at the back showed ruddy. The roads were empty, shaved clean against the woods.

“Am I a little cleaner now?” Helen asked Toni. Her cheeks were shining from the cold water.

“Oh, you're insulted,” he said, miserable. “You're insulted!”

She laughed. It had been lovely to be ordered to wash. The water had been very clean and cold, almost as cold as the well-water. Toni saw that she wasn't insulted. And smiled.

The lady from South America watched the starved dog cross the lot. “Any news of the lorry?” She made it a statement; it was evident that she was convinced there never would be news. “Oh,” she said quickly, bitterly, “nobody knows who holds the roads, or if they're torn up, or if the army's on them. How can anyone promise a lorry?”

IN THE MIDDLE
of the lot, Olive was calling Helen. She went over slowly, swinging the large hat. “Anyone who can wear sneakers and a big black hat—” Olive smiled fancifully.

“I like the hat. I like the shoes. It's very simple,” Helen laughed. “Any simple pleasures we find, just now—” she broke off.

“I know one,” said Olive. “Come and see the church. The Hungarians say there's a rope which makes a ghetto of the Fascist section, and they're fed by the town across the rope.”

“Just a second.” Three young boys were standing at the edge of the lot, their heavy guns in their hands. They were comparing bullets. Their sleeves hung in rags, one had a rag about his head. When the two women came close, they looked up, grinned.

“Big,” said one of them, holding out a bullet. Helen put out her hand, involuntarily. “
Por favor
,” she said.

He placed the silverly end of the bullet on her palm. It rolled over into the deepest place and lay heavy. She looked down at it as if it had a word written on it. “That's the business end,” said Olive.

The boys caught the remark, and nudged the spokesman. He held out the shell. “There!” he said. The shorter boy raised his finger, “one moment,” and shook something into his hand. It was a little mound of iron-black, square bits, like children's mosaic, or beauty patches.

“That's gunpowder!” exclaimed Olive. “Powder,” she repeated to the boys.

“Sí, pow-der,” they answered, delighted. The short one went through the motions—he poured the powder into an imaginary gun, took aim, clicked his tongue. “Pam-pam!” he said.

“Yes,” said Helen.

A quick double shot came down from the wooded hill nearest the school, like a pain in the head. The boys gripped their guns and set off, running up the dirt road. Two men caught up with them from their doorways, the guns jolting with their arms. The five hurried to the foot, stopped to talk a moment, and then spread in a fan up the hill, disappearing into the grove one by one.

Olive and Helen recrossed the lot. The hand with the bullet tightened, setting to the weight and the consciousness. Another shot flew from the wood. They hurried. Peter came to meet them. “There's a story that officers are in the wood,” he said, a little breathless.

The whole train was standing in front of the schoolhouse, looking up the hill, perfectly quiet. One of the Rodman Truesdale Young Ladies pulled the professor's elbow. “Perhaps we ought to go into the school,” she said in a flat little voice. He did not answer. Nobody said anything. Nobody went inside. There was no choice
but to stand there. To look at the hill. The rounded, small trees went up it in rows to a line near the top, where they ended abruptly, and the soft hill rose from there. There was nothing to be seen. A few women came to their doors, drying their hands, staring up the hill. Slowly the sunset began to wash color above it, a russet finish, like sunset-glaze on a wide river, leaking over the sky.

Peapack stumbled noisily down the stairs, babbling. She was very nervous. She giggled. “There's a Rodman Truesdale upstairs, sitting on her suitcase in the backroom,” she shook with little screams of laughter. “And you know what she said to me?” Peapack continued, failing, stumbling, the words falling over each other, trying an Oxford drawl, “in her English accent, she says, moaning, ‘I'm only eighteen'—she was almost crying,” and Peapack shrieked, ‘I'm only eighteen, and I don't suppose I'll ever live to see my nineteenth birthday.'” Peapack saw that everyone was watching the hill, and grew quiet, suppressing little gusty shrieks of laughter.