Savage Coast (33 page)

SOVIETS EVERYWHERE

THE THREE TURNED
away. They could not have seen the second boat go out. Very quickly, they walked down the waterfront. The sun was low in the sky, knots of soldiers were gathering before the government buildings, getting their orders for the night, a few armed cars passed, blowing their horns, and the dead quiet followed. Gunfire was beginning again, in the old city; they heard the sound.

They would have to go back to the Olympic and take the baggage to their hotel. Dispiritedly, the crisis passed and their condition upon them for the moment, they walked up past the shattered carnival. The gay swings had fallen, the carousel was torn and twisted as if a transmontane wind had whirled the booths about.
Beside the carousel was an empty lot, full of old bricks. They would be useful; at the street corner, armed men were building another barricade.

There was a shout from across the street, and Helen turned swiftly. It was Hans. He crossed the street, and took her arm.

“We've been seeing the French sail,” she said, in explanation.

“Did they really go?” he asked.

“Two thousand of them,” Peter answered.

“It's just as well,” said Hans. “The Frenchman died this afternoon.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Helen.

“He was really shot, then!” Peter said to Olive. She looked at him, smiling, with an inclination of her head.

“It's correct that they go,” Hans went on. “The United Front is more important, and there will be ‘incidents' enough, without the French athletes having to be involved.”

He would go with them if they were going to the Olympic, he said.

“Don't be unhappy when you see the hotel,” he warned them. “It's changed since last night. There will be no Games.”

They stared at him.

“Officially?” asked Peter.

“I think it was decided when the Frenchman died,” said Hans. “Although the committee probably had voted this morning.”

When the news came, it was only confirmation, after all. Helen looked at him, fearfully. His wide tan jaw, the stretched mouth gave an Oriental cast to his lower face. She thought she knew what was coming next. Peter was asking what the other teams would do.

“They've given us the Palacio—next to the Olympic—to live in, and asked the consul to make arrangements.”

“And you—what will you do?” asked Helen painfully.

“I will stay in Spain.”

She was filled, it was the same exultation and certainty that had possessed her in the dark compartment when she had asked him what he would do in the Games, and he had answered to tempt her bad hip, “I am a runner.” He had his place, he chose with his full will!

“But what will you do here?” Peter was pressing in schoolboy excitement. Olive turned to him also for a direct answer, but he did not give them one, rather steering the conversation to the day's news. He knew that Madrid was strongly held by the government and was sending out troops. He and Peter dropped into German. Peter was telling him what Spanner had said about the city, laughing over the picture of Spanner, coatless, playing worker, dodging into doorways, conscious that he was not wearing jewelry.

They were walking up the Rambla. At every other street corner, barricades were being repaired or going up. The trucks full of machine guns went past, and armed cars with boys lying along the fender, holding their rifles ready. The street was warm in the sunset, and populous; many had turned the café tables right side up again and were sitting around them, although the café's iron curtains were all down and nothing was being served.

                 
Forgetting the song and singing the refrain: Everything that happens, happens in the street.

(song lyrics)

P
laza de España. Sunset, the long lights struck the avenues into heroic distortion, rounding out bravely the great circle, with its inner and outer lanes of traffic, the massive statues, the corner booths where already the evening edition of the few newspapers still in print were selling out, the beautiful faces of the group of boys at the bullring corner. The face of Hans acquired the philosophic planes Helen had noticed in the Moncada evening; day left him active, reduced his forehead and cheeks to live-wood vigor, but evening, night, touched his mouth and eyes, making the thought apparent.

Plaza de España, the bullring corner, with its new sign up,

MOBILIZATION CENTER

They saw that first, as they came down the Rambla: the two boys standing with their arms locked, head down, talking quietly a moment before they went into the entrance. The guards stationed there stopped them with questions, then motioned them in with their carbines.

Hans was reading a note in the late paper. “Saragossa's threatened,” he said to Helen. “That's close. That's likely to be a new front . . .”

Peter cried out. “No banner!”

They all followed his stare. “Wrong building,” Hans pointed at the Hotel Olympic. “The banner's still up.”

The banner,
OLIMPIADA POPULAR
, still hung, but the entrance had changed. It was deserted. One guard at the door, and the guide talking to a single soldier inside, where last night streams of athletes had given the building a meaning of warmth and safety.

“You're the last,” the guide told them. “They've all gone to the Palacio to wait for their boats, and I guess the
Djeube
took two-thirds of the foreign athletes, and the French colony, too.” He kicked at the pile of posters on the floor. “We'll change the date,” he said, “we'll have the Games in October, when the war is won.”

“See you then!” Olive was trying to be brisk. “We'll all go to the October Games together.”

The hall was empty; there were no knapsacks. In the corner stood two suitcases, with Mehring's
Karl Marx
⁹⁵
lying open across them. Olive turned the cover, and looked at the name in the book. “I knew it! The bitches, they've left their baggage, too; we'll never be able to carry it all.”

Hans walked over to the table where Helen was sitting. It was the one before which they had filed to show their passports. The guide was suggesting that they get a car, he thought he could manage one of the cars marked
Extranjeros
; he left for the Palacio to get an official pass. Peter and Olive started for the fourth floor; they nodded to Helen, they would bring her suitcase.

“Bad leg?” asked Hans.

She nodded. “But not so much that; I hate to hear them talk about coming back. It seems impossible to leave now.”

“You feel that, too?”

“I love your
knowledge
,” she said. “You know so clearly. It was so rare on the train, and the train was very small; here, with all of us disturbed and undecided, you are the strong one still.”

“My choice is very limited, I go toward what I most want. You. This war, which is my World War. The French athlete died, and a Spanish athlete, too; and they can prove already that guns from Italy and Germany were behind all of it. So soon! The guns were in
the country before the war. That means too much. But you see what it does for me, it gives me a country.”

“It becomes my fight, quickly. You know,” she said, in a voice of wonder, remembering long distances, histories, “I came in as a tourist, with tourist eyes and wishes.”

“You were started. Think of Peapack.” He laughed shortly. “And how we kept them going in the restaurant with wine and sailors' stories about this city. You have been moving all along.”

“There must be some way to stay.”

“They are thinking, there must be some way to get out.”

“I know,” she said. “Every time they speak of it, I see you. They talked to a man about sailing to Mallorca, at the docks. It's the only times I'm not their friend.”

“We can't be children,” he said, and kissed her. “What about your leg?”

“I'll be all right,” she said, mechanically, in the tone she had used at the consulate. She saw sharply again the shiny photos in the trade journal she had held. “I'll be fine.”

“You know,” he told her, going back to the thought in both their minds, the growth that was surprising her constantly, as his coming had surprised her, breaking in on her life with unforeseen conditions, the sum of what she had wished for in people, action and grace and security of thought, “I had no political party; so many of these people have been set for a long time. In Bavaria, I was a
Rotfrontkämpfer
⁹⁶
before Hitler and during the early period, before the exiles; and then I went to Italy, did some professional running, some furniture designing, other designing to make my living, among all the organizing. And, after that, I was in France a while, arrested there for activity, lost my passport . . .”

“You can't go to France?” All the ways were being cut off, slowly and scientifically.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “There is always now only one thing to do.”

The guide was coming back. “Stay inside, stay inside!” he shouted. “Are the others still here?”

“What is it?” Hans asked. “We're all here.”

“Fighting in the plaza . . . There! Hear it? Automobile fighting, again, just outside the door. There's still a lot of that going on; evenings,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “I wish we had enough cars.”

“But you've got the plants here,” said Helen.

“We'll probably take control tomorrow,” he answered. “All these cars requisitioned from dealers. But if the fighting gets worse tonight, we'll need more, and we'll take over Ford and General Motors. The same thing will happen there that's been going on in other factories: owners closed them down, and the workers have been forced to open themselves, and take over. The strike should be over by tomorrow or the next day.”

Olive and Peter were coming down the stairs. The guide ran up to take the black suitcase from Peter, and Olive slung the knapsacks down. “We'll stay in a few minutes more,” the guide said, “listen; the sounds are pretty far away now. Our car will be along as soon as it gets back.”

They stood at the doorway, looking out into the blue plaza, at the few cars turning around the circle. The city was intense blue now; and, as they watched, the street-lights bloomed, every other one lit, but hardly penetrating the color in the air.

“Come to the hotel, Hans.”

“Helena!” he said. “I can't. The other Germans are all going to the Palacio; a few more came in today, and there's to be a meeting.”

“At any rate,” said Olive, “you'll be coming along to the party the English are giving at the Condal.”

He looked at Helen. “I'll see you there,” she said.

A car was parking at the inner drive. Its horn blew three times, and the driver waved.

“All right!” said the guide. “I'll come with you, I have the pass.”

“Let's take the bitches' baggage, Helen,” said Olive. She laughed. “
And
the literature!”

They piled the suitcases into the compartment and on the floor of the car. “It won't fit,” Peter was pushing the last suitcase into position. It could not stand on the floor; the driver's rear view would be cut off. “Come on,” said the guide. “It's getting dark. It's better to make the two trips and keep moving than to stay still on the street for any length of time.”

Peter waved them on. “Go ahead,” he told the guide. “I'll wait here for you to come back. It's not more than a ten-minute drive.”

“Oh no,” Olive was pushing at the last large suitcase, “there must be some way . . .”

“There isn't,” said the guide imperatively. “We must go now, and we'll be right back. Be sure to wait.” He nodded to the driver. He bent to release the break, and the car started.

OLIVE TURNED ONCE
to Peter, who stood vaguely at the edge of the inner curb, looking after the full automobile.

Helen was pinned by the bitches' large suitcase. She could not move. She looked into the little mirror over the driver, trying to find Hans in the road behind them. He had disappeared in the evening, blueness after obscurity of blue cutting him off as he hurried toward the Palacio.

The car passed into the traffic in the circle of the plaza. The driver snapped his headlights on. They made watery marks of brightness on the ground before the car. It was not yet dark enough; he turned them off.

As they came to the outlet of the circle, an armed worker doing police duty jumped on the running board and asked for their pass. The guide saluted as he showed it; hardly slowing down, the car was let by and entered the avenue. The driver nodded; cars were coming up in the opposite direction; the two men thrust their fists out,
holding their arms braced on the car doors. “All of us,” the guide advised, and the women followed.

He did not turn his head to talk to them. “Almost all the fighting is cut down to this suicidal automobile warfare,” he was saying. “And the sniping. Although there are rumors of planes. Seville and Madrid have been radioing about bombardments, and Saragossa is threatened. The plane and the radio will fight this war with the soldier, in the cities, at any rate. The sniping should be over in a day or two. Nobody should be allowed on the streets at night,” he said in a low planning voice.

“I'm glad they're going back for Peter,” Olive said in English to Helen. “Hans should be all right; he only had to walk one block.” She looked narrowly at Helen, caught in her vise behind the suitcase.

“Don't worry about him; he'll be fine,” she said.

They were the only car on the avenue now. The quiet was unnatural; they slid forward in silence. On the sidewalks, people seemed pressed back against the houses, near doorways and arches; and the blank facing of steel curtains closed the wall of the street.