Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser Page A

battle,” said the man. “The government’s sound!”
    â€œGod, it has to be,” exploded Helen, forgetting tact, forgetting their strangeness. “What is this all anyway, a putsch of some kind?”
    â€œWhy, hello!” said the man, realizing her. “Is that how you feel? Well, for Christ sake, come and sit down.” The Swiss, not understanding, made a sign; he had to leave. The man went on. “It looks like a Fascist putsch; but the radio says it’s failing in Barcelona. It’s the government radio, of course; but it’s good news, just the same, good news for all of us.”
    â€œAre you going to the Games?” Helen asked him.
    â€œCertainly,” the woman beside him said, in her low, reedy voice; “and if you want the Party line on the radio, and the frontier, and the armed guards, Peter’s the man to give it to you, aren’t you?” she mocked. But the seriousness, the intimacy was very evident. When she spoke to him, the women across were shut out, there was actual closeness.
    â€œCommunist?” Helen asked.
    â€œYes,” he answered, “and gladder of it right now than about any time. Where are you from?” he asked her, and (through the Spanish music) they knew, New York, a matter of blocks between them, a matter, perhaps, of missing each other by moments in theater lobbies, at lectures, on streets.
    â€œOrganization?” asked Peter.
    â€œNone,” she answered, “but I’ve been in the American Student Union, and I’ve done some work for the I.L.D.” She looked past them to the platform. She could see the gray-haired man with the mourning band, surrounded by the Hungarian team: he must be the mayor—the armed workers, the town, alert, faces leaning from the row houses. “I wish now, for the first time, that I were really active,” she said, slowly.
    The two women beside her brightened. “We’re in the Teacher’s Union,” said the sickly one. “We’ve been reading up.”
    Peter pointed to a yellow pamphlet in the tall one’s hand. “How’s that?” He burst into laughter, and the woman beside him laughed, as at an old joke. “She’s been reading a French pamphlet on the problems of the Spanish Revolution ever since the train was stopped!” Helen laughed, a full, happy laugh from the lungs. “You should have seen the faces of the girls who searched for photographs!”
    Helen was trying to remember. “I didn’t see you at Port Bou,” she said.
    â€œWe saw you, though,” said the dark woman.
    â€œYes, Olive saw you get on,” Peter told her.
    â€œWe were in the next car—got on first of all, I guess. We’d beenswimming in Port Bou—came down from Carcassonne yesterday, so that we could have the night at the border. How’s that for perfect timing?”
    â€œCarcassonne!”
    â€œThat’s how Peter felt,” Olive said to Helen. “That poem about never getting to Carcassonne made him go, I swear.”
    â€œSuch a bad poem, too,” Peter was apologizing. “But an amazing city. Preserved, so that the old houses and walls, which should be dead, are full of the living. It was a good prelude to this.” He waved at the window.
    Helen looked down at her suitcase. The benches were upholstered here in the first-class gray. “Next car! Were you in third, too?”
    Peter followed her look. “Don’t be class conscious when it’s irrelevant. We took possession of this compartment. It was quite empty—most of first was empty—and we have to be able to take over, you know.”
    â€œAll right,” said Helen. “I’m beginning to.”
    â€œI have even put my feet up, on occasion,” Peter went on. His eyes were almost black, seen with the light brown hair.
    Olive shook her head, smiling. “ And took them down again. Hollywood disturbed