Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser

laughter.
    The American table was very excited. Peter rushed over.
    The lady drew her eyebrows tight. “How can he?” she said, contemptuously. “He says that he has fallen prisoner, and advises his soldiers to stop fighting, actually. He says to stop the flow of blood, he releases them from their duty. They must have held him to the microphone. A general!” she exclaimed.
    Peter said, “My father spoke in that desperate voice all through 1930 . . . ”
    The voice had changed.
    â€œCiudadanos: Sólo unas palabras porque estos momentos lo son de hechos y no de palabras . . .”
    â€œActs, not words—that’s Companys!” said the waiter, arriving. He stopped at the table, listening.
    â€œ. . . Acabáis de oír al general Goded que dirigía la insurrección y que pide se evite el derramamiento de sangre.
    â€œLa rebelión ha sido sofocada. La insurrección está dominada. Precisa que todos continuéis a las órdenes del Gobierno de las Generalidad, ateniéndos a las consignas.
    â€œNo quiero acabar sin hacer un fervoroso elogio de las fuerzas que con bravura y heroísmo han luchado por la legalidad republicana, apoyando a la autoridad civil. ¡Viva Cataluña! ¡Viva la República!”
    They came to their feet in the burst of cheering. “ Visca Companys !” they shouted.
    â€œHe said, ‘The Rebellion has been suffocated.’ He praises the forces who fought so heroically for the republican regime,” relayed the lady.
    The short man looked into his brother’s eyes during the blare of cheering. His nostrils stiffened and pointed.
    The radio put on another record. The stammer of machinery done, the words issued, crooning, native, absurd:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Alone, alone with a sky of romance above.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Alone, alone with a heart that was made for love,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  There must be someone waiting
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Who feels the way I do.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Whoever you are,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  are you
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  are you, alone?
    They left the café.
    THE WOMAN STUCK her head out of the train window. All the little boys had climbed out of the yellow trees. They had gone off to bed; from the row of houses slanting to the station, their voices still came, moving from window to window. The houses were full of running children. The radio was shouting down at the Worker’scafé. But the children stopped, one by one; the radio was turned off. The deep quiet rose from the ground. The train was deadly still.
    They all sat in the compartment—Peter, Olive, Helen, the two school teachers who were uneasy, the pockmarked Swiss.
    Rising from the ground, following the quiet, a deep roar came, a zoo noise of some sick enormous animal.
    They looked at each other in despair and ignorance, the long fearful look of the haunted.
    Olive said in extreme disbelief: “Storm, in the mountains . . .” She lit her cigarette with heavy sighing puffs.
    It came again, eager and deep. They all knew what it was.
    The Belgian woman pulled the compartment door open, slamming it back fiercely in its groove so that it slipped half-shut as she cried out: “The cannons are coming! Don’t you hear them coming nearer?” Her hair was pulled in disorder, her fat soft shoulders rocked.
    Helen trembled. The woman stood above her, agitated and moist, pushing at her forehead as if she had gone mad.
    The great sound boomed again.
    â€œOh, God,” said the Belgian woman, pushing at her hair, “somebody come back with me to my compartment. I can’t stand it when they come nearer.” She was appealing to the two school teachers. They did not move. She threw her hand out.
    â€œYou babies!” she shouted. “What do you know about