Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser Page A

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.
    â€œIt 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.
    â€œVivid and black.”
    â€œThose people are, somehow, historic facts.”
    â€œRealer than any, more strong than any, more the clue?”
    â€œNo,” 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.
    â€œMimosa?” 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.
    â€œI never knew,” he said. “Maybe. The words came again.”
    â€œThey came up once today, stronger than ever before, creating what they said.”
    â€œGeneral 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.
    Peter came to the door. “Good night,” he said, and kissed Olive.
    â€œWhere will you be?” she asked.
    â€œThe Hungarians have captured three compartments,” Peter answered triumphantly. “I’ll be in there. I’ll come by early—first thing, dear,” he said, and shut the door.
    The three women lay down.
    Helen snapped the light off. As she shut her eyes, knowing the train lay dead in a dead station, she felt a powerful muscular motion around her: the train, the secret hills, the country, the whole worldof war rushing down the tracks, headfirst in conflict like a sea, unshakable, the momentum adding until the need burst through all other barriers: to reach the center, to will continuance.
    SHE DREAMED THE sea: a green streaked sea, with black tremendous currents. And headlong, plunging through the stream, a force rushing, which carried her along; until she ceded her will to it in a huge gesture. In that moment she revived, she drew will from the enormous source, and thought, even in the dream: O Parable.
    And passed, during the voyage, faces.
    Of all these, two came clear; husband and wife, the poets, their looks like light, their beautiful heads. She saw them changed, the fine familiar bones tapering down, planted tight in seabottom; and the currents swept over their faces, but could not change their steady look. She felt a hammering of love, faith in them, in the force which carried her memory upon the looks she loved so much and trusted,