The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1937

Red Vendetta in Barcelona

PARIS. SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Although news from Barcelona is heavily censored, word has got through to our correspondent in Paris of clashes between rival Republican factions in that city. The Stalin-backed Communists, well armed by Russia, are rumoured to be carrying out purges against the rival POUM, the extremist Trotskyists who have made common cause with the Anarchists. The heady early days of Republican rule have given way to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear, as Communists accuse the POUM of "fifth-column" treachery. Open street fighting has been observed, with city police siding with the Communists. Many POUM members are said to be in jail or in flight. Several Canadians may have been caught in the crossfire, but these reports remain unverified.

Elsewhere in Spain, Madrid continues to be held by the Republicans, but Nationalist forces under General Franco are making significant gains.

Union Station

She bends her neck, rests her forehead on the edge of the table. Imagines his advent.

It's dusk, the station lights are on, his face is haggard in them. Somewhere nearby there's a coast, ultramarine: he can hear the cries of gulls. He swings aboard the train through clouds of hissing steam, hoists his duffel bag onto the rack; then he slumps into the seat, takes out the sandwich he's bought, unwraps it from the crumpled paper, tears it apart. He's almost too tired to eat.

Beside him is an elderly woman who's knitting something red, a sweater. He knows what she's knitting because she tells him; she'd tell him all about it if allowed, about her children, about her grandchildren; no doubt she's got snapshots, but hers is not a story he wishes to hear. He can't think about children, having seen too many dead ones. It's the children that stay with him, even more than the women, more than the old men. They were always so unexpected: their sleepy eyes, their waxy hands, the fingers lax, the tattered rag doll soaked with blood. He turns away, gazes at his face in the night window, hollow-eyed, framed by his wet-looking hair, the skin greenish black, bleared with soot and the dark shapes of trees rushing past behind it.

He clambers past the old woman's knees into the aisle, stands between cars, smokes, tosses the butt, pisses into the void. He senses himself going the same way-off into nothingness. He could fall away here and never be found.

Marshland, a dimly seen horizon. He returns to his seat. The train is chilly and damp or overheated and muggy; he either sweats or shivers, perhaps both: he burns and freezes, as in love. The bristly upholstery of the seat back is musty and comfortless, and rasps against his cheek. At last he sleeps, mouth open, head fallen to the side, against the dirty glass. In his ears is the ticking of the knitting needles, and under that the clacking of the wheels along the iron rails, like the workings of some relentless metronome.

Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him.

Through a sky the colour of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings, searching, searching, doubling back, drawn by hope and longing, baffled by fear. In their dreams they touch, they intertwine, it's more like a collision, and that is the end of the flying. They fall to earth, fouled parachutists, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. Enemy groundfire comes up to meet them.

A day passes, a night, a day. At a stop he gets out, buys an apple, a Coca-Cola, a half-pack of cigarettes, a newspaper. He should have brought a mickey or even a whole bottle, for the oblivion that's in it. He looks out through the rain-blurred windows at the long flat fields unrolling like stubbled rugs, at the clumps of trees; his eyes cross with drowsiness. In the evening there's a lingering sunset, receding westward as he approaches, wilting from pink to violet. Night falls with its fitfulness, its starts and stops, the iron screams of the train. Behind his eyes is redness, the red of tiny hoarded fires, of explosions in the air.

He wakes as the sky grows lighter; he can make out water on one side, flat and shoreless and silvery, the inland lake at last. On the other side of the tracks are small discouraged houses, laundry drooping on the lines in their yards. Then an encrusted brick smokestack, a blank-eyed factory with a tall chimney; then another factory, its many windows reflecting palest blue.

She imagines him descending into the early morning, walking through the station, through the long vaulted hall lined with pillars, across the marble floor. Echoes float there, blurred loudspeaker voices, their messages obscure. The air smells of smoke-the smoke of cigarettes, of trains, of the city itself, which is more like dust. She too is walking through this dust or smoke; she's poised to open her arms, to be lifted up by him into the air. Joy clutches her by the throat, indistinguishable from panic. She can't see him. Dawn sun comes in through the tall arched windows, the smoky air ignites, the floor glimmers. Now he's in focus, at the far end, each detail distinct-eye, mouth, hand-though tremulous, like a reflection on a shivering pool.

But her mind can't hold him, she can't fix the memory of what he looks like. It's as if a breeze blows over the water and he's dispersed, into broken colours, into ripples; then he reforms elsewhere, past the next pillar, taking on his familiar body. Around him is a shimmering.

The shimmering is his absence, but it appears to her as light. It's the simple daily light by which everything around her is illuminated. Every morning and night, every glove and shoe, every chair and plate.