Departure Read Free

olives and whose lips are like poppies. They would have been fools to believe me, but we believed anything then. It was my first love and my last.
    You remember what you want to remember; a man’s past is part of all the past, and everywhere little gates are carefully closed. Only when it is all finished, our way, will we open all the gates. It was two or three or four days after we were there that the big meeting was called in the one theater the town boasted. Seven or eight hundred of us crowded in there, full and overfilled and cloudy with the smoke of our brown-paper cigarettes.
    This is it, kid, someone who knew and was on the inside.
    He spoke in Spanish, “You men of the Internationals, amigo de corazon, you men of the Internationals who are my comrades, my brothers-in-arms, listen to me! We will defend Barcelona to the death! We go back!”
    That is also a memory. I cried again; I put my hands over my face and wept, but I haven’t wept since then. Through all the rest, I was dry-eyed. No more clowning, and the kid was not a kid any more. Sitting and listening to the speakers, one after another, telling how Barcelona could be held and made a bridgehead for all free men, I made a disposition of myself. Then we went outside into the dry sunlight of Spain.
    The people from our land, America of the lovely name, the free land over the mountains and over the sea, went to a carpentry shop, and there some volunteered and others said they would go home. The volunteers would not go home any more. They stayed together, talking and making arrangements for the battery; I didn’t have anything to say, and someone asked me:
    â€œWhat is it, kid, worried?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œTake it easy, kid. Nobody is brave.”
    â€œI’m not brave,” I said. My childhood was over, youth and adolescence and the sprouting of the weed as juices run through its stem, and the wonderful, beautiful conviction that you will live forever while all other mortals die; manhood is a benediction as well as a curse, and the calm inside of me was life’s repayment. It was a fair exchange. “I’m not brave,” I said. “I want to stay here.”
    You see, it was to defend Barcelona to the death, if necessary, and most likely necessary, and you made your own choice. The great bulk of the Internationals were gone, but you had stayed with the leave-taking. You had overstayed; then sleep, and tomorrow we will break bread again.
    What else do you remember?
    Well, then, I also remember these things: the children who played in the streets, they the inheritors, and I was grown now and saw them as children. The fresh-baked bread we had for our dinner—oh, honored guests. We shared our bread with the children, who made us at home as you do when a guest is no longer a stranger. There were also things to be done, arrangements for the new guns, which were coming down from France, arrangements for officers and for a table of organization, arrangements into the sunset, the sweet, cool night. I was bedded with a cobbler’s family, and we sat before bed with a glass of wine and a piece of sausage.
    Partake, oh cousin, and tell us about how it goes in the South. Is there death in the South? Will there be victory or defeat? Will the fascists be driven back?
    A su tiempo.
    Cunning words from an old fighter. You are one of the new ones, a machine gunner?
    An artilleryman.
    Drink the wine and don’t spare the sausage. When will Spain see better men? A glass of wine makes the couch easy.
    And then I slept until a whistle wakened me, and this was it, was it not? We formed into ranks and then onto the train, and nobody really knew except—rumors; but after a while we understood. The train was going north, not south. Barcelona would not be held; the last of the Internationals were going away. This was a night train for the border, salute and farewell. Somewhere, men were afraid; somewhere men lost heart and hope,