Authors: Howard Fast
that in a few more weeks, he won't be able to work, but
until then, he must decide."
It was an empty evening. Barbara had tried all day to begin her "Letter from Paris," but the words wouldn't come. Her contributions to
Manhattan Magazine
had achieved a reputation for their air of gaiety, for their lightness and gossipy quality, but all this day her heart had been heavy as lead.
The
single letter from Marcel had been her only word from him; then, day after day with nothing, no word in.
Le Monde,
and nothing in the mail. She had gone to the newspaper and had been assured that they knew no more than she did. Then she waited, while all the joy and exuberance drained out of her life and the wonder-city of Paris became a bleak and lonely and strange place. She had never experienced anything like this before—days utterly empty, time moving like thick, reluctant oil. April became May. Susan Clark returned to America. Betty Greenburg went to London to cover an economic conference. And Barbara felt utterly abandoned and forsaken.
Then, a little after six o'clock, her doorbell rang. It was Jean Brissard, and before she could even ask what he was doing there, he said to her, "He's alive. He's all right, and I have a fat letter for you right here in my pocket. So may I come in?"
She threw her arms around him and burst into tears. "You darling, sweet man!"
"Actually, I had hoped he would never show up. Then I could have you for myself."
"I don't believe that. Come in. Come on in." She ran into the bathroom to throw cold water on her face and wipe away the tears. Then, a moment later, she said, "I must get over crying about everything. I never do it when I'm alone."
"We were worried," Brissard admitted.
"Where is he? When will he come back?"
"First question. He's in Toulouse, in a hospital."
"Oh, no!"
"He's all right. I told you that. He was wounded in two places, a shell fragment in his right arm and a bullet wound in the leg. But he's all right."
"Are you sure?"
"Decide for yourself. Here's a letter to you." He handed her a thick envelope. "It's dictated. He found someone down there to take his dictation, and he's charged the paper the two hundred and eighty franks he paid her. But he sent us one hell of a story, believe me. It's on the front page tomorrow."
"What hospital?"
"The Sacred Heart."
"Could I get a train to Toulouse tonight?"
"I doubt it. Look, Barbara, he's all right. You can telephone the hospital; if you wish. You can't speak to him because there's no telephone in his room. Go down there by all means, if you wish. But wait until tomorrow—"
She was tearing open the letter, her hands shaking.
"I'm going to run along," Brissard said. "I'll be at the paper if you want to talk to me."
She hardly realized that he had gone. She began to read:
"My darling Barbara, I am dictating this letter because my right arm is unfortunately not functioning. The lady taking the dictation, Madame Clouet, is, we think, some sort of a distant relative. She has five children, and she is an excellent stenographer and typist. You know that my father and mother still live in Toulouse, so in a way I have finally come home to them, a bit battered, but otherwise in fine fettle. As for the story, I think it's good. As for my English, no more snide remarks from you and no more innuendos. I have been communicating in English—or American, if you will—believe it or not. My God, how I love you! How I adore you! Now Madame Clouet is regarding me very strangely. She is very proper. She says that for a writer, I am diffuse. She reads Balzac. I tell her to read Proust. She says she has no time for Proust, and that he bores her."
Laughing and crying all at once, Barbara paused to dry her eyes with the towel she had brought from the bathroom. "Not at all true that I don't cry when I'm alone," she whispered to herself. "Not at all true." She turned back to the letter.
"Very well, where have I been? You will read my story in the paper, but it's a newspaper story. I have to tell it to you differently. To get here, they had to carry me part of the way over the passes in a litter, and in my rational moments I debated with myself whether to tell you what happened. Then I decided that I must, since neither of us had ever held anything back. So I begin with the group I joined, the 58th Lincoln Battalion, Americans. It is, or was, part of the 15th International Brigade, and when I joined them they had about three hundred men. Very young, most of them younger than we are. I wore my old service uniform, with a correspondent's patch and a tricolor. Not much of anything, but most of the kids in the 58th wore old pants and what you Americans call sweat shirts. They were volunteers from every part of the States, lots of them from New York City, and a good many from your place, California, and I felt that those were particularly wonderful, since they shared a place of origin with someone I love so much. Have you predisposed me toward America? I think I fell in love with those kids. They didn't look like soldiers. They carried bolt-action Springfield rifles, most of them, and they didn't even have cartridge belts. They stuffed their pockets full of cartridges and hand grenades. But my God, they are something.
"I heard rumors when I joined them that the Republican front was breaking up and that soon there might be a general retreat across the Ebro, but they didn't know anything about this. I was with them two days, mostly experimenting with my English and trying to get some backgrounds stories, when orders came for the 58th Battalion to advance and to keep advancing until the orders were countermanded. There were six other correspondents there at their bivouac, three of them Americans. We had a meeting, and the correspondents decided that, in the light of the rumors they all had heard, the best thing would be to head back toward Barcelona for the time being. But I had just arrived. My lovely darling, I am not a brave man, and I know how you feel about 'heroes,' which is why I put it in quotation marks, but I had just arrived, and where was my story? Believe me, I had a vision of a lifetime of cursing out bad restaurants in print and reviewing second-rate plays, and I could not face it. So I decided to move along with the 58th and see what happened. I had made some slight acquaintance with the two officers in command, one by the name of Dave Doran and the other by the name of Bob Merryman. Merryman was from California. Poor boys, they both died. I also met your Bernie Cohen, but more of that later.
"At first, they said flatly that I couldn't go along, but when I explained that I would be doing a special feature for
Le Monde
and that, since I was French, I had done my army service and that if it came to the worst, I could take care of myself, they relented and agreed I could move with them.
"The 58th began to advance. No opposition. It was hot and dry and bleak. Our water gave out, and we lost our liaison. We didn't know it then, but the Republican army had already broken, and the whole line was in retreat. The 58th had simply cut loose, and there we were, three hundred men advancing against the whole fascist army. About noontime, we spotted a fascist water truck. The men guarding it gave up without a fight, and everyone's mood changed. We had plenty of water, and the little victory over the truck gave us confidence. We tied up the three rebel soldiers, left them there, and continued our advance. But Merryman was nervous about the silence all around us, and he cut out on our flank to try to effect some kind of liaison.
"It was very hot. About three o'clock in the afternoon, we decided to rest, and we sprawled in the shade under a grove of olive trees. We waited there for Merryman to return. It was very strange, just the American battalion, all alone, a few goats in the distance, not a living soul otherwise, the hot Spanish sun sinking slowly toward the west, and silence. Where were the armies? Where was the war? Then Merryman returned and told us that the 58th had advanced deep into fascist territory, while behind us the whole Republican army was in retreat. Also, he had met a Republican soldier who told him that the way back behind us was closed.
"Doran gave the orders to march, and we headed back, not quite the way we had come but through some rough country. We marched very quickly, and it was quite exhausting. Then we came to an elevation where we could look down into a little Spanish town—I think it was called Gondese or something of the sort. That's where the line of battle was, behind us now. We were behind the fascists, and we could see them driving their attack through the streets of the town, while the Spanish soldiers were trying to hold the little clay houses. Merryman and Doran decided that the only thing to do was to break through and join up with the Spaniards. It was getting on to twilight now. They detached a patrol of twenty-five men, and ordered them to fight their way through the fascist lines, join up with the Spaniards, and then we would mount an attack and drive the fascists out of the town. I thought it was very poor tactics to send out twenty-five men with no support, but I was in no position to comment. Well, we watched it happen. The whole patrol was wiped out. My God, those boys were so brave and so senseless! They were caught in a crossfire, attacking against machine guns with their old Springfields, and we watched it happen. There was nothing we could do.
"Then the Spaniards gave up the town and retreated to a hill beyond it, and there we were, holding our hill with the Republican soldiers on the other hill, and the fascists between us. We tried to dig in, but there weren't enough trenching tools. Then, in the last light of day, the fascists sent a regiment of cavalry charging up the hill against us. Would you believe it, men in shining cuirasses waving their swords? I guess that with the Republican army retreating everywhere, the fascists felt that any show of force would carry the day. We stopped that charge and took a heavy toll of the cavalry. Night came, and we were joined by a few hundred Spanish soldiers who had been cut off. But by then the fascists had brought up their artillery. For two hours they shelled us. It wasn't good. Eight more Americans died there, and that was where I got the piece of shrapnel in my arm. It wasn't too bad at first. But we knew that if we stayed there, it would be the end.
"We set out in the dark, and we walked all the rest of the night. By some miracle, we were not intercepted by the fascists who had been shelling us. Then, toward dawn, we ran smack into what may have been a German Nazi outfit. It was as if all the devils in hell had broken loose, as if their machine guns were set up and waiting for us. The Americans, instead of turning and getting out of there, attacked, and they were just cut to pieces. Afterward I heard that Merryman and Doran were both killed there, and I don't think that even a hundred of the Americans survived that battle. Anyway, it was the end of the 58th Battalion. I was shot in the leg, and the same Bernie Cohen I spoke of before dragged me out of it, and then it was over, with only the crying and moaning of the wounded, and I got out of it somehow, hanging on to Cohen, and we found a little shed, which we crawled into. We couldn't see what was happening from where we were, but we heard German voices all around us, and we were sure that sooner or later they would find us, and Cohen said that if they did, they'd shoot us on the spot, that the Germans didn't take prisoners. Whether or not this is true, I don't know, but I heard the same thing from others. Cohen was very strong and competent. He made splints out of some old wood in the shed and bound up my leg. I was in great pain, and after that, the events are somewhat vague.
"We stayed in the shed all day, and when night came, we left the shed, Cohen carrying me on his back. We were close to the Ebro. He asked me if I could swim, and I said I thought I could, and somehow or other we got across the river. It's all like a sort of nightmare. Then, to compound it, an Italian division of Black Shirts was encamped on the other side. With Cohen dragging me, on our hands and knees, we crawled through a whole sleeping Italian division, believe it or not. They didn't even have a single guard posted. Then Cohen carried me on his back, and toward morning we were picked up by an English ambulance that was searching for wounded in the area between the fascists and the retreating Republican army.
"So there is the whole story, my dear love, a confused, tragic little bit of an obscene and heartbreaking war. I wait now and count the hours before I see you again."
The nature of the immigrant is the state of being alone. Even if he goes to where he goes with a wife and family, he leaves behind him the whole intricate structure of the extended family that is hundreds of years in the making. So it was that when Feng Wo was laid away in the ground in the bleak, interdenominational cemetery in Los Angeles, six thousand miles from the land of his ancestors, in another land that designated him an outsider, a yellow man, a Chinese man, there were only six people present to hear the dirt fall on his coffin, Dan and May Ling, Joseph, So-toy, bent, withered, drying up from her tears, and Sam Goldberg and Sarah Levy, both of them down from San Francisco for the funeral.
They all returned to the little house in Westwood after the burial. It was the first time since she had been married, in the year 1895, that So-toy had not prepared the evening meal—with the exception of those days when there was no food at all to put on the table. She sat in a corner in the kitchen, a tiny, withered woman, as if the death that
had claimed her husband had mistakenly passed her by,
waiting now to be taken.