Again personal belongings had to be left behind. When all were boarding, Machado insisted on being the last to find a seat. While his friends and relatives urged him to take a place, he remained in the patio and then insisted on being the last to enter the ambulance, saying, “Yo tengo tiempo, yo tengo tiempo”: I have time, I have time.11

At Cervià de Ter each passenger had been allowed to take only one small traveling bag. There are conflicting reports about how Antonio Machado lost his luggage and arrived only with the rain-soaked suit on his back at Collioure, “almost naked like the children of the sea” (“Portrait”). But it is almost certain that his suitcases were taken from him by soldiers as they boarded the truck leaving Cervià, his first stop after Barcelona, and that the soldiers were entrusted to get them to him at the border. At the French crossing, despite his sickness, Machado tried in vain to find his luggage and was profoundly depressed at their loss. It is thought that among these lost papers in one suitcase was a songbook to Guiomar, which may have been part of a larger manuscript of recent poems. We do not know what writings were in the luggage, and there is little hope that the bags will turn up on some Spanish farm.

The scene of the voyage to the border was further described to me by Navarro Tomás:

Machado sat opposite me in the crowded vehicle. We were all so numbed from the last sleepless nights and the most painful conditions of our traveling that none of us was able to utter a coherent sentence. During the trip, Machado sat with his head lowered, lost in deep reflection and a tremendous sadness. Occasionally, he mumbled a word to his brother José, who sat crammed next to him in the ambulance. When we reached the border at Port Bou, it was already night, cold, and raining heavily. The French police were preventing a crossing of the border between Port Bou and Cerbère. The accumulation of people and vehicles was so great that we had to get down from the ambulance and walk half a mile by foot, in the rain, with hordes of terrified women and children, until we reached the immigration office. There Machado walked with difficulty. I had to help him, supporting his arm.

I spoke to the chief customs officer and explained to him who Machado was, that he was sick, and that if he had to walk any farther he would certainly die on the way.12 Fortunately, the officer remembered his name from a Spanish textbook when he was studying the Spanish language, and was a man of understanding. He offered his private car to take Machado and his family to Cerbère.

I was the only one who had any negotiable money, fifty prewar francs from a recent trip. With this money the writer Corpus Barga and I could go by train from Cerbère to Perpignan in search of financial resources for our immediate needs. Corpus Barga received a sum of money from a friend in Perpignan and returned to Cebère to share this among his companions. With this same help I was able to go to Paris to seek aid from the Spanish embassy. The ambassador, Dr. Marcelino Pascua, with great urgency, cabled money to Machado at Collioure, so that, contrary to some reports, it can be said that Machado was not in financial straits during the last weeks of his life in France.

In the vehicle for most of the trip Machado held his mother on his lap. She was in her late eighties, frail, and confused. The chaotic moment of reaching the border is also described by Corpus Barga, who had found the Machados at the crossing point: “Antonio, ever resigned and silent, contemplated his mother with her fine white hair stuck to her temples by the rain that slid down her beautiful face like a bright veil of tears,”13Immediately after the frontier, the road curved high to the slope of Balitres and down to the French coastal village of Cerbère, where the family spent the first night in France in winter cold and rain in an abandoned railroad car left on a dead rail. There Don Antonio, already asthmatic, caught cold, a bronchitis from which he was not to recover. The next morning, the 28th of January, accompanied by Barga, they took the train to Collioure.

“Antonio Machado arrived at Collioure on January 29, 1939, drenched by a torrential rain. He had walked a long way and was so exhausted that he was obliged to take a taxi simply to cross the square and reach the hotel.”14 José helped his brother make it to the Bougnol-Quintana Hotel, and Corpus Barga carried their mother in his arms. She weighed not more than a little girl. She kept asking, “Will we soon get to Sevilla?”15 They were treated very well in the hotel, given hot food and drinks, and for the first time since they left Barcelona, a week earlier, they slept in a bed.

Most of the days that followed, Machado spent in his room, writing letters and gazing out of the window. As for meals downstairs, the family sat alone in a corner, almost hidden; in the first days the two brothers never came to eat at the same time.