For Whom the Bell Tolls (2 page)

“And when is the attack?”

“I will tell you. But you are to use the date and hour only as an indication of a probability. You must be ready for that time. You will blow the bridge after the attack has started. You see?” he indicated with the pencil. “That is the only road on which they can bring up reinforcements. That is the only road on which they can get up tanks, or artillery, or even move a truck toward the pass which I attack. I must know that bridge is gone. Not before, so it can be repaired if the attack is postponed. No. It must go when the attack starts and I must know it is gone. There are only two sentries. The man who will go with you has just come from there. He is a very reliable man, they say. You will see. He has people in the mountains. Get as many men as you need. Use as few as possible, but use enough. I do not have to tell you these things.”

“And how do I determine that the attack has started?”

“It is to be made with a full division. There will be an aerial bombardment as preparation. You are not deaf, are you?”

“Then I may take it that when the planes unload, the attack has started?”

“You could not always take it like that,” Golz said and shook his head. “But in this case, you may. It is my attack.”

“I understand it,” Robert Jordan had said. “I do not say I like it very much.”

“Neither do I like it very much. If you do not want to undertake it, say so now. If you think you cannot do it, say so now.”

“I will do it,” Robert Jordan had said. “I will do it all right.”

“That is all I have to know,” Golz said. “That nothing comes up over that bridge. That is absolute.”

“I understand.”

“I do not like to ask people to do such things and in such a way,” Golz went on. “I could not order you to do it. I understand what you may be forced to do through my putting such conditions. I explain very carefully so that you understand and that you understand all of the possible difficulties and the importance.”

“And how will you advance on La Granja if that bridge is blown?”

“We go forward prepared to repair it after we have stormed the pass. It is a very complicated and beautiful operation. As complicated and as beautiful as always. The plan has been manufactured in Madrid. It is another of Vicente Rojo, the unsuccessful professor's, masterpieces. I make the attack and I make it, as always, not in sufficient force. It is a very possible operation, in spite of that. I am much happier about it than usual. It can be successful with that bridge eliminated. We can take Segovia. Look, I show you how it goes. You see? It is not the top of the pass where we attack. We hold that. It is much beyond. Look— Here— Like this——”

“I would rather not know,” Robert Jordan said.

“Good,” said Golz. “It is less of baggage to carry with you on the other side, yes?”

“I would always rather not know. Then, no matter what can happen, it was not me that talked.”

“It is better not to know,” Golz stroked his forehead with the pencil. “Many times I wish I did not know myself. But you do know the one thing you must know about the bridge?”

“Yes. I know that.”

“I believe you do,” Golz said. “I will not make you any little speech. Let us now have a drink. So much talking makes me very thirsty, Comrade Hordan. You have a funny name in Spanish, Comrade Hordown.”

“How do you say Golz in Spanish, Comrade General?”

“Hotze,” said Golz grinning, making the sound deep in his throat as though hawking with a bad cold. “Hotze,” he croaked. “Comrade Heneral Khotze. If I had known how they pronounced Golz in Spanish I would pick me out a better name before I come to war here. When I think I come to command a division and I can pick out any name I want and I pick out Hotze. Heneral Hotze. Now it
is too late to change. How do you like
partizan
work?” It was the Russian term for guerilla work behind the lines.

“Very much,” Robert Jordan said. He grinned. “It is very healthy in the open air.”

“I like it very much when I was your age, too,” Golz said. “They tell me you blow bridges very well. Very scientific. It is only hearsay. I have never seen you do anything myself. Maybe nothing ever happens really. You really blow them?” he was teasing now. “Drink this,” he handed the glass of Spanish brandy to Robert Jordan. “You
really
blow them?”

“Sometimes.”

“You better not have any sometimes on this bridge. No, let us not talk any more about this bridge. You understand enough now about that bridge. We are very serious so we can make very strong jokes. Look, do you have many girls on the other side of the lines?”

“No, there is no time for girls.”

“I do not agree. The more irregular the service, the more irregular the life. You have very irregular service. Also you need a haircut.”

“I have my hair cut as it needs it,” Robert Jordan said. He would be damned if he would have his head shaved like Golz. “I have enough to think about without girls,” he said sullenly.

“What sort of uniform am I supposed to wear?” Robert Jordan asked.

“None,” Golz said. “Your haircut is all right. I tease you. You are very different from me,” Golz had said and filled up the glasses again.

“You never think about only girls. I never think at all. Why should I? I am
Général Sovietique.
I never think. Do not try to trap me into thinking.”

Some one on his staff, sitting on a chair working over a map on a drawing board, growled at him in the language Robert Jordan did not understand.

“Shut up,” Golz had said, in English. “I joke if I want. I am so serious is why I can joke. Now drink this and then go. You understand, huh?”

“Yes,” Robert Jordan had said. “I understand.”

They had shaken hands and he had saluted and gone out to the staff car where the old man was waiting asleep and in that car they had ridden over the road past Guadarrama, the old man still asleep, and up the Navacerrada road to the Alpine Club hut where he, Robert Jordan, slept for three hours before they started.

That was the last he had seen of Golz with his strange white face that never tanned, his hawk eyes, the big nose and thin lips and the shaven head crossed with wrinkles and with scars. Tomorrow night they would be outside the Escorial in the dark along the road; the long lines of trucks loading the infantry in the darkness; the men, heavy loaded, climbing up into the trucks; the machine-gun sections lifting their guns into the trucks; the tanks being run up on the skids onto the long-bodied tank trucks; pulling the Division out to move them in the night for the attack on the pass. He would not think about that. That was not his business. That was Golz's business. He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was as bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.

He sat now by the stream watching the clear water flowing between the rocks and, across the stream, he noticed there was a thick bed of watercress. He crossed the stream, picked a double handful, washed the muddy roots clean in the current and then sat down again beside his pack and ate the clean, cool green leaves and the crisp, peppery-tasting stalks. He knelt by the stream and, pushing his automatic pistol around on his belt to the small of his back so that it would not be wet, he lowered himself with a hand on each of two boulders and drank from the stream. The water was achingly cold.

Pushing himself up on his hands he turned his head and saw the old man coming down the ledge. With him was another man, also in a black peasant's smock and the dark gray trousers that were almost a uniform in that province, wearing rope-soled shoes and with a carbine slung over his back. This man was bareheaded. The two of them came scrambling down the rock like goats.

They came up to him and Robert Jordan got to his feet.

“S
alud, Camarada,
” he said to the man with the carbine and smiled.

“
Salud,
” the other said, grudgingly. Robert Jordan looked at the man's heavy, beard-stubbled face. It was almost round and his head was round and set close on his shoulders. His eyes were small and set too wide apart and his ears were small and set close to his head. He was a heavy man about five feet ten inches tall and his hands and feet were large. His nose had been broken and his mouth was cut at one corner and the line of the scar across the upper lip and lower jaw showed through the growth of beard over his face.

The old man nodded his head at this man and smiled.

“He is the boss here,” he grinned, then flexed his arms as though to make the muscles stand out and looked at the man with the carbine in a half-mocking admiration. “A very strong man.”

“I can see it,” Robert Jordan said and smiled again. He did not like the look of this man and inside himself he was not smiling at all.

“What have you to justify your identity?” asked the man with the carbine.

Robert Jordan unpinned a safety pin that ran through his pocket flap and took a folded paper out of the left breast pocket of his flannel shirt and handed it to the man, who opened it, looked at it doubtfully and turned it in his hands.

So he cannot read, Robert Jordan noted.

“Look at the seal,” he said.

The old man pointed to the seal and the man with the carbine studied it, turning it in his fingers.

“What seal is that?”

“Have you never seen it?”

“No.”

“There are two,” said Robert Jordan. “One is S. I. M., the service of the military intelligence. The other is the General Staff.”

“Yes, I have seen that seal before. But here no one commands but me,” the other said sullenly. “What have you in the packs?”

“Dynamite,” the old man said proudly. “Last night we crossed the lines in the dark and all day we have carried this dynamite over the mountain.”

“I can use dynamite,” said the man with the carbine. He handed back the paper to Robert Jordan and looked him over. “Yes. I have use for dynamite. How much have you brought me?”

“I have brought you no dynamite,” Robert Jordan said to him evenly. “The dynamite is for another purpose. What is your name?”

“What is that to you?”

“He is Pablo,” said the old man. The man with the carbine looked at them both sullenly.

“Good. I have heard much good of you,” said Robert Jordan.

“What have you heard of me?” asked Pablo.

“I have heard that you are an excellent guerilla leader, that you are loyal to the republic and prove your loyalty through your acts, and that you are a man both serious and valiant. I bring you greetings from the General Staff.”

“Where did you hear all this?” asked Pablo. Robert Jordan registered that he was not taking any of the flattery.

“I heard it from Buitrago to the Escorial,” he said, naming all the stretch of country on the other side of the lines.

“I know no one in Buitrago nor in Escorial,” Pablo told him.

“There are many people on the other side of the mountains who were not there before. Where are you from?”

“Avila. What are you going to do with the dynamite?”

“Blow up a bridge.”

“What bridge?”

“That is my business.”

“If it is in this territory, it is my business. You cannot blow bridges close to where you live. You must live in one place and operate in another. I know my business. One who is alive, now, after a year, knows his business.”

“This is my business,” Robert Jordan said. “We can discuss it together. Do you wish to help us with the sacks?”

“No,” said Pablo and shook his head.

The old man turned toward him suddenly and spoke rapidly and furiously in a dialect that Robert Jordan could just follow. It was like reading Quevedo. Anselmo was speaking old Castilian and it went something like this, “Art thou a brute? Yes. Art thou a beast? Yes, many times. Hast thou a brain? Nay. None. Now we come for something of consummate importance and thee, with thy dwelling place to be undisturbed, puts thy fox-hole before the interests of
humanity. Before the interests of thy people. I this and that in the this and that of thy father. I this and that and that in thy this.
Pick up that bag.
”

Pablo looked down.

“Every one has to do what he can do according to how it can be truly done,” he said. “I live here and I operate beyond Segovia. If you make a disturbance here, we will be hunted out of these mountains. It is only by doing nothing here that we are able to live in these mountains. It is the principle of the fox.”

“Yes,” said Anselmo bitterly. “It is the principle of the fox when we need the wolf.”

“I am more wolf than thee,” Pablo said and Robert Jordan knew that he would pick up the sack.

“Hi. Ho . . . ,” Anselmo looked at him. “Thou art more wolf than me and I am sixty-eight years old.”

He spat on the ground and shook his head.

“You have that many years?” Robert Jordan asked, seeing that now, for the moment, it would be all right and trying to make it go easier.

“Sixty-eight in the month of July.”

“If we should ever see that month,” said Pablo. “Let me help you with the pack,” he said to Robert Jordan. “Leave the other to the old man.” He spoke, not sullenly, but almost sadly now. “He is an old man of great strength.”

“I will carry the pack,” Robert Jordan said.

“Nay,” said the old man. “Leave it to this other strong man.”

“I will take it,” Pablo told him, and in his sullenness there was a sadness that was disturbing to Robert Jordan. He knew that sadness and to see it here worried him.

“Give me the carbine then,” he said and when Pablo handed it to him, he slung it over his back and, with the two men climbing ahead of him, they went heavily, pulling and climbing up the granite shelf and over its upper edge to where there was a green clearing in the forest.