For Whom the Bell Tolls (23 page)

The deaf man shook his head at Robert Jordan and grinned in delight. He continued to shake his head happily as Pilar went on vilifying and Robert Jordan knew that it was all right again now. Finally she stopped cursing, reached for the water jug, tipped it up and took a drink and said, calmly, “Then just shut up about what we are to do afterwards, will you,
Inglés
? You go back to the Republic and you take your piece with you and leave us others alone here to decide what part of these hills we'll die in.”

“Live in,” El Sordo said. “Calm thyself, Pilar.”

“Live in and die in,” Pilar said. “I can see the end of it well enough. I like thee,
Inglés,
but keep thy mouth off of what we must do when thy business is finished.”

“It is thy business,” Robert Jordan said. “I do not put my hand in it.”

“But you did,” Pilar said. “Take thy little cropped-headed whore and go back to the Republic but do not shut the door on others who are not foreigners and who loved the Republic when thou wert wiping thy mother's milk off thy chin.”

Maria had come up the trail while they were talking and she heard this last sentence which Pilar, raising her voice again, shouted at Robert Jordan. Maria shook her head at Robert Jordan violently and shook her finger warningly. Pilar saw Robert Jordan looking at the girl and saw him smile and she turned and said, “Yes. I said whore and I mean it. And I suppose that you'll go to Valencia together and we can eat goat crut in Gredos.”

“I'm a whore if thee wishes, Pilar,” Maria said. “I suppose I am in all case if you say so. But calm thyself. What passes with thee?”

“Nothing,” Pilar said and sat down on the bench, her voice calm now and all the metallic rage gone out of it. “I do not call thee that. But I have such a desire to go to the Republic.”

“We can all go,” Maria said.

“Why not?” Robert Jordan said. “Since thou seemest not to love the Gredos.”

Sordo grinned at him.

“We'll see,” Pilar said, her rage gone now. “Give me a glass of that rare drink. I have worn my throat out with anger. We'll see. We'll see what happens.”

“You see, Comrade,” El Sordo explained. “It is the morning that is difficult.” He was not talking the pidgin Spanish now and he was looking into Robert Jordan's eyes calmly and explainingly; not searchingly nor suspiciously, nor with the flat superiority of the old campaigner that had been in them before. “I understand your needs and I know the posts must be exterminated and the bridge covered while you do your work. This I understand perfectly. This is easy to do before daylight or at daylight.”

“Yes,” Robert Jordan said. “Run along a minute, will you?” he said to Maria without looking at her.

The girl walked away out of hearing and sat down, her hands clasped over her ankles.

“You see,” Sordo said. “In that there is no problem. But to leave afterward and get out of this country in daylight presents a grave problem.”

“Clearly,” said Robert Jordan. “I have thought of it. It is daylight for me also.”

“But you are one,” El Sordo said. “We are various.”

“There is the possibility of returning to the camps and leaving
from there at dark,” Pilar said, putting the glass to her lips and then lowering it.

“That is very dangerous, too,” El Sordo explained. “That is perhaps even more dangerous.”

“I can see how it would be,” Robert Jordan said.

“To do the bridge in the night would be easy,” El Sordo said. “Since you make the condition that it must be done at daylight, it brings grave consequences.”

“I know it.”

“You could not do it at night?”

“I would be shot for it.”

“It is very possible we will all be shot for it if you do it in the daytime.”

“For me myself that is less important once the bridge is blown,” Robert Jordan said. “But I see your viewpoint. You cannot work out a retreat for daylight?”

“Certainly,” El Sordo said. “We will work out such a retreat. But I explain to you why one is preoccupied and why one is irritated. You speak of going to Gredos as though it were a military manœuvre to be accomplished. To arrive at Gredos would be a miracle.”

Robert Jordan said nothing.

“Listen to me,” the deaf man said. “I am speaking much. But it is so we may understand one another. We exist here by a miracle. By a miracle of laziness and stupidity of the fascists which they will remedy in time. Of course we are very careful and we make no disturbance in these hills.”

“I know.”

“But now, with this, we must go. We must think much about the manner of our going.”

“Clearly.”

“Then,” said El Sordo. “Let us eat now. I have talked much.”

“Never have I heard thee talk so much,” Pilar said. “Is it this?” she held up the glass.

“No,” El Sordo shook his head. “It isn't whiskey. It is that never have I had so much to talk of.”

“I appreciate your aid and your loyalty,” Robert Jordan said. “I
appreciate the difficulty caused by the timing of the blowing of the bridge.”

“Don't talk of that,” El Sordo said. “We are here to do what we can do. But this is complicated.”

“And on paper very simple,” Robert Jordan grinned. “On paper the bridge is blown at the moment the attack starts in order that nothing shall come up the road. It is very simple.”

“That they should let us do something on paper,” El Sordo said. “That we should conceive and execute something on paper.”

“‘Paper bleeds little,'” Robert Jordan quoted the proverb.

“But it is very useful,” Pilar said. “
Es muy utíl.
What I would like to do is use thy orders for that purpose.”

“Me too,” said Robert Jordan. “But you could never win a war like that.”

“No,” the big woman said. “I suppose not. But do you know what I would like?”

“To go to the Republic,” El Sordo said. He had put his good ear close to her as she spoke. “
Ya irás, mujer.
Let us win this and it will all be Republic.”

“All right,” Pilar said. “And now, for God's sake let us eat.”

They left El Sordo's after eating and started down the trail. El Sordo had walked with them as far as the lower post.

“
Salud,
” he said. “Until tonight.”

“
Salud, Camarada,
” Robert Jordan had said to him and the three of them had gone on down the trail, the deaf man standing looking after them. Maria had turned and waved her hand at him and El Sordo waved disparagingly with the abrupt, Spanish upward flick of the forearm as though something were being tossed away which seems the negation of all salutation which has not to do with business. Through the meal he had never unbuttoned his sheepskin coat and he had been carefully polite, careful to turn his head to hear and had returned to speaking his broken Spanish, asking Robert Jordan about conditions in the Republic politely; but it was obvious he wanted to be rid of them.

As they had left him, Pilar had said to him, “Well, Santiago?”

“Well, nothing, woman,” the deaf man said. “It is all right. But I am thinking.”

“Me, too,” Pilar had said and now as they walked down the trail, the walking easy and pleasant down the steep trail through the pines that they had toiled up, Pilar said nothing. Neither Robert Jordan nor Maria spoke and the three of them travelled along fast until the trail rose steeply out of the wooded valley to come up through the timber, leave it, and come out into the high meadow.

It was hot in the late May afternoon and halfway up this last steep grade the woman stopped. Robert Jordan, stopping and looking back, saw the sweat beading on her forehead. He thought her brown face looked pallid and the skin sallow and that there were dark areas under her eyes.

“Let us rest a minute,” he said. “We go too fast.”

“No,” she said. “Let us go on.”

“Rest, Pilar,” Maria said. “You look badly.”

“Shut up,” the woman said. “Nobody asked for thy advice.”

She started on up the trail but at the top she was breathing heavily and her face was wet with perspiration and there was no doubt about her pallor now.

“Sit down, Pilar,” Maria said. “Please, please sit down.”

“All right,” said Pilar and the three of them sat down under a pine tree and looked across the mountain meadow to where the tops of the peaks seemed to jut out from the roll of the high country with snow shining bright on them now in the early afternoon sun.

“What rotten stuff is the snow and how beautiful it looks,” Pilar said. “What an illusion is the snow.” She turned to Maria. “I am sorry I was rude to thee,
guapa.
I don't know what has held me today. I have an evil temper.”

“I never mind what you say when you are angry,” Maria told her. “And you are angry often.”

“Nay, it is worse than anger,” Pilar said, looking across at the peaks.

“Thou art not well,” Maria said.

“Neither is it that,” the woman said. “Come here,
guapa,
and put thy head in my lap.”

Maria moved close to her, put her arms out and folded them as one does who goes to sleep without a pillow and lay with her head on her arms. She turned her face up at Pilar and smiled at her but the big woman looked on across the meadow at the mountains. She stroked the girl's head without looking down at her and ran a blunt finger across the girl's forehead and then around the line of her ear and down the line where the hair grew on her neck.

“You can have her in a little while,
Inglés
,” she said. Robert Jordan was sitting behind her.

“Do not talk like that,” Maria said.

“Yes, he can have thee,” Pilar said and looked at neither of them. “I have never wanted thee. But I am jealous.”

“Pilar,” Maria said. “Do not talk thus.”

“He can have thee,” Pilar said and ran her finger around the lobe of the girl's ear. “But I am very jealous.”

“But Pilar,” Maria said. “It was thee explained to me there was nothing like that between us.”

“There is always something like that,” the woman said. “There is always something like something that there should not be. But with me there is not. Truly there is not. I want thy happiness and nothing more.”

Maria said nothing but lay there, trying to make her head rest lightly.

“Listen,
guapa,
” said Pilar and ran her finger now absently but tracingly over the contours of her cheeks. “Listen,
guapa,
I love thee and he can have thee, I am no
tortillera
but a woman made for men. That is true. But now it gives me pleasure to say thus, in the daytime, that I care for thee.”

“I love thee, too.”

“
Qué va.
Do not talk nonsense. Thou dost not know even of what I speak.”

“I know.”

“
Qué va,
that you know. You are for the
Inglés
. That is seen and as it should be. That I would have. Anything else I would not have. I do not make perversions. I only tell you something true. Few people will ever talk to thee truly and no women. I am jealous and say it and it is there. And I say it.”

“Do not say it,” Maria said. “Do not say it, Pilar.”

“
Por qué,
do not say it,” the woman said, still not looking at either of them. “I will say it until it no longer pleases me to say it. And,” she looked down at the girl now, “that time has come already. I do not say it more, you understand?”

“Pilar,” Maria said. “Do not talk thus.”

“Thou art a very pleasant little rabbit,” Pilar said. “And lift thy head now because this silliness is over.”

“It was not silly,” said Maria. “And my head is well where it is.”

“Nay. Lift it,” Pilar told her and put her big hands under the girl's head and raised it. “And thou,
Inglés
?” she said, still holding
the girl's head as she looked across at the mountains. “What cat has eaten thy tongue?”

“No cat,” Robert Jordan said.

“What animal then?” She laid the girl's head down on the ground.

“No animal,” Robert Jordan told her.

“You swallowed it yourself, eh?”

“I guess so,” Robert Jordan said.

“And did you like the taste?” Pilar turned now and grinned at him.

“Not much.”

“I thought not,” Pilar said. “I
thought
not. But I give you back our rabbit. Nor ever did I try to take your rabbit. That's a good name for her. I heard you call her that this morning.”

Robert Jordan felt his face redden.

“You are a very hard woman,” he told her.

“No,” Pilar said. “But so simple I am very complicated. Are you very complicated,
Inglés
?”

“No. Nor not so simple.”

“You please me,
Inglés,
” Pilar said. Then she smiled and leaned forward and smiled and shook her head. “Now if I could take the rabbit from thee and take thee from the rabbit.”

“You could not.”

“I know it,” Pilar said and smiled again. “Nor would I wish to. But when I was young I could have.”

“I believe it.”

“You believe it?”

“Surely,” Robert Jordan said. “But such talk is nonsense.”

“It is not like thee,” Maria said.

“I am not much like myself today,” Pilar said. “Very little like myself. Thy bridge has given me a headache,
Inglés
.”

“We can tell it the Headache Bridge,” Robert Jordan said. “But I will drop it in that gorge like a broken bird cage.”

“Good,” said Pilar. “Keep on talking like that.”

“I'll drop it as you break a banana from which you have removed the skin.”