For Whom the Bell Tolls (37 page)

“I have read the Handbook of Marxism that Emil Burns edited. That is all.”

“If you have read it all that is quite a little. There are fifteen hundred pages and you could spend some time on each page. But there are some other things you should read.”

“There is no time to read now.”

“I know,” Karkov had said. “I mean eventually. There are many things to read which will make you understand some of these things that happen. But out of this will come a book which is very necessary; which will explain many things which it is necessary to know. Perhaps I will write it. I hope that it will be me who will write it.”

“I don't know who could write it better.”

“Do not flatter,” Karkov had said. “I am a journalist. But like all journalists I wish to write literature. Just now, I am very busy on a study of Calvo Sotelo. He was a very good fascist; a true Spanish fascist. Franco and these other people are not. I have been studying all of Sotelo's writing and speeches. He was very intelligent and it was very intelligent that he was killed.”

“I thought that you did not believe in political assassination.”

“It is practised very extensively,” Karkov said. “Very, very extensively.”

“But——”

“We do not believe in acts of terrorism by individuals,” Karkov had smiled. “Not of course by criminal terrorist and counterrevolutionary organizations. We detest with horror the duplicity and villainy of the murderous hyenas of Bukharinite wreckers and such dregs of humanity as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and their henchmen. We hate and loathe these veritable fiends,” he smiled again. “But I still believe that political assassination can be said to be practised very extensively.”

“You mean——”

“I mean nothing. But certainly we execute and destroy such veritable fiends and dregs of humanity and the treacherous dogs of generals and the revolting spectacle of admirals unfaithful to their trust. These are destroyed. They are not assassinated. You see the difference?”

“I see,” Robert Jordan had said.

“And because I make jokes sometime: and you know how dangerous it is to make jokes even in joke? Good. Because I make jokes, do not think that the Spanish people will not live to regret that they have not shot certain generals that even now hold commands. I do not like the shootings, you understand.”

“I don't mind them,” Robert Jordan said. “I do not like them but I do not mind them any more.”

“I know that,” Karkov had said. “I have been told that.”

“Is it important?” Robert Jordan said. “I was only trying to be truthful about it.”

“It is regretful,” Karkov had said. “But it is one of the things that makes people be treated as reliable who would ordinarily have to spend much more time before attaining that category.”

“Am I supposed to be reliable?”

“In your work you are supposed to be very reliable. I must talk to you sometime to see how you are in your mind. It is regrettable that we never speak seriously.”

“My mind is in suspension until we win the war,” Robert Jordan had said.

“Then perhaps you will not need it for a long time. But you should be careful to exercise it a little.”

“I read
Mundo Obrero,
” Robert Jordan had told him and Karkov had said, “All right. Good. I can take a joke too. But there are very intelligent things in
Mundo Obrero
. The only intelligent things written on this war.”

“Yes,” Robert Jordan had said. “I agree with you. But to get a full picture of what is happening you cannot read only the party organ.”

“No,” Karkov had said. “But you will not find any such picture if you read twenty papers and then, if you had it, I do not know what you would do with it. I have such a picture almost constantly and what I do is try to forget it.”

“You think it is that bad?”

“It is better now than it was. We are getting rid of some of the worst. But it is very rotten. We are building a huge army now and some of the elements, those of Modesto, of El Campesino, of Lister and of Durán, are reliable. They are more than reliable. They are magnificent. You will see that. Also we still have the Brigades although their role is changing. But an army that is made up of good and bad elements cannot win a war. All must be brought to a certain level of political development; all must know why they are fighting, and its importance. All must believe in the fight they are to make and all must accept discipline. We are making a huge conscript army without the time to implant the discipline that a conscript army must have, to behave properly under fire. We call it a people's army but it will not have the assets of a true people's army and it will not have the iron discipline that a conscript army needs. You will see. It is a very dangerous procedure.”

“You are not very cheerful today.”

“No,” Karkov had said. “I have just come back from Valencia where I have seen many people. No one comes back very cheerful from Valencia. In Madrid you feel good and clean and with no possibility of anything but winning. Valencia is something else. The cowards who fled from Madrid still govern there. They have settled happily into the sloth and bureaucracy of governing. They have only contempt for those of Madrid. Their obsession now is the weakening
of the commissariat for war. And Barcelona. You should see Barcelona.”

“How is it?”

“It is all still comic opera. First it was the paradise of the crackpots and the romantic revolutionists. Now it is the paradise of the fake soldier. The soldiers who like to wear uniforms, who like to strut and swagger and wear red-and-black scarves. Who like everything about war except to fight. Valencia makes you sick and Barcelona makes you laugh.”

“What about the P. O. U. M. putsch?”

“The P. O. U. M. was never serious. It was a heresy of crackpots and wild men and it was really just an infantilism. There were some honest misguided people. There was one fairly good brain and there was a little fascist money. Not much. The poor P. O. U. M. They were very silly people.”

“But were many killed in the putsch?”

“Not so many as were shot afterwards or will be shot. The P. O. U. M. It is like the name. Not serious. They should have called it the M. U. M. P. S. or the M. E. A. S. L. E. S. But no. The Measles is much more dangerous. It can affect both sight and hearing. But they made one plot you know to kill me, to kill Walter, to kill Modesto and to kill Prieto. You see how badly mixed up they were? We are not at all alike. Poor P. O. U. M. They never did kill anybody. Not at the front nor anywhere else. A few in Barcelona, yes.”

“Were you there?”

“Yes. I have sent a cable describing the wickedness of that infamous organization of Trotskyite murderers and their fascist machinations all beneath contempt but, between us, it is not very serious, the P. O. U. M. Nin was their only man. We had him but he escaped from our hands.”

“Where is he now?”

“In Paris. We say he is in Paris. He was a very pleasant fellow but with bad political aberrations.”

“But they were in communication with the fascists, weren't they?”

“Who is not?”

“We are not.”

“Who knows? I hope we are not. You go often behind their lines,” he grinned. “But the brother of one of the secretaries of the Republican Embassy at Paris made a trip to St. Jean de Luz last week to meet people from Burgos.”

“I like it better at the front,” Robert Jordan had said. “The closer to the front the better the people.”

“How do you like it behind the fascist lines?”

“Very much. We have fine people there.”

“Well, you see they must have their fine people behind our lines the same way. We find them and shoot them and they find ours and shoot them. When you are in their country you must always think of how many people they must send over to us.”

“I have thought about them.”

“Well,” Karkov had said. “You have probably enough to think about for today, so drink that beer that is left in the pitcher and run along now because I have to go upstairs to see people. Upstairs people. Come again to see me soon.”

Yes, Robert Jordan thought. You learned a lot at Gaylord's. Karkov had read the one and only book he had published. The book had not been a success. It was only two hundred pages long and he doubted if two thousand people had ever read it. He had put in it what he had discovered about Spain in ten years of travelling in it, on foot, in third-class carriages, by bus, on horse- and mule-back and in trucks. He knew the Basque country, Navarre, Aragon, Galicia, the two Castiles and Estremadura well. There had been such good books written by Borrow and Ford and the rest that he had been able to add very little. But Karkov said it was a good book.

“It is why I bother with you,” he said. “I think you write absolutely truly and that is very rare. So I would like you to know some things.”

All right. He would write a book when he got through with this. But only about the things he knew, truly, and about what he knew. But I will have to be a much better writer than I am now to handle them, he thought. The things he had come to know in this war were not so simple.

“What do you do sitting there?” Maria asked him. She was standing close beside him and he turned his head and smiled at her.

“Nothing,” he said. “I have been thinking.”

“What of? The bridge?”

“No. The bridge is terminated. Of thee and of a hotel in Madrid where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some time.”

“Are there many Russians in Madrid?”

“No. Very few.”

“But in the fascist periodicals it says there are hundreds of thousands.”

“Those are lies. There are very few.”

“Do you like the Russians? The one who was here was a Russian.”

“Did you like him?”

“Yes. I was sick then but I thought he was very beautiful and very brave.”

“What nonsense, beautiful,” Pilar said. “His nose was flat as my hand and he had cheekbones as wide as a sheep's buttocks.”

“He was a good friend and comrade of mine,” Robert Jordan said to Maria. “I cared for him very much.”

“Sure,” Pilar said. “But you shot him.”

When she said this the card players looked up from the table and
Pablo stared at Robert Jordan. Nobody said anything and then the gypsy, Rafael, asked, “Is it true, Roberto?”

“Yes,” Robert Jordan said. He wished Pilar had not brought this up and he wished he had not told it at El Sordo's. “At his request. He was badly wounded.”

“
Qué cosa mas rara
,” the gypsy said. “All the time he was with us he talked of such a possibility. I don't know how many times I have promised him to perform such an act. What a rare thing,” he said again and shook his head.

“He was a very rare man,” Primitivo said. “Very singular.”

“Look,” Andrés, one of the brothers, said. “You who are Professor and all. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him?”

“I believe he cannot see it,” Robert Jordan said. Pablo was staring at him curiously and Pilar was watching him with no expression on her face. “In the case of this Russian comrade he was very nervous from being too much time at the front. He had fought at Irun which, you know, was bad. Very bad. He had fought later in the north. And since the first groups who did this work behind the lines were formed he had worked here, in Estremadura and in Andalucía. I think he was very tired and nervous and he imagined ugly things.”

“He would undoubtedly have seen many evil things,” Fernando said.

“Like all the world,” Andrés said. “But listen to me,
Inglés
. Do you think there is such a thing as a man knowing in advance what will befall him?”

“No,” Robert Jordan said. “That is ignorance and superstition.”

“Go on,” Pilar said. “Let us hear the viewpoint of the professor.” She spoke as though she were talking to a precocious child.

“I believe that fear produces evil visions,” Robert Jordan said. “Seeing bad signs——”

“Such as the airplanes today,” Primitivo said.

“Such as thy arrival,” Pablo said softly and Robert Jordan looked across the table at him, saw it was not a provocation but only an expressed thought, then went on. “Seeing bad signs, one, with fear, imagines an end for himself and one thinks that imagining
comes by divination,” Robert Jordan concluded. “I believe there is nothing more to it than that. I do not believe in ogres, nor soothsayers, nor in the supernatural things.”

“But this one with the rare name saw his fate clearly,” the gypsy said. “And that was how it happened.”

“He did not see it,” Robert Jordan said. “He had a fear of such a possibility and it became an obsession. No one can tell me that he saw anything.”

“Not I?” Pilar asked him and picked some dust up from the fire and blew it off the palm of her hand. “I cannot tell thee either?”

“No. With all wizardry, gypsy and all, thou canst not tell me either.”

“Because thou art a miracle of deafness,” Pilar said, her big face harsh and broad in the candlelight. “It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such things do not exist.
Qué va, Inglés
. I saw the death of that one with the rare name in his face as though it were burned there with a branding iron.”

“You did not,” Robert Jordan insisted. “You saw fear and apprehension. The fear was made by what he had been through. The apprehension was for the possibility of evil he imagined.”

“
Qué va,
” Pilar said. “I saw death there as plainly as though it were sitting on his shoulder. And what is more he smelt of death.”