For Whom the Bell Tolls (50 page)

Aw hell, I wish Grandfather was here, he thought. For about an hour anyway. Maybe he sent me what little I have through that other one that misused the gun. Maybe that is the only communication that we have. But, damn it. Truly damn it, but I wish the time-lag wasn't so long so that I could have learned from him what
the other one never had to teach me. But suppose the fear he had to go through and dominate and just get rid of finally in four years of that and then in the Indian fighting, although in that, mostly, there couldn't have been so much fear, had made a
cobarde
out of the other one the way second generation bullfighters almost always are? Suppose that? And maybe the good juice only came through straight again after passing through that one?

I'll never forget how sick it made me the first time I knew he was a
cobarde.
Go on, say it in English. Coward. It's easier when you have it said and there is never any point in referring to a son of a bitch by some foreign term. He wasn't any son of a bitch, though. He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have. Because if he wasn't a coward he would have stood up to that woman and not let her bully him. I wonder what I would have been like if he had married a different woman? That's something you'll never know, he thought, and grinned. Maybe the bully in her helped to supply what was missing in the other. And you. Take it a little easy. Don't get to referring to the good juice and such other things until you are through tomorrow. Don't be snotty too soon. And then don't be snotty at all. We'll see what sort of juice you have tomorrow.

But he started thinking about Grandfather again.

“George Custer was not an intelligent leader of cavalry, Robert,” his grandfather had said. “He was not even an intelligent man.”

He remembered that when his grandfather said that he felt resentment that any one should speak against that figure in the buckskin shirt, the yellow curls blowing, that stood on that hill holding a service revolver as the Sioux closed in around him in the old Anheuser-Busch lithograph that hung on the poolroom wall in Red Lodge.

“He just had great ability to get himself in and out of trouble,” his grandfather went on, “and on the Little Big Horn he got into it but he couldn't get out.

“Now Phil Sheridan was an intelligent man and so was Jeb Stuart. But John Mosby was the finest cavalry leader that ever lived.”

He had a letter in his things in the trunk at Missoula from General
Phil Sheridan to old Killy-the-Horse Kilpatrick that said his grandfather was a finer leader of irregular cavalry than John Mosby.

I ought to tell Golz about my grandfather, he thought. He wouldn't ever have heard of him though. He probably never even heard of John Mosby. The British all had heard of them though because they had to study our Civil War much more than people did on the Continent. Karkov said after this was over I could go to the Lenin Institute in Moscow if I wanted to. He said I could go to the military academy of the Red Army if I wanted to do that. I wonder what Grandfather would think of that? Grandfather, who never knowingly sat at table with a Democrat in his life.

Well, I don't want to be a soldier, he thought. I know that. So that's out. I just want us to win this war. I guess really good soldiers are really good at very little else, he thought. That's obviously untrue. Look at Napoleon and Wellington. You're very stupid this evening, he thought.

Usually his mind was very good company and tonight it had been when he thought about his grandfather. Then thinking of his father had thrown him off. He understood his father and he forgave him everything and he pitied him but he was ashamed of him.

You better not think at all, he told himself. Soon you will be with Maria and you won't have to think. That's the best way now that everything is worked out. When you have been concentrating so hard on something you can't stop and your brain gets to racing like a flywheel with the weight gone. You better just not think.

But just suppose, he thought. Just suppose that when the planes unload they smash those anti-tank guns and just blow hell out of the positions and the old tanks roll good up whatever hill it is for once and old Golz boots that bunch of drunks,
clochards,
bums, fanatics and heroes that make up the Quatorzième Brigade ahead of him, and I
know
how good Durán's people are in Golz's other brigade, and we are in Segovia tomorrow night.

Yes. Just suppose, he said to himself. I'll settle for La Granja, he told himself. But you are going to have to blow that bridge, he suddenly knew absolutely. There won't be any calling off. Because the way you have just been supposing there for a minute is how the possibilities of that attack look to those who have ordered it. Yes, you
will have to blow the bridge, he knew truly. Whatever happens to Andrés doesn't matter.

Coming down the trail there in the dark, alone with the good feeling that everything that had to be done was over for the next four hours, and with the confidence that had come from thinking back to concrete things, the knowledge that he would surely have to blow the bridge came to him almost with comfort.

The uncertainty, the enlargement of the feeling of being uncertain, as when, through a misunderstanding of possible dates, one does not know whether the guests are really coming to a party, that had been with him ever since he had dispatched Andrés with the report to Golz, had all dropped from him now. He was sure now that the festival would not be cancelled. It's much better to be sure, he thought. It's always much better to be sure.

So now they were in the robe again together and it was late in the last night. Maria lay close against him and he felt the long smoothness of her thighs against his and her breasts like two small hills that rise out of the long plain where there is a well, and the far country beyond the hills was the valley of her throat where his lips were. He lay very quiet and did not think and she stroked his head with her hand.

“Roberto,” Maria said very softly and kissed him. “I am ashamed. I do not wish to disappoint thee but there is a great soreness and much pain. I do not think I would be any good to thee.”

“There is always a great soreness and much pain,” he said. “Nay, rabbit. That is nothing. We will do nothing that makes pain.”

“It is not that. It is that I am not good to receive thee as I wish to.”

“That is of no importance. That is a passing thing. We are together when we lie together.”

“Yes, but I am ashamed. I think it was from when things were done to me that it comes. Not from thee and me.”

“Let us not talk of that.”

“Nor do I wish to. I meant I could not bear to fail thee now on this night and so I sought to excuse myself.”

“Listen, rabbit,” he said. “All such things pass and then there
is no problem.” But he thought; it was not good luck for the last night.

Then he was ashamed and said, “Lie close against me, rabbit. I love thee as much feeling thee against me in here in the dark as I love thee making love.”

“I am deeply ashamed because I thought it might be again tonight as it was in the high country when we came down from El Sordo's.”

“
Qué va,
” he said to her. “That is not for every day. I like it thus as well as the other.” He lied, putting aside disappointment. “We will be here together quietly and we will sleep. Let us talk together. I know thee very little from talking.”

“Should we speak of tomorrow and of thy work? I would like to be intelligent about thy work.”

“No,” he said and relaxed completely into the length of the robe and lay now quietly with his cheek against her shoulder, his left arm under her head. “The most intelligent is not to talk about tomorrow nor what happened today. In this we do not discuss the losses and what we must do tomorrow we will do. Thou art not afraid?”

“
Qué va,
” she said. “I am always afraid. But now I am afraid for thee so much I do not think of me.”

“Thou must not, rabbit. I have been in many things. And worse than this,” he lied.

Then suddenly surrendering to something, to the luxury of going into unreality, he said, “Let us talk of Madrid and of us in Madrid.”

“Good,” she said. Then, “Oh, Roberto, I am sorry I have failed thee. Is there not some other thing that I can do for thee?”

He stroked her head and kissed her and then lay close and relaxed beside her, listening to the quiet of the night.

“Thou canst talk with me of Madrid,” he said and thought: I'll keep any oversupply of that for tomorrow. I'll need all of that there is tomorrow. There are no pine needles that need that now as I will need it tomorrow. Who was it cast his seed upon the ground in the Bible? Onan. How did Onan turn out? he thought. I don't remember ever hearing any more about Onan. He smiled in the dark.

Then he surrendered again and let himself slip into it, feeling a
voluptuousness of surrender into unreality that was like a sexual acceptance of something that could come in the night when there was no understanding, only the delight of acceptance.

“My beloved,” he said, and kissed her. “Listen. The other night I was thinking about Madrid and I thought how I would get there and leave thee at the hotel while I went up to see people at the hotel of the Russians. But that was false. I would not leave thee at any hotel.”

“Why not?”

“Because I will take care of thee. I will not ever leave thee. I will go with thee to the Seguridad to get papers. Then I will go with thee to buy those clothes that are needed.”

“They are few, and I can buy them.”

“Nay, they are many and we will go together and buy good ones and thou wilt be beautiful in them.”

“I would rather we stayed in the room in the hotel and sent out for the clothes. Where is the hotel?”

“It is on the Plaza del Callao. We will be much in that room in that hotel. There is a wide bed with clean sheets and there is hot running water in the bathtub and there are two closets and I will keep my things in one and thou wilt take the other. And there are tall, wide windows that open, and outside, in the streets, there is the spring. Also I know good places to eat that are illegal but with good food, and I know shops where there is still wine and whiskey. And we will keep things to eat in the room for when we are hungry and also whiskey for when I wish a drink and I will buy thee manzanilla.”

“I would like to try the whiskey.”

“But since it is difficult to obtain and if thou likest manzanilla.”

“Keep thy whiskey, Roberto,” she said. “Oh, I love thee very much. Thou and thy whiskey that I could not have. What a pig thou art.”

“Nay, you shall try it. But it is not good for a woman.”

“And I have only had things that were good for a woman,” Maria said. “Then there in bed I will still wear my wedding shirt?”

“Nay. I will buy thee various nightgowns and pajamas too if you should prefer them.”

“I will buy seven wedding shirts,” she said. “One for each day
of the week. And I will buy a clean wedding shirt for thee. Dost ever wash thy shirt?”

“Sometimes.”

“I will keep everything clean and I will pour thy whiskey and put the water in it as it was done at Sordo's. I will obtain olives and salted codfish and hazel nuts for thee to eat while thou drinkest and we will stay in the room for a month and never leave it. If I am fit to receive thee,” she said, suddenly unhappy.

“That is nothing,” Robert Jordan told her. “Truly it is nothing. It is possible thou wert hurt there once and now there is a scar that makes a further hurting. Such a thing is possible. All such things pass. And also there are good doctors in Madrid if there is truly anything.”

“But all was good before,” she said pleadingly.

“That is the promise that all will be good again.”

“Then let us talk again about Madrid.” She curled her legs between his and rubbed the top of her head against his shoulder. “But will I not be so ugly there with this cropped head that thou wilt be ashamed of me?”

“Nay. Thou art lovely. Thou hast a lovely face and a beautiful body, long and light, and thy skin is smooth and the color of burnt gold and every one will try to take thee from me.”

“
Qué va,
take me from thee,” she said. “No other man will ever touch me till I die. Take me from thee!
Qué va.
”

“But many will try. Thou wilt see.”

“They will see I love thee so that they will know it would be as unsafe as putting their hands into a caldron of melted lead to touch me. But thou? When thou seest beautiful women of the same culture as thee? Thou wilt not be ashamed of me?”

“Never. And I will marry thee.”

“If you wish,” she said. “But since we no longer have the Church I do not think it carries importance.”

“I would like us to be married.”

“If you wish. But listen. If we were ever in another country where there still was the Church perhaps we could be married in it there.”

“In my country they still have the Church,” he told her. “There
we can be married in it if it means aught to thee. I have never been married. There is no problem.”

“I am glad thou hast never been married,” she said. “But I am glad thou knowest about such things as you have told me for that means thou hast been with many women and the Pilar told me that it is only such men who are possible for husbands. But thou wilt not run with other women now? Because it would kill me.”

“I have never run with many women,” he said, truly. “Until thee I did not think that I could love one deeply.”

She stroked his cheeks and then held her hands clasped behind his head. “Thou must have known very many.”

“Not to love them.”

“Listen. The Pilar told me something——”

“Say it.”