For Whom the Bell Tolls (64 page)

Now as he worked, placing, bracing, wedging, lashing tight with wire, thinking only of demolition, working fast and skillfully as a surgeon works, he heard a rattle of firing from below on the road. Then there was the noise of a grenade. Then another, booming through the rushing noise the water made. Then it was quiet from that direction.

“Damn,” he thought. “I wonder what hit them then?”

There was still firing up the road at the upper post. Too damned much firing, and he was lashing two grenades side by side on top of the braced blocks of explosive, winding wire over their corrugations so they would hold tight and firm and lashing it tight; twisting it with the pliers. He felt of the whole thing and then, to make it more
solid, tapped in a wedge above the grenades that blocked the whole charge firmly in against the steel.

“The other side now,
viejo,
” he shouted up to Anselmo and climbed across through the trestling, like a bloody Tarzan in a rolled steel forest, he thought, and then coming out from under the dark, the stream tumbling below him, he looked up and saw Anselmo's face as he reached the packages of explosive down to him. Goddamn good face, he thought. Not crying now. That's all to the good. And one side done. This side now and we're done. This will drop it like what all. Come on. Don't get excited. Do it. Clean and fast as the last one. Don't fumble with it. Take your time. Don't try to do it faster than you can. You can't lose now. Nobody can keep you from blowing one side now. You're doing it just the way you should. This is a cool place. Christ, it feels cool as a wine cellar and there's no crap. Usually working under a stone bridge it's full of crap. This is a dream bridge. A bloody dream bridge. It's the old man on top who's in a bad spot. Don't try to do it faster than you can. I wish that shooting would be over up above. “Give me some wedges,
viejo.
” I don't like that shooting still. Pilar has got in trouble there. Some of the post must have been out. Out back; or behind the mill. They're still shooting. That means there's somebody still at the mill. And all that damned sawdust. Those big piles of sawdust. Sawdust, when it's old and packed, is good stuff to fight behind. There must be several of them still. It's quiet below with Pablo. I wonder what that second flare-up was. It must have been a car or a motorcyclist. I hope to God they don't have any armored cars come up or any tanks. Go on. Put it in just as fast as you can and wedge it tight and lash it fast. You're shaking, like a Goddamn woman. What the hell is the matter with you? You're trying to do it too fast. I'll bet that Goddamn woman up above isn't shaking. That Pilar. Maybe she is too. She sounds as though she were in plenty trouble. She'll shake if she gets in enough. Like everybody bloody else.

He leaned out and up into the sunlight and as he reached his hand up to take what Anselmo handed him, his head now above the noise of the falling water, the firing increased sharply up the road and then the noise of grenades again. Then more grenades.

“They rushed the sawmill then.”

It's lucky I've got this stuff in blocks, he thought. Instead of sticks. What the hell. It's just neater. Although a lousy canvas sack full of jelly would be quicker. Two sacks. No. One of that would do. And if we just had detonators and the old exploder. That son of a bitch threw my exploder in the river. That old box and the places that it's been. In this river he threw it. That bastard Pablo. He gave them hell there below just now. “Give me some more of that,
viejo.
”

The old man's doing very well. He's in quite a place up there. He hated to shoot that sentry. So did I but I didn't think about it. Nor do I think about it now. You have to do that. But then Anselmo got a cripple. I know about cripples. I think that killing a man with an automatic weapon makes it easier. I mean on the one doing it. It is different. After the first touch it is it that does it. Not you. Save that to go into some other time. You and your head. You have a nice thinking head old Jordan. Roll Jordan, Roll! They used to yell that at football when you lugged the ball. Do you know the damned Jordan is really not much bigger than that creek down there below. At the source, you mean. So is anything else at the source. This is a place here under this bridge. A home away from home. Come on Jordan, pull yourself together. This is serious Jordan. Don't you understand? Serious. It's less so all the time. Look at that other side.
Para qué?
I'm all right now however she goes. As Maine goes, so goes the nation. As Jordan goes so go the bloody Israelites. The bridge, I mean. As Jordan goes, so goes the bloody bridge, other way around, really.

“Give me some more of that, Anselmo old boy,” he said. The old man nodded. “Almost through,” Robert Jordan said. The old man nodded again.

Finishing wiring the grenades down, he no longer heard the firing from up the road. Suddenly he was working only with the noise of the stream. He looked down and saw it boiling up white below him through the boulders and then dropping down to a clear pebbled pool where one of the wedges he had dropped swung around in the current. As he looked a trout rose for some insect and made a circle on the surface close to where the chip was turning. As he twisted the wire tight with the pliers that held these two grenades in place,
he saw, through the metal of the bridge, the sunlight on the green slope of the mountain. It was brown three days ago, he thought.

Out from the cool dark under the bridge he leaned into the bright sun and shouted to Anselmo's bending face, “Give me the big coil of wire.”

The old man handed it down.

For God's sake don't loosen them any yet. This will pull them. I wish you could string them through. But with the length of wire you are using it's O.K., Robert Jordan thought as he felt the cotter pins that held the rings that would release the levers on the hand grenades. He checked that the grenades, lashed on their sides, had room for the levers to spring when the pins were pulled (the wire that lashed them ran through under the levers), then he attached a length of wire to one ring, wired it onto the main wire that ran to the ring of the outside grenade, paid off some slack from the coil and passed it around a steel brace and then handed the coil up to Anselmo. “Hold it carefully,” he said.

He climbed up onto the bridge, took the coil from the old man and walked back as fast as he could pay out wire toward where the sentry was slumped in the road, leaning over the side of the bridge and paying out wire from the coil as he walked.

“Bring the sacks,” he shouted to Anselmo as he walked backwards. As he passed he stooped down and picked up the submachine gun and slung it over his shoulder again.

It was then, looking up from paying out wire, that he saw, well up the road, those who were coming back from the upper post.

There were four of them, he saw, and then he had to watch his wire so it would be clear and not foul against any of the outer work of the bridge. Eladio was not with them.

Robert Jordan carried the wire clear past the end of the bridge, took a loop around the last stanchion and then ran along the road until he stopped beside a stone marker. He cut the wire and handed it to Anselmo.

“Hold this,
viejo,
” he said. “Now walk back with me to the bridge. Take up on it as you walk. No. I will.”

At the bridge he pulled the wire back out through the hitch so it now ran clear and unfouled to the grenade rings and handed
it, stretching alongside the bridge but running quite clear, to Anselmo.

“Take this back to that high stone,” he said. “Hold it easily but firmly. Do not put any force on it. When thou pullest hard, hard, the bridge will blow.
Comprendes?
”

“Yes.”

“Treat it softly but do not let it sag so it will foul. Keep it lightly firm but not pulling until thou pullest.
Comprendes?
”

“Yes.”

“When thou pullest really pull. Do not jerk.”

Robert Jordan while he spoke was looking up the road at the remainder of Pilar's band. They were close now and he saw Primitivo and Rafael were supporting Fernando. He looked to be shot through the groin for he was holding himself there with both hands while the man and the boy held him on either side. His right leg was dragging, the side of the shoe scraping on the road as they walked him. Pilar was climbing the bank into the timber carrying three rifles. Robert Jordan could not see her face but her head was up and she was climbing as fast as she could.

“How does it go?” Primitivo called.

“Good. We're almost finished,” Robert Jordan shouted back.

There was no need to ask how it went with them. As he looked away the three were on the edge of the road and Fernando was shaking his head as they tried to get him up the bank.

“Give me a rifle here,” Robert Jordan heard him say in a choky voice.

“No,
hombre.
We will get thee to the horses.”

“What would I do with a horse?” Fernando said. “I am very well here.”

Robert Jordan did not hear the rest for he was speaking to Anselmo.

“Blow it if tanks come,” he said. “But only if they come onto it. Blow it if armored cars come. If they come onto it. Anything else Pablo will stop.”

“I will not blow it with thee beneath it.”

“Take no account of me. Blow it if thou needest to. I fix the other wire and come back. Then we will blow it together.”

He started running for the center of the bridge.

Anselmo saw Robert Jordan run up the bridge, coil of wire over his arm, pliers hanging from one wrist and the submachine gun slung over his back. He saw him climb down under the rail of the bridge and out of sight. Anselmo held the wire in his hand, his right hand, and he crouched behind the stone marker and looked down the road and across the bridge. Halfway between him and the bridge was the sentry, who had settled now closer to the road, sinking closer onto the smooth road surface as the sun weighed on his back. His rifle, lying on the road, the bayonet fixed, pointed straight toward Anselmo. The old man looked past him along the surface of the bridge crossed by the shadows of the bridge rail to where the road swung to the left along the gorge and then turned out of sight behind the rocky wall. He looked at the far sentry box with the sun shining on it and then, conscious of the wire in his hand, he turned his head to where Fernando was speaking to Primitivo and the gypsy.

“Leave me here,” Fernando said. “It hurts much and there is much hemorrhage inside. I feel it in the inside when I move.”

“Let us get thee up the slope,” Primitivo said. “Put thy arms around our shoulders and we will take thy legs.”

“It is inutile,” Fernando said. “Put me here behind a stone. I am as useful here as above.”

“But when we go,” Primitivo said.

“Leave me here,” Fernando said. “There is no question of my travelling with this. Thus it gives one horse more. I am very well here. Certainly they will come soon.”

“We can take thee up the hill,” the gypsy said. “Easily.”

He was, naturally, in a deadly hurry to be gone, as was Primitivo. But they had brought him this far.

“Nay,” Fernando said. “I am very well here. What passes with Eladio?”

The gypsy put his finger on his head to show where the wound had been.

“Here,” he said. “After thee. When we made the rush.”

“Leave me,” Fernando said. Anselmo could see he was suffering much. He held both hands against his groin now and put his head
back against the bank, his legs straight out before him. His face was gray and sweating.

“Leave me now please, for a favor,” he said. His eyes were shut with pain, the edges of the lips twitching. “I find myself very well here.”

“Here is a rifle and cartridges,” Primitivo said.

“Is it mine?” Fernando asked, his eyes shut.

“Nay, the Pilar has thine,” Primitivo said. “This is mine.”

“I would prefer my own,” Fernando said. “I am more accustomed to it.”

“I will bring it to thee,” the gypsy lied to him. “Keep this until it comes.”

“I am in a very good position here,” Fernando said. “Both for up the road and for the bridge.” He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked across the bridge, then shut them as the pain came.

The gypsy tapped his head and motioned with his thumb to Primitivo for them to be off.

“Then we will be down for thee,” Primitivo said and started up the slope after the gypsy, who was climbing fast.

Fernando lay back against the bank. In front of him was one of the whitewashed stones that marked the edge of the road. His head was in the shadow but the sun shone on his plugged and bandaged wound and on his hands that were cupped over it. His legs and his feet also were in the sun. The rifle lay beside him and there were three clips of cartridges shining in the sun beside the rifle. A fly crawled on his hands but the small tickling did not come through the pain.

“Fernando!” Anselmo called to him from where he crouched, holding the wire. He had made a loop in the end of the wire and twisted it close so he could hold it in his fist.

“Fernando!” he called again.

Fernando opened his eyes and looked at him.

“How does it go?” Fernando asked.

“Very good,” Anselmo said. “Now in a minute we will be blowing it.”

“I am pleased. Anything you need me for advise me,” Fernando said and shut his eyes again and the pain lurched in him.

Anselmo looked away from him and out onto the bridge.

He was watching for the first sight of the coil of wire being
handed up onto the bridge and for the
Inglés'
s sunburnt head and face to follow it as he would pull himself up the side. At the same time he was watching beyond the bridge for anything to come around the far corner of the road. He did not feel afraid now at all and he had not been afraid all the day. It goes so fast and it is so normal, he thought. I hated the shooting of the guard and it made me an emotion but that is passed now. How could the
Inglés
say that the shooting of a man is like the shooting of an animal? In all hunting I have had an elation and no feeling of wrong. But to shoot a man gives a feeling as though one had struck one's own brother when you are grown men. And to shoot him various times to kill him. Nay, do not think of that. That gave thee too much emotion and thee ran blubbering down the bridge like a woman.