For Whom the Bell Tolls (65 page)

That is over, he told himself, and thou canst try to atone for it as for the others. But now thou has what thou asked for last night coming home across the hills. Thou art in battle and thou hast no problem. If I die on this morning now it is all right.

Then he looked at Fernando lying there against the bank with his hands cupped over the groove of his hip, his lips blue, his eyes tight shut, breathing heavily and slowly, and he thought, If I die may it be quickly. Nay I said I would ask nothing more if I were granted what I needed for today. So I will not ask. Understand? I ask nothing. Nothing in any way. Give me what I asked for and I leave all the rest according to discretion.

He listened to the noise that came, far away, of the battle at the pass and he said to himself, Truly this is a great day. I should realize and know what a day this is.

But there was no lift or any excitement in his heart. That was all gone and there was nothing but a calmness. And now, as he crouched behind the marker stone with the looped wire in his hand and another loop of it around his wrist and the gravel beside the road under his knees he was not lonely nor did he feel in any way alone. He was one with the wire in his hand and one with the bridge, and one with the charges the
Inglés
had placed. He was one with the
Inglés
still working under the bridge and he was one with all of the battle and with the Republic.

But there was no excitement. It was all calm now and the sun
beat down on his neck and on his shoulders as he crouched and as he looked up he saw the high, cloudless sky and the slope of the mountain rising beyond the river and he was not happy but he was neither lonely nor afraid.

Up the hill slope Pilar lay behind a tree watching the road that came down from the pass. She had three loaded rifles by her and she handed one to Primitivo as he dropped down beside her.

“Get down there,” she said. “Behind that tree. Thou, gypsy, over there,” she pointed to another tree below. “Is he dead?”

“Nay. Not yet,” Primitivo said.

“It was bad luck,” Pilar said. “If we had had two more it need not have happened. He should have crawled around the sawdust pile. Is he all right there where he is?”

Primitivo shook his head.

“When the
Inglés
blows the bridge will fragments come this far?” the gypsy asked from behind his tree.

“I don't know,” Pilar said. “But Agustín with the
máquina
is closer than thee. The
Inglés
would not have placed him there if it were too close.”

“But I remember with the blowing of the train the lamp of the engine blew by over my head and pieces of steel flew by like swallows.”

“Thou hast poetic memories,” Pilar said. “Like swallows.
Joder!
They were like wash boilers. Listen, gypsy, thou hast comported thyself well today. Now do not let thy fear catch up with thee.”

“Well, I only asked if it would blow this far so I might keep well behind the tree trunk,” the gypsy said.

“Keep it thus,” Pilar told him. “How many have we killed?”

“
Pues
five for us. Two here. Canst thou not see the other at the far end? Look there toward the bridge. See the box? Look! Dost see?” He pointed. “Then there were eight below for Pablo. I watched that post for the
Inglés
.”

Pilar grunted. Then she said violently and raging, “What passes with that
Inglés
? What is he obscenitying off under that bridge.
Vaya mandanga!
Is he building a bridge or blowing one?”

She raised her head and looked down at Anselmo crouched behind the stone marker.

“Hey,
viejo
!” she shouted. “What passes with thy obscenity of an
Inglés
?”

“Patience, woman,” Anselmo called up, holding the wire lightly but firmly. “He is terminating his work.”

“But what in the name of the great whore does he take so much time about?”

“
Es muy concíenzudo!
” Anselmo shouted. “It is a scientific labor.”

“I obscenity in the milk of science,” Pilar raged to the gypsy. “Let the filth-faced obscenity blow it and be done. Maria!” she shouted in her deep voice up the hill. “Thy
Inglés
—” and she shouted a flood of obscenity about Jordan's imaginary actions under the bridge.

“Calm yourself, woman,” Anselmo called from the road. “He is doing an enormous work. He is finishing it now.”

“The hell with it,” Pilar raged. “It is speed that counts.”

Just then they all heard firing start down the road where Pablo was holding the post he had taken. Pilar stopped cursing and listened. “Ay,” she said. “Ayee. Ayee. That's it.”

Robert Jordan heard it as he swung the coil of wire up onto the bridge with one hand and then pulled himself up after it. As his knees rested on the edge of the iron of the bridge and his hands were on the surface he heard the machine gun firing around the bend below. It was a different sound from Pablo's automatic rifle. He got to his feet, leaned over, passed his coil of wire clear and commenced to pay out wire as he walked backwards and sideways along the bridge.

He heard the firing and as he walked he felt it in the pit of his stomach as though it echoed on his own diaphragm. It was closer now as he walked and he looked back at the bend of the road. But it was still clear of any car, or tank or men. It was still clear when he was halfway to the end of the bridge. It was still clear when he was three quarters of the way, his wire running clear and unfouled, and it was still clear as he climbed around behind the sentry box, holding his wire out to keep it from catching on the iron work. Then he was on the road and it was still clear below on the road and then he was moving fast backwards up the little washed-out gully by the
lower side of the road as an outfielder goes backwards for a long fly ball, keeping the wire taut, and now he was almost opposite Anselmo's stone and it was still clear below the bridge.

Then he heard the truck coming down the road and he saw it over his shoulder just coming onto the long slope and he swung his wrist once around the wire and yelled to Anselmo, “Blow her!” and he dug his heels in and leaned back hard onto the tension of the wire with a turn of it around his wrist and the noise of the truck was coming behind and ahead there was the road with the dead sentry and the long bridge and the stretch of road below, still clear and then there was a cracking roar and the middle of the bridge rose up in the air like a wave breaking and he felt the blast from the explosion roll back against him as he dove on his face in the pebbly gully with his hands holding tight over his head. His face was down against the pebbles as the bridge settled where it had risen and the familiar yellow smell of it rolled over him in acrid smoke and then it commenced to rain pieces of steel.

After the steel stopped falling he was still alive and he raised his head and looked across the bridge. The center section of it was gone. There were jagged pieces of steel on the bridge with their bright, new torn edges and ends and these were all over the road. The truck had stopped up the road about a hundred yards. The driver and the two men who had been with him were running toward a culvert.

Fernando was still lying against the bank and he was still breathing. His arms straight by his sides, his hands relaxed.

Anselmo lay face down behind the white marking stone. His left arm was doubled under his head and his right arm was stretched straight out. The loop of wire was still around his right fist. Robert Jordan got to his feet, crossed the road, knelt by him and made sure that he was dead. He did not turn him over to see what the piece of steel had done. He was dead and that was all.

He looked very small, dead, Robert Jordan thought. He looked small and gray-headed and Robert Jordan thought, I wonder how he ever carried such big loads if that is the size he really was. Then he saw the shape of the calves and the thighs in the tight, gray herdsman's breeches and the worn soles of the rope-soled shoes
and he picked up Anselmo's carbine and the two sacks, practically empty now and went over and picked up the rifle that lay beside Fernando. He kicked a jagged piece of steel off the surface of the road. Then he swung the two rifles over his shoulder, holding them by the muzzles, and started up the slope into the timber. He did not look back nor did he even look across the bridge at the road. They were still firing around the bend below but he cared nothing about that now.

He was coughing from the TNT fumes and he felt numb all through himself.

He put one of the rifles down by Pilar where she lay behind the tree. She looked and saw that made three rifles that she had again.

“You are too high up here,” he said. “There's a truck up the road where you can't see it. They thought it was planes. You better get farther down. I'm going down with Agustín to cover Pablo.”

“The old one?” she asked him, looking at his face.

“Dead.”

He coughed again, wrackingly, and spat on the ground.

“Thy bridge is blown,
Inglés,
” Pilar looked at him. “Don't forget that.”

“I don't forget anything,” he said. “You have a big voice,” he said to Pilar. “I have heard thee bellow. Shout up to the Maria and tell her that I am all right.”

“We lost two at the sawmill,” Pilar said, trying to make him understand.

“So I saw,” Robert Jordan said. “Did you do something stupid?”

“Go and obscenity thyself,
Inglés,
” Pilar said. “Fernando and Eladio were men, too.”

“Why don't you go up with the horses?” Robert Jordan said. “I can cover here better than thee.”

“Thou art to cover Pablo.”

“The hell with Pablo. Let him cover himself with
mierda.
”

“Nay,
Inglés.
He came back. He has fought much below there. Thou hast not listened? He is fighting now. Against something bad. Do you not hear?”

“I'll cover him. But obscenity all of you. Thou and Pablo both.”

“
Inglés,
” Pilar said. “Calm thyself. I have been with thee in this as no one could be. Pablo did thee a wrong but he returned.”

“If I had had the exploder the old man would not have been killed. I could have blown it from here.”

“If, if, if—” Pilar said.

The anger and the emptiness and the hate that had come with the let-down after the bridge, when he had looked up from where he had lain and crouching, seen Anselmo dead, were still all through him. In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unrelated and he hated every one he saw.

“If there had been no snow—” Pilar said. And then, not suddenly, as a physical release could have been (if the woman would have put her arm around him, say) but slowly and from his head he began to accept it and let the hate go out. Sure, the snow. That had done it. The snow. Done it to others. Once you saw it again as it was to others, once you got rid of your own self, the always ridding of self that you had to do in war. Where there could be no self. Where yourself is only to be lost. Then, from his losing of it, he heard Pilar say, “Sordo——”

“What?” he said.

“Sordo——”

“Yes,” Robert Jordan said. He grinned at her, a cracked, stiff, too-tightened-facial-tendoned grin. “Forget it. I was wrong. I am sorry, woman. Let us do this well and all together. And the bridge
is
blown, as thou sayest.”

“Yes. Thou must think of things in their place.”

“Then I go now to Agustín. Put thy gypsy much farther down so that he can see well up the road. Give those guns to Primitivo and take this
máquina.
Let me show thee.”

“Keep the
máquina,
” Pilar said. “We will not be here any time. Pablo should come now and we will be going.”

“Rafael,” Robert Jordan said, “come down here with me. Here. Good. See those coming out of the culvert. There, above the truck? Coming toward the truck? Hit me one of those. Sit. Take it easy.”

The gypsy aimed carefully and fired and as he jerked the bolt
back and ejected the shell Robert Jordan said, “Over. You threw against the rock above. See the rock dust? Lower, by two feet. Now, careful. They're running. Good.
Sigue tirando.
”

“I got one,” the gypsy said. The man was down in the road halfway between the culvert and the truck. The other two did not stop to drag him. They ran for the culvert and ducked in.

“Don't shoot at him,” Robert Jordan said. “Shoot for the top part of a front tire on the truck. So if you miss you'll hit the engine. Good.” He watched with the glasses. “A little lower. Good. You shoot like hell.
Mucho! Mucho!
Shoot me the top of the radiator. Anywhere on the radiator. Thou art a champion. Look. Don't let anything come past that point there. See?”

“Watch me break the windshield in the truck,” the gypsy said happily.

“Nay. The truck is already sick,” Robert Jordan said. “Hold thy fire until anything comes down the road. Start firing when it is opposite the culvert. Try to hit the driver. That you all should fire, then,” he spoke to Pilar who had come farther down the slope with Primitivo. “You are wonderfully placed here. See how that steepness guards thy flank?”

“That you should get about thy business with Agustín,” Pilar said. “Desist from thy lecture. I have seen terrain in my time.”

“Put Primitivo farther up there,” Robert Jordan said. “There. See, man? This side of where the bank steepens.”

“Leave me,” said Pilar. “Get along,
Inglés.
Thou and thy perfection. Here there is no problem.”

Just then they heard the planes.