For Whom the Bell Tolls (7 page)

“When was this?”

“Six years ago. And every time I saw that paw, like the hand of a man, but with those long claws, dried and nailed through the palm to the door of the church, I received a pleasure.”

“Of pride?”

“Of pride of remembrance of the encounter with the bear on that hillside in the early spring. But of the killing of a man, who is a man as we are, there is nothing good that remains.”

“You can't nail his paw to the church,” Robert Jordan said.

“No. Such a barbarity is unthinkable. Yet the hand of a man is like the paw of a bear.”

“So is the chest of a man like the chest of a bear,” Robert Jordan said. “With the hide removed from the bear, there are many similarities in the muscles.”

“Yes,” Anselmo said. “The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother of man.”

“So do the Indians in America,” Robert Jordan said. “And when they kill a bear they apologize to him and ask his pardon. They put his skull in a tree and they ask him to forgive them before they leave it.”

“The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance.”

“So also believe the Indians.”

“Are the Indians then gypsies?”

“No. But they believe alike about the bear.”

“Clearly. The gypsies also believe he is a brother because he steals for pleasure.”

“Have you gypsy blood?”

“No. But I have seen much of them and clearly, since the movement, more. There are many in the hills. To them it is not a sin to kill outside the tribe. They deny this but it is true.”

“Like the Moors.”

“Yes. But the gypsies have many laws they do not admit to having. In the war many gypsies have become bad again as they were in olden times.”

“They do not understand why the war is made. They do not know for what we fight.”

“No,” Anselmo said. “They only know now there is a war and people may kill again as in the olden times without a surety of punishment.”

“You have killed?” Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the dark and of their day together.

“Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe the wizardry of the gypsies about the brotherhood with animals. No. I am against all killing of men.”

“Yet you have killed.”

“Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven.”

“By whom?”

“Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know.”

“You have not God any more?”

“No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let
them
have God.”

“They claim Him.”

“Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.”

“Then it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing.”

“I believe so,” Anselmo said. “Since you put it clearly in that way I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo.”

“To win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been true.”

“Clearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas,” Anselmo said.

They were walking now close together in the dark and he spoke
softly, sometimes turning his head as he climbed. “I would not kill even a Bishop. I would not kill a proprietor of any kind. I would make them work each day as we have worked in the fields and as we work in the mountains with the timber, all of the rest of their lives. So they would see what man is born to. That they should sleep where we sleep. That they should eat as we eat. But above all that they should work. Thus they would learn.”

“And they would survive to enslave thee again.”

“To kill them teaches nothing,” Anselmo said. “You cannot exterminate them because from their seed comes more with greater hatred. Prison is nothing. Prison only makes hatred. That all our enemies should learn.”

“But still thou hast killed.”

“Yes,” Anselmo said. “Many times and will again. But not with pleasure and regarding it as a sin.”

“And the sentry. You joked of killing the sentry.”

“That was in joke. I would kill the sentry. Yes. Certainly and with a clear heart considering our task. But not with pleasure.”

“We will leave them to those who enjoy it,” Robert Jordan said. “There are eight and five. That is thirteen for those who enjoy it.”

“There are many of those who enjoy it,” Anselmo said in the dark. “We have many of those. More of those than of men who would serve for a battle.”

“Hast thou ever been in a battle?”

“Nay,” the old man said. “We fought in Segovia at the start of the movement but we were beaten and we ran. I ran with the others. We did not truly understand what we were doing, nor how it should be done. Also I had only a shotgun with cartridges of large buckshot and the
guardia civil
had Mausers. I could not hit them with buckshot at a hundred yards, and at three hundred yards they shot us as they wished as though we were rabbits. They shot much and well and we were like sheep before them.” He was silent. Then asked, “Thinkest thou there will be a battle at the bridge?”

“There is a chance.”

“I have never seen a battle without running,” Anselmo said. “I do not know how I would comport myself. I am an old man and I have wondered.”

“I will respond for thee,” Robert Jordan told him.

“And hast thou been in many battles?”

“Several.”

“And what thinkest thou of this of the bridge?”

“First I think of the bridge. That is my business. It is not difficult to destroy the bridge. Then we will make the dispositions for the rest. For the preliminaries. It will all be written.”

“Very few of these people read,” Anselmo said.

“It will be written for every one's knowledge so that all know, but also it will be clearly explained.”

“I will do that to which I am assigned,” Anselmo said. “But remembering the shooting in Segovia, if there is to be a battle or even much exchanging of shots, I would wish to have it very clear what I must do under all circumstances to avoid running. I remember that I had a great tendency to run at Segovia.”

“We will be together,” Robert Jordan told him. “I will tell you what there is to do at all times.”

“Then there is no problem,” Anselmo said. “I can do anything that I am ordered.”

“For us will be the bridge and the battle, should there be one,” Robert Jordan said and saying it in the dark, he felt a little theatrical but it sounded well in Spanish.

“It should be of the highest interest,” Anselmo said and hearing him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the English pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jordan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal way, he resented Golz's orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out.

And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the future
of the human race can turn. As it can turn on everything that happens in this war. You have only one thing to do and you must do it. Only one thing, hell, he thought. If it were one thing it was easy. Stop worrying, you windy bastard, he said to himself. Think about something else.

So he thought about the girl Maria, with her skin, the hair and the eyes all the same golden tawny brown, the hair a little darker than the rest but it would be lighter as her skin tanned deeper, the smooth skin, pale gold on the surface with a darkness underneath. Smooth it would be, all of her body smooth, and she moved awkwardly as though there were something of her and about her that embarrassed her as though it were visible, though it was not, but only in her mind. And she blushed when he looked at her, and she sitting, her hands clasped around her knees and the shirt open at the throat, the cup of her breasts uptilted against the shirt, and as he thought of her, his throat was choky and there was a difficulty in walking and he and Anselmo spoke no more until the old man said, “Now we go down through these rocks and to the camp.”

As they came through the rocks in the dark, a man spoke to them, “Halt. Who goes?” They heard a rifle bolt snick as it was drawn back and then the knock against the wood as it was pushed forward and down on the stock.

“Comrades,” Anselmo said.

“What comrades?”

“Comrades of Pablo,” the old man told him. “Dost thou not know us?”

“Yes,” the voice said. “But it is an order. Have you the password?”

“No. We come from below.”

“I know,” the man said in the dark. “You come from the bridge. I know all of that. The order is not mine. You must know the second half of a password.”

“What is the first half then?” Robert Jordan said.

“I have forgotten it,” the man said in the dark and laughed. “Go then unprintably to the campfire with thy obscene dynamite.”

“That is called guerilla discipline,” Anselmo said. “Uncock thy piece.”

“It is uncocked,” the man said in the dark. “I let it down with my thumb and forefinger.”

“Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl on the bolt and it will fire.”

“This is a Mauser,” the man said. “But I have a grip of thumb and forefinger beyond description. Always I let it down that way.”

“Where is the rifle pointed?” asked Anselmo into the dark.

“At thee,” the man said, “all the time that I descended the bolt. And when thou comest to the camp, order that some one should relieve me because I have indescribable and unprintable hunger and I have forgotten the password.”

“How art thou called?” Robert Jordan asked.

“Agustín,” the man said. “I am called Agustín and I am dying with boredom in this spot.”

“We will take the message,” Robert Jordan said and he thought how the word
aburmiento
which means boredom in Spanish was a word no peasant would use in any other language. Yet it is one of the most common words in the mouth of a Spaniard of any class.

“Listen to me,” Agustín said, and coming close he put his hand on Robert Jordan's shoulder. Then striking a flint and steel together he held it up and blowing on the end of the cork, looked at the young man's face in its glow.

“You look like the other one,” he said. “But something different. Listen,” he put the lighter down and stood holding his rifle. “Tell me this. Is it true about the bridge?”

“What about the bridge?”

“That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?”

“I know not.”

“
You
know not,” Agustín said. “What a barbarity! Whose then is the dynamite?”

“Mine.”

“And knowest thou not what it is for? Don't tell me tales.”

“I know what it is for and so will you in time,” Robert Jordan said. “But now we go to the camp.”

“Go to the unprintable,” Agustín said. “And unprint thyself. But do you want me to tell you something of service to you?”

“Yes,” said Robert Jordan. “If it is not unprintable,” naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man, Agustín, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustín laughed in the dark when he heard the word. “It is a way of speaking I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks according to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me. As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These mountains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would say one thing. Guard well thy explosive.”

“Thank you,” Robert Jordan said. “From thee?”

“No,” Agustín said. “From people less unprintably equipped than I.”

“So?” asked Robert Jordan.

“You understand Spanish,” Agustín said seriously now. “Care well for thy unprintable explosive.”

“Thank you.”

“No. Don't thank me. Look after thy stuff.”

“Has anything happened to it?”

“No, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion.”

“Thank you all the same. We go now to camp.”

“Good,” said Agustín, “and that they send some one here who knows the password.”

“Will we see you at the camp?”

“Yes, man. And shortly.”

“Come on,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and there was a gray mist. The grass was lush underfoot after the pine-needle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert Jordan could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave must be.

“Agustín is a very good man,” Anselmo said. “He speaks very filthily and always in jokes but he is a very serious man.”