For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Let the old man go. You understand this gun and the day is not over."

"I will go when the snow melts," Anselmo said. "And the snow is melting fast."

"What think you of their chance of catching Pablo?" Robert Jordan asked Agustin.

"Pablo is smart," Agustin said. "Do men catch a wise stag without hounds?"

"Sometimes," Robert Jordan said.

"Not Pablo," Agustin said. "Clearly, he is only a garbage of what he once was. But it is not for nothing that he is alive and comfortable in these hills and able to drink himself to death while there are so many others that have died against a wall."

"Is he as smart as they say?"

"He is much smarter."

"He has not seemed of great ability here."

"Como que no? If he were not of great ability he would have died last night. It seems to me you do not understand politics, Ingles, nor guerilla warfare. In politics and this other the first thing is to continue to exist. Look how he continued to exist last night. And the quantity of dung he ate both from me and from thee."

Now that Pablo was back in the movements of the unit, Robert Jordan did not wish to talk against him and as soon as he had uttered it he regretted saying the thing about his ability. He knew himself how smart Pablo was. It was Pablo who had seen instantly all that was wrong with the orders for the destruction of the bridge. He had made the remark only from dislike and he knew as he made it that it was wrong. It was part of the talking too much after a strain. So now he dropped the matter and said to Anselmo, "And to go into La Granja in daylight?"

"It is not bad," the old man said. "I will not go with a military band."

"Nor with a bell around his neck," Agustin said. "Nor carrying a banner."

"How will you go?"

"Above and down through the forest."

"But if they pick you up."

"I have papers."

"So have we all but thou must eat the wrong ones quickly."

Anselmo shook his head and tapped the breast pocket of his smock.

"How many times have I contemplated that," he said. "And never did I like to swallow paper."

"I have thought we should carry a little mustard on them all," Robert Jordan said. "In my left breast pocket I carry our papers. In my right the fascist papers. Thus one does not make a mistake in an emergency."

It must have been bad enough when the leader of the first patrol of cavalry had pointed toward the entry because they were all talking very much. Too much, Robert Jordan thought.

"But look, Roberto," Agustin said. "They say the government moves further to the right each day. That in the Republic they no longer say Comrade but Senor and Senora. Canst shift thy pockets?"

"When it moves far enough to the right I will carry them in my hip pocket," Robert Jordan said, "and sew it in the center."

"That they should stay in thy shirt," Agustin said. "Are we to win this war and lose the revolution?"

"Nay," Robert Jordan said. "But if we do not win this war there will be no revolution nor any Republic nor any thou nor any me nor anything but the most grand carajo."

"So say I," Anselmo said. "That we should win the war."

"And afterwards shoot the anarchists and the Communists and all this canalla except the good Republicans," Agustin said.

"That we should win this war and shoot nobody," Anselmo said. "That we should govern justly and that all should participate in the benefits according as they have striven for them. And that those who have fought against us should be educated to see their error."

"We will have to shoot many," Agustin said. "Many, many, many."

He thumped his closed right fist against the palm of his left hand.

"That we should shoot none. Not even the leaders. That they should be reformed by work."

"I know the work I'd put them at," Agustin said, and he picked up some snow and put it in his mouth.

"What, bad one?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Two trades of the utmost brilliance."

"They are?"

Agustin put some more snow in his mouth and looked across the clearing where the cavalry had ridden. Then he spat the melted snow out. "Vaya. What a breakfast," he said. "Where is the filthy gypsy?"

"What trades?" Robert Jordan asked him. "Speak, bad mouth."

"Jumping from planes without parachutes," Agustin said, and his eyes shone. "That for those that we care for. And being nailed to the tops of fence posts to be pushed over backwards for the others."

"That way of speaking is ignoble," Anselmo said. "Thus we will never have a Republic."

"I would like to swim ten leagues in a strong soup made from the cojones of all of them," Agustin said. "And when I saw those four there and thought that we might kill them I was like a mare in the corral waiting for the stallion."

"You know why we did not kill them, though?" Robert Jordan said quietly.

"Yes," Agustin said. "Yes. But the necessity was on me as it is on a mare in heat. You cannot know what it is if you have not felt it."

"You sweated enough," Robert Jordan said. "I thought it was fear."