For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Listen to it," he said. "It is a massacre."

"If they have surrounded the hollow it is that," Robert Jordan said. "Some may have gotten out."

"Coming on them now we could take them from behind," Primitivo said. "Let four of us go with the horses."

"And then what? What happens after you take them from behind?"

"We join with Sordo."

"To die there? Look at the sun. The day is long."

The sky was high and cloudless and the sun was hot on their backs. There were big bare patches now on the southern slope of the open glade below them and the snow was all dropped from the pine trees. The boulders below them that had been wet as the snow melted were steaming faintly now in the hot sun.

"You have to stand it," Robert Jordan said. "Hay que aguantarse. There are things like this in a war."

"But there is nothing we can do? Truly?" Primitivo looked at him and Robert Jordan knew he trusted him. "Thou couldst not send me and another with the small machine gun?"

"It would be useless," Robert Jordan said.

He thought he saw something that he was looking for but it was a hawk that slid down into the wind and then rose above the line of the farthest pine woods. "It would be useless if we all went," he said.

Just then the firing doubled in intensity and in it was the heavy bumping of the hand grenades.

"Oh, obscenity them," Primitivo said with an absolute devoutness of blasphemy, tears in his eyes and his cheeks twitching. "Oh, God and the Virgin, obscenity them in the milk of their filth."

"Calm thyself," Robert Jordan said. "You will be fighting them soon enough. Here comes the woman."

Pilar was climbing up to them, making heavy going of it in the boulders.

Primitivo kept saying. "Obscenity them. Oh, God and the Virgin, befoul them," each time for firing rolled down the wind, and Robert Jordan climbed down to help Pilar up.

"Que tal, woman," he said, taking hold of both her wrists and hoisting as she climbed heavily over the last boulder.

"Thy binoculars," she said and lifted their strap over her head. "So it has come to Sordo?"

"Yes."

"Pobre," she said in commiseration. "Poor Sordo."

She was breathing heavily from the climb and she took hold of Robert Jordan's hand and gripped it tight in hers as she looked out over the country.

"How does the combat seem?"

"Bad. Very bad."

"He's jodido?"

"I believe so."

"Pobre," she said. "Doubtless because of the horses?"

"Probably."

"Pobre," Pilar said. Then, "Rafael recounted me all of an entire novel of dung about cavalry. What came?"

"A patrol and part of a squadron."

"Up to what point?"

Robert Jordan pointed out where the patrol had stopped and showed her where the gun was hidden. From where they stood they could just see one of Agustin's boots protruding from the rear of the blind.

"The gypsy said they rode to where the gun muzzle pressed against the chest of the horse of the leader," Pilar said. "What a race! Thy glasses were in the cave."

"Have you packed?"

"All that can be taken. Is there news of Pablo?"

"He was forty minutes ahead of the cavalry. They took his trail."

Pilar grinned at him. She still held his hand. Now she dropped it. "They'll never see him," she said. "Now for Sordo. Can we do anything?"

"Nothing."

"Pobre," she said. "I was fond of Sordo. Thou art sure, sure that he is jodido?"

"Yes. I have seen much cavalry."

"More than were here?"

"Another full troop on their way up there."

"Listen to it," Pilar said. "Pobre, pobre Sordo."

They listened to the firing.

"Primitivo wanted to go up there," Robert Jordan said.

"Art thou crazy?" Pilar said to the flat-faced man. "What kind of locos are we producing here?"

"I wish to aid them."

"Que va," Pilar said. "Another romantic. Dost thou not believe thou wilt die quick enough here without useless voyages?"

Robert Jordan looked at her, at the heavy brown face with the high Indian cheekbones, the wide-set dark eyes and the laughing mouth with the heavy, bitter upper lip.

"Thou must act like a man," she said to Primitivo. "A grown man. You with your gray hairs and all."

"Don't joke at me," Primitivo said sullenly. "If a man has a little heart and a little imagination--"

"He should learn to control them," Pilar said. "Thou wilt die soon enough with us. There is no need to seek that with strangers. As for thy imagination. The gypsy has enough for all. What a novel he told me."

"If thou hadst seen it thou wouldst not call it a novel," Primitivo said. "There was a moment of great gravity."

"Que va," Pilar said. "Some cavalry rode here and they rode away. And you all make yourselves a heroism. It is to this we have come with so much inaction."

"And this of Sordo is not grave?" Primitivo said contemptuously now. He suffered visibly each time the firing came down the wind and he wanted either to go to the combat or have Pilar go and leave him alone.

"Total, que?" Pilar said. "It has come so it has come. Don't lose thy cojones for the misfortune of another."