For Whom The Bell Tolls

"That seems much better to me. But understand always that I will do what you wish. But thou must tell me for I have great ignorance and much of what she told me I did not understand clearly. For I was ashamed to ask and she is of such great and varied wisdom."

"Rabbit," he said. "Thou art very wonderful."

"Que va," she said. "But to try to learn all of that which goes into wifehood in a day while we are breaking camp and packing for a battle with another battle passing in the country above is a rare thing and if I make serious mistakes thou must tell me for I love thee. It could be possible for me to remember things incorrectly and much that she told me was very complicated."

"What else did she tell thee?"

"Pues so many things I cannot remember them. She said I could tell thee of what was done to me if I ever began to think of it again because thou art a good man and already have understood it all. But that it were better never to speak of it unless it came on me as a black thing as it had been before and then that telling it to thee might rid me of it."

"Does it weigh on thee now?"

"No. It is as though it had never happened since we were first together. There is the sorrow for my parents always. But that there will be always. But I would have thee know that which you should know for thy own pride if I am to be thy wife. Never did I submit to any one. Always I fought and always it took two of them or more to do me the harm. One would sit on my head and hold me. I tell thee this for thy pride."

"My pride is in thee. Do not tell it."

"Nay, I speak of thy own pride which it is necessary to have in thy wife. And another thing. My father was the mayor of the village and an honorable man. My mother was an honorable woman and a good Catholic and they shot her with my father because of the politics of my father who was a Republican. I saw both of them shot and my father said, 'Viva la Republica,' when they shot him standing against the wall of the slaughterhouse of our village.

"My mother standing against the same wall said, 'Viva my husband who was the Mayor of this village,' and I hoped they would shoot me too and I was going to say 'Viva la Republica y vivan mis padres,' but instead there was no shooting but instead the doing of the things.

"Listen. I will tell thee of one thing since it affects us. After the shooting at the matadero they took us, those relatives who had seen it but were not shot, back from the matadero up the steep hill into the main square of the town. Nearly all were weeping but some were numb with what they had seen and the tears had dried in them. I myself could not cry. I did not notice anything that passed for I could only see my father and my mother at the moment of the shooting and my mother saying, 'Long live my husband who was Mayor of this village,' and this was in my head like a scream that would not die but kept on and on. For my mother was not a Republican and she would not say, 'Viva la Republica,' but only Viva my father who lay there, on his face, by her feet.

"But what she had said, she had said very loud, like a shriek and then they shot and she fell and I tried to leave the line to go to her but we were all tied. The shooting was done by the guardia civil and they were still there waiting to shoot more when the Falangists herded us away and up the hill leaving the guardias civiles leaning on their rifles and leaving all the bodies there against the wall. We were tied by the wrists in a long line of girls and women and they herded us up by the hill and through the streets to the square and in the square they stopped in front of the barbershop which was across the square from the city hail.

"Then the two men looked at us and one said, 'That is the daughter of the Mayor,' and the other said, 'Commence with her.'

"Then they cut the rope that was on each of my wrists, one saying to others of them, 'Tie up the line,' and these two took me by the arms and into the barbershop and lifted me up and put me in the barber's chair and held me there.

"I saw my face in the mirror of the barbershop and the faces of those who were holding me and the faces of three others who were leaning over me and I knew none of their faces but in the glass I saw myself and them, but they saw only me. And it was as though one were in the dentist's chair and there were many dentists and they were all insane. My own face I could hardly recognize because my grief had changed it but I looked at it and knew that it was me. But my grief was so great that I had no fear nor any feeling but my grief.