For Whom The Bell Tolls

"That is a thing I never like to talk about," Karkov said. "That American who comes here sometimes is over there. You know the one, Jordan, who is with the partizan group. He is there where this business they spoke of is supposed to happen."

"Well, he should have a report through on it tonight then," the General said. "They don't like me down there or I'd go down and find out for you. He works with Golz on this, doesn't he? You'll see Golz tomorrow."

"Early tomorrow."

"Keep out of his way until it's going well," the General said. "He hates you bastards as much as I do. Though he has a much better temper."

"But about this--"

"It was probably the fascists having manoeuvres," the General grinned. "Well, we'll see if Golz can manceuvre them a little. Let Golz try his hand at it. We manoeuvred them at Guadalajara."

"I hear you are travelling too," Karkov said, showing his bad teeth as he smiled. The General was suddenly angry.

"And me too. Now is the mouth on me. And on all of us always. This filthy sewing circle of gossip. One man who could keep his mouth shut could save the country if he believed he could."

"Your friend Prieto can keep his mouth shut."

"But he doesn't believe he can win. How can you win without belief in the people?"

"You decide that," Karkov said. "I am going to get a little sleep."

He left the smoky, gossip-filled room and went into the back bedroom and sat down on the bed and pulled his boots off. He could still hear them talking so he shut the door and opened the window. He did not bother to undress because at two o'clock he would be starting for the drive by Colmenar, Cerceda, and Navacerrada up to the front where Golz would be attacking in the morning.

33

It was two o'clock in the morning when Pilar waked him. As her hand touched him he thought, at first, it was Maria and he rolled toward her and said, "Rabbit." Then the woman's big hand shook his shoulder and he was suddenly, completely and absolutely awake and his hand was around the butt of the pistol that lay alongside of his bare right leg and all of him was as cocked as the pistol with its safety catch slipped off.

In the dark he saw it was Pilar and he looked at the dial of his wrist watch with the two hands shining in the short angle close to the top and seeing it was only two, he said, "What passes with thee, woman?"

"Pablo is gone," the big woman said to him.

Robert Jordan put on his trousers and shoes. Maria had not waked.

"When?" he asked.

"It must be an hour."

"And?"

"He has taken something of thine," the woman said miserably.

"So. What?"

"I do not know," she told him. "Come and see."

In the dark they walked over to the entrance of the cave, ducked under the blanket and went in. Robert Jordan followed her in the dead-ashes, bad-air and sleeping-men smell of the cave, shining his electric torch so that he would not step on any of those who were sleeping on the floor. Anselmo woke and said, "Is it time?"

"No," Robert Jordan whispered. "Sleep, old one."

The two sacks were at the head of Pilar's bed which was screened off with a hanging blanket from the rest of the cave. The bed smelt stale and sweat-dried and sickly-sweet the way an Indian's bed does as Robert Jordan knelt on it and shone the torch on the two sacks. There was a long slit from top to bottom in each one. Holding the torch in his left hand, Robert Jordan felt in the first sack with his right hand. This was the one that he carried his robe in and it should not be very full. It was not very full. There was some wire in it still but the square wooden box of the exploder was gone. So was the cigar box with the carefully wrapped and packed detonators. So was the screw-top tin with the fuse and the caps.

Robert Jordan felt in the other sack. It was still full of explosive. There might be one packet missing.

He stood up and turned to the woman. There is a hollow empty feeling that a man can have when he is waked too early in the morning that is almost like the feeling of disaster and he had this multiplied a thousand times.

"And this is what you call guarding one's materials," he said.

"I slept with my head against them and one arm touching them," Pilar told him.

"You slept well."

"Listen," the woman said. "He got up in the night and I said, 'Where do you go, Pablo?' 'To urinate, woman,' he told me and I slept again. When I woke again I did not know what time had passed but I thought, when he was not there, that he had gone down to look at the horses as was his custom. Then," she finished miserably, "when he did not come I worried and when I worried I felt of the sacks to be sure all was well and there were the slit places and I came to thee."

"Come on," Robert Jordan said.

They were outside now and it was still so near the middle of the night that you could not feel the morning coming.

"Can he get out with the horses other ways than by the sentry?"

"Two ways."

"Who's at the top?"

"Eladio."