For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Brothers," Andres said. He was wet through with sweat and he knew the bomb advocate was perfectly capable of tossing a grenade at any moment. "I have no importance."

"I believe it," the bomb man said.

"You are right," Andres said. He was working carefully through the third belt of wire and he was very close to the parapet. "I have no importance of any kind. But the affair is serious. Muy, muy serio."

"There is no more serious thing than liberty," the bomb man shouted. "Thou thinkest there is anything more serious than liberty?" he asked challengingly.

"No, man," Andres said, relieved. He knew now he was up against the crazies; the ones with the black-and-red scarves. "Viva la Libertad!"

"Viva la F. A. I. Viva la C.N.T.," they shouted back at him from the parapet. "Viva el anarco-sindicalismo and liberty."

"Viva nosotros," Andres shouted. "Long life to us."

"He is a coreligionary of ours," the bomb man said. "And I might have killed him with this."

He looked at the grenade in his hand and was deeply moved as Andres climbed over the parapet. Putting his arms around him, the grenade still in one hand, so that it rested against Andres's shoulder blade as he embraced him, the bomb man kissed him on both cheeks.

"I am content that nothing happened to thee, brother," he said. "I am very content."

"Where is thy officer?" Andres asked.

"I command here," a man said. "Let me see thy papers."

He took them into a dugout and looked at them with the light of a candle. There was the little square of folded silk with the colors of the Republic and the seal of the S. I. M. in the center. There was the Salvoconducto or safe-conduct pass giving his name, age, height, birthplace and mission that Robert Jordan had written out on a sheet from his notebook and sealed with the S. I. M. rubber stamp and there were the four folded sheets of the dispatch to Golz which were tied around with a cord and sealed with wax and the impression of the metal S. I. M. seal that was set in the top end of the wooden handle of the rubber stamp.

"This I have seen," the man in command of the post said and handed back the piece of silk. "This you all have, I know. But its possession proves nothing without this." He lifted the Salvoconducto and read it through again. "Where were you born?"

"Villaconejos," Andres said.

"And what do they raise there?"

"Melons," Andres said. "As all the world knows."

"Who do you know there?"

"Why? Are you from there?"

"Nay. But I have been there. I am from Aranjuez."

"Ask me about any one."

"Describe Jose Rincon."

"Who keeps the bodega?"

"Naturally."

"With a shaved head and a big belly and a cast in one eye."

"Then this is valid," the man said and handed him back the paper. "But what do you do on their side?"

"Our father had installed himself at Villacastin before the movement," Andres said. "Down there beyond the mountains on the plain. It was there we were surprised by the movement. Since the movement I have fought with the band of Pablo. But I am in a great hurry, man, to take that dispatch."

"How goes it in the country of the fascists?" the man commanding asked. He was in no hurry.

"Today we had much tomate," Andres said proudly. "Today there was plenty of dust on the road all day. Today they wiped out the band of Sordo."

"And who is Sordo?" the other asked deprecatingly.

"The leader of one of the best bands in the mountains."

"All of you should come in to the Republic and join the army," the officer said. "There is too much of this silly guerilla nonsense going on. All of you should come in and submit to our Libertarian discipline. Then when we wished to send out guerillas we would send them out as they are needed."

Andres was a man endowed with almost supreme patience. He had taken the coming in through the wire calmly. None of this examination had flustered him. He found it perfectly normal that this man should have no understanding of them nor of what they were doing and that he should talk idiocy was to be expected. That it should all go slowly should be expected too; but now he wished to go.

"Listen, Compadre," he said. "It is very possible that you are right. But I have orders to deliver that dispatch to the General commanding the Thirty-Fifth Division, which makes an attack at daylight in these hills and it is already late at night and I must go."

"What attack? What do you know of an attack?"

"Nay. I know nothing. But I must go now to Navacerrada and go on from there. Wilt thou send me to thy commander who will give me transport to go on from there? Send one with me now to respond to him that there be no delay."

"I distrust all of this greatly," he said. "It might have been better to have shot thee as thou approached the wire."

"You have seen my papers, Comrade, and I have explained my mission," Andres told him patiently.