For Whom The Bell Tolls

The girl looked at the woman, who said nothing, and gave no sign of having heard, then she went to a kettle containing water and dipped a cup full. She brought it to the table and put it down before him. Robert Jordan smiled at her. At the same time he sucked in on his stomach muscles and swung a little to the left on his stool so that his pistol slipped around on his belt closer to where he wanted it. He reached his hand down toward his hip pocket and Pablo watched him. He knew they all were watching him, too, but he watched only Pablo. His hand came up from the hip pocket with the leather-covered flask and he unscrewed the top and then, lifting the cup, drank half the water and poured very Slowly from the flask into the cup.

"It is too strong for thee or I would give thee some," he said to the girl and smiled at her again. "There is little left or I would offer some to thee," he said to Pablo.

"I do not like anis," Pablo said.

The acrid smell had carried across the table and he had picked out the one familiar component.

"Good," said Robert Jordan. "Because there is very little left."

"What drink is that?" the gypsy asked.

"A medicine," Robert Jordan said. "Do you want to taste it?"

"What is it for?"

"For everything," Robert Jordan said. "It cures everything. If you have anything wrong this will cure it."

"Let me taste it," the gypsy said.

Robert Jordan pushed the cup toward him. It was a milky yellow now with the water and he hoped the gypsy would not take more than a swallow. There was very little of it left and one cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafes, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of book shops, of kiosques, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of the Guaranty Trust Company and the Ile de la Cite, of Foyot's old hotel, and of being able to read and relax in the evening; of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.

The gypsy made a face and handed the cup back. "It smells of anis but it is bitter as gall," he said. "It is better to be sick than have that medicine."

"That's the wormwood," Robert Jordan told him. "In this, the real absinthe, there is wormwood. It's supposed to rot your brain out but I don't believe it. It only changes the ideas. You should pour water into it very slowly, a few drops at a time. But I poured it into the water."

"What are you saying?" Pablo said angrily, feeling the mockery.

"Explaining the medicine," Robert Jordan told him and grinned. "I bought it in Madrid. It was the last bottle and it's lasted me three weeks." He took a big swallow of it and felt it coasting over his tongue in delicate anxsthesia. He looked at Pablo and grinned again.

"How's business?" he asked.

Pablo did not answer and Robert Jordan looked carefully at the other three men at the table. One had a large flat face, flat and brown as a Serrano ham with a nose flattened and broken, and the long thin Russian cigarette, projecting at an angle, made the face look even flatter. This man had short gray hair and a gray stubble of beard and wore the usual black smock buttoned at the neck. He looked down at the table when Robert Jordan looked at him but his eyes were steady and they did not blink. The other two were evidently brothers. They looked much alike and were both short, heavily built, dark haired, their hair growing low on their foreheads, dark-eyed and brown. One had a scar across his forehead above his left eye and as he looked at them, they looked back at him steadily. One looked to be about twenty-six or -eight, the other perhaps two years older.

"What are you looking at?" one brother, the one with the scar, asked.

"Thee," Robert Jordan said.

"Do you see anything rare?"

"No," said Robert Jordan. "Have a cigarette?"

"Why not?" the brother said. He had not taken any before. "These are like the other had. He of the train."

"Were you at the train?"

"We were all at the train," the brother said quietly. "All except the old man."

"That is what we should do now," Pablo said. "Another train."

"We can do that," Robert Jordan said. "After the bridge."

He could see that the wife of Pablo had turned now from the fire and was listening. When he said the word "bridge" every one was quiet.

"After the bridge," he said again deliberately and took a sip of the absinthe. I might as well bring it on, he thought. It's coming anyWay.

"I do not go for the bridge," Pablo said, looking down at the table. "Neither me nor my people."

Robert Jordan said nothing. He looked at Anselmo and raised the cup. "Then we shall do it alone, old one," he said and smiled.

"Without this coward," Anselmo said.

"What did you say?" Pablo spoke to the old man.

"Nothing for thee. I did not speak to thee," Anselmo told him.