For Whom the Bell Tolls (44 page)

“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.

“
Qué 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 Agustín'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.”

“
Qué 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.”

“
Qué 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, qué?
” Pilar said. “It has come so it has come. Don't lose thy
cojones
for the misfortune of another.”

“Go defile thyself,” Primitivo said. “There are women of a stupidity and brutality that is insupportable.”

“In order to support and aid those men poorly equipped for procreation,” Pilar said, “if there is nothing to see I am going.”

Just then Robert Jordan heard the plane high overhead. He looked up and in the high sky it looked to be the same observation
plane that he had seen earlier in the morning. Now it was returning from the direction of the lines and it was moving in the direction of the high country where El Sordo was being attacked.

“There is the bad luck bird,” Pilar said. “Will it see what goes on there?”

“Surely,” Robert Jordan said. “If they are not blind.”

They watched the plane moving high and silvery and steady in the sunlight. It was coming from the left and they could see the round disks of light the two propellers made.

“Keep down,” Robert Jordan said.

Then the plane was overhead, its shadows passing over the open glade, the throbbing reaching its maximum of portent. Then it was past and headed toward the top of the valley. They watched it go steadily on its course until it was just out of sight and then they saw it coming back in a wide dipping circle, to circle twice over the high country and then disappear in the direction of Segovia.

Robert Jordan looked at Pilar. There was perspiration on her forehead and she shook her head. She had been holding her lower lip between her teeth.

“For each one there is something,” she said. “For me it is those.”

“Thou hast not caught my fear?” Primitivo said sarcastically.

“Nay,” she put her hand on his shoulder. “Thou hast no fear to catch. I know that. I am sorry I joked too roughly with thee. We are all in the same caldron.” Then she spoke to Robert Jordan. “I will send up food and wine. Dost need anything more?”

“Not in this moment. Where are the others?”

“Thy reserve is intact below with the horses,” she grinned. “Everything is out of sight. Everything to go is ready. Maria is with thy material.”

“If by any chance we
should
have aviation keep her in the cave.”

“Yes, my Lord
Inglés,
” Pilar said. “
Thy
gypsy (I give him to thee) I have sent to gather mushrooms to cook with the hares. There are many mushrooms now and it seemed to me we might as well eat the hares although they would be better tomorrow or the day after.”

“I think it is best to eat them,” Robert Jordan said, and Pilar put her big hand on his shoulder where the strap of the submachine gun
crossed his chest, then reached up and mussed his hair with her fingers. “What an
Inglés,
” Pilar said. “I will send the Maria with the
puchero
when they are cooked.”

The firing from far away and above had almost died out and now there was only an occasional shot.

“You think it is over?” Pilar asked.

“No,” Robert Jordan said. “From the sound that we have heard they have attacked and been beaten off. Now I would say the attackers have them surrounded. They have taken cover and they wait for the planes.”

Pilar spoke to Primitivo, “Thou. Dost understand there was no intent to insult thee?”

“
Ya lo sé,
” said Primitivo. “I have put up with worse than that from thee. Thou hast a vile tongue. But watch thy mouth, woman. Sordo was a good comrade of mine.”

“And not of mine?” Pilar asked him. “Listen, flat face. In war one cannot say what one feels. We have enough of our own without taking Sordo's.”

Primitivo was still sullen.

“You should take a physic,” Pilar told him. “Now I go to prepare the meal.”

“Did you bring the documentation of the
requeté
?” Robert Jordan asked her.

“How stupid I am,” she said. “I forgot it. I will send the Maria.”

It was three o'clock in the afternoon before the planes came. The snow had all been gone by noon and the rocks were hot now in the sun. There were no clouds in the sky and Robert Jordan sat in the rocks with his shirt off browning his back in the sun and reading the letters that had been in the pockets of the dead cavalryman. From time to time he would stop reading to look across the open slope to the line of the timber, look over the high country above and then return to the letters. No more cavalry had appeared. At intervals there would be the sound of a shot from the direction of El Sordo's camp. But the firing was desultory.

From examining his military papers he knew the boy was from Tafalla in Navarra, twenty-one years old, unmarried, and the son of a blacksmith. His regiment was the Nth cavalry, which surprised Robert Jordan, for he had believed that regiment to be in the North. He was a Carlist, and he had been wounded at the fighting for Irun at the start of the war.

I've probably seen him run through the streets ahead of the bulls at the feria in Pamplona, Robert Jordan thought. You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war, he said to himself. Well, hardly ever, he amended and went on reading the letters.

The first letters he read were very formal, very carefully written and dealt almost entirely with local happenings. They were from his
sister and Robert Jordan learned that everything was all right in Tafalla, that father was well, that mother was the same as always but with certain complaints about her back, that she hoped he was well and not in too great danger and she was happy he was doing away with the Reds to liberate Spain from the domination of the Marxist hordes. Then there was a list of those boys from Tafalla who had been killed or badly wounded since she wrote last. She mentioned ten who were killed. That is a great many for a town the size of Tafalla, Robert Jordan thought.

There was quite a lot of religion in the letter and she prayed to Saint Anthony, to the Blessed Virgin of Pilar, and to other Virgins to protect him and she wanted him never to forget that he was also protected by the Sacred Heart of Jesus that he wore still, she trusted, at all times over his own heart where it had been proven innumerable—this was underlined—times to have the power of stopping bullets. She was as always his loving sister Concha.

This letter was a little stained around the edges and Robert Jordan put it carefully back with the military papers and opened a letter with a less severe handwriting. It was from the boy's
novia,
his fiancée, and it was quietly, formally, and completely hysterical with concern for his safety. Robert Jordan read it through and then put all the letters together with the papers into his hip pocket. He did not want to read the other letters.

I guess I've done my good deed for today, he said to himself. I guess you have all right, he repeated.

“What are those you were reading?” Primitivo asked him.

“The documentation and the letters of that
requeté
we shot this morning. Do you want to see it?”

“I can't read,” Primitivo said. “Was there anything interesting?”

“No,” Robert Jordan told him. “They are personal letters.”

“How are things going where he came from? Can you tell from the letters?”

“They seem to be going all right,” Robert Jordan said. “There are many losses in his town.” He looked down to where the blind for the automatic rifle had been changed a little and improved after the snow melted. It looked convincing enough. He looked off across the country.

“From what town is he?” Primitivo asked.

“Tafalla,” Robert Jordan told him.

All right, he said to himself. I'm sorry, if that does any good.

It doesn't, he said to himself.

All right then, drop it, he said to himself.

All right, it's dropped.

But it would not drop that easily. How many is that you have killed? he asked himself. I don't know. Do you think you have a right to kill any one? No. But I have to. How many of those you have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the enemy to whose force we are opposing force. But you like the people of Navarra better than those of any other part of Spain. Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don't believe it go down there to the camp. Don't you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes.