For Whom the Bell Tolls (27 page)

“I do not believe in ogres, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or chicken-crut gypsy witchcraft.”

“Oh,” said Pilar.

“No. And you can leave the girl alone.”

“I will leave the girl alone.”

“And leave the mysteries,” Robert Jordan said. “We have enough work and enough things that will be done without complicating it with chicken-crut. Fewer mysteries and more work.”

“I see,” said Pilar and nodded her head in agreement. “And listen,
Inglés,
” she said and smiled at him. “Did the earth move?”

“Yes, God damn you. It moved.”

Pilar laughed and laughed and stood looking at Robert Jordan laughing.

“Oh,
Inglés
.
Inglés,
” she said laughing. “You are very comical. You must do much work now to regain thy dignity.”

The Hell with you, Robert Jordan thought. But he kept his mouth shut. While they had spoken the sun had clouded over and as he looked back up toward the mountains the sky was now heavy and gray.

“Sure,” Pilar said to him, looking at the sky. “It will snow.”

“Now? Almost in June?”

“Why not? These mountains do not know the names of the months. We are in the moon of May.”

“It can't be snow,” he said. “It
can't
snow.”

“Just the same,
Inglés,
” she said to him, “it will snow.”

Robert Jordan looked up at the thick gray of the sky with the sun gone faintly yellow, and now as he watched gone completely and the gray becoming uniform so that it was soft and heavy; the gray now cutting off the tops of the mountains.

“Yes,” he said. “I guess you are right.”

By the time they reached the camp it was snowing and the flakes were dropping diagonally through the pines. They slanted through the trees, sparse at first and circling as they fell, and then, as the cold wind came driving down the mountain, they came whirling and thick and Robert Jordan stood in front of the cave in a rage and watched them.

“We will have much snow,” Pablo said. His voice was thick and his eyes were red and bleary.

“Has the gypsy come in?” Robert Jordan asked him.

“No,” Pablo said. “Neither him nor the old man.”

“Will you come with me to the upper post on the road?”

“No,” Pablo said. “I will take no part in this.”

“I will find it myself.”

“In this storm you might miss it,” Pablo said. “I would not go now.”

“It's just downhill to the road and then follow it up.”

“You could find it. But thy two sentries will be coming up now with the snow and you would miss them on the way.”

“The old man is waiting for me.”

“Nay. He will come in now with the snow.”

Pablo looked at the snow that was blowing fast now past the mouth of the cave and said, “You do not like the snow,
Inglés
?”

Robert Jordan swore and Pablo looked at him through his bleary eyes and laughed.

“With this thy offensive goes,
Inglés
,” he said. “Come into the cave and thy people will be in directly.”

Inside the cave Maria was busy at the fire and Pilar at the kitchen table. The fire was smoking but, as the girl worked with it, poking in a stick of wood and then fanning it with a folded paper, there was a puff and then a flare and the wood was burning, drawing brightly as the wind sucked a draft out of the hole in the roof.

“And this snow,” Robert Jordan said. “You think there will be much?”

“Much,” Pablo said contentedly. Then called to Pilar, “You don't like it, woman, either? Now that you command you do not like this snow?”

“
A mi qué?
” Pilar said, over her shoulder. “If it snows it snows.”

“Drink some wine,
Inglés,
” Pablo said. “I have been drinking all day waiting for the snow.”

“Give me a cup,” Robert Jordan said.

“To the snow,” Pablo said and touched cups with him. Robert Jordan looked him in the eyes and clinked his cup. You bleary-eyed murderous sod, he thought. I'd like to clink this cup against your teeth.
Take it easy,
he told himself,
take it easy
.

“It is very beautiful the snow,” Pablo said. “You won't want to sleep outside with the snow falling.”

So
that's
on your mind too is it? Robert Jordan thought. You've a lot of troubles, haven't you, Pablo?

“No?” he said, politely.

“No. Very cold,” Pablo said. “Very wet.”

You don't know why those old eiderdowns cost sixty-five dollars, Robert Jordan thought. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I've slept in that thing in the snow.

“Then I should sleep in here?” he asked politely.

“Yes.”

“Thanks,” Robert Jordan said. “I'll be sleeping outside.”

“In the snow?”

“Yes” (damn your bloody, red pig-eyes and your swine-bristly swines-end of a face). “In the snow.” (In the utterly damned,
ruinous, unexpected, slutting, defeat-conniving, bastard-cessery of the snow.)

He went over to where Maria had just put another piece of pine on the fire.

“Very beautiful, the snow,” he said to the girl.

“But it is bad for the work, isn't it?” she asked him. “Aren't you worried?”

“
Qué va,
” he said. “Worrying is no good. When will supper be ready?”

“I thought you would have an appetite,” Pilar said. “Do you want a cut of cheese now?”

“Thanks,” he said and she cut him a slice, reaching up to unhook the big cheese that hung in a net from the ceiling, drawing a knife across the open end and handing him the heavy slice. He stood, eating it. It was just a little too goaty to be enjoyable.

“Maria,” Pablo said from the table where he was sitting.

“What?” the girl asked.

“Wipe the table clean, Maria,” Pablo said and grinned at Robert Jordan.

“Wipe thine own spillings,” Pilar said to him. “Wipe first thy chin and thy shirt and then the table.”

“Maria,” Pablo called.

“Pay no heed to him. He is drunk,” Pilar said.

“Maria,” Pablo called. “It is still snowing and the snow is beautiful.”

He doesn't know about that robe, Robert Jordan thought. Good old pig-eyes doesn't know why I paid the Woods boys sixty-five dollars for that robe. I wish the gypsy would come in though. As soon as the gypsy comes I'll go after the old man. I should go now but it is very possible that I would miss them. I don't know where he is posted.

“Want to make snowballs?” he said to Pablo. “Want to have a snowball fight?”

“What?” Pablo asked. “What do you propose?”

“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said. “Got your saddles covered up good?”

“Yes.”

Then in English Robert Jordan said, “Going to grain those horses or peg them out and let them dig for it?”

“What?”

“Nothing. It's your problem, old pal. I'm going out of here on my feet.”

“Why do you speak in English?” Pablo asked.

“I don't know,” Robert Jordan said. “When I get very tired sometimes I speak English. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. When I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It's a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime.”

“What do you say,
Inglés
?” Pilar said. “It sounds very interesting but I do not understand.”

“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said. “I said, ‘nothing' in English.”

“Well then, talk Spanish,” Pilar said. “It's shorter and simpler in Spanish.”

“Surely,” Robert Jordan said. But oh boy, he thought, oh Pablo, oh Pilar, oh Maria, oh you two brothers in the corner whose names I've forgotten and must remember, but I get tired of it sometimes. Of it and of you and of me and of the war and why in all why did it have to snow now? That's too bloody much. No, it's not. Nothing is too bloody much. You just have to take it and fight out of it and now stop prima-donnaing and accept the fact that it is snowing as you did a moment ago and the next thing is to check with your gypsy and pick up your old man. But to snow! Now in this month. Cut it out, he said to himself. Cut it out and take it. It's that cup, you know. How did it go about that cup? He'd either have to improve his memory or else never think of quotations because when you missed one it hung in your mind like a name you had forgotten and you could not get rid of it. How did it go about that cup?

“Let me have a cup of wine, please,” he said in Spanish. Then, “Lots of snow? Eh?” he said to Pablo. “
Mucha nieve
.”

The drunken man looked up at him and grinned. He nodded his head and grinned again.

“No offensive. No
aviones
. No bridge. Just snow,” Pablo said.

“You expect it to last a long time?” Robert Jordan sat down by him. “You think we're going to be snowed in all summer, Pablo, old boy?”

“All summer, no,” Pablo said. “Tonight and tomorrow, yes.”

“What makes you think so?”

“There are two kinds of storms,” Pablo said, heavily and judiciously. “One comes from the Pyrenees. With this one there is great cold. It is too late for this one.”

“Good,” Robert Jordan said. “That's something.”

“This storm comes from the Cantabrico,” Pablo said. “It comes from the sea. With the wind in this direction there will be a great storm and much snow.”

“Where did you learn all this, old timer?” Robert Jordan asked.

Now that his rage was gone he was excited by this storm as he was always by all storms. In a blizzard, a gale, a sudden line squall, a tropical storm, or a summer thunder shower in the mountains there was an excitement that came to him from no other thing. It was like the excitement of battle except that it was clean. There is a wind that blows through battle but that was a hot wind; hot and dry as your mouth; and it blew heavily; hot and dirtily; and it rose and died away with the fortunes of the day. He knew that wind well.

But a snowstorm was the opposite of all of that. In the snowstorm you came close to wild animals and they were not afraid. They travelled across country not knowing where they were and the deer stood sometimes in the lee of the cabin. In a snowstorm you rode up to a moose and he mistook your horse for another moose and trotted forward to meet you. In a snowstorm it always seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies. In a snowstorm the wind could blow a gale; but it blew a white cleanness and the air was full of a driving whiteness and all things were changed and when the wind stopped there would be the stillness. This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it.

“I was an
arroyero
for many years,” Pablo said. “We trucked freight across the mountains with the big carts before the camions came into use. In that business we learned the weather.”

“And how did you get into the movement?”

“I was always of the left,” Pablo said. “We had many contacts with the people of Asturias where they are much developed politically. I have always been for the Republic.”

“But what were you doing before the movement?”

“I worked then for a horse contractor of Zaragoza. He furnished horses for the bull rings as well as remounts for the army. It was then that I met Pilar who was, as she told you, with the matador Finito de Palencia.”

He said this with considerable pride.

“He wasn't much of a matador,” one of the brothers at the table said looking at Pilar's back where she stood in front of the stove.

“No?” Pilar said, turning around and looking at the man. “He wasn't much of a matador?”

Standing there now in the cave by the cooking fire she could see him, short and brown and sober-faced, with the sad eyes, the cheeks sunken and the black hair curled wet on his forehead where the tight-fitting matador's hat had made a red line that no one else noticed. She saw him stand, now, facing the five-year-old bull, facing the horns that had lifted the horses high, the great neck thrusting the horse up, up, as that rider poked into that neck with the spiked pole, thrusting up and up until the horse went over with a crash and the rider fell against the wooden fence and, with the bull's legs thrusting him forward, the big neck swung the horns that searched the horse for the life that was in him. She saw him, Finito, the not-so-good matador, now standing in front of the bull and turning sideways toward him. She saw him now clearly as he furled the heavy flannel cloth around the stick; the flannel hanging blood-heavy from the passes where it had swept over the bull's head and shoulders and the wet streaming shine of his withers and on down and over his back as the bull raised into the air and the banderillas clattered. She saw Finito stand five paces from the bull's head, profiled, the bull standing still and heavy, and draw the sword slowly up until it was level with his shoulder and then sight along the dipping blade at a point he could not yet see because the bull's head was higher than his eyes. He would bring that head down with the sweep his left arm would make with the wet, heavy cloth; but now he rocked back a little on his heels and sighted along the blade, profiled in front of the splintered horn; the bull's chest heaving and his eyes watching the cloth.

She saw him very clearly now and she heard his thin, clear voice as he turned his head and looked toward the people in the first row
of the ring above the red fence and said, “Let's see if we can kill him like this!”

She could hear the voice and then see the first bend of the knee as he started forward and watch his voyage in onto the horn that lowered now magically as the bull's muzzle followed the low swept cloth, the thin, brown wrist controlled, sweeping the horns down and past, as the sword entered the dusty height of the withers.