For Whom the Bell Tolls (48 page)

Robert Jordan looked at Maria and shook his head. She sat down by him and put her arm around his shoulder. Each knew how the other felt and they sat there and Robert Jordan ate the stew, taking time to appreciate the mushrooms completely, and he drank the wine and they said nothing.

“You may stay here,
guapa,
if you want,” he said after a while when the food was all eaten.

“Nay,” she said. “I must go to Pilar.”

“It is all right to stay here. I do not think that anything will happen now.”

“Nay. I must go to Pilar. She is giving me instruction.”

“What does she give thee?”

“Instruction.” She smiled at him and then kissed him. “Did you never hear of religious instruction?” She blushed. “It is something like that.” She blushed again. “But different.”

“Go to thy instruction,” he said and patted her on the head. She smiled at him again, then said to Primitivo, “Do you want anything from below?”

“No, daughter,” he said. They both saw that he was still not yet recovered.

“
Salud,
old one,” she said to him.

“Listen,” Primitivo said. “I have no fear to die but to leave them alone thus—” his voice broke.

“There was no choice,” Robert Jordan told him. “I know. But all the same.”

“There was no choice,” Robert Jordan repeated. “And now it is better not to speak of it.”

“Yes. But there alone with no aid from us——”

“Much better not to speak of it,” Robert Jordan said. “And thou,
guapa,
get thee to thy instruction.”

He watched her climb down through the rocks. Then he sat there for a long time thinking and watching the high country.

Primitivo spoke to him but he did not answer. It was hot in the sun but he did not notice the heat while he sat watching the hill slopes and the long patches of pine trees that stretched up the highest slope. An hour passed and the sun was far to his left now when he saw them coming over the crest of the slope and he picked up his glasses.

The horses showed small and minute as the first two riders came into sight on the long green slope of the high hill. Then there were four more horsemen coming down, spread out across the wide hill and then through his glasses he saw the double column of men and horses ride into the sharp clarity of his vision. As he watched them he felt sweat come from his armpits and run down his flanks. One man rode at the head of the column. Then came more horsemen. Then came the riderless horses with their burdens tied across the saddles. Then there were two riders. Then came the wounded with men walking by them as they rode. Then came more cavalry to close the column.

Robert Jordan watched them ride down the slope and out of sight into the timber. He could not see at that distance the load one saddle bore of a long rolled poncho tied at each end and at intervals so that it bulged between each lashing as a pod bulges with peas. This was tied across the saddle and at each end it was lashed to the stirrup leathers. Alongside this on the top of the saddle the automatic rifle Sordo had served was lashed arrogantly.

Lieutenant Berrendo, who was riding at the head of the column, his flankers out, his point pushed well forward, felt no arrogance. He felt only the hollowness that comes after action. He was thinking: taking the heads is barbarous. But proof and identification is necessary. I will have trouble enough about this as it is and who knows? This of the heads may appeal to them. There are those of them who like such things. It is possible they will send them all to Burgos. It is a barbarous business. The planes were
muchos.
Much. Much. But we could have done it all, and almost without losses, with a Stokes mortar. Two mules to carry the shells and a mule with a mortar on each side of the pack saddle. What an army we would be then! With the fire power of all these automatic weapons. And another mule. No, two mules to carry ammunition. Leave it alone, he told himself. It is no longer cavalry. Leave it alone. You're building yourself an army. Next you will want a mountain gun.

Then he thought of Julián, dead on the hill, dead now, tied across a horse there in the first troop, and as he rode down into the dark pine forest, leaving the sunlight behind him on the hill, riding now in the quiet dark of the forest, he started to say a prayer for him again.

“Hail, holy queen mother of mercy,” he started. “Our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we send up our sighs, mournings and weepings in this valley of tears——”

He went on with the prayer, the horses' hooves soft on the fallen pine needles, the light coming through the tree trunks in patches as it comes through the columns of a cathedral, and as he prayed he looked ahead to see his flankers riding through the trees.

He rode out of the forest onto the yellow road that led into La Granja and the horses' hooves raised a dust that hung over them as they rode. It powdered the dead who were tied face down across the
saddles and the wounded, and those who walked beside them, were in thick dust.

It was here that Anselmo saw them ride past in their dust.

He counted the dead and the wounded and he recognized Sordo's automatic rifle. He did not know what the poncho-wrapped bundle was which flapped against the led horse's flanks as the stirrup leathers swung but when, on his way home, he came in the dark onto the hill where Sordo had fought, he knew at once what the long poncho roll contained. In the dark he could not tell who had been up on the hill. But he counted those that lay there and then made off across the hills for Pablo's camp.

Walking alone in the dark, with a fear like a freezing of his heart from the feeling the holes of the bomb craters had given him, from them and from what he had found on the hill, he put all thought of the next day out of his mind. He simply walked as fast as he could to bring the news. And as he walked he prayed for the souls of Sordo and of all his band. It was the first time he had prayed since the start of the movement.

“Most kind, most sweet, most clement Virgin,” he prayed.

But he could not keep from thinking of the next day finally. So he thought: I will do exactly as the
Inglés
says and as he says to do it. But let me be close to him, O Lord, and may his instructions be exact for I do not think that I could control myself under the bombardment of the planes. Help me, O Lord, tomorrow to comport myself as a man should in his last hours. Help me, O Lord, to understand clearly the needs of the day. Help me, O Lord, to dominate the movement of my legs that I should not run when the bad moment comes. Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a man tomorrow in the day of battle. Since I have asked this aid of thee, please grant it, knowing I would not ask it if it were not serious, and I will ask nothing more of thee again.

Walking in the dark alone he felt much better from having prayed and he was sure, now, that he would comport himself well. Walking now down from the high country, he went back to praying for the people of Sordo and in a short time he had reached the upper post where Fernando challenged him.

“It is I,” he answered, “Anselmo.”

“Good,” Fernando said.

“You know of this of Sordo, old one?” Anselmo asked Fernando, the two of them standing at the entrance of the big rocks in the dark.

“Why not?” Fernando said. “Pablo has told us.”

“He was up there?”

“Why not?” Fernando said stolidly. “He visited the hill as soon as the cavalry left.”

“He told you——”

“He told us all,” Fernando said. “What barbarians these fascists are! We must do away with all such barbarians in Spain.” He stopped, then said bitterly, “In them is lacking all conception of dignity.”

Anselmo grinned in the dark. An hour ago he could not have imagined that he would ever smile again. What a marvel, that Fernando, he thought.

“Yes,” he said to Fernando. “We must teach them. We must take away their planes, their automatic weapons, their tanks, their artillery and teach them dignity.”

“Exactly,” Fernando said. “I am glad that you agree.”

Anselmo left him standing there alone with his dignity and went on down to the cave.

Anselmo found Robert Jordan sitting at the plank table inside the cave with Pablo opposite him. They had a bowl poured full of wine between them and each had a cup of wine on the table. Robert Jordan had his notebook out and he was holding a pencil. Pilar and Maria were in the back of the cave out of sight. There was no way for Anselmo to know that the woman was keeping the girl back there to keep her from hearing the conversation and he thought that it was odd that Pilar was not at the table.

Robert Jordan looked up as Anselmo came in under the blanket that hung over the opening. Pablo stared straight at the table. His eyes were focused on the wine bowl but he was not seeing it.

“I come from above,” Anselmo said to Robert Jordan.

“Pablo has told us,” Robert Jordan said.

“There were six dead on the hill and they had taken the heads,” Anselmo said. “I was there in the dark.”

Robert Jordan nodded. Pablo sat there looking at the wine bowl and saying nothing. There was no expression on his face and his small pig-eyes were looking at the wine bowl as though he had never seen one before.

“Sit down,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

The old man sat down at the table on one of the hide-covered stools and Robert Jordan reached under the table and brought up the pinch-bottle of whiskey that had been the gift of Sordo. It was
about half-full. Robert Jordan reached down the table for a cup and poured a drink of whiskey into it and shoved it along the table to Anselmo.

“Drink that, old one,” he said.

Pablo looked from the wine bowl to Anselmo's face as he drank and then he looked back at the wine bowl.

As Anselmo swallowed the whiskey he felt a burning in his nose, his eyes and his mouth, and then a happy, comforting warmth in his stomach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then he looked at Robert Jordan and said, “Can I have another?”

“Why not?” Robert Jordan said and poured another drink from the bottle and handed it this time instead of pushing it.

This time there was not the burning when he swallowed but the warm comfort doubled. It was as good a thing for his spirit as a saline injection is for a man who has suffered a great hemorrhage.

The old man looked toward the bottle again.

“The rest is for tomorrow,” Robert Jordan said. “What passed on the road, old one?”

“There was much movement,” Anselmo said. “I have it all noted down as you showed me. I have one watching for me and noting now. Later I will go for her report.”

“Did you see anti-tank guns? Those on rubber tires with the long barrels?”

“Yes,” Anselmo said. “There were four camions which passed on the road. In each of them there was such a gun with pine branches spread across the barrels. In the trucks rode six men with each gun.”

“Four guns, you say?” Robert Jordan asked him.

“Four,” Anselmo said. He did not look at his papers.

“Tell me what else went up the road.”

While Robert Jordan noted Anselmo told him everything he had seen move past him on the road. He told it from the beginning and in order with the wonderful memory of those who cannot read or write, and twice, while he was talking, Pablo reached out for more wine from the bowl.

“There was also the cavalry which entered La Granja from the high country where El Sordo fought,” Anselmo went on.

Then he told the number of the wounded he had seen and the number of the dead across the saddles.

“There was a bundle packed across one saddle that I did not understand,” he said. “But now I know it was the heads.” He went on without pausing. “It was a squadron of cavalry. They had only one officer left. He was not the one who was here in the early morning when you were by the gun. He must have been one of the dead. Two of the dead were officers by their sleeves. They were lashed face down over the saddles, their arms hanging. Also they had the
máquina
of El Sordo tied to the saddle that bore the heads. The barrel was bent. That is all,” he finished.

“It is enough,” Robert Jordan said and dipped his cup into the wine bowl. “Who beside you has been through the lines to the side of the Republic?”

“Andrés and Eladio.”

“Which is the better of those two?”

“Andrés.”

“How long would it take him to get to Navacerrada from here?”

“Carrying no pack and taking his precautions, in three hours with luck. We came by a longer, safer route because of the material.”

“He can surely make it?”

“
No sé,
there is no such thing as surely.”

“Not for thee either?”

“Nay.”

That decides that, Robert Jordan thought to himself. If he had said that he could make it surely, surely I would have sent him.

“Andrés can get there as well as thee?”

“As well or better. He is younger.”

“But this must absolutely get there.”

“If nothing happens he will get there. If anything happens it could happen to any one.”

“I will write a dispatch and send it by him,” Robert Jordan said. “I will explain to him where he can find the General. He will be at the Estado Mayor of the Division.”

“He will not understand all this of divisions and all,” Anselmo said. “Always has it confused me. He should have the name of the General and where he can be found.”

“But it is at the Estado Mayor of the Division that he will be found.”

“But is that not a place?”

“Certainly it is a place, old one,” Robert Jordan explained patiently. “But it is a place the General will have selected. It is where he will make his headquarters for the battle.”

“Where is it then?” Anselmo was tired and the tiredness was making him stupid. Also words like Brigades, Divisions, Army Corps confused him. First there had been columns, then there were regiments, then there were brigades. Now there were brigades and divisions, both. He did not understand. A place was a place.