For Whom the Bell Tolls (51 page)

“No. It is better not to. Let us talk again about Madrid.”

“What was it you were going to say?”

“I do not wish to say it.”

“Perhaps it would be better to say it if it could be important.”

“You think it is important?”

“Yes.”

“But how can you know when you do not know what it is?”

“From thy manner.”

“I will not keep it from you then. The Pilar told me that we would all die tomorrow and that you know it as well as she does and that you give it no importance. She said this not in criticism but in admiration.”

“She said that?” he said. The crazy bitch, he thought, and he said, “That is more of her gypsy manure. That is the way old market women and café cowards talk. That is manuring obscenity.” He felt the sweat that came from under his armpits and slid down between his arm and his side and he said to himself, So you are scared, eh? and aloud he said, “She is a manure-mouthed superstitious bitch. Let us talk again of Madrid.”

“Then you know no such thing?”

“Of course not. Do not talk such manure,” he said, using a stronger, ugly word.

But this time when he talked about Madrid there was no slipping
into make-believe again. Now he was just lying to his girl and to himself to pass the night before battle and he knew it. He liked to do it, but all the luxury of the acceptance was gone. But he started again.

“I have thought about thy hair,” he said. “And what we can do about it. You see it grows now all over thy head the same length like the fur of an animal and it is lovely to feel and I love it very much and it is beautiful and it flattens and rises like a wheatfield in the wind when I pass my hand over it.”

“Pass thy hand over it.”

He did and left his hand there and went on talking to her throat, as he felt his own throat swell. “But in Madrid I thought we could go together to the coiffeur's and they could cut it neatly on the sides and in the back as they cut mine and that way it would look better in the town while it is growing out.”

“I would look like thee,” she said and held him close to her. “And then I never would want to change it.”

“Nay. It will grow all the time and that will only be to keep it neat at the start while it is growing long. How long will it take it to grow long?”

“Really long?”

“No. I mean to thy shoulders. It is thus I would have thee wear it.”

“As Garbo in the cinema?”

“Yes,” he said thickly.

Now the making believe was coming back in a great rush and he would take it all to him. It had him now, and again he surrendered and went on. “So it will hang straight to thy shoulders and curl at the ends as a wave of the sea curls, and it will be the color of ripe wheat and thy face the color of burnt gold and thine eyes the only color they could be with thy hair and thy skin, gold with the dark flecks in them, and I will push thy head back and look in thy eyes and hold thee tight against me——”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Wherever it is that we are. How long will it take for thy hair to grow?”

“I do not know because it never had been cut before. But I think
in six months it should be long enough to hang well below my ears and in a year as long as thou couldst ever wish. But do you know what will happen first?”

“Tell me.”

“We will be in the big clean bed in thy famous room in our famous hotel and we will sit in the famous bed together and look into the mirror of the
armoire
and there will be thee and there will be me in the glass and then I will turn to thee thus, and put my arms around thee thus, and then I will kiss thee thus.”

Then they lay quiet and close together in the night, hot-aching, rigid, close together and holding her, Robert Jordan held closely too all those things that he knew could never happen, and he went on with it deliberately and said, “Rabbit, we will not always live in that hotel.”

“Why not?”

“We can get an apartment in Madrid on that street that runs along the Parque of the Buen Retiro. I know an American woman who furnished apartments and rented them before the movement and I know how to get such an apartment for only the rent that was paid before the movement. There are apartments there that face on the park and you can see all of the park from the windows; the iron fence, the gardens, and the gravel walks and the green of the lawns where they touch the gravel, and the trees deep with shadows and the many fountains, and now the chestnut trees will be in bloom. In Madrid we can walk in the park and row on the lake if the water is back in it now.”

“Why would the water be out?”

“They drained it in November because it made a mark to sight from when the planes came over for bombing. But I think that the water is back in it now. I am not sure. But even if there is no water in it we can walk through all the park away from the lake and there is a part that is like a forest with trees from all parts of the world with their names on them, with placards that tell what trees they are and where they came from.”

“I would almost as soon go the cinema,” Maria said. “But the trees sound very interesting and I will learn them all with thee if I can remember them.”

“They are not as in a museum,” Robert Jordan said. “They grow naturally and there are hills in the park and part of the park is like a jungle. Then below it there is the book fair where along the sidewalks there are hundreds of booths with second-hand books in them and now, since the movement, there are many books, stolen in the looting of the houses which have been bombed and from the houses of the fascists, and brought to the book fair by those who stole them. I could spend all day every day at the stalls of the book fair as I once did in the days before the movement, if I ever could have any time in Madrid.”

“While thou art visiting the book fair I will occupy myself with the apartment,” Maria said. “Will we have enough money for a servant?”

“Surely. I can get Petra who is at the hotel if she pleases thee. She cooks well and is clean. I have eaten there with newspapermen that she cooks for. They have electric stoves in their rooms.”

“If you wish her,” Maria said. “Or I can find some one. But wilt thou not be away much with thy work? They would not let me go with thee on such work as this.”

“Perhaps I can get work in Madrid. I have done this work now for a long time and I have fought since the start of the movement. It is possible that they would give me work now in Madrid. I have never asked for it. I have always been at the front or in such work as this.

“Do you know that until I met thee I have never asked for anything? Nor wanted anything? Nor thought of anything except the movement and the winning of this war? Truly I have been very pure in my ambitions. I have worked much and now I love thee and,” he said it now in a complete embracing of all that would not be, “I love thee as I love all that we have fought for. I love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the rights of all men to work and not be hungry. I love thee as I love Madrid that we have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died. And many have died. Many. Many. Thou canst not think how many. But I love thee as I love what I love most in the world and I love thee more. I love thee very much, rabbit. More than I can tell thee. But I say this now to tell thee a little. I have never had a wife and now I have thee for a wife and I am happy.”

“I will make thee as good a wife as I can,” Maria said. “Clearly I am not well trained but I will try to make up for that. If we live in Madrid; good. If we must live in any other place; good. If we live nowhere and I can go with thee; better. If we go to thy country I will learn to talk
Inglés
like the most
Inglés
that there is. I will study all their manners and as they do so will I do.”

“Thou wilt be very comic.”

“Surely. I will make mistakes but you will tell me and I will never make them twice, or maybe only twice. Then in thy country if thou art lonesome for our food I can cook for thee. And I will go to a school to learn to be a wife, if there is such a school, and study at it.”

“There are such schools but thou dost not need that schooling.”

“Pilar told me that she thought they existed in your country. She had read of them in a periodical. And she told me also that I must learn to speak
Inglés
and to speak it well so thou wouldst never be ashamed of me.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“Today while we were packing. Constantly she talked to me about what I should do to be thy wife.”

I guess she was going to Madrid too, Robert Jordan thought, and said, “What else did she say?”

“She said I must take care of my body and guard the line of my figure as though I were a bullfighter. She said this was of great importance.”

“It is,” Robert Jordan said. “But thou hast not to worry about that for many years.”

“No. She said those of our race must watch that always as it can come suddenly. She told me she was once as slender as I but that in those days women did not take exercise. She told me what exercises I should take and that I must not eat too much. She told me which things not to eat. But I have forgotten and must ask her again.”

“Potatoes,” he said.

“Yes,” she went on. “It was potatoes and things that are fried. Also when I told her about this of the soreness she said I must not tell thee but must support the pain and not let thee know. But I told thee because I do not wish to lie to thee ever and also I feared that
thou might think we did not have the joy in common any longer and that other, as it was in the high country, had not truly happened.”

“It was right to tell me.”

“Truly? For I am ashamed and I will do anything for thee that thou should wish. Pilar has told me of things one can do for a husband.”

“There is no need to do anything. What we have we have together and we will keep it and guard it. I love thee thus lying beside thee and touching thee and knowing thou art truly there and when thou art ready again we will have all.”

“But hast thou not necessities that I can care for? She explained that to me.”

“Nay. We will have our necessities together. I have no necessities apart from thee.”

“That seems much better to me. But understand always that I will do what you wish. But thou must tell me for I have great ignorance and much of what she told me I did not understand clearly. For I was ashamed to ask and she is of such great and varied wisdom.”

“Rabbit,” he said. “Thou art very wonderful.”

“
Qué va,
” she said. “But to try to learn all of that which goes into wifehood in a day while we are breaking camp and packing for a battle with another battle passing in the country above is a rare thing and if I make serious mistakes thou must tell me for I love thee. It could be possible for me to remember things incorrectly and much that she told me was very complicated.”

“What else did she tell thee?”

“
Pues
so many things I cannot remember them. She said I could tell thee of what was done to me if I ever began to think of it again because thou art a good man and already have understood it all. But that it were better never to speak of it unless it came on me as a black thing as it had been before and then that telling it to thee might rid me of it.”

“Does it weigh on thee now?”

“No. It is as though it had never happened since we were first together. There is the sorrow for my parents always. But that there will be always. But I would have thee know that which you should
know for thy own pride if I am to be thy wife. Never did I submit to any one. Always I fought and always it took two of them or more to do me the harm. One would sit on my head and hold me. I tell thee this for thy pride.”

“My pride is in thee. Do not tell it.”

“Nay, I speak of thy own pride which it is necessary to have in thy wife. And another thing. My father was the mayor of the village and an honorable man. My mother was an honorable woman and a good Catholic and they shot her with my father because of the politics of my father who was a Republican. I saw both of them shot and my father said,
‘Viva la República,'
when they shot him standing against the wall of the slaughterhouse of our village.

“My mother standing against the same wall said, ‘Viva my husband who was the Mayor of this village,' and I hoped they would shoot me too and I was going to say
‘Viva la República y vivan mis padres,'
but instead there was no shooting but instead the doing of the things.

“Listen. I will tell thee of one thing since it affects us. After the shooting at the
matadero
they took us, those relatives who had seen it but were not shot, back from the
matadero
up the steep hill into the main square of the town. Nearly all were weeping but some were numb with what they had seen and the tears had dried in them. I myself could not cry. I did not notice anything that passed for I could only see my father and my mother at the moment of the shooting and my mother saying, ‘Long live my husband who was Mayor of this village,' and this was in my head like a scream that would not die but kept on and on. For my mother was not a Republican and she would not say,
‘Viva la República,'
but only
Viva
my father who lay there, on his face, by her feet.

“But what she had said, she had said very loud, like a shriek and then they shot and she fell and I tried to leave the line to go to her but we were all tied. The shooting was done by the
guardia civil
and they were still there waiting to shoot more when the Falangists herded us away and up the hill leaving the
guardias civiles
leaning on their rifles and leaving all the bodies there against the wall. We were tied by the wrists in a long line of girls and women and they herded us up by the hill and through the streets to the square and in
the square they stopped in front of the barbershop which was across the square from the city hall.