For Whom the Bell Tolls (66 page)

•   •   •

Maria had been with the horses for a long time, but they were no comfort to her. Nor was she any to them. From where she was in the forest she could not see the road nor could she see the bridge and when the firing started she put her arm around the neck of the big white-faced bay stallion that she had gentled and brought gifts to many times when the horses had been in the corral in the trees below the camp. But her nervousness made the big stallion nervous, too, and he jerked his head, his nostrils widening at the firing and
the noise of the bombs. Maria could not keep still and she walked around patting and gentling the horses and making them all more nervous and agitated.

She tried to think of the firing not as just a terrible thing that was happening, but to realize that it was Pablo below with the new men, and Pilar with the others above, and that she must not worry nor get into a panic but must have confidence in Roberto. But she could not do this and all the firing above and below the bridge and the distant sound of the battle that rolled down from the pass like the noise of a far-off storm with a dried, rolling rattle in it and the irregular beat of the bombs was simply a horrible thing that almost kept her from breathing.

Then later she heard Pilar's big voice from away below on the hillside shouting up some obscenity to her that she could not understand and she thought, Oh, God no, no. Don't talk like that with him in peril. Don't offend any one and make useless risks. Don't give any provocation.

Then she commenced to pray for Roberto quickly and automatically as she had done at school, saying the prayers as fast as she could and counting them on the fingers of her left hand, praying by tens of each of the two prayers she was repeating. Then the bridge blew and one horse snapped his halter when he rose and jerked his head at the cracking roar and he went off through the trees. Maria caught him finally and brought him back, shivering, trembling, his chest dark with sweat, the saddle down, and coming back through the trees she heard shooting below and she thought I cannot stand this longer. I cannot live not knowing any longer. I cannot breathe and my mouth is so dry. And I am afraid and I am no good and I frighten the horses and only caught this horse by hazard because he knocked the saddle down against a tree and caught himself kicking into the stirrups and now as I get the saddle up, Oh, God, I do not know. I cannot bear it. Oh please have him be all right for all my heart and all of me is at the bridge. The Republic is one thing and we must win is another thing. But, Oh, Sweet Blessed Virgin, bring him back to me from the bridge and I will do anything thou sayest ever. Because I am not here. There isn't any me. I am only with him. Take care of him for me and that
will be me and then I will do the things for thee and he will not mind. Nor will it be against the Republic. Oh, please forgive me for I am very confused. I am too confused now. But if thou takest care of him I will do whatever is right. I will do what he says and what you say. With the two of me I will do it. But this now not knowing I cannot endure.

Then, the horse tied again, she with the saddle up now, the blanket smoothed, hauling tight on the cinch she heard the big, deep voice from the timber below, “Maria! Maria! Thy
Inglés
is all right. Hear me? All right.
Sin Novedad!
”

Maria held the saddle with both hands and pressed her cropped head hard against it and cried. She heard the deep voice shouting again and she turned from the saddle and shouted, choking, “Yes! Thank you!” Then, choking again, “Thank you! Thank you very much!”

•   •   •

When they heard the planes they all looked up and the planes were coming from Segovia very high in the sky, silvery in the high sky, their drumming rising over all the other sounds.

“Those!” Pilar said. “There has only lacked those!”

Robert Jordan put his arm on her shoulders as he watched them. “Nay, woman,” he said. “Those do not come for us. Those have no time for us. Calm thyself.”

“I hate them.”

“Me too. But now I must go to Agustín.”

He circled the hillside through the pines and all the time there was the throbbing, drumming of the planes and across the shattered bridge on the road below, around the bend of the road there was the intermittent hammering fire of a heavy machine gun.

Robert Jordan dropped down to where Agustín lay in the clump of scrub pines behind the automatic rifle and more planes were coming all the time.

“What passes below?” Agustín said. “What is Pablo doing? Doesn't he know the bridge is gone?”

“Maybe he can't leave.”

“Then let us leave. The hell with him.”

“He will come now if he is able,” Robert Jordan said. “We should see him now.”

“I have not heard him,” Agustín said. “Not for five minutes. No. There! Listen! There he is. That's him.”

There was a burst of the spot-spot-spotting fire of the cavalry submachine gun, then another, then another.

“That's the bastard,” Robert Jordan said.

He watched still more planes coming over in the high cloudless blue sky and he watched Agustín's face as he looked up at them. Then he looked down at the shattered bridge and across to the stretch of road which still was clear. He coughed and spat and listened to the heavy machine gun hammer again below the bend. It sounded to be in the same place that it was before.

“And what's that?” Agustín asked. “What the unnameable is that?”

“It has been going since before I blew the bridge,” Robert Jordan said. He looked down at the bridge now and he could see the stream through the torn gap where the center had fallen, hanging like a bent steel apron. He heard the first of the planes that had gone over now bombing up above at the pass and more were still coming. The noise of their motors filled all the high sky and looking up he saw their pursuit, minute and tiny, circling and wheeling high above them.

“I don't think they ever crossed the lines the other morning,” Primitivo said. “They must have swung off to the west and then come back. They could not be making an attack if they had seen these.”

“Most of these are new,” Robert Jordan said.

He had the feeling of something that had started normally and had then brought great, outsized, giant repercussions. It was as though you had thrown a stone and the stone made a ripple and the ripple returned roaring and toppling as a tidal wave. Or as though you shouted and the echo came back in rolls and peals of thunder, and the thunder was deadly. Or as though you struck one man and he fell and as far as you could see other men rose up all armed and armored. He was glad he was not with Golz up at the pass.

Lying there, by Agustín, watching the planes going over, listening for firing behind him, watching the road below where he knew
he would see something but not what it would be, he still felt numb with the surprise that he had not been killed at the bridge. He had accepted being killed so completely that all of this now seemed unreal. Shake out of that, he said to himself. Get rid of that. There is much, much, much to be done today. But it would not leave him and he felt, consciously, all of this becoming like a dream.

“You swallowed too much of that smoke,” he told himself. But he knew it was not that. He could feel, solidly, how unreal it all was through the absolute reality and he looked down at the bridge and then back to the sentry lying on the road, to where Anselmo lay, to Fernando against the bank and back up the smooth, brown road to the stalled truck and still it was unreal.

“You better sell out your part of you quickly,” he told himself. “You're like one of those cocks in the pit where nobody has seen the wound given and it doesn't show and he is already going cold with it.”

“Nuts,” he said to himself. “You are a little groggy is all, and you have a let-down after responsibility, is all. Take it easy.”

Then Agustín grabbed his arm and pointed and he looked across the gorge and saw Pablo.

They saw Pablo come running around the corner of the bend in the road. At the sheer rock where the road went out of sight they saw him stop and lean against the rock and fire back up the road. Robert Jordan saw Pablo, short, heavy and stocky, his cap gone, leaning against the rock wall and firing the short cavalry automatic rifle and he could see the bright flicker of the cascading brass hulls as the sun caught them. They saw Pablo crouch and fire another burst. Then, without looking back, he came running, short, bow-legged, fast, his head bent down straight toward the bridge.

Robert Jordan had pushed Agustín over and he had the stock of the big automatic rifle against his shoulder and was sighting on the bend of the road. His own submachine gun lay by his left hand. It was not accurate enough for that range.

As Pablo came toward them Robert Jordan sighted on the bend but nothing came. Pablo had reached the bridge, looked over his shoulder once, glanced at the bridge, and then turned to his left and gone down into the gorge and out of sight. Robert Jordan was still
watching the bend and nothing had come in sight. Agustín got up on one knee. He could see Pablo climbing down into the gorge like a goat. There had been no noise of firing below since they had first seen Pablo.

“You see anything up above? On the rocks above?” Robert Jordan asked.

“Nothing.”

Robert Jordan watched the bend of the road. He knew the wall just below that was too steep for any one to climb but below it eased and some one might have circled up above.

If things had been unreal before, they were suddenly real enough now. It was as though a reflex lens camera had been suddenly brought into focus. It was then he saw the low-bodied, angled snout and squat green, gray and brown-splashed turret with the projecting machine gun come around the bend into the bright sun. He fired on it and he could hear the spang against the steel. The little whippet tank scuttled back behind the rock wall. Watching the corner, Robert Jordan saw the nose just reappear, then the edge of the turret showed and the turret swung so that the gun was pointing down the road.

“It seems like a mouse coming out of his hole,” Agustín said. “Look,
Inglés.
”

“He has little confidence,” Robert Jordan said.

“This is the big insect Pablo has been fighting,” Agustín said. “Hit him again,
Inglés.
”

“Nay. I cannot hurt him. I don't want him to see where we are.”

The tank commenced to fire down the road. The bullets hit the road surface and sung off and now they were pinging and clanging in the iron of the bridge. It was the same machine gun they had heard below.

“
Cabrón!
” Agustín said. “Is that the famous tanks,
Inglés
?”

“That's a baby one.”

“
Cabrón.
If I had a baby bottle full of gasoline I would climb up there and set fire to him. What will he do,
Inglés
?”

“After a while he will have another look.”

“And these are what men fear,” Agustín said. “Look,
Inglés
! He's rekilling the sentries.”

“Since he has no other target,” Robert Jordan said. “Do not reproach him.”

But he was thinking, Sure, make fun of him. But suppose it was you, way back here in your own country and they held you up with firing on the main road. Then a bridge was blown. Wouldn't you think it was mined ahead or that there was a trap? Sure you would. He's done all right. He's waiting for something else to come up. He's engaging the enemy. It's only us. But he can't tell that. Look at the little bastard.

The little tank had nosed a little farther around the corner.

Just then Agustín saw Pablo coming over the edge of the gorge, pulling himself over on hands and knees, his bristly face running with sweat.

“Here comes the son of a bitch,” he said.

“Who?”

“Pablo.”

Robert Jordan looked, saw Pablo, and then he commenced firing at the part of the camouflaged turret of the tank where he knew the slit above the machine gun would be. The little tank whirred backwards, scuttling out of sight and Robert Jordan picked up the automatic rifle, clamped the tripod against the barrel and swung the gun with its still hot muzzle over his shoulder. The muzzle was so hot it burned his shoulder and he shoved it far behind him turning the stock flat in his hand.

“Bring the sack of pans and my little
máquina,
” he shouted, “and come running.”

Robert Jordan ran up the hill through the pines. Agustín was close behind him and behind him Pablo was coming.

“Pilar!” Jordan shouted across the hill. “Come on, woman!”

The three of them were going as fast as they could up the steep slope. They could not run any more because the grade was too severe and Pablo, who had no load but the light cavalry submachine gun, had closed up with the other two.

“And thy people?” Agustín said to Pablo out of his dry mouth.

“All dead,” Pablo said. He was almost unable to breathe. Agustín turned his head and looked at him.

“We have plenty of horses now,
Inglés,
” Pablo panted.

“Good,” Robert Jordan said. The murderous bastard, he thought. “What did you encounter?”

“Everything,” Pablo said. He was breathing in lunges. “What passed with Pilar?”

“She lost Fernando and the brother——”

“Eladio,” Agustín said.

“And thou?” Pablo asked.

“I lost Anselmo.”

“There are lots of horses,” Pablo said. “Even for the baggage.”

Agustín bit his lip, looked at Robert Jordan and shook his head. Below them, out of sight through the trees, they heard the tank firing on the road and bridge again.

Robert Jordan jerked his head. “What passed with that?” he said to Pablo. He did not like to look at Pablo, nor to smell him, but he wanted to hear him.