For Whom The Bell Tolls

"You are too high up here," he said. "There's a truck up the road where you can't see it. They thought it was planes. You better get farther down. I'm going down with Agustin to cover Pablo."

"The old one?" she asked him, looking at his face.

"Dead."

He coughed again, wrackingly, and spat on the ground.

"Thy bridge is blown, Ingles," Pilar looked at him. "Don't forget that."

"I don't forget anything," he said. "You have a big voice," he said to Pilar. "I have heard thee bellow. Shout up to the Maria and tell her that I am all right."

"We lost two at the sawmill," Pilar said, trying to make him understand.

"So I saw," Robert Jordan said. "Did you do something stupid?"

"Go and obscenity thyself, Ingles," Pilar said. "Fernando and Eladio were men, too."

"Why don't you go up with the horses?" Robert Jordan said. "I can cover here better than thee."

"Thou art to cover Pablo."

"The hell with Pablo. Let him cover himself with mierda."

"Nay, Ingles. He came back. He has fought much below there. Thou hast not listened? He is fighting now. Against something bad. Do you not hear?"

"I'll cover him. But obscenity all of you. Thou and Pablo both."

"Ingles," Pilar said. "Calm thyself. I have been with thee in this as no one could be. Pablo did thee a wrong but he returned."

"If I had had the exploder the old man would not have been killed. I could have blown it from here."

"If, if, if--" Pilar said.

The anger and the emptiness and the hate that had come with the let-down after the bridge, when he had looked up from where he had lain and crouching, seen Anselmo dead, were still all through him. In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unelated and he hated every one he saw.

"If there had been no snow--" Pilar said. And then, not suddenly, as a physical release could have been (if the woman would have put her arm around him, say) but slowly and from his head he began to accept it and let the hate go out. Sure, the snow. That had done it. The snow. Done itto others. Once you saw it again as it was to others, once you got rid of your own self, the always ridding of self that you had to do in war. Where there could be no self. Where yourself is only to be lost. Then, from his losing of it, he heard Pilar say, "Sordo--"

"What?" he said.

"Sordo--"

"Yes," Robert Jordan said. He grinned at her, a cracked, stiff, too-tightened-facial-tendoned grin. "Forget it. I was wrong. I am sorry, woman. Let us do this well and all together. And the bridge is blown, as thou sayest."

"Yes. Thou must think of things in their place."

"Then I go now to Agustin. Put thy gypsy much farther down so that he can see well up the road. Give those guns to Primitivo and take this maquina. Let me show thee."

"Keep the maquina," Pilar said. "We will not be here any time. Pablo should come now and we will be going."

"Rafael," Robert Jordan said, "come down here with me. Here. Good. See those coming out of the culvert. There, above the truck? Coming toward the truck? Hit me one of those. Sit. Take it easy."

The gypsy aimed carefully and fired and as he jerked the bolt back and ejected the shell Robert Jordan said, "Over. You threw against the rock above. See the rock dust? Lower, by two feet. Now, careful. They're running. Good. Sigue tirando."

"I got one," the gypsy said. The man was down in the road halfway between the culvert and the truck. The other two did not stop to drag him. They ran for the culvert and ducked in.

"Don't shoot at him," Robert Jordan said. "Shoot for the top part of a front tire on the truck. So if you miss you'll hit the engine. Good." He watched with the glasses. "A little lower. Good. You shoot like hell. Mucho! Mucho! Shoot me the top of the radiator. Anywhere on the radiator. Thou art a champion. Look. Don't let anything come past that point there. See?"

"Watch me break the windshield in the truck," the gypsy said happily.

"Nay. The truck is already sick," Robert Jordan said. "Hold thy fire until anything comes down the road. Start firing when it is opposite the culvert. Try to hit the driver. That you all should fire, then," he spoke to Pilar who had come farther down the slope with Primitivo. "You are wonderfully placed here. See how that steepness guards thy flank?"

"That you should get about thy business with Agustin," Pilar said. "Desist from thy lecture. I have seen terrain in my time."

"Put Primitivo farther up there," Robert Jordan said. "There. See, man? This side of where the bank steepens."

"Leave me," said Pilar. "Get along, Ingles. Thou and thy perfection. Here there is no problem."

Just then they heard the planes.