For Whom The Bell Tolls

All right, Robert Jordan said to himself. Only I am not having any. I've known a lot of gypsies and they are strange enough. But so are we. The difference is we have to make an honest living. Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do not know. We know nothing about what happens to us in the nights. When it happens in the day though, it is something. Whatever happened, happened and now this woman not only has to make the girl say it when she did not want to; but she has to take it over and make it her own. She has to make it into a gypsy thing. I thought she took a beating up the hill but she was certainly dominating just now back there. If it had been evil she should have been shot. But it wasn't evil. It was only wanting to keep her hold on life. To keep it through Maria.

When you get through with this war you might take up the study of women, he said to himself. You could start with Pilar. She has put in a pretty complicated day, if you ask me. She never brought in the gypsy stuff before. Except the hand, he thought. Yes, of course the hand. And I don't think she was faking about the hand. She wouldn't tell me what she saw, of course. Whatever she saw she believed in herself. But that proves nothing.

"Listen, Pilar," he said to the woman.

Pilar looked at him and smiled.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Don't be so mysterious," Robert Jordan said. "These mysteries tire me very much."

"So?" Pilar said.

"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, Ingles," 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, Ingles. Ingles," 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, Ingles," 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."

14

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, Ingles?"

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

"With this thy offensive goes, Ingles," 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 que?" Pilar said, over her shoulder. "If it snows it snows."