For Whom The Bell Tolls

"And the upper legs?"

"No. They hurt too badly."

"But if I rub them and put liniment on, it will warm them and they will be better."

"Nay, Pilar. Thank thee. I would rather they were not touched."

"I will wash thee with alcohol."

"Yes. Do it very lightly."

"You were enormous in the last bull," she would say to him and he would say, "Yes, I killed him very well."

Then, having washed him and covered him with a sheet, she would lie by him in the bed and he would put a brown hand out and touch her and say, "Thou art much woman, Pilar." It was the nearest to a joke he ever made and then, usually, after the fight, he would go to sleep and she would lie there, holding his hand in her two hands and listening to him breathe.

He was often frightened in his sleep and she would feel his hand grip tightly and see the sweat bead on his forehead and if he woke, she said, "It's nothing," and he slept again. She was with him thus five years and never was unfaithful to him, that is almost never, and then after the funeral, she took up with Pablo who led picador horses in the ring and was like all the bulls that Finito had spent his life killing. But neither bull force nor bull courage lasted, she knew now, and what did last? I last, she thought. Yes, I have lasted. But for what?

"Maria," she said. "Pay some attention to what you are doing. That is a fire to cook with. Not to burn down a city."

Just then the gypsy came in the door. He was covered with snow and he stood there holding his carbine and stamping the snow from his feet.

Robert Jordan stood up and went over to the door, "Well?" he said to the gypsy.

"Six-hour watches, two men at a time on the big bridge," the gypsy said. "There are eight men and a corporal at the roadmender's hut. Here is thy chronometer."

"What about the sawmill post?"

"The old man is there. He can watch that and the road both."

"And the road?" Robert Jordan asked.

"The same movement as always," the gypsy said. "Nothing out of the usual. Several motor cars."

The gypsy looked cold, his dark face was drawn with the cold and his hands were red. Standing in the mouth of the cave he took off his jacket and shook it.

"I stayed until they changed the watch," he said. "It was changed at noon and at six. That is a long watch. I am glad I am not in their army."

"Let us go for the old man," Robert Jordan said, putting on his leather coat.

"Not me," the gypsy said. "I go now for the fire and the hot soup. I will tell one of these where he is and he can guide you. Hey, loafers," he called to the men who sat at the table. "Who wants to guide the Ingles to where the old man is watching the road?"

"I will go," Fernando rose. "Tell me where it is."

"Listen," the gypsy said. "It is here--" and he told him where the old man, Anselmo, was posted.

15

Anselmo was crouched in the lee of the trunk of a big tree and the snow blew past on either side. He was pressed close against the tree and his hands were inside of the sleeves of his jacket, each hand shoved up into the opposite sleeve, and his head was pulled as far down into the jacket as it would go. If I stay here much longer I will freeze, he thought, and that will be of no value. The Ingles told me to stay until I was relieved but he did not know then about this storm. There has been no abnormal movement on the road and I know the dispositions and the habits of this post at the sawmill across the road. I should go now to the camp. Anybody with sense would be expecting me to return to the camp. I will stay a little longer, he thought, and then go to the camp. It is the fault of the orders, which are too rigid. There is no allowance for a change in circumstance. He rubbed his feet together and then took his hands out of the jacket sleeves and bent over and rubbed his legs with them and patted his feet together to keep the circulation going. It was less cold there, out of the wind in the shelter of the tree, but he would have to start walking shortly.

As he crouched, rubbing his feet, he heard a motorcar on the road. It had on chains and one link of chain was slapping and, as he Watched, it came up the snow-covered road, green and brown painted, in broken patches of daubed color, the windows blued over so that you could not see in, with only a half circle left clear in the blue for the occupants to look out through. It was a two-year-old Rolls-Royce town car camouflaged for the use of the General Staff but Anselmo did not know that. He could not see into the car where three officers sat wrapped in their capes. Two were on the back seat and one sat on the folding chair. The officer on the folding chair was looking out of the slit in the blue of the window as the car passed but Anselmo did not know this. Neither of them saw the other.