For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Nor that," he said. "I am not a fool. I do not provoke."

"Cabron," Agustin said.

"You should know," Pablo said. "You know the woman."

Agustin hit him again hard in the mouth and Pablo laughed at him, showing the yellow, bad, broken teeth in the reddened line of his mouth.

"Leave it alone," Pablo said and reached with a cup to scoop some wine from the bowl. "Nobody here has cojones to kill me and this of the hands is silly."

"Cobarde," Agustin said.

"Nor words either," Pablo said and made a swishing noise rinsing the wine in his mouth. He spat on the floor. "I am far past words."

Agustin stood there looking down at him and cursed him, speaking slowly, clearly, bitterly and contemptuously and cursing as steadily as though he were dumping manure on a field, lifting it with a dung fork out of a wagon.

"Nor of those," Pablo said. "Leave it, Agustin. And do not hit me more. Thou wilt injure thy hands."

Agustin turned from him and went to the door.

"Do not go out," Pablo said. "It is snowing outside. Make thyself comfortable in here."

"And thou! Thou!" Agustin turned from the door and spoke to him, putting all his contempt in the single, "Tu."

"Yes, me," said Pablo. "I will be alive when you are dead."

He dipped up another cup of wine and raised it to Robert Jordan. "To the professor," he said. Then turned to Pilar. "To the Senora Commander." Then toasted them all, "To all the illusioned ones."

Agustin walked over to him and, striking quickly with the side of his hand, knocked the cup out of his hand.

"That is a waste," Pablo said. "That is silly."

Agustin said something vile to him.

"No," Pablo said, dipping up another cup. "I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools."

"Go and obscenity in the milk of thy cowardice," Pilar said to him. "I know too much about thee and thy cowardice."

"How the woman talks," Pablo said. "I will be going out to see the horses."

"Go and befoul them," Agustin said. "Is not that one of thy customs?"

"No," Pablo said and shook his head. He was taking down his big blanket cape from the wall and he looked at Agustin. "Thou," he said, "and thy violence."

"What do you go to do with the horses?" Agustin said.

"Look to them," Pablo said.

"Befoul them," Agustin said. "Horse lover."

"I care for them very much," Pablo said. "Even from behind they are handsomer and have more sense than these people. Divert yourselves," he said and grinned. "Speak to them of the bridge, Ingles. Explain their duties in the attack. Tell them how to conduct the retreat. Where will you take them, Ingles, after the bridge? Where will you take your patriots? I have thought of it all day while I have been drinking."

"What have you thought?" Agustin asked.

"What have I thought?" Pablo said and moved his tongue around exploringly inside his lips. "Que te importa, what have I thought."

"Say it," Agustin said to him.

"Much," Pablo said. He pulled the blanket coat over his head, the roundness of his head protruding now from the dirty yellow folds of the blanket. "I have thought much."

"What?" Agustin said. "What?"

"I have thought you are a group of illusioned people," Pablo said. "Led by a woman with her brains between her thighs and a foreigner who comes to destroy you."

"Get out," Pilar shouted at him. "Get out and fist yourself into the snow. Take your bad milk out of here, you horse exhausted maricon."

"Thus one talks," Agustin said admiringly, but absent-mindedly. He was worried.

"I go," said Pablo. "But I will be back shortly." He lifted the blanket over the door of the cave and stepped out. Then from the door he called, "It's still falling, Ingles."

17

The only noise in the cave now was the hissing from the hearth where snow was falling through the hole in the roof onto the coals of the fire.

"Pilar," Fernando said. "Is there more of the stew?"

"Oh, shut up," the woman said. But Maria took Fernando's bowl over to the big pot set back from the edge of the fire and ladled into it. She brought it over to the table and set it down and then patted Fernando on the shoulder as he bent to eat. She stood for a moment beside him, her hand on his shoulder. But Fernando did not look up. He was devoting himself to the stew.

Agustin stood beside the fire. The others were seated. Pilar sat at the table opposite Robert Jordan.

"Now, Ingles," she said, "you have seen how he is."

"What will he do?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Anything," the woman looked down at the table. "Anything. He is capable of doing anything."

"Where is the automatic rifle?" Robert Jordan asked.

"There in the corner wrapped in the blanket," Primitivo said. "Do you want it?"

"Later," Robert Jordan said. "I wished to know where it is."

"It is there," Primitivo said. "I brought it in and I have wrapped it in my blanket to keep the action dry. The pans are in that sack."