For Whom The Bell Tolls

Robert Jordan was watching Pilar. She was looking at Pablo as at some strange animal. On her face there was still a shadow of the expression the mention of the blinding had put there. She shook her head as though to be rid of that, then tossed it back. "Listen," she said to Pablo.

"Yes, woman."

"What passes with thee?"

"Nothing," Pablo said. "I have changed my opinion. Nothing more."

"You were listening at the door," she told him.

"Yes," he said. "But I could hear nothing."

"You fear that we will kill thee."

"No," he told her and looked at her over the wine cup. "I do not fear that. You know that."

"Well, what passes with thee?" Agustin said. "One moment you are drunk and putting your mouth on all of us and disassociating yourself from the work in hand and speaking of our death in a dirty manner and insulting the women and opposing that which should be done--"

"I was drunk," Pablo told him.

"And now--"

"I am not drunk," Pablo said. "And I have changed my mind."

"Let the others trust thee. I do not," Agustin said.

"Trust me or not," Pablo said. "But there is no one who can take thee to Gredos as I can."

"Gredos?"

"It is the only place to go after this of the bridge."

Robert Jordan, looking at Pilar, raised his hand on the side away from Pablo and tapped his right ear questioningly.

The woman nodded. Then nodded again. She said something to Maria and the girl came over to Robert Jordan's side.

"She says, 'Of course he heard," Maria said in Robert Jordan's ear.

"Then Pablo," Fernando said judicially. "Thou art with us now and in favor of this of the bridge?"

"Yes, man," Pablo said. He looked Fernando squarely in the eye and nodded.

"In truth?" Primitivo asked.

"De veras," Pablo told him.

"And you think it can be successful?" Fernando asked. "You now have confidence?"

"Why not?" Pablo said. "Haven't you confidence?"

"Yes," Fernando said. "But I always have confidence."

"I'm going to get out of here," Agustin said.

"It is cold outside," Pablo told him in a friendly tone.

"Maybe," Agustin said. "But I can't stay any longer in this manicomio

."

"Do not call this cave an insane asylum," Fernando said.

"A manicomio for criminal lunatics," Agustin said. "And I'm getting out before I'm crazy, too."

18

It is like a merry-go-round, Robert Jordan thought. Not a merry-goround that travels fast, and with a calliope for music, and the children ride on cows with gilded horns, and there are rings to catch with sticks, and there is the blue, gas-flare-lit early dark of the Avenue du Maine, with fried fish sold from the next stall, and a wheel of fortune turning with the leather flaps slapping against the posts of the numbered compartments, and the packages of lump sugar piled in pyramids for prizes. No, it is not that kind of a merrygo-round; although the people are waiting, like the men in caps and the women in knitted sweaters, their heads bare in the gaslight and their hair shining, who stand in front of the wheel of fortune as it spins. Yes, those are the people. But this is another wheel. This is like a wheel that goes up and around.

It has been around twice now. It is a vast wheel, set at an angle, and each time it goes around and then is back to where it starts. One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either, he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical, rising and falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are back again now, he thought, and nothing is settled.

It was warm in the cave and the wind had dropped outside. Now he was sitting at the table with his notebook in front of him figuring all the technical part of the bridge-blowing. He drew three sketches, figured his formulas, marked the method of blowing with two drawings as clearly as a kindergarten project so that Anselmo could complete it in case anything should happen to himself during the process of the demolition. He finished these sketches and studied them.

Maria sat beside him and looked over his shoulder while he worked. He was conscious of Pablo across the table and of the others talking and playing cards and he smelled the odors of the cave which had changed now from those of the meal and the cooking to the fire smoke and man smell, the tobacco, red-wine and brassy, stale body smell, and when Maria, watching him finishing a drawing, put her hand on the table he picked it up with his left hand and lifted it to his face and smelled the coarse soap and water freshness from her washing of the dishes. He laid her hand down without looking at her and went on working and he could not see her blush. She let her hand lie there, close to his, but he did not lift it again.