For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

(Adapted book. Intermediate level)

Chapter 1

He lay flat on the brown floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. Below he could see the dark of the road going through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream.

"Is that the mill?" he asked.

"Yes."

He spread out the military map and looked at it carefully. The old man looked over his shoulder. He was a short and solid old man in a black peasant's smock and gray trousers and he wore rope-soled shoes. He was breathing heavily from the climb and his hand rested on one of the two heavy packs they had been carrying.

"Then you cannot see the bridge from here."

"No," the old man said.

The young man took his binoculars from the pocket of his khaki flannel shirt and looked at the mill.

"There is no sentry."

"There is smoke coming from the millhouse," the old man said. "I see it but I do not see any sentry."

"Perhaps he is in the shade," the old man explained. "It is hot there now."

"Probably. Where is the next post?"

"Below the bridge."

"How many men are here?" He pointed at the mill.

"Perhaps five."

"And below?"

"More. I will find out."

"And at the bridge?"

"Always two. One at each end."

"We will need a certain number of men," he said.

"Do you wish to study it now?"

"No. Now I wish to go to where we will hide this explosive until it is time.

I would like to have it hidden in utmost security at a distance no greater than half an hour from the bridge, if that is possible."

"That is simple," the old man said. "But now we must climb a little to get there. Are you hungry?"

"Yes," the young man said. "But we will eat later. How are you called? I have forgotten." It was a bad sign to him that he had forgotten.

"I am called Anselmo," the old man said.

The young man, who was tall and thin, with fair hair and a wind-and sunburned face, wore a flannel shirt, a pair of peasant's trousers and rope-soled shoes. He leaned over and put the heavy pack onto his shoulders.

"I'm ready," he said. "How do we go?"

"We climb," Anselmo said.

Bending under the weight of the packs, sweating, they climbed steadily in the pine forest that covered the mountainside.

"Wait here, Roberto," said Anselmo.

Robert Jordan trusted Anselmo so far, in everything except judgment. He had not yet had an opportunity to test his judgment, and, anyway, the judgment was his own responsibility. No, he did not worry about Anselmo and the problem of the bridge was no more difficult than many other problems. He knew how to blow up any sort of bridge and he had blown them of all sizes and constructions. He must not worry. To worry was as bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.

Pushing himself up on his hands he saw the old man coming down the mountainside. With him was another man, also in a black peasant smock and the dark gray trousers that were almost a uniform in that province, wearing rope-soled shoes and with a carbine on his back. The two of them came down the rock like goats.

"Salud, Camarada," he said to the man with the carbine and smiled.

"Salud," the other said. Robert Jordan looked at the man's round, beard-stubbled face. He was a heavy man about five feet ten inches tall and his hands and feet were large. His nose had been broken and his mouth was cut at one corner and the line of the scar showed through the growth of beard over his face.

The old man nodded his head at this man and smiled.

"He is the boss here," he said. "A very strong man."

"I can see it," Robert Jordan said and smiled again. He did not like the look of this man and inside himself he was not smiling at all.

"What have you to justify your identity?" asked the man with the carbine.

Robert took a folded paper out of the left breast pocket of his shirt and handed it to the man, who opened it, looked at it doubtfully and turned it in his hands.

So he cannot read, Robert Jordan noted.

"Look at the seal," he said.

"Yes, I have seen that seal before. What have you in the packs?"

"Dynamite," the old man said proudly.

"I can use dynamite," said the man with the carbine. He handed back the paper to Robert Jordan and looked him over. "How much have you brought me?"

"I have brought you no dynamite," Robert Jordan said. "The dynamite is for another purpose. What is your name?"

"Why?"

"He is Pablo," said the old man. The man with the carbine looked at them both sullenly.

"I have heard many good things about you," said Robert Jordan. "I have heard that you are an excellent guerilla leader, that you are loyal to the Republic and prove your loyalty through your acts, and that you are serious and valiant."

"What are you going to do with the dynamite?"

"Blow up a bridge."

"What bridge?"

"That is my business."

"If it is in this territory, it is my business."

"This is my business," Robert Jordan said. "We can discuss it together.

Now let us go." There was a sadness in Pablo that worried him, the sadness that comes before the sell-out.

They began climbing and reached an open space in the forest.

Ahead of them horses whinnied in the forest. Robert Jordan knew he had to admire the horses.

"Yes," he said. "They are beautiful." He turned to Pablo. "You have your cavalry and all."

There were five horses and now Pablo was proud and less sad-looking, watching them lovingly.

"All these I have taken," Pablo said and Robert Jordan was pleased to hear him speak proudly. "Here I am with horses like these. And what can I look forward to? To be hunted and to die. Nothing more. I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow up a bridge here, we will be hunted and they will find us. I am tired of all this. You hear?" He turned to Robert Jordan. "What right have you, a foreigner, to come and tell me what I must do?"

"I have not told you anything you must do," Robert Jordan said to him.

"You will though," Pablo said.

"I come only for my duty," Robert Jordan told him. "I come under orders from those who are conducting the war. If I ask you to help me, you can refuse and I will find others who will help me. That I am a foreigner is not my fault."

"To me, now, it is most important that we are not disturbed here," Pablo said. "My duty is to those who are with me and to myself."

"Yes," Anselmo said. "Yourself and your horses. When you did not have the horses, you were with us. Now you are another capitalist."

"That is unjust," said Pablo. "I expose the horses all the time for the cause."

"Very little," said Anselmo scornfully. "To steal, yes. To eat well, yes. To murder, yes. To fight, no."

"You are an old man who will make trouble for himself with his mouth."

"I am an old man who is afraid of no one," Anselmo told him.

"You are an old man who may not live long."

"I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said.

It is starting badly enough, Robert Jordan thought. But Anselmo's a man. They are wonderful when they are good, he thought, and when they go bad there is no people that is worse. I don't like any of this.

Chapter 2

They had come through the forest and reached the camp. There was a large cave and beside the opening a man sat with his back against the rock.

"Hola," said the seated man. "What is this that comes?"

"The old man and a dynamiter," Pablo told him and lowered the pack inside the entrance to the cave.

"Don't leave it so close to the cave," said a man who had blue eyes in a dark, good-looking lazy gypsy face. "There's a fire in there."

"He's Rafael, a gypsy," Anselmo said. "Gypsies talk much and kill little." The gypsy smiled at Robert Jordan.

Anselmo said, "I'm going to get some wine."

Robert Jordan lifted the sacks from the cave entrance and leaned them, one on each side of a tree trunk. He knew what was in them and never liked to see them close together.

"Here is the wine." Anselmo said. It was good, light and clean on the tongue. "The food comes soon," Pablo said.

A girl came out of the cave carrying a big iron cooking platter and Robert Jordan saw her face and the strange thing about her.

She smiled and said, "Hola, Comrade," and Robert Jordan said, "Salud." She set down the flat iron platter with meat in front of him and he noticed her handsome brown hands. Now she looked him full in the face and smiled. Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. She had high cheekbones, happy eyes and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair was golden but it was cut short all over her head. She smiled in Robert Jordan's face and put her brown hand up and ran it over her head, flattening the hair which rose again as her hand passed. She has a beautiful face, Robert Jordan thought. She'd be beautiful if they hadn't cropped her hair.

"That is the way I comb it," she said and laughed. "Go ahead and eat. They gave me this haircut in Valladolid."

She sat down opposite him. She had long legs, and he could see the shape of her small breasts under the gray shirt. Every time Robert Jordan looked at her he could feel a thickness in his throat.

"How are you called?" he asked.

"Maria. And you?"

"Roberto. Have you been long in the mountains?"

"Three months." She passed her hand over her hair in embarrassment. "It was shaved," she said. "They shaved it regularly in the prison at Valladolid. I was on the train. They were taking me to the south. Many of the prisoners were caught after the train was blown up but I was not."

"I found her hidden in the rocks," the gypsy said. "We took her with us."

"You have a very beautiful face," he said to Maria. "I wish I would have had the luck to see you before your hair was cut."

"It will grow out," she said. "In six months it will be long enough."

Robert Jordan turned to Anselmo and asked, "How many are you?"

"We are seven and there are two women."

"Two?"

"Yes. The mujer of Pablo."

"And she?"

"In the cave. The girl can cook a little, but mostly she helps the mujer of Pablo."

"And how is the mujer of Pablo?"

"Something barbarous," the gypsy grinned. "If you think Pablo is ugly you should see his woman. But brave. A hundred times braver than Pablo."

"Pablo was brave in the beginning," Anselmo said. "Pablo was something serious in the beginning. Now he is very much afraid to die."

Robert Jordan lay back on the floor of the forest and looked at the high Spanish sky.

"Can you read in the palm of the hand?" the gypsy asked.

"No," Robert Jordan said. "But if you can I wish you would read in the palm of my hand and tell me what is going to pass in the next three days."

"The mujer of Pablo reads in the hands," the gypsy said. "But she is so irritable that I do not know if she will do it."

"Let us see the mujer of Pablo now," he said.

"She has gypsy blood," Rafael said. "She knows of what she speaks. But she has a tongue that bites like a whip."

"How does she get on with the girl, Maria?" Robert Jordan asked. "Good. She likes the girl. She takes good care of her," Anselmo said.

"When we picked the girl up at the time of the train she was very strange," Rafael said. "She would not speak and she cried all the time."

"It must have been very hard at the train," Anselmo said. "I was not there. There was the band of Pablo and the band of El Sordo, whom we will see tonight."

"It was the only good thing we have done," said a deep voice.

Robert Jordan saw a woman of about fifty almost as big as Pablo, almost as wide as she was tall, in a black peasant skirt with heavy wool socks on heavy legs, black rope-soled shoes and a brown face like a model for a granite monument. She had big but nice-looking hands and her thick curly black hair was twisted into a knot on her neck.

"Hola," she said to Robert Jordan and put out her hand and smiled. "How are you and how is everything in the Republic?"

"Good," he said and returned her strong handshake.

"I am happy," she told him. She was looking into his face and smiling and he noticed she had fine gray eyes. "Do you come for us to do another train?"

"No," said Robert Jordan, trusting her instantly. "For a bridge. We have to do this bridge."

"Where is it?"

"Quite close."

"All the better," she said. "Let us blow all the bridges and get out. I am sick of this place."

She saw Pablo through the trees.

"Borracho!" she called to him. "Rotten drunkard! He drinks all the time. This life is ruining him. Young man, I am very glad that you have come. We will understand each other. Be very good and careful with the girl, Maria. She has had a bad time. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Why do you say this?"

"I saw her watching you. She was in a very bad state. Now she is better, she ought to get out of here. Pablo likes her too much. It is another thing which destroys him. It is best that she goes away now."

"We can take her after this is over. If we are alive after the bridge, we will take her."

"That manner of speaking never brings luck. Let me see your hand," the woman said.

Robert Jordan put his hand out and the woman opened it, held it in her own big hand, rubbed her thumb over it and looked at it, carefully, then dropped it. She stood up. He got up too and she looked at him without smiling.

"What did you see in it?" he asked her. "I don't believe in it. You won't scare me."

"Nothing," she told him. "I saw nothing in it."

"Yes you did. I am only curious. I do not believe in such things."

"In what do you believe?"

"In my work."

"Yes, I saw that."

"Tell me what else you saw."

"I saw nothing else," she said bitterly. "The bridge is very difficult you said?"

"No. I said it is very important. And now I am going down to look at it.

How many men have you here?"

"Five that are any good. The gypsy is worthless although his intentions are good. Pablo I no longer trust."

"How many men has El Sordo that are good?"

"Perhaps eight. He comes every night. He is a neighbor and a friend. Go now to your bridge," she said.

Robert Jordan and Anselmo came down moving carefully from tree to tree in the shadows and the bridge was only fifty yards away. The sun was in Robert Jordan's eyes and the bridge showed only in outline. Then the sun lessened and was gone. He was watching the bridge again in the little light that was left and studied its construction. Its demolition was not difficult. He took out a notebook and made several quick line sketches. He was noting the points where the explosive should be placed in order to cut the support of the bridge and drop a section into the narrow valley. It could be done scientifically and correctly with a half dozen charges set to explode simultaneously; or it could be done roughly with two big ones. He was glad to have the problem under his hand at last.

As Robert Jordan lay flat behind the pine trunk, Anselmo pointed with one finger.

In the sentry box the sentry was sitting holding his rifle between his knees. The sentry had a peasant's face. Anselmo looked at the sentry as Robert Jordan smiled at him and pointing with one finger, drew the other across his throat. Robert Jordan nodded but he did not smile.

"You have killed?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even fascists whom we must kill."

"Yet you have killed."

"Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven."

"By whom?"

"Who knows? Since we do not have God here anymore, who forgives, I do not know."

"You don't have God anymore?"

"No. Certainly not. If there were God, he would never have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have God."

"They demand Him."

"Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself."

"Then you will forgive yourself for killing."

"I believe so," Anselmo said. "But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo."

As they came through the rocks in the dark, a man spoke to them, "Halt. Who goes?" asked the voice of a man in the dark.

"Comrades of Pablo," the old man told him.

"How are you called?" Robert Jordan asked the man in the dark.

"Agustin," the man said and coming close put his hand on Robert Jordan's shoulder. "Tell me, is it true about the bridge?"

"What about the bridge?"

"That we blow up a bridge and then have to get ourselves out of these mountains?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," Agustin said. "Whose then is the dynamite?"

"Mine. I know what it is for and so will you in time," Robert Jordan said. "But now we go to the camp."

"Go to the unprintable," Agustin said, "but guard well your explosive."

"We go to camp now. Come on," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

"Agustin is a very serious man," Anselmo said. "I have much confidence in him and what he says."

Chapter 3

They came down to the mouth of the cave, where a light shone out from the edge of a blanket that hung over the opening. The two packs were at the foot of the tree covered with a canvas. Robert Jordan picked up the packs and carried them into the cave.

It was warm and smoky inside. There was a table along one wall with a candle stuck in a bottle on it and at the table were seated Pablo, three men he did not know, and the gypsy, Rafael. The woman of Pablo was standing by the fire in the corner of the cave. The girl knelt by her, stirring in an iron pot. "What do you carry?" Pablo asked.

"My things," Robert Jordan said and set the two packs down.

"I do not like to have dynamite here in the cave," Pablo said.

"It is far from the fire," Robert Jordan said.

Anselmo brought him a stool and he sat down at the table.

"How goes it, gypsy?" he said to Rafael.

"Good," the gypsy said. Robert Jordan could tell they had been talking about him when he came in.

"Is there wine?" Robert Jordan asked.

"There is little left," Pablo said sullenly. Robert Jordan decided he had better look at the other three and try to see where he stood.

"In that case, let me have a cup of water." He called to the girl, "Bring me a cup of water."

She went to a kettle containing water and dipped a cup full and put it down before him. Robert Jordan smiled at her. He reached his hand down toward his hip pocket where the pistol was and Pablo watched him.

"What we should do now is another train," Pablo said.

"We can do that," Robert Jordan said. "After the bridge."

When he said the word "bridge" everyone was quiet.

"After the bridge," he said again deliberately.

"I do not go for the bridge," Pablo said.

Robert Jordan smiled and said, "Then we shall do it alone."

"Without this coward," Anselmo said.

"What did you say?" Pablo said to the old man.

"Nothing for you. I did not speak to you," Anselmo told him.

Robert Jordan now looked at the wife of Pablo who was standing by the fire. She had said nothing yet. But now she said something to the girl and the girl went out of the cave. I think it is going to come now, Robert Jordan thought. I believe this is it.

"Then we will do the bridge without your aid," Robert Jordan said to Pablo.

"No," Pablo said, and Robert Jordan watched his face sweat. "You will blow no bridge here."

"And you?" Robert Jordan spoke to the wife of Pablo.

"I am for the bridge." Her face was lit by the fire and it was flushed and handsome now in the firelight.

"What do you say?" Pablo said to her.

"I am for the bridge and against you," she said.

All the others agreed with her. Robert Jordan watched Pablo and let his right hand hang lower and lower, ready if it should be necessary, half hoping it would be. He saw the wife of Pablo blush proudly as the allegiances were given.

"I am for the Republic," she said happily. "And the Republic is the bridge. Afterwards we will have time for other projects."

"And it means nothing to you to be hunted then like a beast after this thing from which we derive no profit? Nor to die in it?"

"Nothing," the woman of Pablo said. "And do not try to frighten me, coward."

"Coward," Pablo said bitterly. "You treat a man as a coward because he has a tactical sense. Because he can see the results of an idiocy in advance. It is not cowardly to know what is foolish. Am I the only one who sees the seriousness of this?"

I believe so, Old Pablo, Robert Jordan thought. Except me. You can see it and I see it and the woman reads it in my hand but she doesn't see it, yet.

"Am I a leader for nothing?" Pablo asked. "This foreigner comes here to do a thing for the good of the foreigners. For his good we must be sacrificed. I am for the good and the safety of all."

"Safety," the wife of Pablo said. "There is no such thing as safety. In seeking safety now you lose all."

"There is safety," Pablo said. "Within the danger there is the safety of knowing what chances to take."

"Here no one commands but me. Haven't you heard la gente? Here I command!"

"I should shoot you and the foreigner," Pablo said sullenly.

I don't think he is going to take this much more, Robert Jordan thought. He held the cup in one hand and his other hand now rested on the pistol.

Pablo looked at Robert Jordan and then at his mujer. "All right. You command," he said. "And if you want he can command too. And the two of you can go to hell."

"Maria, enter now and serve the supper," the woman of Pablo called. The girl came in and picked up the bowls and brought them to the table.

"Well, did you see the bridge?" the gypsy asked.

"Yes," Robert Jordan said. "It is easy to do." He took out the notebook and showed them the sketches and explained how it would be blown up. Everyone was listening. Only Pablo took no interest, sitting by himself with a cup of wine.

"Have you done much of this?" the girl asked Robert Jordan softly.

"Yes."

"And can we see the doing of it?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"You will see it," Pablo said from his end of the table.

"Shut up," the woman of Pablo said to him and suddenly remembering what she had seen in the hand in the afternoon she was wildly, unreasonably angry. "Shut up, coward. Shut up, bad luck bird."

"I shut up. It is you who commands now. But remember that I am not stupid."

The woman of Pablo could feel her anger changing to sorrow and to a feeling of hopelessness. She knew this feeling from when she was a girl and it came now suddenly and she put it away from her and would not let it touch neither her nor the Republic. "Now we will eat. Serve the bowls from the pot, Maria," she said.

Robert Jordan pushed aside the blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave and, stepping out, took a deep breath of the cold night air. The gypsy stepped out of the cave too and said softly, "Roberto."

"Yes, Rafael," he said.

"Why did you not kill Pablo?"

"Why kill him?"

"You have to kill him sooner or later. Why did you not approve of the moment? What do you think they all waited for? Do you believe it is possible to continue after what has been said?"

"I thought it might molest the others or the woman."

"Kill him now," the gypsy urged.

"I cannot in that way. It is repugnant to me and it is not how one should act for the cause."

"Provoke him then," the gypsy said. "But you have to kill him. There is no remedy."

Robert Jordan walked away through the pines, feeling his way from tree to tree.

I am tired, he thought, and perhaps my judgment is not good. But my obligation is the bridge and to fulfill that I must take no useless risk of myself until I complete that duty. If it is true, as the gypsy says, that they expected me to kill Pablo then I should have done that. But it was never clear to me. While I trust the woman absolutely, I could not tell how she would react to such a drastic thing. As his eyes became used to the starlight he could see that Pablo was talking to one of the horses, and he decided that it was not a practical move to kill him at this time.

Robert Jordan returned to the cave.

"It is strange that El Sordo has not come," the woman said. "He should have been here an hour ago. If he does not come we must go to see him tomorrow."

"May I go too, Pilar?" Maria asked.

"Yes, beautiful," the woman said, then turning her big face, "Isn't she pretty?" she asked Robert Jordan. "How does she seem to you? A little thin?"

"To me she seems very well," Robert Jordan said. Maria filled his cup with wine. "Drink that," she said. "It will make me seem even better."

"Then I had better stop," Robert Jordan said. "Already you seem beautiful and more."

Pilar looked at him and asked, "Are you a Communist?"

"No, I am an anti-fascist."

"For a long time?"

"Since I have understood fascism."

"How long is that?"

"For nearly ten years."

"That is not much time," the woman said. "I have been a Republican for twenty years."

"My father was a Republican all his life," Maria said. "It was for that they shot him."

"My father was also a Republican all his life. Also my grandfather," Robert Jordan said.

"In what country?"

"The United States."

"Did they shoot them?" the woman asked.

"The United States is a country of Republicans," Maria said. "They don't shoot you for being a Republican there."

"Listen, American. Where do you plan to sleep?" Pilar asked.

"Outside. I have a sleeping robe."

"Good, then sleep outside. And your materials can sleep with me."

"Leave us for a moment," Robert Jordan said to the girl and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Why?"

"I wish to speak to Pilar."

"What is it?" the woman of Pablo said when the girl had gone out.

"The gypsy said I should have-" he began.

"No," the woman interrupted. "He is mistaken."

"If it is necessary that I-" Robert Jordan said quietly but with difficulty. "You would have done it, I believe," the woman said. "No, it is not necessary. Your judgment was good." Then she called the girl.

The girl came in and Robert Jordan reached his hand out and patted her head. She stroked under his hand like a kitten.

"You would do well to go to bed now," the woman said to Robert Jordan. "I will get my things," he said.

Chapter 4

He was asleep in the robe on the forest floor and he had been asleep, he thought, for a long time. Then he felt her hand on his shoulder and turned quickly, his right hand holding the pistol under the robe.

"Oh, it is you," he said and pulled her down. With his arms around her he could feel her shivering.

"Get in," he said softly. "It is cold out there. Get in, little rabbit." He kissed her on the back of the neck.

"I am afraid."

"No. Do not be afraid. Get in."

"No, I must not. I am ashamed and frightened."

"No. My rabbit. Please."

"I must not. If you do not love me."

"I love you."

"Oh, I love you. Put your hand on my head," she said, her face in the pillow. He put his hand on her head and stroked it and then suddenly her face was away from the pillow and she was in his arms and her face was against his and she was crying.

"I cannot kiss," she said. "I do not know how."

"There is no need to kiss."

"Yes. I must kiss. I must do everything. I want to be your woman."

"Have you loved others?"

"Never."

Then suddenly, going dead in his arms, "But things were done to me."

"By whom?"

"By various."

Now she lay perfectly quietly and as though her body were dead and turned her head away from him.

"Now you will not love me."

"I love you, Maria," he said.

"No. It is not true," she said. Then pitifully and hopefully she said, "But I have never kissed any man."

"Then kiss me now.

"But I do not know how. Where things were done to me I fought until I could not see and then they tied my mouth and held my arms behind my head - and others did things to me."

"I love you, and no one has done anything to you."

"You believe that?"

"I know it."

She kissed him on the cheek.

"Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go."

"Look, turn your head," and then their mouths were tight together and he was happier than he had ever been. They lay there and he felt her heart beating against his.

"Maria, listen. Do you-?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you wish?"

"Yes. Everything. Please. And if we do everything together, the other maybe never will have been. Pilar told me."

"She is very wise."

"The other thing she told me long ago, soon after the train. She said that nothing is done to oneself that one does not accept and that if I love someone it would take it all away."

"What she said is true."

"And I can be your woman?"

"Yes, my little rabbit."

She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them.

"And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone."

"You want?"

"Yes," she said almost fiercely. "Yes. Yes. Yes."

It was cold in the night and Robert Jordan slept heavily. Once he woke and realized that the girl was there, curled far down in the robe, breathing lightly and regularly. He kissed her smooth shoulder. He woke at first daylight and the girl was gone. Then he fell asleep again. He slept until the sound of airplane motors woke him. Lying on his back, he saw them, a fascist patrol of three Fiats, small, bright, fast-moving across the sky.

Pablo and the gypsy were standing at the cave mouth watching the sky and as Robert Jordan lay still, the sky was now full of the loud noise of motors.

Robert Jordan unrolled the clothing that made his pillow and put on his shirt and trousers as three more of the Heinkel bombers came over. He moved quickly along the rocks to the mouth of the cave where Pablo, the gypsy, Anselmo, the woman and others stood looking out.

"Have there been planes like this before?" he asked.

"Never," said Pablo. "Get in. They will see you."

This is really bad, Robert Jordan thought. Here is a concentration of planes which means something very bad.

Anselmo came out of the cave mouth and they walked a little way.

"I want you to go and watch the road. Make a note of everything that passes both up and down the road."

"I do not write."

"There is no need to," Robert Jordan took out two leaves from his notebook and with his knife cut an inch from the end of his pencil. "Take this and make a mark for tanks like this," he drew a tank, "and then a mark for each one and when there are four, cross the four strokes for the fifth."

"We count like this too."

"Good. Make another mark, two wheels and a box, for trucks. If they are empty make a circle. If they are full of troops make a straight mark. Mark for guns. Mark for cars. Mark for ambulances. You understand?"

"Yes. It is clear."

"Take the gypsy with you so that he will know where you are. Stay until someone else comes."

"I understand."

"Good. When you come back I should know everything that moved upon the road."

They walked over toward the cave. The woman of Pablo poured him a bowl of coffee with condensed milk.

"What movement was there on the road last night, Fernando?" Robert Jordan asked. Maria was close to him but he did not look at her.

"Nothing," Fernando said. "A few camions as usual. No movement of troops while I was there."

After a while Fernando said, "Oh, yes. It seems that the Republic is preparing an offensive."

"That what?"

"That the Republic is preparing an offensive."

"Where?"

"It is not certain. Perhaps here, or in another part of the Sierra."

"They say this in La Granja?"

"Yes. I had forgotten."

"What else did you hear?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Oh, yes. There was some talk that the Republicans would try to blow up the bridges."

"Are you joking?" Robert Jordan said.

"No, hombre," said Fernando.

"This one doesn't joke," the woman said.

"You don't remember anything more?"

"No," Fernando said with dignity.

Robert Jordan turned to Anselmo and the gypsy and said, "Now go, if you have eaten."

The first sound of the planes returned. They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. They move like mechanized doom, Robert Jordan thought.

It was a clear, bright day. Robert Jordan looked at the big, brown-faced woman with her kind, widely set eyes. The woman, too, was looking at him. "Did you make love?" the woman said.

"What did she say?"

"She would not tell me."

"I neither."

"Then you made love," the woman said. "Be as careful with her as you can."

"What if she has a baby?"

"That will do no harm," the woman said. "That will do less harm."

"This is no place for that."

"She will not stay here. She will go with you."

"I can't take a woman where I go."

"Who knows? You may take two."

"That is no way to talk."

"Listen," the woman said. "I see things very clearly in the early morning and I think there are many that we know that are alive now who will never see another Sunday."

"What day is today?"

"Sunday."

"Another Sunday is very far," said Robert Jordan. "If we see Wednesday we are all right. But I do not like to hear you talk like this."

"Everyone needs to talk to someone," the woman said. "Before we had religion and other nonsense. Now there should be someone to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valor that one could have one becomes very alone."

"We are not alone. We are all together."

"We are nothing against machines," said Pilar. She was touched by sadness. Robert Jordan looked at her and said, "You are sad, why?"

"Perhaps I am sad because of that failure of a man who has gone to look at his horses."

"How did you come to be with him?"

Pilar told Robert Jordan about the first days of the movement when Pablo was a man of valor.

"But now he is ruined. He is afraid to die. His own people have left him and I am in command. But my sadness does not affect my resolution. I believe firmly in the Republic and I have faith in the cause."

"I believe that," he said and went into the cave where Maria was standing. "Hello, little rabbit," he said and kissed her on the mouth. She embraced him.

Fernando, still sitting at the table, stood up, picked up his carbine and went out. Agustin looked at Pilar and said very seriously, "What do you think they are preparing?"

"Look," Pilar said. "From this boy coming for the bridges obviously the Republic is preparing an offensive. From these planes obviously the fascists are preparing to meet it. But why show the planes?"

"In this war there are many foolish things," Agustin said.

"Clearly," said Pilar. "Otherwise we could not be here."

"Yes," said Agustin. "We swim within the idiocy for a year now. But Pablo is a man of much understanding. Pablo is very clever. For the coward that he now is, he is very smart."

"I, too, am smart."

"No, Pilar," Agustin said. "You are not smart. You are brave, loyal. You have decision, intuition and heart. But you are not smart."

"You believe that?" the woman asked thoughtfully.

"Yes, Pilar. In this moment we need to act with intelligence. After the bridge we must leave at once. We must know for where we are leaving and how. And for this we need Pablo."

"You are a man of intelligence."

"Intelligent, yes," Agustin said. "But Pablo has talent. To make war you need intelligence. But to win you need talent and material. We need Pablo."

"I will think it over," she said. "We must start now. We are late."

Chapter 5

Let us rest," Pilar said. "Sit down here, Maria, and rest."

"We should continue," Robert Jordan said. "Rest when we get there. I must see this man."

"You will see him. There is no hurry. I rest now," the woman said. "I want to bathe my feet in the stream." She looked at Maria and Robert Jordan. "How would you like to be ugly, beautiful one?" she said to Maria.

"You are not ugly."

"I was born ugly. All my life I have been ugly. Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare. I would have made a good man, but I am all woman and all ugly. Yet many men have loved me and I have loved many men. It is curious."

"No," said Maria. "You are not ugly."

"Try to use your head and not your heart," Pilar said.

"Where were you at the start of the movement?" Robert Jordan asked.

"In my town."

"And what happened?"

"Much," the woman said. "Much. And all of it ugly."

"Tell me about it," Robert Jordan said.

"It is brutal. I do not like to tell it before the girl."

"I can hear it," Maria said. She put her hand on Robert Jordan's. "There is nothing that I cannot hear."

The girl leaned back against the heather and Robert Jordan stretched himself out on the ground and found Maria's hand and held it in his.

Pilar began telling them how Pablo had surrounded the barracks of the guardia civil in the dark, had cut the telephone wires and had blown the wall open. She explained in detail how Pablo had finished off the wounded guards and had executed the other four by having them kneel against the wall and shooting them in the back of the head.

She told of how the fascists of the town had been seized in their homes and taken to the Ayuntamiento. There a priest confessed them and gave them the necessary sacraments.

While this was going on, Pablo organized the townspeople in two lines with about two meters between the lines. These lines extended from the Ayuntamiento to the edge of the cliff. The townspeople were given flails to beat the fascists to death as they walked between the lines. Some used clubs and pitch forks. Once they had been beaten to death they were thrown over the cliff and into the river.

When Pablo was asked why this was being done, he answered that he wanted to save bullets and that each man should have his share in the responsibility.

"That night when everything was over I felt hollow and full of shame, and I had a great feeling of oppression and of bad to come. And bad came after three days, when the fascists took over the town," Pilar said.

"Do not tell me about it," said Maria. "I do not want to hear it. This is enough. This is too much."

"I wish you would tell me of it sometime," Robert Jordan said.

"I will," Pilar said. "But not now."

They got up and started walking. As they came up the trail a man with a carbine stepped out from behind a tree.

"Halt," he said. "Hola, Pilar. Who is with you?"

"An Ingles," Pilar said.

"Salud Camarada." the guard said to Robert Jordan and put out his hand. He was very young and his eyes were friendly.

"Are you the dynamiter?" Joaquin asked.

"Yes, I am the dynamiter."

"Is it for a train?"

"Were you at the last train?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Yes, I was. That's where we got her," he grinned at Maria. Joaquin's father, mother, sister and brother-in-law had been killed by the fascists.

Finally they came to a short and heavy man. He put out a big brown hand to Pilar.

"Hola," he said to Robert Jordan and shook his hand and looked him in the face. His eyes were yellow as a cat's and flat as a reptile's eyes are.

El Sordo nodded. "Ingles?" he asked.

"Americano."

"Same as Ingles. When blow bridge?"

"You know about the bridge?"

El Sordo nodded.

"Day after tomorrow morning."

"Good," said El Sordo. "Pablo?" he asked Pilar.

She shook her head. El Sordo grinned and looked at Robert Jordan and said, "Much troop movement."

"Where?"

"Segovia. Planes you saw."

"Bad, eh?"

"Bad. Why not blow bridge tonight?"

"I have my orders."

"I don't like it," El Sordo said.

"Nor I," said Robert Jordan. "How many men have you?"

"Eight," said El Sordo.

"To cut the telephone, attack the post, take it and fall back on the bridge," said Robert Jordan.

"It is easy."

"It will all be written out."

"Don't trouble."

"And afterwards for the retreat? Where are we going to go when this is done?" Pilar shouted into El Sordo's ear.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"All that must be arranged," the woman said.

"Of course," said El Sordo. "There are many places. You know Gredos? We can get to Gredos as well as to anywhere else, traveling at night. Here it is very dangerous now."

"But I think you could operate very well from the Gredos," said Robert Jordan.

"What?" El Sordo said and looked at him with his eyes very flat. There was no friendliness in the way he asked the question.

"You could raid more effectively from there," Robert Jordan said.

"So," El Sordo said. "You know Gredos?"

"Yes. You could operate against the main line of the railway from there. You are more useful there," Robert Jordan said.

They had both gotten sullen as he talked.

I have made a mistake, Robert Jordan thought to himself. When I should have flattered them I told them what I think they should do and now they are furious.

"Listen," Pilar said to him. "How are your nerves?"

"All right," said Robert Jordan.

"Because the last dynamiter they sent, Kashkin, although a formidable technician, was very nervous."

"We have nervous ones," Robert Jordan said. "Now he is dead."

"How was that?" El Sordo asked.

"I shot him because he was too badly wounded to travel and he did not want to be left behind."

"Was it a train?" El Sordo asked.

"Yes," said Robert Jordan.

"Are you sure your nerves are all right?" Pilar said to Robert Jordan.

"Yes," he told her, "and I think that when we terminate this of the bridge you should go to the Gredos."

As he said that, the woman started to curse in a flood of obscene language.

El Sordo shook his head at Robert Jordan and grinned, and Robert Jordan knew that it was all right again now. Finally she stopped cursing, took a drink of water and said calmly, "We'll see what happens."

"You see, Comrade," El Sordo explained, "it is the morning that is difficult." He was not talking the pidgin Spanish now and was calm. "I understand your needs and I know the posts must be exterminated and the bridge covered while you do your work. This is easy to do before daylight or at daylight. But to leave afterward and get out of this country in daylight presents a grave problem."

"Clearly, I have thought of it. It is daylight for me also."

"But you are one," El Sordo said. "We are various. You could not do it at night?"

"I would be shot for it."

"It is possible we will all be shot for it if you do it in the daytime."

"For me that is less important once the bridge is blown, but I see your viewpoint. Can you work out a retreat for daylight?"

"Certainly," El Sordo said. "We will work out such a retreat. But you speak of going to Gredos. To arrive at Gredos would be a miracle."

Robert Jordan said nothing.

"Listen to me," El Sordo said. "We exist here by a miracle. By a miracle of laziness and stupidity of the fascists which they will remedy in time. We must think much about this. Let us eat now. I have talked much."

"I appreciate your aid and your loyalty," Robert Jordan said.

They left El Sordo's after eating and started down the trail. It was hot in the late May afternoon and the woman stopped. Her face looked pale.

Robert Jordan said, "Let us rest a minute. We go too fast."

"Rest, Pilar," Maria said. "You look bad."

"All right," said Pilar and the three sat down under a pine tree. "Come here, guapa, and put your head in my lap," said Pilar.

Maria moved close to her, put her arms out and folded them as one does who goes to sleep without a pillow and lay with her head on her arms. She turned her face up at Pilar and smiled at her but the big woman looked at the mountains.

"You can have her in a little while, Ingles," she said.

"Do not talk like that," Maria said.

"Yes, he can have you. But I am jealous," Pilar said and ran her finger around the lobe of the girl's ear. "I am very jealous. I love you and he can have you."

"I love you, too," said Maria.

"Now I will leave the two of you. I am only jealous that you are nineteen. It is not a jealousy which lasts. You will not be nineteen always. Now I go." She walked off into the heather toward the stream.

Robert Jordan and Maria walked through the heather of the mountain meadow and from the palm of her hand against the palm of his, from their fingers locked together, something came that was like a current that filled his whole body with an aching hollowness of wanting. He held her to him and kissed her. He felt her trembling as he kissed her and he held her body tight to him. Then her lips were on his throat, and he put her down and said, "Maria, oh, my Maria."

Then he said, "Where should we go?"

She did not say anything but slipped her hand inside of his shirt and he felt her undoing the shirt buttons.

There was the smell of heather and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots. They were both there and he felt time had stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.

Then he was lying on his side, his head deep in the heather, and the girl was lying opposite him with her eyes still shut and then she opened them and smiled at him and he said very tiredly, "Hello, rabbit." And she smiled and said, "Hello, my Ingles."

As they were walking along the stream he said, "Maria, I love you and you are so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with you that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving you."

"Oh," she said. "I die each time. Do you not die?"

"No. Almost. But did you feel the earth move?"

"Yes. As I died."

He was walking beside her but his mind was thinking of the problem of the bridge now. Then he started to think of all the things that might go wrong.

Stop it, he told himself. You mustn't worry. You know the things that may happen. Now he was forced to use these people whom he liked as you should use troops toward whom you have no feeling at all if you are to be successful. Pablo was the smartest. He knew how bad it was instantly. The woman was all for it, and still was. Sordo recognized it instantly and would do it but he did not like it any more than he, Robert Jordan, liked it. No, he would carry out the orders and it was bad luck that you liked the people you must do it with.

And what are you going to do afterwards? I am going back and earn my living teaching Spanish as before, I am going to write a true book and I am going to marry Maria. Spanish girls make wonderful wives. I've never had one so I know.

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be thankful for it. I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years; granted that your life has been full and that you have reached a certain age. If you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had better love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation will lack in duration and in continuity. There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, nor is there any tomorrow. So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long and happy life. Hasn't it been happy lately?

"I love you, rabbit," he said to the girl.

He and Maria talked and made their way back to the camp. Before reaching the camp they met Pilar. The sun had clouded over and as Robert Jordan looked back up toward the mountains the sky was now heavy and gray.

"It will snow," said Pilar.

"It can't be snow," he said.

"Just the same," she said to him, "it will snow."

Chapter 6

By the time they reached the camp it was snowing and the flakes were dropping diagonally through the pines 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 of the road?"

"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."

Pablo looked at the snow that was blowing fast now past the mouth of the cave and said, "You do not like the snow?"

Robert Jordan swore and Pablo laughed.

"With this your offensive fails, Ingles," he said. "Come into the cave."

"This snow," Robert Jordan said. "You think there will be much?"

"Much," Pablo said contentedly. Then he called to Pilar, "You don't like it, woman, either? Now that you command you do not like this snow?"

"If it snows, it snows."

"Drink some wine, Ingles," Pablo said. "I have been drinking all day waiting for the snow."

"Give me a cup," Robert Jordan said.

"To the snow," Pablo said and touched cups with him. Robert Jordan looked him in the eyes and clinked his cup. You bleary-eyed murderous fool, he thought. I'd like to clink this cup against your teeth. Take it easy, he told himself.

He went over to Maria and said, "Very beautiful, the snow."

"But it is had for the work, isn't it?" she asked him. "Aren't you worried?"

"Worrying is no good."

The drunken man looked at him and grinned.

"No offensive. No aviones. No bridge. Just snow," Pablo said.

"You expect it to last a long time?" Robert Jordan said.

"Tonight and tomorrow, yes."

"What makes you think so?"

"I transported goods across the mountains with the big carts before the camions came into use. In that business we learned the weather."

"But what were you doing before the movement?"

"I worked for a horse contractor of Zaragoza. He furnished horses for the bull rings. It was then that I met Pilar who was with the matador Finito de Palencia."

"He wasn't much of a matador," one of the brothers said.

"No?" Pilar said. "He wasn't much of a matador?"

She saw Finito, the not-so-good matador, now standing in front of the bull. She saw him clearly now and she heard his thin, clear voice as he turned his head and looked toward the people above the red fence and said, "Let's see if we can kill him like this!" She could hear the voice and see all his movements inside the ring.

"He was a good matador," Pablo said. "He was handicapped by his short stature."

"And clearly he had tuberculosis," Primitivo said.

"Tuberculosis?" Pilar said. "Who wouldn't have tuberculosis in this country where no poor man can ever hope to make money unless he is a criminal or a bullfighter, or a tenor in the opera? In a country where the bourgeoisie over-eat so that their stomachs are ruined and the poor are hungry from their birth until the day they die. He was short of stature and he had a thin voice and much fear of bulls. Never have I seen a man with more fear before the bullfight and never have I seen a man with less fear in the ring."

"I remember," the first brother said. "I was in the ring. It was a soap-colored one with a curly forehead and with very high horns. It was the last bull he killed in Valladolid."

"Exactly," Pilar said. "And afterwards the club of enthusiasts who had taken his name for their club had the head of the bull mounted and presented it to him at a small banquet. During the meal they had the head on the wall, but it was covered with a cloth. I was at the table and others were there too. Finito did not eat much because he had received a palotaxo, a blow from the horn of a bull he had killed in his last corrida of the year at Zaragoza, and even now he could not hold food on his stomach. He would put his handkerchief to his mouth and deposit a quantity of blood in it at intervals throughout the banquet. He was suffering much during the banquet.

"The president of the club began the speech which was to precede the uncovering of the head. I was watching Finito who was making use of his, no, my, napkin and sinking further back in his chair and staring with horror and fascination at the shrouded bull's head on the wall opposite him.

"So the president of the club reached the end of the speech and then, with everybody cheering him, he pulled the purple shroud off the head. Everyone applauded and Finito sank further back in the chair and said, "No. No." and looked at the bull and pulled further back and then a big blob of blood came out and he didn't even put up the napkin and it slid down his chin."

"How long after that did he die?" Primitivo asked.

"That winter," Pilar said.

Just then the gypsy came in the door. He was covered with snow.

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 hut."

"And the road?" Robert Jordan asked.

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

"Let us go for the old man," Robert Jordan said.

"Not me," the gypsy said. "I go now for the fire and the hot soup. Who wants to guide the Ingles?" he asked.

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

Anselmo was sitting on the trunk of a big tree and the snow blew past on either side. If I stay here much longer I will freeze, he thought. The Ingles told me to stay until someone comes but he did not know about the storm.

Anselmo was so cold now that he decided he had best go to camp before it was dark. But the Ingles told me to stay, he thought. Even now he may be on the way here and, if I leave this place, he may lose himself in the snow searching for me. All through this war we have suffered from a lack of discipline and from disobeying orders and I will wait for him a while still. But if he does not come soon I must go in spite of all orders. Across the road at the mill the fascists are warm and comfortable, he thought, and tomorrow night we will kill them. It is a strange thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all and they are the same men that we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing.

"Hola, viejo," Robert Jordan whispered and clapped him on the back. "How's the old one?"

"Very cold," Anselmo said.

"Come on," Robert Jordan whispered. "Go to camp and get warm. It was a crime to leave you here so long." He stayed as he was told, Robert Jordan thought. That's the rarest thing that can happen in Spain. They slowly walked up the hill in the snow to the camp.

They reached the smoky warmth of the cave and Pilar said, "El Sordo was here. He has gone to look for horses."

Pablo was sitting at the table and grinned and waved his hand.

"It's still falling."

Robert Jordan nodded at him.

"Let me take your shoes and dry them over the fire," said Maria.

"Be careful not to burn them," said Robert Jordan.

"Let me take your jacket," said Maria. "Do not let the snow melt on it. Go and dry your feet and let me bring you something warm to drink."

"You would think a man had never wet his feet before," Pilar said. "Roberto," Maria said, "are you ready to eat?"

"Have the others eaten?"

"All except you, Anselmo and Fernando."

"Let us eat then. And you?"

"Afterwards, with Pilar."

"Eat now with us."

"No, it would not be well. Here it is better to eat after."

"Eat with him," Pablo said. "Drink with him. Sleep with him. Die with him. Follow the customs of his country."

"Are you drunk?" Robert Jordan said.

Pablo looked at him happily and said, "Yes."

"I liked you better when you were barbarous," the woman said. "Of all men the drunkard is the worst. He stinks and vomits in his own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol."

"Listen, Ingles," Agustin said. "How did you happen to come to Spain? Pay no attention to Pablo. He is drunk."

"I came first twelve years ago to study the country and the language," Robert Jordan said. "I teach Spanish in a university."

"But why Spanish?" Andres asked. "Would it not be easier to teach English since you are English?"

"He speaks Spanish as we do," Anselmo said. "Why should he not teach Spanish?"

"Yes. But it is, in a way, presumptuous for a foreigner to teach Spanish,"

Fernando said. "I mean nothing against you, Don Roberto."

"Mule," Pilar said. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans who speak English."

"Do you think this snow will last?" Robert Jordan asked Pablo.

"Ask another. I am not your service of information. Ask the woman," said Pablo.

I'd like to kill him, Robert Jordan was thinking. I don't know what he is going to do, but it is nothing good. Day after tomorrow we want to blow up the bridge and this man is bad and he is a danger to the success of the whole operation. Let us get it over with.

"Cobarde," Robert Jordan said to him.

"It is very possible," Pablo said. "But I am not to be provoked."

"Shut your mouth," Robert Jordan said. "I provoke you for myself."

"It is not worth the trouble," Pablo told him. "I do not provoke."

He's rare, all right, Robert Jordan thought, and smart, and very complicated. "Here's to you," Robert Jordan said, and dipped a cup into the wine bowl. Betrayal wouldn't amount to anything without all these pledges, he thought. "Salud, Pablo," Robert Jordan said. "I'm learning much from you."

"I am teaching the professor," Pablo nodded his head. "Come on, Don Roberto, we will be friends."

"We are good friends already."

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

"What is the matter, negro? Don't you like to see friendship between Don Roberto and me?"

"Watch your mouth about calling me negro." Agustin went over to him and stood in front of Pablo holding his hands low.

"So you are called," Pablo said.

"Not by you."

Agustin hit him hard across the mouth with his left hand. Pablo sat there. The corners of his mouth were wine-stained and his expression did not change, but Robert Jordan watched his eyes change.

Agustfn hit him again on the mouth with his closed fist. Robert Jordan was holding his pistol in his hand under the table. He pushed Maria away with his left hand.

The round-headed man sat staring at Agustin from his flat little eyes. He licked his lips, put up an arm and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked down and saw the blood on his hand.

"I am not a fool. I do not provoke."

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.

"Nobody here has the courage to kill me. I am going to the horses. Even from behind they are better looking and have more sense than these people," he said and grinned. "Speak to them of the bridge, Roberto. Explain their duties in the attack. Tell them about the retreat. Where will you take your patriots after the bridge? I have thought of it all day while I was drinking."

"What have you thought?" Agustfn asked.

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

"Get out," Pilar shouted.

Agustfn was worried.

Chapter 7

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

"What will he do?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Anything. He is capable of doing anything," the woman said. "Kill him. I am for it now."

"I was against it," Agustin said. "Now I am for it."

"Let all speak," Pilar said and her voice was tired. "You, Andres?"

"Matailo," one brother said.

"Eladio?"

"Equally," the other brother said.

"Primitivo?"

"Equally."

"Fernando?"

"Equally."

"I am ready to do it. Since you are all decided that it should be done, I will do it tonight," Robert Jordan said.

He saw Pilar looking at him, her fingers on her lips. She was looking toward the door.

Pablo entered and grinned at them all.

"You are speaking of me?" he addressed them all. "I am interrupting?"

No one answered him and he walked over to the table. He picked up his cup and dipped it into the wine bowl.

"Agustin," Robert Jordan said. "I wish to speak to you."

Robert Jordan walked to the opening of the cave and Agustin followed him

"Have you forgotten what is in the sacks?" Robert Jordan said, speaking so low that no one could hear.

"Milk!" Agustin said. "One becomes accustomed and one forgets."

"I, too, forgot."

"What fools we are." Agustin swung back to the table and sat down. "Have a drink, Pablo, old boy," he said. "How were the horses?"

"Very good," Pablo said. "And it is snowing less."

"Do you think it will stop?"

"Yes," Pablo said. "The wind will blow but the snow is going."

"Do you think it will clear tomorrow?" Robert Jordan asked him.

"Yes," Pablo said. "I believe it will be cold and clear. This wind is changing direction."

Look at him, Robert Jordan thought. Now he is friendly. He has the face and the body of a pig and I know he is many times a murderer and yet has the sensitivity of a good aneroid. He pushes his hatred with insults to the point where you are ready to do away with him and when he sees that this point has been reached he drops it and starts all new and clean again.

"We will have good weather for it," Pablo said to Robert Jordan.

"We," Pilar said. "We?"

"Yes, we," Pablo grinned at her and drank some wine. "Why not? I thought it over while I was outside. Why should we not agree?"

"In what?" the woman asked.

"In all," Pablo said to her. "In this of the bridge. With the change of the weather I am with you. Before I was drunk, and now I am not drunk. I have changed my mind."

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

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

"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. 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.

It is like a merry-go-round, Robert Jordan thought. 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.

Robert Jordan was sitting at the table with his notebook 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.

Now he had finished the demolition project and he took a new page of the notebook and started to write out the operation orders. He was thinking clearly and well on these and what he wrote pleased him.

I think that is all, he said to himself. It is perfectly clear and I do not think there are any holes in it. He shut the notebook and looked up at Maria. "Did you make anything out of all that?"

"No, Roberto," the girl said and put her hand on his. "Have you finished?"

"Yes. Now it is all written out and ordered." He sat back and started thinking.

"What do you do sitting there?" Maria asked him.

"Nothing," he said. "I'm thinking."

"About the bridge?"

"No. The bridge is terminated. Of you and of a hotel in Madrid where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some time."

"Are there many Russians in Madrid?"

"No. Very few."

"Do you like the Russians? The one who was here was a Russian," Maria said.

"He was a good friend and comrade of mine," Robert Jordan said. "I cared for him very much."

"Sure," Pilar said. "But you shot him."

The card players looked up from the table and the gypsy asked, "Is it true, Roberto?"

"Yes," he said. "At his request. He was badly wounded."

"All the time he was with us he talked of such a possibility. What a rare thing," the gypsy said.

"You are a professor and all. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him?" Andres said.

"I believe he cannot see it," Robert Jordan said. "That is ignorance and superstition. I believe that fear produces evil visions. I do not believe in the supernatural things."

"But your Russian comrade saw his fate clearly," the gypsy said. "And that was how it happened."

"He did not see it," Robert Jordan said.

"You are a miracle of deafness," Pilar said. "It is not that you are stupid. You are simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard it, that such a thing does not exist. I saw the death of your Russian comrade in his face as though it were burned there with a branding iron. And what is more he smelt of death."

"He smelt of death," Robert Jordan jeered. "Of fear maybe. There is a smell to fear."

"De la muerte," Pilar said.

"Pablo, do you believe this?"

"I do not know," Pablo said. "I am more of your opinion. No supernatural thing has ever happened to me. But fear, yes certainly. Plenty. But I believe that Pilar can read events from the hand. If she does not lie perhaps it is true that she has smelt such a thing."

"What she says is true, Ingles," the gypsy said. "It is a well-known thing among us."

"I believe nothing of it," Robert Jordan said.

"I am against all such wizardry. But Pilar has the fame of being very advanced in such things," Anselmo said.

Robert Jordan went to the mouth of the cave, lifted the blanket and looked out. It was clear and cold in the night outside and no snow was falling. The air came into his lungs sharp and cold as he breathed.

He dropped the blanket and came back into the cave. "It is clear," he said. "The storm is over."

Now in the night he lay and waited for the girl to come to him.

The night was clear and his head felt as clear and cold as the air. He smelled the odor of the pine branches under him and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. Pilar, he thought. Pilar and the smell of death. This is the smell I love.

I suppose she won't come until they are all asleep, he thought. The night is half gone. Oh, Maria. Come now quickly, Maria, for there is little time. Suddenly he felt a panic that she might not come.

Then he saw her coming. She came running, carrying something in her hands. Then she was kneeling by the robe, slapping snow from her feet. She kissed him and handed him her bundle.

"Put it with your pillow," she said. "I took these off there to save time."

"You came barefoot through the snow?"

"Yes," she said, "and wearing only my wedding shirt."

He held her close and tight in his arms and she rubbed her head against his chin.

"Avoid the feet," she said. "They are very cold, Roberto."

"Put them here and warm them."

"No," she said. "They will warm quickly. But now say that you love me."

"I love you."

"Good. Good. Good."

"I love you, little rabbit."

"Do you love my wedding shirt?"

"It is the same one as always."

"Yes. As last night. It is my wedding shirt."

"Take off your wedding shirt, if you won't be cold."

"Cold? I am on fire."

"I, too. But afterwards you won't be cold?"

"No. Afterwards we will be as one animal of the forest and be so close that neither one can tell that one of us is one and not the other. Can you not feel my heart be your heart?"

"Yes. There is no difference."

During the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. But she was sleeping well and peacefully and she did not wake. So he rolled onto his side and lay there in the night thinking.

Chapter 8

A warm wind came with daylight and he could hear the snow falling from the trees. Then he heard a horse coming,

"Maria," he said, and shook the girl's shoulder to waken her. "Stay under the robe," and he buttoned his shirt with one hand and held the automatic pistol in the other. Then he saw the horseman coming through the trees. The horseman was almost opposite him now. He was riding a big gray horse and he had a young, hard face. He saw Robert Jordan and reached his hand down toward his scabbard. Aiming at the center of his chest, Robert Jordan fired. The pistol roared in the snowy woods. The horse fell and the young man slid over toward the ground, his right foot caught in the stirrup.

People were coming out of the cave. Robert Jordan unrolled his trousers and began to put them on.

"Get dressed," he said to Maria.

Overhead he heard the noise of a plane flying very high.

"Go catch that horse," he called to Primitivo. Then, "Who was on guard at the top?"

"Rafael," Pilar said from the cave. She stood there, her hair still down her back in two braids.

"There's cavalry out," Robert Jordan said. "Get your gun up there."

He heard Pilar call, "Agustin," into the cave. Two men came running out, one with the automatic rifle on his shoulder and the other with the pans.

He looked through the trees to where Primitivo was twisting the rider's foot out of the stirrup. The body lay face down in the snow and Primitivo was going through the pockets.

They were all out of the cave now, standing there with the carbines and with grenades on their belts. Robert Jordan went into the cave, found his two packs and opened the one with the machine gun in it. He locked the pack and started for the door.

"Andres, get the horses ready. If you hear firing bring them up to the woods behind the gap. Come with your arms and leave the women to hold the horses. Fernando, make sure that my sacks are brought."

"Maria and I will prepare all for leaving," Pilar said.

Pablo rode ahead and the two men followed one behind the other in order not to leave tracks in the snow.

Robert Jordan looked back and saw Maria standing with Pilar. Then she came running up the trail.

"Can I go with you?"

"No. Help Pilar."

She was walking behind him and put her hand on his arm.

"I'm coming."

"No," he said. "But take good care of your wedding shirt."

"Kiss me," she said, "if you go."

"You are shameless," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Totally."

He looked at her and smiled through his thinking.

"When you hear firing," he said, "come with the horses. Help Pilar with my sacks."

He looked back and saw her standing there in the first morning light. She turned and walked back down the trail, her head down.

"Cut some pine branches," Robert Jordan said to Primitivo. "I do not like the gun there," he said to Agustin.

"Why?"

"Place it over there," Robert Jordan pointed, "and later I will tell you."

He looked out across the narrow opening, noting the height of the rocks on either side.

"The gun must be farther out. Good. Put the stones there. Leave room for the muzzle to swing."

Robert Jordan watched Pablo riding down the slope and disappearing in the trees. I hope he doesn't run into cavalry, Robert Jordan thought.

Primitivo brought the pine branches and Robert Jordan put them through the snow into the earth, so that they covered the gun from either side.

If we can get through today without fighting we can manage the whole operation tomorrow with what we have. I know we can. If we don't have to fight today. God help us if we have to fight today.

Two crows circled overhead and then settled in a pine tree below. Another crow joined them and Robert Jordan thought: those are my sentinels. As long as those are quiet there is no one coming through the trees.

Agustin and Primitivo came up with the branches and Robert Jordan built a good blind that would conceal the gun from the air and would look natural from the forest.

"Do not fire if you see anyone from there," Robert Jordan said. "Roll a small rock down as a warning, and signal to us with your rifle, so," he lifted the rifle and held it over his head as though guarding it. "Thus for numbers," he lifted the rifle up and down. "If they are on foot point the rifle muzzle at the ground. Do not fire from there until you hear the gun fire. Shoot at a man's knees when you shoot from that height. If you hear me whistle come to these rocks where the gun is."

"I understand," Primitivo said and climbed up into the high rocks with his carbine. Robert Jordan explained to Agustin about the gun.

All this time he had been watching the crows. Now one bird cawed and flew up. But the other crow still stayed in the tree.

"I have a massacre for you tomorrow morning," Robert Jordan said. "It is necessary to exterminate the post at the sawmill."

"I am ready," Agustin said.

"Also the post at the hut below the bridge."

"Both?" Agustin asked.

"Not both. They will be done at the same time," Robert Jordan said.

"Then for either one," Agustin said. "I have wished for action in this war."

Then he heard the first sounds of a plane coming.

"They cannot see us," he said to Agustin. "But it is well to keep down."

As Robert Jordan looked, he saw the crow fly up. He flew away through the trees without cawing.

Robert Jordan was looking ahead across the open space toward the forest. He saw nothing and heard nothing but he could feel his heart beating and then he heard the clack of stone on stone and the clicks of a small rock falling. He saw Primitive's rifle raised and lowered four times horizontally.

"Cavalry," he said softly to Agustin.

Robert Jordan watched them. Finally the four of them trotted into the forest where Pablo's trail led.

"We would have killed all four," Agustin said quietly.

"Yes," Robert Jordan whispered. "But with the firing who knows what might have come?"

Just then he heard the noise of another rock falling and he looked up to where Primitivo was raising and lowering his rifle in what seemed an infinity of quick movements. Pablo has forty-five minutes' start, Robert Jordan thought, and then he heard the noise of cavalry coming. There were twenty men on horseback, armed and uniformed, and they went into the forest.

"There were many," Agustin said.

"We would have had to deal with them if we had destroyed the others," Robert Jordan said softly. There was a hollow feeling in his chest.

"What do you think of their chance of catching Pablo?" Robert Jordan asked Agustin.

"Pablo is very smart," Agustin said.

"Is he as smart as they say?"

"He is much smarter. If he were not smart he would have died last night. In politics and in guerilla warfare the first thing is to continue to exist. Look how he continued to exist last night."

Robert Jordan knew how smart Pablo was. It was Pablo who had seen instantly all that was wrong with the orders for the destruction of the bridge. So now he dropped the matter and said to Anselmo, who had joined them, "Well, what about going into La Granja in daylight?"

"It is not bad," the old man said.

"How will you go?"

"Above and down through the forest."

"But if they catch you."

"I have papers."

"So have we all but you must eat the wrong ones quickly."

Anselmo tapped the breast pocket of his smock.

"How many times have I contemplated that," he said.

"In my left breast pocket I carry our papers. In my right the fascist papers," Robert Jordan said.

Now the morning was late May, the sky was high and clear and the wind blew warm on Robert Jordan's shoulders. The snow was clearing and they were eating breakfast. There were two big sandwiches of meat and cheese each. As they spoke Robert Jordan heard something. It was a noise far off that came above the sound of the warm wind in the trees. It came again. It was the precise, crackling sound of automatic rifle fire. Robert Jordan looked up at Primitivo his face looking toward them, his hand near to his ear. As he looked Primitivo pointed up the mountain toward the highest country.

"They are fighting at El Sordo's," Robert Jordan said.

"Then let us go to help them," Agustin said.

"No," Robert Jordan said. "We stay here. Anselmo, you stay there with Agustin with the gun. He must not fire unless cavalry is actually entering. If they merely present themselves he must leave them alone as we did before. If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod for him and hand him the pans when they are empty."

Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the boulders. Then he stood beside Primitivo who said, "They are attacking Sordo. What must we do?"

"Nothing," Robert Jordan said.

"We have to help them," Primitivo said.

"It is impossible," Robert Jordan told him. "I have expected this all morning."

"How?"

"They went to steal horses last night. The snow stopped and they tracked them up there."

"But we have to help them. Those are our comrades," Primitivo said.

Robert Jordan put his hand on the other man's shoulder.

"We can do nothing," he said. They heard the noise of hand grenades and automatic rifle fire.

"They are lost," Robert Jordan said. "If we go there we are lost, too. It would be useless. Here comes the woman."

Pilar was climbing up to them and breathing heavily from the climb.

"How does the combat seem?" she asked.

"Very bad."

"Can we do anything for El Sordo?"

"Nothing."

"Pobre." she said. "I was fond of Sordo. Are you sure?"

"Yes. I have seen much cavalry."

Just then Robert Jordan heard the plane high overhead. He looked up and in the high sky it looked like the same observation plane that he had seen earlier in the morning. Now it was moving in the direction of where El Sordo was being attacked.

Chapter 9

El Sordo was making his fight on a hilltop. He did not like this hill but he had had no choice. He had picked it and galloped for it, the automatic rifle heavy on his back, the horse laboring, the sack of grenades swinging against one side, the sack of automatic rifle pans banging against the other, and Joaquin and Ignacio stopping and firing to give him time to get the gun in place.

There had still been snow then, the snow that had ruined them. When his horse was hit Sordo had pulled him along by the bridle as he climbed, with bullets hitting the rocks. Then he had shot him quickly, expertly, and tenderly. He fired at what came up the hill, forcing them to scatter.

There were two more horses dead along the hill and three more were dead here on the hilltop. He had only succeeded in stealing three horses last night.

Of the five men who had reached the hilltop three were wounded. Sordo was wounded in the calf of his leg and in two places in his left arm. He was very thirsty and he had a bad headache. As he lay waiting for the planes to come he thought of a joke in Spanish: "Hay que tomar la muerte como si fuera aspirina," which means, "You will have to take death as an aspirin." He grinned inside his pain and nausea.

The five men were spread out like the points of a five-pointed star. "Sordo, when do you think the planes will come?" one man asked.

"Any time," said Sordo.

"Do you think they will attack again?"

"Only if the planes do not come."

He was in much pain. He looked up at the bright, blue early summer sky as he raised the leather wine bottle with his good arm. He was fifty-two years old and he was sure this was the last time he would see that sky.

He was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being trapped on this hill. Dying was nothing and he had no picture or fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was a horse between your legs.

Just then someone shouted from down the slope.

"Listen, bandits!" the voice came from behind the rocks. "Surrender now before the planes blow you to pieces."

"Maybe the planes aren't coming," El Sordo said. "Don't answer them and do not fire."

"Bandidos! Surrender now before we blow you to little pieces."

"Let no one move," Sordo whispered.

"Bandidos! Surrender!" the voice from behind the rocks again.

Sordo grinned. This is better than aspirin, he thought. How many will we get? Can they be that foolish?

Below the officer in command was speaking to the sniper. "They are surrounded. They have nothing to expect but to die."

The sniper said nothing.

"What do you think?" the officer asked.

"Nothing," the sniper said.

"For me it is a trick," the second officer said.

"But if it is not? What ridicule, besieging dead men."

"We have done something worse than ridiculous already," the second officer said. "Look at that slope."

He looked up the slope to where the dead lay.

"Bandidos!" the captain shouted suddenly, getting to his feet.

"Fire, cowards, if you are alive," he shouted and stood there looking at the hilltop.

"There is no one alive up there," the captain said. "You," he said to the sniper, "go up there and see."

The sniper looked down and said nothing.

"Why don't you go?"

"I am afraid, my captain," the soldier said with dignity.

"It is possible the soldier is right," the lieutenant said.

"They are all dead," the captain said.

"You mean our comrades on the hill?" the lieutenant said.

"Don't be a fool. I tell you the Reds are dead."

He stood on the gray boulder and waved both his arms and said, "Shoot me! Kill me!"

On the hilltop El Sordo lay behind the dead horse and grinned. "Lieutenant," the captain said happily, "you and I will go up there."

"Not me."

"What?" The captain had his pistol out again.

"I will go if you order me to. But under protest," Lieutenant Berrendo told the captain.

"Then I will go alone," the captain said. "I smell cowards here."

Holding the pistol in his right hand, he strode steadily up the slope. El Sordo lay behind the horse watching the captain come up the hill. Only one, he thought. We get only one. Look what an animal. Look at him stride forward. This one I take with me on the trip. This one coming now makes the same voyage I do. Come right along, Comrade Voyager.

He pulled the trigger of the automatic rife gently. The captain lay on his face on the hillside.

From the hilltop Sordo shouted, "Bandidos! Shoot me! Kill me!"

Just then the others on the hill heard the first sound of the coming of the planes.

El Sordo did not hear them. He felt a touch on his shoulder and he turned and saw the gray, frightened face of Joaquin and he looked where the boy was pointing and saw the three planes coming.

"Help me to pull this out," he said to Joaquin and the boy dragged the automatic rifle clear from the horse and the rock. The planes were coming on steadily.

"Lie on your backs to fire at them," Sordo said. "Fire ahead of them as they come. Ignacio, put the gun on Joaquin's shoulder."

Joaquin began to pray. There were explosions around him. Then there was a whistle in the air and a red black roar. The earth moved under his knees and then hit him in the face and Ignacio was lying on him. The planes came back three times and bombed the hilltop but no one on the hilltop knew it.

Lieutenant Berrendo walked up to the hilltop. No one was alive except the boy Joaquin, who was unconscious under the dead body of Ignacio. Lieutenant Berrendo made the sign of the cross and then shot him in the back of the head, quickly and gently. He stood on the hilltop and looked at his own dead.

"Take that one, too," he said. "The one with his hands on the automatic rifle. That should be Sordo. No. Cut the head off and wrap it in a poncho. Take all the heads."

Then he made the sign of the cross again and walked down the hill. He did not wish to stay to see his orders being carried out.

After the planes went away Robert Jordan and Primitivo heard the firing start and his heart seemed to start again with it. Then everything was quiet again and he knew that it was over.

Maria came up from the camp with a tin bucket of stewed hare with mushrooms in the rich sauce and a sack with bread, a leather wine bottle, plates, cups and spoons.

"What did the aviation do?" she asked, her eyes frightened.

"Bombed Sordo," Robert Jordan said.

"Are they still fighting?"

"No. It is over."

"Oh," she said and bit her lip.

"I have no appetite," Primitivo said.

"Eat anyway," Robert Jordan told him.

"I could not swallow food."

"Take a drink of this man," Robert Jordan said and handed him the wine bottle. "Then eat."

"This of Sordo has taken away desire," Primitivo said. "You eat."

Maria went over to him and put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Eat, old one," she said. "Each one should take care of his strength."

Primitivo took the wine bottle and then filled his plate and began to eat.

Maria sat down and put her arm around Robert Jordan's shoulder.

"You may stay here, if you want," he said after the food was all eaten.

"No," she said. "I must go to Pilar. She is giving me instruction."

"What does she give you?"

"Instruction." She smiled, kissed him and left.

An hour passed when he saw them coming over the top of the hill and he picked up his binoculars. The first two riders came into sight on the slope of the high hill. Then there were four more horsemen coming down, and then he saw the double column of men and horses. Then came the horses with their burdens tied across the saddles. He could not see at that distance that one saddle had of a long rolled poncho. It carried the heads of the men. Sordo's automatic rifle was lashed on top of the saddle.

Lieutenant Berrendo, who was riding at the head of the column, felt no arrogance. He felt only the hollowness that comes after action. He was thinking: taking the heads is barbarous. But proof and identification is necessary. I will have trouble enough about this. He rode out of the forest onto the yellow road that led into La Granja. It was here that Anselmo saw them ride past.

He counted the dead and the wounded and he recognized Sordo's automatic rifle. He did not know what the poncho was, but when, on his way home, he came onto the hill where Sordo had fought, he knew at once what the poncho contained. 1

He walked as fast as he could to bring the news. And as he walked he prayed for the souls of Sordo and his band. It was the first time he had prayed since the start of the movement.

He could not keep from thinking of the next day. So he thought: I will do exactly as the Ingles says. Help me, O Lord, tomorrow to behave as a man should in his last hours.

When he had reached the upper post Fernando asked, "Who's there?"

"It is I," he answered, "Anselmo."

"Good," Fernando said.

"You know about Sordo?" Anselmo asked Fernando.

"Pablo has told us all."

Robert Jordan looked up as Anselmo came in. Pablo stared straight at the table.

"I come from above," Anselmo said to Robert Jordan.

"Pablo has told us," Robert Jordan said.

"There were six dead on the hill and they had taken the heads," Anselmo said.

Robert Jordan nodded. Pablo sat there looking at the wine bowl and saying nothing. There was no expression on his face.

"Sit down," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. "What happened on the road, old one?"

"There was much movement," Anselmo said. "I have it all noted down as you showed me."

While Robert Jordan noted Anselmo told him everything he had seen move past him on the road. He told it from the beginning and in order with the wonderful memory of those who cannot read or write.

When he finished, he said, "That is all."

"It is enough," Robert Jordan said. "Who beside you has been through the lines to the side of the Republic?"

"Andres and Eladio."

"Which is the better of those two?"

"Andres."

"Then get Andres and I will write a message for him to give to General Golz. I will write it now and close it with this seal. Now go and get Andres."

Robert Jordan commenced writing in his notebook.

"Listen, Ingles there is no need to be disheartened. Without Sordo we have plenty of people to take the posts and blow your bridge," Pablo said.

"Good," Robert Jordan said and continued writing.

"Plenty," Pablo said. "I have admired your judgment much today. You are smarter than I am. I have confidence in you."

Robert Jordan was hardly listening because he was concentrating on his report to Golz. He was trying to write a short report and still convince them to cancel the attack. However, he did not want them to think that he had any fears about his mission.

This is my report to Golz, he thought. I do not blow the bridge until the attack starts. My orders are clear and if the attack is called off I blow nothing.

So now everything had been done that there was to do that night. All orders had been given. Everyone knew exactly what he was to do in the morning. Andres had been gone three hours. Either it would come now with the coming of daylight or it would not come. I believe that it will come, Robert Jordan told himself. Don't worry, he told himself. Look at the miracles that have happened before this. Either you will have to blow that bridge in the morning or you will not have to. It is not you who decides what shall be done. You follow orders.

He began thinking about his grandfather who had been such a good soldier and had fought for four years in the American Civil War. He thought about his father who had shot himself with grandfather's 32 caliber Smith and Wesson. He had forgiven his father and he had pitied him, but he was ashamed of him.

You better not think at all, he told himself. Soon you will be with Maria and you won't have to think.

Chapter 10

So now they were in the robe again together and it was late in the last night. Maria lay close against him.

"Roberto," Maria said very softy and kissed him. "I am sorry. I do not wish to disappoint you but I am not feeling very well tonight."

"That is of no importance. That is a passing thing. We are together when we lie together."

"Yes, but I am very sorry, Roberto."

"Let us talk together. I know you very little from talking."

"Should we speak of tomorrow and of your work?"

"No," he said. "Let us not talk about tomorrow nor what happened today. Are you afraid?"

"I am always afraid. But now I am afraid for you so much I do not think of me."

"You must not, rabbit. I have been in many things. And worse than this," he lied.

Then suddenly surrendering to something, to the luxury of going into unreality, he said, "Let us talk of us in Madrid."

"Good," she said. He stroked her head and kissed her and relaxed beside her, listening to the quiet of the night.

They talked about Madrid, imagined how it would be there and made plans for the future.

Then suddenly Maria said, "Listen. Pilar told me something-"

"Say it."

"No. It is better not to."

"What was it you were going to say?"

"Pilar told me that we would all die tomorrow and that you know it as well as she does and that you give it no importance. She says this not in criticism but in admiration."

"She said that?" he said. The crazy woman, he thought, and he said,

"That is more of her gypsy nonsense."

"Then you know no such thing?"

"Of course not."

But this time when he talked about Madrid there was no slipping into fantasy again. Now he was just lying to his girl and to himself to pass the night before battle and he knew it. He liked to do it, but all the luxury of the acceptance was gone.

God, he had pretended a lot tonight. And Pilar had been pretending all day. Sure. What if they were killed tomorrow? What did it matter as long as they did the bridge properly? That was all they had to do tomorrow. Maybe I have had all my life in three days, he thought. He kissed Maria who did not wake.

It was two o'clock in the morning when Pilar waked him.

"Pablo is gone," the big woman said to him.

Robert Jordan put on his trousers and shoes. Maria had not waked.

"When?" he asked.

"It must be an hour."

"And?"

"He has taken something that belongs to you," the woman said sadly.

"So. What?"

"I do not know," she told him. "Come and see."

Robert Jordan shone the torch on the two sacks that were at the head of Pilar's bed. There was a long slit from top to bottom in each one. He felt in the first sack, and it should not be very full. It was not very full. There was some wire in it still but the wooden box of the exploder was gone. So was the box with the detonators. So was the tin with the fuse. Then he felt in the other sack. It was still full of explosive. There might be one packet missing.

He stood up and turned to the woman.

"I thought you were guarding my things," he said, visibly upset.

"I slept with my head against them and one arm touching them," Pilar told him. "Pablo got up in the night and I said, 'Where do you go, Pablo?'

'To urinate,' he told me and I slept again. When I woke again and he was not there I worried and I felt for the sacks and found that there were the slit places and I came to you."

"Come on," Robert Jordan said.

They went to the meadow and found that two horses were gone.

"How long ago do you think he left?"

"It must have been an hour."

"Then that is that," Robert Jordan said. "I'm going to get what is left of my sacks and go back to bed."

"I will guard them."

"You've guarded them once already."

"There is nothing I would not do to bring back your property. We have both been betrayed by Pablo."

Robert Jordan realized that he should not be angry. He had to work with this woman.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "What is gone is of small importance. We shall improvise something that will do as well. Get some sleep, woman," he told her gently.

Robert Jordan lay in the robe beside Maria who was still sleeping. He was angry with himself. You told yourself the first time you saw him that when he would be friendly would be when the treachery would come. You damned fool.

Oh, the dirty, vile pig. Why was I such a fool as to leave them with that woman? The insane, egotistical pigs that have always governed Spain and ruled her armies.

His anger gradually subsided as he exaggerated more and more and spread his scorn so widely that he could no longer believe in it himself. If that were true what are you here for? It's not true and you know it.

He lay close to the girl now with his arms around her. 1

"It's all planned," he said softly against Maria's shoulder. "We'll be killed but we'll blow the bridge. You have not had to worry about it. Sleep well, my beloved."

Andres arrived at a government position.

"Don't shoot, Comrades," Andres shouted. "I want to come in."

"How many are you?" someone called from behind the wall.

"One. Me. Alone."

"Who are you?"

"Andres Lopez of Villaconejos. From the band of Pablo. With a message."

"Listen, fascist."

"I am not a fascist," Andres shouted. "I am a guerrillero from the band of Pablo.

"He's crazy," he heard someone say. "Throw a bomb at him."

"I have never heard of the band of Pablo," the man who was evidently in command said. "Put your rifle over your shoulder and use your hands to come through the wire."

When he had come through the wire he showed the commanding officer his papers. He examined them carefully.

"I have orders to deliver this message to the General commanding the Thirty-Fifty Division, which makes an attack at daylight in these hills and it is already late at night and I must go."

"What attack?"

"I know nothing."

"I distrust all of this greatly," the commanding officer said. "I will go with you myself to the Commander."

"Good," Andres said. "But we should go quickly."

They went on down the hill in the dark.

Robert Jordan lay with the girl and he watched time passing on his wrist watch. The morning would be coming fast now in this month. It was time to rise.

"Roberto," Maria said.

"Yes, guapa."

"Will we be together today?"

"After the start, yes."

"Not at the start?"

"No. You will be with the horses."

"But you will come fast when it is done?"

"Very fast," he said and grinned in the dark. "Come, let us go and eat."

In the cave Pilar had coffee ready in a pot. She was repairing the hole in one of Jordan's packs. The men drank their coffee and were nervous.

"Are you going to be throwing bombs, Ingles?" Agustin asked.

"Why not?" Robert Jordan said.

But crouched there, sorting out the grenades, what he was thinking was: it is impossible. How could I have deceived myself? We were as defeated when they attacked Sordo as Sordo was defeated when the snow stopped. It is that you can't accept it. You have to go on and make a plan that you know is impossible to carry out. You made it and now you know it is no good. You can take either of the posts with what you've got here. But you can't take them both. Pablo knew that all the time. You can't base an operation on the hope that a miracle will happen. Do you suppose there will be a miracle and Golz will get the message from Andres and stop it? If there isn't, you are going to kill them all with those orders. Maria too.

It was a night plan and it's morning. Night plans aren't any good in the morning. Take it easy, he told himself. There are always ways out.

Pilar came over to him with the bag of grenades.

"How does it seem to you now that it is really starting?"

"That we are few," Robert Jordan said to her quickly.

"To me, too," she said. "Very few."

"About that thing of the hand-"

"What thing of the hand?" he said angrily.

"Do not be angry. In regard to that thing of the hand. That is all gypsy nonsense that I make to give myself an importance. There is no such thing."

"Leave it alone," he said coldly.

"No," she said harshly and lovingly. "I care for you very much. Do not worry. We will all do very well."

"Of course we will," Robert Jordan said.

"When do we go?" Pilar asked.

"Robert Jordan looked at his watch and said, "Any time."

"Listen," Pilar began. Robert Jordan looked toward her and as he did he saw her mouth open and the unbelieving look come on her face and he reached for his pistol. There was Pablo, standing short and wide, looking toward no one in particular.

"You-" Pilar said to him unbelieving.

"Me," said Pablo evenly. He came into the cave.

"Hola, Ingles," he said. "I have five men from the bands of Elias and Alejandro above with their horses."

"And the exploder and the detonators?" Robert Jordan said.

"I threw them into the river," Pablo said still looking at no one. "But I have thought of a way to detonate using a grenade."

"So have I," Robert Jordan said.

He turned to Robert Jordan. "At the bottom I am not a coward."

But you are many other things, Robert Jordan thought. But I'm glad to see you.

"I have thought much since the thing of Sordo. I believe if we must finish we must finish together. But you, Ingles, I hate you for bringing this to us."

In the dark they came up the hill through the forest to the narrow pass at the top. They all had heavy loads and they climbed slowly. The horses had loads too.

Ever since Pablo had said he had five men Robert Jordan felt increasingly better. Seeing Pablo again had broken the pattern of tragedy into which the whole operation had seemed destined ever since the snow. Instead of the certainty of failure he felt confidence rising in him.

During the time that Robert Jordan had slept, the time he had spent planning the destruction of the bridge and the time that he had been with Maria, Andres had made slow progress. He had followed the company commander to battalion headquarters where the commander was filled with enthusiasm on hearing about his mission. This commander, who was named Gomez, cursed the company commander for his stupidity, patted Andres on the back and told him that he had always wanted to be a guerrillero.

Instead of sending Andres back to brigade headquarters with the motorcyclist, Gomez had decided to take him there himself in order to expedite things. With Andres holding tight onto the seat ahead of him, they roared, bumping down the mountain road between the row of big trees.

When they arrived at brigade headquarters Gomez said to a very sleepy officer, "Call the Lieutenant-Colonel. This is a matter of the utmost gravity. We have a message for General Golz who commands the attack that is to be made at dawn at Navacerrada."

"He is asleep," the officer said.

"Wake him up, for the love of God."

The officer looked at him with his droopy eyes and said, "All of you are crazy. I know of no General Golz nor of an attack."

"Wake the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said and Andres saw his mouth tightening.

The officer answered with an obscenity and Gomez took his pistol and held it against the officer's shoulder.

"Wake him or I'll kill you."

"Calm yourself," the officer said.

"Wake him."

The Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda, a short, gray-faced man, who had been in the army all his life, came into the room.

"What brings you, Gomez?" he asked. Gomez showed him Andres's papers and the message. He looked at the message hungrily, felt the seal, tested it with his forefinger and then handed both back to Andres.

"You had better take him, Gomez, on the motorcycle," the Lieutenant-Colonel said. "Write them a very strong Salvoconducto to the Estado Mayor of General Golz for me to sign and put on two seals," he said to the officer.

The officer showed him what he had typed and he read it over and signed it. "You must go now quickly," he said to Gomez and Andres. He shook hands with both of them.

After they went out he stood in front of the big map on the wall and studied the offensive possibilities in the country above Navacerrada.

"I am glad it is Golz and not me," he said.

Chapter 11

Pablo stopped and dismounted in the dark. Robert Jordan heard the creaking and the heavy breathing as they all dismounted. "Agustfn," Robert Jordan said in a whisper, "you and Anselmo come now with me to the bridge."

"Listen, woman," he said softly.

"What now?" she whispered in a low voice.

"You understand that there is to be no attack on the post until you hear the falling of the bombs?"

"How many times do you have to tell me?" Pilar said.

"Only to check," Robert Jordan said. "And after the destruction of the post you fall back onto the bridge and cover the road from above and my left flank."

"I have understood this since we were at Sordo's," Pilar whispered.

Robert Jordan went to where Pablo was tying the horses.

"Do you understand everything?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Why not?" Pablo said. "Destroy the post. Cut the wire. Fall back on the bridge. Cover the bridge until you blow it."

"And nothing to start until the commencement of the bombardment."

"Thus it is."

"Well, much luck," Robert Jordan said.

"We all go now." Pablo said. "Suerte, Ingles."

He put his hand out and said, "Suerte, Pablo," and their two hands gripped in the dark. Pablo's hand gripped his hard and pressed it frankly and he returned the grip.

Robert Jordan threw his pack on his back and walked over to the horses to find Maria.

"Good-by, guapa," he said. "I will see you soon."

He had an unreal feeling about all of this now as though he had said it all before.

"Good-by, Roberto," she said. "Take much care."

Walking carefully they dropped down the steep wooded hillside to the point above the bridge where Robert Jordan and Anselmo had watched the first day.

"Here is where we watched," Anselmo said. He took Robert Jordan's hand to touch a small fresh blaze on the tree trunk. "To the right is where you wanted to put the maquina."

"We will place it there. From here, with daylight," Robert Jordan whispered to Agustin, "you will see a small stretch of road and the entrance to the bridge. Here you will lie while we prepare the exploding and fire on anything that comes from above or below."

Anselmo and Robert Jordan left Agustin there and went back to where the packs were.

"Where had we best leave them?" Robert Jordan whispered.

"I think here."

"Is this exactly where we were on that day?"

"The same tree," Anselmo said.

"It is close enough. We are all right here."

"Then I will go now to cross the gorge and be in position at the other end," Anselmo said. "Until soon, Ingles."

"Until soon, old one," Robert Jordan said. He lay on the pine-needle floor of the forest and waited for daylight.

During the time Pablo had ridden back from the hills to the cave and by the time the band had dropped down to where they had left the horses, Andres had made rapid progress toward Golz's headquarters. The motorcycle went fast, swooping along the road that mounted steadily toward the mountain. As they neared the top Gomez told him to get down and together they pushed the motorcycle up the last steep grade of the pass. At the left, just past the top, there was a big stone building.

"Let us go to ask where the headquarters is," Gomez said to Andres. At the door Gomez spoke to one of the sentries. "Captain Gomez of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade," he said. "Can you tell me where to find the headquarters of General Golz?"

The sentry opened the door. "Call the corporal," he shouted inside.

Just then a big staff car came toward them and stopped outside the door.

A large man, old and heavy, in an oversized khaki beret got out of the car. He spoke in French. Gomez knew this man's high political place in the International Brigades and he knew this man would know where Golz's headquarters were. He did not know what this man had become with time, disappointment and thwarted ambition. Knowing nothing of this Gomez stepped forward, saluted and said, "Comrade Marty, we are the bearers of a message for General Golz. Can you direct us to his headquarters? It is urgent."

"You have what, Comrade?" he asked Gomez.

"A message for General Golz."

Andre Marty glanced at the message and the other papers and put them in his pocket.

"Arrest them both," he said to the corporal.

"What is wrong with that man?" Gomez said to one of the guards.

"He is crazy," the guard said.

"I thought he was a great French figure," Gomez said.

"He may be a glory and all, but he is crazy. He has a mania for shooting people."

It is doubtful if the outcome of Andres's mission would have been different if he and Gomez had been allowed to proceed without Marty's obstruction. There was no one at the front with sufficient authority to cancel the attack.

On this night, Marty was still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians.

Marty did not like Karkov, but Karkov was at this moment one of the three most important men in Spain. When Karkov heard of the message coming through for Golz from a partizan group that involved his American comrade Jordan, he immediately ordered Marty to give him the message and sent Andres and Gomez to Golz's headquarters.

Andres and Gomez were on the motorcycle and on the road again. When they reached Golz's headquarters, however, the first sound of the planes was heard. Duvall, Golz's Chief of Staff, read the message, and felt sweat come out from his armpit and run down his flank. He was able to give the message to Golz on the phone, but it was too late. Golz knew that once they had passed overhead the bombs would fall. He watched the planes with his hard proud eyes that knew how things could be and how they would be instead.

Robert Jordan lay behind the trunk of a pine tree and looked at the structure of the bridge. He looked at his watch and wondered if Andres got through to Golz. And if he did would they cancel it? We should have portable short-wave sets, though.

Robert Jordan looked down to the sentry box. Then he heard the sudden noise of the bombs falling. The man in the sentry box stood up when he heard the bombs and reached for his rifle. Robert Jordan felt his own breath tight now as he aimed at the man's chest and squeezed the trigger. Then he heard Anselmo shoot.

Robert Jordan picked up the two heavy packs, ran onto the bridge and started climbing down into the framework.

"Hand me a package at a time," he called up to Anselmo, who leaned far over the edge handing down the blocks of explosive that Robert Jordan placed where he wanted them.

"Give me some more, Anselmo," he said. The old man nodded. "Almost finished," Robert Jordan said.

"Give me the big coil of wire."

The old man handed it down. Then Robert Jordan climbed up onto the bridge, took the coil from the old man and walked back as fast as he could. Then he handed it to Anselmo.

"Take this back to that high stone," he said. "Hold it easily but firmly. When you pull hard, hard, the bridge will blow. Comprendes?"

"Yes."

"When you pull, really pull. Do not jerk."

While Robert Jordan spoke he was looking up the road at the remainder of Pilar's band. He saw Primitivo and Rafael supporting Fernando who had been shot.

Then they all heard firing start down the road where Pablo was holding the post he had taken. Robert Jordan heard the firing and as he walked he felt it in the pit of his stomach. Now he was almost opposite Anselmo's stone and it was still clear below the bridge.

Then he heard the truck coming down the road and he saw it over his shoulder and he swung his wrist once around the wire and shouted to Anselmo, "Blow her!" and he dug his heels in and leaned back hard onto the tension of the wire, and then there was a cracking roar and the middle of the bridge rose up in the air like a wave breaking and he felt the blast from the explosion roll back against him as he dove on his face with his hands holding tight over his head. His face was down against the pebbles as the bridge settled where it had risen and the familiar yellow smell of it rolled over him in acrid smoke and then it started to rain pieces of steel.

After the steel stopped falling he was still alive and he raised his head and looked across the bridge. The center section was gone.

Anselmo lay face down behind the white marking stone. The loop of wire was still around his right fist. Robert Jordan crossed the road, knelt by him and made sure that he was dead. He was dead and that was all.

Robert Jordan was coughing from the TNT fumes and felt numb all through himself. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and elated and he hated everyone he saw.

Just then they heard the planes. They all looked up and the planes were coming from Segovia very high in the sky. Lying there, by Agustin, watching the planes going over, listening for firing behind him, watching the road below where he knew he would see something but not what it would be, he still felt numb with the surprise that he had not been killed at the bridge. He had accepted being killed so completely that all of this now seemed unreal.

If things had been unreal before, they were suddenly real enough now. A tank started to fire down the road.

"Is that the famous tank, Ingles?" Agustin asked.

"That's a baby one."

Just then Agustin saw Pablo coming over the edge of the gorge, his face running with sweat.

Robert Jordan looked, saw Pablo, and then he started firing at the tank. The little tank moved quickly out of sight.

"Bring the pans and the gun," he shouted, "and come running."

Robert Jordan ran up the hill. Agustin was close behind him and behind him Pablo was coming.

"Pilar!" Robert Jordan shouted. "Come on!"

The three of them were going as fast as they could up the steep slope.

"And your people?" Agustin said to Pablo.

"All dead," Pablo said. "We have plenty of horses now."

"Good," Robert Jordan said. The murderous bastard, he thought.

Robert Jordan saw Maria and the next thing he was holding her tight, with the automatic rifle leaning against his side. Then he said, "Mount. Get on that horse, guapa."

Robert Jordan was on the big gray he had first seen in the snow of the morning of the day before. They all rode down through the timber toward the edge of the road. Robert Jordan rode just behind Maria.

As he rode he could hear guns firing. "Come on, you big gray fascist bastard," he said to the horse and put him down the slope in a sliding plunge. Then he was out in the open. He saw them all ahead in the edge of the forest watching him and he said, "Go on, horse!" and felt his big horse's chest surging as he went up the slope and saw the gray neck stretching, and he looked back at the bridge and saw the bright flash from the tank on the road and then he heard only a banging acrid smelling noise like a boiler being ripped apart and he was under the gray horse and the gray horse was kicking and he was trying to pull out from under the weight.

He could move toward the right. But his left leg stayed perfectly flat under the horse as he moved to the right. It was as though there was a new joint in it; not the hip joint but another one that went sideways.

Primitivo and Agustin pulled him up the last slope to the timber where Maria, Pilar and Pablo were standing.

Maria was kneeling by him and saying, "Roberto, what is it?"

He said, sweating heavily, "The left leg is broken, guapa."

"We will bind it up," Pilar said. "You can ride that." She pointed to one of the horses.

Robert Jordan saw Pablo shake his head and he nodded at him.

"Pablo, come here. I have to speak to Pablo," he said to Pilar and Maria.

"Does it hurt much?" Pablo asked.

"No. I think the nerve is crushed. Listen. I am mucked, see? I will talk to the girl for a moment. When I say to take her, take her. She will want to stay. I will only speak to her for a moment."

"Clearly, there is not much time," Pablo said. "I am sorry you have this, Ingles."

"Slit the trouser, please," he said to Pilar. Maria crouched by him and did not speak. Her face was twisted as a child's contorts before it cries. But she was not crying.

Pilar took her knife and slit his left trouser leg. Ten inches below the hip joint there was a pointed, purple swelling like a little tent and as he touched it with his fingers he could feel the snapped-off thigh bone tight against the skin. His leg was lying at an odd angle. He looked up at Pilar.

"Anda," he said to her. "Go."

She went away without saying anything nor looking back and Robert Jordan could see her shoulders shaking.

"Guapa," he said to Maria and took hold of her hands. "Listen. We will not be going to Madrid-"

Then she started to cry.

"No, don't," he said. "We will not go to Madrid now but I will always go with you where you go. As long as there is one of us there is both of us. Understand?"

"No, I stay with you."

"No, rabbit. What I do now I do alone. I could not do it well with you. If you go then I go with you. It is in that way that I go too."

"But it is easier if I stay with you," she said. "It is worse for me to go."

"Surely," he said. "It is harder for you. But I am you also now."

He looked at her and he was sweating heavily.

"Now you will go for us both," he said. "You must not be selfish, rabbit. You must do your duty now. You are me now."

"No," she said and held him tight around the neck.

He now spoke calmly and reasonably but with great authority.

"Stand up," he said. "You are all there will be of me. Stand up."

She stood up slowly, crying. Pilar was holding her by the arm.

"Vamonos," Pilar said. "You do not need anything, Ingles?"

"No," he said and went on talking to Maria.

"There is no good-by, because we are not apart," he spoke calmly as Pilar walked the girl along.

"Get her in the saddle," he said to Pilar. "Now go."

She started to look around. "Don't look around," Robert Jordan said. "Go." They were all out of sight. He felt empty and drained and exhausted from all of it and from them going and his mouth tasted of bile. Now, finally and at last, there was no problem.

Pilar will take care of her as well as anyone can. It does no good to think about Maria. Try to believe what you told her.

He looked down the hill slope and thought, I hate to leave it, is all. I hate to leave it very much and I hope I have done some good in it.

I wish they would come now, he said, because the leg is starting to hurt now. It must be the swelling. Oh, let them come, he said. I don't want to do that business that my father did. I will do it all right but I'd much prefer not to have to. I'm against that.

I can't wait any longer now, he said. If I wait any longer I'll pass out. It would be all right to do it now.

And if you wait and hold them up even a little while or just get the officer that may make all the difference.

All right, he said. He lay very quietly and tried to hold on to himself that he felt slipping away. Let me last until they come, he said quietly.

As the officer came trotting now on the trail he would pass twenty yards below where Robert Jordan lay. At that distance there would be no problem. The officer was Lieutenant Berrendo. Robert Jordan lay behind the tree. He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place. He could feel his heart beating against the pine-needle floor of the forest.

- THE END -

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