«How art thou called?» Robert Jordan asked.
«Agustín,» the man said. «I am called Agustín and I am dying with boredom in this spot.»
«We will take the message,» Robert Jordan said and he thought how the word ‘aburmiento’ which means boredom in Spanish was a word no peasant would use in any other language. Yet it is one of the most common words in the mouth of a Spaniard of any class.
«Listen to me,» Agustín said, and coming close he put his hand on Robert Jordan’s shoulder. Then striking a flint and steel together he held it up and blowing on the end of the cork, looked at the young man’s face in its glow.
«You look like the other one,» he said. «But something different. Listen,» he put the lighter down and stood holding his rifle. «Tell me this. Is it true about the bridge?»
«What about the bridge?»
«That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?»
«I know not.»
«‘You’ know not,» Agustín said. «What a barbarity! Whose then is the dynamite?»
«Mine.»
«And knowest thou not what it is for? Don’t tell me tales.»
«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,» Agustín said. «And unprint thyself. But do you want me to tell you something of service to you?»
«Yes,» said Robert Jordan. «If it is not unprintable,» naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man, Agustín, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustín laughed in the dark when he heard the word. «It is a way of speaking I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks according to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me. As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These mountains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would say one thing. Guard well thy explosive.»
«Thank you,» Robert Jordan said. «From thee?»
«No,» Agustín said. «From people less unprintably equipped than I.»
«So?» asked Robert Jordan.
«You understand Spanish,» Agustín said seriously now. «Care well for thy unprintable explosive.»
«Thank you.»
«No. Don’t thank me. Look after thy stuff.»
«Has anything happened to it?»
«No, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion.»
«Thank you all the same. We go now to camp.»
«Good,» said Agustín, «and that they send some one here who knows the password.»
«Will we see you at the camp?»
«Yes, man. And shortly.»
«Come on,» Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.
They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and there was a gray mist. The grass was lush underfoot after the pineneedle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert Jordan Could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave must be.
«Agustín is a very good man,» Anselmo said. «He speaks very filthily and always in jokes but he is a very serious man.»
«You know him well?»
«Yes. For a long time. I have much confidence in him.»
«And what he says?»
«Yes, man. This Pablo is bad now, as you could see.»
«And the best thing to do?»
«One shall guard it at all times.»
«Who?»
«You. Me. The woman and Agustín. Since he sees the danger.»
«Did you think things were as bad as they are here?»
«No,» Anselmo said. «They have gone bad very fast. But it was necessary to come here. This is the country of Pablo and of El Sordo. In their country we must deal with them unless it is something that can be done alone.»
«And El Sordo?»
«Good,» Anselmo said. «As good as the other is bad.»
«You believe now that he is truly bad?»
«All afternoon I have thought of it and since we have heard what we have heard, I think now, yes. Truly.»
«It would not be better to leave, speaking of another bridge, and obtain men from other bands?»
«No,» Anselmo said. «This is his country. You could not move that he would not know it. But one must move with much precautions.»
4
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 and Robert Jordan knelt down and felt the canvas wet and stiff over them. In the dark he felt under the canvas in the outside pocket of one of the packs and took out a leather-covered flask and slipped it in his pocket. Unlocking the long barred padlocks that passed through the grommet that closed the opening of the mouth of the packs, and untying the drawstring at the top of each pack, he felt inside them and verified their contents with his hands.
Deep in one pack he felt the bundled blocks in the sacks, the sacks wrapped in the sleeping robe, and tying the strings of that and pushing the lock shut again, he put his hands into the other and felt the sharp wood outline of the box of the old exploder, the cigar box with the caps, each little cylinder wrapped round and round with its two wires (the lot of them packed as carefully as he had packed his collection of wild bird eggs when he was a boy), the stock of the submachine gun, disconnected from the barrel and wrapped in his leather jacket, the two pans and five clips in one of the inner pockets of the big pack-sack arid the small coils of copper wire and the big coil of light insulated wire in the other.
In the pocket with the wire he felt his pliers and the two wooden awls for making holes in the end of the blocks and then, from the last inside pocket, he took a big box of the Russian cigarettes of the lot he had from Golz’s headquarters and tying the mouth of the pack shut, he pushed the lock in, buckled the flaps down and again covered both packs with the canvas. Anselmo had gone on into the cave.
Robert Jordan stood up to follow him, then reconsidered and, lifting the canvas off the two packs, picked them up, one in each hand, and started with them, just able to carry them, for the mouth of the cave. He laid one pack down and lifted the blanket aside, then with his head stooped and with a pack in each hand, carrying by the leather shoulder straps, he went into the cave.
It was warm and smoky in the cave. There was a table along one wall with a tallow 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 candle made shadows on the wall behind the men and Anselmo stood where he had come in to the right of the table. The wife of Pablo was standing over the charcoal fire on the open fire hearth in the corner of the cave. The girl knelt by her stirring in an iron pot. She lifted the wooden spoon out and looked at Robert Jordan as he stood there in the doorway and he saw, in the glow from the fire the woman was blowing with a bellows, the girl’s face, her arm and the drops running down from the spoon and dropping into the iron pot.
«What do you carry?» Pablo said.
«My things,» Robert Jordan said and set the two packs down a little way apart where the cave opened out on the side away from the table.
«Are they not well outside?» Pablo asked.
«Some one might trip over them in the dark,» Robert Jordan said and walked over to the table and laid the box of cigarettes on it.
«I do not like to have dynamite here in the cave,» Pablo said.
«It is far from the fire,» Robert Jordan said. «Take some cigarettes.» He ran his thumbnail along the side of the paper box with the big colored figure of a warship on the cover and pushed the box toward Pablo.
Anselmo brought him a rawhide-covered stool and he sat down at the table. Pablo looked at him as though he were going to speak again, then reached for the cigarettes.
Robert Jordan pushed them toward the others. He was not looking at them yet. But he noted one man took cigarettes and two did not. All of his concentration was on Pablo.
«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. Even the gypsy was not at ease.
«She is going to let you eat again?» Robert Jordan asked the gypsy.
«Yes. Why not?» the gypsy said. It was a long way from the friendly joking they had together in the afternoon.
The woman of Pablo said nothing and went on blowing up the coals of the fire.
«One called Agustín says he dies of boredom above,» Robert Jordan said.
«That doesn’t kill,» Pablo said. «Let him die a little.»
«Is there wine?» Robert Jordan asked the table at large, leaning forward, his hands on the table.
«There is little left,» Pablo said sullenly. Robert Jordan decided he had better look at the other three and try to
