“In what?” the woman asked. “In what now?”
“In all,” Pablo said to her. “In this of the bridge. I am with thee now.”
“You are with us now?” Agustín said to him. “After what you have said?”
“Yes,” Pablo told him. “With the change of the weather I am with thee.”
Agustín shook his head. “The weather,” he said and shook his head again. “And after me hitting thee in the face?”
“Yes,” Pablo grinned at him and ran his fingers over his lips. “After that too.”
Robert Jordan was watching Pilar. She was looking at Pablo as at some strange animal. On her face there was still a shadow of the expression the mention of the blinding had put there. She shook her head as though to be rid of that, then tossed it back. “Listen,” she said to Pablo.
“Yes, woman.”
“What passes with thee?”
“Nothing,” Pablo said. “I have changed my opinion. Nothing more.”
“You were listening at the door,” she told him.
“Yes,” he said. “But I could hear nothing.”
“You fear that we will kill thee.”
“No,” he told her and looked at her over the wine cup. “I do not fear that. You know that.”
“Well, what passes with thee?” Agustín said. “One moment you are drunk and putting your mouth on all of us and disassociating yourself from the work in hand and speaking of our death in a dirty manner and insulting the women and opposing that which should be done—”
“I was drunk,” Pablo told him.
“And now—”
“I am not drunk,” Pablo said. “And I have changed my mind.”
“Let the others trust thee. I do not,” Agustín said.
“Trust me or not,” Pablo said. “But there is no one who can take thee to Gredos as I can.”
“Gredos?”
“It is the only place to go after this of the bridge.”
Robert Jordan, looking at Pilar, raised his hand on the side away from Pablo and tapped his right ear questioningly.
The woman nodded. Then nodded again. She said something to Maria and the girl came over to Robert Jordan’s side.
“She says, ‘Of course he heard,” Maria said in Robert Jordan’s ear.
“Then Pablo,” Fernando said judicially. “Thou art with us now and in favor of this of the bridge?”
“Yes, man,” Pablo said. He looked Fernando squarely in the eye and nodded.
“In truth?” Primitivo asked.
“‘De veras’,” Pablo told him.
“And you think it can be successful?” Fernando asked. “You now have confidence?”
“Why not?” Pablo said. “Haven’t you confidence?”
“Yes,” Fernando said. “But I always have confidence.”
“I’m going to get out of here,” Agustín said.
“It is cold outside,” Pablo told him in a friendly tone.
“Maybe,” Agustín said. “But I can’t stay any longer in this ‘manicomio’.”
“Do not call this cave an insane asylum,” Fernando said.
“A ‘manicomio’ for criminal lunatics,” Agustín said. “And I’m getting out before I’m crazy, too.”
18
It is like a merry-go-round, Robert Jordan thought. Not a merry-goround that travels fast, and with a calliope for music, and the children ride on cows with gilded horns, and there are rings to catch with sticks, and there is the blue, gas-flare-lit early dark of the Avenue du Maine, with fried fish sold from the next stall, and a wheel of fortune turning with the leather flaps slapping against the posts of the numbered compartments, and the packages of lump sugar piled in pyramids for prizes.
No, it is not that kind of a merrygo-round; although the people are waiting, like the men in caps and the women in knitted sweaters, their heads bare in the gaslight and their hair shining, who stand in front of the wheel of fortune as it spins. Yes, those are the people. But this is another wheel. This is like a wheel that goes up and around.
It has been around twice now. It is a vast wheel, set at an angle, and each time it goes around and then is back to where it starts. One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either, he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical, rising and falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are back again now, he thought, and nothing is settled.
It was warm in the cave and the wind had dropped outside. Now he was sitting at the table with his notebook in front of him figuring all the technical part of the bridge-blowing. He drew three sketches, figured his formulas, marked the method of blowing with two drawings as clearly as a kindergarten project so that Anselmo could complete it in case anything should happen to himself during the process of the demolition. He finished these sketches and studied them.
Maria sat beside him and looked over his shoulder while he worked. He was conscious of Pablo across the table and of the others talking and playing cards and he smelled the odors of the cave which had changed now from those of the meal and the cooking to the fire smoke and man smell, the tobacco, red-wine and brassy, stale body smell, and when Maria, watching him finishing a drawing, put her hand on the table he picked it up with his left hand and lifted it to his face and smelled the coarse soap and water freshness from her washing of the dishes. He laid her hand down without looking at her and went on working and he could not see her blush. She let her hand lie there, close to his, but he did not lift it again.
Now he had finished the demolition project and he took a new page of the notebook and commenced to write out the operation orders. He was thinking clearly and well on these and what he wrote pleased him. He wrote two pages in the notebook and read them over carefully.
I think that is all, he said to himself. It is perfectly clear and I do not think there are any holes in it. The two posts will be destroyed and the bridge will be blown according to Golz’s orders and that is all of my responsibility. All of this business of Pablo is something with which I should never have been saddled and it will be solved one way or another. There will be Pablo or there will be no Pablo. I care nothing about it either way. But I am not going to get on that wheel again. Twice I have been on that wheel and twice it has gone around and come back to where it started and I am taking no more rides on it.
He shut the notebook and looked up at Maria. “‘Hola, guapa’,” he said to her. “Did you make anything out of all that?”
“No, Roberto,” the girl said and put her hand on his hand that still held the pencil. “Have you finished?”
“Yes. Now it is all written out and ordered.”
“What have you been doing, ‘Inglés?'” Pablo asked from across the table. His eyes were bleary again.
Robert Jordan looked at him closely. Stay off that wheel, he said to himself. Don’t step on that wheel. I think it is going to start to swing again.
“Working on the problem of the bridge,” he said civilly.
“How is it?” asked Pablo.
“Very good,” Robert Jordan said. “All very good.”
“I have been working on the problem of the retreat,” Pablo said and Robert Jordan looked at his drunken pig eyes and at the wine bowl. The wine bowl was nearly empty.
Keep off the wheel, he told himself. He is drinking again. Sure. But don’t you get on that wheel now. Wasn’t Grant supposed to be drunk a good part of the time during the Civil War? Certainly he was. I’ll bet Grant would be furious at the comparison if he could see Pablo. Grant was a cigar smoker, too. Well, he would have to see about getting Pablo a cigar. That was what that face really needed to complete it; a half chewed cigar. Where could he get Pablo a cigar?
“How does it go?” Robert Jordan asked politely.
“Very well,” Pablo said and nodded his head heavily and judiciously. “‘Muy bien’.”
“You’ve thought up something?” Agustín asked from where they were playing cards.
“Yes,” Pablo said. “Various things.”
“Where did you find them? In that bowl?” Agustín demanded.
“Perhaps,” Pablo said. “Who knows? Maria, fill the bowl, will you, please?”
“In the wineskin itself there should be some fine ideas,” Agustín turned back to the card game. “Why don’t you crawl in and look for them inside the skin?”
“Nay,” said Pablo equably. “I search for them in the bowl.”
He is not getting on the wheel either, Robert Jordan thought. It must be revolving by itself. I suppose you cannot ride that wheel too long. That is probably quite a deadly wheel. I’m glad we are off of it. It was making me dizzy there a couple of times. But it is the thing that drunkards and those who are truly mean or cruel ride until they die. It goes around and up and the swing is never quite the same and then it comes around down. Let it swing, he thought. They will not get me onto it again. No sir, General Grant, I am off that wheel.
Pilar was sitting by the fire, her chair turned so that she could see over the shoulders of the two card players who had their backs to her. She was watching the game.
Here it is the shift from deadliness to normal family
