«There are no plates,» Anselmo said. «Use your own knife.» The girl had leaned four forks, tines down, against the sides of the iron dish.
They were all eating out of the platter, not speaking, as is the Spanish custom. It was rabbit cooked with onions and green peppers and there were chick peas in the red wine sauce. It was well cooked, the rabbit meat flaked off the bones, and the sauce was delicious. Robert Jordan drank another cup of wine while he ate. The girl watched him all through the meal. Every one else was watching his food and eating. Robert Jordan wiped up the last of the sauce in front of him with a piece of bread, piled the rabbit bones to one side, wiped the spot where they had been for sauce, then wiped his fork clean with the bread, wiped his knife and put it away and ate the bread. He leaned over and dipped his cup full of wine and the girl still watched him.
Robert Jordan drank half the cup of wine but the thickness still came in his throat when he spoke to the girl.
«How art thou called?» he asked. Pablo looked at him quickly when he heard the tone of his voice. Then he got up and walked away.
«Maria. And thee?»
«Roberto. Have you been long in the mountains?»
«Three months.»
«Three months?» He looked at her hair, that was as thick and short and rippling when she passed her hand over it, now in embarrassment, as a grain field in the wind on a hillside. «It was shaved,» she said. «They shaved it regularly in the prison at Valladolid. It has taken three months to grow to this. 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 came With these.»
«I found her hidden in the rocks,» the gypsy said. «It was when we were leaving. Man, but this one was ugly. We took her along but many times I thought we would have to leave her.»
«And the other one who was with them at the train?» asked Maria. «The other blond one. The foreigner. Where is he?»
«Dead,» Robert Jordan said. «In April.»
«In April? The train was in April.»
«Yes,» Robert Jordan said. «He died ten days after the train.»
«Poor man,» she said. «He was very brave. And you do that same business?»
«Yes.»
«You have done trains, too?»
«Yes. Three trains.»
«Here?»
«In Estremadura,» he said. «I was in Estremadura before I came here. We do very much in Estremadura. There are many of us working in Estremadura.»
«And why do you come to these mountains now?»
«I take the place of the other blond one. Also I know this country from before the movement.»
«You know it well?»
«No, not really well. But I learn fast. I have a good map and I have a good guide.»
«The old man,» she nodded. «The old man is very good.»
«Thank you,» Anselmo said to her and Robert Jordan realized suddenly that he and the girl were not alone and he realized too that it was hard for him to look at her because it made his voice change so. He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone; and he realized, very suddenly, that he did not care. There were so many things that he had not to care about, why should he care about that?
«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.»
«You should have seen her when we brought her from the train. She was so ugly it would make you sick.»
«Whose woman are you?» Robert Jordan asked, trying not to pull out of it. «Are you Pablo’s?»
She looked at him and laughed, then slapped him on the knee.
«Of Pablo? You have seen Pablo?»
«Well, then, of Rafael. I have seen Rafael.»
«Of Rafael neither.»
«Of no one,» the gypsy said. «This is a very strange woman. Is of no one. But she cooks well.»
«Really of no one?» Robert Jordan asked her.
«Of no one. No one. Neither in joke nor in seriousness. Nor of thee either.»
«No?» Robert Jordan said and he could feel the thickness coming in his throat again. «Good. I have no time for any woman. That is true.»
«Not fifteen minutes?» the gypsy asked teasingly. «Not a quarter of an hour?» Robert Jordan did not answer. He looked at the girl, Maria, and his throat felt too thick for him to trust himself to speak.
Maria looked at him and laughed, then blushed suddenly but kept on looking at him.
«You are blushing,» Robert Jordan said to her. «Do you blush much?»
«Never.»
«You are blushing now.»
«Then I will go into the cave.»
«Stay here, Maria.»
«No,» she said and did not smile at him. «I will go into the cave now.» She picked up the iron plate they had eaten from and the four forks. She moved awkwardly as a colt moves, but with that same grace as of a young animal.
«Do you want the cups?» she asked.
Robert Jordan was still looking at her and she blushed again.
«Don’t make me do that,» she said. «I do not like to do that.»
«Leave them,» they gypsy said to her. «Here,» he dipped into the stone bowl and handed the full cup to Robert Jordan who Watched the girl duck her head and go into the cave carrying the heavy iron dish.
«Thank you,» Robert Jordan said. His voice was all right again, now that she was gone. «This is the last one. We’ve had enough of this.»
«We will finish the bowl,» the gypsy said. «There is over half a skin. We packed it in on one of the horses.»
«That was the last raid of Pablo,» Anselmo said. «Since then he has done nothing.»
«How many are you?» Robert Jordan asked.
«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. I said she cooks well to please her. But mostly she helps the ‘mujer’ of Pablo.»
«And how is she, the ‘mujer’ of Pablo?»
«Something barbarous,» the gypsy grinned. «Something very barbarous. If you think Pablo is ugly you should see his woman. But brave. A hundred times braver than Pablo. But something barbarous.»
«Pablo was brave in the beginning,» Anselmo said. «Pablo was something serious in the beginning.»
«He killed more people than the cholera,» the gypsy said. «At the start of the movement, Pablo killed more people than the typhoid fever.»
«But since a long time he is ‘muy flojo’,» Anselmo said. «He is very flaccid. He is very much afraid to die.»
«It is possible that it is because he has killed so many at the beginning,» the gypsy said philosophically. «Pablo killed more than the bubonic plague.»
«That and the riches,» Anselmo said. «Also he drinks very much. Now he would like to retire like a ‘matador de toros’. Like a bullfighter. But he cannot retire.»
«If he crosses to the other side of the lines they will take his horses and make him go in the army,» the gypsy said. «In me there is no love for being in the army either.»
«Nor is there in any other gypsy,» Anselmo said.
«Why should there be?» the gypsy asked. «Who wants to be in an army? Do we make the revolution to be in an army? I am willing to fight but not to be in an army.»
«Where are the others?» asked Robert Jordan. He felt comfortable and sleepy now from the wine and lying back on the floor of the forest he saw through the tree tops the small afternoon clouds of the mountains moving slowly in the high Spanish sky.
«There are two asleep in the cave,» the gypsy said. «Two are on guard above where we have the gun. One is on guard below. They are probably all asleep.»
Robert Jordan rolled over on his side.
«What kind of a gun is it?»
«A very rare name,» the gypsy said. «It has gone away from me for the moment. It is a machine gun.»
It must be an automatic rifle, Robert Jordan thought.
«How much does it weigh?» he asked.
«One man can carry it but it is heavy. It has three legs that fold. We got it in the last serious raid. The one before the wine.»
«How many rounds have you for it?»
«An infinity,» the gypsy said. «One whole case of an unbelievable heaviness.»
Sounds like about five hundred rounds, Robert Jordan thought.
«Does it feed from a pan or a belt?»
«From round iron cans on the top of the gun.»
Hell, it’s a Lewis gun, Robert Jordan thought.
«Do you know anything about a machine gun?» he asked the old man.
«Nada,» said Anselmo. «Nothing.»
«And thou?» to the gypsy.
«That they fire with much rapidity and become so hot the barrel burns the hand that touches it,» the gypsy said proudly.
«Every one knows that,» Anselmo said with contempt.
«Perhaps,» the gypsy said. «But he asked me to tell what I know about a ‘máquina’ and I told him.» Then he added, «Also, unlike an ordinary rifle, they continue to fire as long as you exert pressure on the trigger.»
«Unless they jam, run out of ammunition or get so hot they melt,» Robert Jordan said in English.
«What do you say?» Anselmo asked him.
«Nothing,» Robert Jordan said. «I was only
