«That is something truly rare,» the gypsy said. «Looking into the future in ‘Inglés’. Can you read in the palm of the hand?»
«No,» Robert Jordan said and he dipped another cup of wine. «But if thou canst I wish thee 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 and of such a barbarousness that I do not know if she will do it.»
Robert Jordan sat up now and took a swallow of the wine.
«Let us see the ‘mujer’ of Pablo now,» he said. «If it is that bad let us get it over with.»
«I would not disturb her,» Rafael said. «She has a strong hatred for me.»
«Why?»
«She treats me as a time waster.»
«What injustice,» Anselmo taunted.
«She is against gypsies.»
«What an error,» Anselmo said.
«She has gypsy blood,» Rafael said. «She knows of what she speaks.» He grinned. «But she has a tongue that scalds and that bites like a bull whip. With this tongue she takes the hide from any one. In strips. She is of an unbelievable barbarousness.»
«How does she get along with the girl, Maria?» Robert Jordan asked.
«Good. She likes the girl. But let any one come near her seriously—» He shook his head and clucked with his tongue.
«She is very good with the girl,» Anselmo said. «She takes good care of her.»
«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 and if any one touched her she would shiver like a wet dog. Only lately has she been better. Lately she has been much better. Today she was fine. Just now, talking to you, she was very good. We would have left her after the train.
Certainly it was not worth being delayed by something so sad and ugly and apparently worthless. But the old woman tied a rope to her and when the girl thought she could not go further, the old woman beat her with the end of the rope to make her go. Then when she could not really go further, the old woman carried her over her shoulder. When the old woman could not carry her, I carried her. We were going up that hill breast high in the gorse and heather.
And when I could no longer carry her, Pablo carried her. But what the old woman had to say to us to make us do it!» He shook his head at the memory. «It is true that the girl is long in the legs but is not heavy. The bones are light and she weighs little. But she weighs enough when we had to carry her and stop to fire and then carry her again with the old woman lashing at Pablo with the rope and carrying his rifle, putting it in his hand when he would drop the girl, making him pick her up again and loading the gun for him while she cursed him; taking the shells from his pouches and shoving them down into the magazine and cursing him. The dusk was coming well on then and when the night came it was all right. But it was lucky that they had no cavalry.»
«It must have been very hard at the train,» Anselmo said. «I was not there,» he explained to Robert Jordan. «There was the band of Pablo, of El Sordo, whom we will see tonight, and two other bands of these mountains. I had gone to the other side of the lines.»
«In addition to the blond one with the rare name—» the gypsy said.
«Kashkin.»
«Yes. It is a name I can never dominate. We had two with a machine gun. They were sent also by the army. They could not get the gun away and lost it. Certainly it weighed no more than that girl and if the old woman had been over them they would have gotten it away.» He shook his head remembering, then went on. «Never in my life have I seen such a thing as when the explosion Was produced. The train was coming steadily. We saw it far away.
And I had an excitement so great that I cannot tell it. We saw steam from it and then later came the noise of the whistle. Then it came chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu steadily larger and larger and then, at the moment of the explosion, the front wheels of the engine rose up and all of the earth seemed to rise in a great cloud of blackness and a roar and the engine rose high in the cloud of dirt and of the Wooden ties rising in the air as in a dream and then it fell onto its side like a great wounded animal and there was an explosion of white steam before the clods of the other explosion had ceased to fall on us and the ‘máquina’ commenced to speak ta-tat-tat-ta!» went the gypsy shaking his two clenched fists up and down in front of him, thumbs up, on an imaginary machine gun. «Ta! Ta! Tat! Tat! Tat! Ta!» he exulted. «Never in my life have I seen such a thing, with the troops running from the train and the ‘máquina’ speaking into them and the men falling.
It was then that I put my hand on the ‘máquina’ in my excitement and discovered that the barrel burned and at that moment the old woman slapped me on the side of the face and said, ‘Shoot, you fool! Shoot or I will kick your brains in!’ Then I commenced to shoot but it was very hard to hold my gun steady and the troops were running up the far hill. Later, after we had been down at the train to see what there was to take, an officer forced some troops back toward us at the point of a pistol. He kept waving the pistol and shouting at them and we were all shooting at him but no one hit him.
Then some troops lay down and commenced firing and the officer walked up and down behind them with his pistol and still we could not hit him and the ‘máquina’ could not fire on him because of the position of the train. This officer shot two men as they lay and still they would not get up and he was cursing them and finally they got up, one two and three at a time and came running toward us and the train. Then they lay flat again and fired. Then we left, with the ‘máquina’ still speaking over us as we left. It was then I found the girl where she had run from the train to the rocks and she ran with us. It was those troops who hunted us until that night.»
«It must have been something very hard,» Anselmo said. «Of much emotion.»
«It was the only good thing we have done,» said a deep voice. «What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable unmarried gypsy obscenity? What are you doing?»
Robert Jordan saw a woman of about fifty almost as big as Pablo, almost as wide as she was tall, in black peasant skirt and waist, 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.
«Answer me,» she said to the gypsy, ignoring the others.
«I was talking to these comrades. This one comes as a dynamiter.»
«I know all that,» the ‘mujer’ of Pablo said. «Get out of here now and relieve Andrés who is on guard at the top.»
«‘Me voy’,» the gypsy said. «I go.» He turned to Robert Jordan. «I will see thee at the hour of eating.»
«Not even in a joke,» said the woman to him. «Three times you have eaten today according to my count. Go now and send me Andrés.
«‘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 hand grip. «Both with me and with the Republic.»
«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.»
«‘No es nada’,» she said. «A bridge is nothing. When do we do another train now that we have horses?»
«Later. This bridge is of great importance.»
«The girl told me your comrade who was with us at the train is dead.»
«Yes.»
«What a pity. Never have I seen such an explosion. He was a man of talent. He pleased me very much. It is not possible to do another train now? There are many men here now in the hills. Too many. It is already hard to get food. It would be better to get out. And we have horses.»
«We have to do this bridge.»
«Where is it?»
«Quite close.»
«All the better,» the ‘mujer’ of Pablo said. «Let us blow all the bridges there are here and get out. I am sick of this place. Here is too much concentration of people. No good can come of it. Here is a stagnation that is repugnant.»
She sighted Pablo through the trees.
«‘Borracho!'» she called to him. «Drunkard. Rotten drunkard!» She turned back to Robert Jordan cheerfully.
