«And I equally.»
«We will understand each other,» she said. «Have a cup of wine.»
«We have already had some,» Robert Jordan said. «But, will you?»
«Not until dinner,» she said. «It gives me heartburn.» Then she sighted Pablo again. «‘Borracho!'» she shouted. «Drunkard!» She turned to Robert Jordan and shook her head. «He was a very good man,» she told him. «But now he is terminated. And listen to me about another thing. Be very good and careful about the girl. The Maria. She has had a bad time. Understandest thou?»
«Yes. Why do you say this?»
«I saw how she was from seeing thee when she came into the cave. I saw her watching thee before she came out.»
«I joked with her a little.»
«She was in a very bad state,» the woman of Pablo said. «Now she is better, she ought to get out of here.»
«Clearly, she can be sent through the lines with Anselmo.»
«You and the Anselmo can take her when this terminates.»
Robert Jordan felt the ache in his throat and his voice thickening. «That might be done,» he said.
The ‘mujer’ of Pablo looked at him and shook her head. «Ayee. Ayee,» she said. «Are all men like that?»
«I said nothing. She is beautiful, you know that.»
«No she is not beautiful. But she begins to be beautiful, you mean,» the woman of Pablo said. «Men. It is a shame to us women that we make them. No. In seriousness. Are there not homes to care for such as her under the Republic?»
«Yes,» said Robert Jordan. «Good places. On the coast near Valencia. In other places too. There they will treat her well and she can work with children. There are the children from evacuated villages. They will teach her the work.»
«That is what I want,» the ‘mujer’ of Pablo said. «Pablo has a sickness for her already. It is another thing which destroys him. It lies on him like a sickness when he sees her. It is best that she goes now.»
«We can take her after this is over.»
«And you will be careful of her now if I trust you? I speak to you as though I knew you for a long time.»
«It is like that,» Robert Jordan said, «when people understand one another.»
«Sit down,» the woman of Pablo said. «I do not ask any promise because what will happen, will happen. Only if you will not take her out, then I ask a promise.»
«Why if I would not take her?»
«Because I do not want her crazy here after you will go. I have had her crazy before and I have enough without that.»
«We will take her after the bridge,» Robert Jordan said. «If we are alive after the bridge, we will take her.»
«I do not like to hear you speak in that manner. That manner of speaking never brings luck.»
«I spoke in that manner only to make a promise,» Robert Jordan said. «I am not of those who speak gloomily.»
«Let me see thy 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?» Robert Jordan 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 many things but not in that.»
«In what?»
«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.»
«But it can be difficult?»
«Yes. And now I go 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. He has a good heart. Pablo I no longer trust.»
«How many men has El Sordo that are good?»
«Perhaps eight. We will see tonight. He is coming here. He is a very practical man. He also has some dynamite. Not very much, though. You will speak with him.»
«Have you sent for him?»
«He comes every night. He is a neighbor. Also a friend as well as a comrade.»
«What do you think of him?»
«He is a very good man. Also very practical. In the business of the train he was enormous.»
«And in the other bands?»
«Advising them in time, it should be possible to unite fifty rifles of a certain dependability.»
«How dependable?»
«Dependable within the gravity of the situation.»
«And how many cartridges per rifle?»
«Perhaps twenty. Depending how many they would bring for this business. If they would come for this business. Remember thee that in this of a bridge there is no money and no loot and in thy reservations of talking, much danger, and that afterwards there must be a moving from these mountains. Many will oppose this of the bridge.»
«Clearly.»
«In this way it is better not to speak of it unnecessarily.»
«I am in accord.»
«Then after thou hast studied thy bridge we will talk tonight with El Sordo.»
«I go down now with Anselmo.»
«Wake him then,» she said. «Do you want a carbine?»
«Thank you,» he told her. «It is good to have but I will not use it. I go to look, not to make disturbances. Thank you for what you have told me. I like very much your way of speaking.»
«I try to speak frankly.»
«Then tell me what you saw in the hand.»
«No,» she said and shook her head. «I saw nothing. Go now to thy bridge. I will look after thy equipment.»
«Cover it and that no one should touch it. It is better there than in the cave.»
«It shall be covered and no one shall touch it,» the woman of Pablo said. «Go now to thy bridge.»
«Anselmo,» Robert Jordan said, putting his hand on the shoulder of the old man who lay sleeping, his head on his arms.
The old man looked up. «Yes,» he said. «Of course. Let us go.»
3
They came down the last two hundred yards, moving carefully from tree to tree in the shadows and now, through the last pines of the steep hillside, the bridge was only fifty yards away. The late afternoon sun that still came over the brown shoulder of the mountain showed the bridge dark against the steep emptiness of the gorge. It was a steel bridge of a single span and there was a sentry box at each end. It was wide enough for two motor cars to pass and it spanned, in solid-flung metal grace, a deep gorge at the bottom of which, far below, a brook leaped in white water through rocks and boulders down to the main stream of the pass.
The sun was in Robert Jordan’s eyes and the bridge showed only in outline. Then the sun lessened and was gone and looking up through the trees at the brown, rounded height that it had gone behind, he saw, now, that he no longer looked into the glare, that the mountain slope was a delicate new green and that there were patches of old snow under the crest.
Then he was watching the bridge again in the sudden short trueness of the little light that would be left, and studying its construction. The problem of its demolition was not difficult. As he watched he took out a notebook from his breast pocket and made several quick line sketches. As he made the drawings he did not figure the charges. He would do that later. Now he was noting the points where the explosive should be placed in order to cut the support of the span and drop a section of it into the gorge. It could be done unhurriedly, scientifically and correctly with a half dozen charges laid and braced to explode simultaneously; or it could be done roughly with two big ones. They would need to be very big ones, on opposite sides and should go at the same time. He sketched quickly and happily; glad at last to have the problem under his hand; glad at last actually to be engaged upon it. Then he shut his notebook, pushed the pencil into its leather holder in the edge of the flap, put the notebook in his pocket and buttoned the pocket.
While he had sketched, Anselmo had been watching the road, the bridge and the sentry boxes. He thought they had come too close to the bridge for safety and when the sketching was finished, he was relieved.
As Robert Jordan buttoned the flap of his pocket and then lay flat behind the pine trunk, looking out from behind it, Anselmo put his hand on his elbow and pointed with one finger.
In the sentry box that faced toward them up the road, the sentry was sitting holding his rifle, the bayonet fixed, between his knees. He was smoking a cigarette and he wore a knitted cap and blanket style cape. At fifty yards, you could not see anything about his face. Robert Jordan put up his field glasses, shading the lenses carefully with his cupped hands even though there was now no
