This hill is truly like a chancre, Sordo thought, and we are the very pus of it. But we killed many when they made that stupidness. How could they think that they would take us thus? They have such modern armament that they lose all their sense with over-confidence. He had killed the young officer who had led the assault with a grenade that had gone bouncing and rolling down the slope as they came up it, running, bent half over.
In the yellow flash and grey roar of smoke he had seen the officer dive forward to where he lay now like a heavy, broken bundle of old clothing marking the farthest point that the assault had reached. Sordo looked at this body and then, down the hill, at the others.
They are brave but stupid people, he thought. But they have sense enough now not to attack us again until the planes come. Unless, of course, they have a mortar coming. It would be easy with a mortar. The mortar was the normal thing and he knew that they would die as soon as a mortar came up, but when he thought of the planes coming up he felt as naked on that hilltop as though all of his clothing and even his skin had been removed. There is no nakeder thing than I feel, he thought.
A flayed rabbit is as well covered as a bear in comparison. But why should they bring planes? They could get us out of here with a trench mortar easily. They are proud of their planes, though, and they will probably bring them. Just as they were so proud of their automatic weapons that they made that stupidness. But undoubtedly they must have sent for a mortar, too.
One of the men fired. Then jerked the bolt and fired again, quickly.
‘Save thy cartridges,’ Sordo said.
‘One of the sons of the great whore tried to reach that boulder,’ the man pointed.
‘Did you hit him?’ Sordo asked, turning his head with difficulty.
‘Nay,’ the man said. ‘The fornicator ducked back.’
‘Who is a whore of whores is Pilar,’ the man with his chin in the dirt said. ‘That whore knows we are dying here.’
‘She could do no good,’ Sordo said. The man had spoken on the side of his good ear and he had heard him without turning his head. ‘What could she do?’
‘Take these sluts from the rear.’
‘Qué va,’ Sordo said. ‘They are spread around a hillside. How would she come on them? There are a hundred and fifty of them. Maybe more now.’
‘But if we hold out until dark,’ Joaquín said.
‘And if Christmas comes on Easter,’ the man with his chin on the ground said.
‘And if thy aunt had cojones she would be thy uncle,’ another said to him. ‘Send for thy Pasionaria. She alone can help us.’
‘I do not believe that about the son,’ Joaquín said. ‘Or if he is there he is training to be an aviator or something of that sort.’
‘He is hidden there for safety,’ the man told him.
‘He is studying dialectics. Thy Pasionaria has been there. So have Lister and Modesto and others. The one with the rare name told me.’
‘That they should go to study and return to aid us,’ Joaquín said.
‘That they should aid us now,’ another man said. ‘That all the cruts of Russian sucking swindlers should aid us now.’ He fired and said, ‘Me cago en tal; I missed him again.’
‘Save thy cartridges and do not talk so much or thou wilt be very thirsty,’ Sordo said. ‘There is no water on this hill.’
‘Take this,’ the man said and rolling on his side he pulled a wine-skin that he wore slung from his shoulder over his head and handed it to Sordo. ‘Wash thy mouth out, old one. Thou must have much thirst with thy wounds.’
‘Let all take it,’ Sordo said.
‘Then I will have some first,’ the owner said and squirted a long stream into his mouth before he handed the leather bottle around.
‘Sordo, when thinkest thou the planes will come?’ the man with his chin in the dirt asked.
‘Any time,’ said Sordo. ‘They should have come before.’
‘Do you think these sons of the great whore will attack again?’
‘Only if the planes do not come.’
He did not think there was any need to speak about the mortar. They would know it soon enough when the mortar came.
‘God knows they’ve enough planes with what we saw yesterday.’
‘Too many,’ Sordo said.
His head hurt very much and his arm was stiffening so that the pain of moving it was almost unbearable. He looked up at the bright, high, blue, early summer sky as he raised the leather wine bottle with his good arm. He was fifty-two years old and he was sure this was the last time he would see that sky.
He was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being trapped on this hill which was only utilizable as a place to die. If we could have gotten clear, he thought. If we could have made them come up the long valley or if we could have broken loose across the road it would have been all right. But this chancre of a hill. We must use it as well as we can and we have used it very well so far.
If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died. Whether one has fear of it or not, one’s death is difficult to accept. Sordo had accepted it but there was no sweetness in its acceptance even at fifty-two, with three wounds and him surrounded on a hill.
He joked about it to himself but he looked at the sky and at the far mountains and he swallowed the wine and he did not want it. If one must die, he thought, and clearly one must, I can die. But I hate it.
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
Sordo passed the wine bottle back and nodded his head in thanks. He leaned forward and patted the dead horse on the shoulder where the muzzle of the automatic rifle had burned the hide. He could still smell the burnt hair. He thought how he had held the horse there, trembling, with the fire around them, whispering and cracking, over and around them like a curtain, and had carefully shot him just at the intersection of the cross-lines between the two eyes and the ears. Then as the horse pitched down he had dropped down behind his warm, wet back to get the gun to going as they came up the hill.
‘Eras mucho caballo,’ he said, meaning, ‘Thou wert plenty of horse.’
El Sordo lay now on his good side and looked up at the sky. He was lying on a heap of empty cartridge hulls but his head was protected by the rock and his body lay in the lee of the horse. His wounds had stiffened badly and he had much pain and he felt too tired to move.
‘What passes with thee, old one?’ the man next to him asked.
‘Nothing. I am taking a little rest.’
‘Sleep,’ the other said. ‘They will wake us when they come.’
Just then someone shouted from down the slope.
‘Listen, bandits!’ the voice came from behind the rocks where the closest automatic rifle was placed. ‘Surrender now before the planes blow you to pieces.’
‘What is it he says?’ Sordo asked.
Joaquín told him. Sordo rolled to one side and pulled himself up so that he was crouched behind the gun again.
‘Maybe the planes aren’t coming,’ he said. ‘Don’t answer them and do not fire. Maybe we can get them to attack again.’
‘If we should insult them a little?’ the man who had spoken to Joaquín about La Pasionaria’s son in Russia asked.
‘No,’ Sordo said. ‘Give me thy big pistol. Who has a big pistol?’
‘Here.’
‘Give it to me.’ Crouched on his knees he took the big 9 mm. Star and fired one shot into the ground beside the dead horse, waited, then fired again four times at irregular intervals. Then he waited while he counted sixty and then fired a final shot directly into the body of the
