Студопедия — История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 29 страница
Студопедия Главная Случайная страница Обратная связь

Разделы: Автомобили Астрономия Биология География Дом и сад Другие языки Другое Информатика История Культура Литература Логика Математика Медицина Металлургия Механика Образование Охрана труда Педагогика Политика Право Психология Религия Риторика Социология Спорт Строительство Технология Туризм Физика Философия Финансы Химия Черчение Экология Экономика Электроника

История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 29 страница






She thinks you're wonderful, he thought. I think you stink. And the _gloria_ and all that nonsense that you had. You had wonderful ideas, didn't you? You had this world all taped, didn't you? The hell with all of that.

Take it easy, he told himself. Don't get into a rage. That's just a way out too. There are always ways out. You've got to bite on the nail now. There isn't any need to deny everything there's been just because you are going to lose it. Don't be like some damned snake with a broken back biting at itself; and your back isn't broken either, you hound. Wait until you're hurt before you start to cry. Wait until the fight before you get angry. There's lots of time for it in a fight. It will be some use to you in a fight.

Pilar came over to him with the bag.

"It is strong now," she said. "Those grenades are very good, _Ingles_. You can have confidence in them."

"How do you feel, woman?"

She looked at him and shook her head and smiled. He wondered how far into her face the smile went. It looked deep enough.

"Good," she said. "_Dentro de la gravedad_."

Then she said, squatting by him, "How does it seem to thee now that it is really starting?"

"That we are few," Robert Jordan said to her quickly.

"To me, too," she said. "Very few."

Then she said still to him alone, "The Maria can hold the horses by herself. I am not needed for that. We will hobble them. They are cavalry horses and the firing will not panic them. I will go to the lower post and do that which was the duty of Pablo. In this way we are one more."

"Good," he said. "I thought you might wish to."

"Nay, _Ingles_," Pilar said looking at him closely. "Do not be worried. All will be well. Remember they expect no such thing to come to them."

"Yes," Robert Jordan said.

"One other thing, _Ingles_," Pilar said as softly as her harsh whisper could be soft. "In that thing of the hand--"

"What thing of the hand?" he said angrily.

"Nay, listen. Do not be angry, little boy. In regard to that thing of the hand. That is all gypsy nonsense that I make to give myself an importance. There is no such thing."

"Leave it alone," he said coldly.

"Nay," she said harshly and lovingly. "It is just a lying nonsense that I make. I would not have thee worry in the day of battle."

"I am not worried," Robert Jordan said.

"Yes, _Ingles_," she said. "Thou art very worried, for good cause. But all will be well, _Ingles_. It is for this that we are born."

"I don't need a political commissar," Robert Jordan told her.

She smiled at him again, smiling fairly and truly with the harsh lips and the wide mouth, and said, "I care for thee very much, _Ingles_."

"I don't want that now," he said. "_Ni tu, ni Dios_."

"Yes," Pilar said in that husky whisper. "I know. I only wished to tell thee. And do not worry. We will do all very well."

"Why not?" Robert Jordan said and the very thinnest edge of the skin in front of his face smiled. "Of course we will. All will be well."

"When do we go?" Pilar asked.

Robert Jordan looked at his watch.

"Any time," he said.

He handed one of the packs to Anselmo.

"How are you doing, old one?" he asked.

The old man was finishing whittling the last of a pile of wedges he had copied from a model Robert Jordan had given him. These were extra wedges in case they should be needed.

"Well," the old man said and nodded. "So far, very well." He held his hand out. "Look," he said and smiled. His hands were perfectly steady.

"_Bueno, y que?_" Robert Jordan said to him. "I can always keep the whole hand steady. Point with one finger."

Anselmo pointed. The finger was trembling. He looked at Robert Jordan and shook his head.

"Mine too," Robert Jordan showed him. "Always. That is normal."

"Not for me," Fernando said. He put his right forefinger out to show them. Then the left forefinger.

"Canst thou spit?" Agustin asked him and winked at Robert Jordan.

Fernando hawked and spat proudly onto the floor of the cave, then rubbed it in the dirt with his foot.

"You filthy mule," Pilar said to him. "Spit in the fire if thou must vaunt thy courage."

"I would not have spat on the floor, Pilar, if we were not leaving this place," Fernando said primly.

"Be careful where you spit today," Pilar told him. "It may be some place you will not be leaving."

"That one speaks like a black cat," Agustin said. He had the nervous necessity to joke that is another form of what they all felt.

"I joke," said Pilar.

"Me too," said Agustin. "But _me cago en la leche_, but I will be content when it starts."

"Where is the gypsy?" Robert Jordan asked Eladio.

"With the horses," Eladio said. "You can see him from the cave mouth."

"How is he?"

Eladio grinned. "With much fear," he said. It reassured him to speak of the fear of another.

"Listen, _Ingles_--" Pilar began. Robert Jordan looked toward her and as he did he saw her mouth open and the unbelieving look come on her face and he swung toward the cave mouth reaching for his pistol. There, holding the blanket aside with one hand, the short automatic rifle muzzle with its flash-cone jutting above his shoulder, was Pablo standing short, wide, bristly-faced, his small red-rimmed eyes looking toward no one in particular.

"Thou--" Pilar said to him unbelieving. "Thou."

"Me," said Pablo evenly. He came into the cave.

"_Hola, Ingles_," he said. "I have five from the bands of Elias and Alejandro above with their horses."

"And the exploder and the detonators?" Robert Jordan said. "And the other material?"

"I threw them down the gorge into the river," Pablo said still looking at no one. "But I have thought of a way to detonate using a grenade."

"So have I," Robert Jordan said.

"Have you a drink of anything?" Pablo asked wearily.

Robert Jordan handed him the flask and he swallowed fast, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"What passes with you?" Pilar asked.

"_Nada_," Pablo said, wiping his mouth again. "Nothing. I have come back."

"But what?"

"Nothing. I had a moment of weakness. I went away but I am come back."

He turned to Robert Jordan. "_En el fondo no soy cobarde_," he said. "At bottom I am not a coward."

But you are very many other things, Robert Jordan thought. Damned if you're not. But I'm glad to see you, you son of a bitch.

"Five was all I could get from Elias and Alejandro," Pablo said. "I have ridden since I left here. Nine of you could never have done it. Never. I knew that last night when the _Ingles_ explained it. Never. There are seven men and a corporal at the lower post. Suppose there is an alarm or that they fight?"

He looked at Robert Jordan now. "When I left I thought you would know that it was impossible and would give it up. Then after I had thrown away thy material I saw it in another manner."

"I am glad to see thee," Robert Jordan said. He walked over to him. "We are all right with the grenades. That will work. The other does not matter now."

"Nay," Pablo said. "I do nothing for thee. Thou art a thing of bad omen. All of this comes from thee. Sordo also. But after I had thrown away thy material I found myself too lonely."

"Thy mother--" Pilar said.

"So I rode for the others to make it possible for it to be successful. I have brought the best that I could get. I have left them at the top so I could speak to you, first. They think I am the leader."

"Thou art," Pilar said. "If thee wishes." Pablo looked at her and said nothing. Then he said simply and quietly, "I have thought much since the thing of Sordo. I believe if we must finish we must finish together. But thou, _Ingles_. I hate thee for bringing this to us."

"But Pablo--" Fernando, his pockets full of grenades, a bandolier of cartridges over his shoulder, he still wiping in his pan of stew with a piece of bread, began. "Do you not believe the operation can be successful? Night before last you said you were convinced it would be."

"Give him some more stew," Pilar said viciously to Maria. Then to Pablo, her eyes softening, "So you have come back, eh?"

"Yes, woman," Pablo said.

"Well, thou art welcome," Pilar said to him. "I did not think thou couldst be the ruin thou appeared to be."

"Having done such a thing there is a loneliness that cannot be borne," Pablo said to her quietly.

"That cannot be borne," she mocked him. "That cannot be borne by thee for fifteen minutes."

"Do not mock me, woman. I have come back."

"And thou art welcome," she said. "Didst not hear me the first time? Drink thy coffee and let us go. So much theatre tires me."

"Is that coffee?" Pablo asked.

"Certainly," Fernando said.

"Give me some, Maria," Pablo said. "How art thou?" He did not look at her.

"Well," Maria told him and brought him a bowl of coffee. "Do you want stew?" Pablo shook his head.

"_No me gusta estar solo_," Pablo went on explaining to Pilar as though the others were not there. "I do not like to be alone. _Sabes?_ Yesterday all day alone working for the good of all I was not lonely. But last night. _Hombre!_ _Que mal lo pase!_"

"Thy predecessor the famous Judas Iscariot hanged himself," Pilar said.

"Don't talk to me that way, woman," Pablo said. "Have you not seen? I am back. Don't talk of Judas nor nothing of that. I am back."

"How are these people thee brought?" Pilar asked him. "Hast brought anything worth bringing?"

"_Son buenos_," Pablo said. He took a chance and looked at Pilar squarely, then looked away.

"_Buenos y bobos_. Good ones and stupids. Ready to die and all. _A tu gusto_. According to thy taste. The way you like them."

Pablo looked Pilar in the eyes again and this time he did not look away. He kept on looking at her squarely with his small, redrimmed pig eyes.

"Thou," she said and her husky voice was fond again. "Thou. I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains."

"_Listo_," Pablo said, looking at her squarely and flatly now. "I am ready for what the day brings."

"I believe thou art back," Pilar said to him. "I believe it. But, hombre, thou wert a long way gone."

"Lend me another swallow from thy bottle," Pablo said to Robert Jordan. "And then let us be going."

In the dark they came up the hill through the timber to the narrow pass at the top. They were all loaded heavily and they climbed slowly. The horses had loads too, packed over the saddles.

"We can cut them loose if it is necessary," Pilar had said. "But with that, if we can keep it, we can make another camp."

"And the rest of the ammunition?" Robert Jordan had asked as they lashed the packs.

"In those saddlebags."

Robert Jordan felt the weight of his heavy pack, the dragging on his neck from the pull of his jacket with its pockets full of grenades, the weight of his pistol against his thigh, and the bulging of his trouser pockets where the clips for the submachine gun were. In his mouth was the taste of the coffee, in his right hand he carried the submachine gun and with his left hand he reached and pulled up the collar of his jacket to ease the pull of the pack straps.

"_Ingles_," Pablo said to him, walking close beside him in the dark.

"What, man?"

"These I have brought think this is to be successful because I have brought them," Pablo said. "Do not say anything to disillusion them."

"Good," Robert Jordan said. "But let us make it successful."

"They have five horses, _sabes?_" Pablo said cautiously.

"Good," said Robert Jordan. "We will keep all the horses together."

"Good," said Pablo, and nothing more.

I didn't think you had experienced any complete conversion on the road to Tarsus, old Pablo, Robert Jordan thought. No. Your coming back was miracle enough. I don't think there will ever be any problem about canonizing you.

"With those five I will deal with the lower post as well as Sordo would have," Pablo said. "I will cut the wire and fall back upon the bridge as we convened."

We went over this all ten minutes ago, Robert Jordan thought. I wonder why this now--

"There is a possibility of making it to Gredos," Pablo said. "Truly, I have thought much of it."

I believe you've had another flash in the last few minutes, Robert Jordan said to himself. You have had another revelation. But you're not going to convince me that I am invited. No, Pablo. Do not ask me to believe too much.

Ever since Pablo had come into the cave and said he had five men Robert Jordan felt increasingly better. Seeing Pablo again had broken the pattern of tragedy into which the whole operation had seemed grooved ever since the snow, and since Pablo had been back he felt not that his luck had turned, since he did not believe in luck, but that the whole thing had turned for the better and that now it was possible. Instead of the surety of failure he felt confidence rising in him as a tire begins to fill with air from a slow pump. There was little difference at first, although there was a definite beginning, as when the pump starts and the rubber of the tube crawls a little, but it came now as steadily as a tide rising or the sap rising in a tree until he began to feel the first edge of that negation of apprehension that often turned into actual happiness before action.

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which _could_ be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work.

And you, he said to himself, I am glad to see you getting a little something back that was badly missing for a time. But you were pretty bad back there. I was ashamed enough of you, there for a while. Only I was you. There wasn't any me to judge you. We were all in bad shape. You and me and both of us. Come on now. Quit thinking like a schizophrenic. One at a time, now. You're all right again now. But listen, you must not think of the girl all day ever. You can do nothing now to protect her except to keep her out of it, and that you are doing. There are evidently going to be plenty of horses if you can believe the signs. The best thing you can do for her is to do the job well and fast and get out, and thinking of her will only handicap you in this. So do not think of her ever.

Having thought this out he waited until Maria came up walking with Pilar and Rafael and the horses.

"Hi, _guapa_," he said to her in the dark, "how are you?"

"I am well, Roberto," she said.

"Don't worry about anything," he said to her and shifting the gun to his left hand he put a hand on her shoulder.

"I do not," she said.

"It is all very well organized," he told her. "Rafael will be with thee with the horses."

"I would rather be with thee."

"Nay. The horses is where thou art most useful."

"Good," she said. "There I will be."

Just then one of the horses whinnied and from the open place below the opening through the rocks a horse answered, the neigh rising into a shrill sharply broken quaver.

Robert Jordan saw the bulk of the new horses ahead in the dark. He pressed forward and came up to them with Pablo. The men were standing by their mounts.

"_Salud_," Robert Jordan said.

"_Salud_," they answered in the dark. He could not see their faces.

"This is the _Ingles_ who comes with us," Pablo said. "The dynamiter."

No one said anything to that. Perhaps they nodded in the dark.

"Let us get going, Pablo," one man said. "Soon we will have the daylight on us."

"Did you bring any more grenades?" another asked.

"Plenty," said Pablo. "Supply yourselves when we leave the animals."

"Then let us go," another said. "We've been waiting here half the night."

"_Hola_, Pilar," another said as the woman came up.

"_Que me maten_, if it is not Pepe," Pilar said huskily. "How are you, shepherd?"

"Good," said the man. "_Dentro de la gravedad_."

"What are you riding?" Pilar asked him.

"The gray of Pablo," the man said. "It is much horse."

"Come on," another man said. "Let us go. There is no good in gossiping here."

"How art thou, Elicio?" Pilar said to him as he mounted.

"How would I be?" he said rudely. "Come on, woman, we have work to do."

Pablo mounted the big bay horse.

"Keep thy mouths shut and follow me," he said. "I will lead you to the place where we will leave the horses."

During the time that Robert Jordan had slept through, the time he had spent planning the destruction of the bridge and the time that he had been with Maria, Andres had made slow progress. Until he had reached the Republican lines he had travelled across country and through the fascist lines as fast as a countryman in good physical condition who knew the country well could travel in the dark. But once inside the Republican lines it went very slowly.

In theory he should only have had to show the safe-conduct given him by Robert Jordan stamped with the seal of the S. I. M. and the dispatch which bore the same seal and be passed along toward his destination with the greatest speed. But first he had encountered the company commander in the front line who had regarded the whole mission with owlishly grave suspicion.

He had followed this company commander to battalion headquarters where the battalion commander, who had been a barber before the movement, was filled with enthusiasm on hearing the account of his mission. This commander, who was named Gomez, cursed the company commander for his stupidity, patted Andres on the back, gave him a drink of bad brandy and told him that he himself, the ex-barber, had always wanted to be a _guerrillero_. He had then roused his adjutant, turned over the battalion to him, and sent his orderly to wake up and bring his motorcyclist. Instead of sending Andres back to brigade headquarters with the motorcyclist, Gomez had decided to take him there himself in order to expedite things and, with Andres holding tight onto the seat ahead of him, they roared, bumping down the shell-pocked mountain road between the double row of big trees, the headlight of the motorcycle showing their whitewashed bases and the places on the trunks where the whitewash and the bark had been chipped and torn by shell fragments and bullets during the fighting along this road in the first summer of the movement. They turned into the little smashed-roofed mountain-resort town where brigade headquarters was and Gomez had braked the motorcycle like a dirt-track racer and leaned it against the wall of the house where a sleepy sentry came to attention as Gomez pushed by him into the big room where the walls were covered with maps and a very sleepy officer with a green eyeshade sat at a desk with a reading lamp, two telephones and a copy of _Mundo Obrero_.

This officer looked up at Gomez and said, "What doest thou here? Have you never heard of the telephone?"

"I must see the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said.

"He is asleep," the officer said. "I could see the lights of that bicycle of thine for a mile coming down the road. Dost wish to bring on a shelling?"

"Call the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said. "This is a matter of the utmost gravity."

"He is asleep, I tell thee," the officer said. "What sort of a bandit is that with thee?" he nodded toward Andres.

"He is a _guerrillero_ from the other side of the lines with a dispatch of the utmost importance for the General Golz who commands the attack that is to be made at dawn beyond Navacerrada," Gomez said excitedly and earnestly. "Rouse the _Teniente-Coronel_ for the love of God."

The officer looked at him with his droopy eyes shaded by the green celluloid.

"All of you are crazy," he said. "I know of no General Golz nor of no attack. Take this sportsman and get back to your battalion."

"Rouse the _Teniente-Coronel_, I say," Gomez said and Andres saw his mouth tightening.

"Go obscenity yourself," the officer said to him lazily and turned away.

Gomez took his heavy 9 mm. Star pistol out of its holster and shoved it against the officer's shoulder.

"Rouse him, you fascist bastard," he said. "Rouse him or I'll kill you."

"Calm yourself," the officer said. "All you barbers are emotional."

Andres saw Gomez's face draw with hate in the light of the reading lamp. But all he said was, "Rouse him."

"Orderly," the officer called in a contemptuous voice.

 

A soldier came to the door and saluted and went out.

"His fiancee is with him," the officer said and went back to reading the paper. "It is certain he will be delighted to see you."

"It is those like thee who obstruct all effort to win this war," Gomez said to the staff officer.

The officer paid no attention to him. Then, as he read on, he remarked, as though to himself, "What a curious periodical this is!"

"Why don't you read _El Debate_ then? That is your paper," Gomez said to him naming the leading Catholic-Conservative organ published in Madrid before the movement.

"Don't forget I am thy superior officer and that a report by me on thee carries weight," the officer said without looking up. "I never read _El Debate_. Do not make false accusations."

"No. You read A. B. C.," Gomez said. "The army is still rotten with such as thee. With professionals such as thee. But it will not always be. We are caught between the ignorant and the cynical. But we will educate the one and eliminate the other."

"'Purge' is the word you want," the officer said, still not looking up. "Here it reports the purging of more of thy famous Russians. They are purging more than the epsom salts in this epoch."

"By any name," Gomez said passionately. "By any name so that such as thee are liquidated."

"Liquidated," the officer said insolently as though speaking to himself. "Another new word that has little of Castilian in it."

"Shot, then," Gomez said. "That is Castilian. Canst understand it?"

"Yes, man, but do not talk so loudly. There are others beside the _Teniente-Coronel_ asleep in this Brigade Staff and thy emotion bores me. It was for that reason that I always shaved myself. I never liked the conversation."

Gomez looked at Andres and shook his head. His eyes were shining with the moistness that rage and hatred can bring. But he shook his head and said nothing as he stored it all away for some time in the future. He had stored much in the year and a half in which he had risen to the command of a battalion in the Sierra and now, as the Lieutenant-Colonel came into the room in his pajamas he drew himself stiff and saluted.

The Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda, who was a short, gray-faced man, who had been in the army all his life, who had lost the love of his wife in Madrid while he was losing his digestion in Morocco, and become a Republican when he found he could not divorce his wife (there was never any question of recovering his digestion), had entered the civil war as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He had only one ambition, to finish the war with the same rank. He had defended the Sierra well and he wanted to be left alone there to defend it whenever it was attacked. He felt much healthier in the war, probably due to the forced curtailment of the number of meat courses, he had an enormous stock of sodium-bicarbonate, he had his whiskey in the evening, his twenty-three-year-old mistress was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as _milicianas_ in the July of the year before, and now he came into the room, nodded in answer to Gomez's salute and put out his hand.

"What brings thee, Gomez?" he asked and then, to the officer at the desk who was his chief of operation, "Give me a cigarette, please, Pepe."

Gomez showed him Andres's papers and the dispatch. The Lieutenant-Colonel looked at the _Salvoconducto_ quickly, looked at Andres, nodded and smiled, and then looked at the dispatch hungrily. He felt of the seal, tested it with his forefinger, then handed both the safe-conduct and dispatch back to Andres.

"Is the life very hard there in the hills?" he asked.

"No, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said.

"Did they tell thee where would be the closest point to find General Golz's headquarters?"

"Navacerrada, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said. "The _Ingles_ said it would be somewhere close to Navacerrada behind the lines to the right of there."

"What _Ingles?_" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked quietly.

"The _Ingles_ who is with us as a dynamiter."

The Lieutenant-Colonel nodded. It was just another sudden unexplained rarity of this war. "The _Ingles_ who is with us as a dynamiter."

"You had better take him, Gomez, on the motor," the Lieutenant-Colonel said. "Write them a very strong _Salvoconducto_ to the _Estado Mayor_ of General Golz for me to sign," he said to the officer in the green celluloid eyeshade. "Write it on the machine, Pepe. Here are the details," he motioned for Andres to hand over his safe-conduct, "and put on two seals." He turned to Gomez. "You will need something strong tonight. It is rightly so. People should be careful when an offensive is projected. I will give you something as strong as I can make it." Then to Andres, very kindly, he said, "Dost wish anything? To eat or to drink?"

"No, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said. "I am not hungry. They gave me cognac at the last place of command and more would make me seasick."

"Did you see any movement or activity opposite my front as you came through?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked Andres politely.

"It was as usual, my Lieutenant-Colonel. Quiet. Quiet."

"Did I not meet thee in Cercedilla about three months back?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked.

"Yes, my Lieutenant-Colonel."

"I thought so," the Lieutenant-Colonel patted him on the shoulder. "You were with the old man Anselmo. How is he?"

"He is well, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres told him.







Дата добавления: 2015-08-29; просмотров: 385. Нарушение авторских прав; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!



Вычисление основной дактилоскопической формулы Вычислением основной дактоформулы обычно занимается следователь. Для этого все десять пальцев разбиваются на пять пар...

Расчетные и графические задания Равновесный объем - это объем, определяемый равенством спроса и предложения...

Кардиналистский и ординалистский подходы Кардиналистский (количественный подход) к анализу полезности основан на представлении о возможности измерения различных благ в условных единицах полезности...

Обзор компонентов Multisim Компоненты – это основа любой схемы, это все элементы, из которых она состоит. Multisim оперирует с двумя категориями...

Типы конфликтных личностей (Дж. Скотт) Дж. Г. Скотт опирается на типологию Р. М. Брансом, но дополняет её. Они убеждены в своей абсолютной правоте и хотят, чтобы...

Гносеологический оптимизм, скептицизм, агностицизм.разновидности агностицизма Позицию Агностицизм защищает и критический реализм. Один из главных представителей этого направления...

Функциональные обязанности медсестры отделения реанимации · Медсестра отделения реанимации обязана осуществлять лечебно-профилактический и гигиенический уход за пациентами...

Индекс гингивита (PMA) (Schour, Massler, 1948) Для оценки тяжести гингивита (а в последующем и ре­гистрации динамики процесса) используют папиллярно-маргинально-альвеолярный индекс (РМА)...

Методика исследования периферических лимфатических узлов. Исследование периферических лимфатических узлов производится с помощью осмотра и пальпации...

Роль органов чувств в ориентировке слепых Процесс ориентации протекает на основе совместной, интегративной деятельности сохранных анализаторов, каждый из которых при определенных объективных условиях может выступать как ведущий...

Studopedia.info - Студопедия - 2014-2024 год . (0.014 сек.) русская версия | украинская версия