История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 2 страница

"Yes," he said. "They are beautiful." He turned to Pablo. "You have your cavalry and all."

There were five horses in the rope corral, three bays, a sorrel, and a buckskin. Sorting them out carefully with his eyes after he had seen them first together, Robert Jordan looked them over individually. Pablo and Anselmo knew how good they were and while Pablo stood now proud and less sad-looking, watching them lovingly, the old man acted as though they were some great surprise that he had produced, suddenly, himself.

"How do they look to you?" he asked.

"All these I have taken," Pablo said and Robert Jordan was pleased to hear him speak proudly.

"That," said Robert Jordan, pointing to one of the bays, a big stallion with a white blaze on his forehead and a single white foot, the near front, "is much horse."

He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had come out of a painting by Velasquez.

"They are all good," said Pablo. "You know horses?"

"Yes."

"Less bad," said Pablo. "Do you see a defect in one of these?"

Robert Jordan knew that now his papers were being examined by the man who could not read.

The horses all still had their heads up looking at the man. Robert Jordan slipped through between the double rope of the corral and slapped the buckskin on the haunch. He leaned back against the ropes of the enclosure and watched the horses circle the corral, stood watching them a minute more, as they stood still, then leaned down and came out through the ropes.

"The sorrel is lame in the off hind foot," he said to Pablo, not looking at him. "The hoof is split and although it might not get worse soon if shod properly, she could break down if she travels over much hard ground."

"The hoof was like that when we took her," Pablo said.

"The best horse that you have, the white-faced bay stallion, has a swelling on the upper part of the cannon bone that I do not like."

"It is nothing," said Pablo. "He knocked it three days ago. If it were to be anything it would have become so already."

He pulled back the tarpaulin and showed the saddles. There were two ordinary vaquero's or herdsman's saddles, like American stock saddles, one very ornate vaquero's saddle, with hand-tooled leather and heavy, hooded stirrups, and two military saddles in black leather.

"We killed a pair of _guardia civil_," he said, explaining the military saddles.

"That is big game."

"They had dismounted on the road between Segovia and Santa Maria del Real. They had dismounted to ask papers of the driver of a cart. We were able to kill them without injuring the horses."

"Have you killed many civil guards?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Several," Pablo said. "But only these two without injury to the horses."

"It was Pablo who blew up the train at Arevalo," Anselmo said. "That was Pablo."

"There was a foreigner with us who made the explosion," Pablo said. "Do you know him?"

"What is he called?"

"I do not remember. It was a very rare name."

"What did he look like?"

"He was fair, as you are, but not as tall and with large hands and a broken nose."

"Kashkin," Robert Jordan said. "That would be Kashkin."

"Yes," said Pablo. "It was a very rare name. Something like that. What has become of him?"

"He is dead since April."

"That is what happens to everybody," Pablo said, gloomily. "That is the way we will all finish."

"That is the way all men end," Anselmo said. "That is the way men have always ended. What is the matter with you, man? What hast thou in the stomach?"

"They are very strong," Pablo said. It was as though he were talking to himself. He looked at the horses gloomily. "You do not realize how strong they are. I see them always stronget always better armed. Always with more material. Here am I with horses like these. And what can I look forward to? To be hunted and to die. Nothing more."

"You hunt as much as you are hunted," Anselmo said.

"No," said Pablo. "Not any more. And if we leave these mountains now, where can we go? Answer me that? Where now?"

"In Spain there are many mountains. There are the Sierra de Gredos if one leaves here."

"Not for me," Pablo said. "I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted. If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?" He turned to Robert Jordan. "What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?"

"I have not told you anything you must do," Robert Jordan said to him.

"You will though," Pablo said. "There. There is the badness."

He pointed at the two heavy packs that they had lowered to the ground while they had watched the horses. Seeing the horses had seemed to bring this all to a head in him and seeing that Robert Jordan knew horses had seemed to loosen his tongue. The three of them stood now by the rope corral and the patchy sunlight shone on the coat of the bay stallion. Pablo looked at him and then pushed with his foot against the heavy pack. "There is the badness."

"I come only for my duty," Robert Jordan told him. "I come under orders from those who are conducting the war. If I ask you to help me, you can refuse and I will find others who will help me. I have not even asked you for help yet. I have to do what I am ordered to do and I can promise you of its importance. That I am a foreigner is not my fault. I would rather have been born here."

"To me, now, the most important is that we be not disturbed here," Pablo said. "To me, now, my duty is to those who are with me and to myself."

"Thyself. Yes," Anselmo said. "Thyself now since a long time. Thyself and thy horses. Until thou hadst horses thou wert with us. Now thou art another capitalist more."

"That is unjust," said Pablo. "I expose the horses all the time for the cause."

"Very little," said Anselmo scornfully. "Very little in my judgment. To steal, yes. To eat well, yes. To murder, yes. To fight, no."

"You are an old man who will make himself trouble with his mouth."

"I am an old man who is afraid of no one," Anselmo told him. "Also I am an old man without horses."

"You are an old man who may not live long."

"I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said. "And I am not afraid of foxes."

Pablo said nothing but picked up the pack.

"Nor of wolves either," Anselmo said, picking up the other pack. "If thou art a wolf."

"Shut thy mouth," Pablo said to him. "Thou art an old man who always talks too much."

"And would do whatever he said he would do," Anselmo said, bent under the pack. "And who now is hungry. And thirsty. Go on, guerilla leader with the sad face. Lead us to something to eat."

It is starting badly enough, Robert Jordan thought. But Anselmo's a man. They are wonderful when they are good, he thought. There is no people like them when they are good and when they go bad there is no people that is worse. Anselmo must have known what he was doing when he brought us here. But I don't like it. I don't like any of it.

The only good sign was that Pablo was carrying the pack and that he had given him the carbine. Perhaps he is always like that, Robert Jordan thought. Maybe he is just one of the gloomy ones.

No, he said to himself, don't fool yourself. You do not know how he was before; but you do know that he is going bad fast and without hiding it. When he starts to hide it he will have made a decision. Remember that, he told himself. The first friendly thing he does, he will have made a decision. They are awfully good horses, though, he thought, beautiful horses. I wonder what could make me feel the way those horses make Pablo feel. The old man was right. The horses made him rich and as soon as he was rich he wanted to enjoy life. Pretty soon he'll feel bad because he can't join the Jockey Club, I guess, he thought. Pauvre Pablo. Il a manque son Jockey.

That idea made him feel better. He grinned, looking at the two bent backs and the big packs ahead of him moving through the trees. He had not made any jokes with himself all day and now that he had made one he felt much better. You're getting to be as all the rest of them, he told himself. You're getting gloomy, too. He'd certainly been solemn and gloomy with Golz. The job had overwhelmed him a little. Slightly overwhelmed, he thought. Plenty overwhelmed. Golz was gay and he had wanted him to be gay too before he left, but he hadn't been.

All the best ones, when you thought it over, were gay. It was much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was like having immortality while you were still alive. That was a complicated one. There were not many of them left though. No, there were not many of the gay ones left. There were very damned few of them left. And if you keep on thinking like that, my boy, you won't be left either. Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old comrade. You're a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker. Man, I'm hungry, he thought. I hope Pablo eats well.

They had come through the heavy timber to the cup-shaped upper end of the little valley and he saw where the camp must be under the rim-rock that rose ahead of them through the trees.

That was the camp all right and it was a good camp. You did not see it at all until you were up to it and Robert Jordan knew it could not be spotted from the air. Nothing would show from above. It was as well hidden as a bear's den. But it seemed to be little better guarded. He looked at it carefully as they came up.

There was a large cave in the rim-rock formation and beside the opening a man sat with his back against the rock, his legs stretched out on the ground and his carbine leaning against the rock. He was cutting away on a stick with a knife and he stared at them as they came up, then went on whittling.

"_Hola_," said the seated man. "What is this that comes?"

"The old man and a dynamiter," Pablo told him and lowered the pack inside the entrance to the cave. Anselmo lowered his pack, too, and Robert Jordan unslung the rifle and leaned it against the rock.

"Don't leave it so close to the cave," the whittling man, who had blue eyes in a dark, good-looking lazy gypsy face, the color of smoked leather, said. "There's a fire in there."

"Get up and put it away thyself," Pablo said. "Put it by that tree."

The gypsy did not move but said something unprintable, then, "Leave it there. Blow thyself up," he said lazily. "Twill cure thy diseases."

"What do you make?" Robert Jordan sat down by the gypsy. The gypsy showed him. It was a figure four trap and he was whittling the crossbar for it.

"For foxes," he said. "With a log for a dead-fall. It breaks their backs." He grinned at Jordan. "Like this, see?" He made a motion of the framework of the trap collapsing, the log falling, then shook his head, drew in his hand, and spread his arms to show the fox with a broken back. "Very practical," he explained.

"He catches rabbits," Anselmo said. "He is a gypsy. So if he catches rabbits he says it is foxes. If he catches a fox he would say it was an elephant."

"And if I catch an elephant?" the gypsy asked and showed his white teeth again and winked at Robert Jordan.

"You'd say it was a tank," Anselmo told him.

"I'll get a tank," the gypsy told him. "I will get a tank. And you can say it is what you please."

"Gypsies talk much and kill little," Anselmo told him.

The gypsy winked at Robert Jordan and went on whittling.

Pablo had gone in out of sight in the cave. Robert Jordan hoped he had gone for food. He sat on the ground by the gypsy and the afternoon sunlight came down through the tree tops and was warm on his outstretched legs. He could smell food now in the cave, the smell of oil and of onions and of meat frying and his stomach moved with hunger inside of him.

"We can get a tank," he said to the gypsy. "It is not too difficult."

"With this?" the gypsy pointed toward the two sacks.

"Yes," Robert Jordan told him. "I will teach you. You make a trap. It is not too difficult."

"You and me?"

"Sure," said Robert Jordan. "Why not?"

"Hey," the gypsy said to Anselmo. "Move those two sacks to where they will be safe, will you? They're valuable."

Anselmo grunted. "I am going for wine," he told Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan got up and lifted the sacks away from the cave entrance and leaned them, one on each side of a tree trunk. He knew what was in them and he never liked to see them close together.

"Bring a cup for me," the gypsy told him.

"Is there wine?" Robert Jordan asked, sitting down again by the gypsy.

"Wine? Why not? A whole skinful. Half a skinful, anyway."

"And what to eat?"

"Everything, man," the gypsy said. "We eat like generals."

"And what do gypsies do in the war?" Robert Jordan asked him.

"They keep on being gypsies."

"That's a good job."

"The best," the gypsy said. "How do they call thee?"

"Roberto. And thee?"

"Rafael. And this of the tank is serious?"

"Surely. Why not?"

Anselmo came out of the mouth of the cave with a deep stone basin full of red wine and with his fingers through the handles of three cups. "Look," he said. "They have cups and all." Pablo came out behind them.

"There is food soon," he said. "Do you have tobacco?"

Robert Jordan went over to the packs and opening one, felt inside an inner pocket and brought out one of the flat boxes of Russian cigarettes he had gotten at Golz's headquarters. He ran his thumbnail around the edge of the box and, opening the lid, handed them to Pablo who took half a dozen. Pablo, holding them in one of his huge hands, picked one up and looked at it against the light. They were long narrow cigarettes with pasteboard cylinders for mouthpieces.

"Much air and little tobacco," he said. "I know these. The other with the rare name had them."

"Kashkin," Robert Jordan said and offered the cigarettes to the gypsy and Anselmo, who each took one.

"Take more," he said and they each took another. He gave them each four more, they making a double nod with the hand holding the cigarettes so that the cigarette dipped its end as a man salutes with a sword, to thank him.

"Yes," Pablo said. "It was a rare name."

"Here is the wine." Anselmo dipped a cup out of the bowl and handed it to Robert Jordan, then dipped for himself and the gypsy.

"Is there no wine for me?" Pablo asked. They were all sitting together by the cave entrance.

Anselmo handed him his cup and went into the cave for another. Coming out he leaned over the bowl and dipped the cup full and they all touched cup edges.

The wine was good, tasting faintly resinous from the wineskin, but excellent, light and clean on his tongue. Robert Jordan drank it slowly, feeling it spread warmly through his tiredness.

"The food comes shortly," Pablo said. "And this foreigner with the rare name, how did he die?"

"He was captured and he killed himself."

"How did that happen?"

"He was wounded and he did not wish to be a prisoner."

"What were the details?"

"I don't know," he lied. He knew the details very well and he knew they would not make good talking now.

"He made us promise to shoot him in case he were wounded at the business of the train and should be unable to get away," Pablo said. "He spoke in a very rare manner."

He must have been jumpy even then, Robert Jordan thought. Poor old Kashkin.

"He had a prejudice against killing himself," Pablo said. "He told me that. Also he had a great fear of being tortured."

"Did he tell you that, too?" Robert Jordan asked him.

"Yes," the gypsy said. "He spoke like that to all of us."

"Were you at the train, too?"

"Yes. All of us were at the train."

"He spoke in a very rare manner," Pablo said. "But he was very brave."

Poor old Kashkin, Robert Jordan thought. He must have been doing more harm than good around here. I wish I would have known he was that jumpy as far back as then. They should have Pulled him out. You can't have people around doing this sort of Work and talking like that. That is no way to talk. Even if they accomplish their mission they are doing more harm than good, talking that sort of stuff.

"He was a little strange," Robert Jordan said. "I think he was a little crazy."

"But very dexterous at producing explosions," the gypsy said. "And very brave."

"But crazy," Robert Jordan said. "In this you have to have very much head and be very cold in the head. That was no way to talk."

"And you," Pablo said. "If you are wounded in such a thing as this bridge, you would be willing to be left behind?"

"Listen," Robert Jordan said and, leaning forward, he dipped himself another cup of the wine. "Listen to me clearly. If ever I should have any little favors to ask of any man, I will ask him at the time."

"Good," said the gypsy approvingly. "In this way speak the good ones. Ah! Here it comes."

"You have eaten," said Pablo.

"And I can eat twice more," the gypsy told him. "Look now who brings it."

The girl stooped as she came out of the cave mouth carrying the big iron cooking platter and Robert Jordan saw her face turned at an angle and at the same time saw the strange thing about her. She smiled and said, "_Hola_, Comrade," and Robert Jordan said, "_Salud_," and was careful not to stare and not to look away. She set down the flat iron platter in front of him and he noticed her handsome brown hands. Now she looked him full in the face and smiled. Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. She had high cheekbones, merry eyes and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair was the golden brown of a grain field that has been burned dark in the sun but it was cut short all over her head so that it was but little longer than the fur on a beaver pelt. She smiled in Robert Jordan's face and put her brown hand up and ran it over her head, flattening the hair which rose again as her hand passed. She has a beautiful face, Robert Jordan thought. She'd be beautiful if they hadn't cropped her hair.

"That is the way I comb it," she said to Robert Jordan and laughed. "Go ahead and eat. Don't stare at me. They gave me this haircut in Valladolid. It's almost grown out now."

She sat down opposite him and looked at him. He looked back at her and she smiled and folded her hands together over her knees. Her legs slanted long and clean from the open cuffs of the trousers as she sat with her hands across her knees and he could see the shape of her small up-tilted breasts under the gray shirt. Every time Robert Jordan looked at her he could feel a thickness in his throat.

"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."