История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 4 страница

"You can't nail his paw to the church," Robert Jordan said.

"No. Such a barbarity is unthinkable. Yet the hand of a man is like the paw of a bear."

"So is the chest of a man like the chest of a bear," Robert Jordan said. "With the hide removed from the bear, there are many similarities in the muscles."

"Yes," Anselmo said. "The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother of man."

"So do the Indians in America," Robert Jordan said. "And when they kill a bear they apologize to him and ask his pardon. They put his skull in a tree and they ask him to forgive them before they leave it."

"The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance."

"So also believe the Indians."

"Are the Indians then gypsies?"

"No. But they believe alike about the bear."

"Clearly. The gypsies also believe he is a brother because he steals for pleasure."

"Have you gypsy blood?"

"No. But I have seen much of them and clearly, since the movement, more. There are many in the hills. To them it is not a sin to kill outside the tribe. They deny this but it is true."

"Like the Moors."

"Yes. But the gypsies have many laws they do not admit to having. In the war many gypsies have become bad again as they were in olden times."

"They do not understand why the war is made. They do not know for what we fight."

"No," Anselmo said. "They only know now there is a war and people may kill again as in the olden times without a surety of punishment."

"You have killed?" Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the dark and of their day together.

"Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe the wizardry of the gypsies about the brotherhood with animals. No. I am against all killing of men."

"Yet you have killed."

"Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven."

"By whom?"

"Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know."

"You have not God any more?"

"No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let _them_ have God."

"They claim Him."

"Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself."

"Then it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing."

"I believe so," Anselmo said. "Since you put it clearly in that way I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo."

"To win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been true."

"Clearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas," Anselmo said.

They were walking now close together in the dark and he spoke softly, sometimes turning his head as he climbed. "I would not kill even a Bishop. I would not kill a proprietor of any kind. I would make them work each day as we have worked in the fields and as we work in the mountains with the timbet all of the rest of their lives. So they would see what man is born to. That they should sleep where we sleep. That they should eat as we eat. But above all that they should work. Thus they would learn."

"And they would survive to enslave thee again."

"To kill them teaches nothing," Anselmo said. "You cannot exterminate them because from their seed comes more with greater hatred. Prison is nothing. Prison only makes hatred. That all our enemies should learn."

"But still thou hast killed."

"Yes," Anselmo said. "Many times and will again. But not with pleasure and regarding it as a sin."

"And the sentry. You joked of killing the sentry."

"That was in joke. I would kill the sentry. Yes. Certainly and with a clear heart considering our task. But not with pleasure."

"We will leave them to those who enjoy it," Robert Jordan said. "There are eight and five. That is thirteen for those who enjoy it."

"There are many of those who enjoy it," Anselmo said in the dark. "We have many of those. More of those than of men who would serve for a battle."

"Hast thou ever been in a battle?"

"Nay," the old man said. "We fought in Segovia at the start of the movement but we were beaten and we ran. I ran with the others. We did not truly understand what we were doing, nor how it should be done. Also I had only a shotgun with cartridges of large buckshot and the _guardia civil_ had Mausers. I could not hit them with buckshot at a hundred yards, and at three hundred yards they shot us as they wished as though we were rabbits. They shot much and well and we were like sheep before them." He was silent. Then asked, "Thinkest thou there will be a battle at the bridge?"

"There is a chance."

"I have never seen a battle without running," Anselmo said. "I do not know how I would comport myself. I am an old man and I have wondered."

"I will respond for thee," Robert Jordan told him.

"And hast thou been in many battles?"

"Several."

"And what thinkest thou of this of the bridge?"

"First I think of the bridge. That is my business. It is not difficult to destroy the bridge. Then we will make the dispositions for the rest. For the preliminaries. It will all be written."

"Very few of these people read," Anselmo said.

"It will be written for every one's knowledge so that all know, but also it will be clearly explained."

"I will do that to which I am assigned," Anselmo said. "But remembering the shooting in Segovia, if there is to be a battle or even much exchanging of shots, I would wish to have it very clear what I must do under all circumstances to avoid running. I remember that I had a great tendency to run at Segovia."

"We will be together," Robert Jordan told him. "I will tell you what there is to do at all times."

"Then there is no problem," Anselmo said. "I can do anything that I am ordered."

"For us will be the bridge and the battle, should there be one," Robert Jordan said and saying it in the dark, he felt a little theatrical but it sounded well in Spanish.

"It should be of the highest interest," Anselmo said and hearing him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the English pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jordan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal way, he resented Golz's orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out.

And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the future of the human race can turn. As it can turn on everything that happens in this war. You have only one thing to do and you must do it. Only one thing, hell, he thought. If it were one thing it was easy. Stop worrying, you windy bastard, he said to himself. Think about something else.

So he thought about the girl Maria, with her skin, the hair and the eyes all the same golden tawny brown, the hair a little darker than the rest but it would be lighter as her skin tanned deeper, the smooth skin, pale gold on the surface with a darkness underneath. Smooth it would be, all of her body smooth, and she moved awkwardly as though there were something of her and about her that embarrassed her as though it were visible, though it was not, but only in her mind. And she blushed with he looked at her, and she sitting, her hands clasped around her knees and the shirt open at the throat, the cup of her breasts uptilted against the shirt, and as he thought of her, his throat was choky and there was a difficulty in walking and he and Anselmo spoke no more until the old man said, "Now we go down through these rocks and to the camp."

As they came through the rocks in the dark, a man spoke to them, "Halt. Who goes?" They heard a rifle bolt snick as it was drawn back and then the knock against the wood as it was pushed forward and down on the stock.

"Comrades," Anselmo said.

"What comrades?"

"Comrades of Pablo," the old man told him. "Dost thou not know us?"

"Yes," the voice said. "But it is an order. Have you the password?"

"No. We come from below."

"I know," the man said in the dark. "You come from the bridge. I know all of that. The order is not mine. You must know the second half of a password."

"What is the first half then?" Robert Jordan said.

"I have forgotten it," the man said in the dark and laughed. "Go then unprintably to the campfire with thy obscene dynamite."

"That is called guerilla discipline," Anselmo said. "Uncock thy piece."

"It is uncocked," the man said in the dark. "I let it down with my thumb and forefinger."

"Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl on the bolt and it will fire."

"This is a Mauser," the man said. "But I have a grip of thumb and forefinger beyond description. Always I let it down that way."

"Where is the rifle pointed?" asked Anselmo into the dark.

"At thee," the man said, "all the time that I descended the bolt. And when thou comest to the camp, order that some one should relieve me because I have indescribable and unprintable hunger and I have forgotten the password."

"How art thou called?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Agustin," the man said. "I am called Agustin and I am dying with boredom in this spot."

"We will take the message," Robert Jordan said and he thought how the word _aburmiento_ which means boredom in Spanish was a word no peasant would use in any other language. Yet it is one of the most common words in the mouth of a Spaniard of any class.

"Listen to me," Agustin said, and coming close he put his hand on Robert Jordan's shoulder. Then striking a flint and steel together he held it up and blowing on the end of the cork, looked at the young man's face in its glow.

"You look like the other one," he said. "But something different. Listen," he put the lighter down and stood holding his rifle. "Tell me this. Is it true about the bridge?"

"What about the bridge?"

"That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?"

"I know not."

"_You_ know not," Agustin said. "What a barbarity! Whose then is the dynamite?"

"Mine."

"And knowest thou not what it is for? Don't tell me tales."

"I know what it is for and so will you in time," Robert Jordan said. "But now we go to the camp."

"Go to the unprintable," Agustin said. "And unprint thyself. But do you want me to tell you something of service to you?"

"Yes," said Robert Jordan. "If it is not unprintable," naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man, Agustin, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustin laughed in the dark when he heard the word. "It is a way of speaking I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks according to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me. As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These mountains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would say one thing. Guard well thy explosive."

"Thank you," Robert Jordan said. "From thee?"

"No," Agustin said. "From people less unprintably equipped than I."

"So?" asked Robert Jordan.

"You understand Spanish," Agustin said seriously now. "Care well for thy unprintable explosive."

"Thank you."

"No. Don't thank me. Look after thy stuff."

"Has anything happened to it?"

"No, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion."

"Thank you all the same. We go now to camp."

"Good," said Agustin, "and that they send some one here who knows the password."

"Will we see you at the camp?"

"Yes, man. And shortly."

"Come on," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and there was a gray mist. The grass was lush underfoot after the pineneedle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert Jordan Could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave must be.

"Agustin is a very good man," Anselmo said. "He speaks very filthily and always in jokes but he is a very serious man."

"You know him well?"

"Yes. For a long time. I have much confidence in him."

"And what he says?"

"Yes, man. This Pablo is bad now, as you could see."

"And the best thing to do?"

"One shall guard it at all times."

"Who?"

"You. Me. The woman and Agustin. Since he sees the danger."

"Did you think things were as bad as they are here?"

"No," Anselmo said. "They have gone bad very fast. But it was necessary to come here. This is the country of Pablo and of El Sordo. In their country we must deal with them unless it is something that can be done alone."

"And El Sordo?"

"Good," Anselmo said. "As good as the other is bad."

"You believe now that he is truly bad?"

"All afternoon I have thought of it and since we have heard what we have heard, I think now, yes. Truly."

"It would not be better to leave, speaking of another bridge, and obtain men from other bands?"

"No," Anselmo said. "This is his country. You could not move that he would not know it. But one must move with much precautions."

They came down to the mouth of the cave, where a light shone out from the edge of a blanket that hung over the opening. The two packs were at the foot of the tree covered with a canvas and Robert Jordan knelt down and felt the canvas wet and stiff over them. In the dark he felt under the canvas in the outside pocket of one of the packs and took out a leather-covered flask and slipped it in his pocket. Unlocking the long barred padlocks that passed through the grommet that closed the opening of the mouth of the packs, and untying the drawstring at the top of each pack, he felt inside them and verified their contents with his hands. Deep in one pack he felt the bundled blocks in the sacks, the sacks wrapped in the sleeping robe, and tying the strings of that and pushing the lock shut again, he put his hands into the other and felt the sharp wood outline of the box of the old exploder, the cigar box with the caps, each little cylinder wrapped round and round with its two wires (the lot of them packed as carefully as he had packed his collection of wild bird eggs when he was a boy), the stock of the submachine gun, disconnected from the barrel and wrapped in his leather jacket, the two pans and five clips in one of the inner pockets of the big pack-sack arid the small coils of copper wire and the big coil of light insulated Wire in the other. In the pocket with the wire he felt his pliers and the two wooden awls for making holes in the end of the blocks and then, from the last inside pocket, he took a big box of the Russian cigarettes of the lot he had from Golz's headquarters and tying the mouth of the pack shut, he pushed the lock in, buckled the flaps down and again covered both packs with the canvas. Anselmo had gone on into the cave.

Robert Jordan stood up to follow him, then reconsidered and, lifting the canvas off the two packs, picked them up, one in each hand, and started with them, just able to carry them, for the mouth of the cave. He laid one pack down and lifted the blanket aside, then with his head stooped and with a pack in each hand, carrying by the leather shoulder straps, he went into the cave.

It was warm and smoky in the cave. There was a table along one wall with a tallow candle stuck in a bottle on it and at the table were seated Pablo, three men he did not know, and the gypsy, Rafael. The candle made shadows on the wall behind the men and Anselmo stood where he had come in to the right of the table. The wife of Pablo was standing over the charcoal fire on the open fire hearth in the corner of the cave. The girl knelt by her stirring in an iron pot. She lifted the wooden spoon out and looked at Robert Jordan as he stood there in the doorway and he saw, in the glow from the fire the woman was blowing with a bellows, the girl's face, her arm and the drops running down from the spoon and dropping into the iron pot.

"What do you carry?" Pablo said.

"My things," Robert Jordan said and set the two packs down a little way apart where the cave opened out on the side away from the table.

"Are they not well outside?" Pablo asked.

"Some one might trip over them in the dark," Robert Jordan said and walked over to the table and laid the box of cigarettes on it.

"I do not like to have dynamite here in the cave," Pablo said.

"It is far from the fire," Robert Jordan said. "Take some cigarettes." He ran his thumbnail along the side of the paper box with the big colored figure of a warship on the cover and pushed the box toward Pablo.

Anselmo brought him a rawhide-covered stool and he sat down at the table. Pablo looked at him as though he were going to speak again, then reached for the cigarettes.

Robert Jordan pushed them toward the others. He was not looking at them yet. But he noted one man took cigarettes and two did not. All of his concentration was on Pablo.

"How goes it, gypsy?" he said to Rafael.

"Good," the gypsy said. Robert Jordan could tell they had been talking about him when he came in. Even the gypsy was not at ease.

"She is going to let you eat again?" Robert Jordan asked the gypsy.

"Yes. Why not?" the gypsy said. It was a long way from the friendly joking they had together in the afternoon.

The woman of Pablo said nothing and went on blowing up the coals of the fire.

"One called Agustin says he dies of boredom above," Robert Jordan said.

"That doesn't kill," Pablo said. "Let him die a little."

"Is there wine?" Robert Jordan asked the table at large, leaning forward, his hands on the table.

"There is little left," Pablo said sullenly. Robert Jordan decided he had better look at the other three and try to see where he stood.

"In that case, let me have a cup of water. Thou," he called to the girl. "Bring me a cup of water."

The girl looked at the woman, who said nothing, and gave no sign of having heard, then she went to a kettle containing water and dipped a cup full. She brought it to the table and put it down before him. Robert Jordan smiled at her. At the same time he sucked in on his stomach muscles and swung a little to the left on his stool so that his pistol slipped around on his belt closer to where he wanted it. He reached his hand down toward his hip pocket and Pablo watched him. He knew they all were watching him, too, but he watched only Pablo. His hand came up from the hip pocket with the leather-covered flask and he unscrewed the top and then, lifting the cup, drank half the water and poured very Slowly from the flask into the cup.

"It is too strong for thee or I would give thee some," he said to the girl and smiled at her again. "There is little left or I would offer some to thee," he said to Pablo.

"I do not like anis," Pablo said.

The acrid smell had carried across the table and he had picked out the one familiar component.

"Good," said Robert Jordan. "Because there is very little left."

"What drink is that?" the gypsy asked.

"A medicine," Robert Jordan said. "Do you want to taste it?"

"What is it for?"

"For everything," Robert Jordan said. "It cures everything. If you have anything wrong this will cure it."

"Let me taste it," the gypsy said.

Robert Jordan pushed the cup toward him. It was a milky yellow now with the water and he hoped the gypsy would not take more than a swallow. There was very little of it left and one cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafes, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of book shops, of kiosques, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of the Guaranty Trust Company and the Ile de la Cite, of Foyot's old hotel, and of being able to read and relax in the evening; of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.

The gypsy made a face and handed the cup back. "It smells of anis but it is bitter as gall," he said. "It is better to be sick than have that medicine."

"That's the wormwood," Robert Jordan told him. "In this, the real absinthe, there is wormwood. It's supposed to rot your brain out but I don't believe it. It only changes the ideas. You should pour water into it very slowly, a few drops at a time. But I poured it into the water."

"What are you saying?" Pablo said angrily, feeling the mockery.

"Explaining the medicine," Robert Jordan told him and grinned. "I bought it in Madrid. It was the last bottle and it's lasted me three weeks." He took a big swallow of it and felt it coasting over his tongue in delicate anxsthesia. He looked at Pablo and grinned again.

"How's business?" he asked.

Pablo did not answer and Robert Jordan looked carefully at the other three men at the table. One had a large flat face, flat and brown as a Serrano ham with a nose flattened and broken, and the long thin Russian cigarette, projecting at an angle, made the face look even flatter. This man had short gray hair and a gray stubble of beard and wore the usual black smock buttoned at the neck. He looked down at the table when Robert Jordan looked at him but his eyes were steady and they did not blink. The other two were evidently brothers. They looked much alike and were both short, heavily built, dark haired, their hair growing low on their foreheads, dark-eyed and brown. One had a scar across his forehead above his left eye and as he looked at them, they looked back at him steadily. One looked to be about twenty-six or -eight, the other perhaps two years older.

"What are you looking at?" one brother, the one with the scar, asked.

"Thee," Robert Jordan said.

"Do you see anything rare?"

"No," said Robert Jordan. "Have a cigarette?"

"Why not?" the brother said. He had not taken any before. "These are like the other had. He of the train."

"Were you at the train?"

"We were all at the train," the brother said quietly. "All except the old man."

"That is what we should do now," Pablo said. "Another train."

"We can do that," Robert Jordan said. "After the bridge."

He could see that the wife of Pablo had turned now from the fire and was listening. When he said the word "bridge" every one was quiet.

"After the bridge," he said again deliberately and took a sip of the absinthe. I might as well bring it on, he thought. It's coming anyWay.

"I do not go for the bridge," Pablo said, looking down at the table. "Neither me nor my people."

Robert Jordan said nothing. He looked at Anselmo and raised the cup. "Then we shall do it alone, old one," he said and smiled.

"Without this coward," Anselmo said.

"What did you say?" Pablo spoke to the old man.

"Nothing for thee. I did not speak to thee," Anselmo told him.

Robert Jordan now looked past the table to where the wife of Pablo was standing by the fire. She had said nothing yet, nor given any sign. But now she said something he could not hear to the girl and the girl rose from the cooking fire, slipped along the wall, opened the blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave and went out. I think it is going to come now, Robert Jordan thought. I believe this is it. I did not want it to be this way but this seems to be the way it is.

"Then we will do the bridge without thy aid," Robert Jordan said to Pablo.

"No," Pablo said, and Robert Jordan watched his face sweat. "Thou wilt blow no bridge here."

"No?"

"Thou wilt blow no bridge," Pablo said heavily.

"And thou?" Robert Jordan spoke to the wife of Pablo who was standing, still and huge, by the fire. She turned toward them and said, "I am for the bridge." Her face was lit by the fire and it was flushed and it shone warm and dark and handsome now in the firelight as it was meant to be.

"What do you say?" Pablo said to her and Robert Jordan saw the betrayed look on his face and the sweat on his forehead as he turned his head.

"I am for the bridge and against thee," the wife of Pablo said. "Nothing more."

"I am also for the bridge," the man with the flat face and the broken nose said, crushing the end of the cigarette on the table.

"To me the bridge means nothing," one of the brothers said. "I am for the _mujer_ of Pablo."

"Equally," said the other brother.

"Equally," the gypsy said.

Robert Jordan watched Pablo and as he watched, letting his right hand hang lower and lower, ready if it should be necessary, half hoping it would be (feeling perhaps that were the simplest and easiest yet not wishing to spoil what had gone so well, knowing how quickly all of a family, all of a clan, all of a band, can turn against a stranger in a quarrel, yet thinking what could be done with the hand were the simplest and best and surgically the most sound now that this had happened), saw also the wife of Pablo standing there and watched her blush proudly and soundly and healthily as the allegiances were given.

"I am for the Republic," the woman of Pablo said happily. "And the Republic is the bridge. Afterwards we will have time for other projects."

"And thou," Pablo said bitterly. "With your head of a seed bull and your heart of a whore. Thou thinkest there will be an afterwards from this bridge? Thou hast an idea of that which will pass?"

"That which must pass," the woman of Pablo said. "That which must pass, will pass."

"And it means nothing to thee to be hunted then like a beast after this thing from which we derive no profit? Nor to die in it?"