История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 28 страница

He lay there holding her very lightly, feeling her breathe and feeling her heart beat, and keeping track of the time on his wrist watch.

Andres had challenged at the government position. That is, he had lain down where the ground fell sharply away below the triple belt of wire and shouted up at the rock and earth parapet. There was no continual defensive line and he could easily have passed this position in the dark and made his way farther into the government territory before running into some one who would challenge him. But it seemed safer and simpler to get it over here.

"_Salud!_" he had shouted. "_Salud, milicianos!_"

He heard a bolt snick as it was pulled back. Then, from farther down the parapet, a rifle fired. There was a crashing crack and a downward stab of yellow in the dark. Andres had flattened at the click, the top of his head hard against the ground.

"Don't shoot, Comrades," Andres shouted. "Don't shoot! I want to come in."

"How many are you?" some one called from behind the parapet.

"One. Me. Alone."

"Who are you?"

"Andres Lopez of Villaconejos. From the band of Pablo. With a message."

"Have you your rifle and equipment?"

"Yes, man."

"We can take in none without rifle and equipment," the voice said. "Nor in larger groups than three."

"I am alone," Andres shouted. "It is important. Let me come in."

He could hear them talking behind the parapet but not what they were saying. Then the voice shouted again, "How many are you?"

"One. Me. Alone. For the love of God."

They were talking behind the parapet again. Then the voice came, "Listen, fascist."

"I am not a fascist," Andres shouted. "I am a _guerrillero_ from the band of Pablo. I come with a message for the General Staff."

"He's crazy," he heard some one say. "Toss a bomb at him."

"Listen," Andres said. "I am alone. I am completely by myself. I obscenity in the midst of the holy mysteries that I am alone. Let me come in."

"He speaks like a Christian," he heard some one say and laugh.

Then some one else said, "The best thing is to toss a bomb down on him."

"No," Andres shouted. "That would be a great mistake. This is important. Let me come in."

It was for this reason that he had never enjoyed trips back and forth between the lines. Sometimes it was better than others. But it was never good.

"You are alone?" the voice called down again.

"_Me cago en la leche_," Andres shouted. "How many times must I tell thee? I AM ALONE."

"Then if you should be alone stand up and hold thy rifle over thy head."

Andres stood up and put the carbine above his head, holding it in both hands.

"Now come through the wire. We have thee covered with the _maquina_," the voice called.

Andres was in the first zigzag belt of wire. "I need my hands to get through the wire," he shouted.

"Keep them up," the voice commanded.

"I am held fast by the wire," Andres called.

"It would have been simpler to have thrown a bomb at him," a voice said.

"Let him sling his rifle," another voice said. "He cannot come through there with his hands above his head. Use a little reason."

"All these fascists are the same," the other voice said. "They demand one condition after another."

"Listen," Andres shouted. "I am no fascist but a _guerrillero_ from the band of Pablo. We've killed more fascists than the typhus."

"I have never heard of the band of Pablo," the man who was evidently in command of the post said. "Neither of Peter nor of Paul nor of any of the other saints nor apostles. Nor of their bands. Sling thy rifle over thy shoulder and use thy hands to come through the wire."

"Before we loose the _maquina_ on thee," another shouted.

"_Que poco amables sois!_" Andres said. "You're not very amiable."

He was working his way through the wire.

"_Amables_," some one shouted at him. "We are in a war, man."

"It begins to appear so," Andres said.

"What's he say?"

Andres heard a bolt click again.

"Nothing," he shouted. "I say nothing. Do not shoot until I get through this fornicating wire."

"Don't speak badly of our wire," some one shouted. "Or we'll toss a bomb on you."

"_Quiero decir, que buena alambrada_," Andres shouted. "What beautiful wire. God in a latrine. What lovely wire. Soon I will be with thee, brothers."

"Throw a bomb at him," he heard the one voice say. "I tell you that's the soundest way to deal with the whole thing."

"Brothers," Andres said. He was wet through with sweat and he knew the bomb advocate was perfectly capable of tossing a grenade at any moment. "I have no importance."

"I believe it," the bomb man said.

"You are right," Andres said. He was working carefully through the third belt of wire and he was very close to the parapet. "I have no importance of any kind. But the affair is serious. _Muy, muy serio_."

"There is no more serious thing than liberty," the bomb man shouted. "Thou thinkest there is anything more serious than liberty?" he asked challengingly.

"No, man," Andres said, relieved. He knew now he was up against the crazies; the ones with the black-and-red scarves. "_Viva la Libertad!_"

"_Viva la F. A. I. Viva la C.N.T._," they shouted back at him from the parapet. "_Viva el anarco-sindicalismo_ and liberty."

"_Viva nosotros_," Andres shouted. "Long life to us."

"He is a coreligionary of ours," the bomb man said. "And I might have killed him with this."

He looked at the grenade in his hand and was deeply moved as Andres climbed over the parapet. Putting his arms around him, the grenade still in one hand, so that it rested against Andres's shoulder blade as he embraced him, the bomb man kissed him on both cheeks.

"I am content that nothing happened to thee, brother," he said. "I am very content."

"Where is thy officer?" Andres asked.

"I command here," a man said. "Let me see thy papers."

He took them into a dugout and looked at them with the light of a candle. There was the little square of folded silk with the colors of the Republic and the seal of the S. I. M. in the center. There was the _Salvoconducto_ or safe-conduct pass giving his name, age, height, birthplace and mission that Robert Jordan had written out on a sheet from his notebook and sealed with the S. I. M. rubber stamp and there were the four folded sheets of the dispatch to Golz which were tied around with a cord and sealed with wax and the impression of the metal S. I. M. seal that was set in the top end of the wooden handle of the rubber stamp.

"This I have seen," the man in command of the post said and handed back the piece of silk. "This you all have, I know. But its possession proves nothing without this." He lifted the _Salvoconducto_ and read it through again. "Where were you born?"

"Villaconejos," Andres said.

"And what do they raise there?"

"Melons," Andres said. "As all the world knows."

"Who do you know there?"

"Why? Are you from there?"

"Nay. But I have been there. I am from Aranjuez."

"Ask me about any one."

"Describe Jose Rincon."

"Who keeps the bodega?"

"Naturally."

"With a shaved head and a big belly and a cast in one eye."

"Then this is valid," the man said and handed him back the paper. "But what do you do on their side?"

"Our father had installed himself at Villacastin before the movement," Andres said. "Down there beyond the mountains on the plain. It was there we were surprised by the movement. Since the movement I have fought with the band of Pablo. But I am in a great hurry, man, to take that dispatch."

"How goes it in the country of the fascists?" the man commanding asked. He was in no hurry.

"Today we had much _tomate_," Andres said proudly. "Today there was plenty of dust on the road all day. Today they wiped out the band of Sordo."

"And who is Sordo?" the other asked deprecatingly.

"The leader of one of the best bands in the mountains."

"All of you should come in to the Republic and join the army," the officer said. "There is too much of this silly guerilla nonsense going on. All of you should come in and submit to our Libertarian discipline. Then when we wished to send out guerillas we would send them out as they are needed."

Andres was a man endowed with almost supreme patience. He had taken the coming in through the wire calmly. None of this examination had flustered him. He found it perfectly normal that this man should have no understanding of them nor of what they were doing and that he should talk idiocy was to be expected. That it should all go slowly should be expected too; but now he wished to go.

"Listen, _Compadre_," he said. "It is very possible that you are right. But I have orders to deliver that dispatch to the General commanding the Thirty-Fifth Division, which makes an attack at daylight in these hills and it is already late at night and I must go."

"What attack? What do you know of an attack?"

"Nay. I know nothing. But I must go now to Navacerrada and go on from there. Wilt thou send me to thy commander who will give me transport to go on from there? Send one with me now to respond to him that there be no delay."

"I distrust all of this greatly," he said. "It might have been better to have shot thee as thou approached the wire."

"You have seen my papers, Comrade, and I have explained my mission," Andres told him patiently.

"Papers can be forged," the officer said. "Any fascist could invent such a mission. I will go with thee myself to the Commander."

"Good," Andres said. "That you should come. But that we should go quickly."

"Thou, Sanchez. Thou commandest in my place," the officer said. "Thou knowest thy duties as well as I do. I take this so-called Comrade to the Commander."

They started down the shallow trench behind the crest of the hill and in the dark Andres smelt the foulness the defenders of the hill crest had made all through the bracken on that slope. He did not like these people who were like dangerous children; dirty, foul, undisciplined, kind, loving, silly and ignorant but always dangerous because they were armed. He, Andres, was without politics except that he was for the Republic. He had heard these people talk many times and he thought what they said was often beautiful and fine to hear but he did not like them. It is not liberty not to bury the mess one makes, he thought. No animal has more liberty than the cat; but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist. Until they learn that from the cat I cannot respect them.

Ahead of him the officer stopped suddenly.

"You have your _carabine_ still," he said.

"Yes," Andres said. "Why not?"

"Give it to me," the officer said. "You could shoot me in the back with it."

"Why?" Andres asked him. "Why would I shoot thee in the back?"

"One never knows," the officer said. "I trust no one. Give me the carbine."

Andres unslung it and handed it to him.

"If it pleases thee to carry it," he said.

"It is better," the officer said. "We are safer that way."

They went on down the hill in the dark.

Now Robert Jordan lay with the girl and he watched time passing on his wrist. It went slowly, almost imperceptibly, for it was a small watch and he could not see the second hand. But as he watched the minute hand he found he could almost check its motion with his concentration. The girl's head was under his chin and when he moved his head to look at the watch he felt the cropped head against his cheek, and it was as soft but as alive and silkily rolling as when a marten's fur rises under the caress of your hand when you spread the trap jaws open and lift the marten clear and, holding it, stroke the fur smooth. His throat swelled when his cheek moved against Maria's hair and there was a hollow aching from his throat all through him as he held his arms around her; his head dropped, his eyes close to the watch where the lance-pointed, luminous splinter moved slowly up the left face of the dial. He could see its movement clearly and steadily now and he held Maria close now to slow it. He did not want to wake her but he could not leave her alone now in this last time and he put his lips behind her ear and moved them up along her neck, feeling the smooth skin and the soft touch of her hair on them. He could see the hand moving on the watch and he held her tighter and ran the tip of his tongue along her cheek and onto the lobe of her ear and along the lovely convolutions to the sweet, firm rim at the top, and his tongue was trembling. He felt the trembling run through all of the hollow aching and he saw the hand of the watch now mounting in sharp angle toward the top where the hour was. Now while she still slept he turned her head and put his lips to hers. They lay there, just touching lightly against the sleep-firm mouth and he swung them softly across it, feeling them brush lightly. He turned himself toward her and he felt her shiver along the long, light lovely body and then she sighed, sleeping, and then she, still sleeping, held him too and then, unsleeping, her lips were against his firm and hard and pressing and he said, "But the pain."

And she said, "Nay, there is no pain."

"Rabbit."

"Nay, speak not."

"My rabbit."

"Speak not. Speak not."

Then they were together so that as the hand on the watch moved, unseen now, they knew that nothing could ever happen to the one that did not happen to the othei that no other thing could happen more than this; that this was all and always; this was what had been and now and whatever was to come. This, that they were not to have, they were having. They were having now and before and always and now and now and now. Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet. Now and forever now. Come now, now, for there is no now but now. Yes, now. Now, please now, only now, not anything else only this now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other one, and not why, not ever why, only this now; and on and always please then always now, always now, for now always one now; one only one, there is no other one but one now, one, going now, rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now; one and one is one, is one, is one, is one, is still one, is still one, is one descendingly, is one softly, is one longingly, is one kindly, is one happily, is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now on earth with elbows against the cut and slept-on branches of the pine tree with the smell of the pine boughs and the night; to earth conclusively now, and with the morning of the day to come. Then he said, for the other was only in his head and he had said nothing, "Oh, Maria, I love thee and I thank thee for this."

Maria said, "Do not speak. It is better if we do not speak."

"I must tell thee for it is a great thing."

"Nay."

"Rabbit--"

But she held him tight and turned her head away and he asked softly, "Is it pain, rabbit?"

"Nay," she said. "It is that I am thankful too to have been another time in _la gloria_."

Then afterwards they lay quiet, side by side, all length of ankle, thigh, hip and shoulder touching, Robert Jordan now with the watch where he could see it again and Maria said, "We have had much good fortune."

"Yes," he said, "we are people of much luck."

"There is not time to sleep?"

"No," he said, "it starts soon now."

"Then if we must rise let us go to get something to eat."

"All right."

"Thou. Thou art not worried about anything?"

"No."

"Truly?"

"No. Not now."

"But thou hast worried before?"

"For a while."

"Is it aught I can help?"

"Nay," he said. "You have helped enough."

"That? That was for me."

"That was for us both," he said. "No one is there alone. Come, rabbit, let us dress."

But his mind, that was his best companion, was thinking La Gloria. She said La Gloria. It has nothing to do with glory nor La Gloire that the French write and speak about. It is the thing that is in the Cante Hondo and in the Saetas. It is in Greco and in San Juan de la Cruz, of course, and in the others. I am no mystic, but to deny it is as ignorant as though you denied the telephone or that the earth revolves around the sun or that there are other planets than this.

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all the other time. I'd like to be an old man and to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

"You taught me a lot, _guapa_," he said in English.

"What did you say?"

"I have learned much from thee."

"_Que va_," she said, "it is thou who art educated."

Educated, he thought. I have the very smallest beginnings of an education. The very small beginnings. If I die on this day it is a waste because I know a few things now. I wonder if you only learn them now because you are oversensitized because of the shortness of the time? There is no such thing as a shortness of time, though. You should have sense enough to know that too. I have been all my life in these hills since I have been here. Anselmo is my oldest friend. I know him better than I know Charles, than I know Chub, than I know Guy, than I know Mike, and I know them well. Agustin, with his vile mouth, is my brother, and I never had a brother. Maria is my true love and my wife. I never had a true love. I never had a wife. She is also my sister, and I never had a sister, and my daughter, and I never will have a daughter. I hate to leave a thing that is so good. He finished tying his rope-soled shoes.

"I find life very interesting," he said to Maria. She was sitting beside him on the robe, her hands clasped around her ankles. Some one moved the blanket aside from the entrance to the cave and they both saw the light. It was night still and here was no promise of morning except that as he looked up through the pines he saw how low the stars had swung. The morning would be coming fast now in this month.

"Roberto," Maria said.

"Yes, _guapa_."

"In this of today we will be together, will we not?"

"After the start, yes."

"Not at the start?"

"No. Thou wilt be with the horses."

"I cannot be with thee?"

"No. I have work that only I can do and I would worry about thee."

"But you will come fast when it is done?"

"Very fast," he said and grinned in the dark. "Come, _guapa_, let us go and eat."

"And thy robe?"

"Roll it up, if it pleases thee."

"It pleases me," she said.

"I will help thee."

"Nay. Let me do it alone."

She knelt to spread and roll the robe, then changed her mind and stood up and shook it so it flapped. Then she knelt down again to straighten it and roll it. Robert Jordan picked up the two packs, holding them carefully so that nothing would spill from the slits in them, and walked over through the pines to the cave mouth where the smoky blanket hung. It was ten minutes to three by his watch when he pushed the blanket aside with his elbow and went into the cave.

They were in the cave and the men were standing before the fire Maria was fanning. Pilar had coffee ready in a pot. She had not gone back to bed at all since she had roused Robert Jordan and now she was sitting on a stool in the smoky cave sewing the rip in one of Jordan's packs. The other pack was already sewed. The firelight lit up her face.

"Take more of the stew," she said to Fernando. "What does it matter if thy belly should be full? There is no doctor to operate if you take a goring."

"Don't speak that way, woman," Agustin said. "Thou hast the tongue of the great whore."

He was leaning on the automatic rifle, its legs folded close against the fretted barrel, his pockets were full of grenades, a sack of pans hung from one shoulder, and a full bandolier of ammunition hung over the other shoulder. He was smoking a cigarette and he held a bowl of coffee in one hand and blew smoke onto its surface as he raised it to his lips.

"Thou art a walking hardware store," Pilar said to him. "Thou canst not walk a hundred yards with all that."

"_Que va_, woman," Agustin said. "It is all downhill."

"There is a climb to the post," Fernando said. "Before the downward slope commences."

"I will climb it like a goat," Agustin said.

"And thy brother?" he asked Eladio. "Thy famous brother has mucked off?"

Eladio was standing against the wall.

"Shut up," he said.

He was nervous and he knew they all knew it. He was always nervous and irritable before action. He moved from the wall to the table and began filling his pockets with grenades from one of the rawhide-covered panniers that leaned, open, against the table leg.

Robert Jordan squatted by the pannier beside him. He reached into the pannier and picked out four grenades. Three were the oval Mill bomb type, serrated, heavy iron with a spring level held down in position by a cotter pin with pulling rig attached.

"Where did these come from?" he asked Eladio.

"Those? Those are from the Republic. The old man brought them."

"How are they?"

"_Valen mas que pesan_," Eladio said. "They are worth a fortune apiece."

"I brought those," Anselmo said. "Sixty in one pack. Ninety pounds, _Ingles_."

"Have you used those?" Robert Jordan asked Pilar.

"Que va have we used them?" the woman said. "It was with those Pablo slew the post at Otero."

When she mentioned Pablo, Agustin started cursing. Robert Jordan saw the look on Pilar's face in the firelight.

"Leave it," she said to Agustin sharply. "It does no good to talk."

"Have they always exploded?" Robert Jordan held the graypainted grenade in his hand, trying the bend of the cotter pin with his thumbnail.

"Always," Eladio said. "There was not a dud in any of that lot we used."

"And how quickly?"

"In the distance one can throw it. Quickly. Quickly enough."

"And these?"

He held up a soup-tin-shaped bomb, with a tape wrapping around a wire loop.

"They are a garbage," Eladio told him. "They blow. Yes. But it is all flash and no fragments."

"But do they always blow?"

"_Que va_, always," Pilar said. "There is no always either with our munitions or theirs."

"But you said the other always blew."

"Not me," Pilar told him. "You asked another, not me. I have seen no _always_ in any of that stuff."

"They all blew," Eladio insisted. "Speak the truth, woman."

"How do you know they all blew?" Pilar asked him. "It was Pablo who threw them. You killed no one at Otero."

"That son of the great whore," Agustin began.

"Leave it alone," Pilar said sharply. Then she went on. "They are all much the same, _Ingles_. But the corrugated ones are more simple."

I'd better use one of each on each set, Robert Jordan thought. But the serrated type will lash easier and more securely.

"Are you going to be throwing bombs, _Ingles?_" Agustin asked.

"Why not?" Robert Jordan said.

But crouched there, sorting out the grenades, what he was thinking was: it is impossible. How I could have deceived myself about it I do not know. We were as sunk when they attacked Sordo as Sordo was sunk when the snow stopped. It is that you can't accept it. You have to go on and make a plan that you know is impossible to carry out. You made it and now you know it is no good. It's no good, now, in the morning. You can take either of the posts absolutely O.K. with what you've got here. But you can't take them both. You can't be sure of it, I mean. Don't deceive yourself. Not when the daylight comes.

Trying to take them both will never work. Pablo knew that all the time. I suppose he always intended to muck off but he knew we were cooked when Sordo was attacked. You can't base an operation on the presumption that miracles are going to happen. You will kill them all off and not even get your bridge blown if you have nothing better than what you have now. You will kill off Pilar, Anselmo, Agustin, Primitivo, this jumpy Eladio, the worthless gypsy and old Fernando, and you won't get your bridge blown. Do you suppose there will be a miracle and Golz will get the message from Andres and stop it? If there isn't, you are going to kill them all off with those orders. Maria too. You'll kill her too with those orders. Can't you even get her out of it? God damn Pablo to hell, he thought.

No. Don't get angry. Getting angry is as bad as getting scared. But instead of sleeping with your girl you should have ridden all night through these hills with the woman to try to dig up enough people to make it work. Yes, he thought. And if anything happened to me so I was not here to blow it. Yes. That. That's why you weren't out. And you couldn't send anybody out because you couldn't run a chance of losing them and being short one more. You had to keep what you had and make a plan to do it with them.

But your plan stinks. It stinks, I tell you. It was a night plan and it's morning now. Night plans aren't any good in the morning. The way you think at night is no good in the morning. So now you know it is no good.

What if John Mosby did get away with things as impossible as this? Sure he did. Much more difficult. And remember, do not undervaluate the element of surprise. Remember that. Remember it isn't goofy if you can make it stick. But that is not the way you are supposed to make it. You should make it not only possible but sure. But look at how it all has gone. Well, it was wrong in the first place and such things accentuate disaster as a snowball rolls up wet snow.

He looked up from where he was squatted by the table and saw Maria and she smiled at him. He grinned back with the front of his face and selected four more grenades and put them in his pockets. I could unscrew the detonators and just use them, he thought. But I don't think the fragmentation will have any bad effect. It will come instantaneously with the explosion of the charge and it won't disperse it. At least, I don't think it will. I'm sure it won't. Have a little confidence, he told himself. And you, last night, thinking about how you and your grandfather were so terrific and your father was a coward. Show yourself a little confidence now.

He grinned at Maria again but the grin was still no deeper than the skin that felt tight over his cheekbones and his mouth.