They were going up the hill in the snow.
"Back to the palace of Pablo," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. It sounded wonderful in Spanish.
"El Palacio del Miedo," Anselmo said. "The Palace of Fear."
"La cueva de los huevos perdidos," Robert Jordan capped the other happily. "The cave of the lost eggs."
"What eggs?" Fernando asked.
"A joke," Robert Jordan said. "Just a joke. Not eggs, you know. The others."
"But why are they lost?" Fernando asked.
"I don't know," said Robert Jordan. "Take a book to tell you. Ask Pilar," then he put his arm around Anselmo's shoulder and held him tight as they walked and shook him. "Listen," he said. "I'm glad to see you, hear? You don't know what it means to find somebody in this country in the same place they were left."
It showed what confidence and intimacy he had that he could say anything against the country.
"I am glad to see thee," Anselmo said. "But I was just about to leave."
"Like hell you would have," Robert Jordan said happily. "You'd have frozen first."
"How was it up above?" Anselmo asked.
"Fine," said Robert Jordan. "Everything is fine."
He was very happy with that sudden, rare happiness that can come to any one with a command in a revolutionary arm; the happiness of finding that even one of your flanks holds. If both flanks ever held I suppose it would be too much to take, he thought. I don't know who is prepared to stand that. And if you extend along a flank, any flank, it eventually becomes one man. Yes, one man. This was not the axiom he wanted. But this was a good man. One good man. You are going to be the left flank when we have the battle, he thought. I better not tell you that yet. It's going to be an awfully small battle, he thought. But it's going to be an awfully good one. Well, I always wanted to fight one on my own. I always had an opinion on what was wrong with everybody else's, from Agincourt down. I will have to make this a good one. It is going to be small but very select. If I have to do what I think I will have to do it will be very select indeed.
"Listen," he said to Anselmo. "I'm awfully glad to see you."
"And me to see thee," the old man said.
As they went up the hill in the dark, the wind at their backs, the storm blowing past them as they climbed, Anselmo did not feel lonely. He had not been lonely since the Ingles had clapped him on the shoulder. The Ingles was pleased and happy and they joked together. The Ingles said it all went well and he was not worried. The drink in his stomach warmed him and his feet were warming now climbing.
"Not much on the road," he said to the Ingles.
"Good," the Ingles told him. "You will show me when we get there."
Anselmo was happy now and he was very pleased that he had stayed there at the post of observation.
If he had come in to camp it would have been all right. It would have been the intelligent and correct thing to have done under the circumstances, Robert Jordan was thinking. But he stayed as he was told, Robert Jordan thought. That's the rarest thing that can happen in Spain. To stay in a storm, in a way, corresponds to a lot of things. It's not for nothing that the Germans call an attack a storm. I could certainly use a couple more who would stay. I most certainly could. I wonder if that Fernando would stay. It's just possible. After all, he is the one who suggested coming out just now. Do you suppose he would stay? Wouldn't that be good? He's just about stubborn enough. I'll have to make some inquiries. Wonder what the old cigar store Indian is thinking about now.
"What are you thinking about, Fernando?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity," Robert Jordan said. "I am a man of great curiosity."
"I was thinking of supper," Fernando said.
"Do you like to eat?"
"Yes. Very much."
"How's Pilar's cooking?"
"Average," Fernando answered.
He's a second Coolidge, Robert Jordan thought. But, you know, I have just a hunch that he would stay.
The three of them plodded up the hill in the snow.
"El Sordo was here," Pilar said to Robert Jordan. They had come in out of the storm to the smoky warmth of the cave and the woman had motioned Robert Jordan over to her with a nod of her head. "He's gone to look for horses."
"Good. Did he leave any word for me?"
"Only that he had gone for horses."
"And we?"
"No se," she said. "Look at him."
Robert Jordan had seen Pablo when he came in and Pablo had grinned at him. Now he looked over at him sitting at the board table and grinned and waved his hand.
"Ingles," Pablo called. "It's still falling, Ingles."
Robert Jordan nodded at him.
"Let me take thy shoes and dry them," Maria said. "I will hang them here in the smoke of the fire."
"Watch out you don't burn them," Robert Jordan told her. "I don't want to go around here barefoot. What's the matter?" he turned to Pilar. "Is this a meeting? Haven't you any sentries out?"
"In this storm? Que va."
There were six men sitting at the table and leaning back against the wall. Anselmo and Fernando were still shaking the snow from their jackets, beating their trousers and rapping their feet against the wall by the entrance.
"Let me take thy jacket," Maria said. "Do not let the snow melt on it."
Robert Jordan slipped out of his jacket, beat the snow from his trousers, and untied his shoes.
"You will get everything wet here," Pilar said.
"It was thee who called me."
"Still there is no impediment to returning to the door for thy brushing."
"Excuse me," Robert Jordan said, standing in his bare feet on the dirt floor. "Hunt me a pair of socks, Maria."
"The Lord and Master," Pilar said and poked a piece of wood into the fire.
"Hay que aprovechar el tiempo," Robert Jordan told her. "You have to take advantage of what time there is."
"It is locked," Maria said.
"Here is the key," and he tossed it over.
"It does not fit this sack."
"It is the other sack. They are on top and at the side."
The girl found the pair of socks, closed the sack, locked it and brought them over with the key.
"Sit down and put them on and rub thy feet well," she said. Robert Jordan grinned at her.
"Thou canst not dry them with thy hair?" he said for Pilar to hear.
"What a swine," she said. "First he is the Lord of the Manor. Now he is our ex-Lord Himself. Hit him with a chunk of wood, Maria."
"Nay," Robert Jordan said to her. "I am joking because I am happy."
"You are happy?"
"Yes," he said. "I think everything goes very well."
"Roberto," Maria said. "Go sit down and dry thy feet and let me bring thee something to drink to warm thee."
"You would think that man had never dampened foot before," Pilar said. "Nor that a flake of snow had ever fallen."
Maria brought him a sheepskin and put it on the dirt floor of the cave.
"There," she said. "Keep that under thee until thy shoes are dry."
The sheepskin was fresh dried and not tanned and as Robert Jordan rested his stocking feet on it he could feel it crackle like parchment.
The fire was smoking and Pilar called to Maria, "Blow up the fire, worthless one. This is no smokehouse."
"Blow it thyself," Maria said. "I am searching for the bottle that El Sordo left."
"It is behind his packs," Pilar told her. "Must you care for him as a sucking child?"
"No," Maria said. "As a man who is cold and wet. And a man who has just come to his house. Here it is." She brought the bottle to where Robert Jordan sat. "It is the bottle of this noon. With this bottle one could make a beautiful lamp. When we have electricity again, what a lamp we can make of this bottle." She looked at the pinch-bottle admiringly. "How do you take this, Roberto?"
"I thought I was Ingles," Robert Jordan said to her.
"I call thee Roberto before the others," she said in a low voice and blushed. "How do you want it, Roberto?"
"Roberto," Pablo said thickly and nodded his head at Robert Jordan. "How do you want it, Don Roberto?"
"Do you want some?" Robert Jordan asked him.
Pablo shook his head. "I am making myself drunk with wine," he said with dignity.
"Go with Bacchus," Robert Jordan said in Spanish.
"Who is Bacchus?" Pablo asked.
"A comrade of thine," Robert Jordan said.
"Never have I heard of him," Pablo said heavily. "Never in these mountains."
"Give a cup to Anselmo," Robert Jordan said to Maria. "It is he who is cold." He was putting on the dry pair of socks and the whiskey and water in the cup tasted clean and thinly warming. But it does not curl around inside of you the way the absinthe does, he thought. There is nothing like absinthe.
Who would imagine they would have whiskey up here, he thought. But La Granja was the most likely place in Spain to find it when you thought it over. Imagine Sordo getting a bottle for the visiting dynamiter and then remembering to bring it down and leave it. It wasn't just manners that they had. Manners would have been producing the bottle and having a formal drink. That was what the French would have done and then they would have saved what was left for another occasion. No, the true thoughtfulness of thinking the visitor would like it and then bringing it down for him to enjoy when you yourself were engaged in something where there was every reason to think of no one else but yourself and of nothing but the matter in hand-that was Spanish. One kind of Spanish, he thought. Remembering to bring the whiskey was one of the reasons you loved these people. Don't go romanticizing them, he thought. There are as many sorts of Spanish as there are Americans. But still, bringing the whiskey was very handsome.
"How do you like it?" he asked Anselmo.
The old man was sitting by the fire with a smile on his face, his big hands holding the cup. He shook his head.
"No?" Robert Jordan asked him.
"The child put water in it," Anselmo said.
"Exactly as Roberto takes it," Maria said. "Art thou something special?"
"No," Anselmo told her. "Nothing special at all. But I like to feel it burn as it goes down."
"Give me that," Robert Jordan told the girl, "and pour him some of that which burns."
He tipped the contents of the cup into his own and handed it back empty to the girl, who poured carefully into it from the bottle.
"Ah," Anselmo took the cup, put his head back and let it run down his throat. He looked at Maria standing holding the bottle and winked at her, tears coming from both eyes. "That," he said. "That." Then he licked his lips. "That is what kills the worm that haunts us."
"Roberto," Maria said and came over to him, still holding the bottle. "Are you ready to eat?"
"Is it ready?"
"It is ready when you wish it."
"Have the others eaten?"
"All except you, Anselmo and Fernando."
"Let us eat then," he told her. "And thou?"
"Afterwards with Pilar."
"Eat now with us."
"No. It would not be well."
"Come on and eat. In my country a man does not eat before his woman."
"That is thy country. Here it is better to eat after."
"Eat with him," Pablo said, looking up from the table. "Eat with him. Drink with him. Sleep with him. Die with him. Follow the customs of his country."
"Are you drunk?" Robert Jordan said, standing in front of Pablo. The dirty, stubble-faced man looked at him happily.
"Yes," Pablo said. "Where is thy country, Ingles, where the women eat with the men?"
"In Estados Unidos in the state of Montana."
"Is it there that the men wear skirts as do the women?"
"No. That is in Scotland."
"But listen," Pablo said. "When you wear skirts like that, Ingles-"
"I don't wear them," Robert Jordan said.
"When you are wearing those skirts," Pablo went on, "what do you wear under them?"
"I don't know what the Scotch wear," Robert Jordan said. "I've wondered myself."
"Not the Escoceses," Pablo said. "Who cares about the Escoceses? Who cares about anything with a name as rare as that? Not me. I don't care. You, I say, Ingles. You. What do you wear under your skirts in your country?"
"Twice I have told you that we do not wear skirts," Robert Jordan said. "Neither drunk nor in joke."
"But under your skirts," Pablo insisted. "Since it is well known that you wear skirts. Even the soldiers. I have seen photographs and also I have seen them in the Circus of Price. What do you wear under your skirts, Ingles?"
"Los cojones," Robert Jordan said.
Anselmo laughed and so did the others who were listening; all except Fernando. The sound of the word, of the gross word spoken before the women, was offensive to him.
"Well, that is normal," Pablo said. "But it seems to me that with enough cojones you would not wear skirts."
"Don't let him get started again, Ingles," the flat-faced man with the broken nose who was called Primitivo said. "He is drunk. Tell me, what do they raise in your country?"
"Cattle and sheep," Robert Jordan said. "Much grain also and beans. And also much beets for sugar."
The three were at the table now and the others sat close by except Pablo, who sat by himself in front of a bowl of the wine. It was the same stew as the night before and Robert Jordan ate it hungrily.
"In your country there are mountains? With that name surely there are mountains," Primitivo asked politely to make conversation. He was embarrassed at the drunkenness of Pablo.
"Many mountains and very high."
"And are there good pastures?"
"Excellent; high pasture in the summer in forests controlled by the government. Then in the fall the cattle are brought down to the lower ranges."
"Is the land there owned by the peasants?"
"Most land is owned by those who farm it. Originally the land was owned by the state and by living on it and declaring the intent~on of improving it, a man could obtain a title to a hundred and fifty hectares."
"Tell me how this is done," Agustin asked. "That is an agrarian reform which means something."
Robert Jordan explained the process of homesteading. He had never thought of it before as an agrarian reform.
"That is magnificent," Primitivo said. "Then you have a communism in your country?"
"No. That is done under the Republic."
"For me," Agustin said, "everything can be done under the Republic. I see no need for other form of government."
"Do you have no big proprietors?" Andres asked.
"Many."
"Then there must be abuses."
"Certainly. There are many abuses."
"But you will do away with them?"
"We try to more and more. But there are many abuses still."
"But there are not great estates that must be broken up?"
"Yes. But there are those who believe that taxes will break them up."
"How?"
Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how the income tax and inheritance tax worked. "But the big estates remain. Also there are taxes on the land," he said.
"But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here," Primitivo said.
"It is possible."
"Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here."
"Yes, we will have to fight."
"But are there not many fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."
"But you cannot destroy them until they rebel?"
"No," Robert Jordan said. "We cannot destroy them. But we can educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it."
"Do you know where there are no fascists?" Andres asked.
"Where?"
"In the town of Pablo," Andres said and grinned.
"You know what was done in that village?" Primitivo asked Robert Jordan.
"Yes. I have heard the story."
"From Pilar?"
"Yes."
"You could not hear all of it from the woman," Pablo said heavily. "Because she did not see the end of it because she fell from a chair outside of the window."
"You tell him what happened then," Pilar said. "Since I know not the story, let you tell it."
"Nay," Pablo said. "I have never told it."
"No," Pilar said. "And you will not tell it. And now you wish it had not happened."
"No," Pablo said. "That is not true. And if all had killed the fascists as I did we would not have this war. But I would not have had it happen as it happened."
"Why do you say that?" Primitivo asked him. "Are you changing your politics?"
"No. But it was barbarous," Pablo said. "In those days I was very barbarous."
"And now you are drunk," Pilar said.
"Yes," Pablo said. "With your permission."
"I liked you better when you were barbarous," the woman said. "Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practise in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in his own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol."
"You are a woman and you do not understand," Pablo said equably. "I am drunk on wine and I would be happy except for those people I have killed. All of them fill me with sorrow." He shook his head lugubriously.
"Give him some of that which Sordo brought," Pilar said. "Give him something to animate him. He is becoming too sad to bear."
"If I could restore them to life, I would," Pablo said.
"Go and obscenity thyself," Agustin said to him. "What sort of place is this?"
"I would bring them all back to life," Pablo said sadly. "Every one."
"Thy mother," Agustin shouted at him. "Stop talking like this or get out. Those were fascists you killed."
"You heard me," Pablo said. "I would restore them all to life."
"And then you would walk on the water," Pilar said. "In my life I have never seen such a man. Up until yesterday you preserved some remnants of manhood. And today there is not enough of you left to make a sick kitten. Yet you are happy in your soddenness."
"We should have killed all or none," Pablo nodded his head. "All or none."
"Listen, Ingles," Agustin said. "How did you happen to come to Spain? Pay no attention to Pablo. He is drunk."
"I came first twelve years ago to study the country and the language," Robert Jordan said. "I teach Spanish in a university."
"You look very little like a professoi" Primitivo said.
"He has no beard," Pablo said. "Look at him. He has no beard."
"Are you truly a professor?"
"An instructor."
"But you teach?"
"Yes."
"But why Spanish?" Andres asked. "Would it not be easier to teach English since you are English?"
"He speaks Spanish as we do," Anselmo said. "Why should he not teach Spanish?"
"Yes. But it is, in a way, presumptuous for a foreigner to teach Spanish," Fernando said. "I mean nothing against you, Don Roberto."
"He's a false professor," Pablo said, very pleased with himself. "He hasn't got a beard."
"Surely you know English better," Fernando said. "Would it not be better and easier and clearer to teach English?"
"He doesn't teach it to Spaniards-" Pilar started to intervene.
"I should hope not," Fernando said.
"Let me finish, you mule," Pilar said to him. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans."
"Can they not speak Spanish?" Fernando asked. "South Americans can."
"Mule," Pilar said. "He teaches Spanish to North Americans who speak English."
"Still and all I think it would be easier for him to teach English if that is what he speaks," Fernando said.
"Can't you hear he speaks Spanish?" Pilar shook her head hopelessly at Robert Jordan.
"Yes. But with an accent."
"Of where?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Of Estremadura," Fernando said primly.
"Oh my mother," Pilar said. "What a people!"
"It is possible," Robert Jordan said. "I have come here from there."
"As he well knows," Pilar said. "You old maid," she turned to Fernando. "Have you had enough to eat?"
"I could eat more if there is a sufficient quantity," Fernando told her. "And do not think that I wish to say anything against you, Don Roberto-"
"Milk," Agustin said simply. "And milk again. Do we make the revolution in order to say Don Roberto to a comrade?"
"For me the revolution is so that all will say Don to all," Fernando said. "Thus should it be under the Republic."
"Milk," Agustin said. "Black milk."
"And I still think it would be easier and clearer for Don Roberto to teach English."
"Don Roberto has no beard," Pablo said. "He is a false professor."
"What do you mean, I have no beard?" Robert Jordan said. "What's this?" He stroked his chin and his cheeks where the threeday growth made a blond stubble.
"Not a beard," Pablo said. He shook his head. "That's not a beard." He was almost jovial now. "He's a false professor."
"I obscenity in the milk of all," Agustin said, "if it does not seem like a lunatic asylum here."
"You should drink," Pablo said to him. "To me everything appears normal. Except the lack of beard of Don Roberto."
Maria ran her hand over Robert Jordan's cheek.
"He has a beard," she said to Pablo.
"You should know," Pablo said and Robert Jordan looked at him.
I don't think he is so drunk, Robert Jordan thought. No, not so drunk. And I think I had better watch myself.
"Thou," he said to Pablo. "Do you think this snow will last?"
"What do you think?"
"I asked you."
"Ask another," Pablo told him. "I am not thy service of information. You have a paper from thy service of information. Ask the woman. She commands."
"I asked thee."
"Go and obscenity thyself," Pablo told him. "Thee and the woman and the girl."
"He is drunk," Primitivo said. "Pay him no heed, Ingles."
"I do not think he is so drunk," Robert Jordan said.
Maria was standing behind him and Robert Jordan saw Pablo watching her over his shoulder. The small eyes, like a boar's, were watching her out of the round, stubble-covered head and Robert Jordan thought: I have known many killers in this war and some before and they were all different; there is no common trait nor feature; nor any such thing as the criminal type; but Pablo is certainly not handsome.
"I don't believe you can drink," he said to Pablo. "Nor that you're drunk."
"I am drunk," Pablo said with dignity. "To drink is nothing. It is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho."
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