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."
4
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.