Robert Jordan reached for his flask and, bringing the flask out, as he brought it he loosened the pistol in the holster and swung it on top of his thigh. He poured a second absinthe into his cup and took the cup of water the girl brought him and commenced to drip it into the cup, a little at a time. The girl stood at his elbow, watching him.
"Outside," the woman of Pablo said to her, gesturing with the spoon.
"It is cold outside," the girl said, her cheek close to Robert Jordan's, watching what was happening in the cup where the liquor was clouding.
"Maybe," the woman of Pablo said. "But in here it is too hot." Then she said, kindly, "It is not for long."
The girl shook her head and went out.
I don't think he is going to take this much more, Robert Jordan thought to himself. He held the cup in one hand and his other hand rested, frankly now, on the pistol. He had slipped the safety catch and he felt the worn comfort of the checked grip chafed almost smooth and touched the round, cool companionship of the trigger guard. Pablo no longer looked at him but only at the woman. She went on, "Listen to me, drunkard. You understand who commands here?"
"I command."
"No. Listen. Take the wax from thy hairy ears. Listen well. I command."
Pablo looked at her and you could tell nothing of what he was thinking by his face. He looked at her quite deliberately and then he looked across the table at Robert Jordan. He looked at him a long time contemplatively and then he looked back at the woman, again.
"All right. You command," he said. "And if you want he can command too. And the two of you can go to hell." He was looking the woman straight in the face and he was neither dominated by her nor seemed to be much affected by her. "It is possible that I am lazy and that I drink too much. You may consider me a coward but there you are mistaken. But I am not stupid." He paused. "That you should command and that you should like it. Now if you are a woman as well as a commander, that we should have something to eat."
"Maria," the woman of Pablo called.
The girl put her head inside the blanket across the cave mouth. "Enter now and serve the supper."
The girl came in and walked across to the low table by the hearth and picked up the enameled-ware bowls and brought them to the table.
"There is wine enough for all," the woman of Pablo said to Robert Jordan. "Pay no attention to what that drunkard says. When this is finished we will get more. Finish that rare thing thou art drinking and take a cup of wine."
Robert Jordan swallowed down the last of the absinthe, feeling it, gulped that way, making a warm, small, fume-rising, wet, chemicalchange-producing heat in him and passed the cup for wine. The girl dipped it full for him and smiled.
"Well, did you see the bridge?" the gypsy asked. The others, who had not opened their mouths after the change of allegiance, were all leaning forward to listen now.
"Yes," Robert Jordan said. "It is something easy to do. Would you like me to show you?"
"Yes, man. With much interest."
Robert Jordan took out the notebook from his shirt pocket and showed them the sketches.
"Look how it seems," the flat-faced man, who was named Primitivo, said. "It is the bridge itself."
Robert Jordan with the point of the pencil explained how the bridge should be blown and the reason for the placing of the charges.
"What simplicity," the scarred-faced brother, who was called Andres, said. "And how do you explode them?"
Robert Jordan explained that too and, as he showed them, he felt the girl's arm resting on his shoulder as she looked. The woman of Pablo was watching too. Only Pablo took no interest, sitting by himself with a cup of wine that he replenished by dipping into the big bowl Maria had filled from the wineskin that hung to the left of the entrance to the cave.
"Hast thou done much of this?" the girl asked Robert Jordan softly.
"Yes."
"And can we see the doing of it?"
"Yes. Why not?"
"You will see it," Pablo said from his end of the table. "I believe that you will see it."
"Shut up," the woman of Pablo said to him and suddenly remembering what she had seen in the hand in the afternoon she was wildly, unreasonably angry. "Shut up, coward. Shut up, bad luck bird. Shut up, murderer."
"Good," Pablo said. "I shut up. It is thou who commands now and you should continue to look at the pretty pictures. But remember that I am not stupid."
The woman of Pablo could feel her rage changing to sorrow and to a feeling of the thwarting of all hope and promise. She knew this feeling from when she was a girl and she knew the things that caused it all through her life. It came now suddenly and she put it away from her and would not let it touch her, neither her nor the Republic, and she said, "Now we will eat. Serve the bowls from the pot, Maria."
5
Robert Jordan pushed aside the saddle blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave and, stepping out, took a deep breath of the cold night air. The mist had cleared away and the stars were out. There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat dried in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat), of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream. Dew had fallen heavily since the wind had dropped, but, as he stood there, he thought there would be frost by morning.
As he stood breathing deep and then listening to the night, he heard first, firing far away, and then he heard an owl cry in the timber below, where the horse corral was slung. Then inside the cave he could hear the gypsy starting to sing and the soft chording of a guitar.
"I had an inheritance from my father," the artificially hardened voice rose harshly and hung there. Then went on:
"It was the moon and the sun
"And though I roam all over the world
"The spending of it's never done."
The guitar thudded with chorded applause for the singer. "Good," Robert Jordan heard some one say. "Give us the Catalan, gypsy."
"No."
"Yes. Yes. The Catalan."
"All right," the gypsy said and sang mournfully,
"My nose is flat.
"My face is black.
"But still I am a man."
"Ole!" some one said. "Go on, gypsy!"
The gypsy's voice rose tragically and mockingly.
"Thank God I am a Negro.
"And not a Catalan!"
"There is much noise," Pablo's voice said. "Shut up, gypsy."
"Yes," he heard the woman's voice. "There is too much noise. You could call the guardia civil with that voice and still it has no quality."
"I know another verse," the gypsy said and the guitar commenced
"Save it," the woman told him.
The guitar stopped.
"I am not good in voice tonight. So there is no loss," the gypsy said and pushing the blanket aside he came out into the dark.
Robert Jordan watched him walk over to a tree and then come toward him.
"Roberto," the gypsy said softly.
"Yes, Rafael," he said. He knew the gypsy had been affected by the wine from his voice. He himself had drunk the two absinthes and some wine but his head was clear and cold from the strain of the difficulty with Pablo.