"Be careful," he said to her. "The wine's below the chest now."
No one said anything.
"I drank from the belly-button to the chest today," Pablo said. "It's a day's work. What's the matter with you all? Have you lost your tongues?"
No one said anything at all.
"Screw it up, Maria," Pablo said. "Don't let it spill."
"There'll be plenty of wine," Agustin said. "You'll be able to be drunk."
"One has encountered his tongue," Pablo said and nodded to Agustin. "Felicitations. I thought you'd been struck dumb."
"By what?" Agustin asked.
"By my entry."
"Thinkest thou that thy entry carries importance?"
He's working himself up to it, maybe, Robert Jordan thought. Maybe Agustin is going to do it. He certainly hates him enough. I don't hate him, he thought. No, I don't hate him. He is disgusting but I do not hate him. Though that blinding business puts him in a special class. Still this is their war. But he is certainly nothing to have around for the next two days. I am going to keep away out of it, he thought. I made a fool of myself with him once tonight and I am perfectly willing to liquidate him. But I am not going to fool with him beforehand. And there are not going to be any shooting matches or monkey business in here with that dynamite around either. Pablo thought of that, of course. And did you think of it, he said to himself? No, you did not and neither did Agustin. You deserve whatever happens to you, he thought.
"Agustin," he said.
"What?" Agustin looked up sullenly and turned his head away from Pablo.
"I wish to speak to thee," Robert Jordan said.
"Later."
"Now," Robert Jordan said. "Por favor."
Robert Jordan had walked to the opening of the cave and Pablo followed him with his eyes. Agustin, tall and sunken cheeked, stood up and came over to him. He moved reluctantly and contemptuously.
"Thou hast forgotten what is in the sacks?" Robert Jordan said to him, speaking so low that it could not be heard.
"Milk!" Agustin said. "One becomes accustomed and one forgets."
"I, too, forgot."
"Milk!" Agustin said. "Leche! What fools we are." He swung back loose-jointedly to the table and sat down. "Have a drink, Pablo, old boy," he said. "How were the horses?"
"Very good," Pablo said. "And it is snowing less."
"Do you think it will stop?"
"Yes," Pablo said. "It is thinning now and there are small, hard pellets. The wind will blow but the snow is going. The wind has changed."
"Do you think it will clear tomorrow?" Robert Jordan asked him.
"Yes," Pablo said. "I believe it will be cold and clear. This wind is shifting."
Look at him, Robert Jordan thought. Now he is friendly. He has shifted like the wind. He has the face and the body of a pig and I know he is many times a murderer and yet he has the sensitivity of a good aneroid. Yes, he thought, and the pig is a very intelligent animal, too. Pablo has hatred for us, or perhaps it is only for our projects, and pushes his hatred with insults to the point where you are ready to do away with him and when he sees that this point has been reached he drops it and starts all new and clean again.
"We will have good weather for it, Ingles," Pablo said to Robert Jordan.
"We," Pilar said. "We?"
"Yes, we," Pablo grinned at her and drank some of the wine. "Why not? I thought it over while I was outside. Why should we not agree?"
"In what?" the woman asked. "In what now?"
"In all," Pablo said to her. "In this of the bridge. I am with thee now."
"You are with us now?" Agustin said to him. "After what you have said?"
"Yes," Pablo told him. "With the change of the weather I am with thee."
Agustin shook his head. "The weather," he said and shook his head again. "And after me hitting thee in the face?"
"Yes," Pablo grinned at him and ran his fingers over his lips. "After that too."
Robert Jordan was watching Pilar. She was looking at Pablo as at some strange animal. On her face there was still a shadow of the expression the mention of the blinding had put there. She shook her head as though to be rid of that, then tossed it back. "Listen," she said to Pablo.
"Yes, woman."
"What passes with thee?"
"Nothing," Pablo said. "I have changed my opinion. Nothing more."
"You were listening at the door," she told him.
"Yes," he said. "But I could hear nothing."
"You fear that we will kill thee."
"No," he told her and looked at her over the wine cup. "I do not fear that. You know that."
"Well, what passes with thee?" Agustin said. "One moment you are drunk and putting your mouth on all of us and disassociating yourself from the work in hand and speaking of our death in a dirty manner and insulting the women and opposing that which should be done-"
"I was drunk," Pablo told him.
"And now-"
"I am not drunk," Pablo said. "And I have changed my mind."
"Let the others trust thee. I do not," Agustin said.
"Trust me or not," Pablo said. "But there is no one who can take thee to Gredos as I can."
"Gredos?"
"It is the only place to go after this of the bridge."
Robert Jordan, looking at Pilar, raised his hand on the side away from Pablo and tapped his right ear questioningly.
The woman nodded. Then nodded again. She said something to Maria and the girl came over to Robert Jordan's side.
"She says, 'Of course he heard," Maria said in Robert Jordan's ear.
"Then Pablo," Fernando said judicially. "Thou art with us now and in favor of this of the bridge?"
"Yes, man," Pablo said. He looked Fernando squarely in the eye and nodded.
"In truth?" Primitivo asked.
"De veras," Pablo told him.
"And you think it can be successful?" Fernando asked. "You now have confidence?"
"Why not?" Pablo said. "Haven't you confidence?"
"Yes," Fernando said. "But I always have confidence."
"I'm going to get out of here," Agustin said.
"It is cold outside," Pablo told him in a friendly tone.
"Maybe," Agustin said. "But I can't stay any longer in this manicomio."
"Do not call this cave an insane asylum," Fernando said.
"A manicomio for criminal lunatics," Agustin said. "And I'm getting out before I'm crazy, too."
18
It is like a merry-go-round, Robert Jordan thought. Not a merry-goround that travels fast, and with a calliope for music, and the children ride on cows with gilded horns, and there are rings to catch with sticks, and there is the blue, gas-flare-lit early dark of the Avenue du Maine, with fried fish sold from the next stall, and a wheel of fortune turning with the leather flaps slapping against the posts of the numbered compartments, and the packages of lump sugar piled in pyramids for prizes. No, it is not that kind of a merrygo-round; although the people are waiting, like the men in caps and the women in knitted sweaters, their heads bare in the gaslight and their hair shining, who stand in front of the wheel of fortune as it spins. Yes, those are the people. But this is another wheel. This is like a wheel that goes up and around.
It has been around twice now. It is a vast wheel, set at an angle, and each time it goes around and then is back to where it starts. One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either, he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical, rising and falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are back again now, he thought, and nothing is settled.