"Well, you see they must have their fine people behind our lines the same way. We find them and shoot them and they find ours and shoot them. When you are in their country you must always think of how many people they must send over to us."
"I have thought about them."
"Well," Karkov had said. "You have probably enough to think about for today, so drink that beer that is left in the pitcher and run along now because I have to go upstairs to see people. Upstairs people. Come again to see me soon."
Yes, Robert Jordan thought. You learned a lot at Gaylord's. Karkov had read the one and only book he had published. The book had not been a success. It was only two hundred pages long and he doubted if two thousand people had ever read it. He had put in it what he had discovered about Spain in ten years of travelling in it, on foot, in third-class carriages, by bus, on horse- and mule-back and in trucks. He knew the Basque country, Navarre, Aragon, Galicia, the two Castiles and Estremadura well. There had been such good books written by Borrow and Ford and the rest that he had been able to add very little. But Karkov said it was a good book.
"It is why I bother with you," he said. "I think you write absolutely truly and that is very rare. So I would like you to know some things."
All right. He would write a book when he got through with this. But only about the things he knew, truly, and about what he knew. But I will have to be a much better writer than I am now to handle them, he thought. The things he had come to know in this war were not so simple.
19
"What do you do sitting there?" Maria asked him. She was standing close beside him and he turned his head and smiled at her.
"Nothing," he said. "I have been thinking."
"What of? The bridge?"
"No. The bridge is terminated. Of thee and of a hotel in Madrid where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some time."
"Are there many Russians in Madrid?"
"No. Very few."
"But in the fascist periodicals it says there are hundreds of thousands."
"Those are lies. There are very few."
"Do you like the Russians? The one who was here was a Russian."
"Did you like him?"
"Yes. I was sick then but I thought he was very beautiful and very brave."
"What nonsense, beautiful," Pilar said. "His nose was flat as my hand and he had cheekbones as wide as a sheep's buttocks."
"He was a good friend and comrade of mine," Robert Jordan said to Maria. "I cared for him very much."
"Sure," Pilar said. "But you shot him."
When she said this the card players looked up from the table and Pablo stared at Robert Jordan. Nobody said anything and then the gypsy, Rafael, asked, "Is it true, Roberto?"
"Yes," Robert Jordan said. He wished Pilar had not brought this up and he wished he had not told it at El Sordo's. "At his request. He was badly wounded."
"Que cosa mas rara," the gypsy said. "All the time he was with us he talked of such a possibility. I don't know how many times I have promised him to perform such an act. What a rare thing," he said again and shook his head.
"He was a very rare man," Primitivo said. "Very singular."
"Look," Andres, one of the brothers, said. "You who are Professor and all. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him?"
"I believe he cannot see it," Robert Jordan said. Pablo was staring at him curiously and Pilar was watching him with no expression on her face. "In the case of this Russian comrade he was very nervous from being too much time at the front. He had fought at Irun which, you know, was bad. Very bad. He had fought later in the north. And since the first groups who did this work behind the lines were formed he had worked here, in Estremadura and in AndalucIa. I think he was very tired and nervous and he imagined ugly things."
"He would undoubtedly have seen many evil things," Fernando said.
"Like all the world," Andres said. "But listen to me, Ingles. Do you think there is such a thing as a man knowing in advance what will befall him?"
"No," Robert Jordan said. "That is ignorance and superstition."
"Go on," Pilar said. "Let us hear the viewpoint of the professor." She spoke as though she were talking to a precocious child.
"I believe that fear produces evil visions," Robert Jordan said. "Seeing bad signs-"
"Such as the airplanes today," Primitivo said.
"Such as thy arrival," Pablo said softly and Robert Jordan looked across the table at him, saw it was not a provocation but only an expressed thought, then went on. "Seeing bad signs, one, with fear, imagines an end for himself and one thinks that imagining comes by divination," Robert Jordan concluded. "I believe there is nothing more to it than that. I do not believe in ogres, nor soothsayers, nor in the supernatural things."
"But this one with the rare name saw his fate clearly," the gypsy said. "And that was how it happened."
"He did not see it," Robert Jordan said. "He had a fear of such a possibility and it became an obsession. No one can tell me that he saw anything."
"Not I?" Pilar asked him and picked some dust up from the fire and blew it off the palm of her hand. "I cannot tell thee either?"
"No. With all wizardry, gypsy and all, thou canst not tell me either."
"Because thou art a miracle of deafness," Pilar said, her big face harsh and broad in the candlelight. "It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such things do not exist. Que va, Ingles. I saw the death of that one with the rare name in his face as though it were burned there with a branding iron."
"You did not," Robert Jordan insisted. "You saw fear and apprehension. The fear was made by what he had been through. The apprehension was for the possibility of evil he imagined."
"Que va," Pilar said. "I saw death there as plainly as though it were sitting on his shoulder. And what is more he smelt of death."
"He smelt of death," Robert Jordan jeered. "Of fear maybe. There is a smell to fear."
"De la muerte," Pilar said. "Listen. When Blanquet, who was the greatest peon de brega who ever lived, worked under the orders of Granero he told me that on the day of Manolo Granero's death, when they stopped in the chapel on the way to the ring, the odor of death was so strong on Manolo that it almost made Blanquet sick. And he had been with Manolo when he had bathed and dressed at the hotel before setting out for the ring. The odor was not present in the motorcar when they had sat packed tight together riding to the bull ring. Nor was it distinguishable to any one else but Juan Luis de la Rosa in the chapel. Neither Marcial nor Chicuelo smelled it neither then nor when the four of them lined up for the paseo. But Juan Luis was dead white, Blanquet told me, and he, Blanquet, spoke to him saying, 'Thou also?
"'So that I cannot breathe, Juan Luis said to him. 'And from thy matador.
" Pues nada, Blanquet said. 'There is nothing to do. Let us hope we are mistaken.
"'And the others? Juan Luis asked Blanquet.
" Nada, Blanquet said. 'Nothing. But this one stinks worse than Jose at Talavera.
"And it was on that afternoon that the bull Pocapena of the ranch of Veragua destroyed Manolo Granero against the planks of the barrier in front of tendido two in the Plaza de Toros of Madrid. I was there with Finito and I saw it. The horn entirely destroyed the cranium, the head of Manolo being wedged under the estribo at the base of the barrera where the bull had tossed him."