"Take it slowly, old one," Robert Jordan said. He knew that if he could not make Anselmo understand he could never explain it clearly to Andres either. "The Estado Mayor of the Division is a place the General will have picked to set up his organization to command. He commands a division, which is two brigades. I do not know where it is because I was not there when it was picked. It will probably be a cave or dugout, a refuge, and wires will run to it. Andres must ask for the General and for the Estado Mayor of the Division. He must give this to the General or to the Chief of his Estado Mayor or to another whose name I will write. One of them will surely be there even if the others are out inspecting the preparations for the attack. Do you understand now?"
"Yes."
"Then get Andres and I will write it now and seal it with this seal." He showed him the small, round, wooden-backed rubber stamp with the seal of the S. I. M. and the round, tin-covered inking pad no bigger than a fifty-cent piece he carried in his pocket. "That seal they will honor. Get Andres now and I will explain to him. He must go quickly but first he must understand."
"He will understand if I do. But you must make it very clear. This of staffs and divisions is a mystery to me. Always have I gone to such things as definite places such as a house. In Navacerrada it is in the old hotel where the place of command is. In Guadarrama it is in a house with a garden."
"With this General," Robert Jordan said, "it will be some place very close to the lines. It will be underground to protect from the planes. Andres will find it easily by asking, if he knows what to ask for. He will only need to show what I have written. But fetch him now for this should get there quickly."
Anselmo went out, ducking under the hanging blanket. Robert Jordan commenced writing in his notebook.
"Listen, Ingles," Pablo said, still looking at the wine bowl.
"I am writing," Robert Jordan said without looking up.
"Listen, Ingles," Pablo spoke directly to the wine bowl. "There is no need to be disheartened in this. Without Sordo we have plenty of people to take the posts and blow thy bridge."
"Good," Robert Jordan said without stopping writing.
"Plenty," Pablo said. "I have admired thy judgment much today, Ingles," Pablo told the wine bowl. "I think thou hast much picardia. That thou art smarter than I am. I have confidence in thee."
Concentrating on his report to Golz, trying to put it in the fewest words and still make it absolutely convincing, trying to put it so the attack would be cancelled, absolutely, yet convince them he wasn't trying to have it called off because of any fears he might have about the danger of his own mission, but wished only to put them in possession of all the facts, Robert Jordan was hardly half listening.
"Ingles," Pablo said.
"I am writing," Robert Jordan told him without looking up.
I probably should send two copies, he thought. But if I do we will not have enough people to blow it if I have to blow it. What do I know about why this attack is made? Maybe it is only a holding attack. Maybe they want to draw those troops from somewhere else. Perhaps they make it to draw those planes from the North. Maybe that is what it is about. Perhaps it is not expected to succeed. What do I know about it? This is my report to Golz. I do not blow the bridge until the attack starts. My orders are clear and if the attack is called off I blow nothing. But I've got to keep enough people here for the bare minimum necessary to carry the orders out.
"What did you say?" he asked Pablo.
"That I have confidence, Ingles." Pablo was still addressing the wine bowl.
Man, I wish I had, Robert Jordan thought. He went on writing.
30
So now everything had been done that there was to do that night. All orders had been given. Every one knew exactly what he was to do in the morning. Andres had been gone three hours. Either it would come now with the coming of the daylight or it would not come. I believe that it will come, Robert Jordan told himself, walking back down from the upper post where he had gone to speak to Primitivo.
Golz makes the attack but he has not the power to cancel it. Permission to cancel it will have to come from Madrid. The chances are they won't be able to wake anybody up there and if they do wake up they will be too sleepy to think. I should have gotten word to Golz sooner of the preparations they have made to meet the attack, but how could I send word about something until it happened? They did not move up that stuff until just at dark. They did not want to have any movement on the road spotted by planes. But what about all their planes? What about those fascist planes?
Surely our people must have been warned by them. But perhaps the fascists were faking for another offensive down through Guadalajara with them. There were supposed to be Italian troops concentrated in Soria, and at Siguenza again besides those operating in the North. They haven't enough troops or material to run two major offensives at the same time though. That is impossible; so it must be just a bluff.
But we know how many troops the Italians have landed all last month and the month before at Cadiz. It is always possible they will try again at Guadalajara, not stupidly as before, but with three main fingers coming down to broaden it out and carry it along the railway to the west of the plateau. There was a way that they could do it all right. Hans had shown him. They made many mistakes the first time. The whole conception was unsound. They had not used any of the same troops in the Arganda offensive against the Madrid-Valencia road that they used at Guadalajara. Why had they not made those same drives simultaneously? Why? Why? When would we know why?
Yet we had stopped them both times with the very same troops. We never could have stopped them if they had pulled both drives at once. Don't worry, he told himself. Look at the miracles that have happened before this. Either you will have to blow that bridge in the morning or you will not have to. But do not start deceiving yourself into thinking you won't have to blow it. You will blow it one day or you will blow it another. Or if it is not this bridge it will be some other bridge. It is not you who decides what shall be done. You follow orders. Follow them and do not try to think beyond them.
The orders on this are very clear. Too very clear. But you must not worry nor must you be frightened. For if you allow yourself the luxury of normal fear that fear will infect those who must work with you.
But that heads business was quite a thing all the same, he told himself. And the old man running onto them on the hilltop alone. How would you have liked to run onto them like that? That impressed you, didn't it? Yes, that impressed you, Jordan. You have been quite impressed more than once today. But you have behaved O.K. So far you have behaved all right.
You do very well for an instructor in Spanish at the University of Montana, he joked at himself. You do all right for that. But do not start to thinking that you are anything very special. You haven't gotten very far in this business. Just remember Duran, who never had any military training and who was a composer and lad about town before the movement and is now a damned good general commanding a brigade. It was all as simple and easy to learn and understand to Duran as chess to a child chess prodigy. You had read on and studied the art of war ever since you were a boy and your grandfather had started you on the American Civil War. Except that Grandfather always called it the War of the Rebellion. But compared with Duran you were like a good sound chess player against a boy prodigy. Old Duran. It would be good to see Duran again. He would see him at Gaylord's after this was over. Yes. After this was over. See how well he was behaving?
I'll see him at Gaylord's, he said to himself again, after this is over. Don't kid yourself, he said. You do it all perfectly O.K. Cold. Without kidding yourself. You aren't going to see Duran any more and it is of no importance. Don't be that way either, he told himself. Don't go in for any of those luxuries.
Nor for heroic resignation either. We do not want any citizens full of heroic resignation in these hills. Your grandfather fought four years in our Civil War and you are just finishing your first year in this war. You have a long time to go yet and you are very well fitted for the work. And now you have Maria, too. Why, you've got everything. You shouldn't worry. What is a little brush between a guerilla band and a squadron of cavalry? That isn't anything. What if they took the heads? Does that make any difference? None at all.