For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [100]
“He’s a false professor,” Pablo said, very pleased with himself. “He hasn’t got a beard.”
“Surely you know English better,” Fernando said. “Would it not be better and easier and clearer to teach English?”
“He doesn’t teach it to Spaniards—” Pilar started to intervene.
“I should hope not,” Fernando said.
“Let me finish, you mule,” Pilar said to him. “He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans.”
“Can they not speak Spanish?” Fernando asked. “South Americans can.”
“Mule,” Pilar said. “He teaches Spanish to North Americans who speak English.”
“Still and all I think it would be easier for him to teach English if that is what he speaks,” Fernando said.
“Can’t you hear he speaks Spanish?” Pilar shook her head hopelessly at Robert Jordan.
“Yes. But with an accent.”
“Of where?” Robert Jordan asked.
“Of Estremadura,” Fernando said primly.
“Oh my mother,” Pilar said. “What a people!”
“It is possible,” Robert Jordan said. “I have come here from there.”
“As he well knows,” Pilar said. “You old maid,” she turned to Fernando. “Have you had enough to eat?”
“I could eat more if there is a sufficient quantity,” Fernando told her. “And do not think that I wish to say anything against you, Don Roberto—”
“Milk,” Agustín said simply. “And milk again. Do we make the revolution in order to say Don Roberto to a comrade?”
“For me the revolution is so that all will say Don to all,” Fernando said. “Thus should it be under the Republic.”
“Milk,” Agustín said. “Black milk.”
“And I still think it would be easier and clearer for Don Roberto to teach English.”
“Don Roberto has no beard,” Pablo said. “He is a false professor.”
“What do you mean, I have no beard?” Robert Jordan said. “What’s this?” He stroked his chin and his cheeks where the threeday growth made a blond stubble.
“Not a beard,” Pablo said. He shook his head. “That’s not a beard.” He was almost jovial now. “He’s a false professor.”
“I obscenity in the milk of all,” Agustín said, “if it does not seem like a lunatic asylum here.”
“You should drink,” Pablo said to him. “To me everything appears normal. Except the lack of beard of Don Roberto.”
Maria ran her hand over Robert Jordan’s cheek.
“He has a beard,” she said to Pablo.
“You should know,” Pablo said and Robert Jordan looked at him.
I don’t think he is so drunk, Robert Jordan thought. No, not so drunk. And I think I had better watch myself.
“Thou,” he said to Pablo. “Do you think this snow will last?”
“What do you think?”
“I asked you.”
“Ask another,” Pablo told him. “I am not thy service of information. You have a paper from thy service of information. Ask the woman. She commands.”
“I asked thee.”
“Go and obscenity thyself,” Pablo told him. “Thee and the woman and the girl.”
“He is drunk,” Primitivo said. “Pay him no heed, Inglés.”
“I do not think he is so drunk,” Robert Jordan said.
Maria was standing behind him and Robert Jordan saw Pablo watching her over his shoulder. The small eyes, like a boar’s, were watching her out of the round, stubble-covered head and Robert Jordan thought: I have known many killers in this war and some before and they were all different; there is no common trait nor feature; nor any such thing as the criminal type; but Pablo is certainly not handsome.
“I don’t believe you can drink,” he said to Pablo. “Nor that you’re drunk.”
“I am drunk,” Pablo said with dignity. “To drink is nothing. It is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho.”
“I doubt it,” Robert Jordan told him. “Cowardly, yes.”
It was so quiet in the cave, suddenly, that he could hear the hissing noise the wood made burning on the hearth where Pilar cooked. He heard the sheepskin crackle as he rested his weight on his feet. He thought he could almost hear the snow falling outside. He could not, but he could hear the silence where it fell.
I’d like to kill him and have it over with, Robert Jordan was thinking. I don’t know what he is going to do, but it is nothing good. Day after tomorrow is the bridge