For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [105]
“Agustín,” he said.
“What?” Agustín 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. Agustín, 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!” Agustín said. “One becomes accustomed and one forgets.”
“I, too, forgot.”
“Milk!” Agustín 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, Inglés,” 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?” Agustín said to him. “After what you have said?”
“Yes,” Pablo told him. “With the change of the weather I am with thee.”
Agustín 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?” Agustín 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,” Agustín 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