For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [12]
“How many are you?” Robert Jordan asked.
“We are seven and there are two women.”
“Two?”
“Yes. The mujer of Pablo.”
“And she?”
“In the cave. The girl can cook a little. I said she cooks well to please her. But mostly she helps the mujer of Pablo.”
“And how is she, the mujer of Pablo?”
“Something barbarous,” the gypsy grinned. “Something very barbarous. If you think Pablo is ugly you should see his woman. But brave. A hundred times braver than Pablo. But something barbarous.”
“Pablo was brave in the beginning,” Anselmo said. “Pablo was something serious in the beginning.”
“He killed more people than the cholera,” the gypsy said. “At the start of the movement, Pablo killed more people than the typhoid fever.”
“But since a long time he is muy flojo,” Anselmo said. “He is very flaccid. He is very much afraid to die.”
“It is possible that it is because he has killed so many at the beginning,” the gypsy said philosophically. “Pablo killed more than the bubonic plague.”
“That and the riches,” Anselmo said. “Also he drinks very much. Now he would like to retire like a matador de toros. Like a bullfighter. But he cannot retire.”
“If he crosses to the other side of the lines they will take his horses and make him go in the army,” the gypsy said. “In me there is no love for being in the army either.”
“Nor is there in any other gypsy,” Anselmo said.
“Why should there be?” the gypsy asked. “Who wants to be in an army? Do we make the revolution to be in an army? I am willing to fight but not to be in an army.”
“Where are the others?” asked Robert Jordan. He felt comfortable and sleepy now from the wine and lying back on the floor of the forest he saw through the tree tops the small afternoon clouds of the mountains moving slowly in the high Spanish sky.
“There are two asleep in the cave,” the gypsy said. “Two are on guard above where we have the gun. One is on guard below. They are probably all asleep.”
Robert Jordan rolled over on his side.
“What kind of a gun is it?”
“A very rare name,” the gypsy said. “It has gone away from me for the moment. It is a machine gun.”
It must be an automatic rifle, Robert Jordan thought.
“How much does it weigh?” he asked.
“One man can carry it but it is heavy. It has three legs that fold. We got it in the last serious raid. The one before the wine.”
“How many rounds have you for it?”
“An infinity,” the gypsy said. “One whole case of an unbelievable heaviness.”
Sounds like about five hundred rounds, Robert Jordan thought.
“Does it feed from a pan or a belt?”
“From round iron cans on the top of the gun.”
Hell, it’s a Lewis gun, Robert Jordan thought.
“Do you know anything about a machine gun?” he asked the old man.
“Nada,” said Anselmo. “Nothing.”
“And thou?” to the gypsy.
“That they fire with much rapidity and become so hot the barrel burns the hand that touches it,” the gypsy said proudly.
“Every one knows that,” Anselmo said with contempt.
“Perhaps,” the gypsy said. “But he asked me to tell what I know about a máquina and I told him.” Then he added, “Also, unlike an ordinary rifle, they continue to fire as long as you exert pressure on the trigger.”
“Unless they jam, run out of ammunition or get so hot they melt,” Robert Jordan said in English.
“What do you say?” Anselmo asked him.
“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said. “I was only looking into the future in English.”
“That is something truly rare,” the gypsy said. “Looking into the future in Inglés. Can you read in the palm of the hand?”
“No,” Robert Jordan said and he dipped another cup of wine. “But if thou canst I wish thee would read in the palm of my hand and tell me what is going to pass in the next three days.”
“The mujer of Pablo reads in the hands,” the gypsy said. “But she is so irritable and of such a barbarousness that I do not know if she will do it.”
Robert Jordan sat up now and took a swallow of the wine.
“Let us see the mujer of Pablo now,” he said. “If it is that bad let us get it over with.”
“I would not disturb her,” Rafael said. “She has a strong hatred for