For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [49]
“‘Pablo is able,’ another said. ‘But in this finishing off of the civiles he was egoistic. Don’t you think so, Pilar?’
“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But now all are participating in this.’
“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is well organized. But why do we not hear more news of the movement?’
“‘Pablo cut the telephone wires before the assault on the barracks. They are not yet repaired.’
“‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It is for this we hear nothing. I had my news from the roadmender’s station early this morning.’
“‘Why is this done thus, Pilar?’ he said to me.
“‘To save bullets,’ I said. ‘And that each man should have his share in the responsibility.’
“‘That it should start then. That it should start.’ And I looked at him and saw that he was crying.
“‘Why are you crying, Joaquín?’ I asked him. ‘This is not to cry about’
“‘I cannot help it, Pilar,’ he said. ‘I have never killed any one.’
“If you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing. And on this day most of the men in the double line across the plaza wore the clothes in which they worked in the fields, having come into town hurriedly, but some, not knowing how one should dress for the first day of a movement, wore their clothes for Sundays or holidays, and these, seeing that the others, including those who had attacked the barracks, wore their oldest clothes, were ashamed of being wrongly dressed. But they did not like to take off their jackets for fear of losing them, or that they might be stolen by the worthless ones, and so they stood, sweating in the sun and waiting for it to commence.
“Then the wind rose and the dust was now dry in the plaza for the men walking and standing and shuffling had loosened it and it commenced to blow and a man in a dark blue Sunday jacket shouted ‘Agua! Agua!’ and the caretaker of the plaza, whose duty it was to sprinkle the plaza each morning with a hose, came and turned the hose on and commenced to lay the dust at the edge of the plaza, and then toward the center. Then the two lines fell back and let him lay the dust over the center of the plaza; the hose sweeping in wide arcs and the water glistening in the sun and the men leaning on their flails or the clubs or the white wood pitchforks and watching the sweep of the stream of water. And then, when the plaza was nicely moistened and the dust settled, the lines formed up again and a peasant shouted, ‘When do we get the first fascist? When does the first one come out of the box?’
“‘Soon,’ Pablo shouted from the door of the Ayuntamiento. ‘Soon the first one comes out.’ His voice was hoarse from shouting in the assault and from the smoke of the barracks.
“‘What’s the delay?’ some one asked.
“‘They’re still occupied with their sins,’ Pablo shouted.
“‘Clearly, there are twenty of them,’ a man said.
“‘More,’ said another.
“‘Among twenty there are many sins to recount.’
“‘Yes, but I think it’s a trick to gain time. Surely facing such an emergency one could not remember one’s sins except for the biggest.’
“‘Then have patience. For with more than twenty of them there are enough of the biggest sins to take some time.’
“‘I have patience,’ said the other. ‘But it is better to get it over with. Both for them and for us. It is July and there is much work. We have harvested but we have not threshed. We are not yet in the time of fairs and festivals.’
“‘But this will be a fair and festival today,’ another said. ‘The Fair of Liberty and from this day, when these are extinguished, the town and the land are ours.’
“‘We thresh fascists today,’ said one, ‘and out of the chaff comes the freedom of this pueblo.’
“‘We must administer it well to deserve it,’ said another. ‘Pilar,’ he said to me, ‘when do we have a meeting for organization?’
“‘Immediately after this is completed,’ I told him. ‘In the same building of the Ayuntamiento.’
“I was wearing one of the three-cornered patent leather hats of the guardia civil as a joke and I had put the