For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [85]
“Maria,” Pablo said from the table where he was sitting.
“What?” the girl asked.
“Wipe the table clean, Maria,” Pablo said and grinned at Robert Jordan.
“Wipe thine own spillings,” Pilar said to him. “Wipe first thy chin and thy shirt and then the table.”
“Maria,” Pablo called.
“Pay no heed to him. He is drunk,” Pilar said.
“Maria,” Pablo called. “It is still snowing and the snow is beautiful.”
He doesn’t know about that robe, Robert Jordan thought. Good old pig-eyes doesn’t know why I paid the Woods boys sixty-five dollars for that robe. I wish the gypsy would come in though. As soon as the gypsy comes I’ll go after the old man. I should go now but it is very possible that I would miss them. I don’t know where he is posted.
“Want to make snowballs?” he said to Pablo. “Want to have a snowball fight?”
“What?” Pablo asked. “What do you propose?”
“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said. “Got your saddles covered up good?”
“Yes.”
Then in English Robert Jordan said, “Going to grain those horses or peg them out and let them dig for it?”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s your problem, old pal. I’m going out of here on my feet.”
“Why do you speak in English?” Pablo asked.
“I don’t know,” Robert Jordan said. “When I get very tired sometimes I speak English. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. When I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It’s a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime.”
“What do you say, Inglés?” Pilar said. “It sounds very interesting but I do not understand.”
“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said. “I said, ‘nothing’ in English.”
“Well then, talk Spanish,” Pilar said. “It’s shorter and simpler in Spanish.”
“Surely,” Robert Jordan said. But oh boy, he thought, oh Pablo, oh Pilar, oh Maria, oh you two brothers in the corner whose names I’ve forgotten and must remember, but I get tired of it sometimes. Of it and of you and of me and of the war and why in all why did it have to snow now? That’s too bloody much. No, it’s not. Nothing is too bloody much. You just have to take it and fight out of it and now stop prima-donnaing and accept the fact that it is snowing as you did a moment ago and the next thing is to check with your gypsy and pick up your old man. But to snow! Now in this month. Cut it out, he said to himself. Cut it out and take it. It’s that cup, you know. How did it go about that cup? He’d either have to improve his memory or else never think of quotations because when you missed one it hung in your mind like a name you had forgotten and you could not get rid of it. How did it go about that cup?
“Let me have a cup of wine, please,” he said in Spanish. Then, “Lots of snow? Eh?” he said to Pablo. “Mucha nieve.”
The drunken man looked up at him and grinned. He nodded his head and grinned again.
“No offensive. No aviones. No bridge. Just snow,” Pablo said.
“You expect it to last a long time?” Robert Jordan sat down by him. “You think we’re going to be snowed in all summer, Pablo, old boy?”
“All summer, no,” Pablo said. “Tonight and tomorrow, yes.”
“What makes you think so?”
“There are two kinds of storms,” Pablo said, heavily and judiciously. “One comes from the Pyrenees. With this one there is great cold. It is too late for this one.”
“Good,” Robert Jordan said. “That’s something.”
“This storm comes from the Cantabrico,” Pablo said. “It comes from the sea. With the wind in this direction there will be a great storm and much snow.”
“Where did you learn all this, old timer?” Robert Jordan asked.
Now that his rage was gone he was excited by this storm as he was always by all storms. In a blizzard, a gale, a sudden line squall, a tropical storm, or a summer thunder shower in the mountains there was an excitement that came to him from no other thing. It was like the excitement of battle except that it was clean. There is a wind that blows through battle but that was a hot wind; hot and dry as your mouth; and it blew heavily; hot and dirtily; and it rose and died away with the fortunes of the day. He knew that wind well.
But a