The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [241]
Then, two hours later, a Polish officer, recently detached from the batalion and attached to the staff, had offered to show us the positions the Poles had just captured and, coming from under the lee of a fold of hill, we had walked into machine-gun fire that we had to crawl out from under with our chins tight to the ground and dust in our noses, and at the same time made the sad discovery that the Poles had captured no positions at all that day but were a little further back than the place they had started from. And now, lying in the shelter of the trench, I was wet with sweat, hungry and thirsty and hollow inside from the now-finished danger of the attack.
“You are sure you are not Russians?” asked a soldier. “There are Russians here today.”
“Yes. But we are not Russians.”
“You have the face of a Russian.”
“No,” I said. “You are wrong, comrade. I have quite a funny face but it is not the face of a Russian.”
“He has the face of a Russian,” pointing at the other one of us who was working on a camera.
“Perhaps. But still he is not Russian. Where you from?”
“Extremadura,” he said proudly.
“Are there any Russians in Extremadura?” I asked.
“No,” he told me, even more proudly. “There are no Russians in Extremadura, and there are no Extremadurans in Russia.”
“What are your politics?”
“I hate all foreigners,” he said.
“That’s a broad political program.”
“I hate the Moors, the English, the French, the Italians, the Germans, the North Americans and the Russians.”
“You hate them in that order?”
“Yes. But perhaps I hate the Russians the most.”
“Man, you have very interesting ideas,” I said. “Are you a fascist?”
“No. I am an Extremaduran and I hate foreigners.”
“He has very rare ideas,” said another soldier. “Do not give him too much importance. Me, I like foreigners. I am from Valencia. Take another cup of wine, please.”
I reached up and took the cup, the other wine still brassy in my mouth. I looked at the Extremaduran. He was tall and thin. His face was haggard and unshaven, and his cheeks were sunken. He stood straight up in his rage, his blanket cape around his shoulders.
“Keep your head down,” I told him. “There are many lost bullets coming over.”
“I have no fear of bullets and I hate all foreigners,” he said fiercely.
“You don’t have to fear bullets,” I said, “but you should avoid them when you are in reserve. It is not intelligent to be wounded when it can be avoided.”
“I am not afraid of anything,” the Extremaduran said.
“You are very lucky, comrade.”
“It’s true,” the other, with the wine cup, said. “He has no fear, not even of the aviones.”
“He is crazy,” another soldier said. “Everyone fears planes. They kill little but make much fear.”
“I have no fear. Neither of planes nor of nothing,” the Extremaduran said. “And I hate every foreigner alive.”
Down the gap, walking beside two stretcher-bearers and seeming to pay no attention at all to where he was, came a tall man in International Brigade uniform with a blanket rolled over his shoulder and tied at his waist. His head was held high and he looked like a man walking in his sleep. He was middle-aged. He was not carrying a rifle and, from where I lay, he did not look wounded.
I watched him walking alone down out of the war. Before he came to the staff cars he turned to the left and his head still held high in that strange way, he walked over the edge of the ridge and out of sight.
The one who was with me, busy changing film in the hand cameras, had not noticed him.
A single shell came in over the ridge and fountained in the dirt and black smoke just short of the tank reserve.
Someone put his head out of the cave where brigade headquarters was and then disappeared inside. I thought it looked like a good place to go, but knew they would all be furious in there because the attack was a failure, and I did not want to face them. If an operation was successful