"I love thee, Maria."
"No. It is not true," she said. Then as a last thing pitifully and hopefully.
"But I have never kissed any man."
"Then kiss me now."
"I wanted to," she said. "But I know not how. Where things were done to me I fought until I could not see. I fought until-- until--until one sat upon my head--and I bit him--and then they tied my mouth and held my arms behind my head--and others did things to me."
"I love thee, Maria," he said. "And no one has done anything to thee. Thee, they cannot touch. No one has touched thee, little rabbit."
"You believe that?"
"I know it."
"And you can love me?" warm again against him now.
"I can love thee more."
"I will try to kiss thee very well."
"Kiss me a little."
"I do not know how."
"Just kiss me."
She kissed him on the cheek.
"No."
"Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go."
"Look, turn thy head," and then their mouths were tight together and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth opened a little gradually and then, suddenly, holding her against him, he was happier than he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, exultingly, innerly happy and unthinking and untired and unworried and only feeling a great delight and he said, "My little rabbit. My darling. My sweet. My long lovely."
"What do you say?" she said as though from a great distance away.
"My lovely one," he said.
They lay there and he felt her heart beating against his and with the side of his foot he stroked very lightly against the side of hers.
"Thee came barefooted," he said.
"Yes."
"Then thee knew thou wert coming to the bed."
"Yes."
"And you had no fear."
"Yes. Much. But more fear of how it would be to take my shoes off."
"And what time is it now? _lo sabes?_"
"No. Thou hast no watch?"
"Yes. But it is behind thy back."
"Take it from there."
"No."
"Then look over my shoulder."
It was one o'clock. The dial showed bright in the darkness that the robe made.
"Thy chin scratches my shoulder."
"Pardon it. I have no tools to shave."
"I like it. Is thy beard blond?"
"Yes."
"And will it be long?"
"Not before the bridge. Maria, listen. Dost thou--?"
"Do I what?"
"Dost thou wish?"
"Yes. Everything. Please. And if we do everything together, the other maybe never will have been."
"Did you think of that?"
"No. I think it in myself but Pilar told me."
"She is very wise."
"And another thing," Maria said softly. "She said for me to tell you that I am not sick. She knows about such things and she said to tell you that."
"She told you to tell me?"
"Yes. I spoke to her and told her that I love you. I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before and I told Pilar and she said if I ever told you anything about anything, to tell you that I was not sick. The other thing she told me long ago. Soon after the train."
"What did she say?"
"She said that nothing is done to oneself that one does not accept and that if I loved some one it would take it all away. I wished to die, you see."
"What she said is true."
"And now I am happy that I did not die. I am so happy that I did not die. And you can love me?"
"Yes. I love you now."
"And I can be thy woman?"
"I cannot have a woman doing what I ao. But thou art my woman now."
"If once I am, then I will keep on. Am I thy woman now?"
"Yes, Maria. Yes, my little rabbit."
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, "And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone."
"You want?"
"Yes," she said almost fiercely. "Yes. Yes. Yes."
8
It was cold in the night and Robert Jordan slept heavily. Once he woke and, stretching, realized that the girl was there, curled far down in the robe, breathing lightly and regularly, and in the dark, bringing his head in from the cold, the sky hard and sharp with stars, the air cold in his nostrils, he put his head under the warmth of the robe and kissed her smooth shoulder. She did not wake and he rolled onto his side away from her and with his head out of the robe in the cold again, lay awake a moment feeling the long, seeping luxury of his fatigue and then the smooth tactile happiness of their two bodies touching and then, as he pushed his legs out deep as they would go in the robe, he slipped down steeply into sleep.
He woke at first daylight and the girl was gone. He knew it as he woke and, putting out his arm, he felt the robe warm where she had been. He looked at the mouth of the cave where the blanket showed frost-rimmed and saw the thin gray smoke from the crack in the rocks that meant the kitchen fire was lighted.
A man came out of the timber, a blanket worn over his head like a poncho Robert Jordan saw it was Pablo and that he was smoking a cigarette. He's been down corralling the horses, he thought.
Pablo pulled open the blanket and went into the cave without looking toward Robert Jordan.
Robert Jordan felt with his hand the light frost that lay on the worn, spotted green balloon silk outer covering of the five-year-old down robe, then settled into it again. _Bueno_, he said to himself, feeling the familiar caress of the flannel lining as he spread his legs wide, then drew them together and then turned on his side so that his head would be away from the direction where he knew the sun would come. _Que mas da_, I might as well sleep some more.
He slept until the sound of airplane motors woke him.
Lying on his back, he saw them, a fascist patrol of three Fiats, tiny, bright, fast-moving across the mountain sky, headed in the direction from which Anselmo and he had come yesterday. The three passed and then came nine more, flying much higher in the minute, pointed formations of threes, threes and threes.
Pablo and the gypsy were standing at the cave mouth, in the shadow, watching the sky and as Robert Jordan lay still, the sky now full of the high hammering roar of motors, there was a new droning roar and three more planes came over at less than a thousand feet above the clearing. These three were Heinkel one-elevens, twin-motor bombers.
Robert Jordan, his head in the shadow of the rocks, knew they would not see him, and that it did not matter if they did. He knew they could possibly see the horses in the corral if they were looking for anything in these mountains. If they were not looking for anything they might still see them but would naturally take them for some of their own cavalry mounts. Then came a new and louder droning roar and three more Heinkel one-elevens showed coming steeply, stiffly, lower yet, crossing in rigid formation, their pounding roar approaching in crescendo to an absolute of noise and then receding as they passed the clearing.
Robert Jordan unrolled the bundle of clothing that made his pillow and pulled on his shirt. It was over his head and he was pulling it down when he heard the next planes coming and he pulled his trousers on under the robe and lay still as three more of the Heinkel bimotor bombers came over. Before they were gone over the shoulder of the mountain, he had buckled on his pistol, rolled the robe and placed it against the rocks and sat now, close against the rocks, tying his rope-soled shoes when the approaching droning turned to a greater clattering roar than ever before and nine more Heinkel light bombers came in echelons; hammering the sky apart as they went over.
Robert Jordan slipped along the rocks to the mouth of the cave where one of the brothers, Pablo, the gypsy, Anselmo, Agustin and the woman stood in the mouth looking out.
"Have there been planes like this before?" he asked.
"Never," said Pablo. "Get in. They will see thee."
The sun had not yet hit the mouth of the cave. It was just now shining on the meadow by the stream and Robert Jordan knew they could not be seen in the dark, early morning shadow of the trees and the solid shade the rocks made, but he went in the cave in order not to make them nervous.
"They are many," the woman said.
"And there will be more," Robert Jordan said.
"How do you know?" Pablo asked suspiciously.
"Those, just now, will have pursuit planes with them."
Just then they heard them, the higher, whining drone, and as they passed at about five thousand feet, Robert Jordan counted fifteen Fiats in echelon of echelons like a wild-goose flight of the V-shaped threes.
In the cave entrance their faces all looked very sober and Robert Jordan said, "You have not seen this many planes?"
"Never," said Pablo.
"There are not many at Segovia?"
"Never has there been, we have seen three usually. Sometimes six of the chasers. Perhaps three Junkers, the big ones with the three motors, with the chasers with them. Never have we seen planes like this."
It is bad, Robert Jordan thought. This is really bad. Here is a concentration of planes which means something very bad. I must listen for them to unload. But no, they cannot have brought up the troops yet for the attack. Certainly not before tonight or tomorrow night, certainly not yet. Certainly they will not be moving anything at this hour.
He could still hear the receding drone. He looked at his watch. By now they should be over the lines, the first ones anyway. He Pushed the knob that set the second hand to clicking and watched it move around. No, perhaps not yet. By now. Yes. Well over by now. Two hundred and fifty miles an hour for those one-elevens anyway. Five minutes would carry them there. By now they're well beyond the pass with Castile all yellow and tawny beneath them now in the morning, the yellow crossed by white roads and spotted with the small villages and the shadows of the Heinkels moving over the land as the shadows of sharks pass over a sandy floor of the ocean.
There was no bump, bump, bumping thud of bombs. His watch ticked on.
They're going on to Colmenar, to Escorial, or to the flying field at Manzanares el Real, he thought, with the old castle above the lake with the ducks in the reeds and the fake airfield just behind the real field with the dummy planes, not quite hidden, their props turning in the wind. That's where they must be headed. They can't know about the attack, he told himself and something in him said, why can't they? They've known about all the others.
"Do you think they saw the horses?" Pablo asked.
"Those weren't looking for horses," Robert Jordan said.
"But did they see them?"
"Not unless they were asked to look for them."
"Could they see them?"
"Probably not," Robert Jordan said. "Unless the sun were on the trees."
"It is on them very early," Pablo said miserably.
"I think they have other things to think of besides thy horses," Robert Jordan said.
It was eight minutes since he had pushed the lever on the stop watch and there was still no sound of bombing.
"What do you do with the watch?" the woman asked.
"I listen where they have gone."
"Oh," she said. At ten minutes he stopped looking at the watch knowing it would be too far away to hear, now, even allowing a minute for the sound to travel, and said to Anselmo, "I would speak to thee."
Anselmo came out of the cave mouth and they walked a little way from the entrance and stood beside a pine tree.
"_Que tal?_" Robert Jordan asked him. "How goes it?"
"All right."
"Hast thou eaten?"
"No. No one has eaten."
"Eat then and take something to eat at mid-day. I want you to go to watch the road. Make a note of everything that passes both up and down the road."
"I do not write."
"There is no need to," Robert Jordan took out two leaves from his notebook and with his knife cut an inch from the end of his pencil. "Take this and make a mark for tanks thus," he drew a slanted tank, "and then a mark for each one and when there are four, cross the four strokes for the fifth."
"In this way we count also."
"Good. Make another mark, two wheels and a box, for trucks. If they are empty make a circle. If they are full of troops make a straight mark. Mark for guns. Big ones, thus. Small ones, thus. Mark for cars. Mark for ambulances. Thus, two wheels and a box with a cross on it. Mark for troops on foot by companies, like this, see? A little square and then mark beside it. Mark for cavalry, like this, you see? Like a horse. A box with four legs. That is a troop of twenty horse. You understand? Each troop a mark."
"Yes. It is ingenious."
"Now," he drew two large wheels with circles around them and a short line for a gun barrel. "These are anti-tanks. They have rubber tires. Mark for them. These are anti-aircraft," two wheels with the gun barrel slanted up. "Mark for them also. Do you understand? Have you seen such guns?"
"Yes," Anselmo said. "Of course. It is clear."
"Take the gypsy with you that he will know from what point you will be watching so you may be relieved. Pick a place that is safe, not too close and from where you can see well and comfortably. Stay until you are relieved."
"I understand."
"Good. And that when you come back, I should know everything that moved upon the road. One paper is for movement up. One is for movement down the road."
They walked over toward the cave.
"Send Rafael to me," Robert Jordan said and waited by the tree. He watched Anselmo go into the cave, the blanket falling behind him. The gypsy sauntered out, wiping his mouth with his hand.
