"Listen," he said to Anselmo. "I'm awfully glad to see you."
"And me to see thee," the old man said.
As they went up the hill in the dark, the wind at their backs, the storm blowing past them as they climbed, Anselmo did not feel lonely. He had not been lonely since the _Ingles_ had clapped him on the shoulder. The _Ingles_ was pleased and happy and they joked together. The _Ingles_ said it all went well and he was not worried. The drink in his stomach warmed him and his feet were warming now climbing.
"Not much on the road," he said to the _Ingles_.
"Good," the _Ingles_ told him. "You will show me when we get there."
Anselmo was happy now and he was very pleased that he had stayed there at the post of observation.
If he had come in to camp it would have been all right. It would have been the intelligent and correct thing to have done under the circumstances, Robert Jordan was thinking. But he stayed as he was told, Robert Jordan thought. That's the rarest thing that can happen in Spain. To stay in a storm, in a way, corresponds to a lot of things. It's not for nothing that the Germans call an attack a storm. I could certainly use a couple more who would stay. I most certainly could. I wonder if that Fernando would stay. It's just possible. After all, he is the one who suggested coming out just now. Do you suppose he would stay? Wouldn't that be good? He's just about stubborn enough. I'll have to make some inquiries. Wonder what the old cigar store Indian is thinking about now.
"What are you thinking about, Fernando?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity," Robert Jordan said. "I am a man of great curiosity."
"I was thinking of supper," Fernando said.
"Do you like to eat?"
"Yes. Very much."
"How's Pilar's cooking?"
"Average," Fernando answered.
He's a second Coolidge, Robert Jordan thought. But, you know, I have just a hunch that he would stay.
The three of them plodded up the hill in the snow.
16
"El Sordo was here," Pilar said to Robert Jordan. They had come in out of the storm to the smoky warmth of the cave and the woman had motioned Robert Jordan over to her with a nod of her head. "He's gone to look for horses."
"Good. Did he leave any word for me?"
"Only that he had gone for horses."
"And we?"
"_No se_," she said. "Look at him."
Robert Jordan had seen Pablo when he came in and Pablo had grinned at him. Now he looked over at him sitting at the board table and grinned and waved his hand.
"_Ingles_," Pablo called. "It's still falling, _Ingles_."
Robert Jordan nodded at him.
"Let me take thy shoes and dry them," Maria said. "I will hang them here in the smoke of the fire."
"Watch out you don't burn them," Robert Jordan told her. "I don't want to go around here barefoot. What's the matter?" he turned to Pilar. "Is this a meeting? Haven't you any sentries out?"
"In this storm? _Que va_."
There were six men sitting at the table and leaning back against the wall. Anselmo and Fernando were still shaking the snow from their jackets, beating their trousers and rapping their feet against the wall by the entrance.
"Let me take thy jacket," Maria said. "Do not let the snow melt on it."
Robert Jordan slipped out of his jacket, beat the snow from his trousers, and untied his shoes.
"You will get everything wet here," Pilar said.
"It was thee who called me."
"Still there is no impediment to returning to the door for thy brushing."
"Excuse me," Robert Jordan said, standing in his bare feet on the dirt floor. "Hunt me a pair of socks, Maria."
"The Lord and Master," Pilar said and poked a piece of wood into the fire.
"_Hay que aprovechar el tiempo_," Robert Jordan told her. "You have to take advantage of what time there is."
"It is locked," Maria said.
"Here is the key," and he tossed it over.
"It does not fit this sack."
"It is the other sack. They are on top and at the side."
The girl found the pair of socks, closed the sack, locked it and brought them over with the key.
"Sit down and put them on and rub thy feet well," she said. Robert Jordan grinned at her.
"Thou canst not dry them with thy hair?" he said for Pilar to hear.
"What a swine," she said. "First he is the Lord of the Manor. Now he is our ex-Lord Himself. Hit him with a chunk of wood, Maria."
"Nay," Robert Jordan said to her. "I am joking because I am happy."
"You are happy?"
"Yes," he said. "I think everything goes very well."
"Roberto," Maria said. "Go sit down and dry thy feet and let me bring thee something to drink to warm thee."
"You would think that man had never dampened foot before," Pilar said. "Nor that a flake of snow had ever fallen."
Maria brought him a sheepskin and put it on the dirt floor of the cave.
"There," she said. "Keep that under thee until thy shoes are dry."
The sheepskin was fresh dried and not tanned and as Robert Jordan rested his stocking feet on it he could feel it crackle like parchment.
The fire was smoking and Pilar called to Maria, "Blow up the fire, worthless one. This is no smokehouse."
"Blow it thyself," Maria said. "I am searching for the bottle that El Sordo left."
"It is behind his packs," Pilar told her. "Must you care for him as a sucking child?"
"No," Maria said. "As a man who is cold and wet. And a man who has just come to his house. Here it is." She brought the bottle to where Robert Jordan sat. "It is the bottle of this noon. With this bottle one could make a beautiful lamp. When we have electricity again, what a lamp we can make of this bottle." She looked at the pinch-bottle admiringly. "How do you take this, Roberto?"
"I thought I was _Ingles_," Robert Jordan said to her.
"I call thee Roberto before the others," she said in a low voice and blushed. "How do you want it, Roberto?"
"Roberto," Pablo said thickly and nodded his head at Robert Jordan. "How do you want it, Don Roberto?"
"Do you want some?" Robert Jordan asked him.
Pablo shook his head. "I am making myself drunk with wine," he said with dignity.
"Go with Bacchus," Robert Jordan said in Spanish.
"Who is Bacchus?" Pablo asked.
"A comrade of thine," Robert Jordan said.
"Never have I heard of him," Pablo said heavily. "Never in these mountains."
"Give a cup to Anselmo," Robert Jordan said to Maria. "It is he who is cold." He was putting on the dry pair of socks and the whiskey and water in the cup tasted clean and thinly warming. But it does not curl around inside of you the way the absinthe does, he thought. There is nothing like absinthe.
Who would imagine they would have whiskey up here, he thought. But La Granja was the most likely place in Spain to find it when you thought it over. Imagine Sordo getting a bottle for the visiting dynamiter and then remembering to bring it down and leave it. It wasn't just manners that they had. Manners would have been producing the bottle and having a formal drink. That was what the French would have done and then they would have saved what was left for another occasion. No, the true thoughtfulness of thinking the visitor would like it and then bringing it down for him to enjoy when you yourself were engaged in something where there was every reason to think of no one else but yourself and of nothing but the matter in hand--that was Spanish. One kind of Spanish, he thought. Remembering to bring the whiskey was one of the reasons you loved these people. Don't go romanticizing them, he thought. There are as many sorts of Spanish as there are Americans. But still, bringing the whiskey was very handsome.
"How do you like it?" he asked Anselmo.
The old man was sitting by the fire with a smile on his face, his big hands holding the cup. He shook his head.
"No?" Robert Jordan asked him.
"The child put water in it," Anselmo said.
"Exactly as Roberto takes it," Maria said. "Art thou something special?"
"No," Anselmo told her. "Nothing special at all. But I like to feel it burn as it goes down."
"Give me that," Robert Jordan told the girl, "and pour him some of that which burns."
He tipped the contents of the cup into his own and handed it back empty to the girl, who poured carefully into it from the bottle.
"Ah," Anselmo took the cup, put his head back and let it run down his throat. He looked at Maria standing holding the bottle and winked at her, tears coming from both eyes. "That," he said. "That." Then he licked his lips. "That is what kills the worm that haunts us."
"Roberto," Maria said and came over to him, still holding the bottle. "Are you ready to eat?"
"Is it ready?"
"It is ready when you wish it."
"Have the others eaten?"
"All except you, Anselmo and Fernando."
"Let us eat then," he told her. "And thou?"
"Afterwards with Pilar."
"Eat now with us."
"No. It would not be well."
"Come on and eat. In my country a man does not eat before his woman."
"That is thy country. Here it is better to eat after."
"Eat with him," Pablo said, looking up from the table. "Eat with him. Drink with him. Sleep with him. Die with him. Follow the customs of his country."
"Are you drunk?" Robert Jordan said, standing in front of Pablo. The dirty, stubble-faced man looked at him happily.
"Yes," Pablo said. "Where is thy country, _Ingles_, where the women eat with the men?"
"In _Estados Unidos_ in the state of Montana."
"Is it there that the men wear skirts as do the women?"
"No. That is in Scotland."
"But listen," Pablo said. "When you wear skirts like that, _Ingles_--"
"I don't wear them," Robert Jordan said.
"When you are wearing those skirts," Pablo went on, "what do you wear under them?"
"I don't know what the Scotch wear," Robert Jordan said. "I've wondered myself."
"Not the _Escoceses_," Pablo said. "Who cares about the _Escoceses?_ Who cares about anything with a name as rare as that? Not me. I don't care. You, I say, _Ingles_. You. What do you wear under your skirts in your country?"
"Twice I have told you that we do not wear skirts," Robert Jordan said. "Neither drunk nor in joke."
"But under your skirts," Pablo insisted. "Since it is well known that you wear skirts. Even the soldiers. I have seen photographs and also I have seen them in the Circus of Price. What do you wear under your skirts, _Ingles?_"
"_Los cojones_," Robert Jordan said.
Anselmo laughed and so did the others who were listening; all except Fernando. The sound of the word, of the gross word spoken before the women, was offensive to him.
"Well, that is normal," Pablo said. "But it seems to me that with enough _cojones_ you would not wear skirts."
"Don't let him get started again, _Ingles_," the flat-faced man with the broken nose who was called Primitivo said. "He is drunk. Tell me, what do they raise in your country?"
"Cattle and sheep," Robert Jordan said. "Much grain also and beans. And also much beets for sugar."
The three were at the table now and the others sat close by except Pablo, who sat by himself in front of a bowl of the wine. It was the same stew as the night before and Robert Jordan ate it hungrily.
"In your country there are mountains? With that name surely there are mountains," Primitivo asked politely to make conversation. He was embarrassed at the drunkenness of Pablo.
"Many mountains and very high."
"And are there good pastures?"
"Excellent; high pasture in the summer in forests controlled by the government. Then in the fall the cattle are brought down to the lower ranges."
"Is the land there owned by the peasants?"
"Most land is owned by those who farm it. Originally the land was owned by the state and by living on it and declaring the intent~on of improving it, a man could obtain a title to a hundred and fifty hectares."
"Tell me how this is done," Agustin asked. "That is an agrarian reform which means something."
Robert Jordan explained the process of homesteading. He had never thought of it before as an agrarian reform.
"That is magnificent," Primitivo said. "Then you have a communism in your country?"
"No. That is done under the Republic."
"For me," Agustin said, "everything can be done under the Republic. I see no need for other form of government."
"Do you have no big proprietors?" Andres asked.
"Many."
"Then there must be abuses."
"Certainly. There are many abuses."
"But you will do away with them?"
"We try to more and more. But there are many abuses still."
"But there are not great estates that must be broken up?"
"Yes. But there are those who believe that taxes will break them up."
"How?"
Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how the income tax and inheritance tax worked. "But the big estates remain. Also there are taxes on the land," he said.
"But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here," Primitivo said.
