"But the dispatch."
"The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people. We understand him now."
"Bring in the two prisoners," came the voice of Andre Marty.
"_Quereis echar un trago?_" the corporal asked. "Do you want a drink?"
"Why not?"
The corporal took a bottle of anis from a cupboard and both Gomez and Andres drank. So did the corporal. He wiped his mouth on his hand.
"_Vamonos_," he said.
They went out of the guard room with the swallowed burn of the anis warming their mouths, their bellies and their hearts and walked down the hall and entered the room where Marty sat behind a long table, his map spread in front of him, his red-and-blue pencil, with which he played at being a general officer, in his hand. To Andres it was only one more thing. There had been many tonight. There were always many. If your papers were in order and your heart was good you were in no danger. Eventually they turned you loose and you were on your way. But the _Ingles_ had said to hurry. He knew now he could never get back for the bridge but they had a dispatch to deliver and this old man there at the table had put it in his pocket.
"Stand there," Marty said without looking up.
"Listen, Comrade Marty," Gomez broke out, the anis fortifying his anger. "Once tonight we have been impeded by the ignorance of the anarchists. Then by the sloth of a bureaucratic fascist. Now by the oversuspicion of a Communist."
"Close your mouth," Marty said without looking up. "This is not a meeting."
"Comrade Marty, this is a matter of utmost urgence," Gomez said. "Of the greatest importance."
The corporal and the soldier with them were taking a lively interest in this as though they were at a play they had seen many times but whose excellent moments they could always savor.
"Everything is of urgence," Marty said. "All things are of importance." Now he looked up at them, holding the pencil. "How did you know Golz was here? Do you understand how serious it is to come asking for an individual general before an attack? How could you know such a general would be here?"
"Tell him, _tu_," Gomez said to Andres.
"Comrade General," Andres started--Andre Marty did not correct him in the mistake in rank--"I was given that packet on the other side of the lines--"
"On the other side of the lines?" Marty said. "Yes, I heard him say you came from the fascist lines."
"It was given to me, Comrade General, by an _Ingles_ named Roberto who had come to us as a dynamiter for this of the bridge. Understandeth?"
"Continue thy story," Marty said to Andres; using the term story as you would say lie, falsehood, or fabrication.
"Well, Comrade General, the _Ingles_ told me to bring it to the General Golz with all speed. He makes an attack in these hills now on this day and all we ask is to take it to him now promptly if it pleases the Comrade General."
Marty shook his head again. He was looking at Andres but he was not seeing him.
Golz, he thought in a mixture of horror and exultation as a man might feel hearing that a business enemy had been killed in a particularly nasty motor accident or that some one you hated but whose probity you had never doubted had been guilty of defalcation. That Golz should be one of them, too. That Golz should be in such obvious communication with the fascists. Golz that he had known for nearly twenty years. Golz who had captured the gold train that winter with Lucacz in Siberia. Golz who had fought against Kolchak, and in Poland. In the Caucasus. In China, and here since the first October. But he _had_ been close to Tukachevsky. To Voroshilov, yes, too. But to Tukachevsky. And to who else? Here to Karkov, of course. And to Lucacz. But all the Hungarians had been intriguers. He hated Gall. Golz hated Gall. Remember that. Make a note of that. Golz has always hated Gall. But he favors Putz. Remember that. And Duval is his chief of staff. See what stems from that. You've heard him say Copic's a fool. That is definitive. That exists. And now this dispatch from the fascist lines. Only by pruning out of these rotten branches can the tree remain healthy and grow. The rot must become apparent for it is to be destroyed. But Golz of all men. That Golz should be one of the traitors. He knew that you could trust no one. No one. Ever. Not your wife. Not your brother. Not your oldest comrade. No one. Ever.
"Take them away," he said to the guards. "Guard them carefully." The corporal looked at the soldier. This had been very quiet for one of Marty's performances.
"Comrade Marty," Gomez said. "Do not be insane. Listen to me, a loyal officer and comrade. That is a dispatch that must be delivered. This comrade has brought it through the fascist lines to give to Comrade General Golz."
"Take them away," Marty said, now kindly, to the guard. He was sorry for them as human beings if it should be necessary to liquidate them. But it was the tragedy of Golz that oppressed him. That it should be Golz, he thought. He would take the fascist communication at once to Varloff. No, better he would take it to Golz himself and watch him as he received it. That was what he would do. How could he be sure of Varloff if Golz was one of them? No. This was a thing to be very careful about.
Andres turned to Gomez, "You mean he is not going to send the dispatch?" he asked, unbelieving.
"Don't you see?" Gomez said.
"_Me cago en su puta madre!_" Andres said. "_Esta loco_."
"Yes," Gomez said. "He is crazy. You are crazy! Hear! Crazy!" he shouted at Marty who was back now bending over the map with his red-and-blue pencil. "Hear me, you crazy murderer?"
"Take them away," Marty said to the guard. "Their minds are unhinged by their great guilt."
There was a phrase the corporal recognized. He had heard that before.
"You crazy murderer!" Gomez shouted.
"_Hijo de la gran puta_," Andres said to him. "_Loco_."
The stupidity of this man angered him. If he was a crazy let him be removed as a crazy. Let the dispatch be taken from his pocket. God damn this crazy to hell. His heavy Spanish anger was rising out of his usual calm and good temper. In a little while it would blind him.
Marty, looking at his map, shook his head sadly as the guards took Gomez and Andres out. The guards had enjoyed hearing him cursed but on the whole they had been disappointed in the performance. They had seen much better ones. Andre Marty did not mind the men cursing him. So many men had cursed him at the end. He was always genuinely sorry for them as human beings. He always told himself that and it was one of the last true ideas that was left to him that had ever been his own.
He sat there, his moustache and his eyes focused on the map, on the map that he never truly understood, on the brown tracing of the contours that were traced fine and concentric as a spider's web. He could see the heights and the valleys from the contours but he never really understood why it should be this height and why this valley was the one. But at the General Staff where, because of the system of Political Commissars, he could intervene as the political head of the Brigades, he would put his finger on such and such a numbered, brown-thin-lined encircled spot among the greens of woods cut by the lines of roads that parallel the never casual winding of a river and say, "There. That is the point of weakness."
Gall and Copic, who were men of politics and of ambition, would agree and later, men who never saw the map, but heard the number of the hill before they left their starting place and had the earth of diggings on it pointed out, would climb its side to find their death along its slope or, being halted by machine guns placed in olive groves would never get up it at all. Or on other fronts they might scale it easily and be no better off than they had been before. But when Marty put his finger on the map in Golz's staff the scarheaded, white-faced General's jaw muscles would tighten and he would think, "I should shoot you, Andre Marty, before I let you put that gray rotten finger on a contour map of mine. Damn you to hell for all the men you've killed by interfering in matters you know nothing of. Damn the day they named tractor factories and villages and co-operatives for you so that you are a symbol that I cannot touch. Go and suspect and exhort and intervene and denounce and butcher some other place and leave my staff alone."
But instead of saying that Golz would only lean back away from the leaning bulk, the pushing finger, the watery gray eyes, the graywhite moustache and the bad breath and say, "Yes, Comrade Marty. I see your point. It is not well taken, however, and I do not agree. You can try to go over my head if you like. Yes. You can make it a Party matter as you say. But I do not agree."
So now Andre Marty sat working over his map at the bare table with the raw light on the unshaded electric light bulb over his head, the overwide beret pulled forward to shade his eyes, referring to the mimeographed copy of the orders for the attack and slowly and laboriously working them out on the map as a young officer might work a problem at a staff college. He was engaged in war. In his mind he was commanding troops; he had the right to interfere and this he believed to constitute command. So he sat there with Robert Jordan's dispatch to Golz in his pocket and Gomez and Andres waited in the guard room and Robert Jordan lay in the woods above the bridge.
It is doubtful if the outcome of Andres's mission would have been any different if he and Gomez had been allowed to proceed without Andre Marty's hindrance. There was no one at the front with sufficient authority to cancel the attack. The machinery had been in motion much too long for it to be stopped suddenly now. There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and movement is under way they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.
But on this night the old man, his beret pulled forward, was still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians in civilian clothes, leather coats and caps. The corporal of the guard closed the door reluctantly behind them. Karkov had been the first responsible man he had been able to communicate with.
"Tovarich Marty," said Karkov in his politely disdainful lisping voice and smiled, showing his bad teeth.
Marty stood up. He did not like Karkov, but Karkov, coming from _Pravda_ and in direct communication with Stalin, was at this moment one of the three most important men in Spain.
"Tovarich Karkov," he said.
"You are preparing the attack?" Karkov said insolently, nodding toward the map.
"I am studying it," Marty answered.
"Are you attacking? Or is it Golz?" Karkov asked smoothly.
"I am only a commissar, as you know," Marty told him.
"No," Karkov said. "You are modest. You are really a general. You have your map and your field glasses. But were you not an admiral once, Comrade Marty?"
"I was a gunner's mate," said Marty. It was a lie. He had really been a chief yeoman at the time of the mutiny. But he thought now, always, that he had been a gunner's mate.
"Ah. I thought you were a first-class yeoman," Karkov said. "I always get my facts wrong. It is the mark of the journalist."
The other Russians had taken no part in the conversation. They were both looking over Marty's shoulder at the map and occasionally making a remark to each other in their own language. Marty and Karkov spoke French after the first greeting.
"It is better not to get facts wrong in _Pravda_," Marty said. He said it brusquely to build himself up again. Karkov always punctured him. The French word is _degonfler_ and Marty was worried and made wary by him. It was hard, when Karkov spoke, to remember with what importance he, Andre Marty, came from the Central Committee of the French Communist Party. It was hard to remember, too, that he was untouchable. Karkov seemed always to touch him so lightly and whenever he wished. Now Karkov said, "I usually correct them before I send them to _Pravda_, I am quite accurate in _Pravda_. Tell me, Comrade Marty, have you heard anything of any message coming through for Golz from one of our _partizan_ groups operating toward Segovia? There is an American comrade there named Jordan that we should have heard from. There have been reports of fighting there behind the fascist lines. He would have sent a message through to Golz."
"An American?" Marty asked. Andres had said an _Ingles_. So that is what it was. So he had been mistaken. Why had those fools spoken to him anyway?"
"Yes," Karkov looked at him contemptuously, "a young American of slight political development but a great way with the Spaniards and a fine _partizan_ record. Just give me the dispatch, Comrade Marty. It has been delayed enough."
"What dispatch?" Marty asked. It was a very stupid thing to say and he knew it. But he was not able to admit he was wrong that quickly and he said it anyway to delay the moment of humiliation, not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said through his bad teeth.
Andre Marty put his hand in his pocket and laid the dispatch on the table. He looked Karkov squarely in the eye. All right. He was wrong and there was nothing he could do about it now but he was not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said softly.
Marty laid it beside the dispatch.
"Comrade Corporal," Karkov called in Spanish.
The corporal opened the door and came in. He looked quickly at Andre Marty, who stared back at him like an old boar which has been brought to bay by hounds. There was no fear on Marty's face and no humiliation. He was only angry, and he was only temporarily at bay. He knew these dogs could never hold him.
"Take these to the two comrades in the guard room and direct them to General Golz's headquarters," Karkov said. "There has been too much delay."
The corporal went out and Marty looked after him, then looked at Karkov.
"Tovarich Marty," Karkov said, "I am going to find out just how untouchable you are."
Marty looked straight at him and said nothing.
