“Not a beard,” Pablo said. He shook his head. “That’s not a beard.” He was almost jovial now. “He’s a false professor.”
“I obscenity in the milk of all,” Agustín said, “if it does not seem like a lunatic asylum here.”
“You should drink,” Pablo said to him. “To me everything appears normal. Except the lack of beard of Don Roberto.”
Maria ran her hand over Robert Jordan’s cheek.
“He has a beard,” she said to Pablo.
“You should know,” Pablo said and Robert Jordan looked at him.
I don’t think he is so drunk, Robert Jordan thought. No, not so drunk. And I think I had better watch myself.
“Thou,” he said to Pablo. “Do you think this snow will last?”
“What do you think?”
“I asked you.”
“Ask another,” Pablo told him. “I am not thy service of information. You have a paper from thy service of information. Ask the woman. She commands.”
“I asked thee.”
“Go and obscenity thyself,” Pablo told him. “Thee and the woman and the girl.”
“He is drunk,” Primitivo said. “Pay him no heed, Inglés.”
“I do not think he is so drunk,” Robert Jordan said.
Maria was standing behind him and Robert Jordan saw Pablo watching her over his shoulder. The small eyes, like a boar’s, were watching her out of the round, stubble-covered head and Robert Jordan thought: I have known many killers in this war and some before and they were all different; there is no common trait nor feature; nor any such thing as the criminal type; but Pablo is certainly not handsome.
“I don’t believe you can drink,” he said to Pablo. “Nor that you’re drunk.”
“I am drunk,” Pablo said with dignity. “To drink is nothing. It is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho.”
“I doubt it,” Robert Jordan told him. “Cowardly, yes.”
It was so quiet in the cave, suddenly, that he could hear the hissing noise the wood made burning on the hearth where Pilar cooked. He heard the sheepskin crackle as he rested his weight on his feet. He thought he could almost hear the snow falling outside. He could not, but he could hear the silence where it fell.
I’d like to kill him and have it over with, Robert Jordan was thinking. I don’t know what he is going to do, but it is nothing good. Day after tomorrow is the bridge and this man is bad and he constitutes a danger to the success of the whole enterprise. Come on. Let us get it over with.
Pablo grinned at him and put one finger up and wiped it across his throat. He shook his head that turned only a little each way on his thick, short neck.
“Nay, Inglés,” he said. “Do not provoke me.” He looked at Pilar and said to her, “It is not thus that you get rid of me.”
“Sinverguenza,” Robert Jordan said to him, committed now in his own mind to the action. “Cobarde.”
“It is very possible,” Pablo said. “But I am not to be provoked. Take something to drink, Inglés, and signal to the woman it was not successful.”
“Shut thy mouth,” Robert Jordan said. “I provoke thee for myself.”
“It is not worth the trouble,” Pablo told him. “I do not provoke.”
“Thou art a bicho raro,” Robert Jordan said, not wanting to let it go; not wanting to have it fail for the second time; knowing as he spoke that this had all been gone through before; having that feeling that he was playing a part from memory of something that he had read or had dreamed, feeling it all moving in a circle.
“Very rare, yes,” Pablo said. “Very rare and very drunk. To your health, Inglés.” He dipped a cup in the wine bowl and held it up. “Salud y cojones.”
He’s rare, all right, Robert Jordan thought, and smart, and very complicated. He could no longer hear the fire for the sound of his own breathing.
“Here’s to you,” Robert Jordan said, and dipped a cup into the wine. Betrayal wouldn’t amount to anything without all these pledges, he thought. Pledge up. “Salud,” he said. “Salud and Salud again,” you salud, he thought. Salud, you salud.