“Yes, me,” said Pablo. “I will be alive when you are dead.”
He dipped up another cup of wine and raised it to Robert Jordan. “To the professor,” he said. Then turned to Pilar. “To the Señora Commander.” Then toasted them all, “To all the illusioned ones.”
Agustín walked over to him and, striking quickly with the side of his hand, knocked the cup out of his hand.
“That is a waste,” Pablo said. “That is silly.”
Agustín said something vile to him.
“No,” Pablo said, dipping up another cup. “I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.”
“Go and obscenity in the milk of thy cowardice,” Pilar said to him. “I know too much about thee and thy cowardice.”
“How the woman talks,” Pablo said. “I will be going out to see the horses.”
“Go and befoul them,” Agustín said. “Is not that one of thy customs?”
“No,” Pablo said and shook his head. He was taking down his big blanket cape from the wall and he looked at Agustín. “Thou,” he said, “and thy violence.”
“What do you go to do with the horses?” Agustín said.
“Look to them,” Pablo said.
“Befoul them,” Agustín said. “Horse lover.”
“I care for them very much,” Pablo said. “Even from behind they are handsomer and have more sense than these people. Divert yourselves,” he said and grinned. “Speak to them of the bridge, Inglés. Explain their duties in the attack. Tell them how to conduct the retreat. Where will you take them, Inglés, after the bridge? Where will you take your patriots? I have thought of it all day while I have been drinking.”
“What have you thought?” Agustín asked.
“What have I thought?” Pablo said and moved his tongue around exploringly inside his lips. “Qué te importa, what have I thought.”
“Say it,” Agustín said to him.
“Much,” Pablo said. He pulled the blanket coat over his head, the roundness of his head protruding now from the dirty yellow folds of the blanket. “I have thought much.”
“What?” Agustín said. “What?”
“I have thought you are a group of illusioned people,” Pablo said. “Led by a woman with her brains between her thighs and a foreigner who comes to destroy you.”
“Get out,” Pilar shouted at him. “Get out and fist yourself into the snow. Take your bad milk out of here, you horse exhausted maricon.”
“Thus one talks,” Agustín said admiringly, but absent-mindedly. He was worried.
“I go,” said Pablo. “But I will be back shortly.” He lifted the blanket over the door of the cave and stepped out. Then from the door he called, “It’s still falling, Inglés.”
17
The only noise in the cave now was the hissing from the hearth where snow was falling through the hole in the roof onto the coals of the fire.
“Pilar,” Fernando said. “Is there more of the stew?”
“Oh, shut up,” the woman said. But Maria took Fernando’s bowl over to the big pot set back from the edge of the fire and ladled into it. She brought it over to the table and set it down and then patted Fernando on the shoulder as he bent to eat. She stood for a moment beside him, her hand on his shoulder. But Fernando did not look up. He was devoting himself to the stew.
Agustín stood beside the fire. The others were seated. Pilar sat at the table opposite Robert Jordan.
“Now, Inglés,” she said, “you have seen how he is.”
“What will he do?” Robert Jordan asked.
“Anything,” the woman looked down at the table. “Anything. He is capable of doing anything.”
“Where is the automatic rifle?” Robert Jordan asked.
“There in the corner wrapped in the blanket,” Primitivo said. “Do you want it?”
“Later,” Robert Jordan said. “I wished to know where it is.”
“It is there,” Primitivo said. “I brought it in and I have wrapped it in my blanket to keep the action dry. The pans are in that sack.”
“He would not do that,” Pilar said. “He would not do anything with the máquina.”