“I thought you said he would do anything.”
“He might,” she said. “But he has no practice with the máquina. He could toss in a bomb. That is more his style.”
“It is an idiocy and a weakness not to have killed him,” the gypsy said. He had taken no part in any of the talk all evening. “Last night Roberto should have killed him.”
“Kill him,” Pilar said. Her big face was dark and tired looking. “I am for it now.”
“I was against it,” Agustín said. He stood in front of the fire, his long arms hanging by his sides, his cheeks, stubble-shadowed below the cheekbones, hollow in the firelight. “Now I am for it,” he said. “He is poisonous now and he would like to see us all destroyed.”
“Let all speak,” Pilar said and her voice was tired. “Thou, Andrés?”
“Matarlo,” the brother with the dark hair growing far down in the point on his forehead said and nodded his head.
“Eladio?”
“Equally,” the other brother said. “To me he seems to constitute a great danger. And he serves for nothing.”
“Primitivo?”
“Equally.”
“Fernando?”
“Could we not hold him as a prisoner?” Fernando asked.
“Who would look after a prisoner?” Primitivo said. “It would take two men to look after a prisoner and what would we do with him in the end?”
“We could sell him to the fascists,” the gypsy said.
“None of that,” Agustín said. “None of that filthiness.”
“It was only an idea,” Rafael, the gypsy, said. “It seems to me that the facciosos would be happy to have him.”
“Leave it alone,” Agustín said. “That is filthy.”
“No filthier than Pablo,” the gypsy justified himself.
“One filthiness does not justify another,” Agustín said. “Well, that is all. Except for the old man and the Inglés.”
“They are not in it,” Pilar said. “He has not been their leader.”
“One moment,” Fernando said. “I have not finished.”
“Go ahead,” Pilar said. “Talk until he comes back. Talk until he rolls a hand grenade under that blanket and blows this all up. Dynamite and all.”
“I think that you exaggerate, Pilar,” Fernando said. “I do not think that he has any such conception.”
“I do not think so either,” Agustín said. “Because that would blow the wine up too and he will be back in a little while to the wine.”
“Why not turn him over to El Sordo and let El Sordo sell him to the fascists?” Rafael suggested. “You could blind him and he would be easy to handle.”
“Shut up,” Pilar said. “I feel something very justified against thee too when thou talkest.”
“The fascists would pay nothing for him anyway,” Primitivo said. “Such things have been tried by others and they pay nothing. They will shoot thee too.”
“I believe that blinded he could be sold for something,” Rafael said.
“Shut up,” Pilar said. “Speak of blinding again and you can go with the other.”
“But, he, Pablo, blinded the guardia civil who was wounded,” the gypsy insisted. “You have forgotten that?”
“Close thy mouth,” Pilar said to him. She was embarrassed before Robert Jordan by this talk of blinding.
“I have not been allowed to finish,” Fernando interrupted.
“Finish,” Pilar told him. “Go on. Finish.”
“Since it is impractical to hold Pablo as a prisoner,” Fernando commenced, “and since it is repugnant to offer him–”
“Finish,” Pilar said. “For the love of God, finish.”
“–in any class of negotiation,” Fernando proceeded calmly, “I am agreed that it is perhaps best that he should be eliminated in order that the operations projected should be insured of the maximum possibility of success.”
Pilar looked at the little man, shook her head, bit her lips and said nothing.
“That is my opinion,” Fernando said. “I believe we are justified in believing that he constitutes a danger to the Republic–”
“Mother of God,” Pilar said. “Even here one man can make a bureaucracy with his mouth.”
“Both from his own words and his recent actions,” Fernando continued. “And while he is deserving of gratitude for his actions in the early part of the movement and up until the most recent time–”
Pilar had walked over to the fire. Now she came up to the table.