“Fernando,” Pilar said quietly and handed a bowl to him. “Take this stew please in all formality and fill thy mouth with it and talk no more. We are in possession of thy opinion.”
“But, how then–” Primitivo asked and paused without completing the sentence.
“Estoy listo,” Robert Jordan said. “I am ready to do it. Since you are all decided that it should be done it is a service that I can do.”
What’s the matter? he thought. From listening to him I am beginning to talk like Fernando. That language must be infectious. French, the language of diplomacy. Spanish, the language of bureaucracy.
“No,” Maria said. “No.”
“This is none of thy business,” Pilar said to the girl. “Keep thy mouth shut.”
“I will do it tonight,” Robert Jordan said.
He saw Pilar looking at him, her fingers on her lips. She was looking toward the door.
The blanket fastened across the opening of the cave was lifted and Pablo put his head in. He grinned at them all, pushed under the blanket and then turned and fastened it again. He turned around and stood there, then pulled the blanket cape over his head and shook the snow from it.
“You were speaking of me?” he addressed them all. “I am interrupting?”
No one answered him and he hung the cape on a peg in the wall and walked over to the table.
“Qué tal?” he asked and picked up his cup which had stood empty on the table and dipped it into the wine bowl. “There is no wine,” he said to Maria. “Go draw some from the skin.”
Maria picked up the bowl and went over to the dusty, heavily distended, black-tarred wineskin that hung neck down from the wall and unscrewed the plug from one of the legs enough so that the wine squirted from the edge of the plug into the bowl. Pablo watched her kneeling, holding the bowl up and watched the light red wine flooding into the bowl so fast that it made a whirling motion as it filled it.
“Be careful,” he said to her. “The wine’s below the chest now.”
No one said anything.
“I drank from the belly-button to the chest today,” Pablo said. “It’s a day’s work. What’s the matter with you all? Have you lost your tongues?”
No one said anything at all.
“Screw it up, Maria,” Pablo said. “Don’t let it spill.”
“There’ll be plenty of wine,” Agustín said. “You’ll be able to be drunk.”
“One has encountered his tongue,” Pablo said and nodded to Agustín. “Felicitations. I thought you’d been struck dumb.”
“By what?” Agustín asked.
“By my entry.”
“Thinkest thou that thy entry carries importance?”
He’s working himself up to it, maybe, Robert Jordan thought. Maybe Agustín is going to do it. He certainly hates him enough. I don’t hate him, he thought. No, I don’t hate him. He is disgusting but I do not hate him. Though that blinding business puts him in a special class. Still this is their war. But he is certainly nothing to have around for the next two days. I am going to keep away out of it, he thought. I made a fool of myself with him once tonight and I am perfectly willing to liquidate him. But I am not going to fool with him beforehand. And there are not going to be any shooting matches or monkey business in here with that dynamite around either. Pablo thought of that, of course. And did you think of it, he said to himself? No, you did not and neither did Agustín. You deserve whatever happens to you, he thought.
“Agustín,” he said.
“What?” Agustín looked up sullenly and turned his head away from Pablo.
“I wish to speak to thee,” Robert Jordan said.
“Later.”
“Now,” Robert Jordan said. “Por favor.”
Robert Jordan had walked to the opening of the cave and Pablo followed him with his eyes. Agustín, tall and sunken cheeked, stood up and came over to him. He moved reluctantly and contemptuously.
“Thou hast forgotten what is in the sacks?” Robert Jordan said to him, speaking so low that it could not be heard.
“Milk!” Agustín said. “One becomes accustomed and one forgets.”