19
“What do you do sitting there?” Maria asked him. She was standing close beside him and he turned his head and smiled at her.
“Nothing,” he said. “I have been thinking.”
“What of? The bridge?”
“No. The bridge is terminated. Of thee and of a hotel in Madrid where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some time.”
“Are there many Russians in Madrid?”
“No. Very few.”
“But in the fascist periodicals it says there are hundreds of thousands.”
“Those are lies. There are very few.”
“Do you like the Russians? The one who was here was a Russian.”
“Did you like him?”
“Yes. I was sick then but I thought he was very beautiful and very brave.”
“What nonsense, beautiful,” Pilar said. “His nose was flat as my hand and he had cheekbones as wide as a sheep’s buttocks.”
“He was a good friend and comrade of mine,” Robert Jordan said to Maria. “I cared for him very much.”
“Sure,” Pilar said. “But you shot him.”
When she said this the card players looked up from the table and Pablo stared at Robert Jordan. Nobody said anything and then the gypsy, Rafael, asked, “Is it true, Roberto?”
“Yes,” Robert Jordan said. He wished Pilar had not brought this up and he wished he had not told it at El Sordo’s. “At his request. He was badly wounded.”
“Qué cosa mas rara,” the gypsy said. “All the time he was with us he talked of such a possibility. I don’t know how many times I have promised him to perform such an act. What a rare thing,” he said again and shook his head.
“He was a very rare man,” Primitivo said. “Very singular.”
“Look,” Andrés, one of the brothers, said. “You who are Professor and all. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him?”
“I believe he cannot see it,” Robert Jordan said. Pablo was staring at him curiously and Pilar was watching him with no expression on her face. “In the case of this Russian comrade he was very nervous from being too much time at the front. He had fought at Irun which, you know, was bad. Very bad. He had fought later in the north. And since the first groups who did this work behind the lines were formed he had worked here, in Estremadura and in AndalucIa. I think he was very tired and nervous and he imagined ugly things.”
“He would undoubtedly have seen many evil things,” Fernando said.
“Like all the world,” Andrés said. “But listen to me, Inglés. Do you think there is such a thing as a man knowing in advance what will befall him?”
“No,” Robert Jordan said. “That is ignorance and superstition.”
“Go on,” Pilar said. “Let us hear the viewpoint of the professor.” She spoke as though she were talking to a precocious child.
“I believe that fear produces evil visions,” Robert Jordan said. “Seeing bad signs–”
“Such as the airplanes today,” Primitivo said.
“Such as thy arrival,” Pablo said softly and Robert Jordan looked across the table at him, saw it was not a provocation but only an expressed thought, then went on. “Seeing bad signs, one, with fear, imagines an end for himself and one thinks that imagining comes by divination,” Robert Jordan concluded. “I believe there is nothing more to it than that. I do not believe in ogres, nor soothsayers, nor in the supernatural things.”
“But this one with the rare name saw his fate clearly,” the gypsy said. “And that was how it happened.”
“He did not see it,” Robert Jordan said. “He had a fear of such a possibility and it became an obsession. No one can tell me that he saw anything.”
“Not I?” Pilar asked him and picked some dust up from the fire and blew it off the palm of her hand. “I cannot tell thee either?”
“No. With all wizardry, gypsy and all, thou canst not tell me either.”
“Because thou art a miracle of deafness,” Pilar said, her big face harsh and broad in the candlelight. “It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such things do not exist. Qué va, Inglés. I saw the death of that one with the rare name in his face as though it were burned there with a branding iron.”