“Pass thy hand over it.”
He did and left his hand there and went on talking to her throat, as he felt his own throat swell. “But in Madrid I thought we could go together to the coiffeur’s and they could cut it neatly on the sides and in the back as they cut mine and that way it would look better in the town while it is growing out.”
“I would look like thee,” she said and held him close to her. “And then I never would want to change it.”
“Nay. It will grow all the time and that will only be to keep it neat at the start while it is growing long. How long will it take it to grow long?”
“Really long?”
“No. I mean to thy shoulders. It is thus I would have thee wear it.”
“As Garbo in the cinema?”
“Yes,” he said thickly.
Now the making believe was coming back in a great rush and he would take it all to him. It had him now, and again he surrendered and went on. “So it will hang straight to thy shoulders and curl at the ends as a wave of the sea curls, and it will be the color of ripe wheat and thy face the color of burnt gold and thine eyes the only color they could be with thy hair and thy skin, gold with the dark flecks in them, and I will push thy head back and look in thy eyes and hold thee tight against me–”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Wherever it is that we are. How long will it take for thy hair to grow?”
“I do not know because it never had been cut before. But I think in six months it should be long enough to hang well below my ears and in a year as long as thou couldst ever wish. But do you know what will happen first?”
“Tell me.”
“We will be in the big clean bed in thy famous room in our famous hotel and we will sit in the famous bed together and look into the mirror of the armoire and there will be thee and there will be me in the glass and then I will turn to thee thus, and put my arms around thee thus, and then I will kiss thee thus.”
Then they lay quiet and close together in the night, hot-aching, rigid, close together and holding her, Robert Jordan held closely too all those things that he knew could never happen, and he went on with it deliberately and said, “Rabbit, we will not always live in that hotel.”
“Why not?”
“We can get an apartment in Madrid on that street that runs along the Parque of the Buen Retiro. I know an American woman who furnished apartments and rented them before the movement and I know how to get such an apartment for only the rent that was paid before the movement. There are apartments there that face on the park and you can see all of the park from the windows; the iron fence, the gardens, and the gravel walks and the green of the lawns where they touch the gravel, and the trees deep with shadows and the many fountains, and now the chestnut trees will be in bloom. In Madrid we can walk in the park and row on the lake if the water is back in it now.”
“Why would the water be out?”
“They drained it in November because it made a mark to sight from when the planes came over for bombing. But I think that the water is back in it now. I am not sure. But even if there is no water in it we can walk through all the park away from the lake and there is a part that is like a forest with trees from all parts of the world with their names on them, with placards that tell what trees they are and where they came from.”
“I would almost as soon go the cinema,” Maria said. “But the trees sound very interesting and I will learn them all with thee if I can remember them.”