“Before we loose the máquina on thee,” another shouted.
“Qué poco amables sois!” Andrés said. “You’re not very amiable.”
He was working his way through the wire.
“Amables,” some one shouted at him. “We are in a war, man.”
“It begins to appear so,” Andrés said.
“What’s he say?”
Andrés heard a bolt click again.
“Nothing,” he shouted. “I say nothing. Do not shoot until I get through this fornicating wire.”
“Don’t speak badly of our wire,” some one shouted. “Or we’ll toss a bomb on you.”
“Quiero decir, qué buena alambrada,” Andrés shouted. “What beautiful wire. God in a latrine. What lovely wire. Soon I will be with thee, brothers.”
“Throw a bomb at him,” he heard the one voice say. “I tell you that’s the soundest way to deal with the whole thing.”
“Brothers,” Andrés said. He was wet through with sweat and he knew the bomb advocate was perfectly capable of tossing a grenade at any moment. “I have no importance.”
“I believe it,” the bomb man said.
“You are right,” Andrés said. He was working carefully through the third belt of wire and he was very close to the parapet. “I have no importance of any kind. But the affair is serious. Muy, muy serio.”
“There is no more serious thing than liberty,” the bomb man shouted. “Thou thinkest there is anything more serious than liberty?” he asked challengingly.
“No, man,” Andrés said, relieved. He knew now he was up against the crazies; the ones with the black-and-red scarves. “Viva la Libertad!”
“Viva la F. A. I. Viva la C.N.T.,” they shouted back at him from the parapet. “Viva el anarco-sindicalismo and liberty.”
“Viva nosotros,” Andrés shouted. “Long life to us.”
“He is a coreligionary of ours,” the bomb man said. “And I might have killed him with this.”
He looked at the grenade in his hand and was deeply moved as Andrés climbed over the parapet. Putting his arms around him, the grenade still in one hand, so that it rested against Andrés’s shoulder blade as he embraced him, the bomb man kissed him on both cheeks.
“I am content that nothing happened to thee, brother,” he said. “I am very content.”
“Where is thy officer?” Andrés asked.
“I command here,” a man said. “Let me see thy papers.”
He took them into a dugout and looked at them with the light of a candle. There was the little square of folded silk with the colors of the Republic and the seal of the S. I. M. in the center. There was the Salvoconducto or safe-conduct pass giving his name, age, height, birthplace and mission that Robert Jordan had written out on a sheet from his notebook and sealed with the S. I. M. rubber stamp and there were the four folded sheets of the dispatch to Golz which were tied around with a cord and sealed with wax and the impression of the metal S. I. M. seal that was set in the top end of the wooden handle of the rubber stamp.
“This I have seen,” the man in command of the post said and handed back the piece of silk. “This you all have, I know. But its possession proves nothing without this.” He lifted the Salvoconducto and read it through again. “Where were you born?”
“Villaconejos,” Andrés said.
“And what do they raise there?”
“Melons,” Andrés said. “As all the world knows.”
“Who do you know there?”
“Why? Are you from there?”
“Nay. But I have been there. I am from Aranjuëz.”
“Ask me about any one.”
“Describe José Rincon.”
“Who keeps the bodega?”
“Naturally.”
“With a shaved head and a big belly and a cast in one eye.”
“Then this is valid,” the man said and handed him back the paper. “But what do you do on their side?”
“Our father had installed himself at Villacastín before the movement,” Andrés said. “Down there beyond the mountains on the plain. It was there we were surprised by the movement. Since the movement I have fought with the band of Pablo. But I am in a great hurry, man, to take that dispatch.”
“How goes it in the country of the fascists?” the man commanding asked. He was in no hurry.