“Like the Moors.”
“Yes. But the gypsies have many laws they do not admit to having. In the war many gypsies have become bad again as they were in olden times.”
“They do not understand why the war is made. They do not know for what we fight.”
“No,” Anselmo said. “They only know now there is a war and people may kill again as in the olden times without a surety of punishment.”
“You have killed?” Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the dark and of their day together.
“Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe the wizardry of the gypsies about the brotherhood with animals. No. I am against all killing of men.”
“Yet you have killed.”
“Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven.”
“By whom?”
“Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know.”
“You have not God any more?”
“No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have God.”
“They claim Him.”
“Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.”
“Then it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing.”
“I believe so,” Anselmo said. “Since you put it clearly in that way I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo.”
“To win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been true.”
“Clearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas,” Anselmo said.
They were walking now close together in the dark and he spoke softly, sometimes turning his head as he climbed. “I would not kill even a Bishop. I would not kill a proprietor of any kind. I would make them work each day as we have worked in the fields and as we work in the mountains with the timbet all of the rest of their lives. So they would see what man is born to. That they should sleep where we sleep. That they should eat as we eat. But above all that they should work. Thus they would learn.”
“And they would survive to enslave thee again.”
“To kill them teaches nothing,” Anselmo said. “You cannot exterminate them because from their seed comes more with greater hatred. Prison is nothing. Prison only makes hatred. That all our enemies should learn.”
“But still thou hast killed.”
“Yes,” Anselmo said. “Many times and will again. But not with pleasure and regarding it as a sin.”
“And the sentry. You joked of killing the sentry.”
“That was in joke. I would kill the sentry. Yes. Certainly and with a clear heart considering our task. But not with pleasure.”
“We will leave them to those who enjoy it,” Robert Jordan said. “There are eight and five. That is thirteen for those who enjoy it.”
“There are many of those who enjoy it,” Anselmo said in the dark. “We have many of those. More of those than of men who would serve for a battle.”
“Hast thou ever been in a battle?”
“Nay,” the old man said. “We fought in Segovia at the start of the movement but we were beaten and we ran. I ran with the others. We did not truly understand what we were doing, nor how it should be done. Also I had only a shotgun with cartridges of large buckshot and the guardia civil had Mausers. I could not hit them with buckshot at a hundred yards, and at three hundred yards they shot us as they wished as though we were rabbits. They shot much and well and we were like sheep before them.” He was silent. Then asked, “Thinkest thou there will be a battle at the bridge?”