“There is a chance.”
“I have never seen a battle without running,” Anselmo said. “I do not know how I would comport myself. I am an old man and I have wondered.”
“I will respond for thee,” Robert Jordan told him.
“And hast thou been in many battles?”
“Several.”
“And what thinkest thou of this of the bridge?”
“First I think of the bridge. That is my business. It is not difficult to destroy the bridge. Then we will make the dispositions for the rest. For the preliminaries. It will all be written.”
“Very few of these people read,” Anselmo said.
“It will be written for every one’s knowledge so that all know, but also it will be clearly explained.”
“I will do that to which I am assigned,” Anselmo said. “But remembering the shooting in Segovia, if there is to be a battle or even much exchanging of shots, I would wish to have it very clear what I must do under all circumstances to avoid running. I remember that I had a great tendency to run at Segovia.”
“We will be together,” Robert Jordan told him. “I will tell you what there is to do at all times.”
“Then there is no problem,” Anselmo said. “I can do anything that I am ordered.”
“For us will be the bridge and the battle, should there be one,” Robert Jordan said and saying it in the dark, he felt a little theatrical but it sounded well in Spanish.
“It should be of the highest interest,” Anselmo said and hearing him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the English pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jordan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal way, he resented Golz’s orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out.
And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the future of the human race can turn. As it can turn on everything that happens in this war. You have only one thing to do and you must do it. Only one thing, hell, he thought. If it were one thing it was easy. Stop worrying, you windy bastard, he said to himself. Think about something else.
So he thought about the girl Maria, with her skin, the hair and the eyes all the same golden tawny brown, the hair a little darker than the rest but it would be lighter as her skin tanned deeper, the smooth skin, pale gold on the surface with a darkness underneath. Smooth it would be, all of her body smooth, and she moved awkwardly as though there were something of her and about her that embarrassed her as though it were visible, though it was not, but only in her mind. And she blushed with he looked at her, and she sitting, her hands clasped around her knees and the shirt open at the throat, the cup of her breasts uptilted against the shirt, and as he thought of her, his throat was choky and there was a difficulty in walking and he and Anselmo spoke no more until the old man said, “Now we go down through these rocks and to the camp.”
As they came through the rocks in the dark, a man spoke to them, “Halt. Who goes?” They heard a rifle bolt snick as it was drawn back and then the knock against the wood as it was pushed forward and down on the stock.
“Comrades,” Anselmo said.
“What comrades?”
“Comrades of Pablo,” the old man told him. “Dost thou not know us?”