“Yes,” the voice said. “But it is an order. Have you the password?”
“No. We come from below.”
“I know,” the man said in the dark. “You come from the bridge. I know all of that. The order is not mine. You must know the second half of a password.”
“What is the first half then?” Robert Jordan said.
“I have forgotten it,” the man said in the dark and laughed. “Go then unprintably to the campfire with thy obscene dynamite.”
“That is called guerilla discipline,” Anselmo said. “Uncock thy piece.”
“It is uncocked,” the man said in the dark. “I let it down with my thumb and forefinger.”
“Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl on the bolt and it will fire.”
“This is a Mauser,” the man said. “But I have a grip of thumb and forefinger beyond description. Always I let it down that way.”
“Where is the rifle pointed?” asked Anselmo into the dark.
“At thee,” the man said, “all the time that I descended the bolt. And when thou comest to the camp, order that some one should relieve me because I have indescribable and unprintable hunger and I have forgotten the password.”
“How art thou called?” Robert Jordan asked.
“Agustín,” the man said. “I am called Agustín and I am dying with boredom in this spot.”
“We will take the message,” Robert Jordan said and he thought how the word aburmiento which means boredom in Spanish was a word no peasant would use in any other language. Yet it is one of the most common words in the mouth of a Spaniard of any class.
“Listen to me,” Agustín said, and coming close he put his hand on Robert Jordan’s shoulder. Then striking a flint and steel together he held it up and blowing on the end of the cork, looked at the young man’s face in its glow.
“You look like the other one,” he said. “But something different. Listen,” he put the lighter down and stood holding his rifle. “Tell me this. Is it true about the bridge?”
“What about the bridge?”
“That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?”
“I know not.”
“You know not,” Agustín said. “What a barbarity! Whose then is the dynamite?”
“Mine.”
“And knowest thou not what it is for? Don’t tell me tales.”
“I know what it is for and so will you in time,” Robert Jordan said. “But now we go to the camp.”
“Go to the unprintable,” Agustín said. “And unprint thyself. But do you want me to tell you something of service to you?”
“Yes,” said Robert Jordan. “If it is not unprintable,” naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man, Agustín, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustín laughed in the dark when he heard the word. “It is a way of speaking I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks according to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me. As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These mountains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would say one thing. Guard well thy explosive.”
“Thank you,” Robert Jordan said. “From thee?”
“No,” Agustín said. “From people less unprintably equipped than I.”
“So?” asked Robert Jordan.
“You understand Spanish,” Agustín said seriously now. “Care well for thy unprintable explosive.”
“Thank you.”
“No. Don’t thank me. Look after thy stuff.”
“Has anything happened to it?”
“No, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion.”
“Thank you all the same. We go now to camp.”
“Good,” said Agustín, “and that they send some one here who knows the password.”
“Will we see you at the camp?”
“Yes, man. And shortly.”
“Come on,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.
They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and there was a gray mist. The grass was lush underfoot after the pineneedle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert Jordan Could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave must be.