It would have been very interesting for Robert Jordan to have heard Pablo speaking to the bay horse but he did not hear him because now, convinced that Pablo was only down checking on his horses, and having decided that it was not a practical move to kill him at this time, he stood up and walked back to the cave. Pablo stayed in the meadow talking to the horse for a long time. The horse understood nothing that he said; only, from the tone of the voice, that they were endearments and he had been in the corral all day and was hungry now, grazing impatiently at the limits of his picket rope, and the man annoyed him. Pablo shifted the picket pin finally and stood by the horse, not talking now. The horse went on grazing and was relieved now that the man did not bother him.
6
Inside the cave, Robert Jordan sat on one of the rawhide stools in a corner by the fire listening to the woman. She was washing the dishes and the girl, Maria, was drying them and putting them away, kneeling to place them in the hollow dug in the wall that was used as a shelf.
“It is strange,” she said. “That El Sordo has not come. He should have been here an hour ago.”
“Did you advise him to come?”
“No. He comes each night.”
“Perhaps he is doing something. Some work.”
“It is possible,” she said. “If he does not come we must go to see him tomorrow.”
“Yes. Is it far from here?”
“No. It will be a good trip. I lack exercise.”
“Can I go?” Maria asked. “May I go too, Pilar?”
“Yes, beautiful,” the woman said, then turning her big face, “Isn’t she pretty?” she asked Robert Jordan. “How does she seem to thee? A little thin?”
“To me she seems very well,” Robert Jordan said. Maria filled his cup with wine. “Drink that,” she said. “It will make me seem even better. It is necessary to drink much of that for me to seem beautiful.”
“Then I had better stop,” Robert Jordan said. “Already thou seemest beautiful and more.”
“That’s the way to talk,” the woman said. “You talk like the good ones. What more does she seem?”
“Intelligent,” Robert Jordan said lamely. Maria giggled and the woman shook her head sadly. “How well you begin and how it ends, Don Roberto.”
“Don’t call me Don Roberto.”
“It is a joke. Here we say Don Pablo for a joke. As we say the Señorita Maria for a joke.”
“I don’t joke that way,” Robert Jordan said. “Camarada to me is what all should be called with seriousness in this war. In the joking commences a rottenness.”
“Thou art very religious about thy politics,” the woman teased him. “Thou makest no jokes?”
“Yes. I care much for jokes but not in the form of address. It is like a flag.”
“I could make jokes about a flag. Any flag,” the woman laughed. “To me no one can joke of anything. The old flag of yellow and gold we called pus and blood. The flag of the Republic with the purple added we call blood, pus and permanganate. It is a joke.”
“He is a Communist,” Maria said. “They are very serious gente.”
“Are you a Communist?”
“No I am an anti-fascist.”
“For a long time?”
“Since I have understood fascism.”
“How long is that?”
“For nearly ten years.”
“That is not much time,” the woman said. “I have been a Republican for twenty years.”
“My father was a Republican all his life,” Maria said. “It was for that they shot him.”
“My father was also a Republican all his life. Also my grandfather,” Robert Jordan said.
“In what country?”
“The United States.”
“Did they shoot them?” the woman asked.
“Qué va,” Maria said. “The United States is a country of Republicans. They don’t shoot you for being a Republican there.”
“All the same it is a good thing to have a grandfather who was a Republican,” the woman said. “It shows a good blood.”
“My grandfather was on the Republican national committee,” Robert Jordan said. That impressed even Maria.