“Do you know where I want to go?” Pilar asked him.
“Where? The Paramera? That’s no good.”
“No,” Pilar said. “Not the Sierra de Paramera. I want to go to the Republic.”
“That is possible.”
“Would your people go?”
“Yes. If I say to.”
“Of mine, I do not know,” Pilar said. “Pablo would not want to although, truly, he might feel safer there. He is too old to have to go for a soldier unless they call more classes. The gypsy will not wish to go. I do not know about the others.”
“Because nothing passes her for so long they do not realize the danger,” El Sordo said.
“Since the planes today they will see it more,” Robert Jordan said. “But I should think you could operate very well from the Gredos.”
“What?” El Sordo said and looked at him with his eyes very flat. There was no friendliness in the way he asked the question.
“You could raid more effectively from there,” Robert Jordan said.
“So,” El Sordo said. “You know Gredos?”
“Yes. You could operate against the main line of the railway from there. You could keep cutting it as we are doing farther south in Estremadura. To operate from there would be better than returning to the Republic,” Robert Jordan said. “You are more useful there.”
They had both gotten sullen as he talked.
Sordo looked at Pilar and she looked back at him.
“You know Gredos?” Sordo asked. “Truly?”
“Sure,” said Robert Jordan.
“Where would you go?”
“Above Barco de Avila. Better places than here. Raid against the main road and the railroad between Béjar and Plasencia.”
“Very difficult,” Sordo said.
“We have worked against that same railroad in much more dangerous country in Estremadura,” Robert Jordan said.
“Who is we?”
“The guerrilleros group of Estremadura.”
“You are many?”
“About forty.”
“Was the one with the bad nerves and the strange name from there?” asked Pilar.
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead, as I told you.”
“You are from there, too?”
“Yes.”
“You see what I mean?” Pilar said to him.
And I have made a mistake, Robert Jordan thought to himself. I have told Spaniards we can do something better than they can when the rule is never to speak of your own exploits or abilities. When I should have flattered them I have told them what I think they should do and now they are furious. Well, they will either get over it or they will not. They are certainly much more useful in the Gredos than here. The proof is that here they have done nothing since the train that Kashkin organized. It was not much of a show. It cost the fascists one engine and killed a few troops but they all talk as though it were the high point of the war. Maybe they will shame into going to the Gredos. Yes and maybe I will get thrown out of here too. Well, it is not a very rosy-looking dish anyway that you look into it.
“Listen Inglés,” Pilar said to him. “How are your nerves?”
“All right,” said Robert Jordan. “O.K.”
“Because the last dynamiter they sent to work with us, although a formidable technician, was very nervous.”
“We have nervous ones,” Robert Jordan said.
“I do not say that he was a coward because he comported himself very well,” Pilar went on. “But he spoke in a very rare and windy way.” She raised her voice. “Isn’t it true, Santiago, that the last dynamiter, he of the train, was a little rare?”
“Algo raro,” the deaf man nodded and his eyes went over Robert Jordan’s face in a way that reminded him of the round opening at the end of the wand of a vacuum cleaner. “Si, algo raro, pero bueno.”
“Murió,” Robert Jordan said into the deaf man’s ear. “He is dead.”
“How was that?” the deaf man asked, dropping his eyes down from Robert Jordan’s eyes to his lips.
“I shot him,” Robert Jordan said. “He was too badly wounded to travel and I shot him.”
“He was always talking of such a necessity,” Pilar said. “It was his obsession.”
“Yes,” said Robert Jordan. “He was always talking of such a necessity and it was his obsession.”