If this was how it was then this was how it was. But there was no law that made him say he liked it. I did not know that I could ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen to me. I would like to have it for my whole life. You will, the other part of him said. You will. You have it now and that is all your whole life is; now. There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.
So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one. Hasn’t it been merry lately? What are you complaining about? That’s the thing about this sort of work, he told himself, and was very pleased with the thought, it isn’t so much what you learn as it is the people you meet. He was pleased then because he was joking and he came back to the girl.
“I love you, rabbit,” he said to the girl. “What was it you were saying?”
“I was saying,” she told him, “that you must not worry about your work because I will not bother you nor interfere. If there is anything I can do you will tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” he said. “It is really very simple.”
“I will learn from Pilar what I should do to take care of a man well and those things I will do,” Maria said. “Then, as I learn, I will discover things for myself and other things you can tell me.”
“There is nothing to do.”
“Qué va, man, there is nothing! Thy sleeping robe, this morning, should have been shaken and aired and hung somewhere in the sun. Then, before the dew comes, it should be taken into shelter.”
“Go on, rabbit.”
“Thy socks should be washed and dried. I would see thee had two pair.”
“What else?”
“If thou would show me I would clean and oil thy pistol.”
“Kiss me,” Robert Jordan said.
“Nay, this is serious. Wilt thou show me about the pistol? Pilar has rags and oil. There is a cleaning rod inside the cave that should fit it.”
“Sure. I’ll show you.”
“Then,” Maria said. “If you will teach me to shoot it either one of us could shoot the other and himself, or herself, if one were wounded and it were necessary to avoid capture.”
“Very interesting,” Robert Jordan said. “Do you have many ideas like that?”
“Not many,” Maria said. “But it is a good one. Pilar gave me this and showed me how to use it,” she opened the breast pocket of her shirt and took out a cut-down leather holder such as pocket combs are carried in and, removing a wide rubber band that closed both ends, took out a Gem type, single-edged razor blade. “I keep this always,” she explained. “Pilar says you must make the cut here just below the ear and draw it toward here.” She showed him with her finger. “She says there is a big artery there and that drawing the blade from there you cannot miss it. Also, she says there is no pain and you must simply press firmly below the ear and draw it downward. She says it is nothing and that they cannot stop it if it is done.”
“That’s right,” said Robert Jordan. “That’s the carotid artery.”
So she goes around with that all the time, he thought, as a definitely accepted and properly organized possibility.
“But I would rather have thee shoot me,” Maria said. “Promise if there is ever any need that thou wilt shoot me.”
“Sure,” Robert Jordan said. “I promise.”