For Whom the Bell Tolls

"What are you going to do with us?" one asked him.
"Shoot thee," Pablo said
"When?" the man asked in the same gray voice.
"Now" said Pablo.
"Where?" asked the man.
"Here," said Pablo. "Here. Now. Here and now. Have you anything to say?"
"Nada," said the civil. "Nothing. But it is an ugly thing."
"And you are an ugly thing," Pablo said. "You murderer of peasants. You who would shoot your own mother."
"I have never killed anyone," the civil said. "And do not speak of my mother."
"Show us how to die. You, who have always done the killing."
"There is no necessity to insult us," another civil said. "And we know how to die."
"Kneel down against the wall with your heads against the wall," Pablo told them. The civiles looked at one another.
"Kneel, I say," Pablo said. "Get down and kneel."
"How does it seem to you, Paco?" one civil said to the tallest , who had spoken with Pablo about the pistol. He wore a corporal's striped on his sleeves and was sweating very much although the early morning was still cool.
"It is as well to kneel," he answered. "It is of no importance."
"It is closer to the earth," the first one who had spoken said, trying to make a joke, but they were all too grave for a joke and no one smiled.
"Then let us kneel", the first civil said, and the four knelt, looking very awkward with their heads against the wall and their hands by their sides, and Pablo passed behind them and shot each in turn in the back of the head with the pistol, going from one to another and putting the barrel of the pistol against the back of thier heads, each man slipping down as he fired. I can hear the pistol still, sharp and yet muffled, and see the barrel jerk and the head of the man drop forward. One held his head still when the pistol touched it. One pushed his head forward and pressed his forehead against the stone. One shivered in his whole body and his head was shaking. Only one put his hands in front of his eyes, and he was the last one, and the four bodies were slumped against the wall when Pablo turned away from them and came toward us with the pistol still in his hand.
"Hold this for me Pilar" he said. "I do not know how to put down the hammer" and he handed me the pistol and stood there looking at the 4 guards as they lay against the wall of the barracks. All those who were with us stood there too, looking at them, and no one said anything.
pg 115

Pablo, when we ate, spoke little.
"Did you like it Pilar?" he asked finally with his mouth full of roast young goat. We were eating at the inn from where the buses leave and the room was crowded and people were singing and there was difficulty serving.
"No", I said. "Except for Don Faustino, I did not like it."
"I liked it," he said.
"All of it?" I asked him.
"All of it," he said and cut himself a big piece of bread with his knife and commenced to mop up gravy with it. "All of it, except the priest."
"You didn't like it about the priest?" because I knew he hated priests even worse than he hated fascists.
"He was a disillusionment to me," Pablo said sadly.
So many people were singing that we had to almost shout to hear one another.
"Why?"
"He died very badly," Pablo said. "He had very little dignity."
"How did you want him to have dignity when he was being chased by the mob?" I said. "I though he had much dignity all the time before. All the dignity that one could have."
"Yes," Pablo said. "But in the last minute he was frightened."
"Who wouldn't be?" I said. "Did you see what they were chasing him with?"
"Why would i not see?" Pablo said. "But I find he died badly."
"In such circumstances anyone dies badly," I told him. "What do you want for your money? Everything that happenend in the Ayuntaminento was scabrous."
"Yes," said Pablo. "There was little organization. But a priest. He has an example to set."
"I thought you hated priests."
"Yes," said Pablo and cut some more bread. "But a Spanish priest. A Spanish priest should die very well."
"I think he died well enough." I said. "Being deprived of all formality."
"No," Pablo said. "To me he was a great disillusionment. All day I had waited for the death of the priest. I had thought he would be the last to enter the lines. I awaited it with great anticipation. I expected something of a culmination. I had never seen a priest die."
pg 141

So if your life trades its 70 years for 70 hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it. pg 182

You ask the impossible. You ask for the ruddy impossible. So if you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had better love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation will lack in duration and in continuity..... pg 184

Probably Golz knew all about this too and wanted to make the point that you must make your whole life in the 2 nights that are given to you; that living as we do now you must concentrate all of that which you should always have into the short time that you can have it. pg 184

"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."
"Thats 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."
"Thank thee very much," Maria told him. "I know it is not easy to do."
pg 186

And another thing. Don't ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. WHat you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most impartant thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow. pg 322

You could take the pistol out of the drawer and hold it. "Handle it freely," was Grandfather's expression. But you could not play with it was "a serious weapon."
You asked Grandfather once if he had ever killed any one with it and he said, "Yes."
Then you said, "When, Grandfather?" and he said, "In the War of the Rebellion and afterwards."
You said, "Will you tell me about it, Grandfather?"
And he said, "I do not care to speak about it Robert."
Then after your father had shot himself with this pistol, and you had come home from school and they'd had the funeral, the coroner had returned it after the inquest saying, "Bob, I guess you might want to keep the gun. I'm supposed to hold it, but I know your dad set a lot of store by it because his dad packed it all through the War, besides out here when he first came out with the Cavalry, and its still a hell of a good gun. I had her out trying her this afternoon. She don't throw much of a slug but you can hit things with her."

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all the other time. I'd like to be an old man and to really know, I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time. pg 402

I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life. YOu've had just as good a life as grandfather's though not as long. You've had as good a life as any one because of these last days. You do not want to complain when you have been so lucky. I wish there was some way to pass on what I've learned, though. Christ, I was learning fast there at the end. I'd like to talk to Karkov. That is in Madrid. Just over the hills there, and down across the plain. DOwn out of the gray rocks and the pines, the heather and the gorse, across the yellow high plateau you see it rising white and beautiful. THat part is just as true as Pilar's old women drinking blood down at the slaughterhouse. There's no one thing that's true. IT's all true. pg 490