For Whom The Bell Tolls

by Эрнест Миллер Хемингуэй

  It is doubtful if the outcome of Andres's mission would have been any different if he and Gomez had been allowed to proceed without Andre Marty's hindrance. There was no one at the front with sufficient authority to cancel the attack. The machinery had been in motion much too long for it to be stopped suddenly now. There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and movement is under way they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

  But on this night the old man, his beret pulled forward, was still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians in civilian clothes, leather coats and caps. The corporal of the guard closed the door reluctantly behind them. Karkov had been the first responsible man he had been able to communicate with.

  "Tovarich Marty," said Karkov in his politely disdainful lisping voice and smiled, showing his bad teeth.

  Marty stood up. He did not like Karkov, but Karkov, coming from Pravda and in direct communication with Stalin, was at this moment one of the three most important men in Spain.

  "Tovarich Karkov," he said.

  "You are preparing the attack?" Karkov said insolently, nodding toward the map.

  "I am studying it," Marty answered.

  "Are you attacking? Or is it Golz?" Karkov asked smoothly.

  "I am only a commissar, as you know," Marty told him.

  "No," Karkov said. "You are modest. You are really a general. You have your map and your field glasses. But were you not an admiral once, Comrade Marty?"

  "I was a gunner's mate," said Marty. It was a lie. He had really been a chief yeoman at the time of the mutiny. But he thought now, always, that he had been a gunner's mate.

  "Ah. I thought you were a first-class yeoman," Karkov said. "I always get my facts wrong. It is the mark of the journalist."

  The other Russians had taken no part in the conversation. They were both looking over Marty's shoulder at the map and occasionally making a remark to each other in their own language. Marty and Karkov spoke French after the first greeting.

  "It is better not to get facts wrong in Pravda," Marty said. He said it brusquely to build himself up again. Karkov always punctured him. The French word is degonfler and Marty was worried and made wary by him. It was hard, when Karkov spoke, to remember with what importance he, Andre Marty, came from the Central Committee of the French Communist Party. It was hard to remember, too, that he was untouchable. Karkov seemed always to touch him so lightly and whenever he wished. Now Karkov said, "I usually correct them before I send them to Pravda, I am quite accurate in Pravda. Tell me, Comrade Marty, have you heard anything of any message coming through for Golz from one of our partizan groups operating toward Segovia? There is an American comrade there named Jordan that we should have heard from. There have been reports of fighting there behind the fascist lines. He would have sent a message through to Golz."

  "An American?" Marty asked. Andres had said an Ingles. So that is what it was. So he had been mistaken. Why had those fools spoken to him anyway?"

  "Yes," Karkov looked at him contemptuously, "a young American of slight political development but a great way with the Spaniards and a fine partizan record. Just give me the dispatch, Comrade Marty. It has been delayed enough."

  "What dispatch?" Marty asked. It was a very stupid thing to say and he knew it. But he was not able to admit he was wrong that quickly and he said it anyway to delay the moment of humiliation, not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said through his bad teeth.

  Andre Marty put his hand in his pocket and laid the dispatch on the table. He looked Karkov squarely in the eye. All right. He was wrong and there was nothing he could do about it now but he was not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said softly.

  Marty laid it beside the dispatch.

  "Comrade Corporal," Karkov called in Spanish.

  The corporal opened the door and came in. He looked quickly at Andre Marty, who stared back at him like an old boar which has been brought to bay by hounds. There was no fear on Marty's face and no humiliation. He was only angry, and he was only temporarily at bay. He knew these dogs could never hold him.

  "Take these to the two comrades in the guard room and direct them to General Golz's headquarters," Karkov said. "There has been too much delay."

  The corporal went out and Marty looked after him, then looked at Karkov.

  "Tovarich Marty," Karkov said, "I am going to find out just how untouchable you are."

  Marty looked straight at him and said nothing.

  "Don't start to have any plans about the corporal, either," Karkov went on. "It was not the corporal. I saw the two men in the guard room and they spoke to me" (this was a lie). "I hope all men always will speak to me" (this was the truth although it was the corpora! who had spoken). But Karkov had this belief in the good which could come from his own accessibility and the humanizing possibility of benevolent intervention. It was the one thing he was never cynical about.

  "You know when I am in the U.S.S.R. people write to me in Pravda when there is an injustice in a town in Azerbaijan. Did you know that? They say 'Karkov will help us."

  Andre Marty looked at him with no expression on his face except anger and dislike. There was nothing in his mind now but that Karkov had done something against him. All right, Karkov, power and all, could watch out.

  "This is something else," Karkov went on, "but it is the same principle. I am going to find Out just how untouchable you are, Comrade Marty. I would like to know if it could not be possible to change the name of that tractor factory."

  Andre Marty looked away from him and back to the map.

  "What did young Jordan say?" Karkov asked him.

  "I did not read it," Andre Marty said. "Et maintenant fiche moi la paix, Comrade Karkov."

  "Good," said Karkov. "I leave you to your military labors."

  He stepped out of the room and walked to the guard room. Andres and Gomez were already gone and he stood there a moment looking up the road and at the mountain tops beyond that showed now in the first gray of daylight. We must get on up there, he thought. It will be soon, now.

  Andres and Gomez were on the motorcycle on the road again and it was getting light. Now Andres, holding again to the back of the seat ahead of him as the motorcycle climbed turn after switchback turn in a faint gray mist that lay over the top of the pass, felt the motorcycle speed under him, then skid and stop and they were standing by the motorcycle on a long, down-slope of road and in the woods, on their left, were tanks covered with pine branches. There were troops here all through the woods. Andres saw men carrying the long poles of stretchers over their shoulders. Three staff cars were off the road to the right, in under the trees, with branches laid against their sides and other pine branches over their tops.

  Gomez wheeled the motorcycle up to one of them. He leaned it against a pine tree and spoke to the chauffeur who was sitting by the car, his back against a tree.

  "I'll take you to him," the chauffeur said. "Put thy moto out of sight and cover it with these." He pointed to a pile of cut branches.

  With the sun just starting to come through the high branches of the pine trees, Gomez and Andres followed the chauffeur, whose name was Vicente, through the pines across the road and up the slope to the entrance of a dugout from the roof of which signal wires ran on up over the wooded slope. They stood outside while the chauffeur went in and Andres admired the construction of the dugout which showed only as a hole in the hillside, with no dirt scattered about, but which he could see, from the entrance, was both deep and profound with men moving around in it freely with no need to duck their heads under the heavy timbered roof.

  Vicente, the chauffeur, came out.

  "He is up above where they are deploying for the attack," he said. "I gave it to his Chief of Staff. He signed for it. Here."

  He handed Gomez the receipted envelope. Gomez gave it to Andres, wh
o looked at it and put it inside his shirt.

  "What is the name of him who signed?" he asked.

  "Duval," Vicente said.

  "Good," said Andres. "He was one of the three to whom I might give it."

  "Should we wait for an answer?" Gomez asked Andres.

  "It might be best. Though where I will find the Ingles and the others after that of the bridge neither God knows."

  "Come wait with me," Vicente said, "until the General returns. And I will get thee coffee. Thou must be hungry."

  "And these tanks," Gomez said to him.

  They were passing the branch-covered, mud-colored tanks, each with two deep-ridged tracks over the pine needles showing where they had swung and backed from the road. Their 45-mm. guns jutted horizontally under the branches and the drivers and gunners in their leather coats and ridged helmets sat with their backs against the trees or lay sleeping on the ground.

  "These are the reserve," Vicente said. "Also these troops are in reserve. Those who commence the attack are above."

  "They are many," Andres said.

  "Yes," Vicente said. "It is a full division."

  Inside the dugout Duval, holding the opened dispatch from Robert Jordan in his left hand, glancing at his wrist watch on the same hand, reading the dispatch for the fourth time, each time feeling the sweat come out from under his armpit and run down his flank, said into the telephone, "Get me position Segovia, then. He's left? Get me position Avila."

  He kept on with the phone. It wasn't any good. He had talked to both brigades. Golz had been up to inspect the dispositions for the attack and was on his way to an observation post. He called the observation post and he was not there.

  "Get me planes one," Duval said, suddenly taking all responsibility. He would take responsibility for holding it up. It was better to hold it up. You could not send them to a surprise attack against an enemy that was waiting for it. You couldn't do it. It was just murder. You couldn't. You mustn't. No matter what. They could shoot him if they wanted. He would call the airfield directly and get the bombardment cancelled. But suppose it's just a holding attack? Suppose we were supposed to draw off all that material and those forces? Suppose that is what it is for? They never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.

  "Cancel the call to planes one," he told the signaller. "Get me the Sixty-Ninth Brigade observation post."

  He was still calling there when he heard the first sound of the planes.

  It was just then he got through to the observation post.

  "Yes," Golz said quietly.

  He was sitting leaning back against the sandbag, his feet against a rock, a cigarette hung from his lower lip and he was looking up and over his shoulder while he was talking. He was seeing the expanding wedges of threes, silver and thundering in the sky that were coming over the far shoulder of the mountain where the first sun was striking. He watched them come shining and beautiful in the sun. He saw the twin circles of light where the sun shone on the propellers as they came.

  "Yes," he said into the telephone, speaking in French because it was Duval on the wire. "Nous sommes foutus. Oui. Comme toujours. Oui. C'est dommage. Oui. It's a shame it came too late."

  His eyes, watching the planes coming, were very proud. He saw the red wing markings now and he watched their steady, stately roaring advance. This was how it could be. These were our planes. They had come, crated on ships, from the Black Sea through the Straits of Marmora, through the Dardanelles, through the Mediterranean and to here, unloaded lovingly at Alicante, assembled ably, tested and found perfect and now flown in lovely hammering precision, the V's tight and pure as they came now high and silver in the morning sun to blast those ridges across there and blow them roaring high so that we can go through.

  Golz knew that once they had passed overhead and on, the bombs would fall, looking like porpoises in the air as they tumbled. And then the ridge tops would spout and roar in jumping clouds and disappear in one great blowing cloud. Then the tanks would grind clanking up those two slopes and after them would go his two brigades. And if it had been a surprise they could go on and down and over and through, pausing, cleaning up, dealing with, much to do, much to be done intelligently with the tanks helping, with the tanks wheeling and returning, giving covering fire and others bringing the attackers up then slipping on and over and through and pushing down beyond. This was how it would be if there was no treason and if all did what they should.

  There were the two ridges, and there were the tanks ahead and there were his two good brigades ready to leave the woods and here came the planes now. Everything he had to do had been done as it should be.

  But as he watched the planes, almost up to him now, he felt sick at his stomach for he knew from having heard Jordan's dispatch over the phone that there would be no one on those two ridges. They'd be withdrawn a little way below in narrow trenches to escape the fragments, or hiding in the timber and when the bombers passed they'd get back up there with their machine guns and their automatic weapons and the anti-tank guns Jordan had said went up the road, and it would be one famous balls up more. But the planes, now coming deafeningly, were how it could have been and Golz watching them, looking up, said into the telephone, "No. Rien a faire. Rien. Faut pas penser. Faut accepter."

  Golz watched the planes with his hard proud eyes that knew how things could be and how they would be instead and said, proud of how they could be, believing in how they could be, even if they never were, "Bon. Nous ferons notre petit possible," and hung up.

  But Duval did not hear him. Sitting at the table holding the receiver, all he heard was the roar of the planes and he thought, now, maybe this time, listen to them come, maybe the bombers will blow them all off, maybe we will get a break-through, maybe he will get the reserves he asked for, maybe this is it, maybe this is the time. Go on. Come on. Go on. The roar was such that he could not hear what he was thinking.

  43

  Robert Jordan lay behind the trunk of a pine tree on the slope of the hill above the road and the bridge and watched it become daylight. He loved this hour of the day always and now he watched it; feeling it gray within him, as though he were a part of the slow lightening that comes before the rising of the sun; when solid things darken and space lightens and the lights that have shone in the night go yellow and then fade as the day comes. The pine trunks below him were hard and clear now, their trunks solid and brown and the road was shiny with a wisp of mist over it. The dew had wet him and the forest floor was soft and he felt the give of the brown, dropped pine needles under his elbows. Below he saw, through the light mist that rose from the stream bed, the steel of the bridge, straight and rigid across the gap, with the wooden sentry boxes at each end. But as he looked the structure of the bridge was still spidery and fine in the mist that hung over the stream.

  He saw the sentry now in his box as he stood, his back with the hanging blanket coat topped by the steel casque on his head showing as he leaned forward over the hole-punched petrol tin of the brazier, warming his hands. Robert Jordan heard the stream, far down in the rocks, and he saw a faint, thin smoke that rose from the sentry box.

  He looked at his watch and thought, I wonder if Andres got through to Golz? If we are going to blow it I would like to breathe very slowly and slow up the time again and feel it. Do you think he made it? Andres? And if he did would they call it off? If they had time to call it off? Que va. Do not worry. They will or they won't. There are no more decisions and in a little while you will know. Suppose the attack is successful. Golz said it could be. That there was a possibility. With our tanks coming down that road, the people coming through from the right and down and past La Granja and the whole left of the mountains turned. Why don't you ever think of how it is to win? You've been on the defensive for so long that you can't think of that. Sure. But that was before all that stuff went up this road. That was before all the planes came. Don't be so naive. But remember this that as long as we can hold them here we keep the fascists tied up. Th
ey can't attack any other country until they finish with us and they can never finish with us. If the French help at all, if only they leave the frontier open and if we get planes from America they can never finish with us. Never, if we get anything at all. These people will fight forever if they're well armed.

  No you must not expect victory here, not for several years maybe. This is just a holding attack. You must not get illusions about it now. Suppose we got a break-through today? This is our first big attack. Keep your sense of proportion. But what if we should have it? Don't get excited, he told himself. Remember what went up the road. You've done what you could about that. We should have portable short-wave sets, though. We will, in time. But we haven't yet. You just watch now and do what you should.

  Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of this war is that way. You are getting very pompous in the early morning, he told himself. Look there what's coming now.

  He saw the two men in blanket capes and steel helmets come around the corner of the road walking toward the bridge, their rifles slung over their shoulders. One stopped at the far end of the bridge and was out of sight in the sentry box. The other came on across the bridge, walking slowly and heavily. He stopped on the bridge and spat into the gorge, then came on slowly to the near end of the bridge where the other sentry spoke to him and then started off back over the bridge. The sentry who was relieved walked faster than the other had done (because he's going to coffee, Robert Jordan thought) but he too spat down into the gorge.