For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

  " 'Leave him alone,' some one shouted. 'Don't touch him.'

  "The lines understood and no one made a move to touch Don Faustino and, with his hands shaking and held in front of his eyes, and with his mouth moving, he walked along between the lines.

  "No one said anything and no one touched him and, when he was halfway through the lines, he could go no farther and fell to his knees.

  "No one struck him. I was walking along parallel to the line to see what happened to him and a peasant leaned down and lifted him to his feet and said, 'Get up, Don Faustino, and keep walking. The bull has not yet come out.'

  "Don Faustino could not walk alone and the peasant in a black smock helped him on one side and another peasant in a black smock and herdsman's boots helped him on the other, supporting him by the arms and Don Faustino walking along between the lines with his hands over his eyes, his lips never quiet, and his yellow hair slicked on his head and shining in the sun, and as he passed the peasants would say, 'Don Faustino, buen provecho. Don Faustino, that you should have a good appetite,' and others said, 'Don Faustino, a sus ordenes. Don Faustino at your orders,' and one, who had failed at bullfighting himself, said, 'Don Faustino. Matador, a sus ordenes,' and another said, 'Don Faustino, there are beautiful girls in heaven, Don Faustino.' And they walked Don Faustino through the lines, holding him close on either side, holding him up as he walked, with him with his hands over his eyes. But he must have looked through his fingers, because when they came to the edge of the cliff with him, he knelt again, throwing himself down and clutching the ground and holding to the grass, saying, 'No. No. No. Please. NO. Please. Please. No. No.'

  "Then the peasants who were with him and the others, the hard ones of the end of the line, squatted quickly behind him as he knelt, and gave him a rushing push and he was over the edge without ever having been beaten and you heard him crying loud and high as he fell.

  "It was then I knew that the lines had become cruel and it was first the insults of Don Ricardo and second the cowardice of Don Faustino that had made them so.

  "'Let us have another,' a peasant called out and another peasant slapped him on the back and said, 'Don Faustino! What a thing! Don Faustino!'

  " 'He's seen the big bull now,' another said. 'Throwing up will never help him, now.'

  " 'In my life,' another peasant said, 'in my life I've never seen a thing like Don Faustino.'

  " 'There are others,' another peasant said. 'Have patience. Who knows what we may yet see?'

  " 'There may be giants and dwarfs,' the first peasant said. 'There may be Negroes and rare beasts from Africa. But for me never, never will there be anything like Don Faustino. But let's have another one! Come on. Let's have another one!'

  "The drunkards were handing around bottles of anis and cognac that they had looted from the bar of the club of the fascists, drinking them down like wine, and many of the men in the lines were beginning to be a little drunk, too, from drinking after the strong emotion of Don Benito, Don Federico, Don Ricardo and especially Don Faustino. Those who did not drink from the bottles of liquor were drinking from leather wineskins that were passed about and one handed a wineskin to me and I took a long drink, letting the wine run cool down my throat from the leather bota for I was very thirsty, too.

  " 'To kill gives much thirst,' the man with the wineskin said to me.

  "'Que va,' I said. 'Hast thou killed?'

  " 'We have killed four,' he said, proudly. 'Not counting the civiles. Is it true that thee killed one of the civiles, Pilar?'

  " 'Not one,' I said. 'I shot into the smoke when the wall fell, as did the others. That is all.'

  " 'Where got thee the pistol, Pilar?'

  " 'From Pablo. Pablo gave it to me after he killed the civiles.'

  " 'Killed he them with this pistol?'

  " 'With no other,' I said. 'And then he armed me with it.'

  " 'Can I see it, Pilar? Can I hold it?'

  " 'Why not, man?' I said, and I took it out from under the rope and handed it to him. But I was wondering why no one else had come out and just then who should come out but Don Guillermo Martin from whose store the flails, the herdsman's clubs, and the wooden pitchforks had been taken. Don Guillermo was a fascist but otherwise there was nothing against him.

  "It is true he paid little to those who made the flails but he charged little for them too and if one did not wish to buy flails from Don Guillermo, it was possible to make them for nothing more than the cost of the wood and the leather. He had a rude way of speaking and he was undoubtedly a fascist and a member of their club and he sat at noon and at evening in the cane chairs of their club to read El Debate, to have his shoes shined, and to drink vermouth and seltzer and eat roasted almonds, dried shrimps, and anchovies. But one does not kill for that, and I am sure if it had not been for the insults of Don Ricardo Montalvo and the lamentable spectacle of Don Faustino, and the drinking consequent on the emotion of them and the others, some one would have shouted, 'That Don Guillermo should go in peace. We have his flails. Let him go.'

  "Because the people of this town are as kind as they can be cruel and they have a natural sense of justice and a desire to do that which is right. But cruelty had entered into the lines and also drunkenness or the beginning of drunkenness and the lines were not as they were when Don Benito had come out. I do not know how it is in other countries, and no one cares more for the pleasure of drinking than I do, but in Spain drunkenness, when produced by other elements than wine, is a thing of great ugliness and the people do things that they would not have done. Is it not so in your country, Ingles?"

  "It is so," Robert Jordan said. "When I was seven years old and going with my mother to attend a wedding in the state of Ohio at which I was to be the boy of a pair of boy and girl who carried flowers----"

  "Did you do that?" asked Maria. "How nice!"

  "In this town a Negro was hanged to a lamp post and later burned. It was an arc light. A light which lowered from the post to the pavement. And he was hoisted, first by the mechanism which was used to hoist the arc light but this broke----"

  "A Negro," Maria said. "How barbarous!"

  "Were the people drunk?" asked Pilar. "Were they drunk thus to burn a Negro?"

  "I do not know," Robert Jordan said. "Because I saw it only looking out from under the blinds of a window in the house which stood on the corner where the arc light was. The street was full of people and when they lifted the Negro up for the second time----"

  "If you had only seven years and were in a house, you could not tell if they were drunk or not," Pilar said.

  "As I said, when they lifted the Negro up for the second time, my mother pulled me away from the window, so I saw no more," Robert Jordan said. "But since I have had experiences which demonstrate that drunkenness is the same in my country. It is ugly and brutal."

  "You were too young at seven," Maria said. "You were too young for such things. I have never seen a Negro except in a circus. Unless the Moors are Negroes."

  "Some are Negroes and some are not," Pilar said. "I can talk to you of the Moors."

  "Not as I can," Maria said. "Nay, not as I can."

  "Don't speak of such things," Pilar said. "It is unhealthy. Where were we?"

  "Speaking of the drunkenness of the lines," Robert Jordan said. "Go on."

  "It is not fair to say drunkenness," Pilar said. "For, yet, they were a long way from drunkenness. But already there was a change in them, and when Don Guillermo came out, standing straight, near-sighted, gray-headed, of medium height, with a shirt with a collar button but no collar, standing there and crossing himself once and looking ahead, but seeing little without his glasses, but walking forward well and calmly, he was an appearance to excite pity. But some one shouted from the line, 'Here, Don Guillermo. Up here, Don Guillermo. In this direction. Here we all have your products.'

  "They had had such success joking at Don Faustino that they could not see, now, that Don Guillermo was a different thing, and if Don Guillermo was to b
e killed, he should be killed quickly and with dignity.

  " 'Don Guillermo,' another shouted. 'Should we send to the house for thy spectacles?'

  "Don Guillermo's house was no house, since he had not much money and was only a fascist to be a snob and to console himself that he must work for little, running a wooden-implement shop. He was a fascist, too, from the religiousness of his wife which he accepted as his own due to his love for her. He lived in an apartment in the building three houses down the square and when Don Guillermo stood there, looking near-sightedly at the lines, the double lines he knew he must enter, a woman started to scream from the balcony of the apartment where he lived. She could see him from the balcony and she was his wife.

  " 'Guillermo,' she cried. 'Guillermo. Wait and I will be with thee.'

  "Don Guillermo turned his head toward where the shouting came from. He could not see her. He tried to say something but he could not. Then he waved his hand in the direction the woman had called from and started to walk between the lines.

  " 'Guillermo!' she cried. 'Guillermo! Oh, Guillermo!' She was holding her hands on the rail of the balcony and shaking back and forth. 'Guillermo!'

  "Don Guillermo waved his hand again toward the noise and walked into the lines with his head up and you would not have known what he was feeling except for the color of his face.

  "Then some drunkard yelled, 'Guillermo!' from the lines, imitating the high cracked voice of his wife and Don Guillermo rushed toward the man, blindly, with tears now running down his cheeks and the man hit him hard across the face with his flail and Don Guillermo sat down from the force of the blow and sat there crying, but not from fear, while the drunkards beat him and one drunkard jumped on top of him, astride his shoulders, and beat him with a bottle. After this many of the men left the lines and their places were taken by the drunkards who had been jeering and saying things in bad taste through the windows of the Ayuntamiento.

  "I myself had felt much emotion at the shooting of the guardia civil by Pablo," Pilar said. "It was a thing of great ugliness, but I had thought if this is how it must be, this is how it must be, and at least there was no cruelty, only the depriving of life which, as we all have learned in these years, is a thing of ugliness but also a necessity to do if we are to win, and to preserve the Republic.

  "When the square had been closed off and the lines formed, I had admired and understood it as a conception of Pablo, although it seemed to me to be somewhat fantastic and that it would be necessary for all that was to be done to be done in good taste if it were not to be repugnant. Certainly if the fascists were to be executed by the people, it was better for all the people to have a part in it, and I wished to share the guilt as much as any, just as I hoped to share in the benefits when the town should be ours. But after Don Guillermo I felt a feeling of shame and distaste, and with the coming of the drunkards and the worthless ones into the lines, and the abstention of those who left the lines as a protest after Don Guillermo, I wished that I might disassociate myself altogether from the lines, and I walked away, across the square, and sat down on a bench under one of the big trees that gave shade there.

  "Two peasants from the lines walked over, talking together, and one of them called to me, 'What passes with thee, Pilar?'

  " 'Nothing, man,' I told him.

  " 'Yes,' he said. 'Speak. What passes.'

  "'I think that I have a belly-full,' I told him.

  " 'Us, too,' he said and they both sat down on the bench. One of them had a leather wineskin and he handed it to me.

  " 'Rinse out thy mouth,' he said and the other said, going on with the talking they had been engaged in, 'The worst is that it will bring bad luck. Nobody can tell me that such things as the killing of Don Guillermo in that fashion will not bring bad luck.'

  "Then the other said, 'If it is necessary to kill them all, and I am not convinced of that necessity, let them be killed decently and without mockery.'

  " 'Mockery is justified in the case of Don Faustino,' the other said. 'Since he was always a farcer and was never a serious man. But to mock such a serious man as Don Guillermo is beyond all right.'

  " 'I have a belly-full,' I told him, and it was literally true because I felt an actual sickness in all of me inside and a sweating and a nausea as though I had swallowed bad sea food.

  " 'Then, nothing,' the one peasant said. 'We will take no further part in it. But I wonder what happens in the other towns.'

  " 'They have not repaired the telephone wires yet,' I said. 'It is a lack that should be remedied.'

  " 'Clearly,' he said. 'Who knows but what we might be better employed putting the town into a state of defense than massacring people with this slowness and brutality.'

  " 'I will go to speak with Pablo, I told them and I stood up from the bench and started toward the arcade that led to the door of the Ayuntamiento from where the lines spread across the square. The lines now were neither straight nor orderly and there was much and very grave drunkenness. Two men had fallen down and lay on their backs in the middle of the square and were passing a bottle back and forth between them. One would take a drink and then shout, 'Viva la Anarquia!' lying on his back and shouting as though he were a madman. He had a red-and-black handkerchief around his neck. The other shouted, 'Viva la Libertad!' and kicked his feet in the air and then bellowed, 'Viva la Libertad!' again. He had a red-and-black handkerchief too and he waved it in one hand and waved the bottle with the other.

  "A peasant who had left the lines and now stood in the shade of the arcade looked at them in disgust and said, 'They should shout, "Long live drunkenness." That's all they believe in.'

  " 'They don't believe even in that,' another peasant said. 'Those neither understand nor believe in anything.'

  "Just then, one of the drunkards got to his feet and raised both arms with his fists clenched over his head and shouted, 'Long live Anarchy and Liberty and I obscenity in the milk of the Republic!'

  "The other drunkard who was still lying on his back, took hold of the ankle of the drunkard who was shouting and rolled over, so that the shouting drunkard fell with him, and they rolled over together and then sat up and the one who had pulled the other down put his arm around the shouter's neck and then handed the shouter a bottle and kissed the red-and-black handkerchief he wore and they both drank together.

  "Just then, a yelling went up from the lines and, looking up the arcade, I could not see who it was that was coming out because the man's head did not show above the heads of those crowded about the door of the Ayuntamiento. All I could see was that some one was being pushed out by Pablo and Cuatro Dedos with their shotguns but I could not see who it was and I moved on close toward the lines where they were packed against the door to try to see.

  "There was much pushing now and the chairs and the tables of the fascists' cafe had been overturned except for one table on which a drunkard was lying with his head hanging down and his mouth open and I picked up a chair and set it against one of the pillars and mounted on it so that I could see over the heads of the crowd.

  "The man who was being pushed out by Pablo and Cuatro Dedos was Don Anastasio Rivas, who was an undoubted fascist and the fattest man in the town. He was a grain buyer and the agent for several insurance companies and he also loaned money at high rates of interest. Standing on the chair, I saw him walk down the steps and toward the lines, his fat neck bulging over the back of the collar band of his shirt, and his bald head shining in the sun, but he never entered them because there was a shout, not as of different men shouting, but of all of them. It was an ugly noise and was the cry of the drunken lines all yelling together and the lines broke with the rush of men toward him and I saw Don Anastasio throw himself down with his hands over his head and then you could not see him for the men piled on top of him. And when the men got up from him, Don Anastasio was dead from his head being beaten against the stone flags of the paving of the arcade and there were no more lines but only a mob.

  " 'We're going in,' they commenc
ed to shout. 'We're going in after them.'

  " 'He's too heavy to carry,' a man kicked at the body of Don Anastasio, who was lying there on his face. 'Let him stay there.'

  " 'Why should we lug that tub of tripe to the cliff? Let him lie there.'

  " 'We are going to enter and finish with them inside,' a man shouted. 'We're going in.'

  " 'Why wait all day in the sun?' another yelled. 'Come on. Let us go.'

  "The mob was now pressing into the arcade. They were shouting and pushing and they made a noise now like an animal and they were all shouting 'Open up! Open up!' for the guards had shut the doors of the Ayuntamiento when the lines broke.

  "Standing on the chair, I could see in through the barred window into the hall of the Ayuntamiento and in there it was as it had been before. The priest was standing, and those who were left were kneeling in a half circle around him and they were all praying. Pablo was sitting on the big table in front of the Mayor's chair with his shotgun slung over his back. His legs were hanging down from the table and he was rolling a cigarette. Cuatro Dedos was sitting in the Mayor's chair with his feet on the table and he was smoking a cigarette. All the guards were sitting in different chairs of the administration, holding their guns. The key to the big door was on the table beside Pablo.

  "The mob was shouting, 'Open up! Open up! Open up!' as though it were a chant and Pablo was sitting there as though he did not hear them. He said something to the priest but I could not hear what he said for the noise of the mob.

  "The priest, as before, did not answer him but kept on praying. With many people pushing me, I moved the chair close against the wall, shoving it ahead of me as they shoved me from behind. I stood on the chair with my face close against the bars of the window and held on by the bars. A man climbed on the chair too and stood with his arms around mine, holding the wider bars.

  " 'The chair will break,' I said to him.

  " 'What does it matter?' he said. 'Look at them. Look at them pray.'