Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
“The hell with them,” Robert Jordan said. “You tell me at camp. Come on, let’s go.”
“Let me show you,” Anselmo said.
“I’m going to look at it in the morning,” Robert Jordan said. “Here, take a swallow of this.”
He handed the old man his flask. Anselmo tipped it up and swallowed.
“Ayee,” he said and rubbed his mouth. “It is fire.”
“Come on,” Robert Jordan said in the dark. “Let us go.”
It was so dark now you could only see the flakes blowing past and the rigid dark of the
pine trunks. Fernando was standing a little way up the hill. Look at that cigar store Indian,
Robert Jordan thought. I suppose I have to offer him a drink.
“Hey, Fernando,” he said as he came up to him. “A swallow?”
“No,” said Fernando. “Thank you.”
Thank you, I mean, Robert Jordan thought. I’m glad cigar store Indians don’t drink.
There isn’t too much of that left. Boy, I’m glad to see this old man, Robert Jordan
thought. He looked at Anselmo and then clapped him on the back again as they started
up the hill.
“I’m glad to see you, viejo,” he said to Anselmo. “If I ever get gloomy, when I see you it
cheers me up. Come on, let’s get up there.”
They were going up the hill in the snow.
“Back to the palace of Pablo,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. It sounded wonderful in
Spanish.
“El Palacio del Miedo,” Anselmo said. “The Palace of Fear.”
“La cueva de los huevos perdidos,” Robert Jordan capped the other happily. “The
cave of the lost eggs.”
“What eggs?” Fernando asked.
“A joke,” Robert Jordan said. “Just a joke. Not eggs, you know. The others.”
“But why are they lost?” Fernando asked.
“I don’t know,” said Robert Jordan. “Take a book to tell you. Ask Pilar,” then he put his
arm around Anselmo’s shoulder and held him tight as they walked and shook him.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, hear? You don’t know what it means to find
somebody in this country in the same place they were left.”
It showed what confidence and intimacy he had that he could say anything against the
country.
“I am glad to see thee,” Anselmo said. “But I was just about to leave.”
“Like hell you would have,” Robert Jordan said happily. “You’d have frozen first.”
Spoiler
Originally Posted by paddy honey
