|
They reach Pablo's well-hidden camp near a cave in the mountains, where Jordan meets the gypsy Rafael and a short-haired girl Maria, to whom Robert
Jordan feels strangely drawn. Maria serves the men food, and Rafael indicates to Jordan that Pablo's woman Pilar is in many ways the real leader of the group. He tells him the story of blowing up the train with Kashkin. Then Pilar emerges from the cave, and she and Robert Jordan discuss blowing
up the bridge and the necessity of enlisting the aid of another guerilla leader, El Sordo. She reads Jordan's palm and seems troubled by what she
sees.
Robert Jordan and Anselmo leave to scout out the bridge. Jordan realizes that the mission will be extremely dangerous and quite probably result in
the deaths of all involved. He feels frustrated by the waste. He and Anselmo discuss the philosophy of killing and war, and, on the way back, they meet Agustin, one of Pablo's band, who Anselmo says is a good man despite his blasphemous way of speaking. Back at the cave, Pablo announces that he
refuses to blow up the bridge. Robert Jordan says that he and Anselmo will do it themselves, and Pablo forbids them from blowing up the bridge in his
territory. Pilar stands and says that she is for blowing up the bridge and that she is the real leader of the group. Pablo protests, but the men back
Pilar, and Pablo sullenly subsides.
Robert Jordan steps outside the cave into the night air. The gypsy follows and asks him why he did not kill Pablo. Jordan worries that he should have,
but when Pablo emerges and makes friendly small talk with him, Jordan realizes that to murder him now would simply be assassination. When Pablo
leaves, Jordan goes back into the cave and talks to Maria about his past in the United States, and Pilar notices the attraction between them. He sends
Maria away and asks Pilar whether he should have killed Pablo. She assures him he did the right thing; she says Pablo will not prove dangerous.
Jordan and Maria share a romantic night. In the morning Maria is gone, and Jordan sleeps until he is awakened by enemy aircraft flying overhead. He
talks briefly about the bridge-blowing mission with Rafael and Fernando, then listens to Pilar talk about living in Valencia as he eats breakfast.
Planes fly overhead again, and Jordan talks to Pilar about loving Maria; he promises to be careful with her. Pilar talks briefly to Agustin about the
differences between Pablo and Robert Jordan, then leaves with Robert Jordan and Maria to walk to El Sordo’s camp. They stop for a rest, and Pilar tells
Robert Jordan and Maria about the start of the war, about the violence the republicans inflicted on the fascists in her town, and the ruthlessness with
which Pablo killed his enemies.
They reach El Sordo's camp, where Robert Jordan and Pilar enlist the deaf guerilla leader's aid in blowing up the bridge. They discuss supplies and
tactics, Robert Jordan and Pilar yelling into El Sordo's ear, and convince El Sordo of the need to perform the attack during the daytime so as to time it with the right point of the larger Republican offensive, when their retreat will be much more difficult. Like Robert Jordan, El Sordo is
frustrated by the inefficiency of the military requirements.
Returning to Pablo's camp, they stop in a clearing to rest, and Pilar tells Maria that she is jealous that Maria will be Jordan's now. She leaves them;
Jordan tries to follow her, but Maria convinces him to let her go.
Robert Jordan thinks back on his life in the war and in America and wonders if he could possibly take Maria with him to be a professor's wife in
Missoula, Montana, or if he would himself be welcomed back to Missoula now that he has fought for the communists. When they reach Pilar, she realizes
that, though it is May, it is going to snow. If it snows, their retreat from the bridge will be even harder, because the snow will make their tracks
easily visible to their enemies.
When they return to the camp, they find the others waiting for the storm, which Pablo says will bring much snow. Inwardly, Jordan feels enraged and
disgusted by his mission and the whole war: The snow will make things nearly impossible. He talks to Pablo about politics and about his past, and they discuss bullfighting; Pilar tells the story of the bullfighters she had been with before meeting Pablo. Robert Jordan leaves to find Anselmo, who is
watching the road. Anselmo loyally waits despite the cold and the storm, sees a car go by, and watches the soldiers in the sawmill by the bridge.
Finally, Jordan reaches him and brings him back to the warmth of the cave. Pilar tells Robert Jordan that El Sordo has gone to find more horses. Maria
brings Robert Jordan food. Pablo, drinking in the corner, begins to insult Jordan, but when Jordan tries to provoke him into a fight, thinking it would
be an opportune moment to kill Pablo without assassinating him, Pablo refuses to be provoked. Agustin hits him several times in the face, but
Pablo responds only by telling Agustin he should stop before he hurts his hands. Finally, Pablo goes out to check on his horses.
In the cave, the group discusses whether Pablo should be killed. They are in agreement that he has become dangerous, and Robert Jordan tells them he will
kill him that night. Pablo returns, grinning, and asks if they were speaking about him; then, he resumes drinking wine. Merrily, he tells them he agrees
to help with the bridge. Robert Jordan thinks it is like a merry-go-round and remembers at length his time at Gaylord's in Madrid with his friend, the
Russian journalist Karkov.
Maria asks Robert Jordan of what he is thinking, and he tells her about the hotel in Madrid. The group talks about superstition and divination, and
Pilar defends her palm reading to Robert Jordan, who does not believe in it. Pilar describes the smell of death, the way a gypsy can tell if a person
will soon die. Fernando is offended that Pilar would talk so to a person of Robert Jordan's education, and Pilar tells him angrily to shut up. The
evening passes.
That night, Jordan and Maria talk and agree that together they feel like one
person, as though their identities were interchangeable. In the morning, Jordan hears the sound of hoof beats and sees a fascist horseman riding
toward him. He tells Maria to hide and shoots the horseman. He yells to the others to set up their tripod machine gun and sends Pablo with the rider's horse so that the tracks will lead away from the camp. He asks furiously who
was on guard and is told it was Rafael, the unreliable gypsy. Jordan only hopes the cavalry will not see the tracks El Sordo’s men left while rounding
up horses, or El Sordo's force is likely to be taken by surprise and killed.
In the forest, Jordan finds Rafael, who left his post to trap a pair of hares. He discusses machine gun tactics with Agustin and Primitivo.
Suddenly, they spot a group of fascist cavalry. But, the group does not spot them, so they do not fire the gun and draw attention to themselves from the
other riders they know are roaming near the camp. When the cavalry is gone, Anselmo volunteers to sneak to the village of La Granja and see what he can
determine about the enemies movements. Before he leaves, he and Agustin argue about what to do with the fascists at the end of the war. The
soldierly Agustin is for killing them but old Anselmo wants to see them reformed through work.
Robert Jordan and Agustin talk about Maria and Agustin confides that he is in love with her, and he tells Robert Jordan to take good care of her. Suddenly, Jordan hushes him; he hears noises in the distance and realizes that there is fighting at El Sordo's. He tells Agustin that they must not
ride to help; they must stay where they are.
Primitivo is maddened by the sound of fighting from El Sordo’s he is desperate to ride to help his comrades fight. But Robert Jordan and Pilar
force him to restrain himself, saying that Sordo's men were doomed as soon as the cavalry found their tracks. Jordan tells him that one must learn to
handle things like this in war. He then looks through the papers of the cavalry rider he killed that morning and experiences the pain of remorse he
always feels after killing. He reminds himself that he does not believe in killing, but that he must do it to prevent worse things from happening to
other people. He tries to keep himself straight on the subject, and he refuses to keep a tally of how many people he has killed. He thinks that he
is not a real Marxist, that he believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and he looks forward to the end of the war and to being able to
be with Maria when he can discard the things in which he does not really believe.
Click here for
part 2 of the summary of For Whom The Bell Tolls |
