Read Online For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway - Free Book Online Page B

this. Is it true about the bridge?”
    â€œWhat about the bridge?”
    â€œThat we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?”
    â€œI know not.”
    â€œ You know not,” Agustín said. “What a barbarity! Whose then is the dynamite?”
    â€œMine.”
    â€œAnd knowest thou not what it is for? Don’t tell me tales.”
    â€œI know what it is for and so will you in time,” Robert Jordan said. “But now we go to the camp.”
    â€œGo to the unprintable,” Agustín said. “And unprint thyself. But do you want me to tell you something of service to you?”
    â€œYes,” said Robert Jordan. “If it is not unprintable,” naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man, Agustín, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustín laughed in the dark when he heard the word. “It is a way of speaking I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks according to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me. As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These mountains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would say one thing. Guard well thy explosive.”
    â€œThank you,” Robert Jordan said. “From thee?”
    â€œNo,” Agustín said. “From people less unprintably equipped than I.”
    â€œSo?” asked Robert Jordan.
    â€œYou understand Spanish,” Agustín said seriously now. “Care well for thy unprintable explosive.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œNo. Don’t thank me. Look after thy stuff.”
    â€œHas anything happened to it?”
    â€œNo, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion.”
    â€œThank you all the same. We go now to camp.”
    â€œGood,” said Agustín, “and that they send some one here who knows the password.”
    â€œWill we see you at the camp?”
    â€œYes, man. And shortly.”
    â€œCome on,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.
    They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and there was a gray mist. The grass was lush underfoot after the pine-needle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert Jordan could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave must be.
    â€œAgustín is a very good man,” Anselmo said. “He speaks very filthily and always in jokes but he is a very serious man.”
    â€œYou know him well?”
    â€œYes. For a long time. I have much confidence in him.”
    â€œAnd what he says?”
    â€œYes, man. This Pablo is bad now, as you could see.”
    â€œAnd the best thing to do?”
    â€œOne shall guard it at all times.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYou. Me. The woman and Agustín. Since he sees the danger.”
    â€œDid you think things were as bad as they are here?”
    â€œNo,” Anselmo said. “They have gone bad very fast. But it was necessary to come here. This is the country of Pablo and of El Sordo. In their country we must deal with them unless it is something that can be done alone.”
    â€œAnd El Sordo?”
    â€œGood,” Anselmo said. “As good as the other is bad.”
    â€œYou believe now that he is truly bad?”
    â€œAll afternoon I have thought of it and since we have heard what we have heard, I think now, yes. Truly.”
    â€œIt would not be better to leave, speaking of another bridge, and obtain men from other bands?”
    â€œNo,” Anselmo said. “This is his country. You could not move that he would not know it. But one must move with much precautions.”

4
    They came down to the mouth of the cave, where a