For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition
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About this ebook
In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from “the good fight,” and one of the foremost classics of war literature in history.
Published in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Robert Jordan is a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. In his portrayal of Jordan’s love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo’s last stand, Hemingway creates a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. “If the function of a writer is to reveal reality,” Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, “no one ever so completely performed it.” Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author’s previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.
Featuring early drafts and manuscript notes, some of Hemingway’s writings during the Spanish Civil War, and three previously collected stories of his on the subject of war, as well as a personal foreword by the author’s son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls brings new life to a literary master’s epic like never before.
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, he died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961.
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Reviews for For Whom the Bell Tolls
3,566 ratings75 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The most satisfying eding of the Hemingway books I've read. & the characters in the forest are wonderful.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maddeningly slow and repetitive
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Possibly the best opening paragraph in modern literature. Brilliant story about the realities of partisan warfare in Spain.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A hard read, especially for those whose Spanish is not so good (I really should have had my spanish dictionary by my side while reading, however I'm not sure it would have helped as it seems you would need to know the colloquialisms as well) but ... well worth reading and finishing, interesting group dynamics hold up in and around a cave for three days waiting to blow a bridge. I would also recommend reading about the Spanish Civil War first also, a war that people from all over the world came to fight in and that everyone should know about.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Having just finished this fantastic novel, I am left with a sense of gratitude for having read it, but also a sense of sadness for having it end. Hemingway completely nails this one. His writing style is brilliant especially with the spanish translations. This is an incredible account of only a few days in the life of Robert Jordan and a band of rebels during the Spanish Civil War. I recommend this to anyone as it is a classic and must be read. Books like this are hard to find anymore so please read it. I am much more fulfilled for having read it and lucky that this was in my Aunt's collection.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Documentair interessant over Spaanse burgeroorlog: vooral relativering van het republikeinse idealisme. Blootlegging Spaanse ziel: de dood centraal. Het liefdesthema is zeer goedkoop, de figuur van Maria komt helemaal niet geloofwaardig over. Enige indrukwekkende vrouw is Pilar, maar die heeft alles van een man. Robert Jordan staat er natuurlijk, als onthechte antiheld, geëngageerd en zich pijnlijk bewust van wat hij teweegbrengt in de partizanengemeenschap, maar desondanks toch zijn verantwoordelijkheid opnemend. Het boek komt langzaam op gang, opbouwend naar de grote finale; enkele onvolkomenheden onderweg. Zeker niet Hemingways beste boek. Al in het Nederlands gelezen toen ik 16 was; was er toen erg door gegrepen.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What struck me most in this novel was the language. Hemingway of course is known for his journalistic style, but there it was his willingness to mirror the Spanish language, making the distinction between the thou and the you to demonstrate familiarity and ultimately emotion.The politics were well explained without being burdening; the cultural aspects and the horrors of the war are very moving and bring the readers into the story, especially at the end, where we are left alone with Jordan. Finally, I liked the flashback to the American Civil War - it made me better understand why Jordan was there in the first place, so all ties in well from a historical and psychological perspective. Definitely a tour de force.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The story of the American Robert Jordan participating in the Spanish civil war. Both loyalty to the cause and disillusionment among the members of the republican guerrilla group. Interesting to hear about the presence of Russians. Even some of the highly publicized peasant leaders were Russian, a fact not part of the image manufactured for the public.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My first experience reading anything by Hemingway. Overall I thought the story was very good at showing the in-depth relationships and personalities of a small group of persecuted people during war-time. The design of the text around the Spanish language was really clever and I will always remember the "I obscenity in the milk of..." lines. But this is definitely a very character-driven novel with not much happening in plot over the 500 pages. Hemingway is always talked about how "simple" his writing is but I didn't get the whole grasp of that ability in this story. I would be eager to read more Hemingway but I don't think I would likely re-read this book again.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I highly recommend 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' It is simple and very complex at the same time and incredibly well written!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Are there no pleasant things to speak of?...Do we have to talk always of horrors?" asks Maria at one point in For Whom the Bell Tolls.Good question.To be fair, For Whom the Bell Tolls isn't ALL about horrors. It even has some pleasant moments. But ultimately, it's about the selfless nature of war---which, though Hemingway clearly intends us to admire the acts of sacrifice to which the war incites his characters, I think is the greatest condemnation of war.But Hemingway's portrayal of this theme is quite powerful. He isn't always consistent, but he is about as consistent as it is possible to be about such a theme and much more so than most, which is of great artistic value.It's also generally very well written, much more so than (and something of a relief after reading) a lot of faux-Hemingway like John Steinbeck or Cormac McCarthy. And I thought this was much better than the only other Hemingway I've read, A Farewell to Arms. But there are a few passages that miss the mark, such as this almost comically bad sex scene: "...They were having now and before and always and now and now and now. Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet. Now and forever now. Come now, now, for there is no now but now. Yes, now. Now, please now, only now, not anything else only this now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other one, and not why, not ever why, only this now; and on and always please then always now, always now, for now always one now; one only one, there is no other one but one now, one, going now, rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now; one and one is one, is one, is one, is one, is still one, is still one, is one descendingly, is one softly, is one longingly, is one kindly, is one happily, is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now..." blah blah blah.The mind-numbing repetitiousness of this "description" (if one can call it that) is especially unfortunate as it echoes another passage just a few pages earlier which is intended to have quite a different feel: "...muck this whole treacherous muckfaced mucking country and every mucking Spaniard in it on either side and to hell forever. Muck them to hell together, Largo, Prieto, Asensio, Miaja, Rojo, all of them. Muck every one of them to death to hell. Muck the whole treachery-ridden country. Muck their egotism and their selfishness and their selfishness and their egotism and their conceit and their treachery. Muck them to hell and always. Muck them before we die for them. Muck them after we die for them. Muck them to death and hell..." It goes on like this at some length.But in the end, Hemingway affirms that there are "pleasant things to speak of": "That is in Madrid. Just over the hills there, and down across the plain. Down out of the gray rocks and the pines, the heather and the gorse, across the yellow high plateau you see it rising white and beautiful. That part is just as true as Pilar's old women drinking the blood down at the slaughterhouse. There's no one thing that's true. It's all true. The way the planes are beautiful whether they are ours or theirs." But the horrors win out in the end: "The hell they are, he thought."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spanish Civil War novelExcellent account of killing of fascists hiding in a ChurchLead character tasked with blowing up a bridge - book deals with disorder among the group of communists and hostility within republican parties - all within an intense relationship with a republican girl who had been abused by the fascists
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't like Hemingway, but I found this book fairly enjoyable. Definitely better than 'The Sun Also Rises'. I find that the character of Robert Jordan spends a little too much time in his head -- it gets irritating the back and forth that he has with himself, his fantasies.
I found it interesting that Hemingway chose to situate the American, Jordan, with the communists. It had to be controversial in its time and I wonder how autobiographical it is.
I like the message. Live in today, it's all we have.
I think it's worth the read or in my case, the listen during the commute. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've read this before in excerpts but never the entire novel.
About this edition, this is an audiobook read in a matter-of-fact, almost Bogart-esque style, which fits the era perfectly. It's wry and heartbreaking and rubs like sand in an open wound. Perfect for a gruesome war story.
About the style.
Some people have issues with Hemingway's style. I like him except when he gets too excessively Gertrude Steinian, which he does in two sections of this book -- but it seems intended, to me, as they go along with the protagonist losing his self-control to a resurgence of carefully repressed feeling. The lack of contractions and the strange diction match what Spanish sounds like in translation, and the novel is taking place mostly en español, so it fits. If you live in an area with a lot of Spanish-speakers, it's easier to tell. The rhythm of speech is the same. Not all of the Spanish is translated, incidentally. There's a lot of fabulously vulgar slang that slipped through the censors. *g*
Hemingway writes some gorgeous sentences, let me tell you.
What I missed from the excerpts I had read before was Hemingway's/the narrator's profound sense of disillusionment concerning the Spanish Civil War. It was a travesty and rightfully deserves to be called the *real* second world war, what with the Germans and Italians arming and aiding Franco and Britain, France, and the US standing by watching civilians be massacred and mutilated without lifting a hand. It's a horrible time in history. And no one teaches it now. It's fallen out of the world history curricula because it's too awful. Or because the US and its allies failed to step up. (And if FDR had, would the Nazi war have started early? I imagine someone's written a book on that.)
I've seen criticism of this novel as "sexist" somewhere, but I don't understand where they're coming from unless it's an anachronistic application of the word. To me it seemed the opposite of sexist. A woman is a guerrilla leader. A teenage girl is a survivor of multiple rape and regains her emotional health and sexual identity after her trauma through the nurturing of the female guerrilla leader. I see a celebration of female power in that. The division of labor is what it is (the teenage girl is hardly strong enough to handle a giant old fashioned machine gun), and everyone in the sorry little band of rebels is equally in the shit together.
Which is the main point of the book for me. There was no glory in the war against Franco. It was an obscenity, a crime against humanity, and the international community was as responsible for meddling in the lives of illiterate paisanos as the first wave of idealistic intelligentsia and Communist idealogues.
What a horrific, traumatizing, nation-crippling thing.
Note: this gets a glbt_interest tag because of "maricón" being one of the most serious insults one can call a man (at the time), and also because of the scene where the guerrilla asks the American why he has to get together with the girl instead of finding a buddy to take his pleasure with as the rest of the men do. "Why not go with one of us?" he says (paraphrasing), and it could be taken as a proposition, but Jordan answers that he's in love with the girl and plans to marry her, and totally sidesteps the matter. :) - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Oh, Hemingway. Is it you or is it me? I don't know why but I can't feel anything above mild acceptance that your novels are okay. Are you just not as good as you're cracked up to be, or do I just not understand your genius? And do I keep reading until I work it out?Robert Jordan (not just Robert, never Robert, but Robert Jordan) is a Spanish teacher who has become involved in the Spanish Civil War as a dynamiter. He has to blow up a bridge with the help of a band of guerillas living in a cave somewhere in Spain. The world as he knows changes when he falls in love with Maria, who was adopted by the band after they blew up a train. First off, the dialogue was frustrating to read. With so many thous and thees and thys you would've thought you were reading Shakespearian but actually the translation of Spanish to English translates better that way than to modern English, apparently. The problem is, it doesn't fit with the rest of the narrative. I don't know how else to explain it except it doesn't fit. Just reads wrong. The other thing about the writing style is that while it is written in the third person, the reader spends a lot of time in Robert Jordan's head. Which is not always an exciting place to be as he often argues with himself and goes off on crazy tangents that don't always feel relevant or crucial to the story. It's hard to stay interested.I struggled to get into the story mainly because it felt like the point, the blowing up of the bridge, was so far away and without it there was so little to keep the plot moving. I also found it hard to connect with the characters - none of them really did anything for me. I wasn't at all moved by this book until the very end. At the end the imagery of Robert Jordan lying on the ground with his leg at an unnatural angle and with his submachine gun pointed at Lieutenant Berrard was just so vivid and so real in the my mind - if the whole novel was more like the last page, my rating would have been very different.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh boy. The printer almost did me in with this one. I got to page 442 and the next page was 412. Only the fact that Jim had the text on Kindle saved me from self-explosion. And it's a library book! Didn't anyone tell the librarian about the defect?!?!ok. got that said. Now, about the book.I was somewhat surprised by how many people in my f2f reading group actively disliked this book. They objected to Hemingway's portrayal of women (gee, the younger one is pretty naive, and the older one isn't. right). They objected to his attempt to represent the difference between 'usted' and 'tu' in Spanish by using 'you' and 'thou', etc. in English. And I admit that some of the attempts to make the text sound like a translation from the Spanish were worse than awkward,and the editor did the story no favor in insisting that the naturally obscene language be masked so clumsily.But what about the story? What about the naive volunteer trying his best to be a good soldier for a cause he thinks he believes in, in spite of what we know about the errors and excesses of that cause? The partisan band in the hills, trying to say alive so that they can go back to being farmers and vintners, each one delineated as a distinct person with frailties and honor in unique proportion? And the honesty of the brutality on both sides of this gruesome war, the ineptitude and cynicism of the commanders, the pain of both dying and killing, and the fatalism war can engender.The intense writing made me see everything as if through a close-up lens. Although the language can seem moderately straightforward (and no, it's not all simple declarative sentences by any means), I had to slow down to capture the vivid detail, even when I wanted to story to move faster because the tension mounts even though the inevitability of the outcome seems clearer every step of the way. Bad grammar, bad usage can pull me right out of a mediocre story, but nothing could pull me out of this one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this book in the course of three days. Very engrossing and fast to read. A classic caper with some brutal bits concerning the flimsiness of mortality in such things as war.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This book reminded me of a soap opera. I could skip pages, wander back in and never miss a thing. Dialog sounded like conversations between a bunch of drunks.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this in the summer of 1949. On Aug 19 I said: "For Whom the Bell Tolls is not much good - holds my interest but moderately." On Aug 21 I said: "Reading in For Whom the Bell Tolls - I just think the style is not the kind that impresses me. In fact, I can scarcely find a style." SPOILER On Aug 24 I said: "Finished For Whom the Bell Tolls. 'Twas quite good towards the end. He breaks his leg and is left behind to be killed at the end. Hemingway's relation of his subject's thought is novel and realistic and good. All in all, 'twas quite a good book."
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This books is incredibly moving in its events; the characters will grab you and hold you, and their experiences will effect your worldview and what kind of day you have tomorrow. The ending is earthshaking. It's an important work about war and its effects; it makes important statements. And the composition and structure are remarkable and unique; using Spanish-language word order in English (to communicate translation for the reader's sake) is a technique that I always appreciate when I reread. This may be my favorite book (a big statement).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love this book as it always make me want to go back to my real home ...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for..."
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tis is an absolute classic and you must read it. It's a great story and Ernest Hemingway is one of the world's greatest writers (in my opinion). A worthwhile read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hemingway's famously terse style is well suited to this story of derring do in the Spanish Civil War. I found myself cursing like a Spanish peasant by the time I'd finished it. Well worth a read, rewarding and interesting.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Since I had previously read The Sun Also Rises and thought it was a real snooze; I thought I would give Hemingway another try......zzzzzzzzzz. This novel is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War It is about an American, Robert Jordan, who is working with a guerilla group. His one job is to blow up a bridge. 98% of the book is about his thinking about it and debating it with other guerillas. Absolutely no better than the last Hemingway.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A book with very little action about a man of action who spends most of his time thinking. I think a contemporary writer would've written the book about half as long and cut the middle section entirely. This is a book that makes a bold and stubborn decision to be slow and dish out the good stuff sparingly. Yet it's very, very worthwhile and satisfying once the whole thing comes together at the end. Once all the dragging bits in the cave and the boring romance have fallen away, you're left with a story of wonderful symmetry, fantastic dialogue, and very memorable scenes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not sure why, but took quite a while for me to get through this... tough going, took a couple weeks, which is quite a while for me to read a novel.The scene where Pilar describes Pablo and his band taking over the town and lining the townspeople up in two lines to whip and beat the fascists one by one before throwing them of a cliff... woweee. That's some writing goin on there.It's easy (for me at least)to get a little tired of the whole Hemingway tough guy bullfighting brawling thing, but you can't deny him. He's a beast.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a sad story... and a very long one at that. Hemingway's bare writing style is evident, and where the real action takes place makes up only a fraction of the thick book. So if you're into fast-paced novels, this is not for you. However, one should try and finish it at least once in their life - it is a beautiful novel.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a short review--others have provided much more in-depth content. This is my favorite Hemingway novel. Though it is fiction, a large portion of this book is auto-biographical. From that standpoint alone, this made it more interesting for me. Though many of his books are, this one had multiple layers to it that revolved around his experience in war. I'm partial to first-hand accounts of war, so this is an obvious bias. I would give it 5 stars; however, I found that he can occasionally drag on a sentance too long--which I find annoying (and explains why I never could finish "On the Road"). Overall, a worthy read. If you like adventure, war, intriguing characters, and Hemingway as a person, then you will find something to like about this book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert Jordan is an American professor who takes a year off to fight in the Spanish civil war around 1936. Jordan finds himself allied with a band of rag tag band of communists consisting of Spanish farmers and gypsies fighting against oppressive fascists in the Spanish mountains. Jordan does not consider himself a communist- rather that he is fighting against fascism. The band seemingly is lead by Pablo, a rebel fighter who has seen better days; he currently spends his days drinking himself into a stupor, while his formidable woman- Pilar- actually leads the band of rebels. Pilar is a wonderful character, a strong, wise, smart mouth woman with a bit of the fortune -teller about her. The characters and settings in this book are wonderfully descriptive. I loved the antiquated language used throughout the book, and the obscenities used in lighter moments were certainly interesting. Some sections of the book were a bit dry for me, it is a war story after all, but many parts were very powerful and written with such simplicity and truth. At many points during the story, the small band with Jordan, and Jordan himself are certain that they will die, thoughts of the future are almost day dreams that the reader knows aren’t going to pass. Jordan faces these thoughts in a pragmatic business like manner- yet tries to live each moment as if he knows his days are coming to an end. Suicide was a recurring theme throughout the book, from Jordan’s father- to individual’s plans should they be captured. What rung true for me were the reactions the men had before, after and during the fighting- not that I have ever been involved in anything approaching warfare- but I have been in some precarious positions once or twice in my life in the course of my duties and these passages struck me as true. How a person suddenly finds faith when faced with the possibility of death or the nervous chatter that follows by which you can gauge just how close you came. The only real problem I had with the book was Jordan’s romance with Maria, a woman that had been rescued by Pilar after being abused by the fascists. The romance between Jordan and Maria seemed somewhat contrived to me, like a mildly misogynistic man’s fantasy of what a woman should be- submissive, docile, utterly dependent and a bit foolish. All in all, I enjoyed For Whom The Bell Tolls- I liked Hemingway’s writing and I’d like to read something else written by him, but maybe not a war story next time.
Book preview
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
INTRODUCTION
During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Spain became a battleground in the fight between freedom and fascism. Fascism prevailed.1
To gain a powerful and palpable impression of the civil war in Spain you can do no better than to read Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece, For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is a story about a young American volunteer in the International Brigades, named Robert Jordan, who is attached to an anti-fascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. All of life—hope, fear, and love—plays out in three days of intense action. Though entirely a work of fiction, it transports you to that time and place so that you feel as though you have experienced it yourself. For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway’s longest and, for many readers, finest novel and his most in-depth treatment of war. It is also simply a great story.
An ardent lover of Spain since his first visit there, when he was twenty-four, to see the bullfights at Pamplona in 1923, Hemingway followed the Spanish conflict from its inception. At the onset of the war he supported the Loyalist cause as the chairman of the Ambulance Committee for the Medical Bureau of the American Friends of Spanish Democracy and through his own personal contributions to buy ambulances, a form of support sanctioned by the U.S. government, which was not yet involved in the conflict.2
Having volunteered as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, Hemingway knew from firsthand experience the critical value of medical aid in wartime.3
He also supported the Spanish Republic when, in 1937, together with Jörg Ivens, he produced the movie The Spanish Earth, which was for him a new kind of writing endeavor.4
In just under an hour, the masterful documentary attempts to show the reality of life amid the fighting in Spain. Hemingway wrote the script and narrated the film after Orson Welles declined. He also promoted the film in the United States, speaking at fund-raising events for the Loyalist cause. His speech to the American Writers Congress at Carnegie Hall on June 4, 1937, is included in this Hemingway Library Edition as Appendix I. In it, Hemingway discusses how a writer needs to write truly in order to create in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it,
how dangerous it is to write the truth in war, and how no good writer can do his job working in a fascist state, which is built on lies. It received a standing ovation and remains to this day a powerful commentary on the importance of a writer’s accurate record of war and its atrocities.
Ernest Hemingway experienced the Spanish Civil War firsthand as a war correspondent for the North American Newspaper Association (NANA). He wrote twenty-eight dispatches for NANA that were published between March 13, 1937, and May 11, 1938.5
His journalism makes tangible the devastating effects of war on people, but it has been criticized for its partisanship and for not presenting a balanced assessment of events.6
However, some recent scholarship has, in my opinion, mischaracterized his contribution, which was significant and sincere. Adam Hochschild’s book on the Spanish Civil War and U.S. participation essentially omits Hemingway, for example, suggesting that he was self-aggrandizing and motivated by self-interest.7
I beg to differ. I believe that the tremendous body of work Hemingway produced during this period—his journalism; The Spanish Earth; his only full-length play, The Fifth Column; his excellent short stories including The Butterfly and the Tank
and Night Before Battle
; and For Whom the Bell Tolls—reflects my grandfather’s passion and commitment to his work, which was fueled by his enthusiastic support for the anti-fascist Loyalist cause and his love of Spain.
A previously unpublished account written by Hemingway just after his time as a war correspondent for NANA, and included as Appendix II (and Figure 1
) in this book, gives a vivid sense of Hemingway’s wartime experience in Spain, his proximity to battle, and the strong psychological effects it had on him. The piece is full of anti-fascist opinion and thoughtfully argued assessments of military actions, which he supports with graphic details that bring the horrors of battle to life. Readers may judge for themselves how close to the truth it is.
Myths about Ernest Hemingway—the hard-living, hard-drinking, celebrity he-man—have proliferated almost to the same extent as his literary fame and have inevitably clouded opinions of his work, especially for those who have not read it or read it closely. Even a writer as fine as Orhan Pamuk has misjudged Hemingway’s literature, referring to his war-loving heroes
since war is the focus of so much of his writing.8
Such an assessment of Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s greatest literary war hero, would be totally inaccurate. To be sure, Hemingway appreciated the deep bonds forged in wartime among its fellow combatants, but he viewed war itself as a crime against humanity.9
He explained to F. Scott Fitzgerald why he thought war made such a good subject for writing: . . . war is the best subject of all. It groups the maximum of material and speeds up the action and brings out all sorts of stuff that normally you have to wait a lifetime to get.
10
The complexities of war and its many contradictions can make it very difficult to write about, but Hemingway succeeds beautifully in For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of the greatest war novels of all time.
Hemingway visited the front in Spain for the last time in November of 1938. When he returned he did not know he would soon begin work on his novel. He began it as a short story. That fall and winter he wrote two powerful short stories based on his recent war experiences, Night Before Battle
and The Butterfly and the Tank.
11
In the middle of February of 1939, he went to Cuba and set himself up at the Hotel Sevilla Biltmore in Havana intending to write three more stories. Upon completing the first, Under the Ridge,
he began typing a second story in March, and after writing some fifteen thousand words knew that it would be a novel.
His regimen was to begin writing at eight-thirty in the morning and continue until two or three in the afternoon, the same practice he had established with A Farewell to Arms. He frequently recorded the number of words he wrote each day, which ranged from about three hundred to over a thousand (see Figure 7
). On the fourth of April he wrote to his friend Tommy Shevlin: It is the most important thing that I’ve done and it is the place in my career as a writer where I have to write a real one.
12
Later that month, Martha Gellhorn, his new love, joined him in Cuba and found Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm
) in San Francisco di Paula outside of Havana. Hemingway soon moved in with her and continued to work on the book there until late August 1939. By May 23, 1939, he had completed 199 pages of the manuscript, and by July 10, 352 pages. Finca Vigía was located high in the hills above Havana and was susceptible to electrical storms that frequently occurred in the summertime. Papa related to his sons Patrick and Gregory how lightning struck that July just before he had hung up the phone from speaking with their mother, Pauline, and sent him flying nearly ten feet across the living room, stiffening his arm and neck and taking away his voice for a long time. He joked with the boys then that it was lucky he had on dry shoes and was standing on a stone floor or it could have been the end of him and it would have been up to them to finish the novel.13
After a family vacation with Pauline and his three sons at Nordquist’s L-Bar-T Ranch in Montana, Hemingway resumed writing the book between September 20 and December 9, 1939, in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he and Martha Gellhorn were guests at the nascent Sun Valley Resort. On Christmas Day he returned to the Finca alone and resigned himself to continue writing until the manuscript was done. By April 20, 1940, he told Max Perkins that he had thirty-two chapters completed. That month he decided on a title. As he had done in the past, he turned to the Bible and Shakespeare for inspiration, and after considering some twenty-five possibilities he settled on The Undiscovered Country. But he was not completely satisfied with it.14
Persevering, he looked to the Oxford Book of English Verse where he found a quote from John Donne, which expressed the interconnectedness of humanity that matched the aspirations of his work. On April 21 he wired Max Perkins that he had decided on the title For Whom the Bell Tolls. By the beginning of July he was working on the last chapter and contemplating how to end it. He considered having an epilogue, which he sent to Max Perkins, who describes it in some detail.15
However, he ultimately decided against it. On August 26 Hemingway wrote Perkins:
What would you think of ending the book as it ends now without the epilogue?
I have written it and rewritten it and it is okay but it seems sort of like going back into the dressing room or following Catherine Barclay to the cemetery (as I originally did in A Farewell to Arms) and explaining what happened to Rinaldi and all.
I have a strong tendency to do that always on account of wanting everything knit up and stowed away ship-shape.
I can write it like Tolstoi and make the book seem larger, wiser, and all the rest of it. But then I remember that was what I always skipped in Tolstoi.
What do you think? . . .
You see that the epilogue only shows that good generals suffer after an unsuccessful attack (which isn’t new); that they get over it (that’s a little newer) Golz haveing killed so much that day is forgiving of Marty because he has that kindliness you get sometimes. I can and do make Karkov see how it will all go. But that seems to me to date it. The part about Andres at the end is very good and very pitiful and very fine.
But it really stops where Jordan is feeling his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.
You see every damn word and action in this book depends on every other word and action. You see he’s laying there on the pine needles at the start [see Figure 2
] and that is where he is at the end [see Figure 8
]. He has had his problem and all his life before him at the start and he has all his life in those days and, at the end there is only death there for him and he truly isn’t afraid of it at all because he has the chance to finish his mission.16
An early false start of the epilogue is preserved among the papers at the Finca (Appendix III, n. 38), though no complete copy is known to exist.
Hemingway completed his manuscript on July 21, 1940, and hand-delivered it to Max Perkins at Scribner’s in New York around July 25. By August 25 he had sent the first batch of corrected galley proofs back to Scribner’s from Cuba (see Figures 9
–10
). The last corrected proofs were sent from Sun Valley on September 10. The book was published on October 31, 1940.
There are many cases where Hemingway expands on passages from the first draft to make them more poignant, such as the lovemaking scenes between Robert Jordan and Maria (Appendix III, nn. 13–14, Figures 5
–6
) or El Sordo reflecting on life during his last stand on the hilltop (Appendix III, n. 25). The manuscript shows how Hemingway grappled with trying to translate certain words in the Spanish language (Appendix III, n. 5). He was also very familiar with the danger of censorship and its impact on book sales, having dealt with these issues in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.18
In For Whom the Bell Tolls he tried to avoid such problems as much as possible at the outset while still conveying the realism that was central to his storytelling. His editor, Max Perkins, and publisher, Charles Scribner, had very few criticisms of the manuscript text.19
Scribner objected to the graphic wording of the scene in chapter 31 where Robert Jordan masturbates the night before battle. Hemingway cut the offending sentence, There is no need to spill that on the pine needles now,
and wrote instead, There are no pine needles that need that now as I will need it tomorrow.
20
In response to Scribner’s objection, Hemingway also changed at the galley stage Robert Jordan’s status as a card-carrying member of the Communist Party (Appendix III, n. 16) to someone working under communist discipline. However, while Perkins and Scribner were both concerned by Pilar’s discussion of the stench of death and suggested removing it, Hemingway insisted that it was important and left it as he wrote it originally. Despite the length of the manuscript, the differences between the published version and the original manuscript are relatively small. The missing epilogue and list of possible titles and a few draft pages preserved among my grandfather’s papers at the Ernest Hemingway Museum at the Finca in Cuba make clear that additional drafts and supporting materials existed.
For Whom the Bell Tolls depicts guerilla warfare—a war of resilience involving small-scale skirmishes over an indefinite period of time. It is a type of combat that goes back at least to ancient Roman times. The term itself derives from the diminutive form of the Spanish word for war, guerre, and means little war.
It became popular during the Peninsular War in the early nineteenth century when the Spanish and Portuguese people used the guerilla strategy against Napoleon Bonaparte’s vastly superior army during his invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War (1810–1820), his graphic etchings of the Spanish struggle against Napoleon’s army, were well known to my grandfather, who owned a set that was made from the original plates during the Spanish Civil War.21
Goya’s images of executions, such as the etching entitled Y no hai remedio
(And there is nothing to be done
), are a visual pretext for some of the more powerful scenes in the novel, like the brutal execution of citizens described by Pilar in chapter 10. In a passage cut from this very chapter of the novel, Hemingway wrote that You heard about it; you heard the shots. You saw the bodies but no Goya yet had made the pictures
(Appendix III, n. 11).
Hemingway counted Stendhal as among the most important literary predecessors for his novel. In a famous interview with Lillian Ross, Hemingway, using the metaphor of boxing, said that he had fought two draws with Stendhal and that he thought he had the edge in the last one.22
Hemingway saw For Whom the Bell Tolls as his first great bout with Stendhal and Across the River and Into the Trees, which he had just finished at the time he spoke with Ross, as his second. There are distinct similarities between Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, where a participant in the Battle of Waterloo gives the reader a strong sense of battle from a soldier’s perspective, and For Whom the Bell Tolls; Hemingway even calls out the book as a superlative example of war literature in a passage he cut from the novel (Appendix III, no. 10).
Hemingway conceived For Whom the Bell Tolls out of his own experience and the knowledge that he had gained about Spain and its people. As he told Malcolm Cowley in an interview for Life Magazine in 1949, But it wasn’t just the Spanish Civil War that I put into it, . . . it was everything I had learned about Spain for eighteen years.
23
The terrain of the book is realistic but does not correspond exactly to an actual place. It is what Allen Josephs, in his excellent book about the novel, calls Hemingway’s undiscovered country,
echoing the author’s early title for For Whom the Bell Tolls. Patrick Hemingway notes in his foreword to this edition that his father drew considerably from his experiences in the American West to write truly the passages about life in the mountains and tracking in snow.
For Whom the Bell Tolls was an immediate success. Hemingway wrote to his first wife, Hadley, that it was selling like frozen daiquiris in hell.
24
It has had tremendous impact and has been valued for its accurate depiction of guerilla warfare. Fidel Castro famously said that he had used it as a kind of training manual for his military insurrection that began in December of 1956 and played out in the southern mountains of Cuba until his reverberant guerilla triumph over the government of Cuba in 1959. When I visited Cuba in early November of 2002 as part of a delegation to preserve my grandfather’s papers at Finca Vigía, I had the opportunity to meet Castro. I asked him what parts of the book were especially instructive for him and he recalled that the passage about machine-gun placement in the mountains was perhaps the most instructive.25
In their recent documentary on the Vietnam War, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick interviewed a Vietnamese woman, the writer Le Minh Khue, who as a youth volunteer working on the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War carried with her a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Le Minh Khue greatly admired Robert Jordan and learned a great deal from his character about how to endure war.26
These are but two testaments to the realism of the book in its many parts. Hemingway, in his own words, believed that A writer’s job is to tell the truth. His standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be. For facts can be observed badly; but when a good writer is creating something, he has time and scope to make it of an absolute truth.
27
As Graham Greene wrote in his review of the book, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a record more truthful than history.
28
• • •
This new edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls also includes three short stories about my grandfather’s experiences during World War II, the great conflict that followed the Spanish Civil War, which Hemingway predicted as early as September of 1935.29
The stories were never published in his lifetime although he wrote them in several drafts (see Figures 13
–15
) and even sent them to Charles Scribner suggesting that if they were too provocative they could be published after his death.30
Scholars have long been interested in these stories, two of which have never before been published.31
Colonel David Bruce of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) remembered being with my grandfather on August 25, 1944, when the Second Armored Division of General Philippe LeClerc, accompanied by an American infantry division, successfully entered and assumed control of Paris from the Nazis. Bruce and Hemingway were with the advance fighting units that headed into the center of the city and together they climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe to look across all of Paris. How magnificent it must have felt to be there at that moment. Hemingway suggested that they go straight to the Ritz Hotel. Paris was the city my grandfather loved more than any other in the world. He was proud to assist the OSS in the city’s liberation and the liberation of the Ritz Hotel became one of his most memorable moveable feasts. When he arrived at the Ritz with Colonel Bruce and their band of irregulars, the hotel manager greeted them joyously and asked Hemingway if there was anything he could get for them, to which Hemingway replied, How about seventy-three dry martinis?
32
A Room on the Garden Side
is a fictional account of the days following the liberation. Hemingway stayed at the Ritz before setting out to catch up with the 22nd Regiment, who were chasing Nazi troops from France across Belgium and into Germany. In conversation with the hotel owner Charles Ritz and the French novelist cum military leader André Malraux, as well as various GIs, the protagonist (named Robert but clearly based on Hemingway) sips champagne in his room on the quieter garden side of the hotel and riffs on war, French writers, literature, and Paris. The author displays a wry wit and gives us a sense of the camaraderie among the men who lived through this momentous time in Paris. As Hemingway wrote later, How different it was, when you were there.
33
The short story ends with Robert planning to leave Paris early the next morning. Hemingway left Paris on September 7, 1944, in a small well-armed convoy of two cars, two jeeps, and a motorcycle with Archie Red
Pelkey serving as his driver.34
Indian Country and the White Army
continues the story only a few days later. It is a thinly fictionalized account of Hemingway with his small band of irregulars and two other journalists traveling through the Ardennes forest in Belgium toward Houffalize, the first town taken by the Germans. Captain Stevie, the American soldier in charge, remarks that the two Frenchmen with them are all that is left of an outfit of irregulars originally two thousand strong. They are remnants of the foreign volunteers who first served the anti-fascist Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War and went on to assist the underground resistance in France. The Ardennes forest reminds Hemingway of the northern Michigan of his youth when the Native American presence was very much a part of the territory. The White Army
is a witty reference to the Belgians, who wore white armbands and are portrayed as rather inferior and uncourageous guerilla fighters. Hemingway captures with sly humor the delicate tensions between the Belgian farmhouse owner and his liberators over the killing of a goose amid the real dangers of combat. The difficulties of feeding an army on the move, a topic discussed in the abstract in the previous short story, are presented here in vivid detail. While they are sitting with the owner, they hear the bridge at Houffalize being blown up by the Germans during their retreat.
The theme of blowing up a bridge continues in The Monument,
a point of comparison to For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which a bridge is also blown but for notably different tactical reasons.35
Hemingway rejoins his old friend Buck Lanham, commander of the 22nd Infantry Regiment, just after Lanham has taken the Belgian town of Houffalize. He and Buck talk together while the bridge that the Nazis blew up is repaired so that they can bring their tank destroyers across it. Peter Lawless, a London Daily News correspondent, describes to Hemingway a monument in town dedicated to the first Belgian soldier killed in World War I. He was from Houffalize. The monument recalls the Homeric warrior Protesilaos, the first Greek soldier to die in the Trojan War, and makes us reflect on the tragic cost of human life in war, notions of fame and glory, and the significance of place. At the end of the story, Hemingway states that another monument was built there to record their own liberation of Houffalize and the rebuilding of the bridge. In reality, the monument is a small plaque set up near the bridge that records how Lanham and his men had managed to rebuild the bridge in forty-five minutes on September 10, 1944.36
Hemingway wrote all three of the stories in Paris during the summer of 1956 long after the war. As Patrick notes in his foreword, they present a much more personal vision of my grandfather’s experiences in the European theater of operations than what he wrote about World War II combat in Across the River and Into the Trees. In fact, an inquiry during World War II by the U.S. military into Hemingway’s participation in the war beyond the parameters of a journalist likely weighed heavily on his decision not to write about these experiences until much later.37
We can be thankful that he did.
Nearly eighty years later, For Whom the Bell Tolls retains the power that made it an instant classic at the time of its publication in 1940. With this new Hemingway Library Edition the reader gains a better appreciation of Ernest Hemingway’s commitment to the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War. It was arguably the single most important thing that my grandfather ever believed in, besides writing truly. The Loyalist defeat was profoundly disappointing, but his experiences in Spain inspired him to write a true account of the war in the medium that mattered most to him—fiction—where he could draw on his passion for Spain, exceptional knowledge, and formidable talent. Through his manuscripts we glimpse something of the creative magic and hard work that went into how Hemingway wrote what is perhaps his finest novel.
Seán Hemingway
January 2019
Maplewood, New Jersey
1
He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.
Is that the mill?
he asked.
Yes.
I do not remember it.
It was built since you were here. The old mill is farther down; much below the pass.
He spread the photostated military map out on the forest floor and looked at it carefully. The old man looked over his shoulder. He was a short and solid old man in a black peasant’s smock and gray iron-stiff trousers and he wore rope-soled shoes. He was breathing heavily from the climb and his hand rested on one of the two heavy packs they had been carrying.
Then you cannot see the bridge from here.
No,
the old man said. This is the easy country of the pass where the stream flows gently. Below, where the road turns out of sight in the trees, it drops suddenly and there is a steep gorge—
I remember.
Across this gorge is the bridge.
And where are their posts?
There is a post at the mill that you see there.
The young man, who was studying the country, took his glasses from the pocket of his faded, khaki flannel shirt, wiped the lenses with a handkerchief, screwed the eyepieces around until the boards of the mill showed suddenly clearly and he saw the wooden bench beside the door; the huge pile of sawdust that rose behind the open shed where the circular saw was, and a stretch of the flume that brought the logs down from the mountainside on the other bank of the stream. The stream showed clear and smooth-looking in the glasses and, below the curl of the falling water, the spray from the dam was blowing in the wind.
There is no sentry.
There is smoke coming from the millhouse,
the old man said. There are also clothes hanging on a line.
I see them but I do not see any sentry.
Perhaps he is in the shade,
the old man explained. It is hot there now. He would be in the shadow at the end we do not see.
Probably. Where is the next post?
Below the bridge. It is at the roadmender’s hut at kilometer five from the top of the pass.
How many men are here?
He pointed at the mill.
Perhaps four and a corporal.
And below?
More. I will find out.
And at the bridge?
Always two. One at each end.
We will need a certain number of men,
he said. How many men can you get?
I can bring as many men as you wish,
the old man said. There are many men now here in the hills.
How many?
There are more than a hundred. But they are in small bands. How many men will you need?
I will let you know when we have studied the bridge.
Do you wish to study it now?
No. Now I wish to go to where we will hide this explosive until it is time. I would like to have it hidden in utmost security at a distance no greater than half an hour from the bridge, if that is possible.
That is simple,
the old man said. From where we are going, it will all be downhill to the bridge. But now we must climb a little in seriousness to get there. Are you hungry?
Yes,
the young man said. But we will eat later. How are you called? I have forgotten.
It was a bad sign to him that he had forgotten.
Anselmo,
the old man said. I am called Anselmo and I come from Barco de Avila. Let me help you with that pack.
The young man, who was tall and thin, with sun-streaked fair hair, and a wind- and sun-burned face, who wore the sun-faded flannel shirt, a pair of peasant’s trousers and rope-soled shoes, leaned over, put his arm through one of the leather pack straps and swung the heavy pack up onto his shoulders. He worked his arm through the other strap and settled the weight of the pack against his back. His shirt was still wet from where the pack had rested.
I have it up now,
he said. How do we go?
We climb,
Anselmo said.
Bending under the weight of the packs, sweating, they climbed steadily in the pine forest that covered the mountainside. There was no trail that the young man could see, but they were working up and around the face of the mountain and now they crossed a small stream and the old man went steadily on ahead up the edge of the rocky stream bed. The climbing now was steeper and more difficult, until finally the stream seemed to drop down over the edge of a smooth granite ledge that rose above them and the old man waited at the foot of the ledge for the young man to come up to him.
How are you making it?
All right,
the young man said. He was sweating heavily and his thigh muscles were twitchy from the steepness of the climb.
Wait here now for me. I go ahead to warn them. You do not want to be shot at carrying that stuff.
Not even in a joke,
the young man said. Is it far?
It is very close. How do they call thee?
Roberto,
the young man answered. He had slipped the pack off and lowered it gently down between two boulders by the stream bed.
Wait here, then, Roberto, and I will return for you.
Good,
the young man said. But do you plan to go down this way to the bridge?
No. When we go to the bridge it will be by another way. Shorter and easier.
I do not want this material to be stored too far from the bridge.
You will see. If you are not satisfied, we will take another place.
We will see,
the young man said.
He sat by the packs and watched the old man climb the ledge. It was not hard to climb and from the way he found hand-holds without searching for them the young man could see that he had climbed it many times before. Yet whoever was above had been very careful not to leave any trail.
The young man, whose name was Robert Jordan, was extremely hungry and he was worried. He was often hungry but he was not usually worried because he did not give any importance to what happened to himself and he knew from experience how simple it was to move behind the enemy lines in all this country. It was as simple to move behind them as it was to cross through them, if you had a good guide. It was only giving importance to what happened to you if you were caught that made it difficult; that and deciding whom to trust. You had to trust the people you worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make decisions about the trusting. He was not worried about any of that. But there were other things.
This Anselmo had been a good guide and he could travel wonderfully in the mountains. Robert Jordan could walk well enough himself and he knew from following him since before daylight that the old man could walk him to death. Robert Jordan trusted the man, Anselmo, so far, in everything except judgment. He had not yet had an opportunity to test his judgment, and, anyway, the judgment was his own responsibility. No, he did not worry about Anselmo and the problem of the bridge was no more difficult than many other problems. He knew how to blow any sort of bridge that you could name and he had blown them of all sizes and constructions. There was enough explosive and all equipment in the two packs to blow this bridge properly even if it were twice as big as Anselmo reported it, as he remembered it when he had walked over it on his way to La Granja on a walking trip in 1933, and as Golz had read him the description of it night before last in that upstairs room in the house outside of the Escorial.
To blow the bridge is nothing,
Golz had said, the lamplight on his scarred, shaved head, pointing with a pencil on the big map. You understand?
Yes, I understand.
Absolutely nothing. Merely to blow the bridge is a failure.
Yes, Comrade General.
To blow the bridge at a stated hour based on the time set for the attack is how it should be done. You see that naturally. That is your right and how it should be done.
Golz looked at the pencil, then tapped his teeth with it.
Robert Jordan had said nothing.
You understand that is your right and how it should be done,
Golz went on, looking at him and nodding his head. He tapped on the map now with the pencil. That is how I should do it. That is what we cannot have.
Why, Comrade General?
Why?
Golz said, angrily. "How many attacks have you seen and you ask me why? What is to guarantee that my orders are not changed? What is to guarantee that the attack is not annulled? What is to guarantee that the attack is not postponed? What is to guarantee that it starts within six hours of when it should start? Has any attack ever been as it should?"
It will start on time if it is your attack,
Robert Jordan said.
They are never my attacks,
Golz said. I make them. But they are not mine. The artillery is not mine. I must put in for it. I have never been given what I ask for even when they have it to give. That is the least of it. There are other things. You know how those people are. It is not necessary to go into all of it. Always there is something. Always some one will interfere. So now be sure you understand.
So when is the bridge to be blown?
Robert Jordan had asked.
After the attack starts. As soon as the attack has started and not before. So that no reinforcements will come up over that road.
He pointed with his pencil. I must know that nothing will come up over that road.
And when is the attack?
I will tell you. But you are to use the date and hour only as an indication of a probability. You must be ready for that time. You will blow the bridge after the attack has started. You see?
he indicated with the pencil. That is the only road on which they can bring up reinforcements. That is the only road on which they can get up tanks, or artillery, or even move a truck toward the pass which I attack. I must know that bridge is gone. Not before, so it can be repaired if the attack is postponed. No. It must go when the attack starts and I must know it is gone. There are only two sentries. The man who will go with you has just come from there. He is a very reliable man, they say. You will see. He has people in the mountains. Get as many men as you need. Use as few as possible, but use enough. I do not have to tell you these things.
And how do I determine that the attack has started?
It is to be made with a full division. There will be an aerial bombardment as preparation. You are not deaf, are you?
Then I may take it that when the planes unload, the attack has started?
You could not always take it like that,
Golz said and shook his head. But in this case, you may. It is my attack.
I understand it,
Robert Jordan had said. I do not say I like it very much.
Neither do I like it very much. If you do not want to undertake it, say so now. If you think you cannot do it, say so now.
I will do it,
Robert Jordan had said. I will do it all right.
That is all I have to know,
Golz said. That nothing comes up over that bridge. That is absolute.
I understand.
I do not like to ask people to do such things and in such a way,
Golz went on. I could not order you to do it. I understand what you may be forced to do through my putting such conditions. I explain very carefully so that you understand and that you understand all of the possible difficulties and the importance.
And how will you advance on La Granja if that bridge is blown?
We go forward prepared to repair it after we have stormed the pass. It is a very complicated and beautiful operation. As complicated and as beautiful as always. The plan has been manufactured in Madrid. It is another of Vicente Rojo, the unsuccessful professor’s, masterpieces. I make the attack and I make it, as always, not in sufficient force. It is a very possible operation, in spite of that. I am much happier about it than usual. It can be successful with that bridge eliminated. We can take Segovia. Look, I show you how it goes. You see? It is not the top of the pass where we attack. We hold that. It is much beyond. Look— Here— Like this—
I would rather not know,
Robert Jordan said.
Good,
said Golz. It is less of baggage to carry with you on the other side, yes?
I would always rather not know. Then, no matter what can happen, it was not me that talked.
It is better not to know,
Golz stroked his forehead with the pencil. Many times I wish I did not know myself. But you do know the one thing you must know about the bridge?
Yes. I know that.
I believe you do,
Golz said. I will not make you any little speech. Let us now have a drink. So much talking makes me very thirsty, Comrade Hordan. You have a funny name in Spanish, Comrade Hordown.
How do you say Golz in Spanish, Comrade General?
Hotze,
said Golz grinning, making the sound deep in his throat as though hawking with a bad cold. Hotze,
he croaked. "Comrade Heneral Khotze. If I had known how they pronounced Golz in Spanish I would pick me out a better name before I come to war here. When I think I come to command a division and I can pick out any name I want and I pick out Hotze. Heneral Hotze. Now it is too late to change. How do you like partizan work?" It was the Russian term for guerilla work behind the lines.
Very much,
Robert Jordan said. He grinned. It is very healthy in the open air.
I like it very much when I was your age, too,
Golz said. They tell me you blow bridges very well. Very scientific. It is only hearsay. I have never seen you do anything myself. Maybe nothing ever happens really. You really blow them?
he was teasing now. Drink this,
he handed the glass of Spanish brandy to Robert Jordan. "You really blow them?"
Sometimes.
You better not have any sometimes on this bridge. No, let us not talk any more about this bridge. You understand enough now about that bridge. We are very serious so we can make very strong jokes. Look, do you have many girls on the other side of the lines?
No, there is no time for girls.
I do not agree. The more irregular the service, the more irregular the life. You have very irregular service. Also you need a haircut.
I have my hair cut as it needs it,
Robert Jordan said. He would be damned if he would have his head shaved like Golz. I have enough to think about without girls,
he said sullenly.
What sort of uniform am I supposed to wear?
Robert Jordan asked.
None,
Golz said. Your haircut is all right. I tease you. You are very different from me,
Golz had said and filled up the glasses again.
"You never think about only girls. I never think at all. Why should I? I am Général Sovietique. I never think. Do not try to trap me into thinking."
Some one on his staff, sitting on a chair working over a map on a drawing board, growled at him in the language Robert Jordan did not understand.
Shut up,
Golz had said, in English. I joke if I want. I am so serious is why I can joke. Now drink this and then go. You understand, huh?
Yes,
Robert Jordan had said. I understand.
They had shaken hands and he had saluted and gone out to the staff car where the old man was waiting asleep and in that car they had ridden over the road past Guadarrama, the old man still asleep, and up the Navacerrada road to the Alpine Club hut where he, Robert Jordan, slept for three hours before they started.
That was the last he had seen of Golz with his strange white face that never tanned, his hawk eyes, the big nose and thin lips and the shaven head crossed with wrinkles and with scars. Tomorrow night they would be outside the Escorial in the dark along the road; the long lines of trucks loading the infantry in the darkness; the men, heavy loaded, climbing up into the trucks; the machine-gun sections lifting their guns into the trucks; the tanks being run up on the skids onto the long-bodied tank trucks; pulling the Division out to move them in the night for the attack on the pass. He would not think about that. That was not his business. That was Golz’s business. He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was as bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.
He sat now by the stream watching the clear water flowing between the rocks and, across the stream, he noticed there was a thick bed of watercress. He crossed the stream, picked a double handful, washed the muddy roots clean in the current and then sat down again beside his pack and ate the clean, cool green leaves and the crisp, peppery-tasting stalks. He knelt by the stream and, pushing his automatic pistol around on his belt to the small of his back so that it would not be wet, he lowered himself with a hand on each of two boulders and drank from the stream. The water was achingly cold.
Pushing himself up on his hands he turned his head and saw the old man coming down the ledge. With him was another man, also in a black peasant’s smock and the dark gray trousers that were almost a uniform in that province, wearing rope-soled shoes and with a carbine slung over his back. This man was bareheaded. The two of them came scrambling down the rock like goats.
They came up to him and Robert Jordan got to his feet.
"Salud, Camarada," he said to the man with the carbine and smiled.
"Salud," the other said, grudgingly. Robert Jordan looked at the man’s heavy, beard-stubbled face. It was almost round and his head was round and set close on his shoulders. His eyes were small and set too wide apart and his ears were small and set close to his head. He was a heavy man about five feet ten inches tall and his hands and feet were large. His nose had been broken and his mouth was cut at one corner and the line of the scar across the upper lip and lower jaw showed through the growth of beard over his face.
The old man nodded his head at this man and smiled.
He is the boss here,
he grinned, then flexed his arms as though to make the muscles stand out and looked at the man with the carbine in a half-mocking admiration. A very strong man.
I can see it,
Robert Jordan said and smiled again. He did not like the look of this man and inside himself he was not smiling at all.
What have you to justify your identity?
asked the man with the carbine.
Robert Jordan unpinned a safety pin that ran through his pocket flap and took a folded paper out of the left breast pocket of his flannel shirt and handed it to the man, who opened it, looked at it doubtfully and turned it in his hands.
So he cannot read, Robert Jordan noted.
Look at the seal,
he said.
The old man pointed to the seal and the man with the carbine studied it, turning it in his fingers.
What seal is that?
Have you never seen it?
No.
There are two,
said Robert Jordan. One is S. I. M., the service of the military intelligence. The other is the General Staff.
Yes, I have seen that seal before. But here no one commands but me,
the other said sullenly. What have you in the packs?
Dynamite,
the old man said proudly. Last night we crossed the lines in the dark and all day we have carried this dynamite over the mountain.
I can use dynamite,
said the man with the carbine. He handed back the paper to Robert Jordan and looked him over. Yes. I have use for dynamite. How much have you brought me?
I have brought you no dynamite,
Robert Jordan said to him evenly. The dynamite is for another purpose. What is your name?
What is that to you?
He is Pablo,
said the old man. The man with the carbine looked at them both sullenly.
Good. I have heard much good of you,
said Robert Jordan.
What have you heard of me?
asked Pablo.
I have heard that you are an excellent guerilla leader, that you are loyal to the republic and prove your loyalty through your acts, and that you are a man both serious and valiant. I bring you greetings from the General Staff.
Where did you hear all this?
asked Pablo. Robert Jordan registered that he was not taking any of the flattery.
I heard it from Buitrago to the Escorial,
he said, naming all the stretch of country on the other side of the lines.
I know no one in Buitrago nor in Escorial,
Pablo told him.
There are many people on the other side of the mountains who were not there before. Where are you from?
Avila. What are you going to do with the dynamite?
Blow up a bridge.
What bridge?
That is my business.
If it is in this territory, it is my business. You cannot blow bridges close to where you live. You must live in one place and operate in another. I know my business. One who is alive, now, after a year, knows his business.
This is my business,
Robert Jordan said. We can discuss it together. Do you wish to help us with the sacks?
No,
said Pablo and shook his head.
The old man turned toward him suddenly and spoke rapidly and furiously in a dialect that Robert Jordan could just follow. It was like reading Quevedo. Anselmo was speaking old Castilian and it went something like this, "Art thou a brute? Yes. Art thou a beast? Yes, many times. Hast thou a brain? Nay. None. Now we come for something of consummate importance and thee, with thy dwelling place to be undisturbed, puts thy fox-hole before the interests of humanity. Before the interests of thy people. I this and that in the this and that of thy father. I this and that and that in thy this. Pick up that bag."
Pablo looked down.
Every one has to do what he can do according to how it can be truly done,
he said. I live here and I operate beyond Segovia. If you make a disturbance here, we will be hunted out of these mountains. It is only by doing nothing here that we are able to live in these mountains. It is the principle of the fox.
Yes,
said Anselmo bitterly. It is the principle of the fox when we need the wolf.
I am more wolf than thee,
Pablo said and Robert Jordan knew that he would pick up the sack.
Hi. Ho . . .,
Anselmo looked at him. Thou art more wolf than me and I am sixty-eight years old.
He spat on the ground and shook his head.
You have that many years?
Robert Jordan asked, seeing that now, for the moment, it would be all right and trying to make it go easier.
Sixty-eight in the month of July.
If we should ever see that month,
said Pablo. Let me help you with the pack,
he said to Robert Jordan. Leave the other to the old man.
He spoke, not sullenly, but almost sadly now. He is an old man of great strength.
I will carry the pack,
Robert Jordan said.
Nay,
said the old man. Leave it to this other strong man.
I will take it,
Pablo told him, and in his sullenness there was a sadness that was disturbing to Robert Jordan. He knew that sadness and to see it here worried him.
Give me the carbine then,
he said and when Pablo handed it to him, he slung it over his back and, with the two men climbing ahead of him, they went heavily, pulling and climbing up the granite shelf and over its upper edge to where there was a green clearing in the forest.
They skirted the edge of the little meadow and Robert Jordan, striding easily now without the pack, the carbine pleasantly rigid over his shoulder after the heavy, sweating pack weight, noticed that the grass was cropped down in several places and signs that picket pins had been driven into the earth. He could see a trail through the grass where horses had been led to the stream to drink and there was the fresh manure of several horses. They picket them here to feed at night and keep them out of sight in the timber in the daytime, he thought. I wonder how many horses this Pablo has?
He remembered now noticing, without realizing it, that Pablo’s trousers were worn soapy shiny in the knees and thighs. I wonder if he has a pair of boots or if he rides in those alpargatas, he thought. He must have quite an outfit. But I don’t like that sadness, he thought. That sadness is bad. That’s the sadness they get before they quit or before they betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out.
Ahead of them a horse whinnied in the timber and then, through the brown trunks of the pine trees, only a little sunlight coming down through their thick, almost-touching tops, he saw the corral made by roping around the tree trunks. The horses had their heads pointed toward the men as they approached, and at the foot of a tree, outside the corral, the saddles were piled together and covered with a tarpaulin.
As they came up, the two men with the packs stopped, and Robert Jordan knew it was for him to admire the horses.
Yes,
he said. They are beautiful.
He turned to Pablo. You have your cavalry and all.
There were five horses in the rope corral, three bays, a sorrel, and a buckskin. Sorting them out carefully with his eyes after he had seen them first together, Robert Jordan looked them over individually. Pablo and Anselmo knew how good they were and while Pablo stood now proud and less sad-looking, watching them lovingly, the old man acted as though they were some great surprise that he had produced, suddenly, himself.
How do they look to you?
he asked.
All these I have taken,
Pablo said and Robert Jordan was pleased to hear him speak proudly.
That,
said Robert Jordan, pointing to one of the bays, a big stallion with a white blaze on his forehead and a single white foot, the near front, is much horse.
He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had come out of a painting by Velásquez.
They are all good,
said Pablo. You know horses?
Yes.
Less bad,
said Pablo. Do you see a defect in one of these?
Robert Jordan knew that now his papers were being examined by the man who could not read.
The horses all still had their heads up looking at the man. Robert Jordan slipped through between the double rope of the corral and slapped the buckskin on the haunch. He leaned back against the ropes of the enclosure and watched the horses circle the corral, stood watching them a minute more, as they stood still, then leaned down and came out through the ropes.
The sorrel is lame in the off hind foot,
he said to Pablo, not looking at him. The hoof is split and although it might not get worse soon if shod properly, she could break down if she travels over much hard ground.
The hoof was like that when we took her,
Pablo said.
The best horse that you have, the white-faced bay stallion, has a swelling on the upper part of the cannon bone that I do not like.
It is nothing,
said Pablo. He knocked it three days ago. If it were to be anything it would have become so already.
He pulled back the tarpaulin and showed the saddles. There were two ordinary vaquero’s or herdsman’s saddles, like American stock saddles, one very ornate vaquero’s saddle, with hand-tooled leather and heavy, hooded stirrups, and two military saddles in black leather.
"We killed a pair of guardia civil," he said, explaining the military saddles.
That is big game.
They had dismounted on the road between Segovia and Santa Maria del Real. They had dismounted to ask papers of the driver of a cart. We were able to kill them without injuring the horses.
Have you killed many civil guards?
Robert Jordan asked.
Several,
Pablo said. But only these two without injury to the horses.
It was Pablo who blew up the train at Arevalo,
Anselmo said. That was Pablo.
There was a foreigner with us who made the explosion,
Pablo said. Do you know him?
What is he called?
I do not remember. It was a very rare name.
What did he look like?
He was fair, as you are, but not as tall and with large hands and a broken nose.
Kashkin,
Robert Jordan said. That would be Kashkin.
Yes,
said Pablo. It was a very rare name. Something like that. What has become of him?
He is dead since April.
That is what happens to everybody,
Pablo said, gloomily. That is the way we will all finish.
That is the way all men end,
Anselmo said. That is the way men have always ended. What is the matter with you, man? What hast thou in the stomach?
They are very strong,
Pablo said. It was as though he were talking to himself. He looked at the horses gloomily. You do not realize how strong they are. I see them always stronger, always better armed. Always with more material. Here am I with horses like these. And what can I look forward to? To be hunted and to die. Nothing more.
You hunt as much as you are hunted,
Anselmo said.
No,
said Pablo. Not any more. And if we leave these mountains now, where can we go? Answer me that? Where now?
In Spain there are many mountains. There are the Sierra de Gredos if one leaves here.
Not for me,
Pablo said. I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted. If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?
He turned to Robert Jordan. What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?
I have not told you anything you must do,
Robert Jordan said to him.
You will though,
Pablo said. There. There is the badness.
He pointed at the two heavy packs that they had lowered to the ground while they had watched the horses. Seeing the horses had seemed to bring this all to a head in him and seeing that Robert Jordan knew horses had seemed to loosen his tongue. The three of them stood now by the rope corral and the patchy sunlight shone on the coat of the bay stallion. Pablo looked at him and then pushed with his foot against the heavy pack. There is the badness.
I come only for my duty,
Robert Jordan told him. I come under orders from those who are conducting the war. If I ask you to help me, you can refuse and I will find others who will help me. I have not even asked you for help yet. I have to do what I am ordered to do and I can promise you of its importance. That I am a foreigner is not my fault. I would rather have been born here.
To me, now, the most important is that we be not disturbed here,
Pablo said. To me, now, my duty is to those who are with me and to myself.
Thyself. Yes,
Anselmo said. Thyself now since a long time. Thyself and thy horses. Until thou hadst horses thou wert with us. Now thou art another capitalist more.
That is unjust,
said Pablo. I expose the horses all the time for the cause.
Very little,
said Anselmo scornfully. "Very little in my judgment. To steal, yes. To