For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

“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 eat well, yes. To murder, yes. To fight, no.” “You are an old man who will make himself trouble with his mouth.” “I am an old man who is afraid of no one,” Anselmo told him. “Also I am an old man without horses.” “You are an old man who may not live long.” “I am an old man who will live until I die,” Anselmo said. “And I am not afraid of foxes.” Pablo said nothing but picked up the pack. “Nor of wolves either,” Anselmo said, picking up the other pack. “If thou art a wolf.” “Shut thy mouth,” Pablo said to him. “Thou art an old man who always talks too much.” “And would do whatever he said he would do,” Anselmo said, bent under the pack. “And who now is hungry. And thirsty. Go on, guerilla leader with the sad face. Lead us to something to eat.”

You do not know how he was before; but you do know that he is going bad fast and without hiding it. When he starts to hide it he will have made a decision. Remember that, he told himself. The first friendly thing he does, he will have made a decision.

All the best ones, when you thought it over, were gay. It was much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was like having immortality while you were still alive. That was a complicated one. There were not many of them left though. No, there were not many of the gay ones left. There were very damned few of them left. And if you keep on thinking like that, my boy, you won’t be left either. Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old comrade. You’re a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker. Man, I’m hungry, he thought. I hope Pablo eats well.

“He was a little strange,” Robert Jordan said. “I think he was a little crazy.” “But very dexterous at producing explosions,” the gypsy said. “And very brave.” “But crazy,” Robert Jordan said. “In this you have to have very much head and be very cold in the head. That was no way to talk.” “And you,” Pablo said. “If you are wounded in such a thing as this bridge, you would be willing to be left behind?” “Listen,” Robert Jordan said and, leaning forward, he dipped himself another cup of the wine. “Listen to me clearly. If ever I should have any little favors to ask of any man, I will ask him at the time.” “Good,” said the gypsy approvingly. “In this way speak the good ones.

He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone; and he realized, very suddenly, that he did not care. There were so many things that he had not to care about, why should he care about that?

“Pablo was brave in the beginning,” Anselmo said. “Pablo was something serious in the beginning.” “He killed more people than the cholera,” the gypsy said. “At the start of the movement, Pablo killed more people than the typhoid fever.” “But since a long time he is muy flojo,” Anselmo said. “He is very flaccid. He is very much afraid to die.”

“Men. It is a shame to us women that we make them.

I speak to you as though I knew you for a long time.” “It is like that,” Robert Jordan said, “when people understand one another.”

“We will take her after the bridge,” Robert Jordan said. “If we are alive after the bridge, we will take her.” “I do not like to hear you speak in that manner. That manner of speaking never brings luck.” “I spoke in that manner only to make a promise,” Robert Jordan said. “I am not of those who speak gloomily.”

“You like to hunt?” “Yes, man. More than anything. We all hunt in my village. You do not like to hunt?” “No,” said Robert Jordan. “I do not like to kill animals.” “With me it is the opposite,” the old man said. “I do not like to kill men.” “Nobody does except those who are disturbed in the head,” Robert Jordan said. “But I feel nothing against it when it is necessary. When it is for the cause.”

“You have killed?” Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the dark and of their day together. “Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe the wizardry of the gypsies about the brotherhood with animals. No. I am against all killing of men.” “Yet you have killed.” “Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven.” “By whom?” “Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know.” “You have not God any more?” “No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have God.” “They claim Him.” “Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.” “Then it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing.” “I believe so,” Anselmo said. “Since you put it clearly in that way I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo.” “To win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been true.” “Clearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas,” Anselmo said.

“It should be of the highest interest,” Anselmo said and hearing him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the English pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jordan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal way, he resented Golz’s orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out. And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the future of the human race can turn. As it can turn on everything that happens in this war. You have only one thing to do and you must do it. Only one thing, hell, he thought. If it were one thing it was easy. Stop worrying, you windy bastard, he said to himself. Think about something else.

“What drink is that?” the gypsy asked. “A medicine,” Robert Jordan said. “Do you want to taste it?” “What is it for?” “For everything,” Robert Jordan said. “It cures everything. If you have anything wrong this will cure it.” “Let me taste it,” the gypsy said. Robert Jordan pushed the cup toward him. It was a milky yellow now with the water and he hoped the gypsy would not take more than a swallow. There was very little of it left and one cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of book shops, of kiosques, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of the Guaranty Trust Company and the Ile de la Cité, of Foyot’s old hotel, and of being able to read and relax in the evening; of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.

This foreigner comes here to do a thing for the good of the foreigners. For his good we must be sacrificed. I am for the good and the safety of all.” “Safety,” the wife of Pablo said. “There is no such thing as safety. There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great danger. In seeking safety now you lose all.”

I am tired, he thought, and perhaps my judgment is not good. But my obligation is the bridge and to fulfill that, I must take no useless risk of myself until I complete that duty. Of course it is sometimes more of a risk not to accept chances which are necessary to take but I have done this so far, trying to let the situation take its own course. If it is true, as the gypsy says, that they expected me to kill Pablo then I should have done that. But it was never clear to me that they did expect that. For a stranger to kill where he must work with the people afterwards is very bad. It may be done in action, and it may be done if backed by sufficient discipline, but in this case I think it would be very bad, although it was a temptation and seemed a short and simple way.

“Every one needs to talk to some one,” the woman said. “Before we had religion and other nonsense. Now for every one there should be some one to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valor that one could have one becomes very alone.” “We are not alone. We are all together.”

“For the bridges; the boy,” Agustín said. “This he must know. Look at the fine manner in which the other organized the train.” “Yes,” Pilar said. “It was really he who planned all.” “You for energy and resolution,” Agustín said. “But Pablo for the moving. Pablo for the retreat. Force him now to study it.” “You are a man of intelligence.” “Intelligent, yes,” Agustín said. “But sin picardía. Pablo for that.” “With his fear and all?” “With his fear and all.” “And what do you think of the bridges?” “It is necessary. That I know. Two things we must do. We must leave here and we must win. The bridges are necessary if we are to win.” “If Pablo is so smart, why does he not see that?” “He wants things as they are for his own weakness. He wants to stay in the eddy of his own weakness. But the river is rising. Forced to a change, he will be smart in the change. Es muy vivo.” “It is good that the boy did not kill him.” “Qué va. The gypsy wanted me to kill him last night. The gypsy is an animal.” “You’re an animal, too,” she said. “But intelligent.” “We are both intelligent,” Agustín said. “But the talent is Pablo!” “But difficult to put up with. You do not know how ruined.” “Yes. But a talent. Look, Pilar. To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material.”

“If you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing.

If that woman could only write. He would try to write it and if he had luck and could remember it perhaps he could get it down as she told it. God, how she could tell a story. She’s better than Quevedo, he thought. He never wrote the death of any Don Faustino as well as she told it. I wish I could write well enough to write that story, he thought. What we did. Not what the others did to us. He knew enough about that. He knew plenty about that behind the lines. But you had to have known the people before. You had to know what they had been in the village. Because of our mobility and because we did not have to stay afterwards to take the punishment we never knew how anything really ended, he thought. You stayed with a peasant and his family. You came at night and ate with them. In the day you were hidden and the next night you were gone. You did your job and cleared out. The next time you came that way you heard that they had been shot. It was as simple as that. But you were always gone when it happened. The partizans did their damage and pulled out. The peasants stayed and took the punishment.

A Spaniard was only really loyal to his village in the end. First Spain of course, then his own tribe, then his province, then his village, his family and finally his trade. If you knew Spanish he was prejudiced in your favor, if you knew his province it was that much better, but if you knew his village and his trade you were in as far as any foreigner ever could be. He never felt like a foreigner in Spanish and they did not really treat him like a foreigner most of the time; only when they turned on you. Of course they turned on you. They turned on you often but they always turned on every one. They turned on themselves, too. If you had three together, two would unite against one, and then the two would start to betray each other. Not always, but often enough for you to take enough cases and start to draw it as a conclusion.

The first thing was to win the war. If we did not win the war everything was lost.

“What barbarians,” said Pilar. “Where is El Sordo? I do not see him.” “He is here. He is probably inside,” answered Joaquín and stopping now, and resting the rifle butt on the ground, said, “Pilar, listen to me. And thou, Maria. Forgive me if I have molested you speaking of things of the family. I know that all have the same troubles and it is more valuable not to speak of them.” “That you should speak,” Pilar said. “For what are we born if not to aid one another? And to listen and say nothing is a cold enough aid.” “But it can molest the Maria. She has too many things of her own.” “Qué va,” Maria said. “Mine are such a big bucket that yours falling in will never fill it.

“Why do you speak in such a brutal manner, Pilar?” Maria said to her. “I love thee very much but thou art acting very barbarous.” “It is possible that I am barbarous,” Pilar said. “Listen, inglés. Do you know what you are going to say to El Sordo?” “Yes.” “Because he is a man of few words unlike me and thee and this sentimental menagerie.” “Why do you talk thus?” Maria asked again, angrily. “I don’t know,” said Pilar as she strode along. “Why do you think?” “I do not know.” “At times many things tire me,” Pilar said angrily. “You understand? And one of them is to have forty-eight years. You hear me? Forty-eight years and an ugly face. And another is to see panic in the face of a failed bullfighter of Communist tendencies when I say, as a joke, I might kiss him.” “It’s not true, Pilar,” the boy said. “You did not see that.” “Qué va, it’s not true. And I obscenity in the milk of all of you.

And I have made a mistake, Robert Jordan thought to himself. I have told Spaniards we can do something better than they can when the rule is never to speak of your own exploits or abilities. When I should have flattered them I have told them what I think they should do and now they are furious. Well, they will either get over it or they will not.

“I appreciate your aid and your loyalty,” Robert Jordan said. “I appreciate the difficulty caused by the timing of the blowing of the bridge.” “Don’t talk of that,” El Sordo said. “We are here to do what we can do. But this is complicated.” “And on paper very simple,” Robert Jordan grinned. “On paper the bridge is blown at the moment the attack starts in order that nothing shall come up the road. It is very simple.” “That they should let us do something on paper,” El Sordo said. “That we should conceive and execute something on paper.” “ ‘Paper bleeds little,’ ” Robert Jordan quoted the proverb. “But it is very useful,” Pilar said. “Es muy utíl. What I would like to do is use thy orders for that purpose.” “Me too,” said Robert Jordan. “But you could never win a war like that.”

In all the work that they, the partizans, did, they brought added danger and bad luck to the people that sheltered them and worked with them. For what? So that, eventually, there should be no more danger and so that the country should be a good place to live in. That was true no matter how trite it sounded.

He believed in the Republic as a form of government but the Republic would have to get rid of all of that bunch of horse thieves that brought it to the pass it was in when the rebellion started. Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.

The time for getting back will not be until the fall of thirty-seven. I left in the summer of thirty-six and though the leave is for a year you do not need to be back until the fall term opens in the following year. There is a lot of time between now and the fall term. There is a lot of time between now and day after tomorrow if you want to put it that way.

Once you accept the idea of demolition as a problem it is only a problem. But there was plenty that was not so good that went with it although God knows you took it easily enough. There was the constant attempt to approximate the conditions of successful assassination that accompanied the demolition. Did big words make it more defensible? Did they make killing any more palatable? You took to it a little too readily if you ask me, he told himself. And what you will be like or just exactly what you will be suited for when you leave the service of the Republic is, to me, he thought, extremely doubtful. But my guess is you will get rid of all that by writing about it, he said. Once you write it down it is all gone. It will be a good book if you can write it. Much better than the other. But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be very thankful for it.

I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years; granted that your life has been full up to the time that the seventy hours start and that you have reached a certain age.

So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it. Now, ahora, maintenant, heute. Now, it has a funny sound to be a whole world and your life. Esta noche, tonight, ce soir, heute abend. Life and wife, Vie and Mari. No it didn’t work out. The French turned it into husband. There was now and frau; but that did not prove anything either. Take dead, mort, muerto, and todt. Todt was the deadest of them all. War, guerre, guerra, and krieg. Krieg was the most like war, or was it? Or was it only that he knew German the least well? Sweetheart, chérie, prenda, and schatz. He would trade them all for Maria. There was a name.

You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything.

I did not know that I could ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen to me. I would like to have it for my whole life. You will, the other part of him said. You will. You have it now and that is all your whole life is; now. There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

I’ve known a lot of gypsies and they are strange enough. But so are we. The difference is we have to make an honest living. Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do not know. We know nothing about what happens to us in the nights. When it happens in the day though, it is something. Whatever happened, happened and now this woman not only has to make the girl say it when she did not want to; but she has to take it over and make it her own. She has to make it into a gypsy thing. I thought she took a beating up the hill but she was certainly dominating just now back there. If it had been evil she should have been shot. But it wasn’t evil. It was only wanting to keep her hold on life. To keep it through Maria.

“He was short of stature and he had a thin voice and much fear of bulls. Never have I seen a man with more fear before the bullfight and never have I seen a man with less fear in the ring. You,” she said to Pablo. “You are afraid to die now. You think that is something of importance. But Finito was afraid all the time and in the ring he was like a lion.”

“If he was so short he should not have tried to be a matador,” Primitivo said. Pilar looked at Robert Jordan and shook her head. Then she bent over the big iron pot, still shaking her head. What a people they are, she thought. What a people are the Spaniards, “and if he was so short he should not have tried to be a matador.” And I hear it and say nothing. I have no rage for that and having made an explanation I am silent. How simple it is when one knows nothing. Qué sencillo! Knowing nothing one says, “He was not much of a matador.” Knowing nothing another says, “He was tubercular.” And another says, after one, knowing, has explained, “If he was so short he should not have tried to be a matador.”

“Any one who lives either by the sea or by the land knows that it is the moon and not the month which counts,” the soldier who was cooking said. “Now for example, we have just started the moon of May. Yet it is coming on June.”

“Come on and eat. In my country a man does not eat before his woman.” “That is thy country. Here it is better to eat after.” “Eat with him,” Pablo said, looking up from the table. “Eat with him. Drink with him. Sleep with him. Die with him. Follow the customs of his country.”

“But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here,” Primitivo said. “It is possible.” “Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here.” “Yes, we will have to fight.” “But are there not many fascists in your country?” “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.” “But you cannot destroy them until they rebel?” “No,” Robert Jordan said. “We cannot destroy them. But we can educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it.”

“Why do you say that?” Primitivo asked him. “Are you changing your politics?” “No. But it was barbarous,” Pablo said. “In those days I was very barbarous.” “And now you are drunk,” Pilar said. “Yes,” Pablo said. “With your permission.” “I liked you better when you were barbarous,” the woman said. “Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practise in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in his own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.”

“I don’t believe you can drink,” he said to Pablo. “Nor that you’re drunk.” “I am drunk,” Pablo said with dignity. “To drink is nothing. It is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho.” “I doubt it,” Robert Jordan told him. “Cowardly, yes.”

Look at him, Robert Jordan thought. Now he is friendly. He has shifted like the wind. He has the face and the body of a pig and I know he is many times a murderer and yet he has the sensitivity of a good aneroid. Yes, he thought, and the pig is a very intelligent animal, too. Pablo has hatred for us, or perhaps it is only for our projects, and pushes his hatred with insults to the point where you are ready to do away with him and when he sees that this point has been reached he drops it and starts all new and clean again.

It has been around twice now. It is a vast wheel, set at an angle, and each time it goes around and then is back to where it starts. One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either, he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical, rising and falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are back again now, he thought, and nothing is settled.

In a revolution you could not admit to outsiders who helped you nor that any one knew more than he was supposed to know. He had learned that. If a thing was right fundamentally the lying was not supposed to matter. There was a lot of lying though. He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.