For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

It is one thing to hold positions. It is another to attack positions and take them and it is something very different to manœuvre an army in the field, Robert Jordan thought as he sat there at the table.

At Velazquez 63 it was like being a member of a religious order—and Gaylord’s was a long way away from the feeling you had at the headquarters of the Fifth Regiment before it had been broken up into the brigades of the new army. At either of those places you felt that you were taking part in a crusade. That was the only word for it although it was a word that had been so worn and abused that it no longer gave its true meaning. You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife, something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at León and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that ...

Listen, Comrade Jordan. Do you know about the two kinds of fools?” “Plain and damn?” “No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia,” Karkov grinned and began. “First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes to the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the door and you see him there and you have never seen him before. He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow. First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them. Then he takes off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls. Then he takes off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool. That is the winter fool. “Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. That is a summer fool.

You know the Spanish are very strange,” Karkov went on. “This government has had much money. Much gold. They will give nothing to their friends. You are a friend. All right. You will do it for nothing and should not be rewarded. But to people representing an important firm or a country which is not friendly but must be influenced—to such people they give much. It is very interesting when you follow it closely.” “I do not like it. Also that money belongs to the Spanish workers.” “You are not supposed to like things. Only to understand,” Karkov had told him. “I teach you a little each time I see you and eventually you will acquire an education. It would be very interesting for a professor to be educated.”

“I mean nothing. But certainly we execute and destroy such veritable fiends and dregs of humanity and the treacherous dogs of generals and the revolting spectacle of admirals unfaithful to their trust. These are destroyed. They are not assassinated. You see the difference?” “I see,” Robert Jordan had said. “And because I make jokes sometime: and you know how dangerous it is to make jokes even in joke? Good. Because I make jokes, do not think that the Spanish people will not live to regret that they have not shot certain generals that even now hold commands. I do not like the shootings, you understand.” “I don’t mind them,” Robert Jordan said. “I do not like them but I do not mind them any more.” “I know that,” Karkov had said. “I have been told that.” “Is it important?” Robert Jordan said. “I was only trying to be truthful about it.” “It is regretful,” Karkov had said. “But it is one of the things that makes people be treated as reliable who would ordinarily have to spend much more time before attaining that category.” “Am I supposed to be reliable?” “In your work you are supposed to be very reliable. I must talk to you sometime to see how you are in your mind. It is regrettable that we never speak seriously.” “My mind is in suspension until we win the war,” Robert Jordan had said. “Then perhaps you will not need it for a long time. But you should be careful to exercise it a little.”

“I like it better at the front,” Robert Jordan had said. “The closer to the front the better the people.” “How do you like it behind the fascist lines?” “Very much. We have fine people there.” “Well, you see they must have their fine people behind our lines the same way. We find them and shoot them and they find ours and shoot them. When you are in their country you must always think of how many people they must send over to us.” “I have thought about them.”

“The Maria and I will prepare all for leaving,” Pilar said. Then to Robert Jordan, “Look at him,” nodding at Pablo on the gray horse, sitting him in the heavy-thighed herdsman manner, the horse’s nostrils widening as Pablo replaced the clip in the automatic rifle. “See what a horse has done for him.” “That I should have two horses,” Robert Jordan said fervently. “Danger is thy horse.” “Then give me a mule,” Robert Jordan grinned.

“You hijo de la gran puta!” he said softly. “Where the obscenity have you been?”

He felt the need to talk that, with him, was the sign that there had just been much danger. He could always tell how bad it had been by the strength of the desire to talk that came after.

Anselmo does not like to because he is a hunter, not a soldier. Don’t idealize him, either. Hunters kill animals and soldiers kill men. Don’t lie to yourself, he thought. Nor make up literature about it. You have been tainted with it for a long time now. And do not think against Anselmo either. He is a Christian. Something very rare in Catholic countries.

“Listen, old one,” Robert Jordan said. “It is because of the lack of time that there has been informality. What we do not have is time. Tomorrow we must fight. To me that is nothing. But for the Maria and me it means that we must live all of our life in this time.”

“We are lucky.” “No. We have two weak elements. The gypsy and Pablo. But the band of Sordo are as much better than we are as we are better than goat manure.”

“You have to stand it,” Robert Jordan said. “Hay que aguantarse. There are things like this in a war.”

They listened to the firing. “Primitivo wanted to go up there,” Robert Jordan said. “Art thou crazy?” Pilar said to the flat-faced man. “What kind of locos are we producing here?” “I wish to aid them.” “Qué va,” Pilar said. “Another romantic. Dost thou not believe thou wilt die quick enough here without useless voyages?”

Sordo was wounded in the calf of his leg and in two places in his left arm. He was very thirsty, his wounds had stiffened, and one of the wounds in his left arm was very painful. He also had a bad headache and as he lay waiting for the planes to come he thought of a joke in Spanish. It was, “Hay que tomar la muerte como si fuera aspirina,” which means, “You will have to take death as an aspirin.”

If one must die, he thought, and clearly one must, I can die. But I hate it. Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.

There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.

It is not you who decides what shall be done. You follow orders. Follow them and do not try to think beyond them. The orders on this are very clear. Too very clear. But you must not worry nor must you be frightened. For if you allow yourself the luxury of normal fear that fear will infect those who must work with you.

You do very well for an instructor in Spanish at the University of Montana, he joked at himself. You do all right for that. But do not start to thinking that you are anything very special. You haven’t gotten very far in this business.

I wish Grandfather were here instead of me. Well, maybe we will all be together by tomorrow night. If there should be any such damn fool business as a hereafter, and I’m sure there isn’t, he thought, I would certainly like to talk to him. Because there are a lot of things I would like to know. I have a right to ask him now because I have had to do the same sort of things myself. I don’t think he’d mind my asking now. I had no right to ask before. I understand him not telling me because he didn’t know me. But now I think that we would get along all right. I’d like to be able to talk to him now and get his advice. Hell, if I didn’t get advice I’d just like to talk to him. It’s a shame there is such a jump in time between ones like us. Then, as he thought, he realized that if there was any such thing as ever meeting, both he and his grandfather would be acutely embarrassed by the presence of his father. Any one has a right to do it, he thought. But it isn’t a good thing to do. I understand it, but I do not approve of it. Lâche was the word. But you do understand it? Sure, I understand it but. Yes, but. You have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do a thing like that.

I’ll never forget how sick it made me the first time I knew he was a cobarde. Go on, say it in English. Coward. It’s easier when you have it said and there is never any point in referring to a son of a bitch by some foreign term. He wasn’t any son of a bitch, though. He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have. Because if he wasn’t a coward he would have stood up to that woman and not let her bully him. I wonder what I would have been like if he had married a different woman? That’s something you’ll never know, he thought, and grinned. Maybe the bully in her helped to supply what was missing in the other. And you. Take it a little easy. Don’t get to referring to the good juice and such other things until you are through tomorrow. Don’t be snotty too soon. And then don’t be snotty at all. We’ll see what sort of juice you have tomorrow.

Coming down the trail there in the dark, alone with the good feeling that everything that had to be done was over for the next four hours, and with the confidence that had come from thinking back to concrete things, the knowledge that he would surely have to blow the bridge came to him almost with comfort. The uncertainty, the enlargement of the feeling of being uncertain, as when, through a misunderstanding of possible dates, one does not know whether the guests are really coming to a party, that had been with him ever since he had dispatched Andrés with the report to Golz, had all dropped from him now. He was sure now that the festival would not be cancelled. It’s much better to be sure, he thought. It’s always much better to be sure.

“Good night, my husband.” “Good night,” he said. “Good night, wife.” He heard her breathing steadily and regularly now and he knew she was asleep and he lay awake and very still not wanting to waken her by moving. He thought of all the part she had not told him and he lay there hating and he was pleased there would be killing in the morning. But I must not take any of it personally, he thought. Though how can I keep from it? I know that we did dreadful things to them too. But it was because we were uneducated and knew no better. But they did that on purpose and deliberately. Those who did that are the last flowering of what their education has produced. Those are the flowers of Spanish chivalry. What a people they have been. What sons of bitches from Cortez, Pizarro, Menéndez de Avila all down through Enrique Lister to Pablo. And what wonderful people. There is no finer and no worse people in the world. No kinder people and no crueler. And who understands them? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all. To understand is to forgive. That’s not true. Forgiveness has been exaggerated. Forgiveness is a Christian idea and Spain has never been a Christian country. It has always had its own special idol worship within the Church. Otra Virgen más. I suppose that was why they had to destroy the virgins of their enemies. Surely it was deeper with them, with the Spanish religion fanatics, than it was with the people. The people had grown away from the Church because the Church ...

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all the other time. I’d like to be an old man and to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

Don’t get angry. Getting angry is as bad as getting scared. But instead of sleeping with your girl you should have ridden all night through these hills with the woman to try to dig up enough people to make it work. Yes, he thought. And if anything happened to me so I was not here to blow it. Yes. That. That’s why you weren’t out. And you couldn’t send anybody out because you couldn’t run a chance of losing them and being short one more. You had to keep what you had and make a plan to do it with them. But your plan stinks. It stinks, I tell you. It was a night plan and it’s morning now. Night plans aren’t any good in the morning. The way you think at night is no good in the morning. So now you know it is no good.

Take it easy, he told himself. Don’t get into a rage. That’s just a way out too. There are always ways out. You’ve got to bite on the nail now. There isn’t any need to deny everything there’s been just because you are going to lose it. Don’t be like some damned snake with a broken back biting at itself; and your back isn’t broken either, you hound. Wait until you’re hurt before you start to cry. Wait until the fight before you get angry. There’s lots of time for it in a fight. It will be some use to you in a fight.

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one’s self, which could be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of this war is that way.

I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life.