"ErnestHemingway-ForWhomTheBellTolls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemingway Ernest)

"Good," Pablo said. "I shut up. It is thou who commands now and you should continue to look at the pretty pictures. But remember that I am not stupid."
The woman of Pablo could feel her rage changing to sorrow and to a feeling of the thwarting of all hope and promise. She knew this feeling from when she was a girl and she knew the things that caused it all through her life. It came now suddenly and she put it away from her and would not let it touch her, neither her nor the Republic, and she said, "Now we will eat. Serve the bowls from the pot, Maria."




5


Robert Jordan pushed aside the saddle blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave and, stepping out, took a deep breath of the cold night air. The mist had cleared away and the stars were out. There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat dried in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat), of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream. Dew had fallen heavily since the wind had dropped, but, as he stood there, he thought there would be frost by morning.
As he stood breathing deep and then listening to the night, he heard first, firing far away, and then he heard an owl cry in the timber below, where the horse corral was slung. Then inside the cave he could hear the gypsy starting to sing and the soft chording of a guitar.
"_I had an inheritance from my father_," the artificially hardened voice rose harshly and hung there. Then went on:


"_It was the moon and the sun_
"_And though I roam all over the world_
"_The spending of it's never done_."


The guitar thudded with chorded applause for the singer. "Good," Robert Jordan heard some one say. "Give us the Catalan, gypsy."
"No."
"Yes. Yes. The Catalan."
"All right," the gypsy said and sang mournfully,


"_My nose is flat_.
"_My face is black_.
"_But still I am a man_."


"Ole!" some one said. "Go on, gypsy!"
The gypsy's voice rose tragically and mockingly.


"_Thank God I am a Negro_.
"_And not a Catalan!_"


"There is much noise," Pablo's voice said. "Shut up, gypsy."
"Yes," he heard the woman's voice. "There is too much noise. You could call the _guardia civil_ with that voice and still it has no quality."
"I know another verse," the gypsy said and the guitar commenced
"Save it," the woman told him.
The guitar stopped.
"I am not good in voice tonight. So there is no loss," the gypsy said and pushing the blanket aside he came out into the dark.
Robert Jordan watched him walk over to a tree and then come toward him.
"Roberto," the gypsy said softly.
"Yes, Rafael," he said. He knew the gypsy had been affected by the wine from his voice. He himself had drunk the two absinthes and some wine but his head was clear and cold from the strain of the difficulty with Pablo.
"Why didst thou not kill Pablo?" the gypsy said very softly.
"Why kill him?"
"You have to kill him sooner or later. Why did you not approve of the moment?"