How about that?
And that poor bloody Sordo abandoning his pidgin Spanish to explain it to him so carefully.
As though he had not thought about that whenever he had done any particularly bad thinking ever since Golz had first mentioned it.
As though he hadn't been living with that like a lump of undigested dough in the pit of his stomach ever since the night before the night before last.
What a business.
You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything.
There was never any of what this is.
You think that is one thing that you will never have.
And then, on a lousy show like this, co-ordinating two chicken-crut guerilla bands to help you blow a bridge under impossible conditions, to abort a counteroffensive that will probably already be started, you run into a girl like this Maria.
Sure.
That is what you would do.
You ran into her rather late, that was all.
So a woman like that Pilar practically pushed this girl into your sleeping bag and what happens?
Yes, what happens?
What happens?
You tell me what happens, please.
Yes.
That is just what happens.
That is exactly what happens.
Don't lie to yourself about Pilar pushing her into your sleeping robe and try to make it nothing or to make it lousy.
You were gone when you first saw her.
When she first opened her mouth and spoke to you it was there already and you know it.
Since you have it and you never thought you would have it, there is no sense throwing dirt at it, when you know what it is and you know it came the first time you looked at her as she came out bent over carrying that iron cooking platter.
It hit you then and you know it and so why lie about it?
You went all strange inside every time you looked at her and every time she looked at you.
So why don't you admit it?
All right, I'll admit it.
And as for Pilar pushing her onto you, all Pilar did was be an intelligent woman.
She had taken good care of the girl and she saw what was coming the minute the girl came back into the cave with the cooking dish.
So she made things easier. She made things easier so that there was last night and this afternoon.
She is a damned sight more civilized than you are and she knows what time is all about.
Yes, he said to himself, I think we can admit that she has certain notions about the value of time.
She took a beating and all because she did not want other people losing what she'd lost and then the idea of admitting it was lost was too big a thing to swallow.
So she took a beating back there on the hill and I guess we did not make it any easier for her.
Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole nights with her.
Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all.
One night that is past, once one afternoon, one night to come; maybe.
No, sir.
Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pajamas, not the morning paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she's there and that you're not alone.
No.
None of that.
But why, when this is all you are going to get in life of what you want; when you have found it; why not just one night in a bed with sheets?
You ask for the impossible.
You ask for the ruddy impossible.
So if you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had better love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation will lack in duration and in continuity.
Do you hear that?
In the old days people devoted a lifetime to it.
And now when you have found it if you get two nights you wonder where all the luck came from.
Two nights.
Two nights to love, honor and cherish.