No one could tell from the bodies of these wounded men he would leave in beds at the Palace, that they were Russians.
Nothing proved a naked dead man was a Russian.
Your nationality and your politics did not show when you were dead.
Robert Jordan had asked Karkov how he felt about the necessity of performing this act and Karkov had said that he had not looked forward to it.
"How were you going to do it?" Robert Jordan had asked him and had added, "You know it isn't so simple just suddenly to poison people."
And Karkov had said,
"Oh, yes, it is when you carry it always for your own use."
Then he had opened his cigarette case and showed Robert Jordan what he carried in one side of it.
"But the first thing anybody would do if they took you prisoner would be to take your cigarette case," Robert Jordan had objected.
"They would have your hands up."
"But I have a little more here," Karkov had grinned and showed the lapel of his jacket.
"You simply put the lapel in your mouth like this and bite it and swallow."
"That's much better," Robert Jordan had said.
"Tell me, does it smell like bitter almonds the way it always does in detective stories?"
"I don't know," Karkov said delightedly.
"I have never smelled it.
Should we break a little tube and smell it?"
"Better keep it."
"Yes," Karkov said and put the cigarette case away.
"I am not a defeatist, you understand, but it is always possible that such serious times might come again and you cannot get this anywhere.
Have you seen the communique from the Cordoba front?
It is very beautiful.
It is now my favorite among all the communiques."
"What did it say?"
Robert Jordan had come to Madrid from the Cordoban Front and he had the sudden stiffening that comes when some one jokes about a thing which you yourself may joke about but which they may not. "Tell me?"
"_Nuestra gloriosa tropa siga avanzando sin perder ni una sola palma de terreno_," Karkov said in his strange Spanish.
"It didn't really say that," Robert Jordan doubted.
"Our glorious troops continue to advance without losing a foot of ground," Karkov repeated in English.
"It is in the communique.
I will find it for you."
You could remember the men you knew who died in the fighting around Pozoblanco; but it was a joke at Gaylord's.
So that was the way it was at Gaylord's now.
Still there had not always been Gaylord's and if the situation was now one which produced such a thing as Gaylord's out of the survivors of the early days, he was glad to see Gaylord's and to know about it.
You are a long way from how you felt in the Sierra and at Carabanchel and at Usera, he thought. You corrupt very easily, he thought. But was it corruption or was it merely that you lost the naivete that you started with? Would it not be the same in anything? Who else kept that first chastity of mind about their work that young doctors, young priests, and young soldiers usually started with?
The priests certainly kept it, or they got out. I suppose the Nazis keep it, he thought, and the Communists who have a severe enough selfdiscipline.
But look at Karkov.
He never tired of considering the case of Karkov.
The last time he had been at Gaylord's Karkov had been wonderful about a certain British economist who had spent much time in Spain.
Robert Jordan had read this man's writing for years and he had always respected him without knowing anything about him.
He had not cared very much for what this man had written about Spain.
It was too clear and simple and too open and shut and many of the statistics he knew were faked by wishful thinking.
But he thought you rarely cared for journalism written about a country you really knew about and he respected the man for his intentions.
Then he had seen the man, finally, on the afternoon when they had attacked at Carabanchel.They were sitting in the lee of the bull ring and there was shooting down the two streets and every one was nervous waiting for the attack.
A tank had been promised and it had not come up and Montero was sitting with his head in his hand saying,
"The tank has not come.
The tank has not come."
It was a cold day and the yellow dust was blowing down the street and Montero had been hit in the left arm and the arm was stiffening.
"We have to have a tank," he said.
"We must wait for the tank, but we cannot wait."
His wound was making him sound petulant.