But like all journalists I wish to write literature.
Just now, I am very busy on a study of Calvo Sotelo.
He was a very good fascist; a true Spanish fascist.
Franco and these other people are not.
I have been studying all of Sotelo's writing and speeches.
He was very intelligent and it was very intelligent that he was killed."
"I thought that you did not believe in political assassination."
"It is practised very extensively," Karkov said. "Very, very extensively." "But--" "We do not believe in acts of terrorism by individuals," Karkov had smiled.
"Not of course by criminal terrorist and counterrevolutionary organizations.
We detest with horror the duplicity and villainy of the murderous hyenas of Bukharinite wreckers and such dregs of humanity as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and their henchmen.
We hate and loathe these veritable fiends," he smiled again.
"But I still believe that political assassination can be said to be practised very extensively."
"You mean--"
"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 read _Mundo Obrero_," Robert Jordan had told him and Karkov had said,
"All right. Good.
I can take a joke too.
But there are very intelligent things in _Mundo Obrero_.
The only intelligent things written on this war."
"Yes," Robert Jordan had said.
"I agree with you.
But to get a full picture of what is happening you cannot read only the party organ."
"No," Karkov had said. "But you will not find any such picture if you read twenty papers and then, if you had it, I do not know what you would do with it.
I have such a picture almost constantly and what I do is try to forget it."
"You think it is that bad?"
"It is better now than it was.
We are getting rid of some of the worst.
But it is very rotten.
We are building a huge army now and some of the elements, those of Modesto, of El Campesino, of Lister and of Duran, are reliable.