Thanks for all the good advice and is it all right for me to love Maria?
Yes, himself said.
Even if there isn't supposed to be any such thing as love in a purely materialistic conception of society?
Since when did you ever have any such conception? himself asked.
Never.
And you never could have.
You're not a real Marxist and you know it.
You believe in Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. You believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Don't ever kid yourself with too much dialectics.
They are for some but not for you.
You have to know them in order not to be a sucker.
You have put many things in abeyance to win a war.
If this war is lost all of those things are lost.
But afterwards you can discard what you do not believe in.
There is plenty you do not believe in and plenty that you do believe in.
And another thing.
Don't ever kid yourself about loving some one.
It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it.
You never had it before and now you have it.
What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being.
There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it.
But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.
Cut out the dying stuff, he said to himself.
That's not the way we talk.
That's the way our friends the anarchists talk.
Whenever things get really bad they want to set fire to something and to die.
It's a very odd kind of mind they have.
Very odd.
Well, we're getting through today, old timer, he told himself.
It's nearly three o'clock now and there is going to be some food sooner or later.
They are still shooting up at Sordo's, which means that they have him surrounded and are waiting to bring up more people, probably.
Though they have to make it before dark.
I wonder what it is like up at Sordo's.
That's what we all have to expect, given enough time.
I imagine it is not too jovial up at Sordo's.
We certainly got Sordo into a fine jam with that horse business.
How does it go in Spanish? _Un callejon sin salida_.
A passageway with no exit.
I suppose I could go through with it all right.
You only have to do it once and it is soon over with.
But wouldn't it be luxury to fight in a war some time where, when you were surrounded, you could surrender? _Estamos copados_.
We are surrounded.
That was the great panic cry of this war.
Then the next thing was that you were shot; with nothing bad before if you were lucky.
Sordo wouldn't be lucky that way.
Neither would they when the time ever came.
It was three o'clock.
Then he heard the far-off, distant throbbing and, looking up, he saw the planes.
27
El Sordo was making his fight on a hilltop.