The British all had heard of them though because they had to study our Civil War much more than people did on the Continent.
Karkov said after this was over I could go to the Lenin Institute in Moscow if I wanted to.
He said I could go to the military academy of the Red Army if I wanted to do that.
I wonder what Grandfather would think of that?
Grandfather, who never knowingly sat at table with a Democrat in his life.
Well, I don't want to be a soldier, he thought.
I know that.
So that's out.
I just want us to win this war.
I guess really good soldiers are really good at very little else, he thought.
That's obviously untrue.
Look at Napoleon and Wellington.
You're very stupid this evening, he thought.
Usually his mind was very good company and tonight it had been when he thought about his grandfather.
Then thinking of his father had thrown him off.
He understood his father and he forgave him everything and he pitied him but he was ashamed of him.
You better not think at all, he told himself.
Soon you will be with Maria and you won't have to think.
That's the best way now that everything is worked out.
When you have been concentrating so hard on something you can't stop and your brain gets to racing like a flywheel with the weight gone.
You better just not think.
But just suppose, he thought.
Just suppose that when the planes unload they smash those anti-tank guns and just blow hell out of the positions and the old tanks roll good up whatever hill it is for once and old Golz boots that bunch of drunks, _clochards_, bums, fanatics and heroes that make up the Quatorzieme Brigade ahead of him, and I _know_ how good Duran's people are in Golz's other brigade, and we are in Segovia tomorrow night.
Yes.
Just suppose, he said to himself.
I'll settle for La Granja, he told himself.
But you are going to have to blow that bridge, he suddenly knew absolutely.
There won't be any calling off.
Because the way you have just been supposing there for a minute is how the possibilities of that attack look to those who have ordered it.
Yes, you will have to blow the bridge, he knew truly.
Whatever happens to Andres doesn't matter.
Coming down the trail there in the dark, alone with the good feeling that everything that had to be done was over for the next four hours, and with the confidence that had come from thinking back to concrete things, the knowledge that he would surely have to blow the bridge came to him almost with comfort.
The uncertainty, the enlargement of the feeling of being uncertain, as when, through a misunderstanding of possible dates, one does not know whether the guests are really coming to a party, that had been with him ever since he had dispatched Andres with the report to Golz, had all dropped from him now.
He was sure now that the festival would not be cancelled.
It's much better to be sure, he thought.
It's always much better to be sure.
31
So now they were in the robe again together and it was late in the last night.
Maria lay close against him and he felt the long smoothness of her thighs against his and her breasts like two small hills that rise out of the long plain where there is a well, and the far country beyond the hills was the valley of her throat where his lips were.
He lay very quiet and did not think and she stroked his head with her hand.
"Roberto," Maria said very softly and kissed him.
"I am ashamed.
I do not wish to disappoint thee but there is a great soreness and much pain.
I do not think I would be any good to thee."
"There is always a great soreness and much pain," he said.
"Nay, rabbit.
That is nothing.
We will do nothing that makes pain."
"It is not that.
It is that I am not good to receive thee as I wish to."