He touched the lower part of his leg and it was as though it were not part of his body.
He looked down the hill slope again and he thought, I hate to leave it, is all.
I hate to leave it very much and I hope I have done some good in it.
I have tried to with what talent I had. _Have, you mean.
All right, have_.
I have fought for what I believed in for a year now.
If we win here we will win everywhere.
The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life.
You've had just as good a life as grandfather's though not as long.
You've had as good a life as any one because of these last days.
You do not want to complain when you have been so lucky.
I wish there was some way to pass on what I've learned, though.
Christ, I was learning fast there at the end.
I'd like to talk to Karkov.
That is in Madrid.
Just over the hills there, and down across the plain.
Down out of the gray rocks and the pines, the heather and the gorse, across the yellow high plateau you see it rising white and beautiful.
That part is just as true as Pilar's old women drinking the blood down at the slaughterhouse.
There's no one thing that's true.
It's all true.
The way the planes are beautiful whether they are ours or theirs.
The hell they are, he thought.
You take it easy, now, he said.
Get turned over now while you still have time.
Listen, one thing.
Do you remember? Pilar and the hand?
Do you believe that crap?
No, he said.
Not with everything that's happened?
No, I don't believe it.
She was nice about it early this morning before the show started.
She was afraid maybe I believed it.
I don't, though.
But she does.
They see something.
Or they feel something. Like a bird dog.
What about extra-sensory perception?
What about obscenity? he said.
She wouldn't say good-by, he thought, because she knew if she did Maria would never go.
That Pilar.
Get yourself turned over, Jordan.
But he was reluctant to try it.
Then he remembered that he had the small flask in his hip pocket and he thought, I'll take a good spot of the giant killer and then I'll try it.
But the flask was not there when he felt for it.
Then he felt that much more alone because he knew there was not going to be even that.
I guess I'd counted on that, he said.
Do you suppose Pablo took it?
Don't be silly.
You must have lost it at the bridge.