"Intelligent," Robert Jordan said lamely.
Maria giggled and the woman shook her head sadly.
"How well you begin and how it ends, Don Roberto."
"Don't call me Don Roberto."
"It is a joke.
Here we say Don Pablo for a joke.
As we say the Senorita Maria for a joke."
"I don't joke that way," Robert Jordan said.
"Camarada to me is what all should be called with seriousness in this war.
In the joking commences a rottenness."
"Thou art very religious about thy politics," the woman teased him.
"Thou makest no jokes?"
"Yes.
I care much for jokes but not in the form of address.
It is like a flag."
"I could make jokes about a flag.
Any flag," the woman laughed.
"To me no one can joke of anything.
The old flag of yellow and gold we called pus and blood.
The flag of the Republic with the purple added we call blood, pus and permanganate.
It is a joke."
"He is a Communist," Maria said.
"They are very serious _gente_."
"Are you a Communist?"
"No I am an anti-fascist."
"For a long time?"
"Since I have understood fascism."
"How long is that?"
"For nearly ten years."
"That is not much time," the woman said.
"I have been a Republican for twenty years."
"My father was a Republican all his life," Maria said.
"It was for that they shot him."
"My father was also a Republican all his life.
Also my grandfather," Robert Jordan said.
"In what country?"
"The United States."
"Did they shoot them?" the woman asked.
"_Que va_," Maria said.
"The United States is a country of Republicans.
They don't shoot you for being a Republican there."
"All the same it is a good thing to have a grandfather who was a Republican," the woman said.
"It shows a good blood."
"My grandfather was on the Republican national committee," Robert Jordan said.
That impressed even Maria.
"And is thy father still active in the Republic?" Pilar asked.
"No.
He is dead."
"Can one ask how he died?"
"He shot himself."