"I heard it from Buitrago to the Escorial," he said, naming all the stretch of country on the other side of the lines.
"I know no one in Buitrago nor in Escorial," Pablo told him.
"There are many people on the other side of the mountains who were not there before.
Where are you from?"
"Avila.
What are you going to do with the dynamite?"
"Blow up a bridge."
"What bridge?"
"That is my business."
"If it is in this territory, it is my business.
You cannot blow bridges close to where you live.
You must live in one place and operate in another.
I know my business.
One who is alive, now, after a year, knows his business."
"This is my business," Robert Jordan said.
"We can discuss it together.
Do you wish to help us with the sacks?"
"No," said Pablo and shook his head.
The old man turned toward him suddenly and spoke rapidly and furiously in a dialect that Robert Jordan could just follow.
It was like reading Quevedo.
Anselmo was speaking old Castilian and it went something like this,
"Art thou a brute?
Yes.
Art thou a beast?
Yes, many times Hast thou a brain?
Nay.
None.
Now we come for something of consummate importance and thee, with thy dwelling place to be undisturbed, puts thy fox-hole before the interests of humanity.
Before the interests of thy people.
I this and that in the this and that of thy father.
I this and that and that in thy this. _Pick up that bag_."
Pablo looked down.
"Every one has to do what he can do according to how it can be truly done," he said.
"I live here and I operate beyond Segovia.
If you make a disturbance here, we will be hunted out of these mountains.
It is only by doing nothing here that we are able to live in these mountains.
It is the principle of the fox."
"Yes," said Anselmo bitterly.
"It is the principle of the fox when we need the wolf."
"I am more wolf than thee," Pablo said and Robert Jordan knew that he would pick up the sack.
"Hi.
Ho. . . ," Anselmo looked at him.
"Thou art more wolf than me and I am sixty-eight years old."
He spat on the ground and shook his head.
"You have that many years?" Robert Jordan asked, seeing that now, for the moment, it would be all right and trying to make it go easier.
"Sixty-eight in the month of July."
"If we should ever see that month," said Pablo.
"Let me help you with the pack," he said to Robert Jordan.
"Leave the other to the old man."
He spoke, not sullenly, but almost sadly now.