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For Whom the Bell Tolls Chapter 14
It is snowing. Robert Jordan is cranky. He wants to go to the upper post, where Anselmo waits, and Pablo tells him that he will not be able to find it in the snow. Pablo acts strange, asking if he will sleep outside, and Robert Jordan curses him in his mind. Robert Jordan takes wine. Pablo tells him that there are two different kinds of storms, depending on where they come from, and that this is a great one. Robert Jordan looks at the snow and is over his rage: "It was like the excitement of the battle except it was clean... In a snowstorm it always seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies." Chapter 14, pg. 182
Pablo tells them that he worked for a leftist movement and met Pilar when she was with the bullfighter Finito de Palencia, who was not much of a bullfighter. Pilar remembers differently. She can see Finito in his glory, victorious as the bright sword plunges into the bull. She says that Finito was one of the bravest men in the ring and did not fear death, as Pablo does. Out of the ring, though, he was one of the most fearful men Pilar had ever known. The bulls often struck him in the chest because he was so short. One night after a fight, there was a banquet in his honor. He drank a lot. Pilar was taken in with the festivities and did not notice he was in bad shape. When they presented him with the head of the bull, it stared at him as if alive, and he was horrified and said "no" again and again, bleeding from the mouth. He died that winter of the chest wounds. Primitivo says that if he was so short, he should not have fought bulls. Pilar is enraged with his simpleness. She can still see his body, his deep scars, and remembers how she would rub his sore muscles and he would tell her she was much woman. Bull force and courage do not last, but she has lasted, and wonders for what.
The gypsy brings a report on the enemy posts and the road: nothing unusual. Fernando will lead Robert Jordan to where Anselmo is posted.
