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For Whom the Bell Tolls Chapter 9
Robert Jordan thinks planes are mechanized doom. Maria says they look like death. The woman says they look like planes. They come so close that they can see the pilots. The woman asks if he and Maria made love, and since neither of them will say, she assumes they have. He says he cannot take a woman where she goes, and the woman jokes that he may take two where he is going, meaning he and Maria will go to their deaths. She says she is no coward, but knows some may not live to see another Sunday. She knows that she has hurt Pablo with her talk of Valencia, and will curse and want to kill him, but she will never wound him. She sees the success he was and the failure that he has become. In bed he cries about how the people no longer follow him, and how he fears death. She tells him that there isn't room in bed for him and her and his fear. She tells Robert Jordan that she has felt sadness, but it did not crush her as it did Pablo; she believes in the Republic as others believe religion.
The woman thinks Robert Jordan is cold because he does not fear death, but he says he is only preoccupied with work. He tells her that he cares for Maria very deeply. She says she will leave her with him, for there is not much time, and denies this is something she read in his palm. She and Agustín bicker, "the insults having reached the ultimate formalism in Spanish in which the acts are never stated but only implied." Chapter 9, pg. 93 She laughs and says he has no variety in his obscenities, only force. He talks of Pablo's cowardice, but also of his wiliness and understanding, amidst the unbounded idiocy in the war. He says that she is loyal and intuitive, but not smart. She argues that Pablo is rendered useless by his fear, but Agustín still has confidence in him. He says that Pablo resists blowing the bridges because he wants to stay, out of his own weakness. He says that they are both intelligent, but Pablo has the talent. "To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material." Chapter 9, pg. 95
