For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway Page B

ago. And every time I saw that paw, like the hand of a man, but with those long claws, dried and nailed through the palm to the door of the church, I received a pleasure.”
    â€œOf pride?”
    â€œOf pride of remembrance of the encounter with the bear on that hillside in the early spring. But of the killing of a man, who is a man as we are, there is nothing good that remains.”
    â€œYou can’t nail his paw to the church,” Robert Jordan said.
    â€œNo. Such a barbarity is unthinkable. Yet the hand of a man is like the paw of a bear.”
    â€œSo is the chest of a man like the chest of a bear,” Robert Jordan said. “With the hide removed from the bear, there are many similarities in the muscles.”
    â€œYes,” Anselmo said. “The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother of man.”
    â€œSo do the Indians in America,” Robert Jordan said. “And when they kill a bear they apologize to him and ask his pardon. They put his skull in a tree and they ask him to forgive them before they leave it.”
    â€œThe gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance.”
    â€œSo also believe the Indians.”
    â€œAre the Indians then gypsies?”
    â€œNo. But they believe alike about the bear.”
    â€œClearly. The gypsies also believe he is a brother because he steals for pleasure.”
    â€œHave you gypsy blood?”
    â€œNo. But I have seen much of them and clearly, since the movement, more. There are many in the hills. To them it is not a sin to kill outside the tribe. They deny this but it is true.”
    â€œLike the Moors.”
    â€œYes. But the gypsies have many laws they do not admit to having. In the war many gypsies have become bad again as they were in olden times.”
    â€œThey do not understand why the war is made. They do not know for what we fight.”
    â€œNo,” Anselmo said. “They only know now there is a war and people may kill again as in the olden times without a surety of punishment.”
    â€œYou have killed?” Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the dark and of their day together.
    â€œYes. Several times. But not with pleasure. To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe the wizardry of the gypsies about the brotherhood with animals. No. I am against all killing of men.”
    â€œYet you have killed.”
    â€œYes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven.”
    â€œBy whom?”
    â€œWho knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know.”
    â€œYou have not God any more?”
    â€œNo. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have God.”
    â€œThey claim Him.”
    â€œClearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.”
    â€œThen it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing.”
    â€œI believe so,” Anselmo said. “Since you put it clearly in that way I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo.”
    â€œTo win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been true.”
    â€œClearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas,” Anselmo said.
    They were walking now close together in the dark and he spokesoftly, sometimes turning his head as he climbed. “I would not kill even a Bishop. I would not kill a proprietor of any kind. I would make them work each day as we have worked in the fields and as