For Whom The Bell Tolls

They were walking through the heather of the mountain meadow and Robert Jordan
felt the brushing of the heather against his legs, felt the weight of his pistol in its holster
against his thigh, felt the sun on his head, felt the breeze from the snow of the mountain
peaks cool on his back and, in his hand, he felt the girl’s hand firm and strong, the
fingers locked in his. From it, from the palm of her hand against the palm of his, from
their fingers locked together, and from her wrist across his wrist something came from
her hand, her fingers and her wrist to his that was as fresh as the first light air that
moving toward you over the sea barely wrinkles the glassy surface of a calm, as light as
a feather moved across one’s lip, or a leaf falling when there is no breeze; so light that it
could be felt with the touch of their fingers alone, but that was so strengthened, so
intensified, and made so urgent, so aching and so strong by the hard pressure of their
fingers and the close pressed palm and wrist, that it was as though a current moved up
his arm and filled his whole body with an aching hollowness of wanting. With the sun
shining on her hair, tawny as wheat, and on her gold-brown smooth-lovely face and on
the curve of her throat he bent her head back and held her to him and kissed her. He felt
her trembling as he kissed her and he held the length of her body tight to him and felt
her breasts against his chest through the two khaki shirts, he felt them small and firm
and he reached and undid the buttons on her shirt and bent and kissed her and she
stood shivering, holding her head back, his arm behind her. Then she dropped her chin
to his head and then he felt her hands holding his head and rocking it against her. He
straightened and with his two arms around her held her so tightly that she was lifted off
the ground, tight against him, and he felt her trembling and then her lips were on his
throat, and then he put her down and said, “Maria, oh, my Maria.”
 Then he said, “Where should we go?”
 She did not say anything but slipped her hand inside of his shirt and he felt her
undoing the shirt buttons and she said, “You, too. I want to kiss, too.”
 “No, little rabbit.”
 “Yes. Yes. Everything as you.”
 “Nay. That is an impossibility.”
 “Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh.”
 Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness of the bent stalks
under her head and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would
remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots and
her lips that moved smally and by themselves and the fluttering of the lashes on the
eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything, and for her everything was
red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it,
the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color. For
him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to
nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows
in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to
unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne
once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into
nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and
they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from
under them.
 Then he was lying on his side, his head deep in the heather, smelling it and the smell
of the roots and the earth and the sun came through it and it was scratchy on his bare
shoulders and along his flanks and the girl was lying opposite him with her eyes still shut
and then she opened them and smiled at him and he said very tiredly and from a great
but friendly distance, “Hello, rabbit.” And she smiled and from no distance said, “Hello,
my Inglés.”
 “I’m not an Inglés,” he said very lazily.
 “Oh yes, you are,” she said. “You’re my Inglés,” and reached and took hold of both his
ears and kissed him on the forehead.
 “There,” she said. “How is that? Do I kiss thee better?”
 Then they were walking along the stream together and he said, “Maria, I love thee and
thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be
with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.”
 “Oh,” she said. “I die each time. Do you not die?”
 “No. Almost. But did thee feel the earth move?”
 “Yes. As I died. Put thy arm around me, please.”
 “No. I have thy hand. Thy hand is enough.”
 He looked at her and across the meadow where a hawk was hunting and the big
afternoon clouds were coming now over the mountains.
 “And it is not thus for thee with others?” Maria asked him, they now walking hand in
hand.
 “No. Truly.”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” By Ernest Hemingway 89
 “Thou hast loved many others.”
 “Some. But not as thee.”
 “And it was not thus? Truly?”
 “It was a pleasure but it was not thus.”
 “And then the earth moved. The earth never moved before?”
 “Nay. Truly never.”
 “Ay,” she said. “And this we have for one day.”
 He said nothing.
 “But we have had it now at least,” Maria said. “And do you like me too? Do I please
thee? I will look better later.”
 “Thou art very beautiful now.”
 “Nay,” she said. “But stroke thy hand across my head.”
 He did that feeling her cropped hair soft and flattening and then rising between his
fingers and he put both hands on her head and turned her face up to his and kissed her.
 “I like to kiss very much,” she said. “But I do not do it well.”
 “Thou hast no need to kiss.”
 “Yes, I have. If I am to be thy woman I should please thee in all ways.”
 “You please me enough. I would not be more pleased. There is no thing I could do if I
were more pleased.”
 “But you will see,” she said very happily. “My hair amuses thee now because it is odd.
But every day it is growing. It will be long and then I will not look ugly and perhaps you
will love me very much.”
 “Thou hast a lovely body,” he said. “The loveliest in the world.”
 “It is only young and thin.”
 “No. In a fine body there is magic. I do not know what makes it in one and not in
another. But thou hast it.”
 “For thee,” she said.
 “Nay.”
 “Yes. For thee and for thee always and only for thee. But it is littie to bring thee. I
would learn to take good care of thee. But tell me truly. Did the earth never move for
thee before?”
 “Never,” he said truly.
 “Now am I happy,” she said. “Now am I truly happy."