They went up the stairs, Enrique carrying the basket. He put it down by the bed and walked to the edge of the porch and looked. The Negro who wore the narrow-brimmed flat-topped straw hat was gone.
"So," Enrique said quietly.
"So what?" asked the girl, holding his arm now and looking out.
"So he is gone. What is there to eat?"
"I am sorry you were here alone all day" she said. "It was so stupid that I had to wait until it was dark to come. I have wanted to come all day."
"It was stupid to be here at all. They brought me here from the boat before daylight and left me, with a password and nothing to eat, in a house that is watched. You cannot eat a password. I should not be put in a house that is being watched for other reasons. It is very Cuban. But at least, in the old days we ate. How are you, Maria?"
In the dark she kissed him, hard, on the mouth. He felt the tight-pressed fullness of her lips and the way her body shivered against his and then came the stab of white pain in the small of his back.
"Ayee! Be careful."
"What is it?"
"The back."
"What of the back? Is it a wound?"
"You should see it," he said.
"Can I see it now?"
"Afterwards. We must eat and get out of here. What have they stored here?"
"Too many things. Things left over from the failure of April. Things kept for the future."
"The long-distant future," he said. "Did they know it was watched?"
"I am sure not."
"What is there?"
"There are some rifles in cases. There are boxes of ammunition."
"Everything should be moved tonight." His mouth was full. "There will be years of work before we will need this again."
"Do you like the escabeche?"
"It's very good; sit here close."
"Enrique," she said, sitting tight against him. She put a hand on his thigh and with the other she stroked the back of his neck. "My Enrique."
"Touch me carefully," he said, eating. "The back is bad."
"Are you happy to be back from the war?"
"I have not thought about it," he said.
"Enrique, how is Chucho?"
"Dead at Lerida."
"Felipe?"
"Dead. Also at Lerida."
"And Arturo?"
"Dead at Teruel."
"And Vicente?" she asked in a flat voice, her two hands folded on his thigh now.
"Dead. At the attack across the road at Celadas."
"Vicente is my brother." She sat stiff and alone now, her hands away from him.
"I know," said Enrique. He went on eating.
"He is my only brother."
"I thought you knew," said Enrique.
"I did not know and he is my brother."
"I am sorry, Maria. I should have said it another way."
"And he is dead? You know he is dead? It is not just a report?"
"Listen. Rogello, Basilio, Esteban, Fel and I are alive. The others are dead."
"All?"
"All," said Enrique.
"I cannot stand it," said Maria. "Please, I cannot stand it."
"It does no good to discuss it. They are dead."
"But it is not only that Vicente is my brother. I can give up my brother. It is the flower of our party."
"Yes. The flower of the party."
"It is not worth it. It has destroyed the best."
"Yes. It is worth it."
"How can you say that? That is criminal."
"No. It is worth it."
She was crying now and Enrique went on eating. "Don't cry," he said. "The thing to do is to think how we can work to take their places."
"But he is my brother. Don' you uderstand? My brother."
"We are all brothers. Some are dead and others still live. They send us home now, so there will be some left. Otherwise there would be none. Now we must work."
"But why were they all killed?"
"We were with an attack division. You are either killed or wounded. We others have been wounded."
"How was Vicente killed?"
"He was crossing the road when he was struck by machine-gun fire from a farmhouse on the right. The road was enfiladed from that house."
"Were you there?"
"Yes. I had the first company. We were on his right. We took the house but it took some time. They had three machine guns there. Two in the house, one in the stable. It was difficult to approach. We had to get a tank up to put fire on the window before we could rush the last gun. I lost eight men. It was too many."
"And where was that?"
"Celadas."
"I never heard of it."
"No," said Enrique. "The operation was not a success. No one will ever hear of it. That was where Vicente and Ignacio were killed."
"And you say such things are justified? That men like that should die in failures in a foreign country?"
"There are no foreign countries, Maria, where people speak Spanish. Where you die does not matter, if you die for liberty. Anyway, the thing to do is live and not to die."
"But think of who have died-away from here-and in failures."
"They did not go to die. They went to fight. The dying is an accident."
"But the failures. My brother is dead in a failure. Chucho in a failure. Ignacio in a failure."
"They are just a part. Some things we had to do were impossible. Many that looked impossible we did. But sometimes the people on your flank would not attack. Sometimes there was not enough artillery. Sometimes we were ordered to do things not in sufficient force-as at Celadas. Those make the failures. But in the end, it was not a failure."
She did not answer and he finished eating.
The wind was fresh now in the trees and it was cold on the porch. He put the dishes back in the basket and wiped his mouth on the napkin. He wiped his hands carefully and then put his arm around the girl. She was crying.
"Don't cry, Maria," he said. "What has happened has happened. We must think of what there is to do. There is much to do."
She said nothing and he could see her face in the light from the street lamp looking straight ahead.
"We must check all romanticism. This place is an example of that romanticism. We must stop terrorism. We must proceed so that we will never again fall into revolutionary adventurism."
The girl still said nothing and he looked at her face that he had thought of all the months when he had thought of anything except his work.
"You talk like a book," she said. "Not like a human being."
"I am sorry," he said. "It is only lessons I have learned. It is things I know must be done. To me it is more real than anything."
"All that is real to me are the dead," she said.
"We honor them. But they are not important."
"You talk like a book again," she said angrily. "Your heart is a book."
"I am sorry, Maria. I thought you would understand."
"All I understand is the dead," she said.
He knew this was not true because she had not seen them dead as he had in the rain in the olive groves of the Jarama, in the heat in the smashed houses of Quijorna, and in the snow at Teruel. But he knew that she blamed him for being alive when Vicente was dead and suddenly-in the small and unconditioned human part of him which was left, and which he did not realize was still there-he was hurt deeply.
"There was a bird," he said. "A mockingbird in a cage."
"Yes."
"I let it go."
"Aren't you kind!" she said scornfully. "Are soldiers all sentimental?"
"I am a good soldier."
"I believe it. You talk like one. What kind of soldier was my brother?"
"Very good. Gayer than me. I was not gay. It is a lack."
"But you practice self-criticism and you talk like a book."
"It would be better if I were gayer," he said. "I could never learn it."
"And the gay ones are all dead."
"No," he said. "Basilio is gay."
"Then he'll die," she said.
"Maria? Do not talk like that. You talk like a defeatist."
"You talk like a book," she told him. "Please do not touch me. You have a dry heart and I hate you."
Now he was hurt again, he who had thought that his heart was dry, and that nothing could hurt ever again except the pain, and sitting on the bed he leaned forward.