Summary: Chapter Eight
By dawn, Maria is gone. Robert Jordan goes back to sleep
until the sound of enemy airplanes wakes him. A total of forty-five
planes fly overhead, in groups of threes and nines. Robert Jordan
wonders whether the Fascists know about the planned guerrilla offensive,
so he sends Anselmo to watch the road.
At breakfast, Fernando, the ninth member of the
band, reports that the night before, he heard rumors about a possible
Republican offensive in La Granja, the nearest town. Pilar talks
about a time when she visited the city of Valencia when her lover,
Finito, had a bullfighting gig there. After breakfast, the sound
of enemy planes returns.
Summary: Chapter Nine
Three enemy planes fly very low overhead. Robert Jordan
promises Pilar that he will be careful with Maria. Pilar tells him
that during the night, after she and Pablo made love, she heard
Pablo crying because his men had renounced his leadership. In private,
Agustín tells Pilar that he does not trust Pablo, but even so, he
wants Pablo to plan their retreat after they blow up the bridge.
Summary: Chapter Ten
Pilar, Maria, and Robert Jordan leave to visit El Sordo
and talk to him about the bridge operation. They stop to rest along
the way. Pilar complains that she is ugly, even though she admits
that she has had many lovers in her life.
Pilar then tells a long story about the start of the war
in Pablo’s hometown. After shooting four Fascist guards point blank,
Pablo orchestrated a brutal scenario to kill the town Fascists.
Pilar compares the situation to bull-baiting. Pablo and his cohorts
forced each Fascist to walk past a line of Republican peasants,
who beat him with flails before throwing him off a cliff. The last
remaining Fascists and the priest overseeing them prayed inside
a holding cell until Pablo unlocked the door and a mob rushed in
and tore them apart. Afterward, Pablo expressed disappointment with
the priest’s lack of dignity. That night, Pablo and Pilar abstained
from having sex. Pilar says that that day, along with the day three
days later, when the Fascists retook the town, were the worst of
her life. Pilar’s story reminds Robert Jordan of a time when he
saw the lynching of a black man in Ohio when he was seven years
old.
Summary: Chapter Eleven
A young man named Joaquín, who guards El Sordo’s camp,
greets Robert Jordan, Pilar, and Maria. Joaquín and Maria joke about
the time when Joaquín carried her after the guerrilleros blew up
the Fascist train she was riding as a captive. Joaquín tells the
others that Fascists killed his family. Robert Jordan thinks about
the effect that his military missions have had on Republican peasants
in small towns. Maria tells Joaquín that they all are his family
now, and Pilar makes a point to include Robert Jordan.
