So far she had not affected his resolution but
he would much prefer not to die. He would abandon a hero’s or a martyr’s end
gladly. He did not want to make a Thermoplyoe, nor be Horatius at any bridge,
nor be the dutch boy with his finger in that dyke. No. He would like to spend
some time with Maria. That was the simplest expression of it. He would like to
spend a long, long time with her.
What a business. You go along your whole life
and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning
anything. There was never any of what this is. You think that is one thing you
will never have. And then, on a lousy show like this, co-ordinating two
chicken-crut guerilla bands to help you blow a bridge under impossible
conditions, to abort a counter-offensive that will probably already be started,
you run into a girl like this Maria. Sure. That is what you would do. You ran
into her rather late, that was all.
It hit you then and you know it and so why lie
about it? You went all strange inside every time you looked at her and every
time she looked at you. So why don’t you admit it?
Well, so that is what happens and what has
happened and you might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole
nights with her. Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people
were always supposed to have, not at all.
Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children,
not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pyjamas, not the morning
paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she’s there and you’re not
alone. No. None of that. But why, when this is all you’re going to get in life
of what you want; when you have found it; why not just one night in a bed with
sheets?
You ask for the impossible. You ask for the
ruddy impossible. So if you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had
better love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation will lack
in duration and in continuity. Dou you hear that? In the old days people
devoted a lifetime to it. And now when you have found it if you get two nights
you wonder where all the luck came from. Two nights. Two nights to love, honor
and cherish. For better and for worse. In sickness and in death. No that wasn’t
it. In sickness and in health. Till death do us apart. In two nights. Much more
than likely. Much more than likely and now lay off that sort of thinking. You
can stop that now. That’s not good for you. Do nothing that is not good for
you. Sure that’s it.
If this was how it was then this was how it
was. But there was no law made him say he liked it. I did not know that I could
ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen to me. I
would like to have it for my whole life.
So now do not worry, take what you have, and do
your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one. Hasn’t it been
merry lately? What are you complaining about?
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
