For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Back in the cave, Pilar tells Robert Jordan that El Sordo has been to visit them, though he left to look for horses. As he takes off his damp clothes, Jordan says that he is happy, since he thinks that everything is going well. Maria tends to Jordan, and Pilar asks if she has to care for him “as a sucking child.” Pablo is making himself drunk with wine, and Jordan drinks from the whiskey bottle that El Sordo left him as a gift. Bringing the bottle for him when El Sordo himself is “engaged in something where they was every reason to think of no one else but yourself and of nothing but the matter in hand” is “one kind of Spanish,” a kind of true Spanish hospitality.

Pablo is drunk and asks Jordan about the “skirts he wears,” confusing Americans with the Scotch (Scottish). Primitivo asks Jordan about the mountains and pastures in the United States, and Andrés asks about taxes on land; Primitivo wonders whether the “big proprietors and the rich” will “make a revolution” against taxes. Robert Jordan says that it is possible that Americans will have to fight as the Spaniards do, and that it is necessary that they “educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it.” Andrés, grinning, says that there are no fascists in Pablo’s town, and Pablo says that what he did in his town was “very barbarous.” Pilar says that “of all men the drunkard is the foulest.”

Agustin asks Robert Jordan how he came to Spain, and Jordan tells him that he first came twelve years ago to study the country and learn Spanish, since he teaches Spanish at a university. Fernando asks why he doesn’t teach English instead, and Pablo says that he is a “false professor,” since he doesn’t look like one; he has no beard.

Robert Jordan asks Pablo if he thinks that the snow will last, and Pablo curses him. Jordan calls him cowardly and thinks that he would like to kill Pablo and “have it over with.” Jordan and Pablo argue, insulting each other, and when Agustin says that he is fed up and wants to leave, Pablo calls him a “negro”; Agustin hits him across the mouth twice. Pablo says that no one in the group has cojones (“the guts”) to kill him, and he toasts to the group, calling Jordan “the professor” and Pilar the “Commander.” Agustin knocks his wine cup out of his hand, and he asks Pablo what he does with his horses, calling him a “horse lover.” Pablo says that the group is “led by a woman with a brain between her thighs and a foreigner who comes to destroy you,” and he leaves the cave.