For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 37 Summary & Analysis

Robert Jordan lies next to Maria and watches time passing on his watch: time is moving slowly, and his throat “swells” when his cheek moves against Maria’s hair. He does not want to wake her up, but he can’t leave her alone now. She wakes up and begins to kiss him, saying that she no longer has any pain, and the two of them realize “that nothing could ever happen to the one that did not happen to the other”: “they were having now and before and always and now and now and now.” Maria and Jordan tell each other that they are grateful to have found the other.

Maria asks Jordan if he is worried about anything, and he says that he is not, and that she has helped him with his worries. Jordan reflects that they know little of “what there is to know,” and he wishes that he was going to live a long time instead of dying today; he wonders if one keeps on learning as an old man. He tells Maria that he has learned “a lot” from her, though she tells him that he’s the educated one. He thinks that he has only “the very smallest beginnings of an education,” though he does know that Anselmo is his “oldest friend” now, Agustin his “brother,” and Maria his “true love and wife.”

Maria and Jordan sit together after getting dressed; it is still night, with “no promise of morning.” Maria asks if they will be together during the day, and Jordan says that they won’t be “at the start,” though he will come for her “very fast” when it is all done.