For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 42 Summary & Analysis

Meanwhile, Pablo has ridden back from the hills to the cave, and Andrés is making progress toward Golz’s headquarters with Gomez on his motorcycle. Gomez and Andrés encounter a smash-up between trucks, which delays them, and they pass a line of trucks loaded with troops for the upcoming attack. Gomez thinks about how impressive the army is; Andrés has never seen an offensive or preparations for one before.

Andrés and Gomez reach a building and go in to ask where General Golz’s headquarters are, and a large man, “old and heavy,” in a khaki beret in the style of the French Army, steps out. Gomez recognizes him as one of France’s “great modern revolutionary figures” who “led the mutiny of the French Navy in the Black Sea.” Gomez does not know, however, that this man’s ambition has been “thwarted” with “time, disappointment, bitterness both domestic and political,” and that to question him is “one of the most dangerous things that any man could do.” Gomez tells him that he has a dispatch for General Golz from behind the fascist lines, and the man, André Marty, tells the corporal of the guard to arrest both Gomez and Andrés.

The guard searches Gomez and Andrés, and Gomez tries to explain that Andrés is a guerilla with an important dispatch. The guard says that Marty is “crazy as a bedbug,” with “a mania for shooting people.” Still, he says that the soldiers know how to deal with this “crazy”; he offers Andrés and Gomez a bottle of Anis, and they are escorted into Marty’s office.

Gomez tells Marty that the dispatch for Golz is a “matter of utmost urgence,” and Andrés says that it was given to him by Robert Jordan. Marty thinks that Golz is in “obvious communication with the fascists,” though he is shocked—“that Golz should be one of the traitors,” he thinks, means that “you could trust no one.” Marty tells the guard to take Gomez and Andrés away, and Gomez tells him that he is a ”crazy murderer.” Marty doesn’t mind the men cursing him, since he feels “sorry for them as human beings.” He looks at a map and is thinking about strategy when Karkov enters his room.

Marty is “worried and made wary” by Karkov, and whenever he interacts with Karkov, he finds it difficult to remember that he himself is “untouchable.” Karkov asks if he has heard anything of a message coming through for Golz from an American comrade, Robert Jordan. At first, Marty is not able to admit that he has made a mistake, but eventually he puts the dispatch and the safe conduct pass on the table for Karkov. Karkov tells Marty that he is going to figure out “just how untouchable” he is, and he leaves the room. Andrés and Gomez get on Gomez’s motorcycle and stop at a point where three staff cars are parked; they are led to a dugout, and Gomez is handed the receipted envelope of the dispatch.

Golz, at an observation point, receives a phone call from his Chief of Staff about ending the attack. Golz tells him that it is too late to call off the attack. He feels sick to his stomach, and he thinks about “how things could be,” versus “how they would be instead.”