![]() It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. “I was taking care of animals,” he said dully, but no longer to me. “Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust. It’s better not to think about the others,” he said. “Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” I asked. “But what will they do under the artillery when I was told to leave because of the artillery?” “Why not,” I said, watching the far bank where now there were no carts. ![]() “Why they’ll probably come through it all right.” “You think so?” There is no need to be unquiet about the cat. He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with some one, “The cat will be all right, I am sure. “I know no one in that direction,” he said, “but thank you very much. “I will wait a while,” he said, “and then I will go. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.” I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.” “This is not a good place to stop,” I said. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot think what will become of the others.” “No,” he said, “only the animals I stated. “And you have no family?” I asked, watching the far end of the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the slope of the bank. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.” “There were two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.” “There were three animals altogether,” he explained. I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there. “Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?” I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.” “Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. “I was taking care of animals,” he explained. That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there. It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridgehead beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. But the old man sat there without moving. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. ![]() “The Old Man at the Bridge” by Ernest Hemingway:Īn old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road.
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