"How many is that you have killed? he asked himself. I
don’t know. Do you think you have a right to kill any one? No. But I have to. How many
of those you have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the enemy to
whose force we are opposing force. But you like the people of Navarra better than those
of any other part of Spain. Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don’t believe it go down
there to the camp. Don’t you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you
still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes.
 It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and
their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn’t believe in killing, he told
himself. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you believe in it
the whole thing is wrong.
 But how many do you suppose you have killed? I don’t know because I won’t keep track. But do you know? Yes. How many? You can’t be sure how many. Blowing the
trains you kill many. Very many. But you can’t be sure. But of those you are sure of?
More than twenty. And of those how many were real fascists? Two that I am sure of.
Because I had to shoot them when we took them prisoners at Usera. And you did not
mind that? No. Nor did you like it? No. I decided never to do it again. I have avoided it. I
have avoided killing those who are unarmed.
 Listen, he told himself. You better cut this out. This is very bad for you and for your
work. Then himself said back to him, You listen, see? Because you are doing something
very serious and I have to see you understand it all the time. I have to keep you straight
in your head. Because if you are not absolutely straight in your head you have no right
to do the things you do for all of them are crimes and no man has a right to take another
man’s life unless it is to prevent something worse happening to other people. So get it
straight and do not lie to yourself.
 But I won’t keep a count of people I have killed as though it were a trophy record or a
disgusting business like notches in a gun, he told himself. I have a right to not keep
count and I have a right to forget them.
 No, himself said. You have no right to forget anything. You have no right to shut your
eyes to any of it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to change it.
 Shut up, he told himself. You’re getting awfully pompous.
 Nor ever to deceive yourself about it, himself went on.
 All right, he told himself. Thanks for all the good advice and is it all right for me to love
Maria?
 Yes, himself said.
 Even if there isn’t supposed to be any such thing as love in a purely materialistic
conception of society?
 Since when did you ever have any such conception? himself asked. Never. And you
never could have. You’re not a real Marxist and you know it. You believe in Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity. You believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Don’t
ever kid yourself with too much dialectics. They are for some but not for you. You have
to know them in order not to be a sucker. You have put many things in abeyance to win
a war. If this war is lost all of those things are lost.
 But afterwards you can discard what you do not believe in. There is plenty you do not
believe in and plenty that you do believe in. "