Ernest Hemingway | For Whom The Bell Tolls | 1940

Dear Robert (a.k.a. the “Inglés”),

I know, I know… I'm supposed to be agog in male admiration over your bravura with the improvised bridge attack despite Pablo's treacherous half-assery. Shooing Maria off with tears in her eyes to meet a heroic death after that interminable "Thou art my little rabbit" sweetness? Don't kid yourself. The pillow talk won't devote her so easily to your loving memory once she makes the rounds in Madrid. Any woman who can cook wild game and not shy away from a compound fracture is a definite looker in these uncertain times: Fascism does seem to keep reincarnating in forms less obvious than Lieutenant Berrendo! Plus you never will see her with her hair grown out. I'd bet guerrilla warfare makes it fuller, gives it a bit more bounce. Yes, call me a simple bourgeois hedonist, but I think she's also a world unto herself worth fighting for. You would get to keep thine educated head in Montana and lose it with her at the same time, you realize.


Excelsior anyway,
Forrest Roth