For Whom the Bell Tolls

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

Maybe I’m going crazy with this weather or something, but I finished this book absolutely furious with all the characters in it.

Like our buddy Angel-Face, for example.  With all of the confidences and plotting that he shared with the president over the years, did he really think he was going to get away with marrying the general’s daughter?  Wouldn’t you grab your wife and your savings and run, maybe start a political newspaper in a country with no extradition laws, sip espresso in a cafe with other ex-pats and plot a revolution?

Or the lawyer’s wife, who’s so surprised when they take her husband away:

“Miedo, frío, asco, se sobrepuso a todo por estrecharse a la muralla que repetiría el eco de la descarga…  Después de todo, ya estando allí, se le hacía que fusilaran a su marido, así como así, así de una descarda, con balas, con armas, hombres como él…”

Does this woman not pass the jail every single day, with the crying women outside?  Did she not hear about the general’s flight from the uncharacteristic accusations against him?  Why does she expect her fate to be any different?

These people live in a society where a mother is force-fed lime so that she cannot feed her newborn.  Where a wife cannot find out where her husband is buried, and family bar family from their homes for fear gossip.   The jails are overflowing with students and priests, and the streets amok with a secret police that is more criminals than law enforcement.  How long are you going to keep your head down in a society like this?  You have to know that one day soon they’ll come for you too.  And if you realize that there’s no hope, that your life and the lives of your family are worth nothing, what would you do?  I’d be fighting alligators, and trying to get across the frontier, not sit there until the whim of the president gets me in front of a firing squad.  Or if I was going down I'd at least try to take a few of them with me.