The Bell Tolls for No One Read Online Free PDF Page B

the first race, but there I was walking toward this fenced-in enclosure.
    I walked up to the fence and there it was—a huge hog. I’m not much of a farm hand but I felt that this must simply be the largest hog alive, but that wasn’t the thing. There was something in that hog, something that forced me to stop my car. I stood at the fence looking at it. There was the head, and well, I’ll call it a face because that’s exactly what was on the front of the head. This face. Never had I seen a face such as that. I am not sure what had called me to it. People often joke about my ugliness saying I am the ugliest old man they have ever seen. I am rather proud of this. My ugliness was hard-worked for; I was not born that way. I knew it meant a passing through of areas.
    I forgot about the races, about everything but that hog’s face. When one ugly admires another there is a transgression of sorts, a touching and exchange of souls, if you will. He, this hog, had the ugliest face I had seen in a lifetime of living. He was covered with warts and wrinkles and hairs, these long single hairs that cropped out obscenely and twisted—every place a hair shouldn’t be. I thought of Blake’s tiger. Blake had wondered how God had created such a thing, and now here was Bukowski’s hog and I wondered what had made that , and how and why. The deep ugliness reoccurred everywhere—it was wondrous. The eyes were small and mean and stupid, what eyes, as if all the evil and crassness that existed everywhere was registered there. And the mouth, the snout was horrible—gross, demented, slobbering, it was a stinking asshole of a snout and mouth. And the flesh of the face was actually decaying, rotting, falling off in pieces. The overall total of that face and body was beyond what could seem to register upon my brain.
    My next thought came quickly—it’s human, it’s a human being. It came upon me so strongly that I accepted it. The hog had been standing ten or twelve feet off and then it began moving toward me. I couldn’t move although I felt some terror at its approach. Here it came toward me in the moonlight. It walked up to the fence and raised its head toward me. It was very close. Its eyes looked into my eyes and we stood there that way for some time, I believe, looking into each other. That hog recognized something in me. And I looked into those mean and stupid eyes. It was as if I were being given the secret of the world, and the secret was obvious and real and horrible enough.
    It’s human, the thought came again, it’s a human being.
    Suddenly it was too much, I had to break off; I turned and walked away. I got into my car and drove toward the racetrack. The hog rode in my brain, in my memory.
    At the track I began to look at the faces. I saw a part of this face that fit the hog’s face and I saw a part of that face that fit the hog’s face, and here was another part, and here was another. Then I went to the men’s room and saw my face in the mirror. I am not one to linger before mirrors too long. I went out to bet.
    That hog’s face was the sum total of that crowd, somehow. Of crowds everywhere. That hog had added it up and it stood there. It stood there behind that fence on the little farm two or three miles away. It was a night when I didn’t remember too much about the horses. After the races I didn’t have any desire to see the hog again. I took another road up . . .
    A few nights later I explained to a friend of mine about the hog, about what I had seen and felt, mainly that the hog was a human caught in that body. My friend was an intellectual, well read.
    â€œHogs is hogs, Bukowski, that’s all there is to it!”
    â€œBut John, if you had seen that hog’s face you would have known.”
    â€œHogs is hogs, that’s all.”
    I couldn’t explain it to him, nor could he convince me that “hogs is hogs.” Certainly