The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

The air had become cooler, the flanks of the mountains were becoming more rounded, announcing the final crests.

  ‘And don’t people get bored, sir?’ asked Giovanni more intimately, laughing at the same time, as if to say that it would be all the same to him.

  ‘You get used to it,’ answered Ortiz and added with an implied rebuke: ‘I have been there for almost eighteen years. No, that’s wrong, I’ve completed my eighteenth.’

  ‘Eighteen years?’ said Giovanni greatly impressed.

  ‘Eighteen,’ answered the captain.

  A flight of ravens passed, skimming the two officers, and plunging into the funnel of the valley.

  ‘Ravens,’ said the captain.

  Giovanni did not reply – he was thinking of the life that awaited him; he felt that he was no part of that world, of that solitude, of those mountains.

  ‘But,’ he asked, ‘do any of the officers stay on who go there on their first posting?’

  ‘Not many now,’ answered Ortiz, half sorry at having decried the Fort and noticing that the other was now going too far, ‘in fact almost no one. Now they all want to go to a crack garrison. Once it was an honour, Fort Bastiani, now it almost seems to be a punishment.’

  Giovanni said nothing but the other went on:

  ‘All the same, it is a frontier garrison. Speaking by and large there are some first class fellows there. A frontier post is still a frontier post after all.’

  Drogo kept silent; he felt a sudden oppression. The horizon had widened; in the extreme distance appeared the strange silhouettes of rocky mountains, sharp peaks rising in confusion into the sky.

  ‘Even in the army things are looked at differently these days,’ Ortiz went on. ‘Once upon a time Fort Bastiani was a great honour. Now they say the frontier is dead – they forget that the frontier is always the frontier and one never knows.’

  A little stream crossed the road. They stopped to water their horses and, having dismounted, walked up and down a little to stretch themselves.

  ‘Do you know what is really first rate?’ said Ortiz and laughed heartily.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘The messing – you’ll see how we eat at the Fort. And that explains the number of inspections. A general every fortnight.’

  Drogo laughed out of politeness. He could not make out whether Ortiz was a fool, whether he was hiding something or whether he simply talked like that without meaning it.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Giovanni, ‘I’m hungry!’

  ‘We’re nearly there now. Do you see that hillock with the patch of gravel? Well, it is just behind it.’

  They set off again; just beyond the hillock with the patch of gravel the two officers emerged on to the edge of a slightly sloping plateau and the Fort appeared a few hundred yards away.

  It did indeed seem small compared with the vision of the previous evening. From the central fort, which was like nothing so much as a barrack with a few windows, two low turreted walls ran out to connect it with the lateral redoubts, two on each side. Thus the walls formed a weak barrier across the whole width of the gap – some five hundred yards – which was shut in on the flanks by high precipitous cliffs.

  To the right, at the very foot of the mountain, the plateau fell away into a sort of saddle; there the old road ran through the pass and came to an end against the ramparts.

  The Fort was silent, sunk in the full noonday sun, shadow-less. Its walls – the front could not be seen since it faced north – stretched out yellow and bare. A chimney gave out pale smoke. All along the ramparts of the central building, of the curtain walls and of the redoubts, dozens of sentries could be seen, with rifles at the slope, walking up and down methodically, each on his own little beat. Like the motion of a pendulum they marked off the passage of time without breaking the enchantment of the immense silence.

  To right and left the mountains stretched out as far as the eye could see in precipitous and apparently inaccessible ranges. They too – at least at that time of day – had a parched, yellow colour.

  Instinctively Giovanni Drogo stopped his horse. Looking slowly round, he fixed his gaze on the dark walls without being able to read their true meaning. He thought of a prison, he thought of an abandoned palace. A slight breath of wind made a flag, which before had hung limply entangled with the flagstaff, billow out over the Fort. There was the indistinct echo of a trumpet. The sentries walked slowly to and fro. On the square before the gate of the Fort three or four men – at that distance it was impossible to make out whether they were soldiers or not – were loading sacks on to a cart. But over everything there lay a mysterious torpor.

  Captain Ortiz, too, had halted to look at the building.

  ‘There it is,’ he said, although there was no need to say so.

  Drogo thought: now he is going to ask me what I think of it, and was embarrassed at the thought. But instead the captain said nothing.

  It was not imposing, Fort Bastiani, with its low walls, nor was it in any sense beautiful, nor picturesque with towers and bastions – there was not one single thing to make up for its bareness, to bring to mind the sweets of life. Yet as on the previous evening at the foot of the defile Drogo looked at it as if hypnotised and an inexplicable feeling of excitement entered his heart.

  And beyond it, on the other side, what was there? What world opened up beyond that inhospitable building, beyond the ramparts, casemates and magazines which shut off the view? What did the northern kingdom look like, the stony desert no one had ever crossed? The map, Drogo recalled vaguely, showed beyond the frontier a vast zone with scanty names – but from the eminence of the Fort one would see some village, pastures, a house; or was there only the desolation of an uninhabited waste?

  He felt himself suddenly alone, and his soldier’s high spirits, which had come so easily till now – as long as the uneventful garrison life lasted, the comforts of home, the constant company of gay friends, at night the little adventures in the gardens – all his self-assurance were suddenly gone. The Fort seemed to him one of those unknown worlds to which he had never seriously thought he might belong – not that they seemed unpleasant, but rather because they appeared infinitely remote from his own life. A world which would make much greater demands of him, a world without splendour unless it were that of its rigid laws.

  If only he could turn back, not even cross the threshold of the Fort but ride back down to the plain, to his own city, to his old habits. Such was Drogo’s first thought; and, however shameful such weakness in a soldier, he was ready to confess to it, if necessary, provided they let him go at once. But from the invisible north a thick cloud was rising over the glacis and imperturbably the sentries walked up and down under the high sun. Drogo’s horse whinnied. Then the great silence fell once more.

  Giovanni at last looked away from the Fort and glanced to the side, at the captain, hoping for a friendly word. Ortiz too had remained quite still and was gazing intently at the yellow walls. He, too, who had lived there for eighteen years, looked at them as if bewitched, as if once more he witnessed a miracle. It seemed he could not tire of looking upon them once again, and a vague smile, half joyful, half sad, slowly lit his face.

  Chapter Three

  The first thing Drogo did was to report to the adjutant, Major Matti. The orderly officer, an easy-going, friendly young man called Carlo Morel, accompanied him through the heart of the fortress. Leaving the entrance hall, from which one caught a glimpse of a great empty courtyard, the two went down a long corridor whose end was lost to sight. The ceiling was hidden in shadow; at intervals a little beam of light came in through a narrow window.

  It was not until they had climbed to the next floor that they met a soldier carrying a bundle of papers. From the damp and naked walls, the silence, the dim lighting, it seemed as if the inmates had forgotten that somewhere in the world there existed flowers, laughing women, gay and hospitable houses. Here everything spoke of renunciation, but for whom, to what mysterious end? Now they were traversing the seco
nd floor along a corridor exactly similar to the first. From somewhere behind the walls there came the distant echo of a laugh; to Drogo it seemed unreal.

  Major Matti was plump and smiled with an excess of good nature. His office was huge, the desk big in proportion and covered with orderly heaps of paper. There was a coloured print of the king, and the major’s sword hung on a wooden peg driven in for the purpose.

  Drogo came to attention and reported. He produced his personal documents and began to explain that he had not made any request to be posted to the fortress – he was determined to have himself transferred as soon as possible – but Major Matti interrupted him.

  ‘I knew your father years ago. A very fine gentleman. I am sure you will wish to live up to his memory. A President of the High Court, if I remember rightly?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Drogo, ‘he was a doctor, my father.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course, I was forgetting, a doctor, of course, of course.’ For a moment Matti seemed to be embarrassed, and Drogo noted how he kept raising his left hand to his collar as if trying to hide a round, greasy stain, evidently a fresh one, on the breast of his uniform.

  The major recovered himself quickly.

  ‘I am very pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘You know what His Majesty Peter III said? “Fort Bastiani the guardian of my crown.” I may add that it is an honour to belong to it. Don’t you agree?’

  He said these things automatically, as if they were a formula learned years before which he must produce on certain set occasions.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Giovanni, ‘you are quite right, but I must confess it was a surprise to me. I have my family in the city and should prefer if possible to stay …’

  ‘So you want to leave us before you arrive, do you? I must say I’m sorry, very sorry.’

  ‘It isn’t that I wish to. I would not dream of arguing. I mean that I …’

  ‘I understand,’ said the major and sighed as if this were an old story and he could sympathise with it. ‘I understand. You had thought the Fort would be different and now you are a bit frightened. But tell me honestly – how can you form an opinion of it if you have only arrived a few minutes ago?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest objection to the Fort, sir,’ said Drogo. ‘Only I should prefer to stay in the city or at least near it. You understand? I am talking to you in confidence, because I see you understand these things. I put myself in your hands.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ exclaimed Matti with a short laugh. ‘That’s what we are here for. We don’t want anyone here against his will – not even the least important sentry. Still, I’m sorry. You seem a good lad to me.’

  The major fell silent a moment as if to consider the best solution. It was at this point, as he turned his head a little to the left, that Drogo’s glance fell on the window opening on to the inner courtyard. He could see the northern wall, yellowish like the others and sun-beaten like them, with here and there the black rectangle of a window. There was a clock as well, pointing to two o’clock, and on the topmost terrace a sentry walking to and fro with his rifle at the slope. But over the ramparts, far, far away, in the glare of noon, there rose a rocky crest. Only its extreme tip could be seen and in itself it was nothing out of the ordinary. Yet for Giovanni Drogo that fragment of rock represented the first visible lure of the northern territory, the legendary kingdom whose existence hung heavily over the Fort. What was the rest like? he wondered. From it there came a drowsy light shining through slow-moving smoky wisps of mist. Then the major began to speak again.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked Drogo, ‘would you like to go back straight away or would it be the same to you if you waited a month or two? For us, I repeat, it is all the same – from the official point of view, that is,’ he added so as not to sound discourteous.

  ‘Since I have to go back,’ said Giovanni, pleasantly surprised at the lack of difficulties, ‘since I have to go back it seems to me I had better go at once.’

  ‘Quite right, quite right,’ said the major soothingly. ‘But now I must tell you something. If you want to go right away the best thing is for you to go sick. You go into the sick bay under observation for a day or two and the doctor gives you a certificate. There are a lot of people in any case who can’t stand up to the altitude.’

  ‘Do I really have to go sick?’ asked Drogo, who did not like this sort of fiction.

  ‘You don’t have to, but it makes everything easier. Otherwise you would have to make a written request for a posting. That has to be sent to the High Command, the High Command has to reply – that means at least a fortnight. Above all, the colonel has to go into the matter, and that I would prefer to avoid. Because he does find these things unpleasant – they hurt him, that’s it, they hurt him just as if you were doing an injury to his Fort. Well then, if I were you, if you want me to be frank, I would try to avoid it.’

  ‘But excuse me, sir,’ said Drogo, ‘I didn’t know that. If my going away might cause me trouble then it’s another matter.’

  ‘Not at all, you have misunderstood me. In neither case will your career suffer. It is only a case of a – of a shade of meaning. Of course, and I told you this right away, the colonel will not be pleased. But if you have really made up your mind …’

  ‘No, no,’ said Drogo, ‘if things are as you say perhaps the medical certificate is better.’

  ‘Unless …’ said Matti with a meaning smile and leaving his sentence in mid-air.

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless you were to put up with staying here four months – which would be the best solution.’

  ‘Four months?’ asked Drogo, already somewhat disappointed, since he had thought to be leaving at once.

  ‘Four months,’ Matti confirmed. ‘The procedure is much more regular that way. I’ll explain to you direct. Twice a year there is a medical inspection – it is laid down. The next will be in four months’ time. That seems to me to be your best opportunity. I give you my word that, if you like, your report will be adverse. You can set your mind absolutely at rest.’

  ‘Besides,’ continued the major after a pause, ‘besides, four months are four months – long enough for a personal report. You can be certain that the colonel will do one on you. And you know how important that can be for your career. But let us get this quite, quite clear – you are perfectly free …’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Drogo, ‘I understand perfectly.’

  ‘Service here is not hard,’ the major emphasised, ‘almost always guard duties. And the New Redoubt, which demands more of one, will certainly not be entrusted to you to begin with. There will be no hard tasks, don’t be afraid – you won’t ever be bored.’

  But Drogo was scarcely listening to Matti’s explanations, for his attention was strangely attracted by the picture framed in the window with that tiny piece of crag showing above the wall. A vague feeling to which he did not have the key was gradually penetrating into his inmost being – a stupid and absurd feeling, a baseless fancy.

  At the same time he felt somewhat calmer. He was still anxious to go, but not so desperately as before. He was almost ashamed at the fears he had had on his arrival. He could not believe that he was not as good a man as all the others. If he left at once, he now thought, it might be looked upon as a confession of inferiority. Thus his own conceit of himself fought with his longing for the old familiar existence.

  ‘Sir,’ said Drogo, ‘thank you for your advice, but let me think it over till tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Matti with evident satisfaction. ‘And this evening? Do you want to meet the colonel in the mess or would you prefer to leave things in the air?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Giovanni, ‘it seems to me there’s no use my hiding myself, particularly if I have to stay four months?’

  ‘That’s better,’ said the major. ‘You’ll get confidence that way. You will see what nice people they are, all first class officers.’

  Matti smiled and Drogo saw that the time had come to leave.
But first of all he asked:

  ‘Sir,’ his voice was apparently calm, ‘may I take a quick look to the north and see what there is beyond that wall?’

  ‘Beyond the wall? I didn’t know you were interested in views,’ answered the major.

  ‘Just a glance, sir, merely out of curiosity. I’ve heard there is a desert and I’ve never seen one.’

  ‘It isn’t worth it. A monotonous landscape – no beauty in it. Take my advice – don’t think about it.’

  ‘I won’t insist, sir,’ said Drogo. ‘I did not think there was anything against it.’

  Major Matti put the tips of his plump fingers together almost as if in prayer.

  ‘You have asked me,’ he said, ‘the one thing I can’t grant you. Only personnel on duty may go on to the ramparts or into the guard rooms; you need to know the password.’

  ‘But not even as a special exception – not even for an officer?’

  ‘Not even for an officer. Oh, I know – for you people from the city all these petty rules seem ridiculous. Besides down there the password is no great secret. But here it is different.’

  ‘Excuse me, if I keep on about it.’

  ‘Do please, do.’

  ‘I wanted to say – isn’t there even a loophole, a window from which one can look?’

  ‘Only one. Only one in the colonel’s office. Unfortunately no one thought of a belvedere for the inquisitive. But it isn’t worth it, I repeat, a landscape with nothing to recommend it. You will have plenty of that view if you decide to stay.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, will that be all?’ And coming to attention, he saluted.

  Matti made a friendly gesture with his hand.

  ‘Goodbye. Forget about it – a worthless landscape, I assure you, an extremely stupid landscape.’

  But that evening Lieutenant Morel, who had come off orderly duty, secretly led Drogo on to the top of the wall to let him see.

  An immensely long corridor, lit by infrequent lamps, ran all the length of the walls from one side of the pass to the other. Every so often there was a door – storerooms, workshops, guard rooms. They walked for about a hundred and fifty yards to the entrance of the third redoubt. An armed sentry stood before the door. Morel asked to speak to Lieutenant Grotta, who was commander of the guard.