The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  Thus they were able to enter in defiance of the regulations. Giovanni found himself in the entrance to a narrow passageway; on one wall there was a board with the names of the soldiers on duty.

  ‘Come on, come this way,’ said Morel to Drogo, ‘we had better hurry.’

  Drogo followed him up a narrow stair which came out into the open air on the ramparts of the redoubt. To the sentry who paced to and fro Lieutenant Morel made a sign as if to say there was no need for formalities.

  Giovanni suddenly found himself looking on to the outer battlements; in front of him the valley fell away, flooded with moonlight, and the secrets of the north lay open before his eyes.

  A kind of pallor came over Drogo’s face as he looked; he was as rigid as stone. The nearby sentry had halted and an unbroken silence seemed to have descended through the diffused half-light. Then without shifting his gaze Drogo asked:

  ‘And beyond – beyond that rock what is it like? Does it go on and on like this?’

  ‘I have never seen it,’ replied Morel. ‘You have to go to the New Redoubt – that one there on the peak. From there you see all the plain beyond. They say …’ And here he fell silent.

  ‘What do they say?’ asked Drogo, and his voice trembled with unusual anxiety.

  ‘They say it is all covered with stones – a sort of desert, with white stones, they say – like snow.’

  ‘All stones – and nothing else?’

  ‘That’s what they say – and an occasional patch of marsh.’

  ‘But right over – in the north they must see something.’

  ‘Usually there are mists on the horizon,’ said Morel, who had lost his previous warm enthusiasm. ‘There are mists which keep you from seeing.’

  ‘Mists,’ said Drogo incredulously. ‘They can’t always be there – the horizon must clear now and again.’

  ‘Hardly ever clear, not even in winter. But some people say they have seen things.’

  ‘Seen? What sort of things?’

  ‘They mean they’ve dreamt things. You go and hear what the soldiers have to say. One says one thing, one another. Some say they have seen white towers, or else they say there is a smoking volcano and that is where the mists come from. Even Ortiz, Captain Ortiz, maintains he saw something five years ago now. According to him there is a long black patch – forests probably.’

  They were both silent. Where, Drogo asked himself, had he seen this world before? Had he lived there in his dreams or created it as he read some ancient tale. He seemed to make some things out – the low crumbling rocks, the winding valley in which there were neither trees nor verdure, those precipitous slopes and finally that triangle of desolate plain which the rocks before him could not conceal. Responses had been awakened in the very depth of his being and he could not grasp them.

  At this moment Drogo was looking at the northern world – the uninhabited land across which, or so they said, no man had ever come. No enemy had ever come out of it; there had been no battles; nothing had ever happened.

  ‘Well,’ asked Morel attempting to assume a jovial tone, ‘you like it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all Drogo could say. Within he was a whirl of confused desires and foolish fears.

  There was a bugle call, a low bugle call, but he could not tell where.

  ‘You had better go now,’ advised Morel. But Giovanni did not seem to hear, intent as he was on searching his thoughts. The evening light was failing and the wind, re-awakened by the shadows, slid along the geometrical architecture of the Fort. In order to keep warm the sentry had begun to walk up and down again, gazing every now and then at Giovanni Drogo, whom he did not know.

  ‘You had better go now,’ repeated Morel, taking his comrade by the arm.

  Chapter Four

  He had often been alone; sometimes even as a child, lost in the countryside; on other occasions it had been in the city at night, in streets where crime was commonplace; then there was the night before when he had slept by the wayside. But now it was quite different – now that the excitement of the journey was over and his new comrades were already sleeping and he sat in his room on his bed by the light of the lamp, sad and lost. Now he really understood what solitude meant – (quite a nice room, all panelled with wood, with a big bed, a table, an uncomfortable divan and a wardrobe). Everyone had been nice to him; in the mess they had opened a bottle of wine in his honour, but now he did not care, had already completely forgotten them – above the bed there was a wooden crucifix, opposite it an old print with a text of which the first words could be read: Humanissimi Viri Francesci Angloisi virtutibus. During the whole night no one would come in to greet him; in all the Fort no one was thinking of him and not only in the Fort, probably in the whole world, there was not a soul who had a thought for Drogo; everyone has his own worries, can barely cope with himself – perhaps even his mother at that moment had other things on her mind, for he was not her only child and she had thought about Giovanni all day; now it was the others’ turn. That was more than fair, Drogo admitted to himself without the shadow of reproof, but meantime he was sitting on the edge of his bed in his room in the Fort (there was, he now saw, cut into the panelling and coloured with extraordinary patience a full scale sabre, which at first glance almost seemed real – the painstaking work of some officer years before), he was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his head bent forward a little, his back bowed, his eyes heavy and dull, and felt himself alone as never before in his life.

  Suddenly he rose with an effort, opened the window and looked out. The window gave on to the courtyard and there was nothing else to be seen. Since it looked towards the south Drogo sought in vain to distinguish in the darkness the mountains which he had crossed to reach the Fort; but they were lower than he thought and hidden by the wall.

  Only three windows were lit but they were in the same block as his own and so he could not see in; the light they threw out and that from Drogo’s room fell on the wall opposite where it seemed to be magnified; a shadow was moving in one of them – perhaps an officer undressing.

  Drogo shut the window, undressed, went to bed and lay thinking for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling; it too was lined with wood. He had forgotten to bring anything to read but that did not matter, he felt so sleepy. He put out the lamp; little by little the pale rectangle of the window emerged from the dark and Drogo saw the stars shining.

  He felt as if a sudden drowsiness were dragging him down into sleep. But he was too conscious of it. A confusion of images, almost like the figures of a dream, passed before his eyes and even began to form a story; then a few seconds later he found that he was still awake.

  More awake than before, because the vastness of the silence suddenly struck him. From far, far away – or had he imagined it? – there came the sound of a cough. Then close by a soft drip of water sounded in the wall. If he lay still he could see that a small green star, which in the course of its journey through the night had reached the top of his window, was on the point of disappearing; it twinkled for a moment on the very edge of the dark window frame and then finally disappeared. Drogo wanted to follow it a little further by leaning his head forward. At that moment there was another ‘plop’ as if something had fallen into the water. Would it be repeated again? He lay waiting for the noise, such a sound as went with underground passages, marshes and deserted houses. The minutes appeared to stand still; complete silence seemed at last to be undisputed master of the Fort. And once more wild images of the life he had left so far behind crowded round Drogo.

  There it was again, the sound he hated. Drogo sat up. So it was a noise that went on and on; the last splash had been no less loud than the first so it could not be a drip which would at last die away. How could he sleep? Drogo remembered that there was a cord hanging by the side of the bed, perhaps a bell-cord. He tried pulling it; the cord answered his pull and in some remote and winding corridor of the building a brief tinkling answered almost imperceptibly. But how stupid it was, thought Drogo, to c
all someone for such a trifle. And who would come in any case?

  Soon after there was the sound of feet in the corridor outside; they drew closer and someone knocked at the door. ‘Come in,’ said Drogo. A soldier with a lamp in his hand appeared. ‘Yes sir,’ he said.

  ‘It’s impossible to sleep here, damn it,’ said Drogo becoming coldly angry. ‘What is this wretched noise? There’s a pipe burst; see that you stop it – it’s quite impossible to sleep. All you need is a rag under it.’

  ‘It’s the cistern, sir,’ the soldier answered immediately as if he were used to the whole affair. ‘It’s the cistern, sir, there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘The cistern?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ explained the soldier. ‘The cistern – just behind that wall. Everyone complains but no one has ever been able to do anything about it. Captain Fonzaso shouts about it every now and again too, but it’s no good.’

  ‘Away you go then,’ said Drogo. The door closed, the footsteps died away, the silence grew again, the stars gleamed in the window. Giovanni thought of the sentries walking up and down like automata a few yards from him, without pause. Scores of men were awake while he lay in bed and everything seemed sunk in sleep. Scores – thought Drogo – but for whom and why? It seemed as if in the Fort the rigid laws of army life had reached a pitch of insanity. Hundreds of men guarding a gap through which no one would pass. Let me get away, get away as soon as possible, thought Giovanni, get away from this atmosphere, from this mysterious mist. He thought of his own simple home: at this hour his mother would be asleep, all the lights out – unless she were still thinking of him for a moment, which was very likely; he knew her so well and how for the least thing she would lie and worry all night and turn in her bed, unable to rest.

  Once more there was the hollow overflow of the cistern, another star passed out of the frame of the window and its light continued to reach the world, the breastworks of the Fort, the feverish eyes of the sentries, but not Giovanni Drogo who lay waiting for sleep, a prey to sinister thoughts.

  Supposing all Matti’s hair-splitting was an act he put on? Suppose in actual fact they didn’t let him go even at the end of four months? Suppose they kept him from seeing the city again with excuses and quibbles about regulations? Suppose he had to stay up there for years and years, in this room, in this solitary bed, suppose he had to waste all his youth? What absurd things to think, said Drogo to himself, realising their stupidity; yet he did not succeed in dispelling them, for soon under cover of the night they returned.

  Thus he seemed to feel spreading around him an obscure plot to try to retain him there. Probably not even Matti was concerned in it. Neither he nor the colonel, nor any other officer was the least interested in him; whether he stayed or went was completely indifferent to them. Yet some unknown force was working against his return to the city – a force which perhaps without his knowing it had its origins in his own heart.

  Then he saw a great hall, a horse on a white road; he seemed to hear voices calling him by name and fell asleep.

  Chapter Five

  Two evenings later Giovanni Drogo was on duty in the third redoubt for the first time. At six o’clock in the evening the seven guards formed up in the courtyard – three for the Fort, four for the lateral redoubts. The eighth – that for the New Redoubt – had left earlier, for it had some way to go.

  Sergeant-Major Tronk, an old inhabitant of the Fort, had been in charge of the men for the third redoubt – twenty-eight of them with a trumpeter who made twenty-nine. They were all from number two company – Captain Ortiz’ company to which Giovanni had been posted. Drogo took command and unsheathed his sword.

  The seven guards were drawn up in line with perfect dressing; in accordance with tradition, the colonel watched from a window. On the yellow courtyard they made a black pattern which was good to see.

  The last rays of the sun slanted across the walls and over them the sky was bright, swept clear by the wind. A September evening. The second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolosi, came out by the great door of the command post, limping from an old wound and leaning on his sword. That day it was Monti’s turn to inspect the guard, an immense captain whose hoarse voice gave the command and all together, absolutely together, the soldiers presented arms with a great metallic clash. There was a tremendous silence.

  Then one by one the trumpeters of the seven guards sounded the calls. They were the famous silver trumpets of Fort Bastiani, with cords of red and gold silk hung with a great coat of arms. Their pure note filled the sky and the motionless hedge of bayonets resounded with it, like the low resonance of a bell. The soldiers were as motionless as statues; their faces military and expressionless. It could not be that they were preparing for monotonous spells of guard duty; with such heroic mien they must surely be going to face the enemy.

  The last call hung in the air, repeated by the distant ramparts. The bayonets gleamed for another second, bright against the deep sky, only to be swallowed up in the ranks – all extinguished together. The colonel had disappeared from the window. The steps of the seven guards echoed as through the labyrinth of the Fort they marched off to their respective stations.

  An hour later Giovanni Drogo was on the topmost terrace of the third redoubt on the very spot where the evening before he had looked towards the north. Yesterday he had come sight-seeing like a passing visitor. Now he was master there; for twenty-four hours the whole redoubt and a hundred yards of wall were under his sole command. Below him, in the interior of the fortification, two artillerymen stood by the two cannon which covered the end of the valley. Three sentries divided between them the perimeter of the redoubt; four others were set out along the wall to the right at intervals of twenty-five yards.

  The relief of the sentries coming off duty had taken place with meticulous precision under the eyes of Sergeant-Major Tronk, who was an expert on rules and regulations. He had been in the Fort for twenty-two years and now did not stir from it even on leave. There was no one who knew as he did every corner of the fortifications and often the officers came on him by night making a round of inspection, when it was as dark as pitch, without a light of any kind. When he was on duty the sentries did not lay down their rifles even for a second nor lean against the ramparts – they were even careful not to stop pacing up and down, for rests were granted only exceptionally; Tronk did not sleep all night, making the rounds with silent tread, causing the sentries to start. ‘Who goes there? Who goes there?’ they challenged, bringing their guns to their shoulders. ‘Grotta,’ replied the sergeant-major. ‘Gregorio,’ said the sentry.

  The usual practice was for the officers and N.C.O.’s on duty to make the rounds on their own stretch of wall informally; the soldiers knew them well by sight and it would have seemed ridiculous to exchange passwords. It was only with Tronk that the soldiers carried out the regulations to the letter.

  He was small and thin with an old man’s face and a shorn head; he spoke little even to his equals in rank and in his free time preferred to study music in solitude. That was his mania – so much so that the drum-major, Espina, was perhaps his only friend. He had a fine accordion which he hardly ever played, although the story went that he played wonderfully. He studied harmony and was said to have written a number of military marches. But no one really knew.

  When he was on duty there was no risk of his beginning to whistle as he usually did when he was free. Mostly he made a round of the battlements, scanning the great valley to the north as if looking for something. Now he was at Drogo’s side and was showing him the mule-path which lead along precipitous slopes to the New Redoubt.

  ‘There is the guard which has been relieved,’ said Tronk pointing with his right hand; but in the twilight Drogo could not pick it out. The sergeant-major shook his head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Drogo.

  ‘It won’t work like this – I’ve always said so – it’s mad,’ answered Tronk.

  ‘But what has happened?’

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sp; ‘It can’t go on like this,’ Tronk repeated, ‘they should change it earlier, the guard at the New Redoubt. But the colonel won’t hear of it.’

  Giovanni looked at him in amazement. Did Tronk really permit himself the liberty of criticising the colonel?

  ‘The colonel,’ the sergeant-major went on with the utmost gravity and conviction and with not the least attempt to correct himself, ‘the colonel is perfectly right from his point of view. But no one has explained the danger to him.’

  ‘The danger?’ asked Drogo – what danger could there be in moving from the Fort to the New Redoubt along that easy path and in such a deserted spot?

  ‘The danger?’ repeated Tronk. ‘Sooner or later something will happen in this dark.’

  ‘What should they do then?’ asked Drogo out of politeness, for he was only very mildly interested in the whole story.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ said the sergeant-major, delighted to show off his knowledge, ‘once upon a time the guard at the New Redoubt was changed two hours before it was at the Fort. Always in daytime, even in winter; and then the whole system of passwords was simpler. They needed one to get into the New Redoubt; then they needed another new one for that day’s guard and for getting back to the Fort. Two were enough. When the guard had dismounted and was back in the Fort the new guard here had not yet been mounted and the password was still valid.’

  ‘I see,’ said Drogo, no longer trying to follow.

  ‘But then,’ Tronk went on, ‘they were afraid. It’s risky, they said, to let so many soldiers who know the password go about outside the Fort. You never know, they said, of fifty soldiers there is more chance of one turning traitor than one officer.’