The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  ‘So they thought only the guard commander should know the password. So now they leave the Fort three-quarters of an hour before the changing of the guard. Take today. Guard mounting takes place at six. The guard for the New Redoubt left here at quarter past five and got there at six sharp. They need no password to leave the Fort being in column of march. To get into the New Redoubt they needed yesterday’s password – and that only the officer knew. Once the guard at the Redoubt has been relieved today’s password comes into force – that again only the officer knows. And so it goes on for twenty-four hours until the new guard comes to take over. Then tomorrow evening when the soldiers get back to the Fort – they may get there at half-past six, the road is easier going back – the password has changed again. So a third one is needed. The officer has to know three – one for the march out, one for the tour of duty and one for coming back. All these complications so that the soldiers won’t know what it is while on the march.’

  ‘And I say,’ he went on without bothering whether Drogo was paying attention or not, ‘I say, if only the officer knows the password and suppose he turns ill on the way – what do the soldiers do? They can’t make him speak. And they can’t go back where they came from because in the meantime the word has changed there. Haven’t they thought of that? And then if they want secrecy, don’t they see that this way they need three passwords instead of two and the third, the one for getting back into the Fort, is given out more than twenty-four hours before? Whatever happens they must enforce it, otherwise the guard can’t come back into the Fort.’

  ‘But,’ Drogo objected, ‘they know them perfectly well at the gate, don’t they? they should see that it was the guard coming off duty?’

  Tronk looked at the lieutenant with a certain air of superiority.

  ‘That’s impossible, sir. There is a rule at the Fort. No one, no matter who he is, may come into the Fort from the north without giving the pass.’

  ‘But then,’ said Drogo, whom this absurd inflexibility irritated, ‘but then wouldn’t it be simpler to have a special password for the New Redoubt? They could be relieved sooner and the password for coming back given to the officer only. That way the soldiers would know nothing.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the sergeant-major as if he had been waiting for this very argument, ‘it would perhaps be the best solution. But you would have to change the regulations, you would need a new law. The regulations say’ (he put a didactic tone into his voice) ‘“The password shall remain in force for twenty-four hours from one guard mounting to another; there shall be only one password current in the Fort and its outposts.” That’s what they say – “its outposts.” It is quite clear. There’s no way round it.’

  ‘But once,’ said Drogo, who had not been listening at the beginning, ‘once the changing of the guard was carried out earlier at the New Redoubt?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tronk, then corrected himself. ‘Yes, sir. There has only been all this business for two years. Before it was much better.’

  The sergeant-major fell silent. Drogo looked at him in amazement and horror. After twenty-two years in the Fort what was left of this soldier? Did Tronk still remember that somewhere there still existed millions of men like himself who were not in uniform? who moved freely about the city and at night could go to bed or to an inn or to the theatre, as they liked? No, you could see at a glance that Tronk had forgotten other men – for him nothing existed but the Fort and its hateful regulations. Tronk had forgotten the sweet sound of girls’ voices, what a garden was like, or a river or any tree but the stunted bushes scattered round the Fort. Tronk looked towards the north, it was true, but not with the same feelings in his breast as Drogo; he gazed at the road to the New Redoubt, examined the moat and the glacis, scanned the possible approach routes but not the savage crags, nor that triangle of mysterious plain nor the white clouds sailing through the sky where night had almost come.

  Then as darkness fell Drogo once more became a prey to his desire to escape. Why had he not left at once? he kept asking himself. Why had he given in to Matti’s smooth diplomacy? Now he had to wait for four months to pass, one hundred and twenty long, long days, half of them spent on guard on the walls. He felt that he was among men of another race, in a foreign country, a hard, thankless world. He looked around him and saw Tronk standing motionless watching the sentries.

  Chapter Six

  Night had fallen everywhere. Drogo was sitting in the bare room of the redoubt. Having sent for pen and ink ‘Dear mother,’ he began, and at once felt as he had when a child. He was alone, sitting by the light of a lamp in the heart of an unfamiliar Fort, he was far from home, from all the good, familiar things, but at least there was a consolation in being able to unfold his heart.

  Of course with the others, with his colleagues, he had to be a man, had to laugh with them and tell swash-buckling stories about women and the soldier’s life. But to whom could he tell the truth if not to his mother? And that evening the truth as Drogo saw it was not what you would have expected from a good soldier – probably it was unworthy of the austere Fort, and his companions would have laughed at it. The truth was that he was tired from the journey, that the gloomy walls weighed upon him, that he felt completely alone.

  ‘I got here tired out after two days’ travelling,’ that was what he would write, ‘and when I did get here I learned that if I wanted I could go back to the city. The Fort is a melancholy place – there are no villages nearby, there are no amusements and no fun.’ That was what he would write.

  ‘Dear mother,’ his hand wrote, ‘I got here yesterday after an excellent journey. The Fort is wonderful …’ If only he could convey to her the dinginess of the walls, the vague feeling of punishment and of exile, the absurdity of these foreign-seeming men. ‘The officers gave me an affectionate welcome,’ he wrote. ‘Even the adjutant was very nice and left me completely free to go back to the city if I wanted to. But I …’

  Perhaps at that very moment his mother was roaming about his empty room, opening a drawer, tidying some of his old clothes or his books or his desk; she had put them to rights often before but by doing it she seemed to have him with her again, as if he were about to come home as usual for supper. He seemed to hear the familiar noise of her little, restless footsteps which always seemed to say that she was worried about someone. He wondered how he had ever had the courage to cause her bitterness. If he had been with her, in the same room, drawn together in the light of the familiar lamp, then Giovanni would have told her everything and would not have been able to be sad because he was beside her and the bad things were over and done with. But how could he do it from a distance, by letter? If he were sitting beside her in front of the fire, in the reassuring quiet of the old house, then he could have spoken about Major Matti and of his treacherous smoothness, of Tronk’s mania. He would have told her how stupidly he had agreed to stay for four months and probably the two of them would have laughed about it. But how could he do it at this distance?

  ‘However,’ Drogo wrote, ‘I thought it best both for myself and my career to stay up here a while. Besides the other officers are very pleasant and the duties easy and not tiring.’ But what about his room, the noise of the cistern, the meeting with Captain Ortiz and the desolate northern territory? Hadn’t he to explain about the iron rules of the guard and this bare redoubt? No, he could not be frank even with his mother – even to her he could not confess the vague fears which beset him.

  Now at home, in the city, the clocks were striking ten, one after another in varied tones; as they chimed the glasses in the cupboards tinkled a little; from the kitchen there came the echo of laughter; from across the way, a tune on the piano. From where he sat Drogo could glance through a window so extremely narrow as to be almost a slit in the wall and see the valley to the north, that melancholy land; but at this moment there was nothing to see but darkness. The pen squeaked a little. Although the night held full sway the wind began to blow through the crenellations bearing unkn
own messages, and although within the redoubt the shadows piled up and the air was damp and unpleasant ‘on the whole,’ wrote Giovanni Drogo, ‘I am very happy and am keeping well.’

  From nine in the evening until the dawn, a bell rang every half-hour in the fourth redoubt on the extreme right of the pass, where the walls ended. A little bell sounded and at once the furthest sentry called his neighbour; from him to the next man and so on to the far end of the walls the cry ran in the night, from redoubt to redoubt, across the Fort and through the bastions: Stand to, stand to!

  The sentries put no enthusiasm into their call – they repeated it mechanically with a strange note in their voices.

  Drogo did not undress but stretched himself out on his camp bed; he felt a growing desire to sleep and heard the cry come at intervals from far off. ‘To, to,’ was all that reached him. It grew louder and louder as it passed overhead, it reached its peak, then moved on into the distance to die away little by little in the void. Two minutes later it was there again, sent from the furthest outpost on the left, checking and rechecking. Drogo heard it approach once more at a slow and even pace: ‘To, to, to.’ It was only when it was above him and his own sentries repeated it that he could distinguish the words. But soon the ‘stand to’ became blurred into a kind of lament which died away at last with the furthest sentry at the base of the crags.

  Giovanni heard the call pass four times and run back along the ramparts four times to the point from which it had started. The fifth time only a vague resonance penetrated his consciousness and made him start slightly. He remembered that it was not a good thing for the officer of the guard to sleep; the regulations allowed it on condition that he did not undress but almost all the young officers in the Fort stayed awake all night in a mood of elegant bravado, smoking cigars, visiting each other against the rules and playing cards. Tronk, whom Giovanni had asked for guidance, had led him to understand that it was a good plan to stay awake.

  As he lay stretched out on his camp bed beyond the circle of the oil lamp daydreaming over his own life Drogo was suddenly overcome by sleep. Meantime, that very night (had he but known it he might perhaps not have been inclined to sleep) that very night time began to slip by him beyond recall.

  Up to then he had gone forward through the heedless season of early youth – along a road which to children seems infinite, where the years slip past slowly and with quiet pace so that no one notices them go. We walk along calmly, looking curiously around us; there is not the least need to hurry, no one pushes us on from behind and no one is waiting for us; our comrades, too, walk on thoughtlessly, and often stop to joke and play. From the houses, in the doorways, the grown-up people greet us kindly and point to the horizon with an understanding smile. And so the heart begins to beat with desires at once heroic and tender, we feel that we are on the threshold of the wonders awaiting us further on. As yet we do not see them, that is true – but it is certain, absolutely certain that one day we shall reach them.

  Is it far yet? No, you have to cross that river down there, go over those green hills. Haven’t we perhaps arrived already? Aren’t these trees, these meadows, this white house perhaps what we were looking for? For a few seconds we feel that they are and we would like to halt there. Then someone says that it is better further on and we move off again unhurriedly.

  So the journey continues; we wait trustfully and the days are long and peaceful. The sun shines high in the sky and it seems to have no wish to set.

  But at a certain point we turn round, almost instinctively, and see that a gate has been bolted behind us, barring our way back. Then we feel that something has changed; the sun no longer seems to be motionless but moves quickly across the sky; there is barely time to find it when it is already falling headlong towards the far horizon. We notice that the clouds no longer lie motionless in the blue gulfs of the sky but flee, piled one above the other, such is their haste. Then we understand that time is passing and that one day or another the road must come to an end.

  At a certain point they shut a gate behind us, they lock it with lightning speed and it is too late to turn back. But at that moment Giovanni Drogo was sleeping, blissfully unconscious, and smiling in his sleep like a child.

  Some days will pass before Drogo understands what has happened. Then it will be like an awakening. He will look around him incredulously; then he will hear a din of footsteps at his back, will see those who awoke before him running hard to pass him by, to get there first. He will feel the pulse of time greedily beat out the measure of life. There will be no more laughing faces at the windows but unmoved and indifferent ones. And if he asks how far there is still to go they will, it is true, still point to the horizon – but not good-naturedly, not joyfully. Meanwhile his companions will disappear from view. One gets left behind, exhausted; another has outstripped the rest and is now no more than a tiny speck on the horizon.

  Another ten miles – people will say – over that river and you will be there. Instead it never ends. The days grow shorter, the fellow-travellers fewer; at the windows apathetic figures stand and shake their heads.

  At last Drogo will be all alone and there on the horizon stretches a measureless sea, motionless, leaden. Now he will be tired; nearly all the houses along the way will have their windows shut and the few persons he sees will answer him with a sad gesture. The good things lay further back – far, far back and he has passed them by without knowing it. But it is too late to turn back; behind him swells the hum of the following multitude urged on by the same illusion but still invisible on the white road.

  At this moment Giovanni Drogo is sleeping in the third redoubt. He is smiling in his dreams. For the last time there come to him by night the sweet sights of a completely happy world. It is as well that he cannot see himself as he will one day be – there at the end of the road, standing on the shores of the leaden sea under a grey, monotonous sky. And around him there is not a house, not one human being, not a tree, not even a blade of grass. And so it has been since time immemorial.

  Chapter Seven

  At last the trunk with Lieutenant Drogo’s kit arrived from the city. Amongst it there was a brand new cloak of extreme elegance. Drogo put it on and looked at himself inch by inch in the little mirror in his own room. It seemed to him to be a living link with the world he had left and he thought with satisfaction how everyone would look at him, so splendid was the material, so proud its line.

  He decided that he must not spoil it on duty, during the nights spent on guard or among the damp walls. It was even a bad omen to put it on for the first time up here as if admitting that he would not have better occasions. And yet he was sorry he could not show it off and although it was not cold he wanted to put it on, at least to go as far as the regimental tailor from whom he would buy an ordinary one.

  So he left his room and set off down the stairs noting, when the light permitted, the elegance of his own shadow. Yet the further he descended into the heart of the Fort his cloak seemed somehow to lose its original splendour. Moreover he noticed that he did not manage to wear it naturally – as if there were something odd about it, something too conspicuous.

  So he was glad that the stairs and corridors were almost deserted. When at last he met a captain the latter returned his salute without more than the necessary glance. Nor did the rare soldiers turn their eyes to look at him.

  He went down a narrow winding stair cut out of the heart of the ramparts and his footsteps resounded above and below him as if there were others there. The rich folds of the cloak swung to and fro and struck the white mildew on the walls.

  Thus Drogo arrived below ground; for the workshop of the tailor, Prosdocimo, was accommodated in a cellar. When the days were fine a ray of light shone down through a little window level with the ground, but that evening they had already lit the lights.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ said Prosdocimo, the regimental tailor, whenever he saw him come in. Only a few patches of the great room were lit up – a table at which an old man
was writing, the bench where the three young assistants worked. All around scores upon scores of uniforms, greatcoats and cloaks, hung limply with the sinister abandon of hanged men.

  ‘Good evening,’ Drogo replied, ‘I want a cloak; a fairly cheap cloak is what I want – something to last four months.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said the tailor with a smile at once inquisitive and suspicious, taking the hem of Drogo’s cloak and drawing it towards the light. His rank was that of sergeant-major, but by virtue of being tailor he could apparently allow himself a certain ironical familiarity with his superiors.

  ‘Good material, very. You will have paid a fine price for it, I imagine, they don’t do things by halves down there in the city.’

  He looked it all over like a craftsman then shook his head so that his full ruddy cheeks trembled.

  ‘It’s a pity though,’ he said.

  ‘What’s a pity?’

  ‘It’s a pity the collar is so low, so unmilitary.’

  ‘That’s how they wear them nowadays,’ said Drogo with superior air.

  ‘Fashion will have the collar low,’ said the tailor, ‘but for us soldiers fashion doesn’t count. Fashion must be according to the regulations and the regulations say “the collar of the cloak will be tight, stand up and be three inches high.” Perhaps, sir, seeing me in this hole you think I am a very third-class sort of tailor.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Drogo. ‘On the contrary, not a bit of it.’

  ‘You probably think I am a very third-class sort of tailor. But many officers have a high opinion of me – in the city, too – important officers. I am here on a merely temporary basis,’ and he measured out the syllables of the last three words as if it were a statement of great importance.

  Drogo did not know what to say.

  ‘I expect to leave any day,’ Prosdocimo went on. ‘But that the colonel won’t let me go … But what are you people laughing at?’