The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  It had needed only a report, a mere rifle-shot, and the Fort had awakened. For years there had been silence, yet they had always looked to the north to hear the voice of approaching war – too long a silence. Now a gun had been fired, with its regulation charge of powder and its lead ball thirty-two grammes in weight, and the men had looked at each other as if it were the signal.

  Admittedly even this evening no one, unless it be one of the soldiers, pronounces the word which is in everyone’s mind. The officers prefer not to utter it because in it lies their hope. It is because of the Tartars that they have built the walls of the Fort and there use up great stretches of their lives; it is because of the Tartars that the sentries pace up and down day and night like clockwork. And some of them feed their hope every morning with new faith; others keep it hidden in the bottom of their hearts; others again – believing it lost – are not even conscious of harbouring it. But no one has the courage to speak about it, that would perhaps mean bad luck, above all it would look like confessing one’s dearest thoughts and of that soldiers are ashamed.

  As yet there is only a dead soldier and a horse come from who knows where. In the guardroom at the northern gate, where the unfortunate incident occurred, there is a great stir and, although it is against the regulations, Tronk is there too and has no peace at the thought of the punishment which awaits him: the responsibility falls on him, it was his duty to stop Lazzari from slipping off; it was his duty to notice at once when they came back that the soldier had not answered the roll call.

  And now Major Matti also appears, anxious to make his authority felt and to show his powers. He has a strange and puzzling expression – he almost gives the impression that he is smiling. Evidently he is fully informed of everything and orders Lieutenant Mentana, who is on duty in the redoubt, to recover the corpse of the soldier.

  Mentana is a pale-faced officer, the oldest lieutenant in the Fort; if he did not have a large diamond ring and play good chess no one would notice his existence. It is a great jewel he wears on his ring-finger and there are few who can beat him on the chessboard, but in the presence of Major Matti he literally shakes and loses his head over such a simple matter as sending a fatigue party for the dead man.

  Fortunately Major Matti has caught sight of Sergeant-Major Tronk standing in a corner and calls him.

  ‘Tronk, seeing you have nothing to do, take command of the party.’

  He says this with the greatest possible naturalness as if Tronk were any N.C.O. and had no personal connection with the occurrence; because Matti is incapable of administering a direct rebuke he usually ends up by becoming white with rage and cannot find words. He prefers the much more terrible weapon of courts of inquiry with phlegmatic interrogations and written documents which succeed in monstrously magnifying the slightest shortcomings and almost always lead to notable punishments.

  Tronk does not bat an eyelid – ‘Yes, sir,’ he replies and hastens down into the little courtyard immediately behind the postern gate. Shortly afterwards a little procession issues from the Fort by the light of one or two lanterns. Tronk is at their head, then four soldiers with a stretcher, four more armed soldiers as a precaution, and last of all Major Matti himself wrapped in a faded cloak and trailing his sabre on the stones.

  They find Lazzari as he died, his face to the ground and his arms stretched out in front of him. In his fall his slung rifle has caught between two stones and now stands upright with the butt uppermost – a strange sight. As he fell the soldier has cut his hand and before the body could grow cold a little blood has had time to flow and form a stain on a white stone. The mysterious horse has disappeared.

  Tronk leans over the dead man as though to take him by the shoulders, but he draws back suddenly as if he had caught himself infringing the regulations. ‘Lift him up,’ he orders the soldiers in a low and angry voice, ‘but first take away his rifle.’

  A soldier stoops to unbuckle the sling and lays down the lantern right beside the dead man. Lazzari has not had time to close his eyelids completely and through the aperture the flame gleams a little on the white.

  Then Major Matti, who has remained completely in the shadow calls: ‘Tronk.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answers Tronk coming to attention; the soldiers too stop whatever they are doing.

  ‘What happened? Where did he get away?’ asks the major, drawling the words as if he spoke from a mixture of boredom and curiosity. ‘Was it at the fountain? Where those big boulders are?’

  ‘Yes, sir, at the boulders,’ answers Tronk, and does not add another word.

  ‘And no one saw him escaping?’

  ‘No, sir,’ says Tronk.

  ‘At the fountain, eh? Was it dark?’

  ‘Yes, sir, fairly dark.’

  Tronk remains at attention for a few moments, then since Matti remains silent he gives a sign to the soldiers to carry on. One of them tries to undo the rifle-sling but the clasp is stiff and he has difficulty. When he pulls on it the soldier feels the weight of the dead body, a leaden weight out of all proportion to what one would expect.

  Having got rid of the rifle, the two soldiers delicately turn the corpse over and put it face up. Now they can see his whole face. The mouth is closed and without expression – only the half-open and motionless eyes, since they do not respond to the light of the lantern, have an air of death.

  ‘In the forehead?’ asks Matti’s voice, for he has at once noticed a sort of little hollow just above the nose.

  ‘Sir?’ says Tronk who does not understand.

  ‘I say he was hit in the forehead?’ says Matti, annoyed at having to repeat it.

  Tronk raises the lantern and shines it full on Lazzari’s face; he too sees the little hollow and instinctively puts out a finger as if to touch it. But suddenly he withdraws it in confusion.

  ‘I think so, sir, right there in the middle of the forehead.’ (But why doesn’t he come and see the dead man for himself if he is so interested? What are all these stupid questions for?)

  The soldiers, noticing Tronk’s embarrassment, concentrate of their work. Two lift up the corpse by the shoulders, two by the legs. The head, left without support, dangles horribly. The mouth, although it is frozen in death, almost begins to open.

  ‘And who was it that fired?’ asks Matti once more, still motionless in the darkness.

  But at this moment Tronk is not paying attention to him. Tronk is paying attention only to the dead man. ‘Hold up his head,’ he commands with deep-felt anger as if he himself were the dead man. Then he realises that Matti has spoken and springs to attention again.

  ‘I beg you pardon, sir, I was …’

  ‘I said,’ Matti repeats and he measures out the words to show that if he doesn’t lose his patience it is only because of the dead man, ‘I said: “Who was it that fired?”’

  ‘What is his name, do you know?’ Tronk asked the soldiers in a low voice.

  ‘Martelli,’ says one of them, ‘Giovanni Martelli.’

  ‘Martelli,’ the major repeats to himself. (The name seems not unfamiliar to him – it must be one of the prizewinners at the shooting match. For it is Matti himself who runs the musketry school and he remembers the best ones by name.) ‘Is it by any chance the one they call Moretto?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ says Tronk, standing motionless at attention. ‘I believe they call him Moretto. You know, sir, among themselves.’

  He says this almost apologetically – as if to show that Martelli is not in any way responsible, that if they call him Moretto it isn’t his fault and that there is no reason whatever to punish him.

  But the major has not the slightest intention of punishing him – it doesn’t even enter his head.

  ‘Ah, Moretto,’ he exclaims without concealing a certain satisfaction.

  The sergeant-major looks hard at him and understands.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he thinks, ‘give him a prize, the bastard, because he has done his killing well. A wonderful bull, isn’t it?’

&n
bsp; At this moment Tronk hates him.

  ‘Of course, of course, tell him out loud that you are pleased,’ he thinks, ‘if Lazzari is dead you don’t give a damn. Congratulate this Moretto of yours.’

  And that is what happens – the major with the greatest calmness expresses his satisfaction aloud.

  ‘Ah yes, he doesn’t miss, Moretto,’ he exclaims as if to say – ‘He was a sly one, Lazzari, he thought Moretto would miss, he thought he would have him on, Lazzari did. And so he learnt what sort of a shot he was. And what about Tronk? maybe he hoped that Moretto would miss (then everything would have been put right with a few days’ detention).’ ‘Of course, of course,’ the major repeats once more, completely forgetting that the dead man is in front of him, ‘a picked shot, Moretto.’

  At last, however, he stops and the sergeant-major can turn round and see how they have laid the corpse on the stretcher. It is already laid out decently; they have thrown an army blanket over its face; of the naked flesh only the hands can be seen – two big peasant’s hands which seem still red with life and warm blood.

  Tronk nods his head. The soldiers raise the stretcher.

  ‘May we go, sir?’ he asks.

  ‘Who is there to wait for?’ Matti answers in a hard voice. Now, with genuine amazement, he has felt Tronk’s hatred and means to return it with interest, adding to it his contempt for an inferior.

  ‘Forward,’ orders Tronk. Forward march, he should have said, but it seems almost a profanation. Only now did he look towards the walls of the Fort, towards the sentry on the skyline, vaguely lit by the gleam of the lanterns. Behind these walls in a barrack-room there is Lazzari’s bunk, his little box with the things brought from home – a holy image, two heads of maize, a steel for flint, some coloured handkerchiefs, four silver buttons for his best suit which had belonged to his grandfather and would never be of any use at the Fort.

  Perhaps the pillow still bears the imprint of his head, exactly as two days before when he awoke. Then there is probably a little bottle of ink – Tronk adds mentally, for even his lonely thinking is meticulous – a little bottle of ink and a pen. All this will be put in a little parcel and sent home with a letter from the colonel. The other things issued by the Government will naturally be handed on to some other soldier, including his spare shirt. But not his fine uniform nor yet his gun; the gun and the uniform will be buried with him because such is the ancient rule of the Fort.

  Chapter Fourteen

  And when the first dawn was breaking they saw from the New Redoubt a thin black line on the northern plain. A thin moving line which could not be an hallucination. The first to see it was a sentry called Andronico, then Pietri, then Sergeant Batta who had laughed at it at first, and then Lieutenant Maderna too, the commander of the redoubt.

  A small black line was advancing from the north across the uninhabited steppe; it was both astonishing and absurd although even during the night some sort of presentiment had been abroad in the Fort. At about six, Andronico was the first to shout the alarm. Something was approaching from the north, an event such as had not happened in living memory. As the light grew stronger the advancing body of men stood out clearly against the white background of the desert.

  A few minutes later the regimental tailor, Prosdocimo, as he had done every morning since time immemorial (once it had been from pure hopefulness, then merely from a sense of duty and now was almost solely from habit) – Prosdocimo, then, climbed up to look out from the roof of the Fort. In the guardrooms they let him pass from old custom; he would look in and chat a little with the sergeant of the guard, then go back down into his subterranean quarters.

  This morning he came up on to the sentry-walk and looked at the triangular patch of desert and said to himself: ‘I must be dead.’ It seemed impossible that it should be a dream. In a dream there is always an element of absurdity and confusion – one is never altogether free of the vague feeling that everything is false, that sooner or later one is going to wake up. In a dream things are never crystal clear and real, like that desolate plain over which columns of unknown men were advancing.

  But it was so extraordinary, so like certain longings of his youth, that it never even entered Prosdocimo’s head that it could be true; so he thought he must be dead.

  He thought he must be dead and that God had pardoned him. He thought he was in the other world – a world apparently like our own, except that there the good things of life will come true according to our just desires and once they have been satisfied one’s soul is at peace, not as in this world where there is always something to poison even our happiest days.

  He thought he must be dead, Prosdocimo, and did not move thinking that, being dead, it was not his place to move, and that some mysterious power would stir him to action. Instead it was a sergeant-major who respectfully touched his arm.

  ‘What is it?’ he said to him. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

  It was only then that Prosdocimo began to understand.

  Almost as if in a dream, only better, mysterious men were descending from the Northern Kingdom. Time passed more quickly, one’s eyelids no longer even blinked as one gazed at the unusual sight; the sun was already shining on the red rim of the horizon and little by little the foreign troops drew nearer, although with extreme slowness. Some people said that they were on foot and on horse, that they were coming on in Indian file, that there was a flag too. So some people said and others believed they saw it, everybody got it into their heads that they saw foot and horse, the flag, the long file, although in reality they made out only a thin, black, slowly-moving line.

  ‘The Tartars,’ Andronico dared to say as if it were a grim joke, and his face had become as white as death. Half an hour later Lieutenant Maderna at the New Redoubt ordered the cannon to fire one round, a warning shot, as was laid down in the event of unknown armed forces being seen to approach.

  It was years since a cannon had been heard up there. The walls shook a little. The report spread with a slow rumble; the noise of destruction echoed among the crags. And Lieutenant Maderna’s eyes turned to the smooth profile of the Fort watching for signs of excitement. But the noise of the gun caused no surprise, for the strangers were advancing over that very triangle of plain which was visible from the Fort and everyone knew about them already. Even in the remotest turret, where the left-hand bastion came to an end against the rocks, even the sentry standing guard on the underground storeroom where the lanterns and the mason’s things were kept, even this sentry, shut up in the gloomy cellar, where he could see nothing, had heard the news. And he was impatient for time to pass so that he too could go up on to the sentry-walk and look.

  Everything went on as before – the sentries remained at their posts, pacing up and down in the prescribed space, the clerks went on copying their reports with screeching pens and dipped them in the ink with their usual rhythm; but from the north men were approaching who must be presumed to be enemies. In the stables the soldiers cursed the horses, the cook-house chimneys smoked calmly, three soldiers were sweeping out the courtyard; but already there was everywhere a marked air of solemnity, a state of extreme suspense in everyone’s mind, as if the great hour had come and nothing could now hold it back.

  Officers and men drew deep breaths of the morning air so as to feel within themselves youth and life. The gunners began to get ready their guns, joking among themselves as they worked at them; as if they were beasts one had to keep in good condition; yet at the same time they looked at them with a certain apprehension. Perhaps after such a long interval the pieces could no longer fire; perhaps in the past they had not been cleaned with sufficient care; in a sense, it could only be a makeshift for shortly everything would be settled one way or the other. Never before had the orderlies run up the stairs so quickly, never had the uniforms been so tidy, the bayonets so gleaming, the bugle calls so military. So they had not waited in vain; the years had not been wasted; the old Fort would, after all, be of some use.

  Now they were
waiting for a special bugle call, the signal for the ‘general alarm’ which the men had never had the good fortune to hear. During their exercises – held outside the Fort in a secluded valley, where the noises would not reach the Fort and give rise to misunderstandings – the trumpeters had of a calm summer’s afternoon tried out the famous call, more from excess of zeal than anything else; certainly no one ever thought it would be used. Now they were sorry they had not practised it enough; it climbed in one long arpeggio to a high, high note and probably they would bring out a sound that was not quite true.

  Only the commandant of the Fort could give the order for the signal and it was of him that everyone thought – already the soldiers were waiting for him to come and inspect the walls from end to end, already they saw him advance towards them, smiling proudly, and looking each man keenly in the eye. It must be a great day for him, for had he not spent his whole life waiting for this event?

  But Colonel Filimore was in his office and looked out of his window to the north – towards the little triangle of steppe not hidden by the crags; there he saw a line of small black dots moving like ants, moving towards him, and they seemed indeed to be soldiers.

  Every now and again an officer came in – Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolosi or the captain of the day or an orderly officer. They came in on various pretexts (they were impatiently awaiting his orders) and announced unimportant items of news: that another supply waggon had arrived from the city, that the repairs to the baker’s shop were beginning that morning, that a dozen soldiers had finished their leave, that the telescope had been set up on the terrace of the Fort if the colonel wished to avail himself of it.

  They gave these pieces of news, saluted with a click of their heels, and could not understand why the colonel sat there without saying a word, without giving the commands everyone awaited with certainty. He had not yet reinforced the guards, nor doubled the number of rounds issued to each man nor decided to give the general alarm.