by Dino Buzzati
All had fallen silent – in the roaring of the stonefall they had felt the presence of a hostile power. Monti looked at Angustina with a vague air of distrust. He hoped he would be afraid, but not at all. However the lieutenant seemed to be excessively heated after the short march and his elegant uniform was somewhat disarrayed.
With all the airs you give yourself, you damned snob, thought Monti, I’ll show you soon. He at once continued the march, forcing the pace even more, and every so often he threw short glances behind to look at Angustina. Yes, it was as he had hoped and foreseen, you could see that the boots were beginning to torture his feet. Not that Angustina slackened pace or put on a pained expression. You could guess it only from the rhythm of his marching, from the expression of determination on his brow.
‘I feel I could go on for six hours today,’ said the captain. ‘If only I didn’t have the men. It’s good going today,’ he kept on with naïve malice. ‘How are you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Angustina, ‘what did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ and he smiled wickedly, ‘I was asking how you were getting on.’
‘Ah yes, thank you,’ said Angustina evasively and then after a pause to hide how he was panting from the climb, ‘it’s a pity.’
‘What’s a pity?’ asked Monti, hoping the other would confess to being tired.
‘It’s a pity one can’t come up here oftener, it’s a wonderful spot,’ and he smiled with his detached air.
Monti quickened the pace still more but Angustina kept at his heels; his face was now pale with effort; trickles of sweat ran down from the rim of his heavy cap and even the stuff of his jacket had become soaked through on his back, but he did not say a word nor lose ground.
By now they were among the crags; terrible grey cliffs rose sharply all around; it seemed the valley must rise to unimaginable heights.
The signs of normal life ceased and gave way to the motionless desolation of the mountains. Every now and again Angustina raised his eyes in fascination to the crests poised overhead.
‘We will have a halt further on,’ said Monti, who kept a continual watch on him. ‘You can’t see the place yet. But are you really not tired? Sometimes a person doesn’t feel up to it. It’s best to say so even if you risk getting there too late.’
‘Let’s get on, let’s get on,’ was Angustina’s answer almost as if he were the superior officer.
‘Of course, you know I was only saying that because anyone can happen not to feel up to it. That was the only reason why I said it.’
Angustina was pale, trickles of sweat ran from the rim of his cap, his jacket was soaked through. But he gritted his teeth and did not give in; he would have died sooner. Trying not to let the captain see it, he was in fact glancing up towards the head of the valley, seeking the end of the hard going.
Meanwhile the sun had risen and lit the highest peaks, but there was not the freshness of the fine autumn mornings. A veil of mist was spreading slowly over the sky, treacherous and even.
Now his boots did begin to hurt damnably; the leather bit into his ankle, and to judge by the pain the skin must be already broken.
Suddenly the screes ceased and the valley opened out on to a narrow shelf lying at the foot of a circle of cliffs; it was covered with stunted growths. On both sides there rose, in a maze of towers and rock-chimneys, cliff walls whose height it was hard to judge.
Somewhat against his will Captain Monti ordered a halt and gave the men time to eat. Angustina sat calmly down on a stone, but he shivered at the wind which froze the sweat on his body. He and the captain shared some bread, a slice of meat, a piece of cheese and a bottle of wine.
Angustina was cold; he watched the captain and the men to see if one of them would unroll his cloak so that he could do the same. But the men seemed not to feel tired and were joking among themselves. The captain was eating hungrily and enjoying it, between mouthfuls he looked up at the precipitous mountains above them.
‘Now I see,’ he said. ‘Now I see where we can get up,’ and he pointed to the overhanging cliff which ended on the disputed crest.
‘We must go straight up from here. We’re fit for it, aren’t we? What do you say, lieutenant?’
Angustina looked at the cliff face. To reach the frontier crest they would indeed have to go straight up from there unless they wanted to get round it by some break in the rock. But that would take much more time and they must hurry. The Northerners were at an advantage for they had set out first and on their side the going was much easier. It was necessary to go for the cliff directly in front.
‘Up here?’ asked Angustina looking at the precipitous crags, and he noted that a hundred yards or so to the left the ascent would have been much easier.
‘Straight up from here, of course,’ repeated the captain. ‘What do you say to it?’
‘The whole point is to get there before them,’ said Angustina.
The captain looked at him with obvious dislike.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a quick game.’
He produced a pack of cards from his pocket, spread his cloak over a flat stone, invited Angustina to play and then said:
‘These clouds. You keep looking at them in a funny way. But don’t be frightened, they’re not bad weather clouds.’ And he laughed for some reason as if he had made a witty joke.
So they began to play. Angustina felt the wind chill him. Whereas the captain had sat down between two sheltering rocks he himself caught the wind full in his back. ‘This time I shall fall ill,’ he thought.
‘Listen, this is too much from you,’ cried Captain Monti without warning, literally shouting the words. ‘Letting me have an ace like that, damn it. Where’s your head? You keep looking up there and pay no attention to the cards.’
‘No I don’t,’ replied Angustina. ‘I made a mistake!’ And he tried to laugh without success.
‘Tell the truth,’ said Monti triumphantly and with satisfaction. ‘Tell the truth – these things are hurting you, I could have sworn they would from the time we left.’
‘What things?’
‘These fine boots of yours. They aren’t meant for marches like this, my dear Angustina. Tell the truth – they’re hurting.’
‘They are a nuisance,’ admitted Angustina with a note of contempt, as if to indicate that it was annoying to discuss them.
The captain laughed contentedly.
‘I knew it. It’s a bad idea to wear boots up among the screes!’
‘Do you see that I have played a king of spades,’ Angustina warned him coldly. ‘Can you not follow suit?’
‘Yes, of course, I made a mistake,’ said the captain with unabated joy. ‘Ah, yes, your boots.’
Truth to tell Lieutenant Angustina’s boots did not hold well on the rocks of the cliff face. They had no nails and tended to slip, whereas Captain Monti’s heavy boots, like the men’s, took a solid grip of the footholds. But still Angustina did not fall behind; by making a still greater effort – although he was already tired and suffering from the sweat frozen on his body – he contrived to keep close behind the captain up the broken wall of rock.
The mountain turned out to be less difficult and steep than it had appeared from below. It was broken by chimneys, by drifts and scree-covered ledges; the rock-faces were pitted with innumerable holds which they found with ease. The captain, not being agile by nature, clambered up by brute force in a series of spurts, looking down every now and again in the hope that Angustina might have fallen out. But Angustina held on; with the utmost skill he sought out the broadest, the most secure holds and was almost amazed that he could pull himself up so nimbly although he felt completely finished.
As the abyss opened up beneath them, the last crest seemed to recede behind the defences of a perpendicular face of yellow rock. And evening drew on at increasing speed, although a thick ceiling of grey clouds made it impossible to judge how high the sun still stood. It was beginning to be cold, too. An evil wind rose from
the valley and they could hear it sighing among the crevices of the mountain.
Then they heard the sergeant who brought up the rear call from below: ‘Captain!’
Monti stopped, Angustina stopped and after them each soldier right down the line.
‘What is it now?’ asked the captain as if he had enough to worry him already.
‘They’re on the crest already, the Northerners!’ shouted the sergeant.
‘You’re mad. Where do you see them?’ replied Monti.
‘To the left, on that little saddle, immediately to the left of the bit that looks like a nose.’
There they were. Three tiny black figures stood out against the grey sky and could be seen moving about. It was obvious that they had already occupied the lower portions of the crest and would in all probability reach the peak first.
‘God damn it,’ said the captain with a furious glance below him as if the men had been responsible for the delay. Then he turned to Angustina.
‘We must at least occupy the crest – there’s no two ways about it – otherwise we’re for it with the colonel.’
‘They would have to stop for a bit then,’ said Angustina. ‘They won’t take more than an hour from the saddle to the summit. If they don’t stop we’re bound to reach there after them.’
Then the captain said: ‘Perhaps I had better go on with four men – it’s quicker in a small party. You come on without hurrying, or wait here if you feel tired.’
That’s what he was getting at, the bastard, thought Angustina, he wanted to leave me behind and be the only one to come well out of it.
‘As you wish,’ he replied. ‘But I prefer to come up too; if we stay here we’ll freeze to death.’
So the captain with four of the nimblest soldiers set off as an advanced patrol. Angustina took command of the remainder, hoping in vain to be able to keep up with Monti. But he had too many men; if he forced the pace the line stretched out too much, so that those at the end were completely lost to view.
So Angustina saw the captain’s little patrol disappear above him behind grey ledges of rock. For a little he heard the little stonefalls they caused in the gullies and then not even that. Even their voices at last faded in the distance.
But meanwhile the sky was becoming dark. The surrounding crags, the pale rock-faces on the other side of the valley, the far end of the precipice had a bluish tint. Little ravens flew along the high crests screeching, as if calling to each other because of some imminent danger.
‘Sir,’ said the soldier behind Angustina. ‘It will rain soon.’
Angustina stopped and looked at him and said nothing. His boots were no longer hurting him, but he was beginning to be extremely tired. Each yard he climbed cost an extreme effort. Fortunately on this stretch the rocks were less steep and more broken than before. Who knew where the captain had got to, thought Angustina, perhaps already to the summit, perhaps he had already planted the little flag and set up the boundary mark, perhaps he was already on the way down.
He looked up and saw that the crest was not much further off. But he could not think how to find a way up, so steep and smooth was the bastion below it.
At last he came on to a wide pebble-strewn ledge and found himself a few yards from Captain Monti. The latter had climbed on to the shoulders of a soldier and was trying to scramble up a low but sheer cliff, not more than a dozen yards high, but apparently unscaleable. It was evident that Monti had been trying persistently for some minutes without succeeding in finding a way.
He groped about three or four times, seeking a hold, and seemed to find one; they heard him swear and saw him lower himself again on to the shoulders of the soldier who shook all over with the strain. At last he gave it up and with a leap was down on the stony ledge.
Monti, who was gasping from fatigue, looked at Angustina with a hostile air.
‘You could have waited down there,’ he said. ‘Certainly we can’t all of us get up this way. It will be something if I can get up myself with a couple of soldiers. It would have been better if you had waited down there. Night is coming on now, and it is going to be a serious job to get down.’
‘It was you who said to do it,’ answered Angustina without the least sign of becoming embroiled. ‘You told me to do as I preferred; either wait there or come behind you.’
‘All right,’ said the captain. ‘Now we have to find a way up – there are only these few yards between us and the top.’
‘What? The crest is just up there?’ asked the lieutenant with such indefinable irony that Monti did not even suspect it.
‘It’s less than twelve yards,’ said the captain with a curse. ‘Damn it, I want to see if I can’t manage. Even if …’
He was interrupted by an arrogant cry from overhead. Above the rim of the low cliff there appeared two smiling faces.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ shouted one of them, perhaps an officer. ‘You’ll see that there’s no way up here – you have to come round by the crest.’
The two faces withdrew and only the confused voices of men consulting together could be heard.
Monti was livid with rage. So there was nothing more to be done. The Northerners had now occupied the peak as well. The captain sat down on a boulder, paying no attention to his men who continued to arrive from below.
At that very moment it began to snow, thick, heavy snow, as if it were midwinter. In a few seconds – it seemed hardly credible – the stones became white and the light suddenly faded. Night had fallen, although up to now no one had thought seriously of it.
Without showing the least alarm, the soldiers unrolled their cloaks and took cover beneath them.
‘What are you doing, damn it,’ exclaimed the captain. ‘Roll up your cloaks again at once. You haven’t got it into your heads that you are going to spend the night here, have you? We must go down now.’
‘If you will allow me,’ said Angustina, ‘so long as these other people are up on the ridge …’
‘What? What do you want to say?’ asked the captain angrily.
‘That, in my view, we can’t turn back so long as the Northerners are on the ridge. They got there first and there’s nothing left for us to do here – but we would look remarkably silly.’
The captain did not reply but walked up and down the broad ledge for a few moments. Then he said: ‘But soon they will go away, too – with this weather it is even worse on the crest than here.’
‘Gentlemen,’ called a voice from above as four or five heads appeared over the ridge of the cliff, ‘don’t stand on your dignity, take these ropes and come up here – in this dark you won’t be able to climb down the cliff.’
At the same time two ropes were thrown down from above so that the men from the Fort could use them to scale the low wall.
‘Thank you,’ said Captain Monti with a scornful air. ‘Thank you for the kind thought, but we can look after ourselves.’
‘Just as you wish,’ they shouted once more from the summit. ‘But in any case we’ll leave them here in case you could do with them.’
There followed a long silence – only the rustle of the snow could be heard and a soldier coughing. Their range of vision was reduced almost to nothing – they could barely distinguish the rim of the cliff over their heads; from it there now shone the red gleam of a lantern.
One or two of the soldiers from the Fort had put on their cloaks once more and lit lanterns. One was brought to the captain in case he might need it.
‘Captain,’ said Angustina in a tired voice.
‘What is it now?’
‘What would you say to a game?’
‘To the devil with the game,’ replied Monti who knew perfectly that there was no question of descending on such a night.
Without saying a word Angustina produced the pack of cards from the dispatch-case the captain had entrusted to a soldier. He spread a corner of his own cloak over a stone, set the lantern beside it and began to shuffle the cards.
‘Captain,’ he repe
ated. ‘Listen to me even if you don’t feel like it.’
Then Monti saw what the lieutenant meant – there was nothing else to do with the Northerners there, probably making fun of them. And while the men crept close in to the foot of the cliff, taking advantage of every hollow, or fell to eating with jests and laughter, the two officers began a game of cards in the snow.
‘Your trick, your trick,’ they heard them call jestingly from above.
Neither Monti nor Angustina raised their heads but went on playing. But the captain played with an ill will, slamming the cards down on the cloak in rage. Angustina tried in vain to make light of it.
‘Wonderful, two aces one after another. But I’m going to take this one. Tell me the truth, you had forgotten that club.’ And every now and then he laughed, and his laughter seemed to ring true.
Overhead they heard the voices start up again, then the noise of stones being dislodged; probably they were about to move off.
‘Good luck,’ the same voice as before called down to them. ‘Have a good game and don’t forget the two ropes.’
Neither the captain nor Angustina replied. They went on playing without the least sign of a reply; they made a great show of concentration.
The gleam of the lantern disappeared from the crest – evidently the Northerners were going away. In the heavy snow the cards had become soaked and it was only with difficulty that they could mix them.
‘That’s enough,’ said the captain throwing his down on the cloak. ‘That’s enough of this farce.’
He withdrew under the rocks and wrapped himself up carefully in his cloak.
‘Toni,’ he cried, ‘bring me my knapsack and get me some drinking water.’
‘They can still see us,’ said Angustina. ‘They can still see us from the crest.’ But when he saw that Monti had had enough he went on himself, pretending that the game continued.
