The Tartar Steppe. Dino Buzzati

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 unknown 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