The Tartar Steppe. Dino Buzzati

‘And this evening? Do you want to meet the colonel in the mess or would you prefer to leave things in the air?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ answered Giovanni, ‘it seems to me there’s no use my hiding myself, particularly if I have to stay four months?’

      ‘That’s better,’ said the major. ‘You’ll get confidence that way. You will see what nice people they are, all first class officers.’

      Matti smiled and Drogo saw that the time had come to leave. But first of all he asked:

      ‘Sir,’ his voice was apparently calm, ‘may I take a quick look to the north and see what there is beyond that wall?’

      ‘Beyond the wall? I didn’t know you were interested in views,’ answered the major.

      ‘Just a glance, sir, merely out of curiosity. I’ve heard there is a desert and I’ve never seen one.’

      ‘It isn’t worth it. A monotonous landscape – no beauty in it. Take my advice – don’t think about it.’

      ‘I won’t insist, sir,’ said Drogo. ‘I did not think there was anything against it.’

      Major Matti put the tips of his plump fingers together almost as if in prayer.

      ‘You have asked me,’ he said, ‘the one thing I can’t grant you. Only personnel on duty may go on to the ramparts or into the guard rooms; you need to know the password.’

      ‘But not even as a special exception – not even for an officer?’

      ‘Not even for an officer. Oh, I know – for you people from the city all these petty rules seem ridiculous. Besides down there the password is no great secret. But here it is different.’

      ‘Excuse me, if I keep on about it.’

      ‘Do please, do.’

      ‘I wanted to say – isn’t there even a loophole, a window from which one can look?’

      ‘Only one. Only one in the colonel’s office. Unfortunately no one thought of a belvedere for the inquisitive. But it isn’t worth it, I repeat, a landscape with nothing to recommend it. You will have plenty of that view if you decide to stay.’

      ‘Thank you, sir, will that be all?’ And coming to attention, he saluted.

      Matti made a friendly gesture with his hand.

      ‘Goodbye. Forget about it – a worthless landscape, I assure you, an extremely stupid landscape.’

      But that evening Lieutenant Morel, who had come off orderly duty, secretly led Drogo on to the top of the wall to let him see.

      An immensely long corridor, lit by infrequent lamps, ran all the length of the walls from one side of the pass to the other. Every so often there was a door – storerooms, workshops, guard rooms. They walked for about a hundred and fifty yards to the entrance of the third redoubt. An armed sentry stood before the door. Morel asked to speak to Lieutenant Grotta, who was commander of the guard.

      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