The Tartar Steppe. Dino Buzzati

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Francesci Angloisi virtutibus. During the whole night no one would come in to greet him; in all the Fort no one was thinking of him and not only in the Fort, probably in the whole world, there was not a soul who had a thought for Drogo; everyone has his own worries, can barely cope with himself – perhaps even his mother at that moment had other things on her mind, for he was not her only child and she had thought about Giovanni all day; now it was the others’ turn. That was more than fair, Drogo admitted to himself without the shadow of reproof, but meantime he was sitting on the edge of his bed in his room in the Fort (there was, he now saw, cut into the panelling and coloured with extraordinary patience a full scale sabre, which at first glance almost seemed real – the painstaking work of some officer years before), he was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his head bent forward a little, his back bowed, his eyes heavy and dull, and felt himself alone as never before in his life.

      Suddenly he rose with an effort, opened the window and looked out. The window gave on to the courtyard and there was nothing else to be seen. Since it looked towards the south Drogo sought in vain to distinguish in the darkness the mountains which he had crossed to reach the Fort; but they were lower than he thought and hidden by the wall.

      Only three windows were lit but they were in the same block as his own and so he could not see in; the light they threw out and that from Drogo’s room fell on the wall opposite where it seemed to be magnified; a shadow was moving in one of them – perhaps an officer undressing.

      Drogo shut the window, undressed, went to bed and lay thinking for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling; it too was lined with wood. He had forgotten to bring anything to read but that did not matter, he felt so sleepy. He put out the lamp; little by little the pale rectangle of the window emerged from the dark and Drogo saw the stars shining.

      He felt as if a sudden drowsiness were dragging him down into sleep. But he was too conscious of it. A confusion of images, almost like the figures of a dream, passed before his eyes and even began to form a story; then a few seconds later he found that he was still awake.

      More awake than before, because the vastness of the silence suddenly struck him. From far, far away – or had he imagined it? – there came the sound of a cough. Then close by a soft drip of water sounded in the wall. If he lay still he could see that a small green star, which in the course of its journey through the night had reached the top of his window, was on the point of disappearing; it twinkled СКАЧАТЬ