The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  The sentry at once remarked Drogo’s threatening attitude and although the formality of giving the password, by an ancient tacit agreement, was not used between soldiers and the guard commander he had an excess of scruple. Raising his rifle he asked with the peculiar accent used in the Fort: ‘Who goes there? Who goes there?’

  Drogo stopped short, thrown off his balance. In the clear light of the moon he could see the soldier’s face perfectly clearly perhaps less than five yards away – and the mouth was shut. But the lament had not been interrupted. Where did it come from then, that voice?

  Since the soldier stood there and waited, Giovanni, pondering the strange phenomenon, mechanically gave the password: ‘Miracle.’ ‘Misery,’ replied the sentry and stood at ease again.

  There followed an immense silence in which the muttered words and song drifted more loudly than before.

  At last Drogo understood and a slight shiver ran along his spine. It was water, that was what it was – a distant cascade dashing down the steep sides of the crags. The wind causing the great jet to quiver, the mysterious play of the echoes, the varying sounds of the struck rocks made of it a human voice which spoke and spoke – spoke of our life in words which one was within a hair’s breadth of understanding but never did.

  So it was not the soldier who was singing under his breath, not a man sensitive to cold, to punishments and to love, but the hostile mountain. What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that – we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we see that we are completely alone.

  The wind blows against the officer’s splendid cloak and the blue shadow on the snow waves, too, like a flag. The sentry stands motionless. The moon moves on and on, slowly but not losing a single moment, impatient for the dawn. In Giovanni Drogo’s breast his heart beats hollowly.

  Chapter Eleven

  Almost two years later Giovanni Drogo was sleeping one night in his room in the Fort. Twenty-two months had passed without bringing anything fresh and he had stayed there waiting, as if life could not but be specially lenient with him. Yet twenty-two months are a long time and a lot of things can happen in them – there is time for new families to be formed, for babies to be born and even begin to talk, for a great house to rise where once there was only a field, for a beautiful woman to grow old and no one desire her any more, for an illness – for a long illness – to ripen (yet men live on heedlessly), to consume the body slowly, to recede for short periods as if cured, to take hold again more deeply and drain away the last hopes; there is time for a man to die and be buried, for his son to be able to laugh again and in the evenings take the girls down the avenues and past the cemetery gates without a thought.

  But it seemed as if Drogo’s existence had come to a halt. The same day, the same things, had repeated themselves hundreds of times without taking a step forward. The river of time flowed over the Fort, crumbled the walls, swept down dust and fragments of stone, wore away the stairs and the chains, but over Drogo it passed in vain – it had not yet succeeded in catching him, bearing him with it as it flowed.

  And this night, too, would have been like all the others if Drogo had not had a dream. He was a child again; it was night and he was standing at a window.

  To one side the house fell away and opposite, across the space he saw in the moonlight the façade of a sumptuous palace. And the attention of the little boy who was Drogo was all intent on a high narrow window crowned by a coping of marble. The moon, shining through the glass, fell on a table on which there was a runner, a vase and a few ivory statuettes. And the few things he could see made him imagine that in the dark, behind them, there opened out the intimate secrets of a great salon, the first of an unending series, full of precious things, and that the whole palace slept that profound intriguing sleep of buildings whose owners are both rich and happy. How wonderful, thought Drogo, to be able to live in these salons, to wander through them for hours discovering ever new treasures.

  Meanwhile between the window where he stood and the wonderful palace – there was perhaps twenty yards between them – frail apparitions had begun to float (some sort of fairy creature perhaps) trailing behind them trains of velvet which gleamed in the moon.

  In his dream the presence of such beings, which he had never seen in the real world, did not surprise Giovanni. They floated through the air, whirling gently, and returned again and again to brush past the narrow window.

  By their nature they seemed logically to belong to the palace, but the fact that they paid not the slightest attention to Drogo, never once approached his house, mortified him. So the fairies, too, kept away from common children and had time only for people blessed by fortune, who did not even stand watching but slept indifferently under silken baldachins.

  ‘Hist,’ said Drogo two or three times timidly to attract the attention of the apparitions, although he knew quite well in his heart that it would be useless. And indeed not one of them seemed to hear, none of them drew even a few feet nearer to his window.

  But suddenly one of these magic beings caught at the sill of the window opposite with what seemed to be its arm and knocked gently on the glass as if calling someone.

  Only a few minutes had passed when a slight figure – how small it was in comparison with the immense window – appeared behind the panes and Drogo recognised Angustina, who was a child too.

  Angustina, who was strikingly pale, wore a little velvet dress with a collar of white lace and seemed far from pleased with the silent serenade.

  Drogo thought that, if only out of courtesy, his comrade would have invited him to play with the phantoms. But no. Angustina seemed not to notice his friend and did not even look round when Drogo called him: ‘Angustina! Angustina!’

  Instead, with a tired gesture, his friend opened the window and leant out to the spirit which clung to the sill as if they knew each other and he had something to tell it. The spirit made a sign and, following the direction in which it pointed, Drogo turned his gaze to a great square which stretched out in front of the houses, completely deserted. Across this square a little procession of spirits advanced, some thirty feet above the ground, bearing a litter.

  Formed, apparently, from the same substance as themselves, the litter overflowed with veils and plumes. With his usual expression of detachment and boredom Angustina watched it approach; evidently it came for him.

  The injustice of it struck Drogo to the heart. Why did Angustina get everything and he nothing? With someone else it would not have mattered – but with Angustina who was always so proud and arrogant! Drogo looked at the other windows to see whether there were someone who might perhaps intervene for him – but he could see no one.

  At last the litter stopped, swaying directly in front of the window and all the phantoms clustered around it suddenly in a wavering circle. All were turned towards Angustina – no longer obsequiously but with avid and almost malignant curiosity. Left abandoned, the litter remained in mid-air as if suspended from invisible threads.

  Suddenly Drogo felt all envy drain from him for he knew what was happening. He saw Angustina standing upright at the window and his eyes fix themselves on the litter. Yes, it was for him they had come tonight, the fairy messengers, but on what an errand! So the litter had to serve for a long journey and would not come back before the dawn, nor the next night, nor the next night again, nor ever. The salons of the palace would await their master in vain, a woman’s hands would cautiously close the window which the fugitive had left open and all the others too would be bolted to brood in the dark over the lamenting and desolation.

  So the phantoms, which had seemed so friendly, had not come to play with the moonbeams, they had not come like innocent creatures from scented gardens, but derived from the abyss.

  Other children would have cried, would have called on their mothers, but A
ngustina was not afraid and talked calmly with the spirits as if to clear up some points of ceremonial. Clustered round the window like a drift of foam, they climbed on top of each other, pressing forward towards the child and nodding to him as if to say: ‘Yes, yes, we quite agree.’ At last the spirit which had been the first to cling to the sill – perhaps their leader – made a slight imperious gesture. Still with his air of boredom Angustina climbed over the window sill – he seemed already to have become as light as the phantoms – and sat in the litter like a great gentleman, and crossed his legs. The cluster of phantoms dissolved in a fluttering of veils; the enchanted litter moved gently off.

  A procession formed – the apparitions carried out a semicircular evolution between the wings of the houses before rising into the sky towards the moon. As they wheeled in the semicircle the litter, too, passed close to Drogo’s window; waving his arm he tried to shout his last greeting: ‘Angustina, Angustina.’

  Then at last his friend turned his head towards Giovanni and looked at him for a moment or two – and to Drogo it seemed as if he could read in his glance an excessive air of seriousness for such a small child. But slowly Angustina’s face unfolded in a smile of complicity as if he and Drogo could understand a great deal the phantoms did not know – a last desire to make a joke, the final opportunity to show that he, Angustina, did not need anyone’s pity. This was an ordinary occurrence, he seemed to say, there was nothing to be surprised at.

  As the litter bore him off, Angustina looked away from Drogo and turned his head to the front, in the direction of the procession, with a sort of curiosity which was at once amused and distrustful. It was as if he were experimenting for the first time with a toy which did not interest him in the slightest but which for appearance sake he could not have refused.

  Thus he went off into the night with almost inhuman nobility. He gave not one glance at his palace, nor at the square before it nor at the other houses nor at the city where he had lived. The procession wound slowly through the sky, rising higher and higher; then it became a confused streak, then a wisp of mist, then nothing.

  The window had remained open, the rays of the moon still illumined the table, the vase, the ivory statuettes, which had continued to sleep. Inside, in another room, on a bed by the trembling light of the tapers, lay perhaps a tiny lifeless body whose face was like Angustina’s; and it would be wearing a little velvet dress, a big lace collar and a smile frozen on the white lips.

  Chapter Twelve

  Next day Giovanni Drogo was guard commander in the New Redoubt. It was an outlying fortress three-quarters of an hour from the main fort set on top of a rocky cone commanding the Tartar steppe. It was the most important keep, was completely isolated and had the task of giving the alarm if any threat approached.

  Drogo left the fort in the evening in command of some seventy men – all that number of soldiers was needed because there were ten sentry posts without counting the two gunners. It was the first time he had set foot beyond the pass; to all intents and purposes the frontier had been crossed.

  Giovanni was thinking of the responsibilities of his task, but in particular he was pondering over his dream about Angustina. It was a dream which had awakened in his heart something that would not die away. It seemed to him that there must be some obscure link there with future events; yet he was not particularly superstitious.

  They entered the New Redoubt; the sentries were relieved, then the old guard marched off and at the edge of the parapet Drogo stood watching them move away along the rough stony path. From there the Fort looked like an immensely long wall – a mere wall with nothing behind it. The sentries could not be distinguished for they were too far off. Only the flag could be seen now and again when the wind shook it.

  For twenty-four hours the sole commander in the solitary redoubt would be Drogo. Whatever happened no aid could be asked for. Even if enemy came, the fortress had to look after itself. For twenty-four hours the king himself was of less account than Drogo.

  As he waited for night to come, Giovanni stayed and watched the northern steppe. From the Fort he had been able to see of it only a little triangle because of the mountains in front. But now he could see it all, right to the limits of the horizon where there hung the usual barrier of mist. It was a sort of desert, rock-covered, with here and there thickets of low dusty bushes. To the right, far, far away, there was a dark strip which might well have been a forest. On either flank harsh chains of mountains. They were immensely beautiful, some of them, with sheer unending ramparts and their crests white with the first autumn snows. And yet no one looked at them; everyone – Drogo and the soldiers – tended to look instinctively towards the north, towards the desolate steppe, which had mystery but no meaning.

  Whether it was the thought of being completely alone in command of the fortress, or the sight of the uninhabited country or the memory of his dream about Angustina, Drogo began to feel a slight feeling of anxiety grow upon him as night spread.

  It was an October evening, the weather unsettled; with splashes of reddish light scattered here and there on the ground, reflected from some unknown source and slowly swallowed up by the leaden twilight.

  As usual at sunset a kind of poetic excitement came over Drogo. At this hour he was always full of hope and he began to meditate once more upon the heroic fantasies he had so often put together on the long spells of guard duty and each day, adding new details, had made more perfect. Usually he imagined a desperate battle which he and a few men had joined against an innumerable enemy, as if that night the New Redoubt had been besieged by thousands of Tartars. For days and days he held out. Almost all his comrades were dead or wounded. He too had been struck by a missile – a serious wound but not too serious, one which allowed him still to retain command. But now the cartridges are running out – he attempts a sortie at the head of the last men – he has a bandage round his brow; then at last reinforcements arrive; the enemy disbands and turns to flight; he falls exhausted clutching his bloodstained sabre. But someone is calling him.

  ‘Lieutenant Drogo, Lieutenant Drogo,’ someone calls and shakes him back to life. And Drogo slowly opens his eyes – the King, the King in person is bending over him and says: ‘Well done!’

  At this hour he was always full of hope and he thought over these heroic tales, tales which probably would never come true but still served to make life worth living. Sometimes he was more easily satisfied – he gave up the idea of being the only hero, gave up the wound, gave up the idea that the King said to him ‘Well done.’ After all it need only be an ordinary battle – one single battle but a real one, so that he could charge in full uniform and smile as he rushed towards the inscrutable faces of the enemy. One battle and perhaps then he would be happy for the rest of his life.

  But that evening it was not easy to feel heroic. The world was already shrouded in shadow; the northern plain had lost all colour but had not yet fallen asleep – as if it were giving birth to sorrow.

  It was already eight in the evening and the sky had filled with clouds when it seemed to Drogo that he could see a little black spot moving in the plain, slightly to his right and immediately below the redoubt. ‘My eyes must be tired,’ he thought, ‘I have been looking so long that my eyes are tired and I am seeing specks.’ The same thing had happened to him once before when he was a boy and was sitting up at night studying.

  He tried keeping his eyelids closed for a second or two then looked at things around him; at a bucket which must have been used for washing the terrace, at an iron hook in the wall, at a small bench which the officer on duty before him must have carried up to sit on. It was only after a few minutes that he turned to look down to where he had first seemed to see the tiny black spot. It was still there and was moving a little.

  ‘Tronk,’ Drogo called in an excited voice.

  ‘Sir?’ he replied immediately, his voice so close that it made Drogo start.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Drogo recovering himself, ‘Tronk, I don’
t want to make any mistake but it seems to me – it seems I can see something moving down there.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tronk replied in a regulation voice. ‘I have had it under observation for some minutes.’

  ‘What?’ said Drogo, ‘You have seen it too? What do you see?’

  ‘The thing that is moving about, sir.’

  Drogo felt a surge of panic. This is it at last, he thought, completely forgetting his warlike fantasies, it had to happen to me – now something terrible will happen.

  ‘So you have seen it, too?’ he asked again in the absurd hope that the other would deny it.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Tronk, ‘for about ten minutes. I had gone down to see that the cannon were clean and when I came up again I saw it.’

  Both were silent. Even for Tronk it must have been something strange and disturbing.

  ‘What do you say it is, Tronk?’

  ‘I can’t make out – it moves too slowly.’

  ‘How do you mean, too slowly?’

  ‘Well, I thought it might be the tufts of the canes.’

  ‘Canes, what canes?’

  ‘There is a clump of canes down there at the very bottom,’ he pointed to his right but it was useless for in the dark nothing could be seen. ‘They are a kind that have black tufts at this time of year. Sometimes the wind blows them away, these tufts, and since they are light they fly off – they look like little puffs of smoke. But it can’t be that,’ he added after a pause, ‘they would move more quickly.’

  ‘What can it be then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tronk. ‘It would be odd if they were men. They would come another way. And then it keeps on moving – that’s what I can’t understand.’

  At that moment a sentry gave the alarm, then another and another again. They too had seen the black speck. At once the soldiers who were off duty came running from within the redoubt. They crowded on the parapet, curious and slightly afraid.