The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  ‘Don’t you see it?’ said one. ‘But there it is, right under here, now it’s standing still.’

  ‘It will be mist,’ said another. ‘Sometimes there are gaps in the mist and you see through it, see what’s behind it. It looks as if it were someone moving and it is only gaps in the mist.’

  ‘Yes, yes, now I see it,’ they said. ‘There’s still something black there – it’s a black stone, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t a stone. Don’t you see that it is still moving? Are you blind?’

  ‘It’s a stone, I tell you. I’ve always seen it there – a black stone that looks like a nun.’

  Someone laughed.

  ‘Get out of here, get back inside,’ Tronk interrupted taking the initiative, since all the voices drove the lieutenant to a pitch of excitement. Reluctantly the soldiers withdrew into the redoubt and silence fell again.

  ‘Tronk,’ Drogo suddenly asked, being incapable of deciding alone. ‘Would you give the alarm?’

  ‘You mean the alarm to the Fort? Fire a shot you mean, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Do you think it’s a case for giving the alarm?’

  Tronk shook his head.

  ‘I would wait till we can see better. If we fire a shot they will get excited at the Fort. Then suppose there’s nothing there?’

  ‘That’s true,’ admitted Drogo.

  ‘And then,’ Tronk added, ‘it would be contrary to the regulations, too. The regulations say that the alarm must be given only in case of a threat, that’s what they say – “in the case of a threat or of the appearance of armed forces and in all cases in which suspicious persons approach within a hundred yards of the terrace or the walls” – that’s what the regulations say.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Giovanni, ‘and that’s more than a hundred yards, isn’t it?’

  ‘I would say so too,’ said Tronk approvingly. ‘And then how do we know that it is a person?’

  ‘What do you think it is, then? A ghost?’ said Drogo with a touch of annoyance.

  Tronk did not reply.

  As if suspended in the depth of the night Drogo and Tronk stood leaning on the parapet, gazing down to where the Tartar steppe began. The enigmatic patch of darkness seemed to be motionless, as if it were sleeping, and little by little Giovanni began to think again that there really was nothing there, only a black boulder like a nun, and that his eyes had been deceived – a touch of fatigue, that was all, a silly hallucination. Now he felt a certain bitterness, a dark shadow, such as come when moments of destiny pass us by without touching us and the noise of their passing dies away in the distance while we remain alone amid a swirl of dead leaves lamenting the great – and terrible – opportunity we have lost.

  But then as the night went on the breath of fear began to rise from the dark valley. As the night went on Drogo felt himself little and alone. Tronk was too different from himself to serve as a friend. If only he had his comrades with him, even only one of them, then it would have been different. He would even have felt like joking and it would have been no hardship to await the dawn.

  Meanwhile tongues of mist were forming on the steppe, pale archipelagos on the black ocean. One of them came to rest at the very foot of the redoubt, hiding the mysterious object. The air had become damp, Drogo’s mantle hung from his shoulders limp and heavy.

  What a long night. Drogo had already lost hope of its ever ending when the sky began to pale and cold blasts announced that the dawn was not far off. It was then that sleep overtook him. As he stood leaning against the parapet, Drogo twice let his head droop, twice he righted it with a start; at last it fell over inertly and his eyelids surrendered to the weight. The new day was being born.

  He woke because someone was touching his arm. Slowly he emerged from his dreams, dazzled by the light. A voice, Tronk’s voice, was saying to him: ‘It’s a horse, sir.’

  Then he recalled his life, the Fort, the New Redoubt, the enigma of the black patch. He looked quickly down, eager to know the answer, with a cowardly desire to see nothing but stones and bushes – nothing but the steppe, lonely and empty as it had always been.

  But the voice kept repeating: ‘It’s a horse, sir.’ And Drogo saw it, standing unbelievably at the foot of the rocks.

  It was a horse, not big but low and plump, with a strange beauty in its thin legs and flowing mane. It was of an odd build but most remarkable for its colouring – a gleaming black which was like a dark stain on the landscape.

  Where had it come from? Whose was it? For years and years no living thing, unless it were a raven or snake, had ventured there. But now a horse had appeared and you could see at once that it was not a wild one, but a picked beast, a real charger – except perhaps that the legs were a little too thin.

  It was extraordinary and puzzling. Drogo, Tronk, the sentries, and the other soldiers at the loopholes in the floor beneath could not take their eyes off it. It broke the rules, this horse, and brought back the legends of the north, of Tartars and battles and filled the entire desert with its illogical presence.

  By itself it was not of great importance but you could see that there must be something else behind it. Its saddle was in order as if it had been ridden a little before. So here there was an unfinished story – what had up to yesterday evening been an absurd, a ridiculous superstition might be true then. Drogo seemed to feel them, the mysterious Tartars, lurking among the bushes, in the crevices of the rocks, motionless and silent with clenched teeth. They were waiting for the dark to attack. And meantime others were arriving, a threatening swarm coming slowly out of the northern mists. They had no bands nor songs, no gleaming swords, no fine banners. Their arms were dull so as not to glint in the sun and their horses were trained not to neigh.

  But a pony – this was their immediate thought in the New Redoubt – a pony had escaped from the enemy, had run on to betray them. Probably they had not noticed because the animal had run away from their encampment during the night.

  So the horse had brought valuable intelligence. But what start did it have on the enemy? Drogo could not inform the Fort until evening and in the meantime the Tartars could move up.

  Should he give the alarm then? Tronk said no – after all it was only a horse, he said. The fact that it had reached the foot of the redoubt might mean that it had been left, perhaps its master was a solitary hunter who had ventured imprudently into the steppe and had fallen ill or died. The horse, left to itself, had gone in search of safety, had detected the presence of men in the direction of the Fort and was now waiting for them to bring it some forage.

  This was what really made him have serious doubts that an army was approaching. What motive could the animal have had for running away from an encampment in such inhospitable country? And then, Tronk said, he had heard tell that the Tartars’ horses were almost all white – even in an old picture hung in one of the rooms in the Fort the Tartars were mounted on white steeds; but this one was coal-black.

  So Drogo, after many hesitations, decided to await the evening. Meanwhile the sky had cleared and the sun shone over the landscape and warmed the hearts of the soldiers. Even Giovanni felt himself take heart from the bright light – his fantasies about the Tartars became less solid, everything resumed its normal proportions, the horse was only a horse and one could find all sorts of explanations for its presence without postulating enemy raids. Having forgotten the fears of the night, he suddenly felt himself ready for any adventure and the presentiment that his moment of destiny was at the gates filled him with joy – a happy fate which would raise him above other men.

  He took pleasure in seeing personally to the smallest details of guard duties as if to show Tronk and the soldiers that the appearance of the horse, however strange and worrying, had not disturbed him in the least. This he felt to be very military.

  The soldiers, to tell the truth, were not in the least afraid. They treated the horse as a great joke – they would have dearly liked to be able to catch it and take
it back to the Fort as a trophy. One of them even asked the sergeant-major’s permission, but the latter merely gave a reproving glance as if to say that it was not permissible to joke about service matters.

  On the floor beneath, however, where the two cannon were installed, one of the gunners had become very excited at the sight of the horse. He was called Giuseppe Lazzari, a young fellow who had lately joined up. He said the horse was his – he recognised it perfectly, he could not possibly be mistaken. They must have let it escape when the animals went out of the Fort to be watered.

  ‘It’s Fiocco, my horse,’ he kept on shouting as if it really were his own property and someone had robbed him of it.

  Tronk who had come up from further down in the redoubt stopped his shouting at once and pointed out sharply that it was impossible for his horse to have run away – to get into the northern valley it would have had to jump the walls of the Fort or cross the mountains.

  Lazzari replied that there was a way across – or so he had heard – an easy way across the rocks, an old unused road which no one remembered any more. And in fact this was one of the many legends at the Fort. But it could only be a complete invention, for of this secret way no trace had ever been found. To right and left of the Fort, for miles and miles, rose savage mountains which had never been crossed.

  But the soldier would not be convinced and fretted at the idea of having to stay shut up in the redoubt without being able to recapture his horse – half an hour would have been enough to get there and back.

  Meanwhile the hours passed, the sun continued its journey towards the west, the sentries relieved each other punctually, the steppe gleamed, more solitary than ever; the pony stood where it had stood before – usually without moving, as if it were asleep, or wandered about looking for a blade of grass. Drogo’s eyes probed into the distance but they could pick out nothing new – nothing but the same shelving rocks, the bushes, the mists in the far north which changed colour slowly as the evening drew on.

  Then the new guard came to relieve them. Drogo and his men left the redoubt and moved off across the stony path to return to the Fort through the violet shadows of the evening. When they had reached the walls Drogo gave the password for himself and his men, the door was opened, the old guard drew up in a sort of little courtyard and Tronk began to call the roll. Meanwhile Drogo went off to make a report about the mysterious horse.

  As was laid down, Drogo reported to the captain of the day and then they went together in search of the colonel. Generally when anything out of the ordinary happened one had merely to go to the adjutant – but this time it might be serious and there was no time to lose.

  Meanwhile the rumour had run like lightning through the Fort. In the furthest off guard room there were already mutterings about whole squadrons of Tartars encamped at the foot of the rocks. The colonel, when he heard of it, merely said: ‘Somebody should try to catch it; if it is saddled – this horse – perhaps we will be able to find out where it is from.’

  But there was no point now, for Private Giuseppe Lazzari had succeeded – while the old guard was on its way back to the Fort – in hiding himself behind a boulder without being noticed, then he had climbed down the screes alone, had reached the horse and was now leading it back to the Fort. He had discovered with astonishment that it was not his own, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  It was only when on the point of entering the Fort that some of his comrades noticed that he had disappeared. If Tronk got to know Lazzari would be in the cells for at least a couple of months. They had to save him. So when the sergeant-major called the roll and came to the name ‘Lazzari’ some replied ‘Present’ for him.

  A few minutes later when the men had already broken ranks they remembered that Lazzari did not know the password. It wasn’t a question of prison any longer but of life and death. It would be terrible if he appeared in front of the walls – they would fire on him. Two or three of his friends went off to look for Tronk in an attempt to remedy things.

  Too late. Holding the black horse by the bridle Lazzari was already close to the walls. And Tronk was on his rounds, drawn back to the battlements by some vague foreboding. Immediately after he had called the roll he had become worried – why, he could not determine, but he felt that something was not right. Reviewing the incidents of the day he had traced them as far as the return to the Fort without finding anything suspicious. Then he seemed to stumble on something. Yes, there must have been something wrong at roll call and at the time – as often happens in such cases – he had not noticed it.

  There was a sentry on guard directly over the postern gate. In the dusk he saw two figures approaching across the stony path. They would be a couple of hundred yards off. He took no notice, thinking he was seeing things. Very often in lonely places if you stand waiting for a long time you end up even in broad daylight by seeing human forms start from among the bushes and rocks – you feel that someone is watching, you go and look and there is nothing there.

  To break the monotony the sentry looked around him, greeted a comrade – he was the sentry thirty yards or so to his right – with a gesture, adjusted his heavy cap, which was tight over his brow, and then looked to the left and saw Sergeant-Major Tronk standing absolutely still and gazing at him severely.

  The sentry shook himself, looked to the front once more, saw that the two shadows were not a dream, indeed they were nearer now, only seventy odd yards away: to be precise they were a soldier and a horse. Then he levelled his gun, cocked it and stiffened in the gesture he had repeated hundreds of times at drill. Then he cried: ‘Who goes there? Who goes there?’

  Lazzari had not been a soldier long – it never occurred to him that without the password he could not get in again. At the most he was frightened he might be punished for going off without permission. But you never knew – perhaps the colonel would pardon him because he had brought in the horse. It was a beautiful animal, a general’s charger.

  There were only forty odd yards left. The horse’s shoes rang on the stones. It was almost quite dark. Far off there was the sound of a trumpet. ‘Who goes there? Who goes there?’ repeated the sentry. He would call again then he would have to fire.

  A sudden feeling of uneasiness had fallen upon Lazzari at the sentry’s first shout. It seemed so odd to him, now that he was personally involved, to hear himself challenged like that by a comrade, but at the second ‘Who goes there?’ he recognised the voice of a friend, someone from his own company whom among themelves they called Moretto.

  ‘It’s me, Lazzari,’ he shouted. ‘Send the sergeant of the guard to open for me. I’ve caught the horse. And don’t let them see you or they’ll put me inside.’

  The sentry did not move. He stood there with his gun at his shoulder trying to delay the third ‘Who goes there?’ Perhaps if Lazzari had noticed the danger himself he would have turned back, could have joined up the next day with the guard from the New Redoubt. But there was Tronk, a few yards away, gazing sternly at him.

  Tronk did not say a word. He looked now at the sentry, now at Lazzari because of whom he would probably be punished. What did his glances mean?

  The soldier and the horse were no more than thirty yards away; it would have been silly to wait any longer. The nearer Lazzari came the more easily he would be hit.

  ‘Who goes there? Who goes there?’ the sentry cried for the third time and there was in his voice an undertone – a sort of private warning which was against the regulations. He was trying to say: ‘Turn back while you have time, do you want to get killed?’

  At last Lazzari understood. In a flash he remembered the iron laws of the Fort and felt himself lost. But – who knows why? – instead of running away he dropped the horse’s bridle and came on alone crying out in a shrill voice:

  ‘It’s me, Lazzari. Don’t you see me? Moretto, Oh Moretto. It’s me. What are you doing with your gun? Are you mad, Moretto?’

  But the sentry was no longer Moretto – he was simply a soldier
with a hard face who now was slowly raising his gun to take aim at the enemy. He had laid the gun to his shoulder and with the corner of his eye squinted at the sergeant-major silently praying that he might signal to stop. But Tronk stared at him and did not move.

  Without turning round Lazzari drew back a few paces, stumbling on the stones.

  ‘It’s me, Lazzari,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you see it’s me? Don’t fire, Moretto.’

  But the sentry was no longer the Moretto with whom his comrades joked freely, he was only a sentry at the Fort in a dark blue uniform with a black bandolier, absolutely identical with all the other sentries in the darkness – a sentry like all the others who had taken aim and now pressed the trigger. He heard a roaring in his ears and seemed to catch Tronk’s harsh voice: ‘Good shot,’ although Tronk had not drawn breath.

  The rifle gave a little flash, a tiny cloud of smoke, even the report at first did not seem much, but then it was multiplied by the echoes, thrown from rampart to rampart and for long hung in the air to die away in a distant muttering like thunder.

  Now that his duty was done the sentry lowered his rifle, leant over the parapet and looked down, hoping he had not hit the mark. And in the darkness it seemed indeed that Lazzari had not fallen.

  No, Lazzari was still standing and the horse had come up to him. Then in the silence left by the shot his voice was heard – and how desperate it sounded: ‘Oh, Moretto, you have killed me.’

  These were his words and he slouched slowly forward. Tronk with his inscrutable face had not made a move but through the labyrinths of the Fort there spread a hum of war.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thus began that memorable windswept evening with its swaying lanterns and unwonted trumpet calls, with pacing to and fro in the corridors, with clouds rushing down from the north, clouds which caught on the rocky peaks and there left wisps behind them but had no time to stop, so urgent was their errand.