by Dino Buzzati
Meanwhile a horrible feeling of chill had penetrated him to the marrow. He felt that probably he would no longer be able to move, nor even to stretch himself out; never that he could remember had he felt so ill. On the crest one could still see the swaying light of the Northerners’ lantern moving further and further away; they could still see him. (And there at the window of the wonderful palace was a slender figure – he himself, Angustina, as a child, strikingly pale with an elegant velvet dress and a collar of white lace. With a tired gesture he opened the window, leaning forward towards the wavering spirits which clung to the sill, as if he were at home with them and had something to tell them.)
‘My trick, my trick,’ he tried to shout once more to let the foreigners hear him, but his voice came hoarse and tired. ‘That’s the second time, damn it, captain.’
Wrapped up in his cloak Monti slowly chewed at something and gazed at Angustina, and as he gazed his anger lessened.
‘That’s enough,’ he said, ‘come into the shelter. The Northerners are gone now.’
‘You are a much better player than me,’ Angustina kept up his pretence but his voice was failing, ‘but this evening you have no luck at all. Why do you keep on looking up? Why are you looking at the peak? Are you a little worried?’
Then as the snow swirled down, the last soaked cards dropped from Lieutenant Angustina’s hand, the hand itself fell down lifeless and lay stretched inert on the cloak in the wavering light of the lantern.
His shoulders to a stone, the lieutenant let himself fall slowly back; a strange somnolence was overcoming him. (And through the night a small procession of other spirits advanced towards the palace bearing a litter through the air.)
‘Lieutenant, come over here and eat something. You have to eat in this cold. You must try even if you aren’t hungry.’ That is what the captain called and there was a hint of anxiety in his voice. ‘Come under here – the snow is stopping.’
So it was; quite suddenly the white swirls had become less thick and heavy, the air clearer; by the light of the lanterns one could already pick out rocks ten or twenty yards away.
And suddenly through a rift in the tempest the lights of the Fort appeared, immeasurably distant. They seemed to be infinite in number like an enchanted castle over which there lay all the gaiety of ancient carnivals. Angustina saw them and a thin smile formed slowly on his frost-swollen lips.
‘Lieutenant,’ the captain called again, for he was beginning to grasp what was happening. ‘Lieutenant, throw away those cards and come in here and get some shelter from the wind.’
But Angustina was looking at the lights and in truth did not know what lights they were, whether of the Fort or of the distant city or of his own castle where no one awaited his return.
Perhaps at that moment a sentry, looking through the embrasures of the Fort, had glanced casually up against the mountain and had picked out the lights on the crest; at that distance the unlucky wall-face presented no obstacle at all, it made no difference. And perhaps it was Drogo himself who was guard commander. Drogo, who had he wished could also have set out with Captain Monti and Angustina. But to Drogo it had seemed stupid; now that the threat of the Tartars had been dispelled it had seemed merely a boring duty; there was nothing to be got out of it. But now, Drogo, too, saw the light of the lanterns tremble on the peak and began to regret that he had not gone. So it wasn’t only in war that one might find something worth while doing; and now he wished he too were up there in the heart of the night and the tempest. Too late – the opportunity had passed him by and he had let it go.
Dry and well rested, wrapped in his warm cloak, Giovanni Drogo perhaps looked enviously at the distant lights while Angustina, all encrusted with snow, laboriously put out his last strength to smooth his wet moustache and drape his cloak with care – not so as to pull it tight about him and be warmer, but for his own secret ends. From his shelter Captain Monti gazed at him in astonishment and wondered what Angustina was doing and where he had seen something that looked like him; but he could not remember.
There was in a room in the Fort an old picture of the death of Prince Sebastian. Mortally wounded, Prince Sebastian lay in the heart of the forest with his back to the trunk of a tree, his head a little to one side, his cloak falling in harmonious folds; there was in the picture none of the disagreeable physical cruelty of death and as one looked at it one was not surprised that the painter had contrived to preserve all the prince’s nobility, his extreme elegance.
And now Angustina – not that he thought of it of course – was beginning to look like Prince Sebastian lying wounded in the heart of the forest. Angustina did not have his gleaming breastplate nor did a bloodstained helmet lie at his feet nor a broken sword; he was not leaning his back on a trunk but on a hard rock; it was not the last ray of the sun which lit his forehead but merely a weak lantern. And yet the resemblance was great, the position of the limbs the same, the same the way the mantle fell, the same his expression of utter weariness.
Then, although they were much more vigorous and robust compared to Angustina, the captain, the sergeant and all the men seemed one and all rude oafs. And strange as it may seem there awoke in Monti’s heart amazement and envy.
When the snow stopped, the wind lamented among the rocks, whirled the powdered ice and shook the flames within the glass of the lanterns. Angustina appeared not to hear it; he sat there motionless, leaning on the boulder, his eyes gazing at the distant lights of the Fort.
‘Lieutenant,’ Captain Monti tried again, ‘Lieutenant, make up your mind. Come under here. If you stay there you won’t be able to stand it. You’ll end by freezing to death. Come under here – Toni has built a sort of wall.’
‘Thank you, captain,’ said Angustina with an effort, and finding it too difficult to speak he raised one hand a little, making a sign as if to say it did not matter, that these were foolish trifles, matters of no importance. (At last the chief of the spirits made an imperious gesture to him and Angustina, with his bored air, stepped over the window sill and gracefully took his seat in the litter. The fairy carriage moved gently off.)
For some minutes there was nothing to be heard but the hoarse cry of the wind. Even the soldiers, gathered in clumps under the rocks to keep warm, had lost all desire to joke and fought silently against the cold.
When the wind fell off for a moment, Angustina again raised his head a little and moved his lips slowly as if to speak; there emerged only these three words: ‘Tomorrow we should …’ Then nothing more. Only three words and these so weak that not even Captain Monti noticed that he had spoken.
Three words and Angustina’s head fell forward, for there was no longer anything to support it. One of his hands lay white and stiff in the fold of his cloak, his mouth managed to close. Once more a thin smile began to form on his lips. (As the litter bore him off he took his eyes off his friend 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. Thus he went off into the night with almost inhuman nobility. The procession wound slowly through the sky, rising higher and higher, then it became a confused streak, then a little wisp of mist, then nothing.)
What were you trying to say, Angustina? What should we do tomorrow? Captain Monti had at last left his shelter and shook the lieutenant roughly by the shoulder to bring him to life; but the pity is he succeeds only in disarranging the noble folds of his soldier’s shroud. As yet none of the men has noticed what has happened.
Monti swears and the only answer is the voice of the wind from the black precipice. What were you trying to say, Angustina? You went off without finishing the sentence – perhaps it was something quite trite and stupid, perhaps an absurd hope, perhaps nothing at all.
Chapter Sixteen
When they had buried Lieutenant Angustina, time began to flow over the Fort again just as before.
‘How long have you been here now?’ Major Ortiz asked Drogo.
Drogo said: ‘I have be
en here four years.’
The winter had come unexpectedly, a long winter. Snow would fall, at first a couple of inches, then after a pause a deeper layer and then another, so often that it seemed impossible to keep count of them; it would be a long time before the spring came again. (And yet one day – much sooner than they expected, much sooner – they will hear streams of water gushing from the edge of the terraces and winter will inexplicably be over.)
Lieutenant Angustina’s coffin, wrapped in a flag, lay underground in a little compound to one side of the Fort. Over it there was a cross of white stone with his name on it. Further over there was a smaller cross in wood for Private Lazzari.
‘Sometimes I think,’ said Ortiz, ‘we want a war, we keep waiting for some great chance, we curse our luck because nothing ever happens. And yet there’s Angustina …’
‘You mean,’ said Giovanni Drogo, ‘you mean that Angustina did not need luck? That he was a good soldier without it?’
‘He was not strong – I think he may even have been ill,’ said Major Ortiz. ‘He was worse off than any of us, really. Like us he did not come face to face with the enemy, he didn’t have a war either. Yet he died as if it were in battle. Do you know how he died?’
‘Yes,’ said Drogo, ‘I was there too when Monti told how it happened.’
The winter had come and the foreign troops had departed. Hope’s bright standards with their gleam that might be the gleam of blood had slowly drooped and once more there was calm in men’s hearts; but the sky was left empty and in vain their eyes still sought something on the far edge of the horizon.
‘He knew the right moment to die, that’s a fact,’ said Major Ortiz. ‘Just as if a bullet had got him. A hero, that’s what he was. Yet no one fired at him. Of all those who were with him that day everyone had the same chance – he didn’t have any advantage, unless that it was that he died more easily. But after all, what did the others do? For the others it was a day more or less like the rest.’
‘Yes,’ said Drogo, ‘only a bit colder.’
‘Yes, a bit colder,’ said Ortiz. ‘But you could have gone with them too – you had only to ask.’
They were sitting on a wooden bench on the uppermost terrace of the fourth redoubt. Ortiz had come in search of Lieutenant Drogo, who was on duty. From day to day a firm friendship was growing between them.
They were sitting on a bench wrapped in their cloaks, their gaze automatically turned to the north where great shapeless clouds, heavy with snow, were accumulating. From time to time the north wind blew and chilled their clothing. The high rocky peaks to right and left of the gap had turned black. Drogo said: ‘I think it will snow here at the Fort tomorrow, too.’
‘Probably,’ answered the major without any real interest and fell silent.
‘It will snow,’ Drogo went on. ‘The ravens are still flying past.’
‘It’s our own fault,’ said Ortiz who was pursuing an obstinate line of thought. ‘After all we always get our deserts. Angustina, for instance, was ready to pay a high price – we weren’t. Perhaps that is the whole point. Perhaps we expect too much. After all we get our deserts.’
‘Well,’ asked Drogo, ‘well, what should we do?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do anything,’ said Ortiz with a smile. ‘I have waited too long now, but you …’
‘What about me?’
‘Go away while there is still time, go back down to the city, get used to garrison life. After all you don’t seem to me the type to despise the pleasures of life. You’ll have a better career there than here, that I’m sure of. And then we aren’t born to be heroes.’
Drogo said nothing.
‘You’ve let four years go past already,’ said Ortiz, ‘you have got a certain start in seniority – let’s admit it – but think how much good it would have done you to be stationed in the city. You have been cut off from the world, no one will remember you any more. Go back while there is still time.’
Giovanni listened in silence with his eyes fixed on the ground.
‘I’ve seen others before you,’ the major went on. ‘Little by little they got accustomed to the Fort, remained imprisoned in here and could no longer make a move. Old at thirty, that was what they were.’
‘I believe you, sir,’ said Drogo, ‘but at my age …’
‘You are young,’ Ortiz went on, ‘and will still be young for a bit. That’s true. But I wouldn’t count too much on that. It only needs another two years to pass – only two years – and it would be too much of an effort for you to go back.’
‘Thank you,’ said Drogo, who was not in the least impressed. ‘But after all here at the Fort one can always hope for better things. It may be absurd, but even you – if you are frank – will confess …’
‘Maybe so,’ said the major, ‘all of us, more or less, persist in hoping. But it is absurd. You’ve only got to think a little,’ (and he pointed to the north). ‘It will never again be possible for a war to come from there. And now – after what has just happened – who do you expect to take it seriously?’
As he spoke he had risen to his feet, always looking to the north just as he had done on that distant morning when they were on the edge of the plateau, and Drogo had seen him stare as if spellbound at the enigmatic walls of the Fort. Four years had passed since then, a fair slice of life, and nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened to justify such high hopes. The days had gone by one after another; soldiers, who might have been the enemy, had appeared one morning on the rim of the northern plain, then they had withdrawn after some harmless frontier duties. Peace reigned over the world, the sentries sounded no alarm, nothing gave any grounds for thinking that life might change. As in past years winter came on with the usual routine and the wind from the hills blowing against the bayonets produced a weak whistling sound. And there he was still, Major Ortiz, standing on the terrace of the fourth redoubt, not even believing his own words of wisdom, looking once more at the northern steppe as if he alone had the right to look at it, he alone the right to remain there whatever might come of it, and Drogo on the other hand was a good fellow, but out of place, someone who had miscalculated and would have done well to go back where he came from.
Chapter Seventeen
At last the snow on the terraces turned soft and one’s feet sank into the slush. The sweet sound of the streams came unexpectedly from the nearest mountains; here and there on the sides of the peaks one could see white vertical stripes sparkling in the sun, and now and again the soldiers caught themselves singing as they had not done for months.
The sun no longer raced away as it had before in its haste to set, but began to linger a little in the midst of the sky, eating away the heaped snow, and it was in vain that the clouds continued to rush down from the northern ice-fields; they could no longer make snow – rain was all they could manage and the rain merely melted what little snow remained. The good weather had returned.
Already in the mornings one could hear the voices of the birds which everyone thought to have forgotten. On the other hand the ravens no longer sat gathered on the plateau before the Fort waiting for kitchen scraps but scattered through the valleys in search of fresh food.
At night in the barrack rooms the beams where the packs hang, the rifle-racks, the very doors, even the fine heavy walnut furniture in the colonel’s room, all the timber in the Fort, including the oldest bits, creaked in the darkness. Sometimes there were sharp cracks like pistol shots. It seemed as if something were actually flying apart. A man would wake in his bunk and strain his ears. But he could hear nothing except other creakings whispering in the night.
This is the time when an obstinate lament from life reawakens in the old beams. Many, many years ago in happier times there had been a surge of heat and youthful strength and clusters of buds sprang from the boughs. Then the tree had been cut down. And now it is spring and in each of its dismembered parts there still awakens a pulse of life, an infinitely weaker pulse. Once there were leaves and flowers; now only
a dim memory, enough to make a cracking noise and then it is over until the next year.
This is the time when the men in the Fort begin to have strange, quite unsoldierly thoughts. The walls are no longer a hospitable shelter but feel like a prison. Their bareness, the black streaks of the gutters, the oblique angles of the bastions, their yellow colouring, have nothing in common with their new feelings.
One spring morning an officer – from the back one cannot tell who it is and it might even be Giovanni Drogo – an officer is walking in boredom through the great room where the men wash; at this hour it is deserted. He has no inspection to make, nothing to check; he is wandering about to have an excuse for not standing still. Besides, everything is in order, the basins clean, the floor swept and the running tap is not the troops’ fault. The officer stops and looks up at one of the windows. The panes are shut – probably they have not been washed for years – and spiders’ webs hang in the corners. There is nothing there to comfort the human heart. And yet, through the glass, it is possible to catch a glimpse of something which resembles the sky. The same sky, the officer perhaps thinks, the same sun, is shining at this moment on the squalid wash-place and certain distant meadows.
The meadows are green and not long since little flowers – they will be white – were born there. And the trees, too, as is right and proper, have put on new leaves. It would be fine to ride aimlessly through the countryside. And suppose on a narrow way a pretty girl came to meet him through the hedgerows and as he passed by her on horseback he were to give her a smile. But what foolishness – an officer at Fort Bastiani is never allowed such stupid thoughts.
However strange it may seem, one can even see a white, pleasingly shaped cloud through the glass. The same sort of cloud is sailing over the distant city at this very moment. Now and again people look at it as they stroll along, happy that winter is over; almost all of them are wearing new clothes or refurbished ones, and the young women wear flowered hats and coloured dresses. They all look happy, as if at any moment they expected something pleasant to happen. At least, once upon a time, it was like that – who knows whether things have changed since. And if at a window there were a pretty girl and as he passed beneath it he were to salute her, for no particular reason, would she greet him like a friend with a pleasant smile? But all this is nonsense, a schoolboy’s folly.