The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  To one side through the dirty glass one can catch sight of a stretch of wall. It too is flooded with sunlight but the effect it produces is not one of happiness. It is the wall of a barracks and the wall is indifferent to whether the sun shines or the moon – all that matters is that nothing should arise to upset the smooth round of duties. A barrack wall and that is that. And yet one day in a distant month of September the officer had stopped to gaze at it as if fascinated – then these walls had seemed to hold for him a stern but enviable fate. Although he could not find them beautiful, he had remained motionless for some minutes as if he found himself confronted with a miracle.

  An officer wanders through the empty wash-place – others are on duty in the various redoubts, others are riding on the stony parade ground, others are sitting in the office. None of them understands properly what has happened, but their faces get on his nerves. Always the same faces, he thinks instinctively, always the same talk, the same duties, the same documents. And meanwhile there is within him a ferment of tender longings – it is difficult to say precisely what he does want, certainly not these walls, those soldiers, those trumpet calls.

  So run, horse, run down the road to the plain, run before it is too late. Don’t stop even if you are tired before you see the green meadows, the familiar trees, people’s houses, the churches and the belfries.

  And then farewell to the Fort – it would be dangerous to stay longer. Your simple mystery is gone. The northern steppe will always remain deserted, never again will the enemy come, never again will anyone come to assault your contemptible walls. Farewell, Major Ortiz, melancholy friend, who cannot break away from the Fort on the hilltops – and so many more like you; you have kept on hoping too long, time has been too quick for you and you cannot start over again.

  But Giovanni Drogo can. There is nothing more to keep him at the Fort. Now he is going back to the plain, he is going to rejoin human society – very likely they will give him some special duties, a mission abroad, say, with some general. Of course in those years when he has been in the Fort lots of wonderful opportunities have been lost, but Giovanni is still young, he has all the time in the world to make up for it.

  So farewell, Fort, with your absurd redoubts, your patient soldiers, your colonel who every morning secretly scans the northern steppe through the telescope. But it is no use, there is nothing there. A salute to Angustina’s tomb – perhaps he was the luckiest of all. His at least, was a true soldier’s death – better at all events than the death in the hospital bed which we are likely to have. A salute to his own room, after all Drogo has slept the sleep of the just here for some hundreds of nights. Another salute to the courtyard where this evening too, the new guard will be drawn up with the usual formalities. A last salute to the northern steppe which harbours no more illusions.

  Don’t think about it any more, Giovanni Drogo, don’t turn back now that you have reached the edge of the plateau and the road is about to plunge into the valley. It would be a piece of stupid weakness. You know it stone by stone, one might say, Fort Bastiani, there is not the slightest risk of forgetting it. The horse trots cheerfully, the day is fine, the air warm and mild, there is a long life before you – almost enough to begin over again from the beginning. What need should there be of a last glance at the walls, at the casemates, at the sentries on duty on the parapet of the redoubts? So a page is slowly turned, falls over to join the others, the ones already finished. It is still only a thin layer. Those still to be read are inexhaustible in comparison. But it is always another page finished, a portion of your life.

  In fact Drogo does not turn and look back from the edge of the plateau. Without a hint of hesitation he gives spur to his horse, on down the hill. He does not show the least sign of turning his head even the fraction of an inch, he whistles a tune with a fair attempt at coolness. But it is not easy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The door of the house was open and Drogo at once smelt the same smell of home as in his childhood when he came back to the city after the summer months in the country. It was a familiar and friendly smell and yet after so long a time there was about it a faint suggestion of meaner things. Thus it did recall past years, the sweet pleasures of certain Sundays, happy meals, his lost childhood, but it also spoke of closed windows, of school tasks, of morning chores, of illnesses, of quarrels and of mice.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ cried the good Giovanna exultantly as she opened the door to him. And at once his mother came – thank God she had not changed yet.

  As he sat in the drawing room and tried to answer all their questions he felt his happiness change against his will to sadness. The house seemed empty compared to once upon a time. Of his brothers one was abroad, another on his travels somewhere and the third in the country. Only his mother remained and after a little she, too, had to go out, to attend a service in church where a friend waited for her.

  His bedroom was the same as before, just as he had left it; not a book had been moved, yet it did not seem to be his. He sat in the easy chair and listened to the noise of the carts in the street and the intermittent sound of voices from the kitchen. He sat alone in his room, his mother was praying in church, his brothers were far away – so all the world went on living without need of Giovanni Drogo. He opened a window, saw the grey houses, roof above roof, the hazy sky. He looked for his old school notebooks in a drawer, a diary he had kept for years, some letters. He was amazed that he had written them – he had no recollection of them, everything referred to strange forgotten incidents. He sat down at the piano and tried a chord; then he lowered the cover of the keyboard. And now? he asked himself.

  A stranger, he wandered through the city seeking old friends; he heard that they were deep in affairs, in great enterprises, in their political careers. They talked to him of serious and important matters, of factories, railroads and hospitals. One invited him to dinner, another had got married, all had gone their own ways and in four years they had already travelled far apart. However much he tried – but perhaps even he was no longer able to do it – he could not revive the conversations of another time, its jokes and expressions. He wandered through the city seeking old friends, and he had had many of them, but he ended by finding himself alone on the pavement with hour after empty hour before he could make the evening come.

  At night he stayed out late, determined to find amusement. Each time he went out with the usual vague youthful hopes of love and each time he returned disappointed. Once more he began to hate the road – the unchanging, deserted road which brought him home alone.

  About this time there was a great ball and Drogo, as he entered the mansion in company with his friend Vescovi, the only friend he had found, felt himself in the best of spirits. Although it was already spring the night would be long, an almost unlimited stretch of time; before the dawn so much might happen, what precisely Drogo could not say, but certainly several hours of undiluted pleasure. And in fact he had begun to joke with a girl in a violet dress and still midnight had not sounded, when the host summoned him to show him each detail of the house; he led him through labyrinths and subterranean passages, he held him prisoner in the library, he made him examine a collection of weapons piece by piece, spoke to him of questions of strategy, of military affairs, told stories about the Royal House – and meanwhile time passed, the clocks had begun to race alarmingly. When Drogo contrived to free himself, longing to return to the dance, the rooms were already half empty, the girl in the violet dress had disappeared; probably she had already gone home.

  In vain Drogo tried drinking, in vain he laughed senselessly – not even wine could help him now. And the music of the violins became thinner; the time came when they were literally playing in a void, for no one was dancing any more. Drogo found himself among the trees of the garden with a bitter taste in his mouth; he could hear the uncertain echoes of a waltz and meanwhile the magic of the ball faded and the sky slowly paled with the approaching dawn.

  As the stars set, Drogo stayed on among
the dark leafy shadows to watch the day break while one by one the gilded carriages drove away. Now even the players were silent and a servant went through the rooms, lowering the lights. From a tree right over Drogo’s head there came the fresh sharp trill of a bird. The sky became paler and paler; everything slept silently in confident expectation of a fine day. By now, thought Drogo, the first rays of the sun had already reached the bastions of the Fort and the chilled sentries. His ear waited in vain for the sound of a trumpet.

  He walked through the sleeping city, it was still deep in slumber, and opened the house door with unnecessary noise. Within, a little light was already filtering through the cracks in the shutters.

  ‘Good night, mother,’ he said as he passed along the corridor and it seemed to him that, as in the old days when he came home late, a confused sound answered him from her bedroom – a voice heavy with sleep, but a loving one. And he went on towards his own room feeling almost soothed, when suddenly he noticed that she too was speaking. ‘What’s wrong, mother?’ he asked in the vast silence. At the same moment he realised that he had mistaken the rumbling of a distant carriage for her dear voice. In fact his mother had not replied – her son’s footsteps in the night could no longer awake her as once they had done; it was as if they no longer concerned her, having changed with the passing of time.

  Once his steps had reached her in her sleep like a signal agreed between the two of them. None of the other noises of the night, even if they were much louder, could wake her, neither the carts in the street below nor the crying of a child, nor the howling of the dogs, nor the owls, nor a banging shutter, nor the wind in the gutters, nor the rain nor the creaking of the furniture. Only his step awoke her – not that it was loud, for Giovanni went on tiptoe. There was no special reason for it, except that he was her son.

  But now it seemed he was her son no more. He had greeted her as before with the same inflection in his voice, certain that at the familiar sound of his step she would have awakened. Instead there had been no reply except the rumbling of a distant carriage. It is very silly, he thought, a ridiculous coincidence, the sort of thing that could easily happen. And yet while he got ready for bed, it left him with a bitter feeling, as if the affection they once had for each other had faded, as if time and distance had slowly spread a veil between them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Later he went to visit Maria, Francesco Vescovi’s sister. Their house had a garden and since it was spring the trees bore new leaves and birds sang in the branches.

  Maria met him at the door with a smile. She had known that he was coming and had put on a blue dress with a narrow waist like one which had pleased him long ago.

  Drogo had thought that he would have felt deep emotion, that his heart would have beaten faster. But when he was beside her and saw her smile again, when he heard her voice saying: ‘At last, Giovanni’ (so different from what he had imagined) he realised how much time had passed.

  He was, or so he thought, the same as before, perhaps a little broader in the shoulders and browned by the sun at the Fort. And she had not changed either. But something had come between them.

  They went into the great drawing room because the sun was too bright outside; the room was full of soft shadows, a streak of sunlight gleamed on the carpet and somewhere a clock ticked.

  They sat on a divan – sat sideways to be able to look at each other. Drogo looked into her eyes without finding anything to say, but she looked vivaciously around – a glance at him, at the furniture, at her turquoise bracelet which was apparently a quite new one.

  ‘Francesco will be here shortly,’ said Maria cheerfully. ‘You can keep me company for a little – you must have lots of things to tell me.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Drogo, ‘nothing special really. It’s always …’

  ‘But why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked. ‘Do you find me so changed?’

  No, Drogo did not find her changed – indeed it was surprising that in four years a girl should not have altered visibly in any way. And yet he had a vague feeling of disappointment and coldness. He no longer succeeded in striking the old note of the days when they had talked like brother and sister and could have fun together without hurting each other. Why did she sit on the sofa so calmly and talk so charmingly? He should have caught her by the arm and said: ‘Are you mad? What are you getting at – pretending to be serious?’ The chill spell would have been broken.

  But Drogo did not feel capable of it. He had before him a new and different person whose thoughts he did not know. He himself perhaps was no longer the same person as before, and he had started by striking a false note.

  ‘Changed?’ answered Drogo. ‘No, no, not at all.’

  ‘Ah, you’re saying that because I’m not as pretty as I was, that’s it. Tell the truth.’

  Was it really Maria speaking? Wasn’t she joking? Giovanni listened to her, scarcely believing his ears, hoping from one moment to another that she would cast off her elegant smile, her smooth manner and would laugh out loud instead.

  ‘Ugly, of course I think you’re ugly,’ Giovanni would have replied in the old days, putting an arm round her waist and she would have leant against it. But now? It would have been absurd, a joke in bad taste.

  ‘Of course not,’ Drogo replied. ‘You’re quite unchanged, I assure you.’

  She looked at him with an unconvinced smile and changed the subject. ‘And now tell me, have you come back for good?’

  It was a question he had foreseen. (‘That depends on you,’ he had decided to reply – or something like that.) But he had expected it sooner, at the moment of meeting, as would have been natural if it meant anything to her. Now instead it had almost taken him by surprise and was so different, almost a conventional question with no sentimental undertones.

  There was a moment of silence; the room lay in the half-light, from the garden came the bird song and from a distant room chords on a piano, the slow, mechanical chords of someone practising.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know yet. I am only on leave,’ said Drogo.

  ‘Leave – is that all?’ said Maria suddenly, and there was in her voice a slight quiver which might have been due to chance or disappointment or even to real pain. But something had indeed come between them, an obscure indefinable veil which would not dissolve. Perhaps it had risen slowly day by day during the long separation, dividing them from each other and neither of them knew it.

  ‘Two months. Then perhaps I shall have to go back, or to another posting, perhaps here in the city,’ Drogo explained. The conversation was becoming painful to him. A feeling of indifference had entered his heart.’

  Both were silent. The afternoon hung heavily over the city, the birds had become mute, only the distant chords of the piano were to be heard, sad and painstaking, rising and rising and rising, filling the whole house, and in the sound there was a sort of obstinate effort as if they were trying to say something very difficult which cannot be said at all.

  ‘It is the Micheli’s daughter, on the floor above,’ said Maria, noticing that Giovanni was listening.

  ‘You used to play that piece too, didn’t you?’

  Maria bent her head gracefully as if she were listening.

  ‘No, no, that is too difficult, you must have heard it elsewhere.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Drogo.

  The piano played on with the same effort. Giovanni watched the strip of sunlight on the carpet and thought of the Fort, imagining the melting snow, the dripping of water on the terraces, the poor mountain spring which knows only tiny flowers on the grassy hillsides and the windborne perfume of pastures.

  ‘But now you will ask for a transfer, won’t you?’ the girl went on. ‘You will have a right to it, surely, after all that time. It must be terribly boring up there.’

  She spoke the last words with a suggestion of anger as if she hated the Fort.

  ‘Perhaps a bit, certainly I prefer to stay here with you.’

  This poor sent
ence shot through Drogo’s mind – it seemed a chance to show some courage. It was trite but it might do. But suddenly he lost all desire to say it and thought with disgust how ridiculous the words would have been coming from him.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he went on, ‘but the days go past so quickly.’

  He could hear the sound of the piano but could not tell why the chords rose higher and higher without ceasing. Severe and bare, they retold with resigned detachment an old story – one of his favourites. They spoke of a misty evening under the lamps of the city and of how the two of them walked under the bare trees along the deserted avenue, suddenly happy, holding hands like children, without knowing why. That evening too, he remembered, there had been pianos playing in the houses and the notes had floated from the lighted windows. And although they were probably boring exercises, Giovanni and Maria had never heard such sweet, such human music.

  ‘Of course,’ Drogo added jokingly, ‘there aren’t many amusements up there, but one had got used to it a little.’

  There was a scent of flowers in the drawingroom and their conversation seemed to be slowly acquiring a tone of poetic melancholy conducive to declarations of love. Who knows, thought Giovanni, perhaps this first meeting after so long a separation could not be otherwise – with time we might come together again. I have two months’ time. You can’t tell right away like this, perhaps she still loves me and I won’t go back to the Fort. But the girl said: