The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

  At last the departures began in real earnest. In the courtyard there was a continual rumble of waggons loading stores and one by one the companies paraded to say farewell. Each time the colonel came down from his office to inspect them, he said a few parting words to the men; his voice was unmoving and lifeless.

  Officers who had lived up there for years, who had gone on searching the solitary places of the north from the embrasures of the redoubts, who had been wont to carry on interminable discussions on whether there would be an unexpected enemy attack or not – many of these officers went off with a happy look on their faces, waving insolently to those of their comrades who had remained behind. So they rode off towards the valley, smart and upright in the saddle at the head of their troops, and did not even turn their heads to take a last look at their Fort.

  But there was Morel who, as he drew up his platoon before the colonel in the centre of the courtyard one sunny morning and lowered his sabre in salute – there was Morel whose eyes shone with tears and whose voice trembled; but he was the only one. Leaning against a wall, Drogo watched the scene and gave a friendly smile to his comrade as he rode past towards the gate. Perhaps they were seeing each other for the last time and Giovanni raised his right hand to the peak of his cap in the regulation salute.

  Then he went back into the passages of the Fort, which even in summer were cold and each day were becoming more and more deserted. At the thought of Morel’s departure the wound of the injustice he had suffered had reopened unexpectedly and caused him pain. Giovanni went in search of Ortiz and found him coming out of his office with a bundle of papers. Drogo caught up with him and walked at his side: ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning, Drogo,’ answered Major Ortiz and he halted. ‘Is there something new? Do you want anything?’

  He wanted to ask him something. Solely as a matter of interest, but there was no urgency about it; yet it had been on his mind for some days.

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ he said. ‘You remember when I arrived at the Fort, four and a half years ago, Major Matti told me that only volunteers stayed here. That if any one wanted to leave he was free to do so. You remember I told you? According to Matti all I had to do was to ask to be medically inspected – simply to have a formal excuse – but he said it would have annoyed the colonel a bit.’

  ‘Yes, I remember vaguely,’ said Ortiz with a very faint suggestion of displeasure. ‘But you must excuse me, my dear Drogo, I …’

  ‘One minute, sir. You remember that not to cause any unpleasantness I resigned myself to staying four months? But if I wanted I could leave, couldn’t I?’

  ‘I know, my dear Drogo,’ said Ortiz, ‘but you’re not the only one.’

  ‘Then,’ Giovanni interrupted him excitedly, ‘then these were all stories? then it is not true that I could go away if I wanted to? All stories to keep me quiet.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the major. ‘I don’t think so. You mustn’t get that into your head.’

  ‘Don’t deny it, sir,’ Giovanni replied. ‘Do you mean to tell me that Matti was telling the truth?’

  ‘More or less the same thing happened to me,’ said Ortiz, looking down in his embarassment. ‘I used to have ideas about a brilliant career too.’

  They were standing in one of the long corridors and their voices re-echoed sadly along the walls, for the place was empty and bare.

  ‘So it is not true that all the officers came at their own request? They all had to stay here just like me, is that not the case?’

  Ortiz said nothing and idly poked the point of his sabre into a crack in the floor.

  ‘So it was all nonsense when they said, some of them, that they wanted to stay here?’ Drogo insisted. ‘But why did no one have the courage to say so?’

  ‘Perhaps it is not quite as you say,’ answered Ortiz. ‘There were one or two who really preferred to stay on – few, I admit, but there were some.’

  ‘Who? Tell me who?’ cried Drogo, then he broke off suddenly. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he added, ‘I was naturally not thinking of you – you know what happens when one is talking.’

  Ortiz smiled.

  ‘So you didn’t mean me? Probably I stayed here too because it is my job.’

  The two moved on, walking side by side, and passed the little barred oblongs of the windows; through them they saw the bare plateau behind the Fort, the mountains of the south, the heavy mists of the valley.

  ‘So,’ Drogo went on after a silence, ‘so all that excitement, these stories about the Tartars? So no one really hoped they were true?’

  ‘They not only hoped!’ said Ortiz. ‘They really believed.’

  Drogo shook his head.

  ‘I don’t understand, I assure you I don’t.’

  ‘What can I say?’ said the major. ‘It’s a bit complicated. It’s a kind of exile up here – but you have to find some sort of outlet, you have to hope for something. Someone began thinking about it, then they began to talk about Tartars – who knows who was the first?’

  ‘Perhaps the place has something to do with it,’ said Drogo, ‘seeing that desert.’

  ‘Yes, the place, too, of course. That desert, the mists in the distance, the mountains, you can’t deny it. Yes, the place has something to do with it too.’

  He was silent for a moment, thinking, then he resumed as if talking to himself.

  ‘The Tartars, the Tartars. At first it sounds nonsense, naturally, then you end up by believing it yourself – at least a lot of people have, that’s a fact.’

  ‘But sir, excuse me, do you …’

  ‘It’s different with me,’ said Ortiz, ‘I belong to another generation. I have no ideas about a career. A quiet job is enough for me. But you, lieutenant, you have all your life before you. In a year, a year and a half at the most, you will be transferred.’

  ‘There’s Morel, lucky man,’ exclaimed Drogo stopping at a window. There they saw the platoon marching off across the plateau. The soldiers stood out clearly against the bare, sunbeaten ground. They were laden with heavy packs yet they marched with a spring in their step.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The last company to leave was drawn up in the courtyard. Everybody was thinking that next day they would begin to settle down to the new life with the reduced garrison. There was a sort of impatience to be done with these eternal goodbyes, the anger at seeing others leave. The company had been drawn up and they were waiting for Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolosi to inspect it when Giovanni Drogo, who was looking on, saw Lieutenant Simeoni appear with a strange look on his face.

  Lieutenant Simeoni had been at the Fort for three years and seemed a good fellow, a little heavy, respectful of authority and fond of physical exercises. He advanced into the courtyard and looked about him with apparent anxiety, searching for someone to tell something to. Probably one person would do as well as another for he had no special friends.

  He saw Drogo watching him and came up to him.

  ‘Come and see this,’ he asked in a low voice, ‘Come quickly and see.’

  ‘See what?’ asked Drogo.

  ‘I am on duty on the third redoubt – I have come down for a moment. Come up as soon as you are free. There’s something I don’t understand.’ And he panted a little as if he had been running.

  ‘Where? What did you see?’ asked Drogo, his interest awakened.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Simeoni, ‘wait till the company has moved off.’

  At that moment a trumpet blew three notes and the soldiers came to attention, for the colonel had arrived – the colonel of a fort which had been reduced in rank.

  ‘Wait until they are gone,’ said Simeoni once more, for Drogo was becoming impatient at what appeared a pointless mystery. ‘I want to see them leave at least. I’ve been wanting to tell someone for five days but first they all had to leave.’

  Finally, after Nicolosi’s few words and the last fanfares, the company marched heavily out of the Fort in full kit and made towards the valley. It was a Septemb
er day – the sky was grey and sad.

  Then Simeoni dragged Drogo through the long solitary corridors to the entrance of the third redoubt. They passed through the guard room and came out on to the sentry-walk.

  Lieutenant Simeoni pulled out a telescope and asked Drogo to look at the little triangle of plain the mountains disclosed.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Drogo.

  ‘Take a look first – I don’t want to make a mistake. You look first and tell me if you see anything.’

  Leaning his elbows on the parapet Drogo looked carefully at the desert through the telescope – it was Simeoni’s own – and clearly distinguished the stones, the folds in the ground, the thin clumps of arbutus, although they were all exceedingly far off.

  Bit by bit Drogo swept the triangle of the desert and was about to say no, that he couldn’t see anything, when in the extreme distance, where everything faded into the curtain of mist, he seemed to see a little black dot moving.

  He was still leaning on the parapet with his elbow and looking through the telescope when suddenly he felt his heart beat furiously. Like two years before, he thought, when they believed the enemy had arrived.

  ‘Is it that little speck you mean?’ asked Drogo.

  ‘I’ve seen it for five days but I didn’t want to tell anyone.’

  ‘Why?’ said Drogo, ‘what were you frightened of?’

  ‘If I said anything they might have stopped them from leaving. And so, after playing a dirty trick on us, Morel and the others would have stayed on and exploited the situation. The fewer we are, the better.’

  ‘What situation? What do you think it is? It will be like last time – a reconnaissance patrol or shepherds maybe or simply an animal.’

  ‘I’ve been watching it for five days,’ said Simeoni, ‘if they were shepherds they would have gone away and the same if they were animals. There is something moving, but it stays more or less in the same spot.’

  ‘Well, what do you think it is?’

  Simeoni looked at Drogo with a smile as if wondering whether he could reveal the secret to him. Then he said:

  ‘I think they are making a road, a military road. This is the real thing this time. Two years ago they came to study the ground. Now they are coming in real earnest.’

  Drogo laughed heartily.

  ‘But what sort of a road do you think they are making? You don’t really think anyone is going to come that way again? Didn’t you see enough last time?’

  ‘Perhaps you are a little short-sighted,’ said Simeoni. ‘Perhaps your eyes aren’t very good, but I can pick things out very well – they have begun to lay the foundations of the road. You could see it quite clearly yesterday when there was sun.’

  Drogo shook his head, amazed at such obstinacy. Was he really not tired of waiting, Simeoni? Was he really frightened to disclose his discovery as if it were a treasure? Was he really afraid they would take it from him?

  ‘Once,’ said Drogo, ‘once I would have believed it too. But now it looks to me as if you were victim of an illusion. If I were you I should keep quiet about it; they’ll end up by laughing at you behind your back.’

  ‘They are making a road,’ retorted Simeoni, looking at Drogo pityingly. ‘Of course they will take months, but this time they mean business.’

  ‘But suppose it were true,’ said Drogo, ‘suppose it were as you say, do you think that if a road were really being built to bring guns down from the north – do you think they would have left the Fort stripped? The High Command would know at once, they would have known for years.’

  ‘The High Command never takes Fort Bastiani seriously. No one will believe any of these stories until it has been bombarded. They will allow themselves to be convinced too late.’

  ‘Say what you like,’ repeated Drogo, ‘if that road were really being built the High Command would know all about it, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘The High Command has a thousand sources of information – but only one out of a thousand is any good, so they do not believe any of them. Besides there’s no point in arguing, you’ll see that it will come about as I am saying.’

  They were alone on the edge of the sentry-walk. The sentries, they were much further apart than once upon a time, were walking up and down on their beats. Drogo looked once more towards the north – the rocks, the desert, the mists in the distance, seemed senseless to him.

  Later, speaking to Ortiz, Drogo learned that Lieutenant Simeoni’s famous secret was known to practically everyone. But no one had attached any importance to it. In fact many people were amazed that a serious young man like Simeoni should put about these new rumours.

  In these days there were other things to think about. The reduction in the garrison’s strength obliged them to spread out the forces at their disposal along the top of the walls; they kept on experimenting in order to obtain, with smaller forces, a security system almost as effective as before. Some guards had to be abandoned altogether, others had to be given more equipment, the companies had to be reformed and distributed differently in the barrackrooms.

  For the first time since it was built certain places in the Fort were shut and bolted. The tailor, Prosdocimo, had to get rid of three assistants because he had not sufficient work left. Every now and then one might walk into rooms or offices which were completely empty, with white patches on the walls to show where furniture and pictures had been removed.

  The little black speck moving about on the very limits of the plain continued to be regarded as a joke. There were not many people who allowed Simeoni to lend them the telescope so that they could see it and those few said they had seen nothing. Simeoni himself, since no one took him seriously, avoided speaking about his discovery and took care to laugh about it himself and not take offence.

  Then one evening Simeoni came to Drogo’s room and called him. Night had already fallen and the guard had been changed. The forlorn hope had returned from the New Redoubt and the Fort was preparing for the night watch – another night uselessly wasted.

  ‘Come and see this – you don’t believe it – but come and see this,’ said Simeoni. ‘Either I am having hallucinations or I can see a light.’

  They went to see what it was. They climbed to the top of the fourth redoubt. Drogo’s companion handed him the telescope in the darkness and invited him to look.

  ‘But it’s dark,’ said Giovanni, ‘I can’t see anything in the dark.’

  ‘Look I tell you,’ Simeoni insisted, ‘I told you I hope it isn’t a hallucination. Look where I pointed to last time and tell me if you see anything.’

  Drogo raised the telescope to his right eye and pointed it towards the extreme north; in the darkness he saw a small light which appeared to gleam at the edge of the mists.

  ‘A light,’ exclaimed Drogo. ‘I see a small light – wait’ (and he went on adjusting the telescope), ‘I can’t make out whether there is more than one – sometimes there seem to be two of them.’

  ‘You see?’ said Simeoni triumphantly. ‘So I’m a fool, am I?’

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’ retorted Drogo without much conviction. ‘If there is a light what does it mean? It could be a gipsy encampment – or shepherds.’

  ‘It’s the light of the store shed,’ said Simeoni, ‘the store shed for the new road, you’ll see that I’m right.’

  Strangely enough the light could not be distinguished with the naked eye. Not even the sentries – and there were some wonderful ones among them, great hunters – could see anything.

  Drogo levelled the telescope again, sought the distant light, stayed watching it for some moments then raised the instrument and began idly to observe the stars. Endless in number they filled every part of the sky, a sight of rare beauty. But in the east they were much more thinly scattered, for the moon was about to rise and a diffused light preceded it.

  ‘Simeoni,’ cried Drogo, for he could no longer see his companion at his side. But the other did not reply – he must have gone down by a narrow stair
to inspect the ramparts.

  Drogo looked about him. In the darkness he could see only the empty sentry-walk, the profile of the fortifications, the dark shadow of the mountains. The clock struck once or twice. At this moment the sentry on the extreme right should have given his nocturnal cry and the sound would have run along the ramparts from soldier to soldier. ‘Stand to, stand to.’ Then the call would have turned back on itself, would have died away at the foot of the great cliffs. Now that the sentry posts were halved in number, thought Drogo, the call, being repeated less often, would have made the whole journey much more quickly. Instead the silence remained unbroken.

  Then suddenly there came to Drogo’s mind thoughts of a distant desirable world: of a villa, for example, by the seashore on a soft summer night with charming and beautiful women sitting by his side while he listened to music – images of happiness which youth allowed one to dwell upon with impunity; and meantime in the east the distant rim of the sea would grow black and gleaming and the sky pale with the approaching dawn. To be able to squander the nights thus and not take refuge in sleep, to have no fear of being left behind, to let the sun rise and savour the thought of an infinity of time before one, the thought that there was no need to be miserly with it. Among all the wonderful things of this world Giovanni Drogo persisted in desiring this improbable mansion by the sea, the music, the careless squandering of time, the waiting for the dawn. However stupid it might appear, to him it seemed to express more intensely than anything else the peace he had lost. Because for some time a nagging anxiety which he could not comprehend, had been ceaselessly pursuing him, the feeling, namely, that he was being left behind, that something important would happen and take him unawares.

  His talk with the general down in the city had left him with few hopes of a transfer and a brilliant career, but Giovanni knew he could not stay within the walls of the Fort all his life. Sooner or later he would have to make up his mind. Then the old habits caught him up again with the old rhythm and Drogo no longer thought of the others, of the comrades who had escaped in time, of his old friends grown rich and famous; he consoled himself with the sight of the officers who shared his exile; it never occurred to him that they might be the weak ones, the ones who had been beaten, the last people to take as an example.