by Dino Buzzati
Chapter Twenty-Four
Meanwhile time was slipping past, beating life out silently and with ever increasing speed; there is no time to halt even for a second, not even for a glance behind. ‘Stop, stop,’ one feels like crying, but then one sees it is useless. Everything goes by – men, the seasons, the clouds, and there is no use clinging to the stones, no use fighting it out on some rock in midstream; the tired fingers open, the arms fall back inertly and you are still dragged into the river, the river which seems to flow so slowly yet never stops.
From day to day Drogo felt the mysterious flood grow stronger and sought in vain to hold it back. He had no points of reference in the unvarying life of the Fort and the hours slipped away from him before he could count them.
Then there was the secret hope whereby Drogo looked forward to what should be the best part of his life. In order to nurse it he sacrificed month upon month without a thought; yet that was still not enough. The winter, the long winter at the Fort, was only a sort of mortgage on his hopes. The winter ended and Drogo still waited.
When the good weather came, he thought, the Northerners would resume work on the road. But there was no longer Simeoni’s telescope for him to see them with. Yet as the work went on – but who knew how long that would yet take? – the Northerners would be drawing nearer and one fine day would come within range of the old telescopes which were still issued to some of the guards.
So Drogo had not fixed the term of his waiting in the spring but some months later, always assuming that a road was indeed being built. And all such thoughts he had to brood over in secret, for Simeoni, being afraid of unpleasantnesses, wanted to hear no more of them; his other comrades would have made a joke of it and his superiors frowned on such fantasies.
At the beginning of May, however much he scanned the plain with the best of the regulation telescopes, Giovanni did not succeed in discovering any sign of human activity, not even the light in the dark, and yet how easily fires can be seen even at immense distances.
Little by little his hopes grew fainter. It is difficult to believe in a thing when one is alone and there is no one to speak to. It was at this period that Drogo realised how far apart men are whatever their affection for each other, that if you suffer the pain is yours and yours alone, no one else can take upon himself the least part of it; that if you suffer it does not mean that others feel pain even though their love is great: hence the loneliness of life.
Hope began to wane and impatience grew in Drogo as he heard the strokes of the clock crowd upon each other. He had already reached the point where he let whole days go past without even glancing to the north, although sometimes he liked to pretend to himself that he had forgotten, whereas in reality he did it on purpose so that next time his chances might be a shade better.
At last one evening – but what a long time it had been – a little trembling light appeared in the lens of the telescope, a weak light which seemed to flicker on the point of death but which must be, if you worked out the distance, of a respectable size.
It was the night of the seventh of July. For years Drogo remembered the marvellous joy which flooded his heart and his desire to run and shout so that everyone might know of it and the pride with which he struggled to tell no one because of a superstitious fear that the light might die.
Every evening Drogo stood and waited on the top of the walls, every evening the light appeared to come a little nearer and grow bigger. Often it must have been an illusion born of his longing but at other times there was a real advance, until at last a sentry descried it with his naked eye.
Then even by day they began to see against the whitish background of the desert a movement of little black specks, just as the year before, only now the telescope was less powerful and so the Northerners must have drawn much nearer.
In September the light of what they took to be the workshop was picked out on clear nights even by people with average sight. Little by little among the garrison the talk began once more of the northern steppe, of the foreign troops, of the strange movements and the lights by night. Many of them said that it really was a road although they could not say what it was for – the theory that it was a military undertaking seemed absurd. Besides the work seemed to proceed with extraordinary slowness compared with the huge distance still to be covered.
Yet one evening there was vague talk of war and strange hopes began once more to eddy to and fro within the walls of the Fort.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Little more than half a mile from the Fort a stake has been planted on the crest of the escarpment which runs across the northern steppe. From there the desert stretches to the rocky cone of the New Redoubt, even and compact enough for the artillery to advance freely. A stake has been thrust into the summit of the feature – a strange sign of human activity – easily visible with the naked eye from the summit of the New Redoubt.
That is the point the Northerners have reached with their road. The great work is finished at last, but at what a terrible price. Lieutenant Simeoni had made a forecast, had said six months. But six months had not been enough for the building of it, not six months nor yet eight nor ten. Now the road is finished and the enemy convoys can descend from the north at the gallop and so reach the walls of the Fort; after that there is only the last stretch to cross, a few hundreds of yards of smooth and easy going, but it has all cost them dearly. Fifteen years it took – fifteen long, long years, and yet they have passed like a dream.
A glance around one and nothing seems changed. The mountains are unchanged; on the walls in the Fort the same stains are to be seen – there will be a few new ones but not of any size. The sky is the same, the same the Tartar steppe (if one disregards that dark stake on the edge of the escarpment and a long straight strip which one can or cannot see according to the light – and that is the famous road).
Fifteen years have meant less than nothing to the mountains and have not even done much harm to the bastions of the Fort. But for the men it has been a long road although they do not quite understand how it passed so quickly. The faces are still the same – more or less; the customs have not changed nor the guard duties nor the things the officers talk about every evening.
And yet if one looks closely the marks of the years can be seen in their faces. And then the garrison has been still further reduced in numbers – long stretches of wall are no longer occupied and one can come up to them without any password. The groups of sentries are distributed only among the essential points; it has even been decided to close down the New Redoubt and only to send a picket there every ten days on a tour of inspection. So small is the importance the High Command now attaches to Fort Bastiani.
Indeed the construction of the road on the northern plain has not been taken seriously by the General Staff. Some people say that it is one of the usual eccentricities of military headquarters; others say that in the capital they must be better informed, obviously the evidence goes to show that the road serves no aggressive aims. Besides there is no other explanation to hand even if it is not very convincing.
Life at the Fort has become more monotonous and solitary; Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolosi, Major Monti, Lieutenant-Colonel Matti have retired on pension. The garrison is now commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Ortiz and all the others, too, except the regimental tailor, Prosdocimo, who has remained a sergeant-major, have risen in rank.
One wonderful morning – it is September once more – Drogo, Captain Giovanni Drogo, is riding up the steep road which leads from the plain to Fort Bastiani. He has had a month’s leave, but he is coming back after twenty days; the city has by now become completely foreign to him – his old friends have made careers for themselves, occupy important positions and greet him hastily as if he were an officer like any other. Even his house, which Drogo still loves, fills him with an indefinable pain each time he returns to it. The house is almost always deserted, his mother’s room is empty for ever, his brothers are constantly away from home; one has married and live
s in another city, another still travels; there are no more signs of family life in the living rooms, voices re-echo absurdly and it is not enough to open the windows and let in the sun.
So once more Drogo is climbing up the valley to the Fort and he has fifteen years fewer to live. Yet he does not feel that he has changed particularly; time has slipped by so quickly that his heart has not had a chance to grow old. And although the mysterious tumult of the passing hours grows with each day, Drogo perseveres in his illusion that the really important things of life are still before him. Giovanni patiently awaits his hour, the hour which has never come; he does not see that the future has grown terribly short, that it is no longer like in the days when time to come could seem an immense period, an inexhaustible fund of riches to be squandered without risk.
And yet one day he noticed that he no longer went riding on the level ground behind the Fort. In fact he noticed that he had no desire to do so and that in recent months – but since when exactly? – he no longer ran up the stairs two at a time. This is silly, he thought; physically he felt himself unchanged, everything was going to make a fresh start, of that there was not the least doubt. It was quite unnecessary and ridiculous to require proof of it.
No, physically Drogo has not deteriorated. If he started riding again and running up the stairs two at a time he could easily do it – but that is not what is important. The serious thing is that he no longer feels any desire to do so, that after lunch he prefers to stay dozing in the sun rather than gallop about on the stony plateau. That is what matters, that is the only sign of the passage of the years.
If only he had thought of it the first evening he took the stairs one at a time. He felt a little tired, it is true; there seemed to be an iron band round his head, and he had no desire for the usual game of cards; besides, on previous occasions, too, he had refrained from running up the stairs because of some passing ailment. He had not the slightest suspicion that that evening was a very sad occasion for him, that on these very stairs, at that very moment, his youth was ending, that the next day, for no particular reason, he would not go back to the old ways nor the day after, nor yet later on. Never.
And now as Drogo rides up in the sunlight and meditates, and the horse, already a little tired, goes at a walk, a voice calls him from the other side of the valley.
‘Captain,’ he hears it call and turning round sees on the other side of the gorge a young officer on horseback. He did not recognise him but he seemed to make out the badges of rank of a lieutenant and thought it must be another officer from the Fort returning like himself from leave.
‘What is it?’ asked Giovanni, and stopped; but first, as regulations required, he returned the other’s salute. What reason could that lieutenant have for calling him in this somewhat easygoing manner.
The other did not reply, and ‘What is it?’ Drogo repeated more loudly; this time with a trace of annoyance.
Upright in his saddle the unknown lieutenant put his hands to his mouth, and replied with the full force of his lungs:
‘Nothing, I wanted to say “Good day” to you.’
To Giovanni it seemed a stupid explanation, almost offensive and savouring of a joke. Half an hour’s ride to the bridge and then the two roads met. So what need was there for this unmilitary display of spirits?
‘Who are you?’ Drogo called back.
‘Lieutenant Moro,’ was the reply, or rather such was the name the captain seemed to hear. Lieutenant Moro? he asked himself. There was no one at the Fort with a name like that. Was it perhaps a new subaltern coming to take up his duties?
It was only then that it struck him, awakening sorrowful chords in his heart – the memory of that far distant day when he had climbed up to the Fort for the first time, of his meeting with Captain Ortiz at the very same point in the valley, of his urge to speak with some friendly person, of the embarrassing dialogue across the ravine.
Exactly as on that day, he thought – with this difference, that the roles were changed and now it was he, Drogo, the old captain who rode up to Fort Bastiani for the hundredth time while the new lieutenant was a certain Moro, someone he did not know. Then Drogo realised that in the meantime an entire generation had been used up, that he had now passed the peak of life, belonged with the old men, where it had seemed to him Ortiz belonged on that distant day. And Giovanni – past forty, having done nothing remarkable, with no children, really alone in the world – Giovanni looked around in dismay and felt that his destiny was running out.
He saw boulders encrusted with bushes, wet water-courses, distant naked crests piled one above the other in the sky, the impassible face of the mountains – and on the other side of the valley that new lieutenant, timid and far from home, who deluded himself that he would of course not stay at the Fort more than a few months and dreamt of a brilliant career, glorious feats of arms, romantic loves.
He clapped his horse’s neck with one hand and the animal turned its head in a friendly way, but could not naturally understand him. A noose tightened round Drogo’s heart – farewell to the dreams of those far off days, farewell the good things of life. Bright and friendly the sun shone upon mankind, an invigorating breeze came down the valley, the meadows gave off a sweet smell, the voices of the birds accompanied the music of the torrent. A day for happiness, thought Drogo, and was amazed that there was no apparent difference from certain wonderful mornings in his youth. The horse set off again. Half an hour later Drogo saw the bridge where the roads met, thought that soon he would have to begin to speak to the new lieutenant and the thought hurt him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Why, now that the road was finished, had the Northerners disappeared? Why had men, horses and wagons gone back across the great plain, back into the mists of the north? Was all that work for nothing?
Yet the squads of pioneers were seen going off one by one until once more they became tiny specks visible only through the telescope as they had been fifteen years before. The way lay open for the fighting men, should the army now advance to the assault on Fort Bastiani.
But there was no sign of the advancing army. There remained only the stretch of road running across the Tartar steppe – a strange man-made mark in the ancient wilderness. The army did not come on to the assault; everything seemed left in suspense; but who knew for how long?
Thus the plain remained unaltered, the northern mists did not shift and the life of the Fort stayed as before with all its regulations; the sentries still went on pacing out the same number of steps from one point to another of the sentry-walk, the men’s soup was the same, one day identical with another, repeating the same thing over and over again like a soldier marking time. And yet the winds of time were blowing; heedless of mankind they blew to and fro in the world preying upon beauty; and no one could escape them, not even children so newly born as to be still unnamed.
Giovanni’s face, too, began to be covered with wrinkles, his hair became grey, his step heavier; the torrent of life had now thrown him to one side, towards the swirling backwaters, although he was after all only fifty. Naturally Drogo no longer did guard duty, but he had an office in headquarters company next to Lieutenant-Colonel Ortiz.
When darkness fell the scant number of men on guard no longer sufficed to prevent the night from becoming master of the Fort. Huge stretches of wall were unwatched and there the thoughts that come with the dark, the sad thoughts of lonely men, made their breach. For the old Fort was like a lonely island surrounded by uninhabited wastes – to right and left were the mountains, to the south the long uninhabited valley and in the opposite direction the Tartar steppe. Strange noises, noises never heard before, re-echoed at dead of night through the labyrinths of the Fort and the sentries’ hearts began to beat. The cry of ‘Stand to!’ still ran from one end of the walls to the other, but the soldiers had to make a great effort to pass it on, so far apart were they.
About this time Drogo was a spectator of Lieutenant Moro’s first troubles – it was like a faithful repro
duction of his own youth. Moro, too, had at first been terrified, had gone to Major Simeoni (who, as it were, took Matti’s place), had been persuaded to stay for four months and had finally remained caught like a limed bird. Moro, too, had begun to look too fixedly towards the north and the new unused road along which his soldier’s hopes came marching on. Drogo would have liked to speak to him, to tell him to be on his guard, to go away while there was still time; all the more so since Moro was a nice, conscientious boy. But something stupid always intervened and prevented them from talking and it would in any case probably have been pointless.
One after another the pages turned – the grey pages of the days, the black pages of the nights, and both Drogo and Ortiz (and perhaps some of the other senior officers) felt a growing anxiety that they might no longer have enough time left. Insensible to the wasting power of the years the Northerners made no move, as if they were immortal and it meant nothing to them if they gambled away whole seasons. But the Fort contained poor mortal men, with no defence against the work of time and their final term was upon them. Points in time which had once seemed unreal, so distant were they, now suddenly appeared on the nearby horizon and brought to mind how ruthlessly time strikes its balances. Each time, if one were to go on, one had to work out a new system, find new terms of reference, console oneself with the thought of others still worse off.
At last even Ortiz had to retire on pension and on the northern steppe there was not the least sign of life, not yet the tiniest light. Lieutenant-Colonel Ortiz handed over to Simeoni, the new commandant, paraded the troops in the courtyard – except of course the detachments on guard duties – got through a speech with difficulty, mounted on to his own horse with the help of his batman and rode out of the gate of the Fort. A lieutenant and two soldiers were his escort.