Читать книгу The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati - Страница 7

Chapter One

One September morning, Giovanni Drogo, being newly commissioned, set out from the city for Fort Bastiani; it was his first posting.

He had himself called while it was still dark and for the first time put on his lieutenant’s uniform. When he had done, he looked at himself in the mirror by the light of an oil lamp but failed to find there the expected joy. There was a great silence in the house but from a neighbouring room low noises could be heard; his mother was rising to bid him farewell.

This was the day he had looked forward to for years – the beginning of his real life. He thought of the drab days at the Military Academy, remembered the bitter evenings spent at his books when he would hear people passing in the streets – people who were free and presumably happy, remembered winter reveilles in the icy barrack rooms heavy with the threat of punishment. He recalled the torture of counting one by one the days to which there seemed to be no end.

Now he was an officer at last and need no longer wear himself out over his books nor tremble at the voice of the sergeant; for all that was past. All those days which at the time had seemed so unpleasant were gone for ever – gone to form months and years which would never return. Yes, now he was an officer and would have money, pretty women would perhaps look at him, but then – or so it struck him – the best years, his first youth, were probably over. So Drogo gazed at the mirror and saw a forced smile on his face, the face he had sought in vain to love.

How stupid! Why could he not manage to smile in the proper carefree manner while he said goodbye to his mother? Why did he pay no attention to her last injunctions and succeed only in catching the tone of her voice, so familiar and so human? Why did he roam about the room nervously, inconclusively, unable to find his watch, his crop or his cap although they were in their proper places? It wasn’t as if he were going off to the wars. At this very moment scores of lieutenants like himself, his former companions, were leaving home amid gay laughter as if they were going to a fiesta. Why did he bring out for his mother nothing but vague, meaningless phrases instead of affectionate, soothing words? It was true that his heart was full with the bitterness of leaving the old house for the first time – the old house where he had been born and being born had learned to hope – full with the fears which every change brings with it, with emotion at saying goodbye to his mother; but on top of all this there came an insistent thought to which he could not quite give a name but which was like a vague foreboding as if he were about to set out on a journey of no return.

His friend Francesco Vescovi accompanied him on horseback on the first stage of his road. The horses’ hooves rang through the deserted streets. Dawn was breaking, the city was still sunk in sleep; here and there on a top floor a shutter opened, tired faces appeared and listless eyes looked for a moment on the miraculous birth of the sun.

The two friends did not talk. Drogo was wondering what Fort Bastiani would be like but could not imagine it. He did not even know exactly where it was, nor how far he had to go to reach it. Some people had said a day’s ride, others less; no one whom he had asked had ever really been there.

At the gates of the city Vescovi began to chat about the usual things as if Drogo were going for a ride in the country. Then suddenly he said:

‘Do you see that grassy hill? Yes, that one. Do you see a building on top of it?’ he went on. ‘That’s a bit of the Fort, an outwork. I passed it two years ago, I remember, with my uncle, when we were going hunting.’

They had left the city now. The fields of maize had begun, the pastures, the red autumnal woods. The pair rode on, side by side, along the white, sun-beaten road. Giovanni and Francesco were old friends, having lived together for years on end, with the same enthusiasms, the same friendships; they had seen each other every day, then Vescovi had got fat but Drogo had become an officer and now he saw how far apart they were. All that easy elegant life was his no longer; what lay in wait for him was serious and unknown. It seemed to him that his horse and Francesco’s had already a different gait, that the hoof-beats of his own were less light, less lively, with a suggestion of anxiety and fatigue, as if even the animal felt that life was going to change.

They had reached the brow of a hill. Drogo turned to see the city against the light; the morning smoke rose from the roofs. He picked out the window of his room. Probably it was open. The women were tidying up. They would unmake the bed, shut everything up in a cupboard and then bar the shutters. For months and months no one would enter except the patient dust and, on sunny days, thin streaks of light. There it was, shut up in the dark, the little world of his childhood. His mother would keep it like that so that on his return he could find himself again there, still be a boy within its walls even after his long absence – but of course she was wrong in thinking that she could keep intact a state of happiness which was gone for ever or hold back the flight of time, wrong in imagining that when her son came back and the doors and windows were reopened everything would be as before.

At this point his friend Vescovi took an affectionate farewell and Drogo went on alone, drawing nearer to the mountains. The sun stood overhead when he reached the mouth of the valley leading to the Fort. On the right he could see on a mountain top the redoubt Vescovi had pointed out. It couldn’t be very much further.

In his anxiety to come to the end of his journey Drogo did not stop to eat, but pushed his already tired horse on up the road, which was becoming steeper and was walled in between precipitous banks. Fewer and fewer people were to be met on the way. Giovanni asked a carter how long it took to reach the Fort.

‘The Fort?’ answered the man. ‘What fort?’

‘Fort Bastiani,’ said Drogo.

‘There aren’t any forts in these parts,’ said the carter. ‘I never heard speak of one.’

Evidently he was ill-informed. Drogo set off again and as the afternoon advanced became aware of a subtle uneasiness. He searched the topmost rims of the valley to discover the Fort. He imagined a sort of ancient castle with giddy ramparts. As the hours passed he became more and more convinced that Francesco had misinformed him; the redoubt he had pointed out must already be far behind. And evening was coming on.

Look how small they are – Giovanni Drogo and his horse – how small against the side of the mountains which are growing higher and wilder. He goes on climbing so as to reach the Fort before the end of the day, but the shadows rising from the depths where the torrent rushes are quicker than he is. At a certain moment they are level with Drogo on the opposite side of the ravine, seem to slacken pace for a minute as if not to discourage him, then glide up the hillside and over the boulders and the horseman is left behind.

All the valley was already brimful of violet shadows – only the bare grassy crests, incredibly high up, were lit by the sun when suddenly Drogo found himself in front of what seemed – it was black and gigantic against the intense purity of the evening sky – a military building with an ancient and deserted look. Giovanni felt his heart beat, for that must be the Fort; but everything, the ramparts, the very landscape, breathed an inhospitable and sinister air.

He circled it without finding the entrance. Although it was already dark there was no light in any window nor were there any watch-lights on the line of the ramparts. There was only a bat swinging to and fro against the white cloud. At last Drogo tried a shout.

‘Hallo,’ he cried, ‘is anyone there?’

Then a man rose from the shadows which had gathered at the foot of the walls, a poor beggar of some sort with a grey beard and a little bag in his hand. In the half-light it was difficult to make him out; only the white of his eyes glinted. Drogo looked at him with gratitude.

‘Who are you looking for, sir?’ the man asked.

‘I’m looking for the Fort. Is this it?’

‘There isn’t a fort here any more,’ said the stranger in a good-natured voice. ‘It’s all shut up, there hasn’t been anyone here for ten years.’

‘Where is the Fort then?’ asked Drogo, suddenly annoyed with the man.

‘What Fort? Is that it?’ And so saying the stranger stretched out his arm and pointed.

In a gap in the nearby crags (they were already deep in darkness), behind a disorderly range of crests and incredibly far off, Giovanni Drogo saw a bare hill which was still bathed in the red light of the sunset – a hill which seemed to have sprung from an enchanted land; on its crest there was a regular, geometric band of a peculiar yellowish colour – the silhouette of the Fort.

But how far off it was still! Hours and hours yet on the road and his horse was spent. Drogo gazed with fascination and wondered what attraction there could be in that solitary and almost inaccessible keep, so cut off from the world. What secrets did it hide? But time was running short. Already the last rays of the sun were slowly leaving the distant hill and up its yellow bastions swarmed the dark hordes of encroaching night.