Читать книгу The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Darkness overtook him on the way. The valley had narrowed and the Fort had disappeared behind the overhanging mountains. There were no lights, not even the voices of night birds – only from time to time the noise of distant water.

He tried to call, but the echoes threw back his voice with a hostile note. He tied his horse to a tree trunk on the roadside where it might find some grass. Here he sat down, his back to the bank, waiting for sleep to come, and thought meanwhile of the journey ahead, of the people he would find at the Fort, of his future life; but he could see no cause for joy. From time to time the horse pawed the ground with its hooves in a strange, disturbing manner.

When at dawn he set off again he noticed that on the other side of the valley, at the same height, there was another road, and shortly after made out something moving on it. The sun had not yet reached so far down and the shadows lay heavily in the angles of the road, making it difficult to see clearly. But by quickening his pace Drogo contrived to draw abreast and saw that it was a man – an officer on horseback.

A man like himself at last – a friendly being with whom he could laugh and joke, talk of the life they were going to share, of hunting expeditions, of women, of the city; of the city which to Drogo now seemed to have become part of a distant world.

Meanwhile the valley grew narrower and the two roads drew closer, so that Giovanni Drogo saw that the other was a captain. At first he did not dare to shout – it would have seemed silly and disrespectful. Instead he saluted several times, raising his right hand to his cap, but the other did not respond. Evidently he had not noticed Drogo.

‘Captain,’ Giovanni cried at last, overcome by impatience, and he saluted again.

‘What is it?’ a voice replied from the other side. The captain had halted and saluted correctly and now asked Drogo to explain his cry. There was no severity in the question, but it was evident that the officer was surprised.

‘What is it?’ the captain’s voice echoed again, this time slightly irritated.

Giovanni stopped, used his hands as a megaphone and replied with all his breath:

‘Nothing, I wanted to say “Good day” to you.’

It was a stupid explanation – almost an offensive one, because it might be taken for a joke. Drogo repented of it at once. He had got himself into a ridiculous situation simply because he was bored with himself.

‘Who are you?’ the captain shouted back.

It was the question Drogo had feared. This strange conversation across the valley was beginning to sound like an official interrogation. It was an unpleasant beginning, since it was probable, if not certain, that the captain was from the Fort. However, he had to reply.

‘Lieutenant Drogo,’ Giovanni shouted, introducing himself.

The captain did not know him – in all probability could not catch the name at that distance; however, he seemed to become less ruffled, for he moved forward again making an affirmative gesture as if to say that they would meet shortly. In fact, half an hour later a bridge appeared at a point where the ravine narrowed. The two roads became one.

At the bridge the two men met. The captain, without dismounting, came up to Drogo and held out his hand. He was a man getting on for forty or perhaps older with a thin, aristocratic face. His uniform was clumsily cut but perfectly correct. He introduced himself: ‘Captain Ortiz.’

As he shook his hand it seemed to Drogo that he was at last entering the world of the Fort. This was the first link, to be followed by all sorts of others which would shut him in.

Without more ado the captain set off again and Drogo followed at his side, keeping a little behind out of respect for his rank and awaiting some unpleasant reference to the embarrassing conversation of a few minutes before. Instead the captain kept silence – perhaps he did not want to speak, perhaps he was shy and did not know how to begin. Since the road was steep and the sun hot, the two horses walked on slowly.

At last Captain Ortiz said: ‘I didn’t catch your name at that distance a little while ago. Droso, wasn’t it?’

‘Drogo, with a “g”’ Giovanni answered, ‘Giovanni Drogo. But really, sir, you must excuse me if I shouted back there. You see,’ he added with confusion, ‘I didn’t see your rank across the valley.’

‘No, you couldn’t see,’ Ortiz admitted, not bothering to contradict him, and he laughed.

They rode on thus a while, both a little embarrassed. Then Ortiz said: ‘And where are you bound for like this?’

‘For Fort Bastiani. Isn’t this the road?’

‘Yes, it is.’

They fell silent. It was hot; on all sides there were still mountains, huge wild grass-covered mountains.

‘So you are coming to the Fort?’ said Ortiz. ‘Is it with a dispatch?’

‘No, sir, I am going on duty. I have been posted there.’

‘Posted to the strength?’

‘I believe so, to the strength, my first posting.’

‘I see, to the strength, quite right. Good, good. May I congratulate you?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

They fell silent again and rode on a little further. Giovanni had a tremendous thirst; there was a wooden water-bottle hanging by the captain’s saddle and you could hear the glug-glug of the water in it.

‘For two years?’ asked Ortiz.

‘I beg your pardon, sir – did you say for two years?’

‘Yes, for two years – you will be doing the usual two years’ tour of duty, won’t you?’

‘Two years? I don’t know. They didn’t tell me for how long.’

‘But of course it’s two years – all you newly commissioned lieutenants do two years, then you leave.’

‘Two years is the usual for everyone?’

‘Of course it’s two years – for seniority they count as four. That’s the important thing. Otherwise no one would apply for the post. Well, if it means a quick rise I suppose you can get used to the Fort, what d’you say?’

Drogo had never heard of this, but, not wishing to cut a stupid figure, he tried a vague phrase:

‘Of course, a lot of them …’

Ortiz did not press the point; apparently the topic did not interest him. But now that the ice was broken, Giovanni hazarded a question:

‘So at the Fort everyone has double seniority?’

‘Who is everyone?’

‘I mean the other officers.’

Ortiz chuckled.

‘The whole lot of them! That’s good. Only the subalterns, of course, otherwise who would ask to be posted to it?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Drogo.

‘You didn’t?’

‘No, sir, I learned only two days ago that I had been posted to the Fort.’

‘Well, that’s certainly odd.’

Once more they were silent, each apparently thinking different thoughts.

‘Of course,’ said Ortiz, ‘it might mean …’

Giovanni shook himself.

‘You were saying, sir?’

‘I was saying – it might mean that no one else asked for the posting and so they assigned you officially.’

‘Perhaps that’s it, sir.’

‘Yes, that must be it, right enough.’

Drogo watched the clear-cut shadow of the two horses on the dust of the road, their heads nodding at every step; he heard only the fourfold beat of their hooves, the hum of a fly. The end of the road was still not in sight. Every now and again when the valley curved one could see the road ahead, very high up, cut into precipitous hillsides, climbing in zigzags. They would reach that spot, look up and there the road was still in front of them, still climbing higher.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ asked Drogo.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Is it still far?’

‘Not very – about two and a half hours, perhaps three at this pace. Perhaps we will be there by midday.’

They were silent for a while; the horses were in a lather – the captain’s was tired and dragged its hooves.

‘You are from the Royal Military Academy, I suppose?’ said Ortiz.

‘Yes, sir, from the Academy.’

‘I see – and tell me, is Colonel Magnus still there?’

‘Colonel Magnus? I don’t think so. I don’t know him.’

The valley was narrowing now, shutting out the sunlight from the pass. Every now and again dark ravines opened off it and down them there came icy winds; at the head of the ravines one caught sight of steep, steep peaks. So high did they seem, that you would have said two or three days were not time enough to reach the summit.

‘And tell me,’ said Ortiz, ‘is Major Bosco still there? Does he still run the musketry course?’

‘No, sir, I don’t think so. There’s Zimmermann – Major Zimmermann.’

‘Yes, Zimmermann, that’s right, I’ve heard his name. The point is that it is a good many years since my time. They will all be different now.’

Both now had their own thoughts. The road had come out into the sun again, mountain followed mountain, even steeper now with rock faces here and there.

‘I saw it in the distance yesterday evening,’ said Drogo.

‘What – the Fort?’

‘Yes, the Fort.’ He paused, then added to show that he knew how to behave: ‘It must be very large, isn’t it? It seemed immense to me.’

‘The Fort – very large? No, no, it is one of the smallest – a very old building. It is only from the distance that it looks a little impressive.’

He was silent for a moment, then added:

‘Very, very old and completely out of date.’

‘But isn’t it one of the principal ones?’

‘No, no, it’s a second class fort,’ Ortiz replied. He seemed to enjoy belittling it but with a special tone of voice – in the same way as one amuses oneself by remarking on the defects of a son, certain that they will always seem trifling when set against his unlimited virtues.

‘It is a dead stretch of frontier,’ Ortiz added, ‘and so they never changed it. It has always remained as it was a century ago.’

‘What do you mean – a dead frontier?’

‘A frontier which gives no worry. Beyond there is a great desert.’

‘A desert?’

‘That’s right – a desert. Stones and parched earth – they call it the Tartar steppe.’

‘Why Tartar?’ asked Drogo. ‘Were there ever Tartars there?’

‘Long, long ago, I believe. But it is a legend more than anything else. No one can have come across it – not even in the last wars.’

‘So the Fort has never been any use?’

‘None at all,’ said the captain.

As the road rose more and more the trees came to an end; only a scattered bush remained here and there. For the rest – parched grass, rocks, falls of red earth.

‘Excuse me, sir, are there any villages near at hand?’

‘No, not near. There’s San Rocco, but it will be twenty miles away.’

‘So I don’t suppose there’s much in the way of amusement?’

‘Not much, that’s right, not much.’

The air had become cooler, the flanks of the mountains were becoming more rounded, announcing the final crests.

‘And don’t people get bored, sir?’ asked Giovanni more intimately, laughing at the same time, as if to say that it would be all the same to him.

‘You get used to it,’ answered Ortiz and added with an implied rebuke: ‘I have been there for almost eighteen years. No, that’s wrong, I’ve completed my eighteenth.’

‘Eighteen years?’ said Giovanni greatly impressed.

‘Eighteen,’ answered the captain.

A flight of ravens passed, skimming the two officers, and plunging into the funnel of the valley.

‘Ravens,’ said the captain.

Giovanni did not reply – he was thinking of the life that awaited him; he felt that he was no part of that world, of that solitude, of those mountains.

‘But,’ he asked, ‘do any of the officers stay on who go there on their first posting?’

‘Not many now,’ answered Ortiz, half sorry at having decried the Fort and noticing that the other was now going too far, ‘in fact almost no one. Now they all want to go to a crack garrison. Once it was an honour, Fort Bastiani, now it almost seems to be a punishment.’

Giovanni said nothing but the other went on:

‘All the same, it is a frontier garrison. Speaking by and large there are some first class fellows there. A frontier post is still a frontier post after all.’

Drogo kept silent; he felt a sudden oppression. The horizon had widened; in the extreme distance appeared the strange silhouettes of rocky mountains, sharp peaks rising in confusion into the sky.

‘Even in the army things are looked at differently these days,’ Ortiz went on. ‘Once upon a time Fort Bastiani was a great honour. Now they say the frontier is dead – they forget that the frontier is always the frontier and one never knows.’

A little stream crossed the road. They stopped to water their horses and, having dismounted, walked up and down a little to stretch themselves.

‘Do you know what is really first rate?’ said Ortiz and laughed heartily.

‘What, sir?’

‘The messing – you’ll see how we eat at the Fort. And that explains the number of inspections. A general every fortnight.’

Drogo laughed out of politeness. He could not make out whether Ortiz was a fool, whether he was hiding something or whether he simply talked like that without meaning it.

‘Excellent,’ said Giovanni, ‘I’m hungry!’

‘We’re nearly there now. Do you see that hillock with the patch of gravel? Well, it is just behind it.’

They set off again; just beyond the hillock with the patch of gravel the two officers emerged on to the edge of a slightly sloping plateau and the Fort appeared a few hundred yards away.

It did indeed seem small compared with the vision of the previous evening. From the central fort, which was like nothing so much as a barrack with a few windows, two low turreted walls ran out to connect it with the lateral redoubts, two on each side. Thus the walls formed a weak barrier across the whole width of the gap – some five hundred yards – which was shut in on the flanks by high precipitous cliffs.

To the right, at the very foot of the mountain, the plateau fell away into a sort of saddle; there the old road ran through the pass and came to an end against the ramparts.

The Fort was silent, sunk in the full noonday sun, shadow-less. Its walls – the front could not be seen since it faced north – stretched out yellow and bare. A chimney gave out pale smoke. All along the ramparts of the central building, of the curtain walls and of the redoubts, dozens of sentries could be seen, with rifles at the slope, walking up and down methodically, each on his own little beat. Like the motion of a pendulum they marked off the passage of time without breaking the enchantment of the immense silence.

To right and left the mountains stretched out as far as the eye could see in precipitous and apparently inaccessible ranges. They too – at least at that time of day – had a parched, yellow colour.

Instinctively Giovanni Drogo stopped his horse. Looking slowly round, he fixed his gaze on the dark walls without being able to read their true meaning. He thought of a prison, he thought of an abandoned palace. A slight breath of wind made a flag, which before had hung limply entangled with the flagstaff, billow out over the Fort. There was the indistinct echo of a trumpet. The sentries walked slowly to and fro. On the square before the gate of the Fort three or four men – at that distance it was impossible to make out whether they were soldiers or not – were loading sacks on to a cart. But over everything there lay a mysterious torpor.

Captain Ortiz, too, had halted to look at the building.

‘There it is,’ he said, although there was no need to say so.

Drogo thought: now he is going to ask me what I think of it, and was embarrassed at the thought. But instead the captain said nothing.

It was not imposing, Fort Bastiani, with its low walls, nor was it in any sense beautiful, nor picturesque with towers and bastions – there was not one single thing to make up for its bareness, to bring to mind the sweets of life. Yet as on the previous evening at the foot of the defile Drogo looked at it as if hypnotised and an inexplicable feeling of excitement entered his heart.

And beyond it, on the other side, what was there? What world opened up beyond that inhospitable building, beyond the ramparts, casemates and magazines which shut off the view? What did the northern kingdom look like, the stony desert no one had ever crossed? The map, Drogo recalled vaguely, showed beyond the frontier a vast zone with scanty names – but from the eminence of the Fort one would see some village, pastures, a house; or was there only the desolation of an uninhabited waste?

He felt himself suddenly alone, and his soldier’s high spirits, which had come so easily till now – as long as the uneventful garrison life lasted, the comforts of home, the constant company of gay friends, at night the little adventures in the gardens – all his self-assurance were suddenly gone. The Fort seemed to him one of those unknown worlds to which he had never seriously thought he might belong – not that they seemed unpleasant, but rather because they appeared infinitely remote from his own life. A world which would make much greater demands of him, a world without splendour unless it were that of its rigid laws.

If only he could turn back, not even cross the threshold of the Fort but ride back down to the plain, to his own city, to his old habits. Such was Drogo’s first thought; and, however shameful such weakness in a soldier, he was ready to confess to it, if necessary, provided they let him go at once. But from the invisible north a thick cloud was rising over the glacis and imperturbably the sentries walked up and down under the high sun. Drogo’s horse whinnied. Then the great silence fell once more.

Giovanni at last looked away from the Fort and glanced to the side, at the captain, hoping for a friendly word. Ortiz too had remained quite still and was gazing intently at the yellow walls. He, too, who had lived there for eighteen years, looked at them as if bewitched, as if once more he witnessed a miracle. It seemed he could not tire of looking upon them once again, and a vague smile, half joyful, half sad, slowly lit his face.