"The Tartar Steppe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dino Buzzati)

"Me?" said the old man. "I am his brother, I work here with him."
"His brother? His elder brother?"
"That's right," and the old man smiled, "his elder brother. I was a soldier too, once—then. I broke a leg and now I'm reduced to this."
Then in the subterranean silence Drogo felt the throb of his own heart; it had begun to beat strongly. So even this old man hidden away in his lair in the cellar casting accounts—even this obscure and humble being looked forward to a heroic fate? Giovanni looked him in the eyes and the other shook his head a little with a mixture of sadness and bitterness, as if to indicate that there was indeed no remedy : "That is how we are made," he seemed to say, "and we shall never get better."
Perhaps because a door had been opened somewhere on the stairs one could now hear, filtering through the
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walls, distant voices coming from some indeterminable source. Every now and again they stopped and there was a break ; soon they started again, coming and going like the slow breathing of the Fort.
At last Drogo had understood. He gazed at the multiple shadows of the uniforms hanging there—shadows which trembled with the flicker of the lights and thought that at that precise moment, the colonel in the secrecy of his study had opened the north window. It was quite certain—at a moment like this, so sad with darkness and autumn, the commandant of the Fort looked north, towards the black gulfs of the valley.
It was from the northern steppe that their fortune would come, their adventure, the miraculous hour which once at least falls to each man's lot. Because of this remote possibility which seemed to become more and more uncertain as time went on, grown men lived out their lives pointlessly here in the Fort.
They had not come to terms with ordinary life, with the joys of common people, with a mediocre destiny ; they lived side by side, with the same hopes, never speaking of them because they were not aware of them or simply because they were soldiers who kept to themselves the intimacies of their hearts.
Perhaps Tronk.too—probably so. Tronk followed the clauses of the regulations, the mathematical discipline, knew the pride of painstaking responsibility and deluded himself that that sufficed. Yet if they had said to him : "It will be like this all your life, always the same to the very end," even he would have woken up. Impossible, he would say. Something different must come along, something truly worthy of him, so that he could, say : Now it is over and I have done what I could.
Drogo had understood their simple secret and thought with relief that he was an outsider, an uncontaminated spectator. In four months' time, thank God, he would leave them for ever. The obscure attractions
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of the old fortress had vanished ridiculously. So he thought. But why did the old man keep on looking at him with that ambiguous expression? Why did Drogo feel a desire to whistle softly, to drink some wine, to go into the open air? Was it perhaps to prove to himself that he was really free, really calm?
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IT is dead of night and Drogo's new friends, Lieutenant Carlo Morel, Pietro Angustina, Francesco
Grotta and Max Lagorio are sitting with him in the mess. There remain only an orderly leaning against the lintel of a distant door and, the portraits of former colonels, deep in shadow, lining the walls. Eight bottles stand out darkly against the tablecloth among the disorderly remains of the dinner.
They are all somewhat excited—partly by the wine, partly by the night, and when their voices fall silent one can hear the rain outside.
The dinner is in honour of Count Max Lagorio who is leaving next day after two years in the Fort.
"Angustina," said Lagorio, "if you come too, I'll wait for you." He said it in his usual joking way but they knew it was true.
Angustina, too, had completed his two years' duty but he did not want to leave. Angustina was pale and sat with his usual air of detachment as if he were quite uninterested in them and were there by pure chance.
"Angustina," repeated Lagorio, almost shouting and on the verge of intoxication, "if you come too wait for you—I'm willing to wait three days."
Lieutenant Angustina did not reply but gave a faint long-suffering smile. His blue sun-bleached uniform stood out among the others with a certain faded elegance.
Lagorio turned to the others—to Morel, to Grotta, to Drogo.
"You tell him, too," and he laid his right hand on Angustina's shoulder. " It would do him good to come to town."

"It would do me good?" asked Angustina, as if his curiosity were aroused.
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These were Lagorio's words and outside they heard the rain falling in the courtyard. Angustina smoothed his moustache with two fingers—he was obviously bored.
"Don't you ever think," Lagorio went on, "of your mother, of your people. Imagine if your mother . . ."
"My mother will get used to it," answered Angustina with an undertone of bitterness.
Lagorio noticed it and changed the subject.
"Listen, Angustina, think of it—the day after tomorrow you turn up at Claudina's. `I haven't seen you for two years' she'll say."
"Claudina," said Angustina reluctantly. "Who's she? I don't remember."
"Of course you don't remember. It's impossible to talk to you about anything—that's a fact. There's no mystery about it, is there? People saw you together every day."
"Ah," said Angustina out of politeness, "now I remember. Yes, Claudina—do you know she won't even remember that I exist."
"Get away with you, we know they all go mad about you, don't try to be modest now," exclaimed Grotta and Angustina gazed at him without moving an eyelid, obviously struck by such bluntness.
They fell silent. Outside the sentries paced to and fro in the autumn rain. The water hissed on the terraces, gurgled in the gutters and streamed down the walls. Outside the night lay deep ; Angustina had a slight fit of coughing. It seemed strange that a sound so disagreeable should proceed from such a refined young man. But he coughed with due restraint, lowering his head
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each time as if to indicate that he could not help it-- that it was really something he had nothing to do with but which he must endure. So he transformed the cough into a kind of wilful habit for others to imitate.
Yet a painful silence had fallen ; Drogo felt he must break it.
"Tell me, Lagorio," he asked, "when do you leave tomorrow?"
"About ten, I think. I wanted to leave earlier but I have to say goodbye to the colonel."
"The colonel gets up at five, summer and winter, so he won't waste your time."
Lagorio laughed.
"But I don't get up at five. On my last morning at least I want to take it easy. No one is going to rush me."
"So you will get there the day after tomorrow," Morel observed enviously.
"It doesn't seem possible to me, I can assure you," said Lagorio.
"What doesn't seem possible?"
"To be in the city in two days' time," he paused, "and for always, too."
Angustina had become pale ; he no longer smoothed his moustache but gazed into the shadow before him. The room was heavy with the thoughts which come by night, when fears emerge from the crumbling walls and unhappiness is sweet to savour, and over humanity, as it lies sleeping, the soul proudly beats its wings. The glassy eyes of the colonels looking out of the great portraits foretold heroic deeds. And outside it still rained.