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

He took pleasure in seeing personally to the smallest details of guard duties as if to show Tronk and the soldiers that the appearance of the horse, however strange and worrying, had not disturbed him in the least. This he felt to be very military.
The soldiers, to tell the truth, were not in the least afraid. They treated the horse as a great joke—they would have dearly liked to be able to catch it and take it back to the Fort as a trophy. One of them even asked the sergeant-major's permission, but the latter merely gave a reproving glance as if to say that it was not permissible to joke about service matters.
On the floor beneath, however, where the two can­non were installed, one of the gunners had become very excited at the sight of the horse. He was called Giuseppe Lazzari, a young fellow who had lately joined up. He said the horse was his—he recognised it per­fectly, he could not possibly be mistaken, They must have let it escape when the animals went out of the Fort to be watered.
"It's Fiocco, my horse," he kept on shouting as if it
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really were his own property and someone had robbed him of it.
Tronk who had come up from further down in the redoubt stopped his shouting at once and pointed out sharply that it was impossible for his horse to have run away—to get into the northern valley it would have had to jump the walls of the Fort or cross the mountains.
Lazzari replied that there was a way across—or so he had heard—an easy way across the rocks, an old unused road which no one remembered any more. And in fact this was one of the many legends at the Fort. But it could only be a complete invention, for of this secret way no trace had ever been found. To right and left of the Fort, for miles and miles, rose savage mountains which had never been crossed.
But the soldier would not be convinced and fretted at the idea of having to stay shut up in the redoubt without being able to recapture his horse—half an hour would have been enough to get there and back.
Meanwhile the hours passed, the sun continued its journey towards the west, the sentries relieved each other punctually, the steppe gleamed, more solitary than ever; the pony stood where it had stood before—usually without moving, as if it were asleep, or wan­dered about looking for a blade of grass. Drogo's eyes probed into the distance but they could pick out nothing new—nothing but the same shelving rocks, the bushes, the mists in the far north which changed colour slowly as the evening drew on.
Then the new guard came to relieve them. Drogo and his men left the redoubt and moved off across the stony path to return to the Fort through the violet shadows of the evening. When they had reached the walls Drogo gave the password for himself and his men, the door was opened, the old guard drew up in a sort of little courtyard and Tronk began to call the roll. Mean_while
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Drogo went off to make a report about the mysterious horse.
As was laid down, Drogo reported to the captain of the day and then they went together in search of the colonel. Generally when anything out of the ordinary happened one had merely to go to the adjutant—but this time it might be serious and there was no time to lose.
Meanwhile the rumour had run like lightning through the Fort. In the furthest off guard room there were already mutterings about whole squadrons of Tartars encamped at the foot of the rocks. The colonel, when he heard of it, merely said : " Somebody should try to catch it ; if it is saddled—this horse—perhaps we will be able to find out where it is from."
But there was no point now, for Private Giuseppe Lazzari had succeeded—while the old guard was on its way back to the Fort—in hiding himself behind a boulder without being noticed, then he had climbed down the screes alone, had reached the horse and was now leading it back to the Fort. He had discovered with astonishment that it was not his own, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
It was only when on the point of entering the Fort that some of his comrades noticed that he had dis­appeared. If Tronk got to know Lazzari would be in the cells for at least a couple of months. They had to save him. So when the sergeant-major called the roll and came to the name Lazzari some replied 'Present ' for him.
A few minutes later when the men had already broken ranks they remembered that Lazzari did not know the password. It wasn't a question of prison any longer but of life and death. It would be terrible if he appeared in front of the walls—they would fire on him. Two or three of his friends went off to look for Tronk in an attempt to remedy things.
Too late. Holding the black horse by the bridle 86
Lazzari was already close to the walls. And Tronk was on his rounds, drawn back to the battlements by some vague foreboding. Immediately after he had called the roll he had become worried—why, he could not deter­mine, but he felt that something was not right. Review­ing the incidents of the day he had traced them as far as the return to the Fort without finding anything suspicious. Then he seemed to stumble on something. Yes, there must have been something wrong at roll call and at the time—as often happens in such cases—he had not noticed it.
There was a sentry on guard directly over the postern gate. In the dusk he saw two figures approaching across the stony path. They would be a couple of hundred yards off. He took no notice, thinking he was seeing things. Very often in lonely places if you stand waiting for a long time you end up even in broad daylight by seeing human forms start from among the bushes and rocks—you feel that someone is watching, you go and look and there is nothing there.
To break the monotony the sentry looked around him, greeted a comrade—he was the sentry thirty yards or so to his right—with a gesture, adjusted his heavy cap, which was tight over his brow, and then looked to the left and saw Sergeant-Major Tronk standing abso­lutely still and gazing at him severely.
The sentry shook himself, looked to the front once more, saw that the two shadows were not a dream, indeed they were nearer now, only seventy odd yards away : to be precise they were a soldier and a. horse. Then he levelled his gun, cocked it and stiffened in the gesture he had repeated hundreds of times at drill. Then he cried : " Who goes there ? Who goes there?"
Lazzari had not been a soldier long—it never occurred to him that without the password he could not get in again. At the most he was frightened he might be punished for going off without permission. But you never knew—perhaps the colonel would pardon him
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because he had brought in the horse. It was a beautiful animal, a general's charger.
There were only forty odd yards left. The horse's shoes rang on the stones. It was almost quite dark. Far off there was the sound of a trumpet. "Who goes there ? Who goes there?" repeated the sentry. He would call again then he would have to fire.
A sudden feeling of uneasiness had fallen upon Laz­zari at the sentry's first shout. It seemed so odd to him, now that he was personally involved, to hear himself challenged like that by a comrade, but at the second "Who goes there ?" he recognised the voice of a friend, someone from his own company whom among them-elves they called Moretto.
"It's me, Lazzari," he shouted. "Send the sergeant of the guard to open for me. I've caught the horse. And don't let them see you or they'll put me inside."
The sentry did not move. He stood there with his gun at his shoulder trying to delay the third "Who goes there?" Perhaps if Lazzari had noticed the danger him­self he would have turned back, could have joined up the next day with the guard from the New Redoubt. But there was Tronk, a few yards away, gazing sternly at .him.
Tronk did not say a word. He looked now at the sentry, now at Lazzari because of whom he would probably be punished. What did his glances mean?
The soldier and the horse were no more than thirty yards away ; it would have been silly to wait any longer. The nearer Lazzari came the more easily he would be hit.
"Who goes there? Who goes there?" the sentry cried for the third time and there was in his voice an undertone—a sort of private warning which was against the regulations. He was trying to say : "Turn back while you have time, do you want to get killed?"
At last Lazzari understood. In a flash he remembered 88
the iron laws of the Fort and felt himself lost. But—who knows why?—instead of running away he dropped the horse's bridle and came on alone crying out in a shrill voice :
"It's me, Lazzari. Don't you see me? Moretto, Oh Moretto. It's me. What are you doing with your gun? Are you mad, Moretto?"
But the sentry was no longer Moretto---he was simply a soldier with a hard face who now was slowly raising his gun to take aim at the enemy. He had laid the gun to his shoulder and with the corner of his eye squinted at the sergeant-major silently praying that he might signal to stop. But Tronk stared at him and did not move.
Without turning round Lazzari drew back a few paces, stumbling on the stones.
"It's me, Lazzari," he shouted. "Don't you see it's me? Don't fire, Moretto."
But the sentry was no longer the Moretto with whom his comrades joked freely, he was only a sentry at the Fort in a dark blue uniform with a black bandolier, absolutely identical with all the other sentries in the darkness—a sentry like all the others who had taken aim and now pressed the trigger. He heard a roaring in his ears and seemed to catch Tronk's harsh voice : "Good shot," although Tronk had not drawn breath.
The rifle gave a little flash, a tiny cloud of smoke, even the report at first did not seem much, but then it was multiplied by the echoes, thrown from rampart to rampart and for long hung in the air to die away in a distant muttering like thunder.
Now that his duty was done the sentry lowered his rifle, leant over the parapet and looked down, hoping he had not hit the mark. And in the darkness it seemed indeed that Lazzari had not fallen.
No, Lazzari was still standing and the horse had come up to him. Then in the silence left by the shot his
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voice was heard—and how desperate it sounded : "Oh, Moretto, you have killed me."
These were his words and he slouched slowly for­ward. Tronk with his inscrutable face had not made a move but through the labyrinths of the Fort there spread a hum of war.
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XIII
rTl s began that memorable wind-swept evening 1 with its swaying lanterns and unwonted trumpet calls, with pacing to and fro in the corridors, with clouds rushing down from the north, clouds which caught on the rocky peaks and there left wisps behind them but had no time to stop, so urgent was their errand.
It had needed only a report, a mere rifle-shot, and the Fort had awakened. For years there had been silence, yet they had always looked to the north to hear the voice of approaching war—too long a silence. Now a gun had been fired, with its regulation charge of powder and its lead ball thirty-two grammes in weight, and the men had looked at each other as if it were the signal.