The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

Author:Dino Buzzati [Dino Buzzati]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781847677570
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2007-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile the clock on the wall opposite the desk continued to tick life away, and the colonel’s thin fingers, withered with the years, persisted in cleaning the lenses of his spectacles with a handkerchief although there was no need to do so.

The hands of the clock were approaching half-past ten when Major Matti came into the room to remind the colonel of his daily officers’ conference. Filimore had forgotten and was disagreeably surprised; he would have to talk about the strangers who had appeared on the steppe; he would no longer be able to put off a decision; he would have to state officially that they were enemies – or else make a joke of it, or perhaps take a middle course: give orders for security measures and at the same time take up a sceptical attitude as if there were nothing to get excited about. But some decision had to be taken and that he did not like. He would have preferred to keep on waiting, to remain completely motionless – almost as if he wanted to provoke fate to break loose.

Major Matti said to him with one of his ambiguous smiles:

‘This looks like it this time.’

Colonel Filimore did not reply. The major said:

‘You can see more of them coming up now. There are three columns, you can see them from here.’

The colonel looked him in the eyes and for a moment almost succeeded in liking him.

‘You say more of them are coming up?’

‘You can see them from here, sir, there are a good many of them now.’

They went to the window and saw more black lines moving over the triangle of northern steppe – no longer one as at dawn, but three side by side, and the end of them was lost to sight.

War, war, thought the colonel and tried in vain to dismiss the thought as if to wish for it were forbidden. At Matti’s words hope had reawakened in him and it now filled him with excitement.

His mind still in this whirl, the colonel suddenly found himself in the conference room with all the officers (except those on duty) drawn up before him. Above the dark splash of the uniforms individual faces gleamed palely but he had difficulty in recognising them; fresh or wizened, they all said the same, with feverish, gleaming eyes they avidly asked him to announce formally that the enemy was there. Standing to attention they all stared at him, demanding not to be defrauded.

In the great silence which filled the hall only the deep breathing of the officers was to be heard. The colonel saw that he must say something. At that moment he was filled with an unfamiliar and uncontrolled emotion. To his astonishment (for he could discover no reason for it) Filimore was suddenly certain that the foreigners were indeed enemies determined to violate the frontier. He had no idea how the change had come about for up to the moment before he had successfully resisted the temptation to believe so.

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