In A Melancholy Mood

It is a cold, gray day in mid-November. 

I am reading a somber novel called The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati.  The story concerns a young Lieutenant who is posted to a small fort on the edge of a vast and desolate frontier.  The Lieutenant is dismayed at the barrenness of his new surroundings, and his dispirited thoughts about his life are in harmony with the weather outside my apartment.

The passage:

Up to then he had gone forward through the heedless season of early youth -- along a road which to children seems infinite, where the years slip past slowly and with quiet pace so that no one notices them go.  We walk along calmly, looking curiously around us; there is not the least need to hurry, no one pushes us on from behind and no one is waiting for us; our comrades, too, walk on thoughtlessly, and often stop to joke and play.  From the houses, in the doorways, the grown-up people greet us kindly and point to the horizon with an understanding smile.  And so the heart begins to beat with desires at once heroic and tender, we feel that we are on the threshold of the wonders awaiting us further on.  As yet we do not see them, that is true -- but it is certain, absolutely certain that one day we shall reach them.

Is it far yet?  No, you have to cross that river down there, go over those green hills.  Haven't we perhpas arrived already?  Aren't these trees, these meadows, this white house perhaps what we were looking for?  For a few seconds we feel that they are and we would like to halt there.  Then someone says that it is better further on and we move off again unhurriedly.

So the journey continues; we wait trustfully and the days are long and peaceful.  The sun shines high in the sky and it seems to have no wish to set.

But at a certain point we turn round, almost instinctively and see that a gate has been bolted behind us, barring our way back.  Then we feel that something has changed; the sun no longer seems to be motionless but moves quickly across the sky; there is barely time to find it when it is already falling headlong towards the far horizon.  We notice that the clouds no longer lie motionless in the blue gulfs of the sky but flee, piled on above the other, such is their haste.  Then we understand that time is passing and that one day or another the road must come to an end.