The Belgian had the hardest time making the crawl, but when they stood in the open chamber and turned up their lanterns, it was difficult to tell if his breathlessness was from exertion or excitement.
“So you see, Bastard!”
The chamber they were in was at least six meters tall, and the walls were decorated floor to ceiling with pictures of horses, bison, some sort of antelope, rendered in white and red and brown ochre. Each animal was marked with spots that sometimes extended to the area around them. Lucien was impressed with the skill of the artist, because even on the rough surface there was the hint of perspective, shading on the horses that indicated dimension.
“The examples are better preserved as you go deeper into the cave,” said Vanderlinden.
“Why do the spots extend outside of the outlines?” asked Lucien.
“I have a theory about that,” said Vanderlinden. “You see, I don’t believe these are actually animals. You see here and there the human figures? Small compared to the animals. No dimension, just shadows, yes? But the animals are fully formed.”
“Hunters?”
“That’s just it,” said the Belgian. “We’ve excavated several fire rings in this cave. From the strata, and the smoke built up on the ceiling, people lived here on and off for thousands of years, yet there are no large animal bones to be found in any layer. Many, many examples of small animals, rabbits, marmots, badgers, even a few human bones, mostly teeth. These people did not hunt large animals.”
“Then?”
“Close your eyes,” said Vanderlinden.
Lucien did as he was told.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. Darkness.”
“No, what do you really see? What do you see in the darkness?”
“Circles, like auras, where our lanterns were. Afterimages.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the Belgian, clapping his hands. “These are images that were seen in the dark. In the mind’s eye. I believe that these people were drawing images of animals that they saw in trance. These are spirit animals, not corporeal animals. That’s why the humans are not fully developed. These drawings are shamanistic. Religious, if you will. Not narrative. They are not telling a story, they are invoking the gods.”
“Interesting,” said Professeur Bastard.
“Oh that’s just fucking grand,” said Lucien. He’d really had enough of trying to reconcile the spirit world lately and had really hoped for some hands-on empirical science you could taste.
“I know,” said Vanderlinden, missing the sarcasm. “Wait until you see the rest.”
He led them farther into the cave, ducking through very low passages, following chalk marks at forks he’d obviously left himself from previous explorations. At one point they had to shimmy through an opening on their bellies, handing their lanterns ahead of them, but the narrow passage opened into a huge chamber.
“This passage had been blocked by debris for what must have been thousands of years, but one of my students saw a pattern to the stones, larger at the bottom, getting smaller and smaller to the top. They had been placed. This had been purposely walled up. Thank heavens for fresh, young eyes. I’d have never seen it myself.”
Vanderlinden played his lantern over the walls.
“These, Bastard, these are the drawings I sent the message about.” The drawings higher up on the walls were similar to those outside the chamber, but lower, there was a repeated motif, most of the figures black.
“You can’t see anything under this yellow l
amplight. Wait, let me light a magnesium light. The small arc light you provided, Bastard. The battery will only work for a few minutes, but you’ll see. You can take samples for your analysis.”
Vanderlinden took a strange-looking brass lantern from his knapsack, and then a battery about the size of a cantaloupe, but it must have been very heavy by the way the doctor handled it, and Lucien felt guilty for not having helped the older man carry his burden.
“Now, don’t look into the light. It will blind you. I’m pointing it away.” He attached wires to the leads on the lantern, then turned a small knob at the top of the lamp, which advanced a thin magnesium bar toward an electrode. When the current arced, the cave lit up like bright sunshine, and Lucien could see the size of the chamber. It was larger than the nave at Notre-Dame, and all around it, for about a meter from the floor up the wall, were drawings of human figures, many different human figures: dancing, fighting, hunting, traveling. In every motif, however, two figures were repeated again and again: that of a small, twisted figure, smaller than the others, rendered in brown ochre, holding a black knife; and a tall, slender female figure, rendered in bright, ultramarine blue.
“So you see! The blue is mineral, I’m sure of it,” said Vanderlinden. “The blue brushes off quite easily, so it’s never been disturbed. I’ve tested some of it in a flame. It’s not copper. Perhaps your liquid chromatography method—”
Professeur Bastard held up his hand to signal for his colleague to pause. “And you believe these drawings are how old?”
“It’s only a theory, this chamber has been dry for millennia, but because we had to remove some stalactites and stalagmites on the other side of the constructed barrier, and we have some idea of how long it takes them to grow, given the amount of minerals in the water around here, these could have been painted as long as forty thousand years ago.”