Murder in Lascaux (2 page)

“What about you two?” David asked me.

I explained we were here under false colors as well. As an associate professor of art history at Sonoma College, I had the right letterhead for an application. It's just that I never mentioned my field. Now I felt guilty about it.

David laughed, acknowledging that our mutual grounds for admission were shaky. “So what's your research area if it's not prehistoric art?”

“Nineteenth-century painting.”

David nodded and looked inquiringly at Toby, who said dryly, “I'm here in my capacity as the husband.” His plan was to thoroughly enjoy our excursion. Toby, I should say, has about as much guilt as a radish. “At home,” he added, “I sell antiques.” In fact, he runs a very successful gallery. There's nothing he likes better than being on his own, driving from place to place on a scouting expedition and bringing home some special piece he's pried from a seller's hand.

There was a slightly awkward pause.

“And you, Lily?” I asked.

“I work in publishing at the moment,” she said softly, “but I've been thinking of going back to school.”

She gave us a weak smile, and David looked ill at ease. Why? I wondered. But any further conversation was forestalled by the entrance of our guide, who now appeared from inside the reception hut. It was precisely four o'clock, the hour for the tour. The dour Frenchman, who hadn't bothered to share his name with us, loped slowly up the path to rejoin our group. The guide gave him a disapproving glance and then stood grim-faced until he arrived within hearing distance.

The guide was thin, pale, and hunched-over. His gray hair was slicked straight back and looked wet. He announced his name as Pierre Gounot and set about checking our admission papers and spelling out the rules of the visit. No smoking (a glance at the French puffer, who crushed his cigarette underfoot). No photographs. No touching the walls or rock formations. No flashlights or other means of illumination apart from his own equipment. And we must stay together at all times. Understood? This recital of the regulations was punctuated by an alarming cough. Then, straightening up a bit, he announced: “
Bon. On y va.
” Let's go.

Toby and I donned the jackets we had been advised to bring, and we followed the guide up a trail leading from the reception area toward a grass-covered mound resembling a bunker. As we neared our destination, Toby took my elbow and hung back a little, so we lagged behind the others.

“Okay, who does he remind you of ?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

“The guide? I don't know.”

“Come on. The long face, the batlike ears?”

“Who?”

“The children of the night,” drawled Toby in his best rendition of Bela Lugosi. “They make such music!” Toby does two imitations, both out of date; the other is Groucho Marx.

Gounot did look a lot like Dracula, now that I thought about it. Besides the pointy ears, he had the pallor of someone who spent his days underground. Stifling a laugh, I shushed Toby, and we caught up with the rest of the group. We had walked about two hundred yards up the wooded trail. Now a stone staircase of about a dozen steps led down into the mound, where a huge iron door marked the entrance to the cave. The guide punched some numbers on a security pad next to the door, produced from his pocket a dungeon-sized key, and introduced it into the lock. The massive door swung open with a whisper, which surprised me: I had expected creaks and groans. On the other side of the door, the guide punched a few more buttons and then ushered us in. As he shut the door behind us, we had a moment to sense the chill. Not so cold, I thought. Those warnings about the need for a jacket were overdone. But in fact this was just the first of a series of temperature-controlled antechambers, each smaller and colder than the last.

In the third chamber, we had to step into a shallow tray filled with a chemical solution that would remove algae or pollen from our shoes. Ahead of me, Lily hesitated, and I sensed her reluctance to stain the leather of her expensive-looking flats. She winced as she waded through. I had come in rubber-soled running shoes and felt no compunction in complying. Toby splashed through after me, followed by the grim-faced Frenchman, who stepped lightly in and out of the tray as though he had gone through this strange ablution any number of times.

Then we were on the landing of a dimly lit stairway leading down into the dark. At once the air was different, with a cool smell of earth and rock. Gounot led the way. The steps were uneven, and I grasped the cold iron railing as tightly as I could. At the bottom, a smooth clay surface sloped gently down and away from us. I shivered, not so much from the cold as from the sense of entering a forbidden place.

“Come closer, please,” Gounot wheezed. He detached a battery-powered lamp from his belt and announced he was going to turn off the lights strung along the stairwell. “For the paintings, the less light, the better.”

Huddled together, we shuffled forward through a narrow passage, following the dancing beam of the guide's hand-held lamp. As the neck of the passageway opened onto a wider space, he turned off the lamp, encouraging us to inch forward in the dark. That's when I felt my first pang of fear. There was no reason for it, yet I reached out and grabbed Toby's hand. “It's okay,” I heard David say to Lily. Our group stood for a full minute in the inky blackness, absorbing the alien silence. Then, with a theatrical flair, Gounot threw a switch, and a rack of floodlights lit the cavern.

“
Mesdames
,
Messieurs
,
regardez!
These paintings that surround you have existed for seventeen thousand years.”

The effect was breathtaking. We were standing inside the entrance to the Hall of Bulls, a low rotunda perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide. A natural domed ceiling rose only a few feet above our heads, obscured by deep shadows. But all eyes were on the glistening walls. On either side of us, rows of magnificent animals galloped away toward the back of the chamber. There were bulls, horses, and stags, arrayed as if in a procession. Above my left shoulder was a strange-looking beast with a pair of long, straight horns. There was movement everywhere, and the colors were amazing: reds, yellows, browns, and blacks looking as fresh as if they had been painted yesterday.

Whereas the floors and ceiling of the rotunda were a rusty ochre streaked with yellow, the uneven walls were lightened by a whitish mineral that must have invited the imprint of images. And what images! All the animals were in profile. The herd was dominated by four enormous bulls, two on each side of the hall, the largest at least five yards across. On the left wall, one giant bull faced off against the other, while a line of red and brown horses fled toward and past him. That was the picture from my childhood art book, more spectacular in reality than in dreams.

Gounot had been consulting his watch as we stood in silence, taking in the spectacle. He now moved toward the back of the hall, where he flipped a switch. The lights went out. As he approached us again, in darkness illuminated only by his jiggling lamp, the images leaped to life. Now I could see how the artists had used the contours of the rock to create a sense of three dimensions. Where a boss on the wall protruded, the cave artist saw a haunch or a shoulder, and the rest of the animal followed. The images seemed even more alive emerging out of the dark, as the weak beams of Gounot's lamp created shadows, which defined the figures.

“
Mesdames, Messieurs
, this is how the Cro-Magnons saw Lascaux. They used torches for light, or they made sandstone lamps and burned animal fat, with moss for a wick. One of those lamps was found deep in this cave.”

I strained to take in visual information, while listening as our guide recounted the story of the cave's discovery. Toby and I were able to follow along in French, but I could hear David whispering as he provided a running translation for his wife.

“In 1940, during the war, four local boys from Montignac were on an outing. You may have heard they followed the dog of one of the boys down a hole. That's a myth,” explained Gounot. He hacked a few times and continued. “In reality, an old woman told them that a hole under an uprooted tree looked like it might start a tunnel leading underground. The boys took a flashlight, dropped stones down into the hole, and then one of them, a youth named Ravidat, fell into the hole. He landed here, in the Hall of Bulls. The boys alerted their teacher, and soon word spread. After the war, the cave was opened to visitors, and over a million tourists came to see it. But unfortunately, these visits contaminated the environment, making it necessary to close the site. You are among the privileged few who will ever see the original paintings.”

“This is amazing,” Toby whispered to me, squeezing my hand. The five of us were lined up single file on a concrete walkway with low curbs on each side to remind us not to stray too close to the paintings. But I leaned in as far as possible, to explore each image as the guide's light played over the wall.

As I peered at the figures on the walls, I noticed that almost all of them were drawn with miniature heads and shortened legs, with abstract ovals suggesting hooves. That meant the artists were following a set of conventions—and
that
, I always tell my students, is what defines a style. That also meant the artists had instruction of some kind. There must have been teachers—like me—who led apprentices into the caves to make sure they understood the fine points of the tradition.

While I was taking mental notes for a lecture I might give in the fall, I noticed Lily was acting strange. She had stepped back from the group, and she seemed unsteady. A touch of claustrophobia, I guessed. Her husband placed a protective arm around her shoulder and whispered to her in a tone of concern. She made a hand motion signaling that she didn't want to call attention to herself, then raised her chin and moved back into the group.

“Are you dizzy, Madame?” asked the guide. “That sometimes happens in the cave. Try to take a few deep breaths.” She did so.

Toby whispered, “If he took a few deep breaths himself, he'd fall over.”

I gave Toby an elbow.

“Do you wish to return?” pursued the guide.

“No, no, I'm fine,” Lily said in English. She stood up straighter, brushed her long hair behind her, and gestured again to proceed.

“Very well,” replied Gounot. “Our time is limited, and there are two other chambers to visit. But before we continue, does anyone have any questions? Monsieur?” This last remark was addressed to the silent Frenchman standing in the rear, probably because Guonot doubted whether any of the rest of us could speak his language well enough to pose a question. But the man shook his head in the negative, his face impassive.

“No? Anyone?”

Toby, who is never timid, piped up. “How do you know how old the paintings are?”

“
Bon
,” replied the guide. “Everyone knows about carbon dating?” Nods all around. “Unfortunately, we cannot apply that method to the walls. The paintings are covered by a thin layer of calcite, which is how they have been so well protected. But calcite prevents the test. Nonetheless, other materials found on the floor of the cave have been tested—animal bones, charcoal sticks, and so on. We believe these objects were sealed inside when the original opening collapsed. And that gives us an approximate date of activity in the cave. Our estimate is about 15,000 BC.”

Just then Gounot's lamp began flickering, and a few seconds later it conked out. There was not so much as a sliver of light. The darkness was absolute. I heard a tinny clank, as Gounot banged against the lamp with the palm of his hand. And at the same time I had an uncanny feeling there was someone else or something else moving about in the dark depths beyond us. A trick of the imagination, I said to calm myself, but the hairs rose on the back of my neck.

Gounot kept tapping his lamp until the light flickered back on. “Don't worry,” he reassured us. “There's a spare battery if needed. Are you all right, Madame?”

David sought to comfort his wife, who looked shaken. Toby and I exchanged glances, and smiled. Since infancy, I've been fiercely independent. My long-suffering mother reports that my first phrase was “Me do! Me do!” as I rejected help in putting on a shirt. Toby knows how to leave me on my own until the right moment, which I appreciate. And though he looked at me inquiringly, he let me be.

“Well, then. Any other questions?”

Toby again raised his hand, its shadow enlarged on the wall behind him by the cast of the lantern. “It seems the artists painted only animals. What about human beings?”

“Ah!” declared the guide, standing a little straighter. “Yes, the paintings are always of animals. There are also symbols, though we don't know their meanings, but hardly any other subjects. Human images are extremely rare. Why? Perhaps there was a superstition against representing people in the paintings. Even today, in some cultures the making of human images is prohibited.”

That made sense to me. The Bible condemns graven images. In some tribes it is feared that if one person possesses the image of another, he controls that person's spirit.

Gounot continued: “Nevertheless, here in Lascaux we have a famous example of human representation, but it is located in a part of the cave we can't visit. I'll tell you about it in a moment. First, please follow me. We are now going to enter the Axial Gallery.” These observations were followed by another coughing fit.

Lined up again in single file, we shuffled toward the far end of the chamber, hurrying to keep up with our guide's bouncing light. Gounot led the way, followed by me, then Toby, then Lily, then David. The Frenchman brought up the rear. I found myself wanting to look behind me, but the path was uneven and difficult to follow. I had sensed something sinister, but what had prompted the feeling? Had it been fear of darkness lingering from a childhood scare, perhaps, or triggered by some obscure connection to our ancestors who once gathered here? I tried to shake off the feeling.